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<p>US Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner testified today about the heavily-criticized role he played in the 2008 rate-rigging scandal. In a House Financial Services Committee meeting, Geithner defended his 2008 dealings with the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-libor-geithner-house-hearing-20120725,0,1253219.story" type="external">&#160;the Los Angeles Times reported</a>. Geithner had been serving as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York when he learned that the LIBOR was vulnerable to manipulation by major banks. But despite concerns that the LIBOR was being under-reported, Geithner said that he and other Fed officials saw no problem with using it as a basis while setting the terms for billions of dollars in bailout loans.&#160;</p>
<p>"We, like investors around the world, had to take advantage of the rates available at that time, and we chose LIBOR at the time like many others," Geithner testified today, according to the LA Times. &#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/120601/when-the-brics-crumble" type="external">When the BRICs crumble</a></p>
<p>Geithner has been accused of not doing enough to stop the manipulation of LIBOR, a key interest rate, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/u-lawmakers-probe-geithner-libor-problems-135131931--sector.html" type="external">Reuters reported</a>. Geithner said he learned about the problem in 2008. But his statements contradict a statement from the New York Fed, which says that the bank regulator knew about the problems as early as 2007, according to Reuters.&#160;</p>
<p>Geithner's testimony received heavy criticism from Republican lawmakers, who wonder why he didn't bring up the manipulation sooner. "?You have appeared before this committee countless times since 2008,"? Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., asked Geithner, <a href="http://www.boston.com/business/news/2012/07/25/geithner-warns-congress-risks-economy/MhRtpieN1ZHxBUPcC6xM4H/story.html" type="external">according to the Associated Press</a>. "Why did you never mention it to the committee?"?</p>
<p>The LIBOR is an important interest rate determined by a daily poll carried out by the British Bankers? Association, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-25/geithner-says-u-k-regulators-had-libor-responsibility.html" type="external">Bloomberg News explains</a>. The poll asks banks to estimate how much it would cost for them to borrow from each other.&#160;</p> | Geithner defends his role in LIBOR-rigging scandal | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-07-25/geithner-defends-his-role-libor-rigging-scandal | 2012-07-25 | 3left-center
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<p>The cause was brain cancer, said his wife, Carolyn Campbell Beall.</p>
<p>Beall (pronounced “bell”) was the scion a prominent family of Maryland Republicans. His father and brother, J. Glenn Beall and J. Glenn Beall Jr., respectively, served in the U.S. Senate. And Beall, who was the U.S. attorney for Maryland from 1970 to 1975, was an appointee of President Richard Nixon, a Republican.</p>
<p>He stepped into a job with a long-standing tradition of prosecuting public officeholders, among them Sen. Daniel Brewster, D-Md., Rep. Thomas Johnson, D-Md., and Jesse Baggett, the chairman of the Prince George’s County Commission. Beall vowed to continue that tradition. “Corruption of public officials is heinous, abominable, and has to be ferreted out,” the 32-year-old Beall told The Washington Post in 1970.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In Agnew’s case, the investigation began with a report of a kickback scheme in suburban Baltimore County, where Agnew had been elected county executive in 1962. According to information uncovered by prosecutors, it had been a practice for some time that public officeholders demanded sub rosa payments from engineers and builders for government construction jobs.</p>
<p>Agnew, who was elected Maryland governor in 1966 and picked by Nixon for his vice president in 1968, had accepted such payments, prosecutors said.</p>
<p>Eventually Agnew accepted a deal in which he would plead no contest to a single charge of tax evasion and resign the vice presidency, which he did in October 1973. He also was fined $10,000. Rep. Gerald Ford, R-Mich., replaced Agnew and then became president after Nixon resigned in August 1974.</p>
<p>George Beall VIII was born in Frostburg, Maryland, on Aug 17, 1937. He rarely if ever used the numerals after his name, his wife said.</p>
<p>His family traced its roots in America to the 1600s, and one of the early George Bealls was a Maryland landholder in a section of the state that now is Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood. His father was chairman of the Maryland State Road Commission, a state senator, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and, from 1953 to 1965, a member of the U.S. Senate.</p>
<p>George Beall graduated from the private Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and in 1959 from Princeton University. He received a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1963 and began practicing law in Baltimore.</p>
<p>He had prosecuted no cases when he took the state’s attorney job. Over the next five years, his office investigated price fixing involving Baltimore bakeries, secured an indictment of a state legislator for drug dealing – the legislator was subsequently murdered – and prosecuted Arthur Bremer, the gunman who shot Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who was campaigning in Maryland’s Democratic presidential primary in 1972.</p>
<p>But the Agnew case was the capstone of his prosecutorial tenure. The Post said in 1977 that it gave Beall “a national reputation as a fearless political big game hunter.” But it did not endear him to GOP regulars, who weren’t bothered by the bribery charges.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Beall dabbled in politics for a few years, helping with his brother’s campaigns. He ran for governor in 1978 but dropped out of the race, saying, “I don’t have the desire.”</p>
<p>He practiced law in Baltimore, retiring in the early 2000s from the firm then known as Hogan and Hartson. His specialties included commercial litigation, corporate takeovers and several years as general counsel to the Baltimore Ravens football team. He helped shepherd the team’s relocation to Baltimore from Cleveland.</p>
<p>His marriages to Linda Jenkins and Nancy Roche ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 37 years, Carolyn Campbell Beall of Naples; a daughter from his second marriage, Rebecca Beall of Summit, New Jersey: three stepchildren, Jamie Alban of Baltimore, Nicholas Guy Alban of Nashville and Tobey Frederick of Easton, Maryland; 16 grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.</p>
<p>His brother J. Glenn Beall Jr. died in 2006.</p>
<p>In 1995, Agnew’s official portrait was restored to a place of prominence in the Maryland State House, 22 years after he had resigned as vice president and 16 years after it was ordered removed by Gov. Harry Hughes, D, who was elected on a good-government platform.</p>
<p>Some involved in the prosecution of Agnew were upset, but Beall took what The Post called a “more diplomatic” view.</p>
<p>“Agnew paid a very high price,” Beall said at the time. “He forfeited the second- highest office in the land . . . It was an important lesson for him and for the country. And it seems to me the lesson bears repeating . . . we should not hide our shortcomings in the closet.”</p> | George Beall, who led prosecution of Vice President Spiro Agnew, dies at 79 | false | https://abqjournal.com/930680/george-beall-who-led-prosecution-of-vice-president-spiro-agnew-dies-at-79.html | 2least
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<p>Queen Elizabeth II is known to often times have trouble sleeping, so to cure that she goes for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/queen-almost-shot_us_586e01ede4b0c8575a774109?section=us_weird-news" type="external">late</a>night strolls through the palace grounds in a hope to calm her mind and body. Well one such morning, at about 3 am a guard spotted someone walking through the garden. He called out:</p>
<p>“Who’s that?</p>
<p>But as the Queen got closer the guard quickly realized it was her majesty. In relief and nerves the guard <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/most-curious-royal-incident-x0f7w9sqw" type="external">stated:</a></p>
<p>“Bloody hell, your majesty, I nearly shot you.”</p>
<p>The guard, realizing he may have spoken out of turn, waited patiently for her reaction. The Queen <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/most-curious-royal-incident-x0f7w9sqw" type="external">replied:</a></p>
<p>“That’s quite all right. Next time I’ll ring through beforehand so you don’t have to shoot me.”</p>
<p>The Times originally reported the story but the Buckingham refuses to make a statement or reply to questions. The current status of the guard is unknown as well but the Queen seems to have a good enough sense of humor that her assailant most likely kept his head.</p>
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<p>Featured image via <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/ewaviktorin/queen-elisabeth-ii-funny-moments/" type="external">Pinterest</a>.</p> | The Queen Mother Is Almost Shot In Her Own Backyard (VIDEO) | true | http://offthemainpage.com/2017/01/05/the-queen-mother-is-almost-shot-in-her-own-backyard-video/ | 2017-01-05 | 4left
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<p>apl020115b/ASECTION/PIERRE-LOUIS/JOURNAL/020115Bernalillo County Sheriff Deputies block I 25 traffic in both directions after a fatal accident . Photographed on Sunday February 1 , 2015. /Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — One person was killed in a single vehicle rollover crash on I-25 just south of Rio Bravo about 8:45 p.m. Sunday. Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Capt. Justin Dunlap said both lanes of I-25 are closed through the area. The identity of the victim was not released, nor was it known if the person was wearing a seatbelt or if alcohol was involved.</p>
<p>Another rollover accident which involved multiple vehicles Sunday night, occurred on eastbound I-40 at 6th Street at about 9:15 p.m. No fatalities were reported and there was no other information available.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Rollover accident kills driver | false | https://abqjournal.com/535068/rollover-accident-kills-driver.html | 2least
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<p>For the first time in American history, the high school graduation rate hit 83 percent, higher than any other time before. President Obama made the announcement on Monday at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>"When I took office almost eight years ago, we knew that our education system was falling short," he <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/17/498246451/the-high-school-graduation-reaches-a-record-high-again" type="external">stated</a>. "I said, by 2020 I want us to be No. 1 across the board, so we got to work making real changes to improve the chances for all of our young people ... And the good news is that we've made real progress."</p>
<p>Taking credit for five years straight of record-setting graduation rates, Obama patted himself on the back and repackaged federal education initiatives including the "Preschool for All" program and the "free community college partnership."</p>
<p>What the president failed to mention was the fact that state and local government have been instrumental in churning out more graduates.</p>
<p>In fact, the nationwide boost is largely the result of averages compiled from predominately red states. According to <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/17/498246451/the-high-school-graduation-reaches-a-record-high-again" type="external">NPR</a>, "Georgia's reported rate has risen more than 10 points, from 67 percent to 79 percent since 2010-2011. It jumped more than six points from last spring to this spring."</p>
<p>But the impressive figures come amidst concerns that some states are lowering standards to hit achievement goals. Average SAT and ACT test scores are down, while aptitude tests remain flatlined, as NPR notes.</p>
<p>Even so, President Obama appeared to champion the achievement as his own, implying that the federal government has been at the forefront of increased participation by students at schools. This preposterous claim was even challenged by none other than left-leaning NPR. "Despite all the action that's been taken recently toward this goal, we have to keep in mind the possibility that broader social forces are playing a larger role than policy initiatives in influencing the percentage who graduate," explains NPR.</p>
<p>As The Daily Wire's own Ben Shapiro has pointed out time and time again, the single greatest indicator of childhood success is having two parents in the home. This holds true across racial lines. It's the family unit that helps kids thrive in academics and move up the socioeconomic ladder, not the overbearing state.</p> | HS Graduation Rate Hits Historic High. Obama Congratulates Himself...and The Federal Government. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10026/hs-graduation-rate-hits-historic-high-obama-michael-qazvini | 2016-10-18 | 0right
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<p /> SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.
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<p />A 50 percent increase in lead levels in children's blood has caused the mayor of Flint, Michigan, Karen Weaver, to declare a state of emergency. In April of last year in 2014, the city of Flint switched its water source from the Detroit system to Flint River. The switch has led to various levels of toxins in the water supply, including lead. The water coming out of the taps in the city is foul-smelling and badly discolored. Initially there were problems of E. coli and then high levels of total trihalomethanes, a carcigenic byproduct of chlorine that causes cancer and other diseases.
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<p />Now joining us to talk about all of this is Curt Guyette. He is an award-winning journalist who has been covering Detroit for nearly 20 years. He is now working for the ACLU of Michigan and reporting on issues related to emergency management and open government. Good to have you with us again, Curt.
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<p />CURT GUYETTE: Pleasure to be here.
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<p />PERIES: So Curt, last time you were on the Real News Network we were reporting on a state of emergency over the water supply in Flint, Michigan. So what's the difference between that emergency and this one?
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<p />GUYETTE: Well, this one was declared by the city itself, and I think the significance is, number one, you finally have city officials admitting that this is a disaster. Previously when the city was under emergency management and the previous mayor, both of whom supported the switch to the Flint River, and thereby were responsible for this disaster, now there's a new mayor who is not responsible for it. And only concern is addressing the problem.
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<p />And the first step in addressing the problem is admitting there is a problem. And she is doing that by declaring the state of emergency. It also has the potential to better position the city to receive disaster relief from the federal government.
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<p />PERIES: Now, Curt, from what I understand, the switching from the Detroit's water system to the Flint River was supposed to save the city somewhat, something like $5 million. We know Flint is in a cash-strapped situation, but now changing it back to Detroit's water system is going to cost apparently over $12 million, not to mention the sick children that need to be treated and perhaps lawsuits as well. How are the officers, officials, rationalizing their decision here?
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<p />GUYETTE: That's a, that's a good question. I think that they will say this problem took them by surprise, that they weren't prepared for it. But that just goes to show, if what they're saying is true, at the very least was a lack of due diligence to ensure that the river water would be safe before doing the switchover.
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<p />PERIES: Did they not test it before they switched? I mean, you would think, you know, providing water supply for a city there's some basic measures in place to test it before making such a drastic decision.
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<p />GUYETTE: Yes. And you know, I'm still trying to get a complete answer as to what was and wasn't done prior to the switch. But Mark Edwards, the, who's one of the world's leading experts on issues like this and has been working very closely with the people of Flint, said that, you know, any sort of reasonable testing of the river water beforehand, it would have easily been predictable that this would be the consequence, because the river water is so highly corrosive. And that this is just a predictable outcome. The lead contamination is a predictable outcome of using that highly corrosive water.
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<p />And then the problem was compounded by the fact that the city and the state made a decision to stop adding corrosive control phosphates, to use phosphates to control corrosion in the pipes. And inexplicably they made the decision to stop using that. So they went from the Detroit water, which is clean, safe, not highly corrosive at all, to--but they did use corrosion control, to the Flint River water, which is multiple times more corrosive than the Detroit water. And then when they needed corrosion control more than ever, they stopped using it.
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<p />And when you're talking about the cost, one of the major, major costs that the people of Flint are going to be facing is repairing and replacing the water delivery system infrastructure that has been terribly, terribly damaged by the use of this highly corrosive water.
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<p />PERIES: Now, how are the parents coping with this situation? I understand the neurological damage, the behavioral effects, of lead in your bloodstream is, according to the WHO, irreversible. What's the situation there, and how are they coping with it?
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<p />GUYETTE: You know, it's a very difficult thing to cope with. It's devastating. Absolutely devastating to learn that your child is irreversibly impaired by water that was supposed to be safe. That your government was repeatedly telling you was safe.
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<p />So it's, it's devastating. But one of the things that they're doing is participating in a, a class action lawsuit that the intent is to, to help all these people recover damages. And among those damages are the, the health effects on these families. And in the case of the children, the increased difficulty of providing education, because the lead exposure results in lowered IQs, learning disabilities, and behavioral problems. And so the residents of Flint are going to be needing help paying for all those things.
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<p />PERIES: And yet it's a cash-strapped city. So where does the responsibility for all this eventually lie?
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<p />GUYETTE: I believe it lies with the state, because it was the state that came in and took over the city. It was the state emergency manager who was in charge when the decision was made to leave the Detroit system and start using the Flint River. And it was purely an economic decision, made without, without really taking into account the health consequences that could and did result from that, from that really horribly misguided decision.
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<p />PERIES: Curt, we really appreciate the work you're doing on behalf of the residents of Michigan, and Flint in particular. And we look forward to your continued reports with us. We do want to follow this story, because I think other cities may be faced with similar kinds of situations, and we're not even privy to it at this time.
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<p />GUYETTE: That's absolutely true, because one of the problems is that the way the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality conducts tests under the federal EPA's lead and copper rule are absolutely intended to minimize the amount of lead being found. And Michigan is not the only state where that's occurring.
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<p />And there were just hearings by the EPA which is considering changes to the rule, and one of the things that came out in that hearing was the fact that there's, throughout the United States, 10 million lead service lines. And so unless the proper corrosion control is being used, and unless the proper detection methods are being employed, people are going to be exposed to lead. And it's important to emphasize that there is no safe level of lead.
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<p />So if there's any level of lead in someone's drinking water, that's an unsafe level, and has potential to have really severe consequences. So this isn't just a Flint problem, this is a nationwide issue.
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<p />PERIES: And is there any quick fixes to this besides using this treatment to control the corrosion? Is replacement of all of these pipes the ultimate answer?
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<p />GUYETTE: I believe it is. But it's a complicated issue, because first of all it's so expensive. There are ten million of these pipes. The cost of replacing them can be $3500 each and upwards, depending how long it is. But it's complicated by the fact that typically the municipality will own half of the pipe. The section that goes from the water main that runs down the street to the homeowner's property line. And then the second half is from the property line to the house, is owned by the homeowner. And how you compel them to replace their half of the line is a difficult thing, especially if it's a landlord situation, might not care, someone doesn't want to invoke a $3500 expense, especially if it's a property in a low-income neighborhood.
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<p />So it's a very difficult issue. And really the answer is money. You know, lots, lots and lots. We're talking about billions of dollars here.
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<p />PERIES: And Curt, so what is the potential damage to citizens that don't replace their pipes inside their property line?
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<p />GUYETTE: Well, you know, one thing that Mark Edwards points out is that the biggest problem is not lead in your water, the biggest problem is lead in your water and not knowing about it. Because if you know about it and you're in the financial position, you can filter the water. It helps if you run the water for five minutes or something to, to get the fresh water that's not been sitting in that lead service line.
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<p />So I would say the number one thing that people should be doing is getting their water tested to see if there's lead present in it. And then once they make that determination, excuse me, they can decide what to do in terms of addressing it. But the most important thing is to first find out.
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<p />PERIES: Curt, important work you're doing. Thank you so much for joining us today.
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<p />GUYETTE: Thanks for having me on.
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<p />PERIES: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.
<p />
<p />End
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<p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy. | Poisoning the Children of Flint, Michigan | true | http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D15310 | 2015-12-17 | 4left
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<p>Msgr. Thomas A. Whelan, my pastor when I was growing up in Baltimore, was a striking character: Princeton friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald; former Wall Street broker; high-ranking Army chaplain in World War II; world traveler; founding rector of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. The latter two roles led to some creative thinking about arranging “coverage” at the cathedral during the summer, when he could be found abroad: One by one and year by year, Msgr. Whelan brought to Baltimore newly ordained Australian priests who had studied in Rome, wanted to visit the U.S., and could use some money.</p>
<p>And so, precisely fifty years ago this month, a tall, gangly Aussie named George Pell entered my life. By the end of August 1967, he had become a fast friend of my family. Little did we know that the next half-century would lead us into the same foxholes in various ecclesiastical battles; or to a shared friendship with a Polish priest, pope, and saint; or into synods, consistories, papal elections, and other adventures. We’re both a little slower and a little heavier than we were in the summer of ’67, when, if memory serves, I helped introduce the future cardinal to frisbee at the beach. But the friendship is even closer and it is one of the great blessings of my life.</p>
<p>That summer, Father Pell was heading for doctoral studies in history at Oxford after ordination in Rome from the Pontifical Urban University (horsemeat was a staple on the menu in his day). His intellectual gifts might have marked him out for a scholarly career. But providence (and John Paul II) had other plans, and rather than teaching history full-time, George Pell made history, becoming the defining figure of twenty-first-century Catholicism in Australia.</p>
<p>Had Pell not become archbishop of Melbourne, and later cardinal-archbishop of Sydney, it’s a reasonable bet that Australian Catholicism today would resemble the Irish Church from which the Church Down Under largely descends: scandal-ridden, demoralized, intellectually shoddy, and somewhere out on the far periphery of the New Evangelization. Thanks to Pell’s courage in facing down the Australian forces of Catholic Lite, the Church in Oz today has a fighting chance.</p>
<p>Cardinal Pell’s accomplishment has not been cost-free. Australia is a contact-sport country, and that national tendency to hit hard extends to both the Aussie media and to intra-ecclesiastical life. George Pell’s enemies, and their media lapdogs, have not scrupled to lie about him for decades. Perhaps the most absurd charge was that this man, whose sartorial style rings up “Salvation Army Thrift Shop,” kept a house full of Church finery to satisfy his vanity. As it happens (and as I wrote at the time), I had just stayed in the cardinal’s house when this nonsense appeared; I hadn’t seen a vestment anywhere, but had noted thousands of books and the current issues of every major opinion journal in the English-speaking world.</p>
<p>More recently, the calumnies have become much darker, as the man who designed and implemented the Australian Church’s first vigorous response to the sexual abuse of the young has been charged with being an abuser. His friends are confident that the charges, like other fanciful allegations the cardinal has consistently denied and of which he has been exonerated, will be shown to be gross falsehoods—not least because we believe Pell is telling the truth when he flatly and forcefully denies the current accusations.</p>
<p>There is a new twist to this dirty business, however. Since 2014, Cardinal Pell has been responsible for draining the Vatican financial swamp of corruptions that had become epidemic, ingrained, and virtually institutionalized. Given the stakes and the sleaziness involved, it would not be surprising to learn that some who would be most adversely effected by Pell’s success in Vatican financial reform may have been generating false accusations now in play in the Australian judicial system. Australia, it seems, is not the only place where hardball is played, and in very unsavory forms.</p>
<p>Cardinal George Pell is a big man in every sense of the word and his stamina under assault is entirely admirable. Its deepest root, however, is not his native combativeness but Pell’s faith. Its solidity, and the courage to which that rock-solid faith gives rise, may be what aggravates his foes the most.</p>
<p>It’s also what inspires his legion of friends, among whom I am honored to number myself—for fifty years and counting.</p>
<p>George Weigel&#160;is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington, D.C.’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.</p> | Fifty Years of Friendship with Cardinal Pell | false | https://eppc.org/publications/fifty-years-of-friendship-with-cardinal-pell/ | 1right-center
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<p>WASHINGTON (AP) _ These Dist. of Columbia lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>DC 3 Evening</p>
<p>0-4-1</p>
<p>(zero, four, one)</p>
<p>DC 3 Midday</p>
<p>4-9-3</p>
<p>(four, nine, three)</p>
<p>DC 4 Evening</p>
<p>3-8-7-2</p>
<p>(three, eight, seven, two)</p>
<p>DC 4 Midday</p>
<p>8-6-5-5</p>
<p>(eight, six, five, five)</p>
<p>DC 5 Evening</p>
<p>9-3-3-0-0</p>
<p>(nine, three, three, zero, zero)</p>
<p>DC 5 Midday</p>
<p>0-9-0-7-6</p>
<p>(zero, nine, zero, seven, six)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $40 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>12-29-30-33-61, Powerball: 26, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(twelve, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-three, sixty-one; Powerball: twenty-six; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $570 million</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) _ These Dist. of Columbia lotteries were drawn Saturday:</p>
<p>DC 3 Evening</p>
<p>0-4-1</p>
<p>(zero, four, one)</p>
<p>DC 3 Midday</p>
<p>4-9-3</p>
<p>(four, nine, three)</p>
<p>DC 4 Evening</p>
<p>3-8-7-2</p>
<p>(three, eight, seven, two)</p>
<p>DC 4 Midday</p>
<p>8-6-5-5</p>
<p>(eight, six, five, five)</p>
<p>DC 5 Evening</p>
<p>9-3-3-0-0</p>
<p>(nine, three, three, zero, zero)</p>
<p>DC 5 Midday</p>
<p>0-9-0-7-6</p>
<p>(zero, nine, zero, seven, six)</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $40 million</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>12-29-30-33-61, Powerball: 26, Power Play: 3</p>
<p>(twelve, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-three, sixty-one; Powerball: twenty-six; Power Play: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $570 million</p> | DC Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/57538bc8a8b84a7e93c3ef57d32c4b1d | 2018-01-07 | 2least
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<p>DUHOK, Iraq — As the girls ran frantically in the dead of night, only a flashlight guided them. At 15, Freya Azam Ali had already been thrust into adulthood when she was kidnapped by Islamic State (IS) militants almost 4 months earlier. Many times she held her hand over the mouth of her 10-year-old companion Bousha to muffle the sound of her sobs from their pursuers.</p>
<p>The men chased after them all night. The girls ran and hid repeatedly, but each time the uncontrolled crying of Freya’s young friend or the light the girls used to find their way betrayed their position. Finally they made a last-ditch sprint for the line controlled by Yazidi fighters, running under heavy gunfire.</p>
<p>Freya describes the scene from the safety of her meager shelter in the Khanake Refugee Camp in Duhok, Iraq.</p>
<p>“They started shooting at us with guns and rockets. The sound was deafening,” she says, describing the last moments of their&#160; chase on the rugged mountainside. “There were dogs chasing us. IS was shooting at us. I thought we would die for sure. Bousha didn’t stop crying the whole time.”</p>
<p>But finally, as the girls reached the limits of IS territory, Yazidi militia fighters rushed in to defend them. The girls were returned to their families in Duhok some days later.</p>
<p>Freya and Bousha are among those you could call the lucky ones. According to The Yazidi Fraternal Organization (YFO), around 5,000 other Yazidi women and children remain in the hands of IS militants in Iraq and Syria, many of them treated as sex slaves bought and sold like livestock.</p>
<p>The YFO has also registered the names of thousands of Yazidi men believed to have been killed or captured by IS during a three-day period beginning Aug. 3, when the militants seized control of numerous Yazidi towns in northern Iraq, including Freya’s.</p>
<p>As of last week, the Committee to Assist Escaped Yazidis has registered 150 women, 57 children and 229 men who have escaped IS captivity.</p>
<p>The number is staggeringly low, especially considering the risk to the Yazidi population was one of the key reasons US President Barack Obama gave for authorizing the current campaign of targeted airstrikes against IS in Iraq. The US is also supplying weapons and training to local Iraqi and Kurdish forces.</p>
<p>International support is helping to push back IS, YFO director Hussan Salim said earlier this month. “It is effective. We can see this,” he says. Air raids or even low-flying aircraft have often sent IS prison guards running, giving their captives, mostly women and girls, a chance to escape.</p>
<p>“But it is not enough. We cannot just leave these women to run alone.”</p>
<p>Salim said only special operations forces — either trained Iraqi units or foreign teams, on the ground — could free a significant number of Yazidi captives.</p>
<p>“We know the locations of where many of these women are being held in collective prisons,” Salim said. More are sold or traded every day. “The longer they wait the harder it will be. [The captives] have already been widely distributed in both Iraq and across the Syrian border.”</p>
<p>Last week, local and international forces launched a joint effort to secure routes around Mount Sinjar and to reclaim surrounding villages that had fallen to IS. Many small villages have been retaken, but so far there are no reports that IS captives have been liberated. A fierce battle for villages in the Sinjar area continues.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to know how many women have died or been recaptured in dramatic escape attempts like Freya’s in recent months.</p>
<p>“Clearly we don’t have these figures,” Salim said. “But we can assume the odds of making it out alone are low.”</p>
<p>In an interview before the ground assault to retake Sinjar, Salim said he was disheartened that the US appeared to be focusing their protection on assets rather than lives.</p>
<p>“The areas where they have regained control are either oil-rich or strategic for some other reason, but for our villages and these areas that we know are operating as prisons there is no effort to regain control. As Yazidis it makes us feel sad and abandoned,” he said.</p>
<p>This latest push has given some hope to the thousands of Yazidi families with missing loved ones. As peshmerga and Yazidi militia groups move deeper into IS territory, hopes are strong that many of their captives may be recovered. But already fighters on the ground are sending through reports of finding mass graves. Military victory in the Sinjar region seems set to bring both relief and heartbreak to this displaced community.</p>
<p>For the women being held, time is crucial.</p>
<p>Freya managed to escape before she was sold or abused. When IS militants entered her village on Aug. 3, she had tried to run with other family members. They were all shot around her.</p>
<p>“I saw them fall one by one, then I felt myself hit the ground,” she said.</p>
<p>When she woke up she was in a large room with other captives. Freya had been shot in the shoulder. A local Arab doctor had been brought in to provide primitive treatment to the women and children. He removed the bullet and stiched her wound. A wide, raised pink scar still stretches from her shoulder to her armpit.</p>
<p>“The men they didn’t care about. [IS] just let them die,” Freya said.</p>
<p>She was later sent to the village of Kocho where she was held in a guarded house with 37 others. Once, she tried to run. But when she found a pile of rotting bodies just outside she returned, afraid of what might happen to her if she were caught.</p>
<p>Months after their capture, Freya and Bousha were selected by a group of men who took them to a village she knew, close to Mount Sinjar. Overhearing their captors’ plans to ship them to Syria the next morning, the girls saw their last chance to run. After stealing a flashlight they pried the window open with a spoon. After the night's harrowing chase, they somehow made it across the IS front line with Yazidi forces.</p>
<p>Yazidi militia commander Qassim Shasho has received many girls like Freya at his Sinjar Mountain base.</p>
<p>“Some of the girls escape alone and manage to call their families or make their way to the mountains on foot,” Shasho said. “Other times, IS members contact us directly to assist in the release of women. We also pay smugglers operating within the Islamic State to get our girls out.”</p>
<p>Shasho said there are many good people living under the Islamic State that are willing to help. Even some Arab families that support IS but are appalled by the systematic sale and rape of Yazidi girls have done much to help.</p>
<p>Nahala Morat, 14, was one of four Yazidi girls released in a deal two weeks ago. A local Arab man brought the four young girls from an IS member for $3,000 each. At first Nahala said she was afraid of what he would do to them but instead he took them directly to his mother who cared for them until he was able to get in contact with Nahala’s uncle. An exchange was arranged and the girls were delivered to the Yazidi militia awaiting them on the mountain before being airlifted to Duhok were Nahala and her brother share a tent with their uncle’s family.&#160;</p>
<p>While Shasho has dealt with many good men in such rescue deals, he admits others are just looking out for their own interests.</p>
<p>“They are thinking about their future. When they see the international community rallying against IS, they see their days are numbered. So they are playing their last card before it is too late,” he said.</p>
<p>Shasho said when they make contact they ask for future protection for themselves and for their families.</p>
<p>“If anyone helps even one of our women to return, I give them my word I will do all I can to protect them when IS falls,” he said.</p>
<p>Ameena Saeed, a former Iraqi politician who now heads the Duhok-based Committee to Assist Escaped Yazidis, works with medical teams to arrange health and psychological care for hundreds of Yazidis who survived their run from IS.</p>
<p>Each case is different, she said. Some are barely alive after running and hiding for days or weeks. Many of the girls have been sold up to three times to different individuals or groups of men. Some have lived through hell — repeatedly raped, drugged, and tortured physically and psychologically, with little food and inadequate shelter.</p>
<p>Others have been kept together in large family groups and, like Freya and Bousha, largely left alone. But almost all who survived have been forced to convert to Islam and swear allegiance to the group that has systematically tried to wipe out their people.</p>
<p>This weighs heavily on the survivors.</p>
<p>In a private room at the Lalish temple, Baba Chawish, one of the Yazidis’ top three holy men, pleaded for international support.</p>
<p>“We are a poor community and a peaceful religion. We don’t hold hatred for any other belief or people, even the Islamic State. We have no other problem with them other than their actions towards us,” he said.</p>
<p>“If the international community supports and protects us we can stay here in our holy land, but we are losing faith. We need help if we are to survive.”</p> | Thousands of Yazidi girls and women are still held by the Islamic State | false | https://pri.org/stories/2014-12-24/thousands-yazidi-girls-and-women-are-still-held-islamic-state | 2014-12-24 | 3left-center
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<p>Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has shown on more than one occasion that he’s not afraid to disagree with Trump. With North Korea, Tillerson worked for diplomacy despite Donald Trump’s senseless tweeting. When Trump said we needed to vastly increase our number of nuclear weapons on hand, Tillerson (allegedly) called him a “f***ing moron.”</p>
<p>Now, with Trump doing his best to sabotage the Iran deal, Tillerson is taking somewhat of a stand. In an interview this morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he insisted that staying in the nuclear deal with Iran, forged by President Barack Obama, is in the “best interest” of the United States, directly countering Trump’s rhetoric on the matter.</p>
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<p>Despite his claim that he and Trump are together on this issue, the public record begs to differ. Trump has slammed the deal again and again, calling it “horribly one sided” and “the worst deal ever.” He’s lied and said Iran is breaking the deal, when they are not. For Trump, it’s not so much about the deal itself as it is about the fact the deal is part of President Obama’s legacy. Indeed, as recently as Friday, Trump stated that the deal is “not in the national security interests of the United States,” a statement that stands in start contrast to Tillerson’s interview.</p>
<p>Trump’s entire campaign – and to some extent, his presidency even now – hinged upon undermining the legacy of Barack Obama. When you understand that, you start to understand how difficult Tillerson’s job is: He doesn’t want to fix what isn’t broken, if such a thing would even be possible, and it’s all he can do to keep Trump from making an insane decision based not in policy, but vindictiveness.</p>
<p>Tillerson also countered Trump on North Korea, saying “These diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.”</p>
<p />
<p>He also again refused to address whether he called Trump a moron:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>He even addressed whether or not he’s, uh, intact, because it wouldn’t be a Trump administration interview without a casual mention of genitals (you can blame Tapper for this one, though):</p>
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<p>You can watch a video of his comments below:</p>
<p />
<p>Social media had some interesting reactions to what he had to say:</p>
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<p>Featured image via&#160; <a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/633438498" type="external">Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images</a></p> | Rex Tillerson Stabs Trump In The Back Over Iran Deal – W.H. On Meltdown Watch | true | http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/10/15/rex-tillerson-stabs-trump-in-the-back-over-iran-deal-w-h-on-meltdown-watch/ | 2017-10-15 | 4left
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<p>Former <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Baltimore-Ravens/" type="external">Baltimore Ravens</a> linebacker Zachary Orr announced his retirement from the NFL due to a congenital spine condition.</p>
<p>Orr went in-depth with his explanation for his decision on The Players’ Tribune, just two months after he ended his initial retirement in January.</p>
<p>“Today, I’m officially retiring from professional football … again,” the 25-year-old Orr wrote. “And I’m even more at peace this time around because the teams have spoken. If there was any way I could come back, I would.”</p>
<p>Orr wanted to rejoin the Ravens, but was told by general manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ozzie_Newsome/" type="external">Ozzie Newsome</a> that “he would need to pass a physical.”</p>
<p>“So the Ravens flew me up to Baltimore for a workout and a physical,” Orr wrote. “But at the end of the day, their doctors stood by their initial decision and said they couldn’t clear me to play — not with my spinal condition. They said it was too big a risk, both for them and for me.”</p>
<p>Orr wrote that he visited five additional teams and interviewed “with another 11 over the phone” since becoming an unrestricted free agent.</p>
<p>“I wanted to end my career as a Raven. And even though it didn’t happen the way I envisioned, I’ve done that,” Orr wrote.</p>
<p>Orr was initially placed on injured reserve after suffering a herniated disk Christmas day against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Pittsburgh_Steelers/" type="external">Pittsburgh Steelers</a>. However, the career-ending congenital condition was not diagnosed until he underwent a physical after the season.</p>
<p>Orr was born with his C1 vertebra not fully formed — an issue found in less than 1 percent of the population. The condition however, doesn’t show up with a regular X-ray or MRI.</p>
<p>An after-season CT scan finally revealed the problem. Orr previously did not have that test because there was no history of neck problems, and therefore, not necessary.</p>
<p>Orr evolved from an undrafted player from North Texas to a starter this season. He tied for eighth in the NFL with 132 combined tackles and earned second-team All-Pro honors.</p> | Baltimore Ravens: Linebacker Zachary Orr announces retirement yet again | false | https://newsline.com/baltimore-ravens-linebacker-zachary-orr-announces-retirement-yet-again/ | 2017-08-18 | 1right-center
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<p>Bank of America Corp, after receiving heavy public criticism for a planned $5-per-month debit card fee, is likely to give customers more ways to avoid the fee, a person familiar with the bank's plans said Friday.</p>
<p>The second-biggest U.S. bank is reworking its plans as rivals <a href="" type="internal">Wells Fargo</a> &amp; Co and <a href="" type="internal">JPMorgan Chase</a> &amp; Co have decided not to charge monthly fees, ending test programs in certain states.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Bank of America is likely to allow many customers to sidestep the fee by taking measures such as maintaining minimum balances, having paychecks direct deposited, or using Bank of America credit cards, the person said.</p>
<p>Under earlier plans, customers might have needed balances totaling $20,000 across all their Bank of America accounts to skip the fee.</p>
<p>Bank of America set off a firestorm of criticism from customers, consumer advocates and politicians last month when it disclosed plans to charge customers $5 per month for using their debit cards, starting sometime next year.</p>
<p>The goal was to make up revenue lost to a law that slashes the fees banks charge retailers when consumers swipe their cards.</p>
<p>While some banks have disclosed plans to apply similar fees, many banks and credit unions decided not to institute the charge and have encouraged customers to switch banks.</p>
<p>Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America is not abandoning the fee now and will likely include it in new account types the bank is testing in three states. The bank plans to roll out these packages nationwide next year.</p>
<p>The $5-per-month fee may still remain an option for customers, the person said.</p>
<p>The bank has said the purpose of the new account types is to provide customers with upfront pricing, instead of hitting them with penalties after the fact. Customers can pay monthly fees of between $9 and $20, or avoid the charges by keeping minimum balances, using their credit cards or having a minimum amount deposited to their account.</p>
<p>Among other banks, Wells Fargo &amp; Co said late Friday that in response to customer feedback it has canceled a five-state pilot program that would have charged customers $3 per month to use their cards</p>
<p>After testing a $3 per month fee in two states since February, JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co has decided not to charge customers, a person familiar with the situation said on Friday. The test will end next month and will not be extended or expanded, the person added.</p>
<p>Citigroup Inc announced an account overhaul in mid-September that did not include a monthly debit card usage fee. Stephen Troutner, head of banking products for Citi's U.S. consumer bank, said at the time that the New York-based bank found customers were strongly opposed to such monthly maintenance fees.</p>
<p>Richard Davis, CEO of <a href="" type="internal">US Bancorp</a> , said during an October 19 conference call with analysts the Minneapolis-based regional bank is monitoring the results of other banks imposing debit card fees. Davis did not rule out instituting a fee in the future, but said the bank has no immediate plans to do so.</p>
<p>"We will find out if customers complain and move, or just complain," he said. "We will take all that in time and we will make our decision."</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">SunTrust Banks</a> Inc is charging a $5 per-month fee on everyday checking account customers who make purchases. A spokesman declined to comment on the bank's strategy.</p>
<p>Norma Garcia, manager of Consumers Union's financial services program, applauded JPMorgan's decision, but said that, without more details, it was unclear if Bank of America's changes would be better for customers.</p>
<p>"Clearly, there is overwhelming public support to drop the fee," she added.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Bank of America Revamping Debit Card Fees | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/10/28/bank-america-revamping-debit-card-fees.html | 2016-01-29 | 0right
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<p>FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky state Treasurer Allison Ball is supporting a bill aimed at ending her office’s reliance on taxpayer money.</p>
<p>A bill advanced by the House State Government Committee on Thursday would allow her office to pay for all its operations by using funds generated from unclaimed property.</p>
<p>Ball’s office receives about $2 million from the state General Fund each year and about $250,000 in state road funds. It’s a small amount compared to the overall state budget, but Ball says “every penny helps.”</p>
<p>Ball, a Republican, says half of her agency’s operations are now funded through unclaimed property funds. She says fully funding her office that way would not jeopardize that fund.</p>
<p>The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Ken Fleming, praised Ball and her staff for “out of the box, creative thinking.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>The legislation is House Bill 88.</p>
<p>FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky state Treasurer Allison Ball is supporting a bill aimed at ending her office’s reliance on taxpayer money.</p>
<p>A bill advanced by the House State Government Committee on Thursday would allow her office to pay for all its operations by using funds generated from unclaimed property.</p>
<p>Ball’s office receives about $2 million from the state General Fund each year and about $250,000 in state road funds. It’s a small amount compared to the overall state budget, but Ball says “every penny helps.”</p>
<p>Ball, a Republican, says half of her agency’s operations are now funded through unclaimed property funds. She says fully funding her office that way would not jeopardize that fund.</p>
<p>The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Ken Fleming, praised Ball and her staff for “out of the box, creative thinking.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>The legislation is House Bill 88.</p> | Ball wants to end her office’s reliance on taxpayer funds | false | https://apnews.com/99d486cf4ce848e1bac10081ca798242 | 2018-01-11 | 2least
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Albuquerque police have called out their fatal crash investigators after a pedestrian was struck at the intersection of 61st and Central, officer Simon Drobik said in an email Sunday night.</p>
<p>The crash happened just after 10 p.m. Sunday.</p>
<p>Drobik said the pedestrian was taken to a hospital with unknown injuries, but he said the incident is being investigated as a fatal incident.</p>
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<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Pedestrian seriously injured in crash at Central and 61st | false | https://abqjournal.com/683247/pedestrian-seriously-injured-in-crash-at-central-and-61st.html | 2least
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<p>From The Washington Post, March 1, 2002</p>
<p>“President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans to ensure survival of federal rule after catastrophic attack on the nation’s capital. […]</p>
<p>“Officials who are activated for what some of them call “bunker duty” live and work underground 24 hours a day, away from their families.[…]</p>
<p>“The two sites of the shadow government make use of local geological features to render them highly secure. They are well stocked with food, water, medicine and other consumable supplies, and are capable of generating their own power.”</p>
<p>From 1964’s “Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” by Stanley Kubrick, script by Terry Southern.</p>
<p>DR. STRANGELOVE Mr. President, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy… heh heh… At the bottom of ah… some of our deeper mineshafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided.</p>
<p>PRESIDENT MUFFLEY How long would you have to stay down there?</p>
<p>DR. STRANGELOVE Well let’s see now ah… cobalt thorium G… Radioactive halflife of uh, … hmm.. I would think that uh… possibly uh… one hundred years.</p>
<p>PRESIDENT MUFFLEY You mean, people could actually stay down there for a hundred years?</p>
<p>DR. STRANGELOVE It would not be difficult mein Fuhrer! Nuclear reactors could, heh… I’m sorry. Mr. President. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plantlife. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess… that ah, dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided.</p>
<p>PRESIDENT MUFFLEY Well I… I would hate to have to decide.. who stays up and.. who goes down.</p>
<p>DR. STRANGELOVE Well, that would not be necessary Mr. President. It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. (Slams down left fist. Right arm rises in stiff Nazi salute.) Arrrrr! (restrains right arm with left) Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.</p>
<p>PRESIDENT MUFFLEY But look here doctor, wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they’d, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?</p>
<p>DR. STRANGELOVE No sir… (His right arm rolls his wheelchair backwards.) Excuse me.(He struggles with wayward right arm, ultimately subduing it with a beating from his left.) Also when… when they go down into the mine everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! Ahhhh! (Right arm reflexes into Nazi salute. He pulls it back into his lap and beats it again. Gloved hand attempts to strangle him.)</p>
<p>GENERAL TURGIDSON Doctor, you mentioned the ration of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?</p>
<p>DR. STRANGELOVE Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.</p>
<p>COMRADE DESADESKI I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.</p> | “Ten Women To One Man” | true | https://counterpunch.org/2002/03/04/ten-women-to-one-man/ | 2002-03-04 | 4left
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<p>The Christian understanding of holy places is that all people have claims to the sanctity of their holy places, because holiness is a divine characteristic, not a human one. No party should ever be able to make an exclusive claim over a holy place — in this case, over the holy city of Jerusalem.</p> | Christians are at risk of being driven out of the Holy Land | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/christians-risk-driven-holy-land/ | 3left-center
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<p>Brazilian soldiers guard an entrance to the Mare slum during a protest against violence by security forces in Rio de Janeiro. Silvia Izquierdo/AP</p>
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<p>The Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro has promised to beef up public security ahead of the Olympics next month. But those efforts are complicated by a staggering rate of unlawful police killings, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, that has fostered deep divisions between law enforcement and the communities it serves.</p>
<p>Since 2006, Rio’s police have killed at least 8,021 people, including 645 people last year, according to the 109-page <a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/report_pdf/brazil0716web.pdf" type="external">report</a>, released Thursday. In the city of Rio alone, police killings accounted for a whopping 20 percent of all homicides last year. And while Human Rights Watch says many of these officer-involved killings were likely justified uses of force, since cops patrolling Rio often come up against heavily armed gangs and need to protect themselves, the advocacy group found ample evidence to suggest that some were “extrajudicial killings.”</p>
<p>Human Rights Watch found that for every officer killed on duty in Rio de Janeiro last year, 24.8 civilians were slain by the police—three times the rate in the United States.</p>
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<p>In <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/07/brazil-extrajudicial-executions-undercut-rio-security" type="external">at least 64 cases</a> since 2006, the Brazilian police have allegedly tried to cover up unlawful killings, Human Rights Watch found, citing interviews with officers, victims’ families, prosecutors, and others. The report details incidents where cops planted evidence, guns, or drugs on shooting victims; removed clothes from dead bodies, hoping to discard bullet fragments that could identify the shooter; and even delivered the corpse of someone they’d shot and killed to a hospital, claiming they were trying to “rescue” the victim. Of 32 “rescues” that Human Rights Watch examined, the victim was dead on arrival at the hospital in at least 27 cases. “While these false ‘rescues’ give the appearance of legitimate effort by officers to help victims, in reality they destroy crime scene evidence and hinder forensic evidence,” the advocacy group wrote.</p>
<p>Most of the officers involved have never been brought to court. There were 3,441 recorded police killings between 2010 and 2015, but the state attorney general’s office pursued charges in just four cases, Human Rights Watch found. Rio’s attorney general, Marfan Martins Vieira, said his office had only been able to prosecute a small number of officers because official investigations of such killings are typically of “poor quality,” even though he knows of killings where he believes cops faked a shootout to make it look like they acted in self-defense.</p>
<p>This isn’t the first time the issue has come up just before Brazil prepares to take center stage. Nine years ago, weeks before the Pan-American Games opened in Rio, authorities <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jun/29/brazil.international" type="external">converged</a> on the Complexo do Alemao favela as part of a series of sweeps against drug operations in the city’s slums. In an ensuing shootout, 19 civilians were killed. Five of the victims that day were shot at point-blank range. Nine others were shot in the back. Human Rights Watch found that no officer was ever held accountable for the 2007 incident, and a federal commission <a href="https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/wp-content/uploads/report_pdf/brazil0716web.pdf" type="external">later determined</a> that several deaths “were the result of a procedure of summary and arbitrary execution.” At the time, then-State Security Secretary Jose Mariano Beltrame <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11501370" type="external">told NPR</a> the operation was not intended to be violent but had turned bloody after a confrontation with suspected drug traffickers. “We do not go to these regions looking for or producing violence,” he said. “We were met brutally with bullets and potent arms.”</p>
<p>Ahead of the Olympics, Rio de Janeiro has bolstered security around the games’ venues to <a href="http://bolstered%20to%2085,000" type="external">85,000 officers</a>, thanks to some <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/brazil-rio-de-janeiro-olympics-loan-security-subway" type="external">emergency funds</a>. But high-profile incidents continue to trouble the city. Athletes have been <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/americas/australian-paralympian-mugged-gunpoint-brazil/" type="external">mugged</a> and human remains <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oly-rio-2016-human-body-parts-found-near-olympics-1467297917-htmlstory.html" type="external">have washed</a> up on a beach near the volleyball arena. Robert Muggah, a security expert at the Igarapé Institute in Rio, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-muggah-thompson-rio-games-security-20160622-snap-story.html" type="external">recently noted</a> a 15 percent increase in homicides during the first four months of this year compared with same period in 2015. The city’s mayor <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/04/americas/rio-olympics-mayor-police/" type="external">has blamed</a> the state, which he said was “completely failing at its work of policing and taking care of people.”</p>
<p>Maria Laura Canineu, the Brazil director at Human Rights Watch, said police brutality has made cops feel less safe. It’s dangerous to patrol Rio’s slums—attacks by gang members are common—and criminals are more likely to fight back if they think their lives are at risk, the advocacy group wrote in its report. Some officers told Human Rights Watch that they’d witnessed unlawful police killings but didn’t report anything because they feared potential retaliation from their colleagues. “Unlawful killings turn communities against the police and undermine security for all,” Canineu said in a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/07/brazil-extrajudicial-executions-undercut-rio-security" type="external">statement</a>. “You can’t expect community policing to work when police are executing members of the communities they are supposed to protect. And you can’t expect honest cops to perform well when they live in constant fear—not only of gang members, but also of their fellow officers.”</p>
<p /> | Are Brazilian Cops Ready for the Olympics? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/report-brazil-police-brutality-olympics-human-rights-watch/ | 2016-07-09 | 4left
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<p>Good morning. Happy Hump Day. &#160;</p>
<p>Civil rights attorneys filed suit on Tuesday in the Los Angeles Superior Court to block the practice of automatic driver’s license suspensions for unpaid fines, reports the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-license-suspension-suit-20160802-snap-story.html" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a>.</p>
<p>This is something CalWatchdog has covered <a href="" type="internal">extensively</a>, as civil rights groups in Northern California have done the same thing with <a href="" type="internal">modest</a> success.&#160;</p>
<p>In other news:</p>
<p>Assembly:</p>
<p>Senate:</p>
<p>Gov. Brown:&#160;</p>
<p>Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com</p>
<p>Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp</p>
<p>New follower:&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/LeahDurantLaw" type="external">@LeahDurantLaw</a></p> | CalWatchdog Morning Read – August 3 | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2016/08/03/calwatchdog-morning-read-august-3/ | 2018-08-20 | 3left-center
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<p>Who would’ve guessed Hillary Clinton lied when she said she handed over all work-related emails to the State Department?</p>
<p>It was revealed on Tuesday that 30 more emails that might be related to the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi have been uncovered among the trove of emails recovered during the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private email server, the Associated Press reported.</p>
<p>Government attorneys told U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta that an unknown number of the 30 were not among the documents Clinton gave to the FBI.</p>
<p>State Department officials said they would need until the end of September to redact any potentially classified information before releasing them to the public.</p>
<p>Mehta has demanded the State Department respond to him within a week and explain why it would take an entire month to release 30 emails, according to the AP.</p>
<p>The hearing was held as part of one of the lawsuits filed by Judicial Watch, who just submitted a list of questions related to her private email server that Clinton must answer under oath within 30 days.</p> | About those 30 Benghazi emails Hillary thought were ‘deleted forever’–the FBI got them | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2016/08/30/30-benghazi-emails-hillary-thought-deleted-forever-fbis-got-385222 | 2016-08-30 | 0right
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<p>MELBOURNE, Australia--BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP.AU) is planning a US$204 million expansion of its coking-coal operations in eastern Australia to increase production of the steelmaking ingredient and reduce overall operating costs.</p>
<p>BHP and venture partner Mitsubishi Corp. (8058.TO) on Friday approved the investment in their Caval Ridge mine, where they plan to build a 6.8-mile overland conveyer system to transport coal from the neighboring Peak Downs mine to a preparation plant.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The project is expected to create up to 400 jobs during construction and 200 ongoing operations roles, said Mike Henry, president of BHP's Australian minerals division. Construction is set to begin mid-year and take 18 months to complete.</p>
<p>The investment in the coking-coal business comes after several tough years for the operations. Coal prices have recovered over the past few months, including a surge in recent weeks after a tropical cyclone flooded mines across Australia's Queensland state. Mr. Henry said coking-coal prices were expected to pull back as mines returned to normal operations, but even at longer-term forecasts, the expansion of Caval Ridge was expected to offer a high return for the company.</p>
<p>The bulk of BHP's coal operations are in eastern Australia, centered on coking-coal mines in the Bowen Basin of central Queensland and energy-coal production in New South Wales. It also has a coal operation in Indonesia and owns an equal share alongside partners Anglo American PLC (AAL.LN) and Glencore PLC (GLEN.AU) in Colombia's Cerrejon, one of the world's largest open-pit energy-coal mines.</p>
<p>Coal operations contributed US$4.52 billion to BHP's revenue in the last fiscal year through June, including US$3.35 billion from the Queensland operations that also include a venture with Mitsui &amp; Co. (8031.TO).</p>
<p>Rio Tinto PLC (RIO.LN) in late January moved to capitalize on last year's sharp gains in commodity prices, agreeing to sell a major piece of its coal business for US$2.45 billion to China-controlled Yancoal Australia Ltd. (YAL.AU). Last week, it received approval from Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board for the deal to exit its Coal &amp; Allied Industries Ltd. subsidiary.</p>
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<p>Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>April 20, 2017 23:24 ET (03:24 GMT)</p> | BHP Billiton Venture to Invest $204 Million in Australian Coal Mine | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/04/20/bhp-billiton-venture-to-invest-204-million-in-australian-coal-mine.html | 2017-04-20 | 0right
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Lovelace Health Plan members will no longer be allowed to use non-emergency medical services at any of CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional Medical Centers across northern New Mexico.</p>
<p>The change will take effect Saturday, which is expected to impact about 14,000 Lovelace Health Plan members, according to a Lovelace news release.</p>
<p>Pick up the Albuquerque Journal on Saturday to read more about this.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | BREAKING: St. Vincent Cuts Services For Lovelace Members | false | https://abqjournal.com/8979/breaking-st-vincent-cuts-services-for-lovelace-members.html | 2least
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<p>The specialized deer hunt brings together sportsmen and women, volunteers and workers from the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife for three days every fall.</p>
<p>John Pelletier broke his back when he fell out of a tree stand while hunting in 2004, and the program has allowed him to continue what he calls his passion. He now takes his .50-caliber muzzle-loader to the Massachusetts Military Reservation on Cape Cod to hunt every year.</p>
<p>“Some guys get a mistress when they hit 40; I started hunting,” said a laughing Pelletier, 57, of Westport, who uses a specialized wheelchair with what he describes as mountain bike tires that give him better maneuverability in the wild. “These hunts really afford me the opportunity to get back in the woods like I did before.”</p>
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<p>Most states make accommodations for disabled hunters, said Bill Fertig, director of the resource center at the United Spinal Association, a New York-based organization that advocates for improving the quality of life of people living with spinal cord injuries.</p>
<p>But Massachusetts is among fewer than a dozen states that set aside special seasons and specific hunting areas for the disabled. Many offer waived or reduced fees for disabled hunters, allow them to hunt from their vehicles or allow the use of specialized equipment which hunters who have full use of their legs are not allowed to use.</p>
<p>“Being able to do what you used to do, or what everybody else can do, especially if it’s your passion, is part of what makes you who you are,” Fertig said.</p>
<p>Trina Morruzi, a wildlife biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife who has been coordinating the program for 16 years, said it started in 1972 when a group of paraplegic sportsmen went to state legislators and got a statute passed establishing the three-day hunt, held Thursday, Friday and Saturday this year.</p>
<p>The number of sites where the hunt is offered has grown over the years, giving more people the opportunity to participate.</p>
<p>This year it was held in five spots — in Williamstown and Mount Washington in the Berkshire Mountains; in a wildlife area near the Quabbin Reservoir, the state’s largest body of water; at the former Fort Devens army base; and on Cape Cod, a site added in 2011.</p>
<p>About 25 to 30 disabled hunters participate every year, along with dozens of volunteers and state workers. The state allows anyone who doesn’t have use of their legs to participate, Moruzzi said. In the past, at least two quadriplegic hunters have participated with highly specialized equipment, although there were none this year, she said.</p>
<p>Volunteers scout out the woods in the days before the hunt, looking for the best places to set up blinds, said Dave Esielionis, 71, of Shirley, a volunteer at the Devens location. They place plywood in the woods so wheelchairs don’t get stuck in mud.</p>
<p>They meet before dawn on hunt days, helping hunters out of their vehicles and escorting them to the sites. They check on them during the day, and if they get a deer, they help them haul their game out of the woods.</p>
<p>The harvest rate for the paraplegic hunt is about the same as the as the harvest rate for all hunters, Moruzzi said.</p> | Outward mobility: Paraplegic hunters pursue their passion | false | https://abqjournal.com/883780/outward-mobility-paraplegic-hunters-pursue-their-passion.html | 2016-11-07 | 2least
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<p>Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto told the world of the “horror” she was seeing as whe waded through San Juan’s flooded streets. And the desperation on an island that may remain without power for months.</p>
<p>Until then, Cruz had not been a well-known politician outside the island.But after Cruz criticized Washington’s response to the hurricane this week – “save us from dying,” she pleaded on cable network – President Donald Trump took direct aim at her Twitter.</p>
<p>“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan,” he tweeted Saturday. The Democrats must have convinced her to say nasty things about him, he claimed.</p>
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<p>Since the president brought it up, we present below the historical record of the leadership abilities of Cruz, before and after the storm.</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Cruz has, in some ways, been a lifelong politician: Class president in eighth grade; student council president in high school.</p>
<p>Like many Puerto Ricans, she left the island to pursue opportunities on the U.S. mainland, earning a bachelor’s in political science at Boston University and a master’s in public management and policy at Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>She stayed on the mainland for many years, according to her official biography, and worked her way up to the position of human resources director at several companies, including Scotiabank and the U.S. Treasury Department.</p>
<p>In a 2014 interview with a small New York newspaper, Cruz described the tug of war she and other Puerto Ricans often feel between the mainland and their home island.</p>
<p>“I often say to my friends that I felt too Puerto Rican to live in the States; then I felt too American to live in Puerto Rico,” she said. “So when I settled back in Puerto Rico in 1992, I had to come to terms with all of that.”</p>
<p>After 12 years on the mainland, Cruz returned to her island to plunge back into politics.</p>
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<p>She became an adviser to Sila Maria Calderon, then the mayor of San Juan who later became Puerto Rico’s first and only female governor.</p>
<p>With the experience she gained under Calderon, Cruz ran in 2000 for a seat in Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives. She lost that race, but in 2008 she ran again and won.</p>
<p>“Politics is a rough game, and sometimes as females we are taught that you have to play nice,” she said in a 2014 in an interviewinterview. “Sometimes you can’t play nice.”</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>As the race for mayorship of her home town approached in 2012, she waffled publicly on whether to enter as a candidate.</p>
<p>At first she denied any plans to run. Once she entered the race, she strung together a series of small coalitions to form a base of support, including the LGBT community, students, Dominican immigrants and taxi drivers.</p>
<p>Such allies helped her defeat a formidable opponent – a three-time incumbent, Jorge Santini.</p>
<p>“People don’t realize they have the power,” she recalled in an interview years later. “People don’t realize that if they come together, there are more of them than those who occupy the seat that I’m in right now.”</p>
<p>Puerto Rico’s politics are largely defined by their relationship with the mainland and whether the island should remain a U.S. territory, gain statehood or vie for independence.</p>
<p>Cruz’s party, the Popular Democratic Party, campaigns to maintain Puerto Rico’s status quo as an unincorporated, self-governed U.S. territory.</p>
<p>But in her trips to the United States since winning office, Cruz has at times advocated for more independence.</p>
<p>She once went before Congress to ask that Puerto Rico – crippled by debt – be able to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, and thereafter enter into commercial agreements with other countries.</p>
<p>“Puerto Rico has been denied these tools far too long,” Cruz said in 2015. “And as long as our options are defined by the powers of this Congress, we will always be at your mercy. The measure of our success will always be limited by the vastness of your control over our affairs.”</p>
<p>Two years later, Hurricane Maria has made the island’s many dependencies all too apparent.</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Hurricane Maria flooded roads, destroyed phone lines and cut the island’s lifeline of goods from the mainland.</p>
<p>With limited communications and little help from the outside world in the first days after the hurricane, the mayors of Puerto Rico became the highest form of authority for many residents.</p>
<p>Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground – walking its streets and doing what she could for those she met. In an interview with a Washington Post reporter just three days after the storm, she described what she was seeing.</p>
<p>“There is horror in the streets,” she said at the time. “Sheer pain in people’s eyes.”</p>
<p>The city’s hospitals had no power. Much of the country would not have electricity until 2018, she said. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark. The few who still had gasoline and drinking water were quickly running out.</p>
<p>Cruz had written to scores of other mayors. “There’s no answer,” she saidThe mayor herself felt relatively helpless – only able to do so much for her exhausted neighbors and frightened constituents.</p>
<p>“I know we’re not going to get to everybody in time,” she said. All she could do was try.</p>
<p>On her way totalk to the reporter, she said, a man had asked her for a favor: “To tell the world we’re here.”</p>
<p>As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged. “If anyone can hear us,” she told the reporter: “Help.”</p>
<p>By Thursday night, families were searching for water by the light of dwindling cellphone batteries and moonlight. They passed through a tunnel beneath a city wall, and found at the exit a water tank left there by the city – a godsend.</p>
<p>And then they found their mayor.</p>
<p>Cruz hugged them as they came to her. She handed to each family a small solar-powered lantern – “a box of blessings,” she called it.</p>
<p>“Now this is life,” she told The Post.</p>
<p>Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs.</p>
<p>But if the federal government didn’t step up its response, she feared, “people will die.”</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Nearly 5,000 National Guard personnel were stationed on the island before the storm, according to the White House, and the government has sent thousands more to helpin the days since. But they have struggled to get even basics like drinking water to those in need.</p>
<p>A call with the White House earlier in this week had encouraged Cruz, she said. She told the federal government that 3,000 containers were sitting in a port, trapped behind electronic gates that wouldn’t open. Since then, more federal personnel had arrived, and the government had sent pallets of water and food.</p>
<p>But her city was still on the brink, Cruz said.</p>
<p>On Thursday, in the White House driveway, acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke defended the Trump administration’s response to the storm.</p>
<p>“It is really a good news story, in terms of our ability to reach people,” the director said.</p>
<p>When Cruz heard that, she made good on her warning years earlier – that sometimes in politics “you can’t play nice.”</p>
<p>“People are dying in this country,” Cruz said at a news conference on Friday. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy.”</p>
<p>And with that, the mayor of a ruined city drew the attention and ire of the President of the United States.</p>
<p>“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” he wrote on Twitter.</p>
<p>The latter remark perplexed many experts on Puerto Rican politics.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if Trump’s comments shows an utter lack of understanding of the political situation in Puerto Rico, or if it’s just a cover to rally his base,” said Yarimar Bonilla, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. “It makes no sense. Politics in Puerto Rico are completely different than the mainland, with completely different parties.”</p>
<p>Last year, Bonilla surveyed 1,000 residents of island. Most had no affiliation with Republicans or Democrats, and many had no little understanding of either party.</p>
<p>Cruz, who is widely expected to run for governor of the island, has some understanding, of course.</p>
<p>She isn’t affiliated with either party, but has occasionally supported former Democratic President Barack Obama’s policies. During the 2012 election, she met with Obama’s campaign manager to push for healthcare funding and education grants for Puerto Ricans.</p>
<p>But that is a far cry from being a tool of the Democrats, said Amilcar Barreto, a Puerto Rican political expert at Northeastern University. “Complaining about people on the island not having food, electricity, water is not partisan. That’s just basic human necessity.”</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>On Saturday, Cruz dismissed Trump’s tweets with a smile. She was dressed in combat boots and cargo pants as she oversaw the distribution of supplies from San Juan.</p>
<p>“The most powerful man in the world is concerned with a 5-foot-tall, 120-pound little mayor of the city of San Juan,” she said.</p>
<p>Suddenly, many others were concerned as well.</p>
<p>Cruz fielded calls all daylong from U.S. senators and business leaders. Reporters mobbed her for interviews.</p>
<p>And all day long, her criticism of the relief effort did not soften. “It’s like a clogged artery,” she said of federal government’s bureaucratic hurdles. “The heart has stopped beating.”</p>
<p>When asked if there was anything political in her barbed remarks, Cruz denied it.</p>
<p>“I don’t have time for politics,” she said. “There is a mission, and that is to save lives.”</p>
<p>Then in the middle of an interview, the mayor got a call about a generator catching fire at San Juan hospital. She quickly mobilized her staff, barking out orders like a general.</p>
<p>Then, within minutes, she was rushing once more out into her city.</p>
<p>– – –</p>
<p>Hernandez and Schmidt reported from Puerto Rico. Selk and Wan reported from Washington.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>San Juan mayor: ‘There is horror in the streets’</p>
<p>Video coding:</p>
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<p /> | Trump called San Juan’s mayor a weak leader. Here’s what her leadership looks like. | false | https://abqjournal.com/1071545/trump-called-san-juans-mayor-a-weak-leader-heres-what-her-leadership-looks-like.html | 2least
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<p>It was close but no cigar for anyone who bid less than $26,950 at auction for a signed box of Cuban cigars from Fidel Castro’s personal collection.</p>
<p>Boston-based RR Auction says Thursday that was the winning bid.</p>
<p>The wooden Trinidad Fundadores cigar box was signed in blue felt tip by the longtime Cuban leader. It is accompanied by a photograph of Castro signing it for philanthropist Dr. Eva Haller in 2002.</p>
<p>The box contains 24 cigars, is stamped on each end and has a maker’s mark on the bottom. It also includes a “Republica de Cuba” cigar warranty seal, which has been re-adhered.</p>
<p>Trinidad Fundadores were exclusively produced for Castro starting in 1980. Until 1998, the only boxes allowed to leave the island were gifts to foreign dignitaries.</p>
<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p> | A box of Fidel Castro’s cigars sells for almost $27,000 | false | https://circa.com/story/2018/01/11/whoa/a-box-of-fidel-castros-cigars-sells-for-almost-27-000 | 2018-01-11 | 1right-center
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<p>A friend at the Virginia Council of Churches shared with me&#160; the recent issue of the Religious Herald in which John Klink wrote, “We must be careful not to let ourselves be deceived by the lies of the theory of evolution, which is falsely called science” [Herald, March 12].</p>
<p>As this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, this is an excellent time to look honestly at the world and ask, “Does nature select?” That is the question Darwin answered in the affirmative, and it is one that all biologists would agree with today. For biologists of faith, that does not mean the rejection of God, nor of sin, death and salvation.</p>
<p>We are re-launching the “Life Sciences and Religion Community Forum” here at Virginia Commonwealth University, which is dedicated to enhancing the science-and-religion dialogue in central Virginia. We would welcome a deeper discussion of what constitutes data in science, how science works, the status of evolutionary theory and the like. Many of us involved in science are deeply religious people of various faiths as well, and would see some possibility of fruitful discussion with Mr. Klink and others on such topics. We particularly welcome the opportunity to address questions about whether science is limited to observable phenomena (or whether it can include inference), and the extent to which evolutionary theory can be said to be a “lie” or to be a very good model or explanation of how nature works.</p>
<p>Our website is <a href="http://www.vcu.edu/" type="external">www.vcu.edu/faithscienceforum</a> and my personal contact information is jbcassel@ vcu.edu or (804) 628-1926.&#160; We would welcome invitations to come to local churches, or can set up a date and time to bring people together at VCU to discuss these topics with as much openness and mutual trust as possible.</p>
<p>J. Brian Cassel, Director Life Sciences and Religion Initiative Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Natural selection not a rejection of God or faith | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/naturalselectionnotarejectionofgodorfaith/ | 3left-center
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<p>SPRINGFIELD (MA)Religious News Online <a href="modules.php?name=News&amp;new_topic=4" type="external" />&#160; <a href="modules.php?name=Your_Account&amp;op=userinfo&amp;username=Anonymous" type="external">Anonymous</a> writes "Warren MasonWhile Archbishop Sean O’Malley has moved quickly to settle cases of clergy abuse in the Boston Archdiocese and shown genuine compassion for the victims, it is wishful thinking to believe that the Catholic Church can extricate itself from this ongoing crisis without real systematic and structural change. Only ninety miles up the Massachusetts Turnpike, the Diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts has become a national poster child for all that is wrong within the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church. Bishop Thomas Dupre, a friend of Archbishop O’Malley, finds himself embroiled in a seemingly unending string of embarrassing revelations and cover-ups. The recent case of Rev. Paul Laflamme is emblematic of the convoluted logic, and endemic dishonesty that pervades this institutional dinosaur. Briefly, the Rev. Laflamme, St. Mary Mother of the Church parish in Lee MA., is accused of impregnating a parish employee while she was being counseled by him. Even more telling, Rev. Laflamme’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Dailey, is accused of manipulating the situation, suggesting the victim, Ms. Josephine DiZoglio, “get rid of the problem”, and firing her from position as housekeeper to the parish. Rev. Laflamme does indeed admit to the relationship.Rev. Dailey tells his parishioners that these problems are a result of Satan's desire "to place anger, judgment, condemnation and disunity amongst this parish".</p> | A Diocese in Denial | false | https://poynter.org/news/diocese-denial | 2003-11-04 | 2least
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<p>Scientists are trying to map the Cannabis genome to increase understanding of the versatile plant’s many mutations and hopefully improve medical and recreational, usage.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>This is the marijuana version of the hugely influential <a href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/hgp?show=all" type="external">Human Genome Project Opens a New Window.</a> that identified the blueprint for humans and opened the doors to personalized medicine.</p>
<p>Phylos Bioscience is working on mapping the Cannabis genome; it is part of the Portland, Ore.-based company’s ambitious <a href="http://phylosbioscience.com/the-cannabis-evolution-project/" type="external">Cannabis Evolution Project Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>The company wouldn’t disclose funding information except that to say it’s backed mostly by angel investors from the “traditional” biotech world.</p>
<p>Mowgli Holmes, co-founder and chief scientific officer at the privately-held firm did share details on the program, and the company’s progress, in an exclusive interview with Robert Gray for Fox Business…</p>
<p>FBN: What is the importance of mapping the Cannabis genome?</p>
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<p>Holmes: “Mapping” a genome is kind of a vague idea to most people. The point is to figure out the sequence of the whole thing, read all the pieces, and get them all in order … the Cannabis genome is a nightmare compared to most of them. No two plants are alike. It’s very similar to humans in that way, actually.</p>
<p>FBN: Why did you need to do that?</p>
<p>Holmes: Really we just need it as a point of reference. It makes it way easier to do rapid sequencing on thousands of samples if you have a good reference genome to compare to.</p>
<p>We’re going to make it so people know what they’re getting (when they buy marijuana). This is a very big deal for recreational users, but it’s a much bigger deal for medical users. I think eventually work like ours will lead to new medicinal varieties, but that’s a ways out.</p>
<p>FBN: How are you getting samples when there are so many restrictions on Cannabis?&#160;</p>
<p>Holmes: We have our DNA extraction equipment set up in lots of local Cannabis testing labs that do state-mandated safety testing. They collect samples that come through and take the DNA for us. We have collectors all over the world donating samples.</p>
<p>FBN: Why is mapping a Cannabis genome so important for medical usage?</p>
<p>Holmes: Most Cannabis these days is close to 20% THC, with almost none of the other important medicinal compounds. The strain we're sequencing the entire genome of -- Canna-Tonic -- is about 8 percent THC and about 8 percent CBD—CBD is the most important medicinal component of the plant that we know about right now. It’s also known to decrease the anxiety that THC can cause. I really think plants like this are going to be important in the future, partly because they help with inflammation, pain, epilepsy, and probably a couple other things. But also because normal people can smoke them without going insane. My mom has been smoking this stuff. Your mom could probably smoke it.</p>
<p>FBN: How does Phylos make money?</p>
<p>Holmes: We sell genetic testing, just like <a href="https://www.23andme.com" type="external">23andMe Opens a New Window.</a>. So we work with local testing labs we’re partnered with, and they offer our services to growers, dispensaries, etc. We have a plant sex test that we’re already selling and we’re about to release a set of microbiology tests that are done using genetic analysis. Once we’ve done the evolution study, we’ll be able to tell people exactly what strain they have. You’d be surprised how much of a demand there is for that. People are obsessed with the different varieties, but no one ever really knows what they actually have.</p>
<p>FBN: Are you trying to keep marijuana “open sourced” and out of the hands of corporations who may seek to patent modified Cannabis?</p>
<p>Holmes: Actually we are. We’re giving all of our data to a group called the Open Cannabis Project that’s run by Cannabis activists, social justice activists, plant scientists, and even plant patent lawyers. The goal is to document the fact that everything that exists now is in the public domain. If they do that, then it becomes impossible for big companies to come in, rename existing varieties, and try to patent them.</p>
<p>FBN: How big can the Cannabis crop grow?</p>
<p>Holmes: I think by 2020 it will be the third largest agricultural industry in the US, behind corn and soybeans.</p>
<p>FBN: Any plans for an exit strategy, an IPO or selling the company to a bigger one?</p>
<p>Holmes: We don't want to grow into a company like Monsanto. And we don't want to sell out to a company like Monsanto either. What we want is to keep doing this work for as long as we can. There's a whole new breed of American farmer out there, and we need to make sure we have their backs.</p> | Medical Marijuana: Evolution Revolution? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/06/10/medical-marijuana-evolution-revolution.html | 2016-03-05 | 0right
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<p>One of the deadliest mass shootings in years took place in Plano, Texas on Sunday when an unidentified suspect opened fire at a football party killing 7 people. The gunman was shot and killed by an officer who arrived at the home on West Spring Creek Parkway around 8 p.m. Sunday. When the officer arrived, he found bodies in the yard of the home and shots could still be heard coming from inside the house when he approached and opened fire killing the gunman.</p>
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<p>Credit: WFAA 8</p>
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<p>On Monday afternoon Chief Rushin held a press conference to inform the media that an eighth victim has died at the hospital bringing the total death count to 9 including the shooter. David Tilley, a Plano Police Officer, said "[He] made entry inside the house, confronted the suspect, ultimately shooting and killing him." The officer was brave enough to enter the house and stop the shooter single handily without waiting for backup. His willingness to put his own life in harm's way probably saved the lives of any more potential victims. The owner of the home, Meredith Lane, was 27-years-old and was killed in the shooting. Lane's mother blames her daughter's husband who she recently divorced.</p>
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<p>Lane was hosting a football watching party when her husband showed up and opened fire. Her mother said, "She was a cook, and a quite fine one, and she loved hosting friends and families. This was her first opportunity to do it after the divorce and he didn't take it well." When paramedics arrived at the home they attempted to perform CPR on the victims but only one was alive. The only living victim passed away in the hospital today.</p>
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<p>On Twitter:</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/ErvinProduction" type="external">@ErvinProduction</a></p>
<p>Tips? Info? Send me a message!</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.wfaa.com/news/9th-person-dead-in-plano-shooting-mom-blames-daughters-ex/473181754" type="external">wfaa.com/news/9th-person-dead-in-plano-shooting-mom-blames-daughters-ex/473181754</a></p> | 9th Person Dies In Texas Mass Shooting, Mother Blames Daughters Husband | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/7963-9th-Person-Dies-In-Texas-Mass-Shooting-Mother-Blames-Daughters-Husband | 2017-09-12 | 0right
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<p>On 17 September, 2015, Matthew Bowman shot Jimmy Harold Tillery. Tillery was in the driveway of his ex wife, Cheryl Tillery. Bowman used an AK-47 clone. In the initial articles, the firearm was referred to as a “.30-caliber carbine rifle”.</p>
<p>Cheryl Tillery had finalized the divorce with her ex on 14 August, 2015, about a month before the incident.</p>
<p>The Court had issued an emergency protective order on July 20, after an incident where Jimmy Tillery was said to have threatened Matthew Bowman and Cheryl Tillery’s lives and the lives of Bowman’s two young children. On August 6th, the court issued another order prohibiting Jimmy Tillery from coming within 150 feet of Cheryl Tillery or within 200 feet of Matthew Bowman’s children.</p>
<p>Jimmy Tillery had driven onto the couple’s driveway and demanded to speak with his ex-wife. The couple had called 911 and asked the police to help. Bowman had taken his rifle and ordered Tillery to leave the property. Tillery refused, multiple times. Bowmans lawyer gave this&#160; <a href="http://www.stwnewspress.com/cnhi_network/missouri-man-acquitted-in-stand-your-ground-shooting-death/article_dda3e472-8105-5277-8ceb-d704aabf7e41.html" type="external">argument in court</a>:</p>
<p>Bowman says Tillery drove toward the house from the head of the driveway at high speed before he stopped short and yelled that he wanted to speak to his ex-wife.</p>
<p>Bowman maintains that he had reason to believe Tillery possessed a concealed carry permit and liked to carry a handgun with him at all times.</p>
<p>Luby argued at trial that his client’s decision to shoot was lawful because Tillery was trespassing at the time, had made prior threats to kill Bowman, his ex-wife and himself, and was acting on that day “in a violent, tumultuous manner.”</p>
<p>Bowman fired 4-5 shots at Tillery, who was in the drivers seat of his car. The police arrived a few minutes later.</p>
<p>Bowman always claimed the shooting was in self defense. He refused to plea bargain and took the case to a jury trial.</p>
<p>On 1 September, 2017, almost two years after the incident, a jury found Matthew Bowman not guilty.&#160; <a href="http://www.stwnewspress.com/cnhi_network/missouri-man-acquitted-in-stand-your-ground-shooting-death/article_dda3e472-8105-5277-8ceb-d704aabf7e41.html" type="external">From stwnewspress.com</a>:</p>
<p>Matthew Bowman, 41, was found not guilty of either second-degree murder or armed criminal action in the Pineville, Missouri, shooting death of Jimmie Tillery in September 2015.</p>
<p>Domestic defense cases tend to be messy. I suspect the two restraining orders and the refusal to leave were highly significant factors in the juries decision.</p>
<p>The AK type rifle can be considered a “.30-caliber carbine rifle”, but the description explains how defensive uses of modern sporting rifles are under reported in the media.&#160; Most reporters do not know the technical aspects of firearms. In addition, details of defensive shootings may not be released until long after the event was considered news. Those who desire a disarmed population repeatedly claim that AK and other types of modern sporting rifles are not useful for self defense.</p>
<p>In this case, the jury trial resulted in more detailed reporting nearly two years after the event. It is worth noting that this shooting was almost certainly reported in the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR) as a murder. The FBI UCR does not track the results of trials, only arrests and reports of crime. The FBI justified&#160; <a href="http://gunwatch.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/how-many-justified-homicides-occur-each.html" type="external">homicide reports only catch about 20% of</a>&#160;justified homicides in the nation.</p>
<p>The FBI classes murders and non-negligent homicides in the UCR report together in the murder category. About 2% of homicides are recorded in the UCR as justified, so the actual number is about 10%.</p>
<p>©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.&#160; <a href="http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/" type="external">Gun Watch</a></p>
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<p>Editor’s Note: This once again goes to show how little of actual help a little piece of paper in the form of a restraining order is going to get you. &#160;Unless you have the means to enforce said restraining order in your own defense, it’s about as effective as a gun free zone sign. &#160;In other words, not at all. &#160;Because when someone with ill intent is going to commit a crime, a sign or a piece of paper is not going to stop them. &#160;What is going to stop them? &#160;Thrown lead at high velocity. &#160;The best defense, as they say, is a good offense.</p>
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<p>We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse.</p> | JUSTICE: Man who Used AK-47 Clone to Defend Self, Children, Found Not Guilty | true | http://bulletsfirst.net/2017/09/04/justice-man-used-ak-47-clone-defend-self-children-found-not-guilty/ | 0right
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<p>FALMOUTH (MA)Boston Heraldby Jessica Heslam Friday, October 10, 2003</p>
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<p>A sexual predator accused of slaying a Falmouth golf course worker fantasized about rape but was released from prison based on the recommendation of a priest who also counseled two other convicts who later killed.</p>
<p>``He was paranoid and not doing well at all,'' former inmate counselor Paula Erickson said of Paul Nolin. ``He was having rape and violent fantasies. He was very hostile in the treatment center, and he clearly needed a lot more treatment.''</p>
<p>Erickson said he should not have been released from the treatment center as the Rev. Donald Turlick recommended.</p>
<p>Nolin, who is charged with the Sept. 20 murder of 20-year-old Jonathan Wessner, served 18 years in prison for viciously raping a 10-year-old Lowell boy he snatched from a playground. Court papers show Nolin lured the boy by promising to show him snakes in the woods before binding his hands behind his back with the boy's belt and raping him.</p> | Priest set predator free: Recommendation led to release | false | https://poynter.org/news/priest-set-predator-free-recommendation-led-release | 2003-10-10 | 2least
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<p>Photo Credit: Molly Adams / Flickr Creative Commons</p>
<p>While many able-bodied Americans were debating whether they had the time to call their senators, hundreds of activists, many of them in wheelchairs, lined up outside a hearing room in the&#160;Dirksen Senate Office Building on Monday to oppose the Graham-Cassidy health care bill.</p>
<p>They came from all over the country as a part of a national day of action organized by multiple groups committed to preserving the Affordable Care Act. The line, according to a tweet from Virginia Senator Mark Warner, was longer than that at the Comey hearing.&#160;</p>
<p>Despite the GOP's frequent claims that the Affordable Care Act was not subject to enough scrutiny by Congress, Monday's Finance Committee hearing was the only one scheduled for a bill that impacts one-sixth of the economy and threatens to sharply cut Medicaid, allows states not to cover birth control and discriminate against patients with pre-existing conditions. Protesters disrupted the hearing as soon as it began, preventing Chairman Orrin Hatch from beginning. Just as quickly, Capitol Police began their arrests.&#160;</p>
<p>All afternoon, photos and videos of the arrests flooded Twitter, including shocking images of police handcuffing and dragging wheelchair-bound protesters. Many were from ADAPT, a disability rights organization that has been at the front lines of anti-repeal protests from the beginning of the Trump administration. As of 6pm Monday, protesters were being arrested and processed in groups. No word yet on their release.&#160;</p>
<p>Ilana Novick is an AlterNet contributing writer and production editor.</p> | Disabled Activists Arrested and Dragged by Wheelchairs While Protesting Obamacare Repeal | true | http://alternet.org/activism/disabled-activists-arrested-and-dragged-wheelchairs-while-protesting-obamacare-repeal | 2017-09-25 | 4left
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<p>Two members of the U.S. Senate’s “Wacko Bird” squadron, Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, put out a joint statement calling Attorney General Eric Holder’s replacement, U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, to “denounce” President Obama’s imminent “executive amnesty” for millions of illegal immigrants.</p>
<p>“President Obama’s Attorney General nominee deserves fair and full consideration of the United States Senate, which is precisely why she should not be confirmed in the lame duck session of Congress by senators who just lost their seats and are no longer accountable to the voters,” Cruz and Lee said in a joint statement. “The Attorney General is the President’s chief law enforcement officer. As such, the nominee must demonstrate full and complete commitment to the law. Loretta Lynch deserves the opportunity to demonstrate those qualities, beginning with a statement whether or not she believes the President’s executive amnesty plans are constitutional and legal.”- <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/11/08/Ted-Cruz-Mike-Lee-Obama-s-Attorney-General-Nominee-Must-Denounce-Planned-Executive-Amnesty" type="external">Breitbart</a></p>
<p>Here is what Cruz tweeted:</p>
<p>— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/531190086898298880" type="external">November 8, 2014</a></p>
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<p>I wonder if that old crow John McCain will continue to refer these guys as “wacko birds” now that they helped the GOP regain the majority in the Senate?</p> | Obama’s New AG Pick Asked To Denounce “Executive Amnesty” For Illegal Aliens | true | http://shark-tank.com/2014/11/09/obamas-new-ag-picked-asked-to-denounce-executive-amnesty-for-illegal-aliens/ | 0right
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />This is from 2010, but the story is still good.&#160; If you haven't read Limbaugh's book, you should.&#160; At least, watch this video, because Limbaugh tells the truth about Thanksgiving - something you won't get from the media and today's education system.</p>
<p>Watch, and enjoy!&#160; And may God richly bless each of you this Thanksgiving!</p>
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<p>Related:</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Rush Limbaugh presents the real story of Thanksgiving (Video) | true | http://conservativefiringline.com/rush-limbaugh-presents-the-real-story-of-thanksgiving-video/ | 2012-11-22 | 0right
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<p>Oil prices finished higher Thursday, following losses over the past three trading sessions. Traders continued to digest data from the Energy Information Administration released Wednesday that revealed a rise in total U.S. crude production to their highest level in more than two years, but also a weekly drop in domestic supplies that was the largest in 11 months. September West Texas Intermediate crude rose 31 cents, or 0.7%, to settle at $47.09 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Oil Prices End Higher After Three-session Decline | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/17/oil-prices-end-higher-after-three-session-decline.html | 2017-08-18 | 0right
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<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa's new "stand your ground" law will be tested this week in the trial of a man charged in a fatal shooting at an Iowa City pedestrian mall.</p>
<p>Lamar Wilson, 24, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and intimidation with a dangerous weapon in the Aug. 27 shooting that killed Kaleek Jones, 22, and injured two other men. Wilson has pleaded not guilty to all charges, the <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2018/01/21/trial-iowa-city-ped-mall-shooting-suspect-lamar-wilson-begins-week/1040270001/" type="external">Des Moines Register reported</a> .</p>
<p>Jury selection began Monday.</p>
<p>Iowa's "stand your ground" law took effect in July. The law states law-abiding residents don't have to retreat before using deadly force to defend themselves if they reasonably believe their life is in danger. Wilson's case will be one of the first to test out the protections within the new legislation.</p>
<p>Wilson's attorneys said the shooting was justified because Wilson was defending himself from gunfire. The defense argued that Wilson should receive immunity from prosecution.</p>
<p>Johnson County District Judge Paul Miller has said he will rule on immunity after the jury has heard the case.</p>
<p>Police said Wilson was carrying two guns when he was taken into custody. Police also said Wilson admitted to firing at a number of people. Wilson had a valid permit to carry firearms, according to police.</p>
<p>Prosecutors added criminal gang participation to Wilson's charges. Wilson's lawyers said gang activity testimony isn't necessary to prove the other charges and may prejudice a jury against him. The charge will be decided in a separate trial.</p>
<p>Wilson's trial is being held in Polk County instead of Johnson County due to extensive publicity.</p>
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<p>Information from: The Des Moines Register, <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com" type="external">http://www.desmoinesregister.com</a></p>
<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa's new "stand your ground" law will be tested this week in the trial of a man charged in a fatal shooting at an Iowa City pedestrian mall.</p>
<p>Lamar Wilson, 24, is charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder and intimidation with a dangerous weapon in the Aug. 27 shooting that killed Kaleek Jones, 22, and injured two other men. Wilson has pleaded not guilty to all charges, the <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2018/01/21/trial-iowa-city-ped-mall-shooting-suspect-lamar-wilson-begins-week/1040270001/" type="external">Des Moines Register reported</a> .</p>
<p>Jury selection began Monday.</p>
<p>Iowa's "stand your ground" law took effect in July. The law states law-abiding residents don't have to retreat before using deadly force to defend themselves if they reasonably believe their life is in danger. Wilson's case will be one of the first to test out the protections within the new legislation.</p>
<p>Wilson's attorneys said the shooting was justified because Wilson was defending himself from gunfire. The defense argued that Wilson should receive immunity from prosecution.</p>
<p>Johnson County District Judge Paul Miller has said he will rule on immunity after the jury has heard the case.</p>
<p>Police said Wilson was carrying two guns when he was taken into custody. Police also said Wilson admitted to firing at a number of people. Wilson had a valid permit to carry firearms, according to police.</p>
<p>Prosecutors added criminal gang participation to Wilson's charges. Wilson's lawyers said gang activity testimony isn't necessary to prove the other charges and may prejudice a jury against him. The charge will be decided in a separate trial.</p>
<p>Wilson's trial is being held in Polk County instead of Johnson County due to extensive publicity.</p>
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<p>Information from: The Des Moines Register, <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com" type="external">http://www.desmoinesregister.com</a></p> | Trial for Iowa City pedestrian mall shooting to begin | false | https://apnews.com/amp/debe32424e964bc0b16ad1bae6e1018b | 2018-01-22 | 2least
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<p>FOXBusiness.com Senior Editor Adam Samson, Layfield Report CEO John Layfield, Americans for Tax Reform Director Mattie Duppler and FBN’s Tracy Byrnes on the decline in young people investing in stocks.</p>
<p>Wall Street may have recovered from the financial crisis, but the scars are ever-present, at least for one generation.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Millennials – Americans born after 1980 – have sustained painful financial blows that could forever shape their investing mindset.</p>
<p>A study from investment bank UBS (NYSE:UBS) performed during the first quarter shows Millennials are just about as financially conservative as the World War II generation. That group of Americans, who are currently 68 and older, either directly experienced, or felt the repercussions of, the Great Depression.</p>
<p>“This is remarkable given the impact the Great Depression had on the WWII generation and speaks to the potential permanent scarring that 2008 had on the Millennial investor,” UBS said in the research note.</p>
<p>Echoing that sentiment, Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group, an economic advisory based in Washington, D.C., said “for many, two awful bear markets in 15 years stays in the psyche.” He added that “Millennials are dealing with student debts, high rents, (and a) challenging labor market.”</p>
<p>Unlike the older Generation X and Baby Boomers, the Great Recession struck just as Millennials were entering the workforce. In addition to scary newspaper headlines, it led to widespread unemployment, which has morphed into under-employment, according to a slew of studies. On top of that, many Millennials also remember the dotcom boom and bust that sent the Nasdaq skyrocketing and then collapsing in the early 2000s.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“We’re in this ironic position where the [S&amp;P 500] is near all-time highs and yet it’s not cool to be in the stock market,” said Michael Block, chief strategist at Rhino Trading Partners, a boutique equity research and investment firm based in New York. &#160;He added that he thinks over the next three to five years, the mindset among Millennials could change, which “will give markets some oomph.”</p>
<p>Boockvar shared Block’s position, saying “this is what happens after bubbles pop; it takes a while for people to get the confidence back to step back in. A better economy, though, can more quickly cure that.”</p>
<p>Skittish Millennials Avoid Stocks, Hoard Cash</p>
<p>Still, a review of several studies shows what could be an alarming level of wariness toward investing among a group that represents about 27% of the adult U.S. population.</p>
<p>Millennials, for example, hold 52% of their assets in cash, and only 28% in equities, on average, according to UBS. Strikingly, even older and more affluent Millennials with $100,000 in assets have an average cash allocation of 42%. That compares to 23% in cash and 46% in stocks across other generations. Moreover, a Gallup poll indicates only 27% of 18-to-29-year olds hold any stock at all, according to Bloomberg News.</p>
<p>The financial conservatism has led to a curious mindset among the group. UBS says 69% of Millennials they surveyed said they plan on succeeding by working hard, compared to 51% across other generations. Inversely, only 28% said they would achieve financial success through long-term investing, compared to 52% in other generations. They also broadly plan on relying on spouses, partners, and family members for financial advice, as opposed to traditional financial advisors.</p>
<p>While Millennials are financially conservative, they appear to be eternally optimistic. A Pew Research Center survey from February shows 67% of Millennials feel like they don’t earn enough to lead they life they would like, but 79% of that group believes they will in the future. That’s a higher rate of optimism than any of their peers.</p>
<p>Big Dreams, Big Hurdles</p>
<p>While Millennials might have big financial dreams, generating long-term wealth could be a challenge.</p>
<p>That’s because a key to long-term financial planning is investing the most aggressively at a young age. Cash stored in a bank account provides essentially no returns. Meanwhile, safe-haven assets like Treasury bonds yield low, or sometimes even negative, interest rates when adjusting for inflation. The problem is amplified in an environment where the Federal Reserve is putting strong downward pressure on interest rates.</p>
<p>Riskier stocks, on the flip side, tend to perform well over time, even if crises put short-term pressure on stocks. An investing term called “compounding” adds to the power of long-term investments.</p>
<p>For example, if an investor put $10,000 into various investments that yield 6% per year on average, the portfolio will be worth $30,627 by the time he turns 40, and $102,857 by the time he turns 60, assuming he reinvests the returns, according to a calculation by asset manager Vanguard.</p>
<p>That rate of return could actually be conservative when examining historical trends. &#160;Indeed, average annual S&amp;P 500 returns from 2004 to 2013 were 9.1%, according to a calculation from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Looking at the longer term, from 1964 to 2013, average returns came in at 11.3%, and from 1928 to 2013 they were 11.5%.</p> | Crisis-Scarred Millennials Snub Stocks | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/05/16/crisis-scarred-millennials-snub-street.html | 2016-03-05 | 0right
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<p>A key provision from a 2012 ballot measure that taxed top incomes&#160;to fund education was recently given a clean bill of health&#160;by the state controller’s office, just in time for voters to consider a 12-year extension of the program.</p>
<p>The controller’s office in August published an audit of the&#160;account that collects&#160;tax revenue generated from both a temporary tax on annual incomes of $250,000 or more and a quarter-cent sales tax and then disperses the funds to K-12 school districts, charter schools and community college districts.</p>
<p>With the exception of a $59.7 million accounting error the Department of Finance made when transferring funds (but is set to be&#160;corrected in an upcoming adjustment), <a href="http://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-AUD/ca_dept_of_education_education_protection_account.pdf" type="external">the program was deemed</a> to have used and accounted for the revenue appropriately. &#160;</p>
<p>Still awake? Here’s some background</p>
<p>The Education Protection Account was created to ensure the money is used as intended — meaning to make it so lawmakers couldn’t raid education funds for other purposes — when voters approved Prop 30 in 2012. The audit was one of several accountability provisions.</p>
<p>The audit noted that the $59.7 million error did not affect funding to schools because of another law (Prop 98), which guarantees a certain level of education funding. The Department of Finance told the Controller’s office the error did not hurt schools because the Prop 98 guarantee was met through other accounts.</p>
<p>The fact that the guarantee was met regardless of the error raises questions about the need for Prop 30. But a&#160;spokesman for the Department of Finance said Prop 30 has “provided&#160;a direct benefit to schools” since it provided additional revenue streams and increased the amount of the Prop 98 contribution.</p>
<p>And while $59.7 million is a lot of money, it’s only a fraction of how revenue much Prop 30 has generated. Since its inception in 2012, it’s estimated to have generated around $31.2 billion. &#160;</p>
<p>Why is CalWatchdog telling me this?</p>
<p>In April, <a href="" type="internal">CalWatchdog discovered</a>&#160;the Education Protection Account had not been audited, despite the fact that voters are set to consider a 12-year extension in November (it’s now called Prop 55, and the extension is coming two years early).</p>
<p>Prop 55 would only extend the income tax provision, while the sales tax provision will expire in two years.</p>
<p>Why audit this obscure account and not how the schools are spending the money?</p>
<p>Auditing this account is important because it verifies that lawmakers (or anyone else for that matter) weren’t dipping into Prop 30 funds. The audit could also catch something like a $59.7 million accounting error.</p>
<p>And other audits have&#160;been done. There’s actually plenty of audits of the different school districts, charter schools and community college districts located on the <a href="http://trackprop30.ca.gov/default.aspx" type="external">controller’s website</a>.</p>
<p>Isn’t more education funding a good thing? Seems like a no-brainer.</p>
<p>The Prop 30 and Prop 55 debate has never really been about the need for more education funding. Instead, it has to do with the source of the funding.&#160;</p>
<p>Many experts, including Moody’s, Standard &amp; Poor’s and Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget, argue <a href="" type="internal">the state is too reliant</a> upon income tax revenue from top earners, mainly because of its volatility.</p>
<p>In fact, nearly half of the state’s revenue comes from the top&#160;one percent of&#160;earners&#160;(approximately 150,000 individual tax filings). Critics of Prop 30 and Prop 55 say these measures only perpetuate the problem.</p>
<p>Also, Prop 30 was billed as a temporary tax. But if it Prop 55 passes, it would extend the program until 2030, which critics say is not “temporary.”</p>
<p>Of course, if voters down Prop 55 in November, the program will expire in 2018. There would certainly be a loss of revenue for schools (and <a href="" type="internal">healthcare</a>), but Brown said he’s prepared to proceed either way. &#160;</p> | Despite $59.7 million error, key Prop 30 education account gets OK’d in audit | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2016/10/06/despite-59-7-million-error-key-prop-30-education-account-gets-okd-audit/ | 2018-10-20 | 3left-center
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<p>Analysis &amp; Opinions - Lawfare</p>
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<p>"Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ)&#160; <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/948201/download" type="external">released</a>&#160;an indictment against four Russians in one of the most significant hacking-related law enforcement actions to date. According to the indictment, two criminals working at the behest of two officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) hacked into Yahoo’s internal networks, compromised Yahoo user accounts, and used those compromises to pivot into accounts with other online services, including Google. The Yahoo compromise, involving half a billion accounts, made major news last year; the hack resulted in&#160; <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/15/verizon-yahoo-250-million/" type="external">$250 million</a>&#160;being shaved off Verizon’s acquisition price for that company.</p>
<p>This indictment has it all, from details of Russian espionage and tradecraft and connections to the criminal underworld, to an erectile-dysfunction-spam scheme and even an Aston Martin with a vanity license plate spelling “MR KARIM.” It is only the third indictment we can recall that alleges state-sponsored hacking, with the previous two coming against&#160; <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-military-hackers-cyber-espionage-against-us-corporations-and-labor" type="external">Chinese People’s Liberation Army officers</a>&#160;and&#160; <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-charges-against-seven-iranians-conducting-coordinated" type="external">Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members</a>.</p>
<p>Up front, the story here is not about the long arm of American law bringing ne’er-do-wells to justice..."</p>
<p /> | The Department of Justice Makes the Next Move in the U.S.-Russia Espionage Drama | false | http://belfercenter.org/publication/department-justice-makes-next-move-us-russia-espionage-drama | 2017-03-16 | 2least
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<p>The U.S. Embassy reported that <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/news/shots-fired-at-u-s-embassy-staff-in-yemen/" type="external">shots were fired</a> Tuesday at a vehicle carrying diplomatic staff in Sanaa, Yemen.</p>
<p>The situation in Yemen has recently deteriorated between the Sunni government and Shiite rebels. The Houthis rebel group seized control of the presidential palace and the state television station and news agency, the battle leading to the death of 67, according to the Yemeni Health Ministry.&#160;</p>
<p>Though a ceasefire was declared Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Yemen said that unidentified fighters fired on staff at a nearby checkpoint Tuesday. After warning shots, the gunmen leveled their weapons at the vehicle and fired. No one was injured.</p>
<p>The U.S. State Department said Monday it has no plans to evacuate the Sanaa embassy and officials believed embassy staff face no imminent threat. UPI&#160; <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/news/shots-fired-at-u-s-embassy-staff-in-yemen/" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>Clashes in the capital killed nine and injured 67 Monday before a ceasefire was declared, the Yemeni Health Ministry announced. The rebels, who seized the presidential palace, Yemeni state television and the official SABA news agency said, are Houthis, Shiite Muslims who regard themselves as marginalized by Yemen’s Sunni government.</p>
<p>The U.S. State Department told NBC News on Monday that there are no plans to evacuate the embassy in Sanaa, and military officials added there was no imminent threat to those within the embassy.</p> | Shots Fired At U.S. Embassy Vehicle In Yemen | true | http://truthrevolt.org/news/shots-fired-us-embassy-vehicle-yemen | 2018-10-04 | 0right
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<p>As an adult, the rugged New Mexico terrain culminated in a series of paintings inspired by the artist’s regular camping trips into its remote mountains and mesas. Her camping gear, scuffed sneakers and jeans worn at the knees show the harshness of traveling to a place of such isolation, driven by gusting winds, scorching heat and sudden downpours.</p>
<p>Opening today, “Georgia O’Keeffe and the Faraway: Nature and Image” explores the American modernist’s landscapes throughout New Mexico’s untamed wilds. The exhibition offers a personal glimpse into the world of this iconic artist through her camping gear and art supplies, as well as paintings, sketches and photographs of O’Keeffe in the field. The color and black and white photos hail from the lenses of Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Todd Webb. The personal artifacts range from O’Keeffe’s lanterns and tent to paint chips and brushes.</p>
<p>The show incorporates a panorama of “The Black Place,” the site where O’Keeffe and her friend Maria Chabot camped in 1944, giving viewers a sense of the vastness of this slice of landscape and the pioneering spirit of this singular artist. She cherished sleeping under the stars.</p>
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<p>The result is an exhibition marrying art and object, myth and reality, artist and cowgirl.</p>
<p>“All of her work is about nature,” O’Keeffe curator and exhibition organizer Barbara Buhler Lynes said.</p>
<p>By 1929, O’Keeffe was spending several months painting in northern New Mexico and she revisited the area nearly every year until 1949, when she permanently moved to the state from New York. She explored New Mexico on various car trips, often in the company of Chabot.</p>
<p>In August 1935, she discovered a desolate area of virtually barren hills northwest of Cuba. Immediately drawn to its stark forms, she christened it “The Black Place” and inaugurated what would become one of her most famous series. In 1944, Chabot photographed one of their camping trips at the site.</p>
<p>“We used these to find the exact location of the Black Place,” Buhler Lynes said of the original photographs. The curator was able to pinpoint O’Keeffe’s campground during a 2008-09 research trip for the show’s 2009 opening at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.</p>
<p>When O’Keeffe discovered the Black Place, she was situated for the summer at Ghost Ranch, an area of painted desert whose multicolored cliffs and hills she first saw in 1934. Located 20-odd miles north of Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch was owned by environmentalist Arthur Pack, who ran it as a dude ranch for wealthy Easterners. O’Keeffe made two trips to the Black Place in 1936 accompanied by ranch hands.</p>
<p>The artist painted the various configurations that fascinated her, camping amid its arid hills more than any other site. She identified with both the Black Place and its counterpart, the White Place, possessively calling them her own. The monumental surroundings of Ghost Ranch would surface on her easel, including the square-topped mountain Cerro Pedernal, the red hills and the yellow cliffs.</p>
<p>O’Keeffe filtered the landscapes of her adopted state through her personal aesthetic: Art as a creative expression rather than photographic imitation. She abstracted and manipulated forms, streamlined detail and played with depth, perspective and scale to suggest the region’s vastness.</p>
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<p>In 1944, Chabot took candid photographs of O’Keeffe brushing her hair at camp or posing while seated on the large rock at the base of the barren hills that inspired so many paintings. She referred to the site as “Georgia’s country.”</p>
<p>O’Keeffe discovered The White Place, Plaza Blanca in Rio Arriba, in 1931. The astonishing spot of rock pillars, spires and folds of white drapery captivated her with its otherworldly, primordial quality. In letters to her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, she described it as “a vast area like something dead but startlingly alive in its beauty.” The searing brightness of the midday sun prompted O’Keeffe to acknowledge the difficulty of painting it.</p>
<p>The photographer Eliot Porter was living in Santa Fe in 1940, and he and O’Keeffe drove around the landscape in search of something to paint. He shot the White Place in stunning images that used light and shadow to highlight the texture and architectural quality of the rocky pillars. In 1961, Porter invited O’Keeffe to join him on a 10-day rafting trip down the Colorado River to Glen Canyon, Utah. Still feisty and independent at 74, she eagerly boarded the raft each morning dressed in her tennis shoes and a red shift. Porter, O’Keeffe and photographer Todd Webb slept in sleeping bags on the sand, enduring shifting weather conditions. But it was the kind of camping adventure O’Keeffe eagerly embraced. The landscapes she saw haunted her imagination.</p>
<p>O’Keeffe met Ansel Adams in New Mexico in 1929. He arrived at Ghost Ranch in 1937 and before they departed on their first trip, he photographed O’Keeffe painting in her station wagon. She often worked in the car in the afternoons for protection from the scorching sun. In the photograph, she is working on “Gerald’s Tree II,” one of several compositions on the same subject. O’Keeffe never allowed anyone nearby when she worked, but she made an exception for Adams.</p>
<p>O’Keeffe went to the Black Place with Chabot, a 26-year-old aspiring writer she had met through Boston heiress Mary Cabot Wheelwright, founder of the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Chabot was awed and inspired by the 53-year-old artist. By then, O’Keeffe had bought a home at Ghost Ranch and invited Chabot to spend the summer of 1941 with her. Chabot oversaw the routines of daily life in the isolated spot in return for room, board and writing solitude. She fetched water, serviced the generator and pump, maintained the cars and made frequent grocery and supply runs.</p>
<p>“Maria was smitten by O’Keeffe and would loved to have had an intimate relationship with her,” Buhler Lynes said. “O’Keeffe wasn’t interested in that, but she was interested in having people around who shared her interests. Chabot’s youth proved both blessing and curse.</p>
<p>“Maria was fearless,” Buhler Lynes continued. “She would get in a car and go into the desert. The wind would blow; the rain would pour. (The Black Place) is really desolate — no trees, no plants. When (O’Keeffe) first saw it, she said it looked like a wall of elephants.”</p>
<p>But the friendship waned, and O’Keeffe did not invite Chabot back until 1945, when the artist bought her Abiquiu home.</p>
<p>“Maria did the food department and the shopping department,” Buhler Lynes said. “Maria was not a disciplined person about her work. She drove O’Keeffe crazy. She was noisy; she was a kid. She’d do things like slam the door and play the radio loud.”</p>
<p>“There’s been a lot of speculation on whether they were intimate sexually,” Buhler Lynes said. “All I can say is, I’ve found nothing in my research that shows O’Keeffe was bisexual.”</p> | O’Keeffe’s ‘Faraway’ | false | https://abqjournal.com/106017/okeeffes-faraway.html | 2012-05-11 | 2least
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<p>U.S. retail sales fell in October for the first time in three months as superstorm Sandy slammed the brakes on automobile purchases, suggesting a loss of momentum in spending early in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Sales dipped 0.3 percent, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday, after an upwardly revised 1.3 percent increase in September that was previously reported as a 1.1 percent rise.</p>
<p>Economists polled by Reuters had expected retail sales to fall 0.2 percent. The decline partly reflected the impact from superstorm Sandy, which lashed the densely populated East Coast -- holding down auto sales.</p>
<p>The Commerce Department said it had received indications from companies that the storm had both positive and negative effects on October's sales data.</p>
<p>Motor vehicle sales declined 1.5 percent, the largest fall since August last year, after increasing 1.7 percent in September. Auto manufacturers have blamed the storm for the drop in sales.</p>
<p>They expect auto sales to rebound in November. Automakers and dealers last week estimated that as many as a quarter million vehicles would end up in the scrap yard because of the storm.</p>
<p>Excluding autos, retail sales were unchanged last month after advancing 1.2 percent in September, the Commerce Department said.</p>
<p>The storm also likely dented sales at clothing stores, which dipped 0.1 percent after rising 0.4 percent the prior month.</p>
<p>Building material sales surprisingly fell 1.9 percent, defying expectations of a boost from pre-storm purchases. Building materials and garden equipment sales has increased 2.1 percent in September.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | U.S. Retail Sales Fall for First Time Since June | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/11/14/us-retail-sales-fall-for-first-time-since-june.html | 2016-01-26 | 0right
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<p>The east gymnasium at Albuquerque Academy is, Terry Darnell said, where the 2012-13 season began to go slightly awry for the Bernalillo Spartans.</p>
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<p>A return visit to that same gym Tuesday wasn’t the corrective procedure the Spartans’ boys basketball coach hoped it would be.</p>
<p>“We’re kind of staggering right now,” Darnell said. “We’re trying to find our way back together as a team.”</p>
<p>The fifth-ranked Spartans (9-6) trailed for every bit of the 32 minutes against fourth-ranked Academy. Bernalillo ebbed more than it flowed in a 69-63 nondistrict loss to the Chargers (9-3).</p>
<p>When the Spartans were at Academy last month for the Joe Armijo Classic, Darnell said, he noticed things getting out of sorts.</p>
<p>“Two losses here hurt us,” he said. “We didn’t play well together after that.”</p>
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<p>That included a trip to the Stu Clark Invitational in Las Vegas, N.M., during the holidays, and it has carried over to 2013.</p>
<p>The Spartans got down 12 points in the first quarter to the hot-shooting Chargers, whose lead varied in size but was never relinquished.</p>
<p>Bernalillo was down 13 points in the second quarter, but went into halftime trailing 32-28.</p>
<p>Academy had an 11-0 run to begin the second half, but the Spartans pecked away once more. Aaron Griffith, Tristan Arnett and Brandon Saiz helped Bernalillo cut the deficit to eight at one stage late in the quarter, and the Spartans continued to chip away in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>The Academy lead went from 10, to seven, to four (51-47) with 5:44 left in the game. The Chargers answered with a couple of baskets, but Bernalillo’s pressure defense continued to give Academy trouble.</p>
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<p>Bernalillo cut the deficit all the way down to three at 64-61 with 45 seconds to go. But the Chargers, who hurt the Spartans with their size in the paint on both ends of the floor, were solid from the free-throw line in the last minute.</p>
<p>“We came out flat tonight,” Darnell said. “And we didn’t run good offense. But the biggest thing is, we didn’t make defensive stops. We let them get inside.”</p>
<p>Arnett led the Spartans with 19 points. Saiz added 18 and Griffith 11.</p>
<p>Bernalillo is home to Belen tonight, before visiting Aztec on Saturday night.</p>
<p>The Spartans open District 2-4A play Wednesday at Los Alamos.</p>
<p>NOTE: The rankings come from the MaxPreps.com website; that is the ranking the New Mexico Activities Association will use as part of its selection and seeding criteria for the state tournament. — This article appeared on page 17 of the Albuquerque Journal</p> | Spartans Lose At Academy, Again | false | https://abqjournal.com/160973/spartans-lose-at-academy-again.html | 2013-01-17 | 2least
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<p>Writers never know when something they write will strike a nerve — or, in the common phrase of the internet, "go viral."</p>
<p>Yet my last column, " <a href="" type="internal">Why Conservatives Still Attack Trump</a>" did both. Aside from being reprinted on almost every conservative website, Newsweek published the column, and The New York Times quoted it.</p>
<p>More importantly, many major conservative writers responded to it, mostly in disagreement.</p>
<p>It is interesting that the column elicited so much attention. Maybe, like the man who bit the dog, an articulate case by a mainstream conservative in support of the president is so rare that people felt a need to publish it and respond to it.</p>
<p>Whatever the reason, I feel compelled to respond to some of the disagreements.</p>
<p>Before doing so, I want to note the respectful tone that permeated virtually every one of the disagreeing columns. We have enough cannibals on the left without conservatives eating each other up.</p>
<p>After reading the responses, I feel confident in saying that they confirmed my primary thesis: Anti-Trump conservatives do not believe that Americans are fighting what I call the Second Civil War, while pro-Trump conservatives do.</p>
<p>Indeed, Jonah Goldberg in National Review said as much. He denied that we are in the midst of a civil war on two grounds: One is that it is not violent, and the other is that we are fighting a "culture war," not a civil war.</p>
<p>Whenever I write about the subject, I almost always note that this Second Civil War is not violent. I never thought that the word "war" must always include violence. The word is frequently used in nonviolent contexts: the war against cancer, the war between the sexes, the war against tobacco, the Cold War and myriad other nonviolent wars.</p>
<p>Perhaps Goldberg would respond that he did not write that all wars are violent, only that all civil wars are violent. But if there are nonviolent wars, there can be nonviolent civil wars.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, what most disturbs me is his second argument — articulated in various ways by most of those who disagreed with me — that there is simply no civil war. And many repeated the universal belief among Never-Trumpers that a Hillary Clinton victory would not have been a catastrophe.</p>
<p>My response is that "culture war" is much too tepid a term for what is going on now. Maybe anti-Trump conservatives are fighting a "culture war," but the left is not. The left is working to undo the American Revolution. It's very close to doing so.</p>
<p>Of all people, one would think Jonah Goldberg would understand this. He is the author of what I consider to be a modern classic, " <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189" type="external">Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change</a>."</p>
<p>His book leads to one conclusion: We are fighting fascism. How is that not a civil war? When you fight fascism, you are not merely fighting a "culture war."</p>
<p>So, shouldn't the primary role of a conservative be to vanquish leftism? To me, that means strongly supporting the Republican president of the United States, who has staffed his Cabinet with conservatives and already won substantial conservative victories. As I suggested in my previous column, conservatives would have been thrilled if any Republican president had achieved what Trump has at this point in his administration.</p>
<p>"But what about Trump's character?" nearly all my critics ask. Or, as John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary Magazine, tweeted, "For Dennis Prager, who spent 40 years advocating for a moral frame for American politics, to argue as he argued today is, may I say, ironic."</p>
<p>First, I have indeed dedicated much of my life to advocating for morality — for ethical monotheism as the only way to achieve a moral world; for raising moral children (as opposed to concentrating, for example, on raising "brilliant" children); and for the uniquely great Judeo-Christian moral synthesis developed by the Founding Fathers of America.</p>
<p>But I have never advocated for electing moral politicians. Of course, I prefer people of good character in political office. But 30 years ago, I wrote an essay titled "Adultery and Politicians" in which I argued that what political leaders do is more important than their character. To cite but one of an endless list of examples, I would prefer an adulterous president (like John F. Kennedy) who supported Israel than a faithful family man (like Jimmy Carter) who was an anti-Zionist.</p>
<p>Second, as a religious Jew, I learned from the Bible that God himself chose morally compromised individuals — like King David, who had a man killed in order to cover up the adultery he committed with the man's wife; and the prostitute Rahab, who was instrumental in helping the Jews conquer Canaan — to accomplish some greater good. (And, for the record, I am not suggesting that God chose Donald Trump.)</p>
<p>Third, though I listed his moral defects in column after column during the primaries, I believe that Trump is a better man than his critics maintain. I see no evidence, to cite one example, that he is a misogynist. His comment about famous and powerful men being able to do what they want with women was (a) said in private — and we are fools if we assess people by their private comments (Harry Truman, a great president, frequently used "kike" in private comments about Jews), (b) not a statement about anything he had actually done, (c) not misogynistic and (d) often true.</p>
<p>Fourth, even if he were as morally defective as his critics maintain, my response is this: Trump's character is less morally significant than defeating the left. If the left wins, America loses. And if America loses, evil will engulf the world.</p>
<p>Dennis Prager's latest book, "The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code," was published by Regnery. He is a nationally syndicated radio show host and creator of PragerUniversity.com.</p>
<p>COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM</p> | PRAGER: A Response To My Conservative Critics About Trump | true | https://dailywire.com/news/17196/prager-response-my-conservative-critics-about-dennis-prager | 2017-06-06 | 0right
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<p>CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — The mayor of Ciudad Juarez has confirmed that a drug gang used a car bomb in an attack against federal police in the Mexican border city.</p>
<p>Mayor Jose Reyes says the attackers set a trap for federal police before detonating the explosive inside a parked car.</p>
<p>He said federal police received a phone call about a wounded municipal police officers. Moments after federal police and paramedics arrived to help the officer, the car exploded, killing two officers.</p>
<p>Reyes spoke Friday in an interview with The Associated Press. <a href="../news/state/apjuarezcarbomb1107-16-10.htm" type="external">READ MORE</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Bomb Explodes in Juarez: Watch Video | false | https://abqjournal.com/8443/bomb-explodes-in-juarez-watch-video.html | 2least
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<p>US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that sanctuary cities must cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or face the wrath of cuts in federal grants. The new policy outlines requirements cities need to follow to receive funding.</p>
<p>On Tuesday afternoon, Sessions released a <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/889962217982103554" type="external">statement</a> threatening to cut lucrative funding related to the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants for so-called sanctuary cities, where local and state law enforcement are not bound to federal requests on immigration enforcement. Many cities rely on federal funding for law enforcement in their communities.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/397514-trump-sessions-mccabe-row/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The requirements set forth by Sessions state that the sanctuary cities need to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers access to their jails and can’t stop their local police from providing ICE the immigration status of the people they arrest. Moreover, the cities must give ICE a 48-hour notice before releasing people from custody who get arrested, if ICE has a detainer on them.</p>
<p>“So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes,” Sessions said in the statement.</p>
<p>“This is what the American people should be able to expect from their cities and states, and these long overdue requirements will help us take down MS-13 and other violent transnational gangs, and make our country safer,” the top US law enforcement official added.</p>
<p>Federal funding will not be revoked for any cities that have already received it, or cities that are in the process of getting the money this year. The new rules will go into effect next year, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/its-official-attorney-general-jeff-sessions-takes-on-sanctuary-cities" type="external">according</a> to the Daily Beast.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump has spoken in the past about targeting sanctuary cities, but immigrant rights activists disagree with him and argue that when law enforcement is blocked from communication with ICE, immigrants have less fear about telling law enforcement about crimes.</p>
<p>For many cities, losing the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant will be a big deal and fighting back may not be an option. In March, Austin, which does not fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, said that they may have to start complying because they rely on the grant funding, the Daily Beast reported.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/397435-trump-angry-hillary-crimes/" type="external">READ MORE: Trump blasts AG over ‘Clinton collusion with Ukraine’, says acting FBI director got ‘$700k from H’</a></p>
<p>Cecelia Friedman Levin, senior policy counsel for the immigration justice group Asista, believes undocumented immigrants may think twice about calling law enforcement in the current political climate.</p>
<p>“Abusers commonly threaten victims that reaching out for help will result in their removal or separation from their children,” she said, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/undocumented-immigrants-wary-report-crimes-deportation" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>“Before the executive orders on immigration,” she added, “the advice advocates would commonly give is that the police are here to help, that there are policies in place that protect all victims. But now, depending on the jurisdiction, those advocates may pause before giving that same advice, especially if they’re seeing increased immigration raids in their communities and given the wide breadth of enforcement priorities laid out by the administration.”</p>
<p>The announcement from the US attorney general comes on the heels of Trump’s negative comments about Sessions. Trump <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wont-say-if-he-will-fire-attorney-general-sessions-1501010025" type="external">told</a> the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday afternoon that he was “very disappointed” in Sessions.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p> | Attorney General Sessions threatens sanctuary cities with federal grant cuts | false | https://newsline.com/attorney-general-sessions-threatens-sanctuary-cities-with-federal-grant-cuts/ | 2017-07-26 | 1right-center
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<p>The night before Donald Trump was sworn in as president, the New York Times dropped a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/trump-russia-associates-investigation.html?_r=0" type="external">bombshell</a>: intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been examining intercepted communications and financial transactions in an investigation of possible contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials. This report seemed to confirm <a href="" type="internal">previous indications</a> that the US government has collected sensitive intelligence about interactions between Trump insiders and Russians. And hours before the inauguration, I ran into Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has been one of the few Republicans to call for a special investigation of the Russian hacking that helped Trump, and I asked him about this latest development.</p>
<p>Graham, a member of the Senate judiciary committee, said that he didn’t know anything about the intelligence intercepts. He remarked, “I want to learn and investigate all things Russian, wherever it leads.” He noted that it was clear that Vladimir Putin’s regime had “tried to undermine our election” and “succeeded in creating discontent and discord.” He added, “I want to know what they did and who they did it with.” He went on: “I want to see all of it…I want to know what Russia did…If there is campaign contacts, I want to know about it.”</p>
<p>Graham said he hoped to examine what the FBI knew about any Trump-Russia contacts and what actions the bureau had taken. (Before the election, FBI Director Jim Comey talked rather publicly about the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of her email at the State Department. But Comey has <a href="" type="internal">declined to say anything in public</a> regarding whether the bureau has probed links between Trump associates and Russians.) “I hope to be able to work with Sen. Grassley [the chair of the judiciary committee] to look into the FBI’s role,” Graham said, “in terms of what they did, what they know, and what they can provide to Congress.”</p>
<p>At the moment, the Senate <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/13/politics/senate-probe-into-election-hacking-to-review-possible-links-between-russia-campaigns/" type="external">investigation</a> of the Russian hacking and possible contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign is being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee. So it’s unclear whether Graham will get his wish for a judiciary committee inquiry into the FBI end of this matter.</p>
<p>Before darting off to inauguration business, Graham, who often tussled with Trump during the 2016 campaign, criticized the incoming president for trying to downplay Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “Trump,” he said, “seems to be in the forgive-and-forget mode.” He noted the “biggest mistake” Trump could make would be “forgiving Russia…for what they did in our election.”</p>
<p /> | GOP Senator Calls for Investigating What FBI Did About Russia-Trump Intelligence | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/lindsey-graham-calls-investigating-what-fbi-did-about-russia-trump-intelligence/ | 2017-01-20 | 4left
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<p>Police said they were notified by the interim superintendent on Friday that the student had been making threats a day earlier, and students they interviewed alleged that the student had written out a list of names of students he wanted to kill after returning to class following recess, KOB-TV said.</p>
<p>The students also said their classmate threatened to bring a gun to school on Friday and kill the students on his list, according to Eyewitness News 4.</p>
<p>The student admitted to police that he made the threats and drew up the list, saying he was angry over being bullied over the past few weeks and for being accused of breaking another student’s toy on the playground, KOB-TV said.</p>
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<p>The boy said he had ripped up his list and never intended to carry out his threats, and his father told police there was a gun in the house but it was safely locked up, according to KOB-TV.</p>
<p>The 12th Judicial District Attorney’s Office and the FBI were notified of the threats, and both agreed that nothing reached the level of a delinquent act or prosecutable offense, the station reported.</p>
<p>“We’ve identified a student who admittedly made some remarks about causing some violence at the school,” Ruidoso Police Lt. Ray Merritt told the <a href="http://www.ruidosonews.com/ruidoso-breaking_news/ci_22219000/no-charges-filed-school-threat" type="external">Ruidoso News</a>. “During an interview with him and some other witnesses it turns out that he said that he never planned on executing what he told his friends he was going to do, his plan.”</p> | Ruidoso Student Suspended for Threats | false | https://abqjournal.com/154367/ruidoso-student-suspended-for-threats.html | 2012-12-19 | 2least
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<p>It’s even worse than anybody has previously thought. For the first time, we now know in painstaking detail what was going on in the White House in the months leading up to 9/11.</p>
<p>In 2004, it became public knowledge that President George W. Bush <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">received</a> a “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” memo in his Presidential Daily Briefing on August 6, 2001. That was only one month before the attacks. Now, ex-CIA Director George Tenet is revealing that the CIA began warning the White House much sooner, and far more urgently than what has been previously reported. Every single time he and the CIA pressed the alarm button, he was given the cold shoulder by Bush and his team.</p>
<p>It began in May of 2001 when Tenet and then chief of CIA’s counterterrorism center, Cofer Black, pitched a plan called “the Blue Sky paper” to Bush’s national security team. They wanted to attack Al Qaeda pre-eminently to foil their plan&#160;because they received warnings that a significant attack on American soil was about to happen. Here’s what they were <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/ex-cia-director-bush-ignored-months-of-warnings-about-911-to-avoid-leaving-paper-trail-of-culpability/" type="external">told</a> afterward:</p>
<p>“We’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.”</p>
<p>For those that are unfamiliar with CIA-speak, this means they didn’t want a paper trail to begin yet to show that they’ve been warned. Politico, the publication that <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">discussed</a> this issue directly with ex-CIA Director George Tenet in an exclusive interview, signs off on this revelation as being credible. For more on this, visit <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">HERE</a>.</p>
<p>Black thinks that Bush’s team wasn’t prepared for the new threat:</p>
<p>“I think they were mentally stuck back eight years [before]. They were used to terrorists being Euro-lefties—they drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day, how bad can this be? And it was a very difficult sell to communicate the urgency to this.”</p>
<p>The warnings only got more urgent from there. On July 10, the head of the CIA’s Al Qaeda unit, Richard Blee, burst into Black’s office thinking he had all the information he needed to <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">confirm</a> the attacks:</p>
<p>‘Chief, this is it. Roof’s fallen in.’</p>
<p>Black took the information to inform Tenet, and Tenet immediately picked up the phone to get Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on the line, <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">saying</a>, as he remembers:</p>
<p>“I said, ‘Condi, I have to come see you.’ It was one of the rare times in my seven years as director where I said, ‘I have to come see you. We’re comin’ right now. We have to get there.’”</p>
<p>After getting to the White House, though, and warning Condoleeza Rice that a wartime footing needed to be established right away, she only replied, <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">according</a> to Tenet:</p>
<p>‘What do you think we need to do?’</p>
<p>The sad thing is, nothing happened after that meeting. Mr. Black still <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">shakes</a> his head to this very day in disbelief:</p>
<p>“To me it remains incomprehensible still. I mean, how is it that you could warn senior people so many times and nothing actually happened? It’s kind of like The Twilight Zone.”</p>
<p>Oddly, the meeting was never mentioned&#160;in the 9/11 Commission’s final report, even though Tenet disclosed the meeting behind the scenes with committee members.</p>
<p>Later on that that month at the end of July, they also had another meeting while sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out just how exactly the attacks were going to happen. <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-documentary-911-bush-213353" type="external">According</a> to Tenet:</p>
<p>“We were just thinking about all of this and trying to figure out how this attack might occur. And I’ll never forget this until the day I die. Rich Blee looked at everybody and said, ‘They’re coming here.’ And the silence that followed was deafening. You could feel the oxygen come out of the room. ‘They’re coming here.”</p>
<p>Here’s what the information tells us: George Bush failed to act before the attacks, pure and simple. There’s really no way around this conclusion. This new information only further strengthens that assertion given the fact that the extent, timeline, and quality of the warnings were much greater than previous public reports have revealed up to this point.</p>
<p>When Jeb says that his brother “kept us safe,” that’s not only not true, it’s an outright lie. Bush and his team didn’t know how to prevent the attacks, even though he knew it was coming.</p>
<p>Featured image via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._government_response_to_the_September_11_attacks" type="external">Wikipedia</a>.</p> | Ex-CIA Director: Bush Ignored Several 9/11 Attack Warnings To Avoid ‘Paper Trail’ | true | http://addictinginfo.org/2015/11/13/ex-cia-director-bush-ignored-several-911-attack-warnings-to-avoid-paper-trail/ | 2015-11-13 | 4left
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<p>Balchem Corporation (NASDAQ: BCPC)&#160;had a nearly flawless quarter, with only one segment shrinking versus a year ago. And even that weakness will likely be short-lived.</p>
<p>As growth gains steam, the bottom line is <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/09/balchem-reports-record-earnings-in-first-quarter.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=ea1bbca0-793a-11e7-bc72-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">improving rapidly, as well</a>. Here's what you need to know about the second quarter of 2017 at Balchem.</p>
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<p>The broad numbers showed a lot of growth for Balchem, but the <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/01/health-products-drive-balchem-corporations-growth.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=ea1bbca0-793a-11e7-bc72-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">segment information</a> is really what investors should be looking at.</p>
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<p>Growth was really the highlight for the quarter and "offset margin pressures, primarily from higher raw material costs in all segments," according to CEO Ted Harris. There was particular weakness in the animal nutrition and health segment because of an inventory correction at a large customer and challenging dairy sales.</p>
<p>Management said that, overall, "We are progressing our strategic growth initiatives and are pleased with the IFP acquisition and its contribution to our company as we continue to seek value creating acquisitions to augment our organic growth strategies." Even where there were short-term headwinds, the long-term picture appears to be bright.</p>
<p>Small, strategic acquisitions are helping drive Balchem's growth and the company is willing to add more of these kind of acquisitions as they become available. But the momentum in the core business is also strong, which will continue to drive financial results higher in 2017.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than BalchemWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
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<p>10 stocks we like better than BalchemWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=b21ab0df-acd1-40b4-8844-07fe9350d94d&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=ea1bbca0-793a-11e7-bc72-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks</a> for investors to buy right now... and Balchem wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=b21ab0df-acd1-40b4-8844-07fe9350d94d&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=ea1bbca0-793a-11e7-bc72-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of August 1, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=ea1bbca0-793a-11e7-bc72-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Travis Hoium</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Balchem. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=ea1bbca0-793a-11e7-bc72-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy</a>.</p> | Balchem Corporation's Business Is Getting Healthier in 2017 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/05/balchem-corporations-business-is-getting-healthier-in-2017.html | 2017-08-05 | 0right
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<p>President Donald Trump's review of post-crisis banking rules could sound the death knell for new global standards now being finalized and rip apart a common approach to regulating international lenders, bankers and regulators said.</p>
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<p>Central banks and watchdogs around the world have spent the past eight years drawing up regulation aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, but there are fears that project could unravel after Trump said he wants the U.S. to row back on capital rules.</p>
<p>Trump's order for a regulatory review to overcome what he sees as obstacles to lending came as banking watchdogs were trying to complete the final piece of global capital requirements, known as Basel III.</p>
<p>Given that the United States wants to shrink the banking rule book, there are doubts over whether the Basel rules can make it over the finishing line next month if they don't have backing from the United States.</p>
<p>Without support from the world's biggest capital market, other countries would be less willing to commit too.</p>
<p>The core aim of the outstanding part of Basel III that regulators are working on - dubbed Basel IV by critical banks who worry about more stringent capital requirements - is to impose more consistency into how banks calculate the amount of capital they hold against risky assets like loans.</p>
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<p>JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said in the aftermath of the financial crisis that European rivals had been "a lot more aggressive" than American banks in calculating capital, meaning they were holding less.</p>
<p>European policymakers have rejected that criticism, but their region's banks have been lobbying against the remaining Basel rules, saying they would force them to increase significantly the amount of capital they need to hold.</p>
<p>If the United States fails to approve the completion of Basel III, the perceived problem that European banks get away with holding less capital than U.S. lenders may not be properly tackled, a source involved in the negotiations said.</p>
<p>"It's in the interests of American banks to get this done," the source said.</p>
<p>Others are less optimistic that a deal can now be done after Trump's intervention.</p>
<p>"It's going to delay completing Basel III, and perhaps lead to it not being concluded," an adviser to banks said on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>"I do fear that Basel IV is doomed," a banking industry official added. There are headwinds from elsewhere, too.</p>
<p>Patrick McHenry, Republican vice chairman of the House financial services committee, fired a warning shot at Federal Reserve Governor Janet Yellen about the Basel talks in a letter dated Jan. 31, ahead of Trump's executive order.</p>
<p>The Fed must "cease" all attempts to negotiate binding standards "burdening American business" until the Trump Administration has had the opportunity to nominate officials that prioritize "America's best interests", McHenry said.</p>
<p>While lawmakers often call on regulators to ease pressure on firms, regulators said Trump's intervention in banking rules gives more clout to McHenry's warning.</p>
<p>The Basel Committee declined to comment.</p>
<p>GLOBAL COOPERATION</p>
<p>Trump's decision to review existing, post-crisis banking rules has rung alarm bells among regulators outside the country.</p>
<p>Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, which regulates the euro zone's main lenders, said on Monday that easing banking rules could threaten financial stability.</p>
<p>Draghi was chairman of the Group of 20 Economies' (G20) regulatory task force, the Financial Stability Board, which during the financial crisis was instrumental in building up a global approach to reinforcing banking standards.</p>
<p>A former regulator said the United States would be scoring an own goal by withdrawing from multilateral bodies like Basel as it would no longer be shaping rules that impinge on U.S. banking competitiveness globally. "It's early days, but what we have seen in language and rhetoric from Washington is worrying," said David Wright, a former top EU official who was part of crisis-era efforts to create the global regulatory consensus. "If you break international consensus, you are effectively opening up a regulatory race and heaven knows where it will end," said Wright, now at Flint Global, which advises companies on regulatory matters.</p>
<p>Wright was referring to what was seen in the run-up to the financial crisis, when countries like Britain resorted to a "light touch" approach to banks to make London a more attractive financial center.</p>
<p>Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU's financial services chief, said last week that international regulatory cooperation had been vital in tackling the financial crisis and must continue.</p>
<p>Much will hinge on how much regulatory change Trump can actually push through.</p>
<p>Former Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, who jointly sponsored the Dodd Frank Act that Trump wants to review, told the BBC last week he does not expect Congress to approve the wholesale rolling back of rules, but the Trump administration could pressure U.S. regulators to ease up on applying existing requirements. Anil Kashyap, a Bank of England policymaker, said last month that Trump's nomination for the powerful role of Fed Vice Chair in charge of banking supervision would shape the U.S. approach to international rule-making.</p>
<p>It will have a "huge impact", a regulatory source added. The fear among global regulators is that multilateral bodies like the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board could be abandoned by the United States under Trump.</p>
<p>Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri, chairman of Spain's Bankia, told Spanish television on Tuesday he would be concerned if Trump was questioning the usefulness of international banking rules.</p>
<p>"It would worry me very much because I think it's very important, very relevant that there have been advances in the homogenization of regulation amongst developed countries," he said. ��</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Paul Day in Madrid, editing by Giles Elgood)</p> | Trump Banking Review Raises Fears for Global Standards Talks | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/07/trump-banking-review-raises-fears-for-global-standards-talks.html | 2017-02-08 | 0right
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<p>Over the last few years, a growing numbers of authors have convincingly argued that America’s social order is in a deepening crisis. &#160;Among these studies are: Louis Uchtelle, <a href="" type="internal">The Disposable American</a> (2007); Naomi Klein, <a href="" type="internal">The Shock Doctrine</a>, (2008); Don Peck, <a href="" type="internal">Pinched</a>(2011); Donald Barlett and James Steele, <a href="" type="internal">The Betrayal of the American Dream</a> (2012); D. W. Gibson, <a href="" type="internal">Not Working</a> (2012); and Barbara Garson, <a href="" type="internal">Down the Up Escalator</a> (2013).</p>
<p>These and other writers argue that the Great Recession and the still-unfulfilled recovery — what economist Paul Krugman identified as the Second Great Depression — bespeaks something more then just one more capitalist crisis, another speed-bump in globalization.&#160; It is restructuring the nation’s economic life, with profound political, social and personal consequences.&#160; One can wonder if this restructuring is fostering a new social order best conceived of as “postmodern serfdom”?</p>
<p>Postmodern serfdom may be distinguished by four key attributes: (i) internationally, capitalism is restructuring and U.S. global hegemony is fraying; (ii) domestically, the post-WW-II good-life of the “American Dream” is slipping away; (iii) politically, democracy is eroding, a casualty of big money and voter suppression; and (iv) legally, law enforcement is being increasingly militarized.</p>
<p>These factors contribute to an ever-deepening inequality represented not merely by the tyranny of the 1 percent.&#160; It is also fostering the rise of the postmodern serf, an ever-growing number of citizens (and non-citizens) doomed to perpetual economic and social poverty — people stuck in a life of misery. &#160;Collectively, these developments may preconfigure a very bleak future for an increasing number of Americans.</p>
<p>The leading presidential candidates, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, neither fully appreciate the structural transformation the U.S. is undergoing nor offer programmatic policies that really address the crisis developing in its wake.&#160; They share a common (mis)belief that the U.S. can once again fulfill the post-WW-II promise.&#160; Sadly, those days seem very much over and are being replaced by an era of postmodern serfdom.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Premodern or feudal serfdom flourished throughout Europe for nearly two millennia.&#160; In Britain, it dates from around the year 1000; it was finally abolished in Russia in 1861.&#160; Under serfdom, class tyranny ruled.&#160; Peasant serfs knew their place and had neither economic nor political power; a royal, deified nobility ruled — no wonder the British gentry were called “Lords.”&#160; But serfs were not powerless, as Eric Hobsbawm reveals in <a href="" type="internal">Primitive Rebels</a>, his legendary tale of pre-modern peasant uprisings.</p>
<p>Feudalism – as a form of social organization – fostered its own contradictions, one of which prefigured the rise of the modern nation state. &#160;&#160;And with it, the aristocracy of old was overthrown, superseded, by a new social order, the capitalist class.</p>
<p>The transformation of feudalism was marked by three developments.&#160; First, by an economic system; agrarian society was superseded by a society based on pre- and early-industrial capitalism.&#160; Second, by a political system; the godly tyrant was superseded by a leader chosen through (limited, representative) democracy.&#160; And third, a belief system based on religious thought and superstition was superseded by one based on reason and science.&#160; These developments helped shape a capitalism system that incubated a social order based on secular modernism.</p>
<p>The U.S. fostered its own forms of quasi-feudalism.&#160; One was indentured servitude that operated from 1608 to the early-1800s.&#160; The second and most deeply scaring was the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans that formally lasted from 1619 to 1865 and, informally, persisted under Jim Crow policies well into the 20th century.</p>
<p>Postmodern serfdom seeks to reconstitute an earlier system of social hierarchy through 21st century rebranding.&#160; The king and nobles once ruled, with a supplicant church and legal system promulgated the ideological glue that held society together.&#160; Today, the new nobility of the 1 percent rules and is assisted by a fawningly army of political operatives and law-and-order functionaries — and the nearly all-powerful ideological glue of a vast distraction industry that includes the information and entertainment media.</p>
<p>Those most subjected to the tyranny of postmodern serfdom are the postmodern serfs, the new generation of proletariat laborers who live precarious lives.&#160;&#160; Richard Florida, who celebrated the rise of the “creative class,” has identified the new low-wage service workers as a key component of this new social hierarchy.</p>
<p>In a 2012 Atlantic article, he estimates that the new “underclass” consists of about 60 million Americans who make up the a new working class, “the service class.”&#160; He identifies this sector as “some of America’s fastest-growing job categories, such as food preparation, personal care, and retail sales, but on average they earn just over $30,000 in annual wages, and many quite a bit less than that”&#160; (The U.S. Census reports the average median household income for 2013 at $51,939.)</p>
<p>Florida also includes in this sector “the unemployed, the displaced, and the disconnected to these tens of millions of low-wage service workers, and the population of post-industrialism’s left-behinds surges to as many as two-thirds of all Americans.”&#160; He concludes, with a bitter warning:&#160; “Worse yet, the ranks of the 66 percent are a product of the very structure of post-industrial capitalism. If the top third of America’s workers are navigating and prospering in the knowledge economy, the other two-thirds are disconnected and sinking.”</p>
<p>C.Z. Nnaemeka calls this new part of the working class as the “unexotic underclass” and identifies three sectors :</p>
<p>* single mothers – “80% of whom, according to the US Census, are poor or hovering on the nasty edges of working poverty.”</p>
<p>* veterans of two ongoing wars in the Middle East – “some of these veterans, having served multiple tours, are returning from combat with all manner of monstrosities ravaging their heads and bodies.”</p>
<p>* people over 50 – who are “finding themselves suddenly jobless.&#160; These are the Untouchables of the new American workforce.”</p>
<p>And the list of the underclass of postmodern serfs goes on and on.&#160; It includes coffee-shop baristas burdened by enormous student debt; the legions of contingent workers – i.e., freelancers, contractors, consultants — hungry for a paycheck and willing to work for what’s been dubbed “the sharing economy; and the adjunct faculty, the exploited intellectual labor force who keeps the billion-dollar collage-education racket functioning.</p>
<p>These are wageworkers in the “legal” economy. One need only add in those of the “underground” economy – e.g., neighborhood dope dealers, local hookers or small-time hustlers — and the number grows.&#160; And don’t forget the millions of unemployed who’ve given up and are no longer counted by counted among the unemployed.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Does anyone still believe in the American Dream, that the nation’s better days remain ahead?&#160;&#160; For nearly three-quarters of a century, Americans embraced a shared ideology that hard work, increased debt and white skin privilege would guarantee them – and, more importantly, their children – a better tomorrow.</p>
<p>The belief in the American Dream is grounded in what Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine, announced in early 1941 as the “American Century.”&#160; He proclaimed his vision when the country was finally recovering from the Great Depression and word war was still overseas, in Europe and Asia.&#160; Isolationism was the national sentiment and principle foreign-policy strategy.&#160; Pearl Harbor broke the isolationist bubble, turning Luce’s words into the nation’s war chant, “the 20th century is the American Century.”</p>
<p>Today, the American Century is over – and, increasingly, Americans know it.&#160; &#160;&#160;In its wake, a great social restructuring is underway.&#160; The slow emergence of postmodern serfdom may more resemble the fabled frog in a slowly heating pot of water that a catastrophic social or economic crisis.&#160; And the proverbial heat is rising.&#160; One senses that this issue is at the heart of the 2016 presidential campaign and both Bernie Sanders and Trump spoke to the deepening sense of disillusionment it is fostering.</p>
<p>If the American Century is over, could the U.S. be — dialectically speaking — returning to an era not dissimilar to that which preceded WW-II and its great postwar recovery?&#160; The U.S. may be reliving an historical experience not dissimilar to the mid- to late-1930s when Pres. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” recovery from the Great Depression was floundering.&#160; The economy was stuck and the well-intentioned programs that had kept the nation afloat during the early- and mid-years of the Depression no longer worked. &#160;The war saved the U.S. from itself and propelled it forward over the following quarter century.</p>
<p>The inequality and austerity that drives postmodern serfdom is being imposed at the system’s peripheries. In Europe, it was imposed on Greece and Spain, both suffering under Germany-imposed austerity.&#160; In the U.S., it was imposed on Detroit and &#160;— with the complicity of Congress and the President – on its colony, Puerto Rico. &#160;But it’s also being imposed on the weakest social sectors, the underclass or new serfs.</p>
<p>The great squeeze, postmodern serfdom, is underway.&#160; The temperature in the proverbial pot of water is slowly rising and the great American frog will increasingly feel the heat.</p> | Are We Entering an Era of Postmodern Serfdom? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/07/08/are-we-entering-an-era-of-postmodern-serfdom/ | 2016-07-08 | 4left
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