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<p>The Obama administration on Friday issued guidelines that potentially open banks to marijuana businesses.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Banks are now free to provide services to marijuana-related businesses in states like Colorado and Washington, where sales of the drug are permitted. Regulators stressed that the move will enable financial intuitions to better report possible criminal activity.</p>
<p>The Treasury Department will require that banks file reports on marijuana businesses "to satisfy regulatory obligations in this area." The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a division of the Treasury, said the information will give law enforcement greater insight into marijuana business activity.</p>
<p>"Our guidance provides financial institutions with clarity on what they must do if they are going to provide financial services to marijuana businesses and what reporting will assist law enforcement," said Jennifer Shasky Calvery, director of FinCEN.</p>
<p>Although 20 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana to some degree, the drug is illegal under federal law. Banks have so far avoided doing business with marijuana enterprises, seeking clarification on the issue.</p> | Obama Administration Opens Banks to Marijuana Businesses | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2014/02/14/obama-administration-opens-banks-to-marijuana-businesses.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
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<p>Target’s (NYSE:TGT) invasion of Canada may not be living up to high expectations so far among shoppers, according to a recent customer satisfaction survey.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The U.S. discount retailer went north of the border in March to start a rapid expansion. About 124 former Zellers locations—whose leaseholds were purchased by Target in 2011—are slated to become Target stores by the end of this year. Target Canada has 68 stores open for business, with another 23 coming in the fall.</p>
<p>In response, <a href="" type="internal">retail giants like Wal-Mart</a> (NYSE:WMT) <a href="" type="internal">began bolstering their Canadian operations to prepare for the increased competition</a>.</p>
<p>Target’s first foray outside the U.S. was first met with a significant amount of fanfare and store traffic, but the report from Forum Research indicates that customers may have become less enthused with the new entrant.</p>
<p>The customer satisfaction survey rated Target at the bottom of a list of major Canadian retailers. The retailer scored an average of 2.7 out of 4, compared to Costco’ (NASDAQ:COST) 3.5, and Walmart’s 3.1.</p>
<p>Target fared better when the survey was last conducted four months ago. Only 27% of respondents said they are “very satisfied” with Target, down from 32% in April. Meanwhile, 62% are very satisfied with Costco, and Walmart upped its performance by one percentage point to 40%.</p>
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<p>Target spokeswoman Lisa Gibson said new entrants tend to score lower on customer satisfaction. The retailer has seen “marked improvement” since launching in Canada and “feels very good” looking at its own research, she added.</p>
<p>The survey also said Canadian shoppers have complained that Target stores have been low on inventory and prices remain cheaper across the border, where many Target fans would go before the grand opening in Canada. In addition, Target stores in Canada don’t have the fresh food offerings found in many U.S. locations.</p>
<p>According to Gibson, many products and brands sold at stores in Canada are priced on par with U.S. stores, and the company continues to reinforce value through its price-match and loyalty programs.</p>
<p>“We’ve also received a lot of positive feedback on the stores themselves, how clean and bright they are,” Gibson said.</p>
<p>The Minneapolis-based company is expected to report second-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Target’s first-quarter profit dropped 29% amid weaker sales, and the retailer lowered its full-year outlook as a result.</p>
<p>Shares were up 16 cents at $68.31 in late afternoon trading Monday.</p> | Shoppers Think Target Is Missing the Mark in Canada | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/08/19/shoppers-think-target-is-missing-mark-in-canada.html | 2016-01-25 | 0 |
<p>July 15 (UPI) — William “Hootie” Johnson, the former chairman of Augusta National Golf Club who was at the center of a national controversy over the group’s refusal to admit female members, died Friday. He was 86.</p>
<p>Augusta National announced Johnson’s death, but gave no cause for it. Johnson had suffered from heart problems in recent years, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/hootie-johnson-who-resisted-admitting-women-to-augusta-national-dies-at-86/2017/07/14/12486b64-68d4-11e7-a1d7-9a32c91c6f40_story.html?utm_term=.e2d6fdf81305" type="external">The Washington Post reported</a>.</p>
<p>Johnson’s nine-year tenure as chairman of Augusta National, one of the nation’s most prestigious and selective sports clubs, included some revolutionary changes — and one very memorable refusal to modernize.</p>
<p>When, in the late 1990s, a generation of powerful young golfers led by <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tiger-Woods/" type="external">Tiger Woods</a> began shredding one of the most challenging golf courses in the world, Johnson bucked custom at Augusta and ordered a major overhaul to address players’ increasing dominance at the Masters.</p>
<p>The result was a course much longer from tee to green with longer cuts of rough that put a premium on accuracy, not just the distance players can hit the ball. The overhaul was known in the golf world as “Tiger-proofing” Augusta.</p>
<p>Johnson is also credited with lifting the veil on television coverage of the Masters, doing away with the longstanding custom cameras were banned on several of the 18 holes, which offered players a respite from the every-shot analysis they face today.</p>
<p>But when it came to altering the rules governing Augusta National Golf Club, the group that puts on golf’s premier tournament every spring, Johnson dug in his heels.</p>
<p>In 2002, Martha Burk, then chairwoman of the Washington-based National Council of Women’s Organizations, publicly questioned why Augusta National had no female members. She called on Johnson, a former banker from South Carolina who had a history of supporting the Civil Rights movement in the South, to admit women.</p>
<p>He refused, and a public feud — and national debate — ensued.</p>
<p>“We will not be bullied, threatened, or intimidated,” he said in a statement. “There may well come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours, and not at the point of a bayonet.”</p>
<p>Burk responded, saying Johnson and the other Augusta members lived in “a white-male, privileged bubble.”</p>
<p>Burk organized a boycott of Masters advertisers and the companies run by its 300-plus members. Johnson responded by converting the Masters to a commercial-free broadcast for two years, rendering Burk’s advertising boycott moot.</p>
<p>Johnson’s all-male club endured, with Augusta still refusing to admit women members as of 2006, the year he stepped down as chairman.</p>
<p>It wasn’t until 2012 that Augusta National announced it had admitted its first two female members, former Secretary of State <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Condoleezza_Rice/" type="external">Condoleeza Rice</a>, and Darla Moore, a financier from Johnson’s native South Carolina.</p>
<p>Unlike during the Burk feud, Johnson greeted the news of the new members warmly.</p>
<p>“This is wonderful news for Augusta National Golf Club and I could not be more pleased,” he said at the time.</p>
<p>Johnson is survived by his wife of 65 years, the former Pierrine Baker, four daughters, 10 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.</p> | Hootie Johnson, ex Augusta chair who fought female members, dies | false | https://newsline.com/hootie-johnson-ex-augusta-chair-who-fought-female-members-dies/ | 2017-07-15 | 1 |
<p>Romenesko MemosJeff Bailey, who <a href="http://www.chireader.com/hottype/2005/050304_2.html" type="external">left</a> Crain's in February, will cover "accounting, corporate financial shenanigans and related issues" for the Times, says business editor Larry Ingrassia. Before joining Crain's, Bailey worked at the Wall Street Journal in a variety of jobs starting in 1983. He's also worked at the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times.</p> | Former Crain's Chicago Business editor Bailey joins NYT | false | https://poynter.org/news/former-crains-chicago-business-editor-bailey-joins-nyt | 2005-05-25 | 2 |
<p>Twitter is <a href="http://twitter.com/OURsceneTV/status/20999819038" type="external">abuzz</a> with the news that Judge Vaughn R. Walker has lifted a stay on his <a href="" type="internal">historic Prop. 8 ruling</a>, meaning gay couples in California can once again legally marry beginning Aug. 18. Officials are <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/officials-ready-to-start-gay-marriages-as-soon-as-judge-rules.html" type="external">standing by</a>.</p>
<p>Update from the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0813-gay-marriage-california-20100813,0,5087660.story" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a>: “U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who overturned the measure on Aug. 4, agreed to give its sponsors until Aug. 18 to appeal his ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. No new marriages can take place until then.”</p>
<p>Los Angeles Times:</p>
<p>If “the stay is lifted, ceremonies will be performed on a first-come, first-served basis between the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday,” West Hollywood city officials said in a statement. “Those wanting to get married need to get a license first then can go to Kings Road Park.”</p>
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<p>If the judge lifts the stay, Mayor Antonio Villaragosa said he plans to start performing marriages Thursday afternoon on the steps of City Hall.</p>
<p><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/officials-ready-to-start-gay-marriages-as-soon-as-judge-rules.html" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Judge Lifts Stay, Gay Marriages in California Soon to Be a Go (Updated) | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/judge-lifts-stay-gay-marriages-in-california-soon-to-be-a-go-updated/ | 2010-08-12 | 4 |
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<p>U.S. President and CEO Michael Horn is leaving "to pursue other opportunities effective immediately," the automaker said in a statement. He had been with the German auto maker for 25 years, assuming his most recent post in 2014.</p>
<p>Horn's sudden departure comes as the company continues to grapple with the fallout from its admission last year that nearly 600,000 cars were sold in the U.S. with software that regulators say was designed to cheat on required emissions tests.</p>
<p>The company potentially faces more than $20 billion in fines from state and federal regulators, as well as hundreds of class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of angry vehicle owners. The Justice Department is also conducting a criminal investigation.</p>
<p>It was Horn who was sent to apologize to consumers at a congressional hearing in October. But at the same time, he told lawmakers that top corporate officials had no knowledge of the cheating software installed in 11 million diesel cars worldwide.</p>
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<p>"To my understanding this was not a corporate decision, this was something individuals did," Horn said, adding that he felt personally deceived.</p>
<p>A federal judge has given the company until March 24 to reach an agreement with the government on recalling the affected vehicles. U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer wants to know about available technical solutions to fix the cars and the status of negotiations on a potential settlement with affected owners. Volkswagen has not indicated whether it will be able to meet the deadline.</p>
<p>Volkswagen in September admitted to U.S. regulators that it had used illegal software installed in its so-called "Clean Diesel" engines. The cheating allowed cars to pass laboratory emissions tests while spewing levels of harmful nitrogen oxide at up to 40 times the level allowed when operating on real roads.</p>
<p>The company is negotiating with lawyers for the owners of the defective cars, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board. Both state and federal regulators will have to sign off on any planned recall.</p> | Volkswagen's top US executive out amid emissions scandal | false | https://abqjournal.com/737742/volkswagens-top-us-executive-out-amid-emissions-scandal.html | 2 |
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<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Millions of dollars offered in the Google Lunar X Prize competition will go unclaimed despite a decade of work.</p>
<p>X Prize Foundation officials said Tuesday that none of the five finalist teams will be able to make a launch attempt to reach the moon by the March 31 deadline.</p>
<p>The competition announced by the foundation and Google on Sept. 13, 2007, sought to spur private development of lunar missions.</p>
<p>The winner would have had to land a craft on the moon, move it at least 547 yards (500 meters) across the lunar surface and transmit specific images and data back to Earth.</p>
<p>The grand prize was $20 million, with millions more for achieving specific mission milestones. More than $5 million was already awarded for progress in mission preparations.</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Millions of dollars offered in the Google Lunar X Prize competition will go unclaimed despite a decade of work.</p>
<p>X Prize Foundation officials said Tuesday that none of the five finalist teams will be able to make a launch attempt to reach the moon by the March 31 deadline.</p>
<p>The competition announced by the foundation and Google on Sept. 13, 2007, sought to spur private development of lunar missions.</p>
<p>The winner would have had to land a craft on the moon, move it at least 547 yards (500 meters) across the lunar surface and transmit specific images and data back to Earth.</p>
<p>The grand prize was $20 million, with millions more for achieving specific mission milestones. More than $5 million was already awarded for progress in mission preparations.</p> | Google Lunar X Prize competition ends without a winner | false | https://apnews.com/b0c39a742c31431091f8fd2f3c7a53be | 2018-01-24 | 2 |
<p>The doomsday clock has been adjusted to reflect the conclusion of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that doomsday, or apocalypse, is closer now, in 2017, than it’s been since 1953. But might apocalypse, in some respects, be a good thing?</p>
<p>Derived from the Greek term Apo, which means ‘away from’, and Kalyptein, which means ‘hidden’, apocalypse literally means ‘away from the hidden,’ the exposure of secrets – in other words, Revelation. But just what is being revealed? And how does this literal meaning of the term fit with its figurative meaning, with its identification with the end of the world?</p>
<p>When our very way of life (organized by a toxic, coercive, plutocratic – i.e., capitalist – system) is revealed to be the essentially destructive, alienating system that it is – when what is still, to some degree, a secret becomes broadly acknowledged – the first type of revelation leads to the second; the revelation of this Order’s fundamental injustice leads to the dissolution of popular support. And, as history repeatedly demonstrates, when popular support for, and faith in, a given order evaporates, that concrete order quickly collapses. In other words, apocalypse should not be construed to simply mean the end of the world. Rather than the end of the world in general, apocalypse may refer instead to the end of a particular type of world: the end of the unjust world in which, as our sophisticated military technologies and our entrenched poverty equally illustrate, culture and barbarism are not only inextricable, the former serves the latter.</p>
<p>Viewed from this angle, apocalypse should be welcomed, and the sooner it comes the better – before Trump’s crude and frantic projects (the roundups, torture, and walls designed to shore up a dissolving traditional order) preclude the possibility of an emancipatory apocalypse and leave us with only the traditional variety: global holocaust.</p> | Apocalypse as Liberation | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/01/27/apocalypse-as-liberation/ | 2017-01-27 | 4 |
<p><a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-240264205/stock-photo-new-york-city-ny-oct-charging-bull-sculpture-on-october-in-new-york-city-the.html?src=pp-same_artist-269693657-Lux8TUdl61mEuc2xuDhjQg-3" type="external">Shutterstock</a></p>
<p>Building off the momentum from his 2016 campaign launch Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking aim at America’s banking behemoths with an aggressively named new bill he drew up with Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., called the “Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act.”</p>
<p>The congressional tag team will introduce their measure on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. A preemptive announcement released Tuesday about the unveiling, slated to be held in the Senate Radio and TV Gallery at 11:30 a.m. EST, said the aim of the effort is “to break up the nation’s biggest banks.”</p>
<p><a href="http://tdig.it/1DNhsrA" type="external">Also read: VIDEO: Sen. Bernie Sanders: ‘We Need a Political Revolution in This Country’</a></p>
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<p>A bold move, if seemingly improbable, but we’ll take it over the many implemented acts of legislative hypocrisy that turned out to have the opposite effect in recent history.</p>
<p>The bill’s title draws upon the same rationale that banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America capitalized upon — both while playing roulette with the global economy and then while putting the squeeze on two successive American administrations to bail them out — to illustrate precisely why those same institutions shouldn’t be able to survive in the same destructive form that allowed them to wreak havoc on an unprecedented scale.</p>
<p>“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis,” Sanders said of the driving idea behind his and Sherman’s joint project. “If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”</p>
<p>That’s one way to try to flip the script on Wall Street’s biggest players. The details remain to be revealed, and a GOP-controlled Congress will no doubt act swiftly to block the bill, but then, Sanders is in the running to become boss of both houses.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, he’ll also be working this measure into the national conversation and campaign discourse about the 2008 financial catastrophe that, far from being contained by government interventions ostensibly designed to manage the fallout, has further widened the nation’s economic gap into a chasm.</p>
<p>–Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Kasia Anderson</a></p> | Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Brad Sherman Team Up to Break Up America's Biggest Banks | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/sen-bernie-sanders-rep-brad-sherman-team-up-to-break-up-americas-biggest-banks-2/ | 2015-05-06 | 4 |
<p>Actor Russell Crowe got into some hot water while kayaking with a friend off New York's Long Island over the holiday weekend.</p>
<p>The Oscar-winner set out for some relaxing paddling in the Long Island Sound but lost his way after dark and was rescued by a U.S.&#160;Coast Guard boat and ferried to a harbor, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hahY5DwKbpqUJ2LcRUMpN4vXaxnw?docId=46225cc675c74f568dbb51406f0df4e2" type="external">reports AP.&#160;</a></p>
<p>The pair set out from Cold Spring Harbor on Saturday afternoon, according to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Robert Swieciki. The two got lost as the sun set and eventually headed for shore, beaching their kayaks in Huntington Bay, nearly 10 miles east from where they had set out.</p>
<p>The U.S. Coast Guard was patrolling the area, and Swieciki told AP that he heard Crowe call out to them from the shore around 10 p.m.</p>
<p>Crow and his friend paddled over to the boat and the Coast Guard gave them and their boats a lift to Huntington Harbor.&#160;</p>
<p>"He just needed a little bit of help, he just got a little lost," Swieciki said. "It wasn't really a rescue, really, more of just giving someone a lift."</p>
<p><a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2012/09/russell-crowe-gets-aid-from-coast-guard-during-kayak-outing/1#.UETFFo5CdUQ" type="external">USA Today reports</a> that Crowe is in Oyster Bay, NY filming a movie called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1959490/" type="external">Noah</a>, "the epic, biblical tale of Noah and the ark",&#160;set for release in 2014.</p>
<p>The 48-year-old Gladiator star later tweeted out a thank you to the Coast Guard members who helped him.</p> | Kayaking Russell Crowe rescued by Coast Guard | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-09-03/kayaking-russell-crowe-rescued-coast-guard | 2012-09-03 | 3 |
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<p>The trend is based on an ancient practice called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuman_Thong" type="external">Kuman Thong</a>. In Kuman Thong, real fetuses were worshiped and treated as real children to aid in the practice of black magic by witch doctors. Though the practice was thought to have died out long ago, a man was caught with six fetuses he intended to sell in 2012.</p>
<p>Thankfully, the Luk Thep may be lifelike, but they are manufactured and bought from a store. Still some businesses in Thailand treat them as real children. Smile Airways allows the doll to sit in a seat like a real child, as long as they have a ticket. The Luk Thep aren't allowed to sit in the exit seats, and they must buckle their seat belts on take off and landing. The airline also serves the dolls snacks and drinks on the flights.</p>
<p>A buffet restaurant in Bangkok called Neta Grill also treats the Luk Thep as real children. They allow the doll to purchase a meal at the child rate, as long as any food they get is eaten.</p>
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<p>Many people <a href="http://thailandchatter.com/showthread.php?7130-Thailand-quot-Look-Thep-quot" type="external">claim</a> that the dolls have brought them good luck and fortune, and post pictures of themselves with the Luk Thep and stories about what the doll did for them. Some of the things attributed to the Luk Thep are winning the lottery and getting a better job.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Supernatural Dolls Can Now Buy Seats On Thai Airline | true | http://offthemainpage.com/2016/01/30/supernatural-dolls-can-now-buy-seats-on-thai-airline/ | 2016-01-30 | 4 |
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<p>On Friday, MRC TV posted video of a college snowflake losing her mind at the presence of a Donald Trump sign.&#160; According to <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9171" type="external">Campus Reform</a>, the screamfest lasted at least two minutes.</p>
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<p>Campus Reform said:</p>
<p>A shocking new video shows a Western Washington University student screaming for at least two-minutes straight after seeing a Donald Trump sign on campus.</p>
<p>According to a video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform, an unknown student reacted to a street preacher’s pro-Trump sign by spiraling into a two-minute fit, at some points even splattering paint on the ground in an apparent attempt at artistic protest.</p>
<p>Reaction was pretty much what you’d expect:</p>
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<p>Not a bad idea.</p>
<p>Anthony Gockouwski said that “when an administrator approached asking if she needed help, the student appears to answer that she’s okay.”&#160; She then proceeded to continue screaming.</p>
<p>Campus Reform added:</p>
<p>“Right here on the Western Washington campus, she’s going nuts with a Trump sign—she doesn’t like the Trump sign. She’s anti-Trump,” preacher Eric Bostrom can be heard explaining in the video, holding a sign that reads “Trump: Borders, Laws, Jobs, Liberty, USA,” and another intentionally-obtrusive sign containing shocking bible verses about judgement.</p>
<p>In the video, Bostrom claims that the woman screaming is “an art major,” and at one point in the video another woman who appears to be an administrator runs into the shot to ask the student if she is alright, to which the student replies “call the police, bitch.”</p>
<p>This is what our colleges are producing.&#160; Scary…</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a>&#160;page, please go&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a>&#160;and do so.</p>
<p>And if you’re as concerned about Facebook censorship as we are, go&#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Banned-Facebook-Enables-Militant-Islamic/dp/1944212221/" type="external">here</a>&#160;and order this new book:</p> | Video: Watch snowflake melt down at presence of Trump sign | true | http://conservativefiringline.com/video-watch-snowflake-melt-presence-trump-sign/ | 2017-05-13 | 0 |
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams, Emma Watson and Amy Poehler were among eight actresses bringing gender and racial justice activists as their guests to Sunday's Golden Globe Awards in an effort to shift the focus back on survivors and solutions, and away from those accused of sexual misconduct.</p>
<p>Streep walked the red carpet with Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.</p>
<p>"I think that people are aware now of a power imbalance and it's something that leads to abuse," Streep told E! News. "It's led to abuse in our own industry, and it's led to abuse across domestic workers' field of work. It's in the military, it's in Congress, it's everywhere. And we want to fix that. And we feel sort of emboldened in this particular moment to stand together in a thick black line dividing then from now."</p>
<p>Williams brought Tarana Burke, the founder of the "me too" movement, and Watson brought Marai Larasi, the executive director of Imkaan, a black feminist organization.</p>
<p>"You know why we're here? We're here because of Tarana," Williams told Ryan Seacrest on the carpet. "We're here because Tarana started a movement and she planted a seed years ago and it's grown and caught fire. She started the #MeToo movement."</p>
<p>Poehler's guest was Saru Jayaraman, president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers, Shailene Woodley was being accompanied by Suquamish Tribe member Calina Lawrence, and Laura Dern walked alongside Monica Ramirez, a supporter of worker-led movements. Susan Sarandon brought Rosa Clemente, a political commentator. Nominee Emma Stone took tennis champ and advocate Billie Jean King, whom the actress portrayed in the film "Battle of the Sexes."</p>
<p>Dern said she had reached out to Ramirez "to say that she stood with all the 700,000 women farm workers in solidarity for the women in our industry who were brave enough to speak out about sexual harassment and assault."</p>
<p>Ramirez said that farmworker women "pick, pack and plant the food that we eat and have a long history of combating workplace sexual violence. When we learned about what was happening in Hollywood, our members felt very strongly that they wanted to send a message to the women in this industry and all women who are experiencing sexual violence in the workplace that they are not alone."</p>
<p>In a statement Sunday, the advocates said they were inspired by the Time's Up initiative, which launched Monday with the backing of hundreds of Hollywood women, like Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Shonda Rhimes. The initiative vowed support for women in the entertainment business and beyond, from janitors to health care workers.</p>
<p>"Each of us will be highlighting legislative, community-level and interpersonal solutions that contribute to ending violence against women in all our communities," the advocates' statement said Sunday. "It is our hope that in doing so, we will also help to broaden conversations about the connection to power, privilege and other systemic inequalities."</p>
<p>The statement says that women of color should be at the center of the solutions.</p>
<p>"We want to encourage all women — from those who live in the shadows to those who live in the spotlight, from all walks of life, and across generations — to continue to step forward and know that they will be supported when they do," the statement continued.</p>
<p>Many attending the Golden Globes were wearing black to protest sexual harassment. Mark Ruffalo tweeted Sunday that he wore black "in solidarity with the men and women asking for respect and equality."</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Meryl Streep, Michelle Williams, Emma Watson and Amy Poehler were among eight actresses bringing gender and racial justice activists as their guests to Sunday's Golden Globe Awards in an effort to shift the focus back on survivors and solutions, and away from those accused of sexual misconduct.</p>
<p>Streep walked the red carpet with Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.</p>
<p>"I think that people are aware now of a power imbalance and it's something that leads to abuse," Streep told E! News. "It's led to abuse in our own industry, and it's led to abuse across domestic workers' field of work. It's in the military, it's in Congress, it's everywhere. And we want to fix that. And we feel sort of emboldened in this particular moment to stand together in a thick black line dividing then from now."</p>
<p>Williams brought Tarana Burke, the founder of the "me too" movement, and Watson brought Marai Larasi, the executive director of Imkaan, a black feminist organization.</p>
<p>"You know why we're here? We're here because of Tarana," Williams told Ryan Seacrest on the carpet. "We're here because Tarana started a movement and she planted a seed years ago and it's grown and caught fire. She started the #MeToo movement."</p>
<p>Poehler's guest was Saru Jayaraman, president of Restaurant Opportunities Centers, Shailene Woodley was being accompanied by Suquamish Tribe member Calina Lawrence, and Laura Dern walked alongside Monica Ramirez, a supporter of worker-led movements. Susan Sarandon brought Rosa Clemente, a political commentator. Nominee Emma Stone took tennis champ and advocate Billie Jean King, whom the actress portrayed in the film "Battle of the Sexes."</p>
<p>Dern said she had reached out to Ramirez "to say that she stood with all the 700,000 women farm workers in solidarity for the women in our industry who were brave enough to speak out about sexual harassment and assault."</p>
<p>Ramirez said that farmworker women "pick, pack and plant the food that we eat and have a long history of combating workplace sexual violence. When we learned about what was happening in Hollywood, our members felt very strongly that they wanted to send a message to the women in this industry and all women who are experiencing sexual violence in the workplace that they are not alone."</p>
<p>In a statement Sunday, the advocates said they were inspired by the Time's Up initiative, which launched Monday with the backing of hundreds of Hollywood women, like Streep, Reese Witherspoon and Shonda Rhimes. The initiative vowed support for women in the entertainment business and beyond, from janitors to health care workers.</p>
<p>"Each of us will be highlighting legislative, community-level and interpersonal solutions that contribute to ending violence against women in all our communities," the advocates' statement said Sunday. "It is our hope that in doing so, we will also help to broaden conversations about the connection to power, privilege and other systemic inequalities."</p>
<p>The statement says that women of color should be at the center of the solutions.</p>
<p>"We want to encourage all women — from those who live in the shadows to those who live in the spotlight, from all walks of life, and across generations — to continue to step forward and know that they will be supported when they do," the statement continued.</p>
<p>Many attending the Golden Globes were wearing black to protest sexual harassment. Mark Ruffalo tweeted Sunday that he wore black "in solidarity with the men and women asking for respect and equality."</p> | Streep, Williams bring activists as Golden Globe guests | false | https://apnews.com/amp/449f506f7d7144028e5ca35a66f2e589 | 2018-01-08 | 2 |
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<p>Events unfolded quickly near Central and Utah the morning of Dec. 22, and a clear recording of the shooting wasn't made because the involved officers took cover behind vehicles when they opened fire.</p>
<p>But the videos do indicate the suspect, 19-year-old Jose Rodriguez, was armed with a weapon and wasn't following police commands when he was shot and killed.</p>
<p>Albuquerque police said Thursday that officers Andrew Quillman and Shawna Romero shot and killed Rodriguez after he pointed a gun at Quillman.</p>
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<p>The situation began when a man named Francisco called 911 from his home in the 300 block of Pennsylvania NE at 9:38 a.m.</p>
<p>He said he had walked out of his apartment and was approached by a man who pointed a gun at him and said, "Give me the keys - give me the money," according to a recording of the call to police dispatch.</p>
<p>"I'm good. A little bit scared at first," Francisco told the operator. "This guy's crazy."</p>
<p>Quillman and Romero responded to the call in separate police vehicles and saw Rodriguez, who matched the suspect's description, walking south on Utah toward Central.</p>
<p>The first 30 seconds of the videos don't have sound - which happens on all Taser on-body camera recordings, said officer Simon Drobik, a police spokesman.</p>
<p>The video shows Quillman parking alongside Rodriguez, getting out of his car and issuing a command. Drobik said the officer was telling Rodriguez to show his hands.</p>
<p>Rodriguez keeps walking, and Quillman gets back in his car and drives ahead of Rodriguez. Meanwhile, Romero parks behind the suspect and gets out of her car.</p>
<p>Quillman's audio starts just as he is stepping out of the patrol car for the second time.</p>
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<p>"Get your hands out of your pockets," Quillman says just before taking cover behind his car.</p>
<p>One shot rings out, and then there's a brief pause before more shots are fired. Both of the officers fired their weapons, according to police.</p>
<p>Rodriguez is then seen lying on the sidewalk with a black handgun next to him.</p>
<p>"That mother (expletive) just missed me," Quillman said to Romero seconds later.</p>
<p>Rodriguez moves around on the ground for a while, bleeding. He was later pronounced dead at the scene.</p>
<p>A grainy surveillance camera recording from across the street also was released Thursday. There's no audio in that video.</p>
<p>It barely captures what appears to be Rodriguez stretching his arm toward Quillman before he falls to the ground.</p>
<p>Romero's camera also briefly shows Rodriguez with his arm outstretched toward Quillman, but the video isn't clear, either.</p>
<p>Drobik said police have not determined whether Rodriguez shot at Quillman first.</p>
<p>Rodriguez, who also went by "Panther," was never convicted of a felony, but he was a suspect in a Dec. 1 carjacking at Mesa Verde Park, according to a police report.</p>
<p>Both Quillman and Romero have been with Albuquerque police since 2001 and work in the Southeast Area Command. Neither of them had been in a police shooting before this case.</p>
<p>Drobik said both officers have given investigators interviews about the shooting. They are scheduled to return to work Monday.</p>
<p>The shooting marked the ninth time Albuquerque police officers opened fire in the line of duty in 2015, although not all of those shots struck people. Three men were shot and killed by Albuquerque police during the year.</p>
<p>Police have not released video from all of the 2015 shootings, and the department recently was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and an independent media group for not releasing all lapel camera footage from a January police shooting.</p>
<p>The Albuquerque Police Department is operating under a settlement agreement that aims to reform the department after the U.S. Department of Justice investigated and determined its officers had a pattern of using excessive force, including shootings.</p>
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<p /> | Videos of APD police shooting of carjacking suspect released | false | https://abqjournal.com/698897/police-identify-officer-in-last-weeks-fatal-shooting.html | 2015-12-31 | 2 |
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<p>The lawsuit filed last year in U.S. District Court in Reno accused a female manager and female teller at a Reno bank branch of subjecting the four women to a sexually hostile work environment dating to December 2010.</p>
<p>The workers complained repeatedly beginning in January 2011 and one of the tellers quit in April 2011 because she no longer could tolerate the women’s graphic sexual comments, gestures and images, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.</p>
<p>The commission said the four women also were told that they should wear sexually provocative clothing to help attract customers and advance in the workplace.</p>
<p>“Sexual harassment is illegal, regardless of whether the harasser is female or male, the same or opposite gender as the victim,” said Michael Baldonado, EEOC district director in San Francisco.</p>
<p>“When employees report a manager’s or co-worker’s inappropriate behavior, employers must immediately investigate the claims and take steps to rectify the situation,” he said in a statement.</p>
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<p>Tony Timmons, an assistant vice president for Wells Fargo Bank N.A. in Las Vegas, said bank officials believe “this case constituted an isolated incident.”</p>
<p>“Wells Fargo is committed to creating and promoting a welcoming workplace environment with zero tolerance to any forms of harassment among our team members,” he said in an email Wednesday to The Associated Press.</p>
<p>The lawsuit said the inappropriate behavior included touching of the tellers’ breasts and other parts of their bodies. It said they frequently were subjected to comments about — and images of — male genitalia, sexually obscene gestures and graphic discussions of sexual behavior and activities.</p>
<p>As part of the settlement agreement, Wells Fargo Bank N.A. also agreed to conduct annual anti-discrimination training, issue a memo from the district boss regarding procedures for reporting harassment complaints and interview any future employees who report harassment to ensure their complaints have been resolved in a timely fashion.</p>
<p>Wells Fargo Bank N.A., with its main offices in Sioux Falls, S.D., is the primary operating subsidiary of Wells Fargo &amp; Co., which is headquartered in San Francisco.</p> | Wells Fargo pays $290,000 in sex harassment case | false | https://abqjournal.com/463946/wells-fargo-pays-290000-in-sex-harassment-case.html | 2 |
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<p>The club currently gets treated wastewater for irrigation for 47 cents per 1,000 gallons under a contract that will soon expire. On July 1, the rate will jump to $3.28 per 1,000 gallons under pricing city councilors approved last year.</p>
<p>"I believe it is economically not feasible to operate the club without some different water rate. We wouldn't walk away (from the deal), but we could," said Rio Rancho businessman Bob Gallagher.</p>
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<p>He and Jhett Browne are the sole stockholders in The Club at Rio Rancho Inc., the company formed for the Chamisa Hills purchase.</p>
<p>Browne wrote to Mayor Tom Swisstack and City Manager Keith Riesberg on Tuesday asking the city to extend the current rate for three years. After that, they would be "amiable" to an increase taking the rate to 59 cents per 1,000 gallons for two years, then an increase to 90 cents per 1,000 gallons for a fixed 10-year period.</p>
<p>They propose to renovate the course, clubhouse and other amenities and make them open to the public "with few restrictions."</p>
<p>Browne's letter said they are hoping to get some resolution by March 1 to enable them to start work before the growing season.</p>
<p>At present, they are just looking at rehabilitating 18 of the 27 holes because the North Nine hasn't been irrigated since last summer, Gallagher said. Renovating 18 holes would cost $2 million to $3 million, he estimated, in addition to the undisclosed purchase price. The North Nine would require another $1.5 million to $2 million in investment to make it playable, Gallagher said.</p>
<p>Assistant City Manager Laura Fitzpatrick declined to comment, saying staff had not had time to review the proposal.</p>
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<p>Councilor Mark Scott, whose district includes the golf course, said he hadn't had time to study the rate proposal but is "cautiously optimistic" about the buyer.</p>
<p>Scott said the proposal would have to be considered by the city's Utilities Commission prior to coming before the council.</p>
<p>Before Browne submitted the proposal, councilors were already scheduled to discuss a resolution to consider the recycled water rate from any potential buyer at their meeting tonight.</p>
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<p /> | Rio Rancho asked not to hike water rate | false | https://abqjournal.com/351690/rio-rancho-asked-not-to-hike-water-rate-2.html | 2 |
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<p>(The Sports Xchange) – Highlights of Thursday’s National Football League games:</p>
<p>Los Angeles Chargers 28, Dallas 6</p>
<p>The Los Angeles defense gobbled up the Dallas Cowboys and Philip Rivers did the rest as the Chargers claimed a 28-6 victory on Thursday at AT&amp;T (NYSE:) Stadium.</p>
<p>Rivers passed for 434 yards and three second-half touchdowns, including a 27-yarder to Tyrell Williams that gave Los Angeles a 16-0 lead late in the third quarter.</p>
<p>Dallas broke a 10-quarter drought without a touchdown early in the fourth when running back Rod Smith powered two yards for a score. Smith’s touchdown capped a nine-play, 81-yard march.</p>
<p>But Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott threw incomplete on the two-point conversion attempt and the Chargers maintained a 16-6 lead.</p>
<p>Dallas’ offensive woes continued midway through the fourth quarter when Los Angeles cornerback Desmond King returned an interception 90 yards for a touchdown.</p>
<p>Wide receiver Keenan Allen burned the Dallas defense as he caught 11 passes for 172 yards and a touchdown to lead the Chargers (5-6).</p>
<p>– –</p>
<p>Minnesota 30, Detroit 23</p>
<p>Case Keenum threw two touchdown passes to Kyle Rudolph and ran for another, and the Minnesota Vikings extended their winning streak to seven games with a 30-23 victory over the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day at Ford Field.</p>
<p>Keenum completed 21 of 30 passes for 282 yards. Latavius Murray gained 84 yards on 20 carries and scored a touchdown for Minnesota. Everson Griffen led the defense with two sacks.</p>
<p>Minnesota (9-2) opened up a three-game lead in the NFC North with five games remaining.</p>
<p>Matthew Stafford passed for 250 yards and two touchdowns and was intercepted once for Detroit (6-5), which saw its three-game winning streak snapped.</p>
<p>Stafford suffered an apparent right ankle injury while throwing a 43-yard scoring pass to Marvin Jones early in the fourth but didn’t miss a snap. Jones caught six passes for 109 yards and two touchdowns.</p>
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<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | NFL-Highlights of Thursday's National Football League games | false | https://newsline.com/nfl-highlights-of-thursday039s-national-football-league-games/ | 2017-11-23 | 1 |
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<p>Although the poll shows that people generally are looking forward to the new year with optimism and no blatant sense of foreboding, it also unmasks pent-up worries about international crises and instability, and concerns at home about the standard of living, health care and schools.</p>
<p>What the public thought of 2013:</p>
<p>Good year?</p>
<p>On the whole, Americans rate their own experience in 2013 more positively than negatively. But when asked to assess the year for the United States or the world at large, things turn sour.</p>
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<p>But the outlook for the new year is positive: 49 percent think their own fortunes will improve in 2014, 14 percent are expecting the new year to be a downgrade from the old. Thirty-four percent say they don’t expect much to change.</p>
<p>Countdown companions</p>
<p>Wherever they’re spending the holiday, most Americans prefer the company of family. Asked with whom they want to be when the clock strikes midnight, 83 percent name a family member.</p>
<p>What mattered in news</p>
<p>The implementation of the health care law topped the list of the most important news stories of 2013, with 26 percent citing it. In an AP survey of news directors and editors, 45 of 144 journalists surveyed called the health care rollout their top story.</p>
<p>In the AP-Times Square poll, the death of Nelson Mandela occurred as the poll was underway. It rose quickly, with 8 percent naming it as the most important news of the year, matching the share citing the federal government’s budget difficulties or shutdown.</p>
<p>The budget fight, which led to a partial shutdown of the federal government in October, was rated extremely or very important by 60 percent of Americans, and prompted rare bipartisan agreement. About two-thirds in each major party, 65 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats, rated it highly important.</p>
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<p>A majority said the Boston Marathon bombings were extremely or very important, and 47 percent considered the national debate over gun laws that important.</p>
<p>Pop culture</p>
<p>Miley Cyrus’ MTV Video Music Awards performance. The launch of “Lean In.” Apologies from Paula Deen and Lance Armstrong. Walter White’s exit on “Breaking Bad” and the entrance of the Netflix series “House of Cards.” What do they all have in common? More Americans say these pop culture moments were more forgettable than memorable.</p>
<p>Just one pop culture moment was deemed more memorable than forgettable: The birth of Prince George to Britain’s Prince William and his wife, Kate.</p>
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<p /> | Poll: Americans hopeful for a better year in 2014 | false | https://abqjournal.com/327078/americans-hopeful-for-better-year-in-2014-poll-finds.html | 2 |
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<p>Regardless of whether our candidates won or lost, nearly all of us are thankful that the unrelenting barrage of TV ads we were exposed to in the final weeks of the race have ended!</p>
<p>With some distance from the election, we want to take a moment to put the money spent in 2014 races in context.</p>
<p>The Albuquerque Journal reported “nearly $13 million was spent on television advertising in New Mexico” alone for political races, including an estimated 11,000 gubernatorial ads. New Mexico In Depth reported 260 hours of commercials on traditional TV stations across the state aired at a cost of $12.2 million.</p>
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<p>Splitting the difference, let’s say television ads cost $12.6 million this year. This is big money, but does not even account for the total spent across all campaigns beyond advertising. For the winning candidates and their supporters, that was $12.6 million well spent.</p>
<p>Other community members like us may ask, “What else could New Mexico do with $12.6 million?”</p>
<p>We provide some answers with an eye toward some of the most pressing needs in our community that many of you are familiar with.</p>
<p>For $12.6 million, New Mexico could have invested in:</p>
<p>These figures highlight opportunity costs and provide a sampling of alternative investments.</p>
<p>If you want to play a game with friends or family during the holiday, ask: “What would you do with a million dollars?”</p>
<p>Or even better, during the next election season ask: “What would you do with $12.6 million?”</p>
<p>The point is, how we spend our money reflects our values.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>An important note: The $12.6 million used for ads was private money. We’re in no position to tell people how to spend their money. But we can advocate for options and values – which mirrors the stated purpose of the TV ads.</p>
<p>Our intention of this piece is to create hope about assets, not despair about deficits. With that in mind, we encourage donors, political and philanthropic, to consider return on investment at a state level.</p>
<p>In New Mexico, our greatest assets are our people. Political contributions invested in government leaders elected to serve New Mexicans create support for a small group of New Mexicans, particularly when we consider the depressing low turnout among eligible voters in 2014.</p>
<p>As our leaders take or remain in office, we encourage them to remember to invest in the teachers, families, police, mental health providers, small business owners, health care, education and social programs of our state.</p>
<p>We also ask that they consider more seriously campaign finance laws, which could help curb the rising costs of elections.</p>
<p>We encourage everyone with access to monetary capital (especially those who invest in campaigns) to pitch in and grow our human capital.</p>
<p>After all, the best ROI comes from all of our people, not just those who run for political office.</p>
<p /> | How we spend our money reflects our values | false | https://abqjournal.com/501868/how-we-spend-our-money-reflects-our-values.html | 2 |
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<p>Days before the first round of the French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy was addressing his supporters at a mass rally in Paris. His final words sounded desperate: “French people, help me!” The conservative candidate looked tense and the public mood was grim. A record attendance of 150,000 was hastily announced. Journalists on the ground showed that no more than 30,000 had gathered on Place de la Concorde.</p>
<p>This ever more likely defeat has been a long time coming. While he was campaigning in 2007, Sarkozy’s economic advisers concocted a fiscal plan that gravely offended the French sense of egalitarianism. The Tepa law&#160;– or “fiscal shield” – ensured that the richest people would not pay more than 50% of their annual income in tax. Thanks to the perverse tax cap, Liliane Bettencourt – France’s richest person – received a €30m repayment. Sarkozy’s reputation as a friend of the rich who benefits from their largesse has never rescinded since then.</p>
<p>In the run-up to the 2012 election, the incumbent president has tried to rebrand himself as a “man of the people”, a “political outsider”, even though he has run France for the past five years. Various studies have established that Sarkozy has been true to his popular nickname: the “rich people’s president”. According to the Terra Nova thinktank, François Fillon’s government&#160;has redistributed €84bn in tax cuts since 2007. Of that, €50bn went to companies, and of the €34bn that went to households, the richest 10% received €19bn while the remaining 90% shared €15bn. That €84bn in tax redistribution is worth four points of GDP. It is important to note that without those “fiscal gifts” to the rich, France’s public debt (85% of GDP) would today be lower than that of Germany (83.5%).</p>
<p>In 2007, Sarkozy announced that under his presidency the French would “work more to earn more”. This was a one-sided promise. In fact, people have been working more to earn less – when they can get a job: the unemployment rate was 10% in February 2012 (as opposed to 7.9% at its lowest rate in December 2007). The conservative government has raised France’s legal minimum retirement; a policy that is heavily weighted against the lower-class categories. Sarkozy is now targeting the trade unions that have had the impudence of opposing the changes. He has proposed that work negotiations be carried out between employers and employees in an attempt to short-circuit trade unions, the pillar of labour relations in France. He has snapped at “people living off benefits” and he will be implementing radical workfare reforms should he be re-elected. The unions are well aware of the danger and most fear a major offensive against a dwindling welfare state.</p>
<p>Sarkozy championed a “blameless republic” in 2007. The Bettencourt, Karachi and Takieddine financial scandals&#160;have compromised close political associates and some argue that it is vital for Sarkozy to be re-elected in order to escape being prosecuted.</p>
<p>In line with statesmen such as Tony Blair or David Cameron, Sarkozy has no deep political convictions. His political narrative is made of endless triangulations and contradictory proposals. One day, Sarkozy argues that making money bears witness to a “successful” life. The next day, he launches an attack on “amoral bankers” and their “astronomic bonuses”. He praises “ordinary workers” but thereafter stigmatises unemployed people and immigrants.</p>
<p>The French have turned a blind eye to his casual style, the “bling” and do not mind his lack of respect for the republican pomp. The roots of the problem are deeper. Voters have realised that the president does not have a “sense of the state”. Sarkozy does not incarnate (sarkosis&#160;in Greek means incarnation) the institutions of the French state with rigour and seriousness.</p>
<p>Sarkozysm may be seen as an avatar of Berlusconism. “Sarkoberlusconism” attempts to run the state as a firm. Under Sarkozy, justice, culture or education have become economic goods which should be subjected to the rationality and assessment of market rules. In this respect, Sarkozysm is an Americanism; the closest France has got so far to US-style neo-conservatism.</p>
<p>Like Berlusconi, Sarkozy constantly occupies the media to make daily policy statements that are never properly debated or spelled out. For some, this is a sign of de-democratisation of politics: citizens are unable to engage those inconsistent speeches and cheap emotional claims. Following the Toulouse killings, Sarkozy announced a one-minute silence in schools throughout France. Visiting a junior high school in Paris, he told the pupils that the children killed “were exactly like you” and the attack “could have happened here”. The nation was numb. Few dared to say that it was irresponsible to emotionally destabilise children instead of reassuring them. Few dared to criticise the president’s thinly veiled attempt to sell the children’s parents a set of half-baked anti-terrorist measures.</p>
<p>There is not an ounce of Gaullism left in Nicolas Sarkozy. Who is he then? The Wall Street Journal called him “Nicolas Le Pen”, explaining that he had been fishing for far-right voters. Here lies the political fate of Sarkozy: this electoral strategy might enable him to come ahead in the first ballot, but his hard-right stand and his free-market policies should see him lose the second round.</p>
<p>Philippe Marlière&#160;is a&#160;Professor of French and European politics at University College London (UK).&#160;He can be reached at:&#160; <a href="mailto:p.marliere@ucl.ac.uk" type="external">p.marliere@ucl.ac.uk</a></p> | Farewell Sarkozy | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/04/19/farewell-sarkozy/ | 2012-04-19 | 4 |
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<p>A Dona Ana County jury has acquitted a Chaparral man who had been accused of fatally stabbing a U.S. Marine in a fight two years ago.</p>
<p>After the verdict was read Thursday in Las Cruces where the trial was held, security officers escorted 21-year-old Richard Arzola and his attorney to their vehicles as members of the victim’s family wept.</p>
<p>Arzola admitted stabbing 21-year-old Jose Fernando Nunez in the stomach during a party in Anthony, N.M., but claimed it was self-defense. The two were fighting and Nunez punched Arzola, but prosecutor RoxAnne Esquibel said that didn’t support the use of deadly force.</p>
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<p>Nunez died shortly before he was to be deployed to Iraq.</p>
<p>Defense attorney Jose Coronado said his heart goes out to the Nunez family for their loss. He called it “a difficult case” and said nobody won.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Wednesday, 18 August 2010 06:19</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>More than two years after U.S. Marine Jose Fernando “Fernie” Nunez was stabbed to death after an argument over a fender-bender, the man who is accused in the fatal stabbing is on trial in Las Cruces, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.</p>
<p>Early in the morning of Aug. 2, 2008, Richard Arzola, 21, allegedly stabbed the Gadsden High School graduate once in the stomach outside a going-away party for the Marine who was just days away from a second tour of duty in Iraq, the Sun-News.</p>
<p>Nunez died as he was being transported to University Medical Center in El Paso, the paper reported.</p>
<p>The four-day trial before state District Judge Stephen Bridgforth is expected to wrap up today, the Sun-News said.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | UPDATED: Chaparral Man Acquitted in Marine’s Death | false | https://abqjournal.com/8965/updated-chaparral-man-acquitted-in-marines-death.html | 2 |
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<p>As an active job seeker, you've probably experienced your fair share of job search frustrations. Looking for the right opportunity can itself be a pain, but then there are all those people out there spewing information on "job search best practices." Many of these self-proclaimed experts, college career counselors, and career coaches tell you that you have to do certain things in order to land the job of your dreams.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The job search process can certainly be difficult, but it's important to understand that some of these so-called "best practices" aren't as important to <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/recruiting.html" type="external">recruiters Opens a New Window.</a> as the experts claim. Specifically, here are four things recruiters really don't take as seriously as you do:</p>
<p>1. Cover Letters</p>
<p>Most recruiters don't even read <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cover-letters-dead-kristina-evans" type="external">cover letters Opens a New Window.</a>. On the rare occasion we do read one, it usually turns out to be a template-based document that adds zero value to your resume. Anytime I have found myself on the job seeker side of the fence, I haven't&#160;taken the time to craft a cover letter.</p>
<p>Now that I've been in the recruiting industry for years, I am a firm believer that cover letters are and will forever remain dead. Instead of obsessing over a cover letter, you should spend more time on updating your resume and LinkedIn profile.</p>
<p>2. Double-Spacing</p>
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<p>Articles like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/5-ways-your-resume-makes-you-look-old-2014-10" type="external">this one Opens a New Window.</a> state that job seekers who double space after periods in their resumes may be seen as "old" and, therefore, screened out. I've seen my fair share of poorly formatted resumes riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors – but that's a different story. However, I have never invested time in checking out the spacing at the end of your sentences.</p>
<p>I see two major flaws when it comes to worrying about double-spaces.&#160;One, if a recruiter has time to review spaces in a resume, they aren't taking the time to review the things that matter. Two, if a recruiter decides to pass on a candidate due to double-spacing, they probably don't represent a company culture you want to be a part of anyway.</p>
<p>Focus on creating a resume that highlights what you bring to the table.&#160;Don't worry so much about whether or not you use one or two spaces at the end of your sentences.</p>
<p>3. Reference Checks</p>
<p>You've gone through the interview process, and now it's time to provide your professional references. While you might stress over contacting your old bosses and coworkers to make sure they are available for the recruiter when they finally call,&#160;references really aren't that serious.</p>
<p>Recruiters know that you're only going to provide individuals who will give you a phenomenal reference. Unless you provide someone who is going to give you an awful reference, you shouldn't really worry.</p>
<p>I am not going to tell you to ditch the references because, quite frankly, companies are still doing these checks. Just have your reference list ready to go, and don't be too concerned as long as your references are responsive when the time comes.</p>
<p>4. Mailed Thank-You Notes</p>
<p>I've never met a recruiter or hiring manager who&#160;prefers to receive a mailed thank-you note after an interview. Any expert that tells you otherwise needs to get with the 21st century. In today's digital age, it's more acceptable to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/answered-should-you-send-a-handwritten-or-email-thank-you-note-after-an-interview-2012-3" type="external">send an email thank-you note Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;after your interview. Not only will your interviewer receive the note&#160;quickly, but you also might just get a response.</p>
<p>What "expert" advice have you been given as a job seeker that just didn't add up? Share in the comments below!</p>
<p>Kristina Evans is&#160;a marketing content writer for <a href="http://www.phenompeople.com/" type="external">Phenom People Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 4 Things Recruiters Don't Take as Seriously as You Do | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/03/22/4-things-recruiters-dont-take-as-seriously-as-do.html | 2017-03-27 | 0 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“In Iraq we meant to render futile both the theory and the practice of terrorism; what we have done instead is to endow it with diplomatic credentials, making credible the policies of blind assassination.”</p>
<p>Lewis H. Lapham; Harper’s</p>
<p>In a long line of American puppets, the name Ayad Allawi figures to loom large. In just a matter of weeks the new Prime Minister of Iraq has accommodated his US paymasters with a zeal that must leave the dapper Hamid Karzai wondering if his job is safe.</p>
<p>In his first days after taking office, Allawi was called on to endorse the bombing of an alleged “safe house” in Falluja; an incident that took the lives of 26 Iraqis including women and children. None of the dead were identified as “foreign fighters”, although every major newspaper in America reiterated the Pentagon’s view that the occupants were colleagues of Abu Musab al Zarqawi.</p>
<p>The bombing of Falluja occurred just three days after the UN was cajoled into signing the Iraqi Sovereignty Resolution. During negotiations at the UN, the Bush Administration made it look as though they were taking a more “reasoned approach” to security issues.</p>
<p>That was not the case.</p>
<p>The military simply suspended its major operations to make it appear as though a fundamental shift in policy had taken place. This eschewed the very real possibility that the members of the Security Council would have rejected the resolution outright.</p>
<p>Instead, the Security Council approved the resolution, establishing the US as the “UN Multinational Force”, and the bombing of Falluja resumed three days later.</p>
<p>It was a deception that the “more seasoned” members of the Council should have anticipated.</p>
<p>The ex-CIA operative Allawi expressed his enthusiasm for the bombing, saying that he supported the action as a means of quashing the “terrorist” operatives in post-war Iraq.</p>
<p>We will “annihilate the terrorist groups,” boasted Allawi.</p>
<p>There have been six more bombings in Falluja producing equally dubious results. To date, no “foreign fighters” have been positively identified in Falluja.</p>
<p>The rule of thumb seems to be, that wherever an errant bomb drops on innocent Iraqis (be it a wedding party or a Mosque) it immediately becomes a “legitimate target” in the war on terror.</p>
<p>Just yesterday (Sunday, July 18) US forces bombed another “alleged” safe house in Falluja killing an estimated 14 Iraqis including women and children.</p>
<p>Only the present occupants of the White House and the American media can be expected to defend such slaughter as justifiable.</p>
<p>The increasing death toll of Iraqis attests to the fact that neither the US Military nor the Bush Administration is particularly bothered the prospect of more dead Muslims.</p>
<p>Nor does it seem to weigh on the conscience of Iraq’s “hand picked” P.M., Allawi. Perhaps Allawi’s tenure in Saddam’s Gestapo (the Mukabarat) hardened him to the pangs of remorse that we usually associate with the killing innocent people. Or maybe it was his involvement in a 1990s terrorist bombing campaign in Baghdad (trying to destabilize the Saddam regime) that deadened him to the loss life. (In one incident he was directly connected to the bombing of school bus.)</p>
<p>Whatever it was, he has quickly established his bone fides for ruthlessness with a passion that has impressed his employers in Washington.</p>
<p>Allawi has become the cat’s paw of US policy in Iraq; the continued aggression of the military is being fashioned to appear as though Allawi is “calling the shots”.</p>
<p>Iraqis are not taken in by this ruse. They are well aware of the regions’ colonial history and the subsequent establishing of an “Arab facade”; the puppet governments that provide a mask to disguise the workings of the imperial machine.</p>
<p>The Allawi experiment is no different.</p>
<p>For example, consider the recent detention of 500 criminal suspects who were arrested at Allawi’s behest. The action was taken for one of two reasons; either Allawi has taken a sudden interest in crime in Baghdad or Rumsfeld wants to continue rounding up insurgent suspects without drawing further attention to his real motives. (Following the Abu Ghraib scandal, the military must be as discreet as possible in their random dragnets. Never the less, they will persist in detaining large numbers of innocent Iraqis until the resistance is crushed.) The justification of “fighting crime” provides a useful screen for the real aims of the Defense Dept. chieftans.</p>
<p>Similarly, Allawi’s announcement of an “Order for Safeguarding National Security”, the equivalent of Martial law, is part of a broader US strategy to apply maximum force whenever it chooses.</p>
<p>Even the name of the new law (Safeguarding National Security) smacks of the euphemisms that are churned out of American neoliberal “think tanks” on a regular basis. It is just more of the same old Bush “doublespeak”, invoked to conceal the complete suspension of civil liberties.</p>
<p>(The law provides for “random searches, seizures, closures, eavesdropping, curfews–all tools of the modern police state–are now in the hands of the small and unelected Baghdad leadership; and in the fine print, the establishment of a half-dozen new security agencies, each with a name, acronym and marching orders reminiscent of the decidedly undemocratic Mideast norm.” Mitch Potter)</p>
<p>The law enshrines the principle that in “liberated” Iraq, citizens have been effectively stripped of their personal freedom.</p>
<p>George Orwell could not have imagined a more dismal state of affairs.</p>
<p>Incredibly, in the same week that Allawi announced his intention to enact Martial law, he also unveiled his plan to develop a “state security apparatus” to deal with the insurgency.</p>
<p>No one in Iraq has any misgivings about what this really means.</p>
<p>Allawi started his political career as a Ba’ath Party enforcer and gradually worked his way up to become a senior official in the Iraqi secret police (the Mukabarat.) Eventually, he was bound to try to reconstitute the feared secret police that kept the Iraqi people under Saddam’s iron grip for decades.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, this was already being done by the CIA and Dept of Defense prior to Allawi’s rise to power. (Z Magazine has reported that US intelligence was reenlisting members of Saddam’s Mukabarat to respond to the growing insurgency.)</p>
<p>The Bush Administration has no qualms about resurrecting the “primary instrument of Iraqi state terror”, as long as it is employed in the greater interests of continued American domination.</p>
<p>Again, Allawi provides nothing more than a convenient Iraqi face to a scheme that was well developed before he was ever appointed as Prime Minister.</p>
<p>This is the real meaning of Iraqi sovereignty; a curtain that hides the machinations of the American Imperium.</p>
<p>So far, Allawi has followed each of Washington’s edicts with unmitigated enthusiasm. His passion for his new position hasn’t been dimmed by the carnage he has authorized or by the constant threats to his life.</p>
<p>Apart from his utter loyalty to the Bush clan, Allawi has demonstrated his aptitude for the job in ways that are intangible. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul McGeough tells of Allawi’s involvement in the murder of six alleged insurgents’ just days before he was handed over control of the interim government.</p>
<p>“The prisoners–handcuffed and blindfolded–were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city’s south-western suburbs.”</p>
<p>“Informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister’s personal security team watched in stunned silence.”</p>
<p>Was this the final indication that Allawi was worthy of a place at the Bush table?</p>
<p>Is there a more appropriate “initiation” into the world of gangland terror and political bloodletting than that described in McGeough’s article?</p>
<p>The occupants of the Oval Office must have felt heartened to know that they had enlisted another reliable member to their circle of murders and torturers.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY can be reached at: <a href="mailto:fergiewhitney@msn.com" type="external">fergiewhitney@msn.com</a></p> | Iraq’s New Terrorist Prime Minister | true | https://counterpunch.org/2004/07/19/iraq-s-new-terrorist-prime-minister/ | 2004-07-19 | 4 |
<p />
<p>A recent study by J.D. Power puts Amica Mutual, Erie Insurance and Nationwide at the top for consumer satisfaction when pursuing property claims. The research firm has American Family Insurance and Automobile Club Group at the bottom.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>J.D. Power asked 5,500 homeowners insurance policyholders how they felt about recent claims experience in key areas, including the final settlement, interaction with representatives and the estimate and repair process.</p>
<p>What separates the grins from the groans when dealing with claims? Not surprisingly, the companies that scored the highest received good marks for keeping their clients informed during every step of an often confusing and anxious time. And, of course, homeowners want to feel that the settlement is accurate and fair, said Jeremy Bowler, senior director of the insurance practice at J.D. Power.</p>
<p>The study found that a customer's happiness depends quite a bit on the relationship with their agent. If policyholders become frustrated and take the claim to a supervisor, satisfaction drops significantly, Bowler added.</p>
<p>"The insurers really need to provide clarity and be able to answer all the questions, in a friendly and comprehensive way, as they come up," he says. "It's often the first time a consumer has ever filed a claim. The company needs to fill in the gaps for him and, to avoid frustration, fluidly pass the claim to the claims department."</p>
<p>Here are J.D. Power's <a href="http://www.insurance.com/home-and-renters-insurance.aspx?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-182711510" type="external">homeowner insurance Opens a New Window.</a> rankings, on a 1,000-point scale, with 840 being the industry average:</p>
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<p>Amica Mutual is at the top for the third year running, Bowler says. The report also pointed out that USAA received the highest score (905), but wasn't included on the list because it only sells insurance to military personnel and their families.</p>
<p>The good news for all insurers is that overall consumer satisfaction has improved for the second year in a row.</p>
<p>"Compared with 2013, research findings in 2014 show that homeowners insurance customers who filed a non-catastrophic claim in the past year more often received a thorough explanation of their coverage when first reporting their loss; were more promptly notified of what damages were covered; and received their settlement nearly four days faster," according to the report.</p>
<p>The study also looked at the repercussions of Superstorm Sandy, which caused billions in damage in the northeast in late 2012. Property owners, who were more optimistic shortly after filing claims, apparently became dissatisfied as the complicated process dragged on, Bowler says.</p>
<p>"It has been more than 16 months since Superstorm Sandy hit and its effects are still being felt," according to the report. "Satisfaction among those who filed a claim for damage caused by Sandy averages just 830 in 2014, down from 846 among Sandy-related claimants surveyed shortly after the storm."</p>
<p>Bowler added that "when major storms hit and insurers have to rely on third parties to assist in managing the large number of claims, service levels often deteriorate fast as each insurer has their own processes and approval requirements. This can sometimes lead to significantly extended claim cycle times."</p>
<p>The "J.D. Power 2014 Property Claims Satisfaction Study," now in its seventh year, made several points, including:</p>
<p>Tips for filing a homeowners insurance claim</p>
<p>The Insurance Information Institute (III) suggests these steps when filing a claim:</p>
<p>The original article can be found at Insurance.com: <a href="http://www.insurance.com/home-and-renters-insurance/coverage/j.d.-power-names-best-and-worst-insurers-for-property-claims.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-182711510" type="external">J.D. Power names best and worst insurers for property claims Opens a New Window.</a></p> | J.D. Power Names Best, Worst Insurers for Property Claims | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/03/12/jd-power-names-best-and-worst-insurers-for-property-claims.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) speaks with reporters about the James Comey firing on Wednesday.Jacquelyn Martin/AP</p>
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<p>Emerging from a closed-door strategy meeting following President Donald Trump’s unexpected firing of FBI Director James Comey, Democratic senators on Wednesday appeared to be working out their next steps to address what some of them described as a constitutional crisis.</p>
<p>Several senators said they were losing faith in the ability of political appointees at the Justice Department to oversee the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election. Attorney General Jeff Sessions <a href="" type="internal">recused</a> himself from the investigation in March after he had been caught lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his own contacts with Russian officials. That meant Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would oversee the Russia probe. But Democrats are now questioning&#160;Rosenstein’s independence after he drafted a three-page memo criticizing Comey’s&#160;handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails that Trump used as the rationale for dumping Comey.</p>
<p>Following the meeting, several&#160;Senate Democrats called for a special counsel to be appointed by a career Justice Department official—not&#160;Rosenstein, a political appointee—to take over the Russia inquiry. “I don’t have faith in the political appointees, so it should be appointed by the senior-most career lawyer at the Justice Department,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) agreed, saying, “The best way to do it is to have the deputy attorney general delegate to the top career person the decision to appoint a special counsel.” Asked if that means he had no confidence in Rosenstein, Casey responded, “I think there are a lot of questions about that now.” (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders have steadfastly opposed handing this probe to a special prosecutor or setting up an independent commission.)</p>
<p>Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted that she recently voted to confirm Rosenstein but now had doubts. “This issue should be handled by the most senior career official at [the Justice Department],” she said. Feinstein criticized <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/09/us/politics/document-White-House-Fires-James-Comey.html" type="external">Rosenstein’s memo</a>&#160;on Comey, saying it was based more on quotes from others than on his own reading of the law. “If you read his paper, it’s not a legal paper,” she said. “It’s quotes assembled from other people…so as I read the recommendation, it was not legal, it was not done on any legal theory, any legal law. It was done on what this person and what another person said.”</p>
<p>Democrats are in the minority, and when asked what they can do to force the selection of a special counsel and more generally protect the investigation, they mostly demurred. But their message seems to be clear: They are describing the firing in the most dire terms as a looming constitutional crisis with American democracy at stake. And they expressed tentative hope that their GOP colleagues might join their call for independent oversight.</p>
<p>Some Democrats want to give Republicans time to think the situation over. “This is 12 hours old,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told the Washington Post after the meeting. “I think we have to give a little time for Republicans to have a conversation.” Though Republicans have generally been united, some have expressed concerns since Comey’s firing, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has repeatedly called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russian influence in the election and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/trump-comey-fbi-senators.html" type="external">renewed</a> those calls. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Comey’s firing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-comeys-ouster-democrats-press-for-independent-probe-of-russias-meddling-in-election/2017/05/10/88c45624-3529-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html?utm_term=.569317fb9a4f" type="external">could delay</a> his committee’s investigation. Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) have also expressed concern about the firing.</p>
<p>“Some of them are at least placid on the outside,”&#160;Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of his GOP colleagues, “but others have expressed a real concern as to what this means.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) added, “Certainly there is a lot of disquiet and doubt about this looming constitutional crisis that we face… I have spoken to Republicans and they are certainly thinking very seriously about the constitutional crisis that we face right now.”</p>
<p>Durbin agreed that the Comey firing points toward a constitutional crisis. “I think it’s constitutional”—rather than political—”because it raises a question about the separation of powers and also about whether a president can be held accountable under the law, a president and his team,” he said.</p>
<p /> | Democrats, Sensing a Constitutional Crisis, Plot Out Their Next Steps | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/democrats-plot-post-comey-strategy/ | 2017-05-10 | 4 |
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<p>Contaminated cheese recalled</p>
<p>NEW YORK – Whole Foods Market Inc. is recalling Crave Brothers Les Freres cheese in response to an outbreak of a bacterial infection that has sickened people in several states and killed at least one person.</p>
<p>Whole Foods says the cheese may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. It was sold in New Mexico and 29 other states and Washington, D.C. under names including Les Freres and Crave Brothers Les Freres. The cheese was cut and packaged in clear plastic wrap and sold with Whole Foods Market scale labels.</p>
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<p>Officials said cases have been identified in at least three states. Public health officials in Illinois said Wednesday that one resident became sick after eating contaminated cheese in May. Minnesota officials said Thursday that one elderly person in the state died and another was hospitalized after illnesses linked to the cheese. Both of those illnesses happened in June.</p>
<p>Whole Foods said customers should throw the cheese away and bring in their receipts for a full refund.</p>
<p>Program may limit 911 calls, ER visits</p>
<p>The Albuquerque Fire Department will study the idea of creating a “community paramedicine” program aimed at limiting unnecessary 911 responses and emergency room visits.</p>
<p>Paramedics assigned to the program would work with people who are chronic users of the emergency system – like, say, a homeless person. The goal would be to help the patient get the care and social services they need, avoiding the expense of repeated 911 calls.</p>
<p>Mayor Richard Berry announced on Friday that he’s directed AFD to study the idea and see whether it’s a good fit for Albuquerque.</p>
<p>“We want to do it right rather than fast,” Berry said.</p>
<p>Former worker awarded $250K</p>
<p>LAS CRUCES – Jurors have awarded a former Doña Ana County worker more than $250,000 as part of a verdict against the county.</p>
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<p>Former Public Works Director Jorge Granados and his family shed tears as the decision was announced Wednesday, the Las Cruces Sun News reported.</p>
<p>Granados said he wanted to give a voice to employees who have been retaliated against.</p>
<p>Jurors found the county had created a hostile work environment for Granados and retaliated against him for his efforts in reporting discrimination alleged by another worker.</p>
<p>Jurors awarded Granados more than $60,000 for lost wages and benefits stemming from the six months he was out of work after being fired in June 2010. Another $190,000 was awarded for emotional distress.</p>
<p>The county’s contract attorney said he wasn’t authorized to comment.</p>
<p>Village declares water emergency</p>
<p>CLOUDCROFT – A village in southern New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest has declared a state of emergency due to its dwindling water supplies.</p>
<p>The village of Cloudcroft announced the water emergency last week and village officials fear that water supplies could be wiped out with the influx of July Fourth tourists, KRQE-TV reported.</p>
<p>Officials said the springs and wells supplying Cloudcroft’s water are running low because of the state’s extreme drought.</p>
<p>Lisa King, executive director of the Cloudcroft Chamber of Commerce, says village officials are putting measures into place so the water system doesn’t completely fail.</p>
<p>The village has started to bring in water from nearby Alamogordo.</p>
<p>About 750 people live in the village.</p>
<p>N.M. to get $1M for uninsured kids</p>
<p>SANTA FE – New Mexico will receive a $1 million grant from the federal government to help provide medical care to uninsured children.</p>
<p>U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich announced the grant Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services.</p>
<p>The money is to help the state enroll more children who are eligible for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.</p>
<p>Medicaid provides health care for a fourth of the state’s population.</p>
<p>About 9 percent of children in New Mexico lacked health insurance in 2011, according to a report released last week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that concluded the state was the worst in the nation when it comes to child well-being. About 7 percent of children nationally were uninsured.</p> | Around New Mexico | false | https://abqjournal.com/218212/around-new-mexico-375.html | 2013-07-06 | 2 |
<p />
<p>John Kerry’s odds of winning Alaska this November are almost nonexistent, and the state hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1974. But Democrats are looking at the “Last Frontier” to deliver a key seat this year as the party tries to regain the Senate.</p>
<p>Democratic hopes there ride on <a href="http://www.tonyknowles.com" type="external">former Gov. Tony Knowles</a>, who was elected governor twice despite Alaska’s overall conservatism. Knowles, a Vietnam veteran with a degree in economics from Yale, moved to Alaska after college to work on oil rigs. He opened a number of restaurants in the state before getting elected mayor of Anchorage, and won his first gubernatorial term in 1994.</p>
<p>As for Knowles’ positions, he supports rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the upper class (while keeping the middle-class cuts), believes the Patriot Act is undermining civil liberties, supports importing prescription drugs from Canada and opposes privatization of Social Security and Medicare. But he has also been careful to distance himself from the national ticket, <a href="/news/blog/2004/07/MB_2004_30.html#21" type="external">skipping the Democratic National Convention</a> and stressing his differences with Kerry on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, banning logging in protected wilderness, and gun control (Knowles opposes the assault-weapon ban and closing the gun-show loophole).</p>
<p>So far, that appears to be working, and polls have consistently <a href="http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/080604/sta_senate.shtml" type="external">shown Knowles with a narrow lead</a> against incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski (both have to win primaries Aug. 24, but have overwhelming leads). But as Tuesday’s Washington Post reports, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52838-2004Aug9.html" type="external">Knowles is also benefiting from Murkowski’s baggage</a> – namely, her father.</p>
<p>When Frank Murkowski <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/22/elec02.ak.g/" type="external">defeated Fran Ulmer</a> to succeed the term-limited Knowles in 2002, he appointed his daughter to fill out the last two years of his Senate term. That sparked immediate charges of nepotism, and Lisa Murkowski knows her father’s already-unpopular governorship could prove problematic for her:</p>
<p />
<p>“It is something I have to deal with. I have never once asked Alaskans to like how I got this job…In some people’s mind, the father-daughter connection is a liability. I am working very hard to let people know that I am not a clone of Frank Murkowski.”</p>
<p>Frank Murkowski’s <a href="http://www.adn.com/alaska/v-pda/story/5295005p-5232367c.html" type="external">approval ratings have fallen dramatically</a> since he left the Senate to take over Alaska – due in large part to the cuts he’s made in the state budget – and July polls show his approval rating topping out in the low 40s. That ranks him among the state’s most unpopular governors of all-time, and seems like a factor in Lisa Murkowski’s approval rating dropping 7-8 percent from June to August.</p>
<p>That certainly hasn’t hurt Knowles’ chances, and Democrats are doing what they can to help him secure victory. <a href="http://www.adn.com/alaska/story/5408823p-5344754c.html" type="external">Wesley Clark will campaign</a> for him later this month, following an Alaska visit by former Sen. Max Cleland. Knowles has <a href="http://tonyknowles.com/news.html?id=104" type="external">raised more money than Murkowski</a> for three straight fundraising quarters, helped along by Internet groups requesting donations on his behalf.</p>
<p>Knowles has maintained his narrow lead for about nine months now. If he can keep those numbers steady, Democrats will have reason to toast Alaska this fall, even if Kerry loses there by double digits.</p>
<p /> | Dems could win big in … Alaska! | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2004/08/dems-could-win-big-alaska/ | 2004-08-10 | 4 |
<p />
<p>This Chaser has always cheered publishers’ efforts to distribute their content through emerging platforms. Satellite radio still counts as emerging, even though its subscriber numbers are in the millions. Earlier today, Washington, D.C.-based <a href="http://www.xmradio.com/" type="external">XM Satellite Radio</a> and New York Times Radio got together for a partnership that will bring reviews and commentaries from Times staffers to XM stations, along with plans for newscasts and classical music specials, according to a story from the <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/050803/1144412.html?.v=1" type="external">Washington Business Journal</a>.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>XM is battling rival <a href="http://www.sirius.com" type="external">Sirius Satellite Radio</a> for premium content partners who’ll appeal to its four million subscribers while attracting millions more. The two leading satellite players will approach national entities first, but at some point, they’ll need to build their local news and weather channels. The partnership news reminds me that podcasting is just one way for publishers to deliver engaging, informative and fun audio content. The ambitious site directors out there could introduce their best podcast hosts (staff members and people in the community) to a radio partner and create new shows that give massive promotion to the newspaper’s site and print edition.</p>
<p>Anyone tried something like this already? Please tell me we're not lost in space here!</p> | NY Times Looks to the Skies | false | https://poynter.org/news/ny-times-looks-skies | 2005-08-03 | 2 |
<p>A nursing home management firm in Indiana has sued several former executives who are already criminally charged with embezzling more than $16 million from the company.</p>
<p>American Senior Communities filed the lawsuit Friday against several individuals, including former CEO James Burkhart, and 16 shell companies, The Indianapolis Star reported .</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The company manages nearly 100 senior care facilities, including 60 locations under a contract with Marion County's public health agency. The county is home to Indianapolis.</p>
<p>The federal lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis, alleges the executives took advantage of the company and violated the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act.</p>
<p>Burkhart's attorney said he's innocent and that the company flourished under his leadership.</p>
<p>"Mr. Burkhart intends to vigorously defend himself against claims by ASC or anyone else that he did anything to harm ASC, its owners or residents of ASC facilities," said attorney Kathleen Matsoukas. "ASC owes Mr. Burkhart millions of dollars under his compensation agreements with ASC. Mr. Burkhart's collection of such debt will be a focus of the litigation as he seeks vindication of his rights and reputation."</p>
<p>Federal prosecutors said the executives used shell companies to falsify and inflate costs of goods and services, which enabled them to steal discounts and rebates, and conceal kickbacks from 2009 to 2015.</p>
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<p>Investigators said the executives used fraudulent transactions to buy vacation homes, private planes, luxury trips and even gold bars. U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler called it "unbridled greed."</p>
<p>The executives were indicted in October on more than 30 counts, including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. They have pleaded not guilty. The criminal trial is scheduled for January.</p>
<p>The federal indictment alleges the defendants also conspired to defraud the Health &amp; Hospital Corp. of Marion County, Medicare and Indiana Medicaid.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com</p> | Indiana nursing home company sues former executives | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/18/indiana-nursing-home-company-sues-former-executives.html | 2017-09-18 | 0 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/brendanloy/3451128790/sizes/m/in/photostream/"&gt;Brendan Loy&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
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<p>Americans are remarkably supportive of requiring criminal background checks to buy a gun, banning civilans from buying armor-piercing bullets, and spending more government money training law enforcement officials to deal with mass shootings,&#160;a&#160; <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/160085/americans-back-obama-proposals-address-gun-violence.aspx" type="external">new poll by Gallup</a>&#160;finds.&#160;No fewer than nine in ten people said they’d support requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, Gallup found; eight in ten said they’d vote for more government spending on mental health programs for young people and also on more training for police officers and school officials to respond to armed attacks. Indeed,&#160;the least popular of the nine gun-control ideas advocated by President Obama, according to the poll, is a ban on the sale of ammunition magazines holding more than 10 rounds. And that idea was still favored by more than half of all respondents.</p>
<p>So what’s the catch? The poll didn’t mention Obama by name.&#160;Last week, when&#160; <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/159959/americans-reaction-obama-gun-proposals-positive.aspx" type="external">Gallup polled Americans</a>&#160;on the president’s gun-control plans and name-dropped the president, just 53 percent said they’d tell their representatives in Congress to support them.</p>
<p>Here are the full results:</p>
<p />
<p>We’ll leave it to others to ponder the reasons for the discrepancy, but in practical terms this represents a challenge facing the president as he makes the push for new gun policies: Sell the public on his ideas while staying out of the way.&#160;</p>
<p /> | Americans Like Obama’s Gun-Control Ideas—Unless You Tell Them They’re Obama’s | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/poll-obama-gun-control-background-check-magazine/ | 2013-01-25 | 4 |
<p>Washington Post "CBS Evening News" anchor Bob Schieffer says chatting with reporters on the news set "gives you a chance to elaborate and do that second story that a newspaper does with great ease." CBS News president Sean McManus tells Howard Kurtz: "There's an authenticity about Bob. He really does speak to viewers like he's speaking to them, as opposed to reading a script. When I talk to him in the newsroom, he talks to me the same way one-on-one as he does when he is reporting the news at 6:30." More Schieffer stories in <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2006-03-05-media-mix_x.htm" type="external">USA Today</a>, <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/custom/aetoday/bal-ae.schieffer05mar05,0,5327148.story?coll=bal-aetoday-headlines" type="external">Baltimore Sun</a>, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/397078p-336570c.html" type="external">NYDN</a> and <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/television/14010131.htm" type="external">Miami Herald</a>.</p> | Schieffer compares his "debriefs" to a newspaper sidebar | false | https://poynter.org/news/schieffer-compares-his-debriefs-newspaper-sidebar | 2006-03-06 | 2 |
<p>A woman carries her baby near the gate of a Greek-Macedonian border crossing near the Greek village of Idomeni, on March 6, 2016.Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkoff</p>
<p>Donald Trump wants to cap the number of refugees allowed in the United States at 45,000, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson briefed Congress on Wednesday. That is even fewer than the <a href="https://news.vice.com/story/trump-expected-to-slash-refugee-levels-to-lowest-in-a-generation" type="external">50,000 many administration officials expected</a> and less than half of the 110,000 that President Obama recommended for 2017.&#160;</p>
<p>According to a report in the New York Times, Trump administration officials like Stephen Miller wanted the number of <a href="//www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-lowers-refugee-resettlement_us_59bfc214e4b02da0e1436613" type="external">refugees limited to no more than 15,000.</a></p>
<p>This announcement comes on the heels of the release of the latest version of the Muslim ban, which takes Sudan off the original list, adds North Korea and Chad, and also aims to impose harsher vetting and screening procedures.&#160;</p>
<p>Immigration activists quickly condemned the decision. "We are abandoning desperate people in life-or-death situations, including children with medical emergencies, U.S. wartime allies, and survivors of torture,"&#160;Betsy Fisher of the International Refugee Assistance Project told AlterNet in a phone interview, noting that resettlement is an option of last resort.</p>
<p>"We're at the world's most significant refugee crisis, at least since World&#160;War&#160;II," Fisher continued, "and refugees overwhelmingly are stuck in limbo without access to any kind of permanent solution where they can live in safety, where they can go to school and where they can get jobs and where their kids can go to school."&#160;</p>
<p>Aside from those humanitarian appeals, there are also national security and foreign policy reasons for supporting resettlement.</p>
<p>As Fisher points out, the United States "[relies] on countries like Jordan and Lebanon and Turkey to combat the Islamic state, to provide stable places where we operate military bases... Resettling people from those countries demonstrates that we understand the economic and financial pressures that they're under is a result of the conflict in their region and that we're willing to stand by them by providing a long-term solution for some of the most vulnerable people that they're hosting."</p>
<p>Congress has a few days to provide feedback to Trump's request, but the president has the final say. If Trump's eagerness to pass multiple versions of the ban are any indication, he's unlikely to change his mind. While there's no specific legislation in the works advocates like Fisher are still recommending that people call Congress to express their disappointment, and in general to keep an eye out for future guidance on how to respond once the specifics of the new Muslim ban vetting processes are announced.&#160;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as the AP reported, the&#160; <a href="https://apnews.com/49d246377b924a3f818f7c967be4ab60/%22Don't-be-afraid!%22-Pope-starts-campaign-to-promote-migrants?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP" type="external">Pope encouraged supporters to welcome&#160;</a> <a href="https://apnews.com/49d246377b924a3f818f7c967be4ab60/%22Don't-be-afraid!%22-Pope-starts-campaign-to-promote-migrants?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP" type="external">refugees</a>:&#160;“Brothers, don’t be afraid of sharing the journey. Don’t be afraid of sharing hope,” he told the crowd in St. Peter’s Square.</p>
<p>Our president remains unmoved.&#160;</p>
<p>Ilana Novick is an AlterNet contributing writer and production editor.</p> | Trump Wants to Limit Refugees to Lowest Level in 30 Years | true | https://alternet.org/immigration/trump-wants-limit-refugees | 2017-09-29 | 4 |
<p>Anglo American PLC (AAL.LN) reported Tuesday mixed production figures across its divisions, with a sharp rise in diamond output and declines in nickel and iron ore, while it also lowered full-year guidance for platinum.</p>
<p>The globally diversified miner said its output increased 6% on a copper-equivalent basis for the three months ended Sept. 30. This compares with an 8% year-on-year increase in copper-equivalent production for the second quarter of this year and a 4% rise in the same metric for the third quarter of 2016.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Anglo American's production of diamonds grew 46% to 9.2 million carats. The company said that stable trading conditions supported increased output at its De Beers diamond unit, driven by the Debswana joint venture--owned by De Beers and the government of Botswana--and a ramp-up at its Gahcho Kue mine in Canada.</p>
<p>Iron-ore production stood at 15.7 million tons, down 4% on year. Iron-ore output at the Kumba subsidiary was 2% lower than in the third quarter of 2016, at 11.5 million tons, while at the Minas-Rio project in Brazil it declined 6% to 4.2 million tons.</p>
<p>Anglo American reported a 15% decline in export thermal-coal production to 6.3 million tons, and a 9% rise in export metallurgical-coal to 5.5 million tons.</p>
<p>The miner said its platinum output was flat at 621,000 ounces. Anglo American's copper production rose 5% to 147,300 tons, while nickel output was 1% down year on year to 11,200 tons.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, the mining giant lowered its full-year guidance for platinum to 2.30 million-2.35 million ounces following the closure of unprofitable production at the Bokoni mine in South Africa. The company also raised guidance for iron ore at Kumba to 42 million-44 million tons as it reaffirmed expectations for the remaining divisions.</p>
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<p>Write to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayudvaello@dowjones.com</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 24, 2017 02:58 ET (06:58 GMT)</p> | Anglo American Reports Mixed 3Q Production; Lowers Platinum Guidance | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/24/anglo-american-reports-mixed-3q-production-lowers-platinum-guidance.html | 2017-10-24 | 0 |
<p>A property development company controlled by Dubai's ruler outlined plans Sunday for the first phase of an entertainment and resort complex in the city that promises the Middle East's first Legoland theme park.</p>
<p>The project is part of a broader push by the Arab world's commercial hub to ramp up its hotel and tourism offerings as it prepares to host the World Expo in 2020.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Meraas Holding said initial work began in February on the $2.7 billion Dubai Parks and Resorts project, and that the first phase should be done by 2016. The company is backed by Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.</p>
<p>In addition to the Legoland park, that initial phase will include a Bollywood-themed park celebrating the Indian film industry and another known as Motiongate Dubai promising to bring Hollywood characters to life.</p>
<p>Plans also call for a central retail and dining plaza and family-friendly hotel at the complex, located in Dubai's Jebel Ali area, which is best known for hosting the region's largest seaport and the second of the emirate's palm-shaped islands. The Expo will be held nearby, alongside a new airport that officials envision will one day become the world's busiest.</p>
<p>Tourism plays a growing role in Dubai's trade and transportation-dependent economy. Dubai aims to host 20 million visitors annually by 2020, up from 10 million in 2012.</p>
<p>Dubai developers previously laid out plans for Legoland and Universal Studios parks as part of a broader complex known as Dubailand in a different part of the emirate. Those plans, along with scores of other projects, were shelved or scrapped altogether in the wake of the global financial crisis.</p>
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<p>The financial downturn hit heavily indebted Dubai particularly hard, sending property prices tumbling and forcing the emirate to accept multibillion-dollar emergency aid packages from its oil-rich neighbor, Abu Dhabi.</p>
<p>The local economy has recovered considerably since the crisis came to a head in 2009, though the emirate and its state-linked companies still shoulder tens of billions of dollars in debt. The International Monetary Fund has warned that a sharp rebound in real estate prices could lead to another property bubble.</p>
<p>Officials in Dubai last year announced plans for a $1.6 billion island development that would include the world's biggest Ferris wheel and a $7.3 million park dedicated to the Quran, Islam's holy book.</p>
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<p>Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adamschreck.</p> | Dubai property firm linked to ruler plans to open 1st stage of theme park complex by 2016 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/09/07/dubai-property-firm-linked-to-ruler-plans-to-open-1st-stage-theme-park-complex.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>What's better reading than 50 Shades of Grey?&#160;Mick Jagger's love letters. In 1969, Mick Jagger wrote secret love letters to Marsha Hunt, his girlfriend and first child's mother (and also the inspiration for his song Brown Sugar). How sweet. But now, Hunt is selling the letters in an auction, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/09/mick-jagger-secret-love-letters" type="external">the Guardian reported</a>. "I'm broke," she told the Guardian. "Anyone who has the impression that I have money knows nothing about me. I had friends who came to visit from Pennsylvania and there was no electricity in the house because the bill had been too high, I was kind of grooving it with a wood burning stove. One friend said, 'surely you've got something you could sell?'" Young love is no match for capitalism.</p>
<p>The ten love letters written from Jagger to Hunt during the summer of 1969 are expected to fetch somewhere between 70,000 to 100,000 pounds at Sotheby's English Literature and History sale in December, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/mick-jaggers-love-letters-to-marsha-hunt-reveal-secret-history-of-the-rolling-stone-8306604.html" type="external">the Independent reported</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/120601/when-the-brics-crumble" type="external">When the BRICs Crumble&#160;</a></p>
<p>But Mick shouldn't feel humiliated, because an expert gave his private sentiments rave reviews.&#160;"These beautifully written and lyrical letters from the heart of the cultural and social revolution of 1969, frame a vivid moment in cultural history," Dr. Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby's Books Specialist, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20296121" type="external">told BBC News</a>. "Here we see Mick Jagger, not as the global superstar he has become, but as a poetic and self-aware 25-year-old, with wide-ranging intellectual and artistic interests."</p>
<p>The letters touch on subjects including poet Emily Dickenson, author Christopher Isherwood, the end of his relationship with singer Marianne Faithful and the death of Brian Jones, a founding member of the Rolling Stones, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/mick-jagger-auction-old-love-letters-article-1.1200236" type="external">according to New York Daily News</a>.&#160;</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Mick Jagger's love letters to be auctioned off | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-11-12/mick-jaggers-love-letters-be-auctioned | 2012-11-12 | 3 |
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<p>No place in America grows as much marijuana as Northern California’s Trinity, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties. Backcountry pot farming isn’t just a leading industry in the so-called Emerald Triangle; it’s pretty much the only industry. As I discovered on a recent road trip to investigate <a href="" type="internal">the environmental impacts of large-scale pot farming</a>, nowhere is this more obvious than on the radio. Here’s a sampling of actual ads you’re likely to hear on the way to your neighbor’s bud-trimming party:</p>
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<p /> | Listen: Radio Ads From America’s Pot-Growing Mecca | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/radio-ads-northern-california-emerald-triangle-pot-farmers/ | 2014-03-17 | 4 |
<p>I did not vote for President-Elect Donald Trump and continue to question his fitness to serve. Thus I am unsurprised that hundreds of thousands of women would want to protest his election this coming Saturday, the day after the inauguration. I am surprised, however, that the leaders of the Women’s March on Washington—and most feminists today—are so <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/01/womens-march-2017-drops-anti-choice-partner-after-backlash.html?mid=fb-share-thecut" type="external">unwilling</a> to listen to an alternative feminist perspective, one with deep roots in feminist history and a good deal to offer to women today.</p>
<p>As a pro-choice activist who helped lead my college’s Women’s Center in the 1990s, and now, decades later, as a pro-life feminist, I too have looked forward to the day when a strong and accomplished woman would lead our nation. But however strong and accomplished, Secretary Clinton was not the woman for me. To me she represents all the contradictions of abortion rights feminism, contradictions also conspicuous in the <a href="https://www.womensmarch.com/mission/" type="external">guiding principles</a> of the Women’s March. In my view, an authentic women’s movement—one that properly extols human dignity, care, and non-violence—must be unabashedly pro-life.</p>
<p>With both Trump’s inauguration and the 44th anniversary of Roe v Wade decision fast approaching, I have been concerned that Donald Trump the man—as president of the United States—would actually strengthen in the American imagination the popular feminist fallacy that abortion is necessary to <a href="http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/34_3_889_Bachiochi.pdf" type="external">women’s equality</a>. After all, Donald Trump as “pro-life candidate” fit perfectly the pro-choice caricature of an abortion opponent: degrading to and disrespectful of women. If I could say just one thing to those at the Women’s March, it would be this: the constitutional right to abortion has only made men like Trump worse.</p>
<p>Contraception fails. It just does. But constitutionalizing the right to abortion as Roe did in January 1973 hasn’t relieved women of the consequences of sex or the vulnerabilities of pregnancy. Rather it has detached men even further from sex’s procreative potential and, for the poor in particular, increased the vulnerability of both women and children. That is, easy abortion empowers the male illusion that sex can finally be completely consequence-free. For men, anyway.</p>
<p>The ascendancy of abortion rights feminism over the last fifty years has failed to remedy the sort of objectification of women on particular display by our president-elect in the unearthed Access Hollywood&#160; <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/08/trump-lewd-attack-on-women---the-full-transcript/" type="external">video</a> and <a href="http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&amp;context=dignity" type="external">beyond</a>. As pro-life feminists have long <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/ego/staples009/images/15.htm" type="external">argued</a>, the undisciplined testosterone-driven male libido, interested in no-strings-attached sex, benefits most from an abortion-permissive culture. And when male sexuality goes undisciplined, bereft of the deep emotional bonds once demanded by self-respecting women, sex is sought for pleasure alone. For the most callous of men, women become mere pleasure-providers, the objects of the male libido’s aggressive demands.</p>
<p>Indeed, worry over the tendencies of dissolute men was a key reason women’s <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1566477?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" type="external">suffragists</a> of the late 19th century did not see abortion as the panacea their successors have. Unlike today’s abortion-rights-feminists, the suffragists feared that sex unmoored from its procreative potential would increase male sexual immorality and infidelity. The suffragists were seeking just the reverse: “Votes for women, chastity for men” was actually a <a href="http://www.ampltd.co.uk/digital_guides/women_suffrage_and_politics_sylvia_pankhurst/Introduction-to-Sylvia-Pankhurst.aspx" type="external">suffragist</a> slogan.</p>
<p>And yet, in a bitter irony (with encouragement from some <a href="http://www.feministsforlife.org/men-launched-the-movement-to-legalize-abortion/" type="external">men</a>), those carrying the feminist mantel in the 1970s abandoned this vision of sexual integrity for both sexes and legalized abortion became the sine qua non of sexual freedom. Transforming male-oriented institutions—and the men that governed them—was just too difficult: <a href="http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/feminist-case-against-abortion" type="external">conforming</a> women’s bodies seemed a far easier path. If men could reduce sex to sport, denying the intimate connection created with the women they bedded and the children they fathered, well, women ought to be able to do the same.</p>
<p>Only we can’t. Sex-induced hormones connect us more than “casual” sex would seem to allow. And women must worry about pregnancy, about how carrying a child would impact our bodies, and how caring for a child would shape our futures. And so, women also tend to see more clearly the vulnerability inherent in the human condition, the human goods brought about in giving care, and how our politics affect those at the margins.</p>
<p>So why would women ever think it “better” to treat sex, the act that creates new dependent human life, so casually, as if it lacked profound consequences for connection and caregiving? Why would any feminist think it is a moral advance for women to imitate male abandonment of the vulnerable through abortion?</p>
<p>Influential women such as Anne-Marie Slaughter thankfully have begun to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Business-Women-Work-Family/dp/0812984978" type="external">highlight</a> a more authentic feminist logic: if society better valued caregiving, then perhaps men would do more of it, and we’d see greater collaboration in the home, more equity in the workplace, and more family-friendly policies. But as pro-choice law professor Robin West has <a href="https://www.routledge.com/In-Search-of-Common-Ground-on-Abortion-From-Culture-War-to-Reproductive/West-Murray-Esser/p/book/9781472420466" type="external">noticed</a>, the constitutionalizing of abortion rights in Roe stands in dramatic tension with a political agenda that better values caregiving.</p>
<p>Were it not for the wedding of modern feminism with the sexual revolution, many more men, I think, would more readily value the culturally essential work of caregiving. Both <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3623927.html" type="external">research</a>and my personal experience suggests that men who aren’t beholden to the fleeting attractions of sexual pleasure do value caregiving, and consider the nurture and education of their children their most essential work. I dare say that these men are the very picture of the emotionally available, responsible, and engaged husbands and fathers my feminist sisters and I once dreamed of. Abortion rights will not produce more such men; but a greater appreciation that sex is a serious enterprise just might.</p>
<p>Erika Bachiochi is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of “Embodied Equality: Debunking Equal Protection Arguments for Abortion Rights.” The views expressed in this commentary are solely hers.</p> | I’m a Feminist Against Abortion. Why Exclude Me from a March for Women? | false | https://eppc.org/publications/im-a-feminist-against-abortion-why-exclude-me-from-a-march-for-women/ | 1 |
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<p>Aug. 17 (UPI) — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Stefon-Diggs/" type="external">Stefon Diggs</a> might roast cornerbacks life coffee beans while outfitted in Starbucks cleats for the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Minnesota-Vikings/" type="external">Minnesota Vikings</a>‘ second preseason game.</p>
<p>Diggs will sport the special shoes for the Vikings’ game at 10 p.m. Friday against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Seattle-Seahawks/" type="external">Seattle Seahawks</a> at CenturyLink Field.</p>
<p>Mache Custom Kicks was responsible for making the slick kicks. The mostly white shoes feature the traditional Starbucks check boxes on the toe, with some of them crossed out with a sharpie like design. They feature the traditional brown coffee cup hand protector sleeve on the laces and the Starbucks logo on the side.</p>
<p>“My love for Starbucks is a 4ever thing…” Diggs tweeted Wednesday.</p>
<p>Starbucks also got in on the Twitter love.</p>
<p>“The love is equal, forever &amp; ever,” <a href="https://twitter.com/stefondiggs/status/897951465561399297" type="external">the company tweeted.</a></p>
<p>The shoes also feature Diggs’ name in the form of “Digz.” Diggs will be subject to a fine if he ends up wearing the cleats in the game, as they feature a brand name.</p>
<p>Mache Custom Kicks said that Diggs will bring another pair with him for the contest.</p>
<p>Diggs, 23, had a career-best 903 yards and three touchdowns on 84 receptions in 13 games last season. He had one catch for five yards in the Vikings’ 17-10 win against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Buffalo-Bills/" type="external">Buffalo Bills</a> in his first preseason game of the season on August 10 at <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Ralph_Wilson/" type="external">Ralph Wilson</a> Stadium in New York.</p>
<p>The love is equal, forever &amp; ever.</p>
<p>— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) <a href="https://twitter.com/Starbucks/status/898286044390367232" type="external">August 17, 2017</a></p>
<p>The original Starbucks is located at Pick Place Market in downtown Seattle. The company was established in 1971.</p> | Minnesota Vikings' Stefon Diggs gets Starbucks football cleats | false | https://newsline.com/minnesota-vikings039-stefon-diggs-gets-starbucks-football-cleats/ | 2017-08-17 | 1 |
<p>For students, teachers and administrators, the month of September is the beginning of the year, the time to set a new course. For Chicago’s public schools, this September ushers in a particularly ambitious new beginning. CEO Arne Duncan has unveiled an education plan that, for the first time, seeks to transform teaching to ensure that all students get “superior instructional programs” in “supportive school environments.” With the title “Every Child, Every School,” the Duncan plan echoes the spirit of “No Child Left Behind,” the federal government’s sweeping, though somewhat clumsy, effort to force schools to teach all children.</p>
<p>Drawn up by a University of Chicago researcher with scads of input from educators and academics, Duncan’s plan earnestly talks about helping everyone in the system do a better job. (In contrast, former CEO Paul Vallas’s vision often involved creating new programs for those people to implement.) The 60-page plan is bold in its restructuring of the lines of responsibility, installing a raft of new leaders in belt-tightening times.</p>
<p>Sadly, though, the report is thick with academic jargon and thin on plain English. Put into simpler terms, the plan might have been distributed to parents. Still, those who read it will learn, for instance, that teachers and principals have more opportunities to improve their professional skills. They will also learn that Duncan has decided to reorganize the district’s six regions into 24 instructional areas, each to be led by a highly-regarded former principal or educator. These new administrators will keep a more watchful eye on academic performance, and they will offer principals more support to improve classroom instruction. And beginning next spring, parents will have access to detailed analyses of their children’s performance and reports of overall student performance by teacher.</p>
<p>However they are expressed, such steps parallel the underlying mission of No Child, which envisions a new day and age for public schools. Teachers are expected to teach all children—and those children are expected to learn. Schools are expected to do better, and repercussions await those that don’t. At the same time, parents are expected to become more involved with their children’s academic life.</p>
<p>Grounded in sound educational values, Duncan’s plan is a good start. But he could save himself and the district unnecessary grief by communicating his admirable intentions better. As one staunch school improvement advocate put it, Duncan could use a wise uncle.</p>
<p>Someone who would pull him aside and help him understand the necessity of communicating effectively to parents, taxpayers and the business community. Most of them are already rooting for his success. Their support shouldn’t be undermined.</p>
<p>ABOUT US Our editorial advisory board welcomes five new members: Jody Becker, a reporter for WBEZ-FM Chicago’s public radio station; Shazia Miller, a researcher who also handles public outreach for the Consortium on Chicago School Research; Diana Nelson, director of public affairs for the Union League Club of Chicago; Luis Salces, president of LMS Communications; and Silvia Villa of the Chicago Teachers Center at Northeastern Illinois University.</p>
<p>We also extend heartfelt thanks two departing board members: Carolyn Nordstrom, who served a year as board chair, and Ari Munoz Contreras, a member for three years. Your insights and ideas helped us excel.</p>
<p>NEW RESOURCE Ever wonder how the most recent CPS reading test scores or attendance rates compare to those of five or ten years ago? A new feature on Catalyst’s web site will answer such questions. Citywide Data is a compilation of year-by-year school report card data, including student ISAT and ACT test scores, graduation rates, teacher salaries and demographics and much more. In some cases data are available back to 1986-87. We trust our visitors will find it useful.</p> | ‘No Child,’ ‘Every Child’ on same track | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/no-child-every-child-same-track/ | 2005-07-28 | 3 |
<p>Many analysts are providing their Estimated Earnings analysis for Asanko Gold Inc. and for the current quarter 5 analysts have projected that the stock could give an Average Earnings estimate of $-0.02/share. These analysts have also projected a Low Estimate of $-0.18/share and a High Estimate of $0.05/share.</p>
<p>In case of Revenue Estimates, 1 analysts have provided their consensus Average Revenue Estimates for Asanko Gold Inc. as 59.6 Million. According to these analysts, the Low Revenue Estimate for Asanko Gold Inc. is 59.6 Million and the High Revenue Estimate is 59.6 Million. The company had Year Ago Sales of 70.3 Million.</p>
<p>Some buy side analysts are also providing their Analysis on Asanko Gold Inc., where 0 analysts have rated the stock as Strong buy, 0 analysts have given a Buy signal, 7 said it’s a HOLD, and 0 analysts rated the stock as Sell. (These Recommendations are for the Current Month Only reported by Yahoo Finance.)</p>
<p>When it comes to the Analysis of a Stock, Price Target plays a vital role. Analysts reported that the Price Target for Asanko Gold Inc. might touch $2.34 high while the Average Price Target and Low price Target is $1.31 and $0.78 respectively.</p>
<p>The Relative Volume of the company is 2.56 and Average Volume (3 months) is 913.44 million. The company’s P/E (price to earnings) ratio is 21.64 and Forward P/E ratio of 0.</p>
<p>The company shows its Return on Assets (ROA) value of 0.7%. The Return on Equity (ROE) value stands at 1.1%. While it’s Return on Investment (ROI) value is -2.2%.</p>
<p>While looking at the Stock’s Performance, Asanko Gold Inc. currently shows a Weekly Performance of -23.23%, where Monthly Performance is -51.43%, Quarterly performance is -56.33%, 6 Months performance is -67.84% and yearly performance percentage is -85.71%. Year to Date performance value (YTD perf) value is -84.44%. The Stock currently has a Weekly Volatility of 9.34% and Monthly Volatility of 7.66%.</p> | Price Target Analysis Asanko Gold Inc. (AKG) | false | https://newsline.com/price-target-analysis-asanko-gold-inc-akg/ | 2017-12-13 | 1 |
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<p>MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama has become the second state to sue the U.S. government over refugee resettlement, accusing the Obama administration of failing to consult with states on placement of those who have fled their home countries.</p>
<p>Gov. Robert Bentley spokeswoman Jennifer Ardis says the lawsuit was filed Thursday.</p>
<p>Bentley is one of several Republican governors who opposed the settlement of Syrian refugees in their states after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. The lawsuit doesn't specifically address Syrian refugees, but it follows the lead of Texas, which sued last month to try to block six Syrian refugees from settling in Dallas.</p>
<p>The Alabama lawsuit says the federal government hasn't followed part the Refugee Act of 1980, which says the federal government "shall consult regularly" with states on placement.</p>
<p>The federal government controls resettlement programs. Experts have said states have no authority to ban refugees.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Alabama sues federal government over refugee program | false | https://abqjournal.com/702330/alabama-sues-federal-government-over-refugee-program.html | 2 |
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<p>India is, and has been for years, the Third World answer to our First World economy and has fulfilled all of our outsourcing “needs.” It is especially known for its <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1183552,00.html" type="external">call-centers</a>, which as an American you encounter when you call, well, just about anywhere. Currently, India <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-29595020070918?pageNumber=2" type="external">accounts</a> for 60 percent of international back-office services.</p>
<p>Although, recently, there is a new twist in the world of outsourcing. According to the New York Times, Indian firms such as <a href="http://www.tcs.com/" type="external">Tata Consultancy Service</a> and <a href="http://www.infosys.com/" type="external">Infosys</a>, India’s second largest software services outsourcing firm, have set up shops in places like Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. Another Indian IT services firm, <a href="http://www.wipro.com/" type="external">Wipro</a>, is contemplating opening up centers in places like Idaho, Virginia, and Georgia, U.S. “states which are less developed,” claims the firm’s chairman. Well, isn’t this ironic? The New York Times article goes on to say that an American company will outsource Indians to “supply it with Mexican engineers working 150 miles south of the United States border.”</p>
<p>Isn’t globalization efficient?</p>
<p>—Neha Inamdar</p>
<p /> | India Outsourcing Its Outsourcing | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/india-outsourcing-its-outsourcing/ | 2007-09-26 | 4 |
<p>KROONSTAD, South Africa (AP) - South African police say a truck driver could be charged with manslaughter after his vehicle collided with a train, killing 18 people and injuring about 260 others.</p>
<p>Police official Motantsi Makhele said Friday that "a case of culpable homicide has been opened" following the crash Thursday in Free State province.</p>
<p>Authorities say the truck driver erred by allegedly trying to cross the tracks just ahead of the oncoming train.</p>
<p>Part of the train burst into flames after the collision, trapping some passengers in carriages. Makhele says a final death toll cannot be announced until a forensic investigation including DNA testing is complete.</p>
<p>Workers were checking under the carriages for any other remains.</p>
<p>The train with 429 passengers aboard had been traveling from Port Elizabeth to the country's commercial hub, Johannesburg.</p>
<p>KROONSTAD, South Africa (AP) - South African police say a truck driver could be charged with manslaughter after his vehicle collided with a train, killing 18 people and injuring about 260 others.</p>
<p>Police official Motantsi Makhele said Friday that "a case of culpable homicide has been opened" following the crash Thursday in Free State province.</p>
<p>Authorities say the truck driver erred by allegedly trying to cross the tracks just ahead of the oncoming train.</p>
<p>Part of the train burst into flames after the collision, trapping some passengers in carriages. Makhele says a final death toll cannot be announced until a forensic investigation including DNA testing is complete.</p>
<p>Workers were checking under the carriages for any other remains.</p>
<p>The train with 429 passengers aboard had been traveling from Port Elizabeth to the country's commercial hub, Johannesburg.</p> | Police open manslaughter case in South Africa train crash | false | https://apnews.com/amp/09284b0a36d04ea1a40c8b27b82d07f7 | 2018-01-05 | 2 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal">Following the outrage</a> over Houston’s first openly lesbian mayor demanding copies of sermons and communications from pro-marriage Christian pastors, citizens decided to take action. A mass protest was organized through the mail where hundreds – and perhaps thousands – of Bibles arrived at the left-wing Mayor’s office:</p>
<p>Houston Mayor Annise Parker acknowledged Monday that her office had received Bibles from across the country following a protest campaign launched by former Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee.</p>
<p>“I know we’ve received some and they’re collecting them in the office but I don’t know how many that might be,” Parker said.</p>
<p>A spokesperson with the mayor’s office later stated that somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Bibles had been shipped to the mayor so far.</p>
<p>Via <a href="http://www.click2houston.com/news/strangers-sending-bibles-to-mayor-parker/29369526" type="external">Click2Houston</a></p>
<p>As you see in the video above, Mayor Parker thinks this is a stunt for Fox News ratings. But this is obviously a grassroots movement of people who are speaking out against heavy-handed government intrusion into religion. And it sounds like this Mayor could spend some time reading the truth of Biblical scripture.</p>
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<p>Do you support this Bible-mailing effort to the Houston Mayor? Please leave us a comment and let us know what you think.</p>
<p /> | Many Americans Respond to Lesbian Houston Mayor’s Attack on Christian Pastors in an AWESOME Way! | true | http://thepoliticalinsider.com/americans-respond-lesbian-houston-mayors-attack-christian-pastors/ | 2014-10-29 | 0 |
<p>Getting Gored</p>
<p>From the beginning, Al Gore was fully in synch with the Clinton two-step on the environment. The first environmental promise Al Gore made in the 1992 campaign, he soon broke. It involved the WTI hazardous waste incinerator in East Liverpool, Ohio, built on a floodplain near the Ohio River. The plant, one of the largest of its kind in the world, was scheduled to burn 70,000 tons of hazardous waste a year in a spot only 350 feet from the nearest house. A few hundred yards away is East Elementary School, which sits on a ridge nearly eye-level with the top of the smokestack.</p>
<p>On July 19, 1992, Gore gave one of his first campaign speeches on the environment—across the river from the incinerator site, in Weirton, West Virginia. He hammered the Bush Administration for its plans to give the toxic waste burner a federal air permit. “The very idea is just unbelievable to me,” Gore said. “I’ll tell you this, a Clinton-Gore Administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We’ll be on your side for a change.” Clinton made similar pronouncements on his swing through the Buckeye State.</p>
<p>Shortly after the election, Gore assured neighbors of the incinerator that he hadn’t forgotten about them. “Serious questions concerning the safety of the East Liverpool, Ohio hazardous waste incinerator must be answered before the plant may begin operation,” Gore wrote. “The new Clinton/Gore administration will not issue the plant a test burn permit until all questions concerning compliance with the plant have been answered.”</p>
<p>But that never happened. Instead, the EPA quietly granted the WTI facility its test burn permit. The tests failed twice. In one, the incinerator eradicated only 7 percent of the mercury found in the waste when it was supposed to burn away 99.9 percent. A few weeks later, the EPA granted WTI a commercial permit anyway. They didn’t tell the public about the failed tests until afterward.</p>
<p>Gore claimed his hands were tied by the Bush Administration, who had promised WTI the permit only a few weeks before the Clinton team took office. But by one account, William Reilly, Bush’s EPA director, met with Gore’s top environmental aide, Katie McGinty, in January 1993 and asked her if he should begin the process of approving the permit. He says McGinty told him to proceed. McGinty said later that she had no recollection of the meeting.</p>
<p>Gore persisted in maintaining that there was nothing he could do about it once the permit was granted. A 1994 report on the matter from the General Accounting Office flatly contradicted him, saying the plant could be shut down on numerous grounds, including repeated violations of its permit.</p>
<p>“This was Clinton and Gore’s first environmental promise, and it was their first promise-breaker,” says Terri Swearington, a registered nurse from Chester, West Virginia, just across the Ohio River from the incinerator. Swearington, who won the Goldman Prize in 1997 for her work organizing opposition to WTI, has hounded Gore ever since, and during the 2000 campaign she was banned by Gore staffers from appearing at events featuring the vice president.</p>
<p>The decision to go soft on WTI may have had something to do with its powerful financial backer. The construction of the incinerator was partially financed by Jackson Stephens, the Arkansas investment king who helped bankroll the Clinton-Gore campaign. According to EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman, during the period when the WTI financing package was being put together, Stephens Inc. was represented by Webb Hubble (who later came into Clinton’s justice department and was indicted during the Whitewater investigation) and the Rose law firm (to which Hillary Clinton belonged). Over the ensuing seven years, the WTI plant has burned nearly a half-million tons of toxic waste—5,000 truckloads of toxic material every year—spewing chemicals such as mercury, lead, and dioxin out of its stacks and onto the surrounding neighborhoods. The inevitable illnesses have followed.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>On other crucial matters, Clinton cynically deployed Gore to split environmentalists and thus advance pro-business policies, as in the fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The environmental defects of NAFTA were manifold and had helped to energize broad opposition to the agreement. When it looked like the pact might go down, Gore pledged to Clinton that he could wrest an endorsement of the trade deal from top environmental groups.</p>
<p>Gore turned first to his long-time friend Jay Hair, who proved the perfect person to marshal support for NAFTA. He was, after all, the self-proclaimed leader of the Gang of Ten, executives of the ten largest environmental outfits, including his own National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, Izaak Walton League, World Wildlife Fund, League of Conservation Voters, Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth. The Gang met six times a year in such pleasing settings as Kodiak, Alaska; Telluride, Colorado; Jackson, Wyoming; and the beaches of Belize.</p>
<p>Hair knew he could sell the other eco-executives on the meager environmental provisions in NAFTA, so he outlined the political calculus at work. Hair said the greens’ endorsement would buy the administration’s backing for high priority environmental reforms, such as protections of ancient forests, reform of mining law and strengthening of the Endangered Species Act.</p>
<p>The more conservative and policy-oriented groups speedily aligned themselves behind Hair, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Wildlilfe Fund, Nature Conservancy, Conservation Foundation and the National Audubon Society.</p>
<p>When the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth refused to endorse NAFTA and instead joined the opposition, Hair dashed off threatening letters to the executives of both organizations, accusing them of treachery.</p>
<p>In the end, the resistance of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth didn’t matter. The groups assembled by Hair were more than enough for the purposes of Clinton and Gore. Days after the trade deal squeaked through Congress, John Adams, head of NRDC, claimed credit, boasting about “breaking the back of the environmental opposition to NAFTA.”</p>
<p>A few months later the famous environmental “side accords” to NAFTA were formally declared to be worthless.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>What we now recognize as “the Gore style” was fashioned in the earliest days of his political career. The young congressman picked out safe issues on which to cut a posture. He’d fully digested the lessons of his own masters’ thesis, that television had shifted the balance of power from the Congress to the Executive branch. He became a zealous promoter of TV cameras in Congress and contrived to be the first to speak to those cameras from the House floor. Characteristically, his premier message concerned the therapeutic value of filming House proceedings on a day-to-day basis: “It is a solution for the lack of confidence in government.” Anyone who has watched C-Span for the past twenty years would surely come to precisely the opposite conclusion.</p>
<p>Gore would seize on an issue that could be easily exported to the Sunday talk shows, such as children’s nightwear treated with Tris, a flame retardant that turned out to be carcinogenic. Those particular hearings in May of 1977 were the first to bring young Rep. Gore onto the network news shows, and he made full use of the opportunity. “Did it trouble you,” he howled theatrically at one industry executive, “that the children of this country might have tumors, carcinogenic or otherwise, produced by the chemical that would be used in all this sleepwear?”</p>
<p>From perilous nightwear he turned his attention to infant formula, another sure-fire TV grabber, where he and the shapely Tipper discoursed on the virtues of breastfeeding. On the heels of fiery sermons against Nestlé for its infant formula, came Gore’s efforts to enact a national organ transplant database. This talent for converting minor issues into major TV opportunities was no doubt what prompted Gore’s enthusiasm for Clinton’s pollster Dick Morris when the latter arrived to bail out the Clinton White House in l995 and l996.</p>
<p>“Around Washington he’s what we call ‘a glory boy,’” a Democratic Party insider told Gore Vidal. “He gets to the House and starts running for the Senate. He gets to the Senate and starts running for the White House. There’s no time left to do any of the real work the rest of us have to do.”</p>
<p>The legislative venue for Gore’s grandstanding was the House Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigation. Gore had lobbied strongly to be appointed to this subcommittee, correctly assaying its screen-time potential. In short order he developed an inquisitorial style, matched off the floor by his mercilessly abusive treatment of his staff. His sponsor was the powerful Michigan Democrat John Dingell, the auto industry’s greatest friend on Capitol Hill and, later, the most virulent opponent of clean air legislation. Dingell can himself be a merciless interrogator and evidently saw Gore’s potential. Gore would describe himself later as Dingell’s spear-carrier.</p>
<p>Gore’s skills at self-promotion carried his name into the news and afforded him a certain national reputation as a crusading liberal. But at the substantive legislative level Gore remained emphatically on the center-right. Take the issue that perhaps defines the Democratic Party’s social mission more than any other: labor rights. In the dawn of the Carter presidency, with Democrats controlling both houses, a bill came before the House aimed at expanding unions’ picketing rights. Famously in America, one has the right to strike (barely), but not the right to win, because picketing—a vital component of any serious strike—is so circumscribed by legal restrictions it is effectively useless as a coercive tool in many fights with employers. So this vote was a big one. The AFL-CIO felt confident of victory, but it missed the fact that newly arrived Democrats like Gore felt no loyalty to labor and were intent on advertising that disposition to their business contributors. Gore provided one of the crucial votes that turned back labor’s bill.</p>
<p>As a House member Gore was virtually a poster boy for the National Rifle Association. In 1978 he voted to block funding for the implementation of new federal handgun regulations, explaining many years later that, “when I represented a rural farm district in the House of Representatives there wasn’t a problem [with handguns] perceived by my constituents.” In 1985, after he had moved from representing the crackers in the 4th District to being the junior senator for all the people of Tennessee, he voted for what the NRA called “the most significant pro-gunners’ bill in the last quarter-century”…</p>
<p>As a Congressman, Gore spoke of his belief in “the fetus’ right to life.” He was a relentless supporter of the Hyde amendment, which banned federal funding for abortions for poor women. In one early version of Hyde’s bill, there was language allowing exceptions to the ban in the case of rape. Gore voted against that.</p>
<p>The most far reaching of all the measures dreamed up by the conservative right to undercut Roe v. Wade was an amendment put forward by a Michigan Republican, Mark Siljander, in 1984. It carried a one-two punch. First, it defined the fetus as a person from the moment of conception. Second, it denied federal funding to any hospital or clinic that performed an abortion. Gearing up for his Senate run that year, Gore was one of seventy-four Democrats to vote for Siljander’s ultimately unsuccessful measure.</p>
<p>Those votes returned to haunt Gore as his political ambitions went national and he bid for more support than he’d ever needed in the 4th District or even the entire Volunteer State. By 1988 he was brazenly rewriting his political biography. He and his staff were well aware that his votes against choice—only four years earlier—would be brought up by his opponents. “Since there’s a record of that vote,” an aide told US News &amp; World Report in March of 1988, “what we have to do is deny, deny, deny.”</p>
<p>The problem returned briefly in 1992 and again in the Democratic primaries in 2000, when Bill Bradley, challenging Gore for the nomination, used the occasion of a debate in the Apollo Theater in Harlem, to flourish and then read out a letter Gore had written to a Tennessee constituent in 1984, in which had stated: “It is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong. I hope that some day we will see the current outrageously large number of abortions drop sharply. Let me assure you that I share your belief that innocent human life must be protected and I have an open mind on how to further this goal.”</p>
<p>When confronted with contradictions between his pretensions and his deeds, Gore reflexively performs a ritual of numbed incantation. “I believe a woman ought to have the right to choose,” he kept repeating to his interlocutors in 1992, and he did the same thing at the Apollo in 2000. Someone less rigid could have said, “Look, I’ve evolved.” Freed from his lawyers, Bill Clinton can go through such a routine effortlessly. But Gore, the perfect child of demanding parents, can never admit error, even in retrospect. In 1988, even as both Al and Tipper issued their fabrications about their use of marijuana, Tipper said, “It was either admit it or lie, and we would never lie.”</p>
<p>One unlovely hoof print after another tracks its way across Gore’s legislative voting record. In the 1980s, when the IRS proposed new regulations denying tax-exempt status to private schools that barred black students, Gore was among those in Congress who tried to undermine the regulations.</p>
<p>Likewise, in Gore’s supposed devotion to the environment, there has always been a vast rift between stirring proclamation and legislative reality. Back in the late 1970s, two of the hottest environmental battles concerned the Clinch River Breeder Reactor and the Tellico Dam, both within the purview of the TVA. As it was planned, the Clinch River reactor was not only a $3 billion boondoggle of the first water, but was also destabilizing in terms of the arms race, since it was scheduled to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The Congressional battle over the planned reactor stretched from the mid-1970s to 1983, when, amid growing national disquiet about nuclear power, it went down to defeat.</p>
<p>Gore was a fanatic defender of the reactor, the most ardent of all the Tennessee House delegation. When the Republicans briefly captured the Senate in 1981, the senior senator from Tennessee, Howard Baker, became majority leader and made protection of the Clinch River project one of his priorities. He and Gore kept the fight going until the end. Arkansas’ Senator, Dale Bumpers, gave an entertaining account of this in a 1997 speech: “I remember in 1981, Republicans took over this place and Howard Baker, the senator from Tennessee and one of the finest men ever to serve in this body, became majority leader. I was trying to keep any additional nuclear plants from being licensed—and it was not a tough chore. A lot of people had made up their minds at that point that the nuclear option was not a good one. I fought for about four years to kill the Clinch River Breeder. But I was up against the majority leader. And as everybody here knows, as the old revenuer said, when they announced United States v. Jones, he turned to his lawyer and said, “Them don’t sound like very fair odds to me.” And it was not very fair odds to go up against the majority leader on the Clinch River Breeder, which was going to be built in his beloved Tennessee. Howard Baker could always just pull out that one extra vote he needed. The vote was always close, but you are majority leader, you know, you can just call somebody over and say, ‘I need your vote,’ and you usually get it. Finally, one year I was ahead by about six or seven votes as the votes were being cast, and I think Senator Baker decided that he was done for, and he turned everybody loose that had committed to him [those] who did not really like the idea of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor and only voted for it to accommodate him. He turned them loose, and I think we won that day by about seventy to thirty. Happily, that was the end of the Clinch River Breeder.”</p>
<p>In 1984, Al Gore took Baker’s Senate seat and, over the next eight years, voted for the nuclear lobby 55 percent of the time. As vice president and author of Earth in the Balance (which stays fairly mute on the topic of nuclear power) Gore, along with his former legislative staffer, Energy Department Assistant Secretary Thomas Grumbly, tried to bring the Clinch River scheme to life again as the Fast Flux Test Facility in the Hanford nuclear reservation in the State of Washington.</p>
<p>Then there was the Tellico Dam, the first big test of America’s greatest environmental law, the Endangered Species Act. A law passed in 1973 during the Nixon presidency, which also saw creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The dam, on the Little Tennessee River, was 95 percent complete when biologists discovered the imperiled snail darter species still clinging on in the stretches of the river that were to become the reservoir behind the dam. Environmentalists brought suit against the dam project, and eventually the Supreme Court ruled that the Endangered Species Act required that the dam not be completed.</p>
<p>The Little Tennessee was one of the few wild rivers left in the state unmolested by the TVA. The dam wasn’t needed for flood control and wouldn’t generate power. All it would do was store water and divert it to another dam nearby. The recreation benefits were negative, since the Little Tennessee was a famous trout stream and popular with canoeists. In fact, the only purposes of the dam were to line the pockets of the cement producers and construction nabobs of Tennessee, and to afford an amenity for the “Timberlake” community being planned by Boeing. As Mark Reisner puts it in his book Cadillac Desert, “It was like deciding to put a 50,000 seat Superdome in the middle of Wyoming and then building a city of 150,000 around it to justify its existence.”</p>
<p>Shocked that the Act could threaten huge pork barrel projects, the very lifeblood of Congress, the legislators set up the so-called “God Squad,” which would pass judgment on species-endangering schemes, using cost-benefit analysis as the standard. In the case of the snail darter, the God Squad, led by economist Charles Schultze, did its homework. “Here is a project that is 95 percent complete,” Schultze concluded, “and if one takes just the cost of finishing it against the benefits, it doesn’t pay.”</p>
<p>The fight over the snail darter was fierce and bitter because the stakes were so high. If the pro-dam forces could win a waiver of the Endangered Species Act here, then such a waiver would inevitably be the first of many. Gore was among the leaders in the effort to get this waiver, and in the end Congress exempted the dam from compliance and overturned the Supreme Court’s injunction. As the defenders of the snail darter predicted, the path to destruction of the Endangered Species Act now lay open, and first down that path had been none other than Al Gore.</p>
<p>After he and the other pork-barrelers got the vote that exempted the dam, Gore announced triumphantly, “It was unfortunate that the controversy over the snail darter was used to delay completion of the dam after it was virtually finished. I am glad the Congress has now ended this controversy once and for all.”</p>
<p>How Gore, Howard Baker, and James Duncan (the Republican Congressman in whose district the dam was located) consummated their awful victory was vividly described by Representative Bob Edgar, a Democrat from suburban Philadelphia: He recounts how on June 18, 1979, Gore and his colleague Duncan pushed through, as a rider to the appropriations bill, a measure allowing the Tellico Dam to go forward. “Duncan walked in waving a piece of paper. He said, ‘Mr. Speaker! Mr. Speaker! I have an amendment to offer to the public works appropriation bill.’ Tom Bevill and John Myers [two dreadful reps] of the Appropriations Committee both happened to be there. I wonder why. Bevill says, ‘I’ve seen the amendment. It’s good.’ Myers says, ‘I’ve seen the amendment. It’s a good one.’ And that was that. It was approved by voice vote! No one even knew what they were voting for! They were voting to exempt Tellico Dam from all laws! They punched a loophole big enough to shove a $100 million dam through it, and then they scattered threats all through Congress so that we couldn’t muster the votes to shove it back out. I tried—lots of people tried—but we couldn’t get that rider out of the bill. The speeches I heard on the floor were the angriest I’ve heard in elective office. They got their dam. That is the democratic process at work.”</p>
<p>The foes of the dam had one last hope, that President Jimmy Carter would veto the bill. But Carter too was bushwhacked. The Baker-Gore forces threatened to withhold support for the Panama Canal Treaty, which Carter was fighting for at the time.</p>
<p>Gore supported a scheme to transplant some of the snail darters to the nearby Hiwassee and Holston rivers, where they survived. But the larger damage was done. As David Brower, America’s greatest environmentalist, said in retrospect, “This was the beginning of the end of the Endangered Species Act.” After the snail darter came other species and other waivers, the most notorious of them engineered under the auspices of Vice President Gore. In the Pacific Northwest the spotted owl and marbled murrelet, in the Southeast the red-cockaded woodpecker, in Southern California the gnatcatcher—all were as chaff under the chariot wheels of the timber and real estate industries, who successfully lobbied the vice president and his minions for the all-important waivers. Like refugees in wartime, imperiled species were assigned one holding pen after another, issued temporary “safe” passes, while Gore’s appointments in the Interior Department and the Council on Environmental Quality felt the heat from developers and timber barons and crumbled.</p>
<p>The way American politics works, it took a reputed environmentalist to destroy America’s best environmental law. In l98l, there wasn’t a major environmental group in the country that didn’t bugle its frantic alarums at the approach of the Reaganauts and that Beelzebub of the greens, James Watt, Reagan’s Interior Secretary. The Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, National Audubon, the Natural Resources Defense Council, all raised millions of dollars on the specter of Watt and the havoc he would wreak on environmental regulations. In fact, the pathetic and maladroit Watt never stood a chance. He set back the cause of environmental pillage by at least a decade.</p>
<p>But when Watt was gone and Reagan was gone and Bush was gone, the Democratic “greens” came back to power, and they accomplished triumphs that the Republicans had never dared dream possible. Gore, who had reinvented himself as an environmentalist, largely on the basis of Earth in the Balance, was embraced by the Big Green organizations. They used his entirely mythical green credentials as a way of getting their membership to overlook Bill Clinton’s own adversarial relationship with nature while he was governor of Arkansas.</p>
<p>Yet consider Gore’s record by Big Green’s own criteria. Like all the major environmental organizations, the League of Conservation Voters functions as an outrider for the Democratic National Committee, and its annual ratings of Congress members are notoriously skewed against Republicans. Gore’s lifetime rating from the League is 64 percent, meaning he was in sync with the League’s positions two-thirds of the time. This is not much when you look at such green stars of the League as Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Tim Wirth of Colorado, George Miller of California, or even a Republican like the late John Chafee of Rhode Island, all of whom were consistently ranked in the 90s. The League’s rating of Gore in his House years ran at an average of about 55 percent, with one year down at 30 percent, which put him in harness with such world-class predators as Don Young of Alaska.</p>
<p>Gore didn’t make many friends in the House, but his propensity to techno-flatulence (e.g., “The government is just a big software program”) soon prompted him to sniff out a kindred soul in the form of a pudgy young Congressman from suburban Atlanta who had a marvelous facility for rotund phrase-making on any issue to hand. From the time he was first elected, in 1978, Newt Gingrich was positioning himself with precisely the same blend of opportunism, albeit at a noisier level, as Al Gore was.</p>
<p>The two consecrated their amity in a group called the Congressional Clearing House on the Future. They met monthly, published a newsletter and hosted lectures by futurists and pop scientists including, Carl Sagan and Alvin Toffler. But these monthly klatches were not enough to satiate Gore and Gingrich’s passions for heady chat about meta-technical trends, artificial intelligence, the population bomb, and extraterrestrial life (Gore believes ardently that We Are Not Alone). The two would meet for dinner at each other’s houses. Poor Tipper, hoping for a romantic candle-lit evening with her spouse, would open the door to see the beaming, porcine features of the rising Republican star from Georgia on the doorstep. The relationship didn’t end when Gore reached the Senate. In fact, in 1985, he and Gingrich co-authored a bill titled the Critical Trends Assessment Act. The legislation called for the creation of a White House Office on Futurism (WHOOF) to “study the effects of government policies on critical trends and alternative futures.” In his career in Congress, Gore was rarely the principal author of a bill. This was an exception, albeit a doomed one. Although the two battled for WHOOF strenuously, it never went anywhere.</p>
<p>Soon after his arrival in Congress, Gore formed the Vietnam Veterans Caucus with John Murtaugh, Jim Jones, and Les Aspin. For Gore, the caucus opened up a useful avenue into hawkish Democratic circles, where men like Aspin and Sam Nunn were doing the Pentagon’s work, proclaiming that “Vietnam Syndrome” was sabotaging the nation’s vital sinews. Gore picked up the lingo quickly enough: “I think it is important to realize that we do have interests in the world that are important enough to defend, to stand up for. And we should not be so burned by the tragedy of Vietnam that we fail to recognize an interest that requires the assertion of force.”</p>
<p>With such language, Gore established himself early on as “safe” from the point of view of the Pentagon and the national security complex. Safety meant never straying off the reservation on such issues as America’s right to intervene anywhere it chooses. Gore backed Reagan’s disastrous deployment of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983. He supported the invasion of that puissant Caribbean threat to the United States (population 240 million) by Grenada (population 80,000). He later chided his 1988 Democratic opponents for their failure to embrace this noble enterprise. At a time when many Democrats wanted to restrict the CIA’s ability to undertake covert actions, Gore said he wouldn’t “hesitate to overthrow a government with covert actions,” a posture he ratified with his approval of the CIA’s secret war in Afghanistan. This, the largest covert operation in the Agency’s history, ultimately saddled Afghanistan with the Taliban fundamentalists, destroyers of cities, stoners of women, harborers of Bin Laden, and overseers of that country’s rise in status to the eminence of world’s largest exporter of opium and heroin to the United States and Europe.</p>
<p>To be continued.</p>
<p>JEFFREY ST. CLAIR is the author of <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Grand Theft Pentagon</a>. His newest book, <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">Born Under a Bad Sky</a>, is published by AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:sitka@comcast.net" type="external">sitka@comcast.net</a>.</p>
<p>This essay is excerpted from the forthcoming book GreenScare: the New War on Environmentalism by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and Joshua Frank.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part One.</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part Two.</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part Three.</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part Four.</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part Four.</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part Five.</a></p>
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<p /> | How Green Became the Color of Money | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/02/18/how-green-became-the-color-of-money-9/ | 2011-02-18 | 4 |
<p>Human semen provides a potential hiding place and breeding ground for a host of dangerous viruses, a new evidence review reports.</p>
<p>The analysis of current medical literature revealed genetic evidence of 27 infectious viruses found in semen, including dread-inducing agents like Zika, Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever and chikungunya, along with mumps, Epstein-Barr and chicken pox.</p>
<p>“Clinicians and researchers need to consider the possibility that traditionally non-sexually transmitted viruses can persist in semen, and this therefore raises the possibility of sexual transmission,” said lead researcher Alex Salam. He is a clinical researcher with the University of Oxford’s epidemic diseases research group in the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>However, the presence of viruses in semen does not mean that every virus can be sexually transmitted, the researchers noted.</p>
<p>“Detection means that evidence of viral genetic material or viral protein was found in semen,” Salam said. “It’s important to note that this does not mean that the virus is viable, i.e., capable of replicating. To prove this, the virus needs to be isolated and grown in cells or animals. For many of the viruses, this test has not been done, so we don’t know whether virus is viable or not.”</p>
<p>Sex also might not be the most efficient means of transmission for these viruses. Infectious disease expert Dr. Pritish Tosh noted that scores more cases of Zika have been passed along via mosquito bites than have been transmitted through sexual contact.</p>
<p>People also are much more likely to catch Epstein-Barr virus, which causes mononucleosis, from another person’s unprotected sneeze or cough than through sex, said Tosh, an associate professor with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.</p>
<p>“In some ways it doesn’t matter if it can be spread by semen if it also can be spread by saliva,” Tosh added.</p>
<p>For this report, Salam and his colleagues reviewed more than 3,800 scientific articles published on viruses and semen. Their review resulted in a list of the 27 infectious viruses that have been found in human semen.</p>
<p>The list includes obvious culprits such as hepatitis viruses, herpes viruses and HIV. But it also includes a range of other viruses normally known to pass person-to-person via blood, saliva or other means.</p>
<p>For most of the viruses on the list, data regarding the possibility of sexual transmission is lacking, the researchers reported.</p>
<p>“It is unclear to what extent the viruses detected in semen can also be sexually transmitted,” Salam said. “The virus needs to be viable, but this alone may not be enough for sexual transmission. For some, we found evidence of sexual transmission, but others we found no evidence one way or the other.”</p>
<p>Tosh said that it makes sense that viruses would be able to set up shop in semen. “It’s relatively easy for viruses to get in there, but relatively harder for the immune system to clear these viruses,” he explained.</p>
<p>The immune system tends to see sperm as foreign to the body, and therefore a potential target of attack, Tosh said.</p>
<p>“To ensure survival of sperm, the testes are immunologic sanctuaries where really the immune system doesn’t gain much access to,” he explained.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this sanctuary also can shield dangerous viruses from the immune system. Zika is cleared from the bloodstream in a week, but can persist in semen for months, Tosh noted. And there have been cases of Ebola survivors later reigniting an outbreak because the virus remained latent and active in their testicles.</p>
<p>Salam pointed out that no studies have found influenza in semen, although the flu virus has been found in the testicles.</p>
<p>“There is no evidence currently that influenza can be sexually transmitted,” Salam said.</p>
<p>But the list compiled by Salam and his colleagues did contain other viruses that cause cold and flu-like symptoms, including adenoviruses and cytomegalovirus.</p>
<p>Further research is needed to figure out the potential for sexual transmission of these viruses, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore.</p>
<p>“It will be essential to understand which of these viruses have significant, and possibly unrecognized, sexual transmission components to their epidemiology,” Adalja added.</p>
<p>The new review appears in the October issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.</p> | Semen Contains Wide Range of Viruses | false | https://newsline.com/semen-contains-wide-range-of-viruses/ | 2017-09-14 | 1 |
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<p>When <a href="" type="internal">salacious details</a> emerge about <a href="" type="internal">run-amok</a> contractors, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture—the reason why these scandals keep <a href="" type="internal">happening</a>and <a href="" type="internal">happening</a> and <a href="" type="internal">happening</a>. So what’s the big picture, you ask? Great question. Let me tell you. In military parlance, oversight is FUBAR. (If you don’t know what that means, look it up.) And the Paravant/Blackwater scandal I’ve been <a href="" type="internal">reporting on</a> for the past few days is a perfect case study in what happens when <a href="" type="internal">oversight goes AWOL</a>. Yes, the firm’s personnel acted recklessly and knowingly violated military regulations—even the company acknowledges that—but no one bothered to stop them, to enforce the rules in place. As an <a href="http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=322458" type="external">investigation</a> by Sen. Carl Levin’s armed services committee documents, there was mass confusion about who was actually responsible for monitoring Paravant on the ground.</p>
<p>Ultimately Paravant had a contract with Raytheon. Raytheon had a contract with the Army’s Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation. PEO STRI, headquartered in Orlando, Florida and without a rep on the ground, says it relied on a Dutch military officer attached to NATO’s Combined Security Training Center-Afghanistan. That officer’s supervisor told Levin’s committee he had “no idea” why anyone would think this officer was responsible for Paravant—in fact, he knew of no one at CSTC-A who was. And things got even more ridiculous from there.</p>
<p>From Levin’s <a href="http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=322458" type="external">opening statement</a> at yesterday’s hearing:</p>
<p>Emails from late April 2009 show that approximately six months into the contract, there was still confusion about oversight of Paravant personnel. When issues arose about a shortage of contractor personnel performing at one training site and concerns were raised as to whether they were performing up to U.S. Army standards, the Chief of the Afghan National Army Training &amp; Education (CJ7) at CSTC-A said that Brian McCracken, who had recently moved from Paravant to Raytheon, would be responsible for monitoring Paravant and would be coordinating oversight of the contracts. Until his arrival in Afghanistan in late April 2009, no one from Raytheon had been stationed in country to monitor Paravant, apparently resulting in months of inadequate supervision.</p>
<p>To recap: The military thought a former Paravant and current Raytheon employee—and an individual at least partially responsible for Paravant’s rule-breaking in regards to weapons—was an appropriate source of oversight. It’s easy to pile on Blackwater, Paravant, Raytheon, and other wayward contractors. The hard part is figuring out once and for all <a href="" type="internal">how to fix</a> the broken oversight system that has allowed contractor abuses to repeatedly <a href="" type="internal">undercut</a> US foreign policy objectives.</p>
<p /> | The Other Paravant Scandal | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/other-paravant-scandal/ | 2010-02-25 | 4 |
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<p>President Obama’s climate speech to the United Nations may have been a <a href="" type="internal">big letdown</a>, but he has come through in one key area: nuclear disarmament. In his <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/23/obama.transcript/index.html" type="external">address to the General Assembly</a> on Wednesday, Obama promised to introduce a <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0909/Obamas_nonproliferation_resolution_to_the_UN_the_text.html?showall" type="external">draft UN resolution</a> later this week that would herald a significant shift in American nuclear policy compared with the Bush administration, which let the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty wither unratified in the Senate and stymied other important arms control initiatives. Obama’s resolution indicates that the US will renew efforts to ratify the treaty, and, among other things, proposes that a country’s right to use nuclear energy should be contingent on meeting its nonproliferation obligations. (That would currently <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27148.html" type="external">bar Iran</a>, for instance, from enriching uranium.) Later in the week, the president will head a UN Security Council meeting on nuclear nonproliferation—the first time an American president has done so.</p>
<p>Obama also announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend the Test Ban conference this week—a glaring contrast with the Bush administration, which didn’t even send a delegation to the last four meetings. Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton huffed to the <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODA2YzJmNTkwYmFmZDk4MTQwNWFkYzJjNzM5Y2MwMmE=" type="external">National Review</a> that this meeting would be an “incredible waste of time for [Clinton].” (He also thought Obama’s speech to the UN was too “UN-centric.”)</p>
<p>Ridding the world of nuclear weapons has long been a pet cause for Obama—he spoke about them on the stump while running for the Senate way back in 2004. Later, he forged a <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.larson.html" type="external">close relationship</a> with Sen. Richard Lugar on the issue, accompanying him on a trip to Russia to inspect weapons facilities and co-sponsoring legislation to secure loose nukes. “If we fail to act,” Obama told the UN on Wednesday, “we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine.”</p>
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<p /> | Obama Comes Through On Nukes | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/obama-comes-through-nukes/ | 2009-09-23 | 4 |
<p>Published time: 3 Oct, 2017 18:30</p>
<p>Pockmarked with the remnants of early space exploration, the moon now plays second fiddle to Mars as a potential destination. But a new project aims to revisit the lunar landscape – by rocketing a mini art gallery to Earth’s natural satellite.</p>
<p>Once the great frontier of space-faring, the moon has not been visited by a manned mission since 1972. Evidence of bygone missions remain however, including defecation (yes, really) left by Apollo 11 <a href="https://history.nasa.gov/humanartifacts.html" type="external">astronauts</a>, some commemorative items and the Soviet Union’s crash-landed Luna 2 impactor.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/404995-musk-spacex-big-rocket/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;Musk’s ‘Big F*cking Rocket’ will get you ‘anywhere on Earth in under an hour’ (VIDEOS, PHOTOS)</a></p>
<p>But next year mankind’s lunar footprint may become a lot more cultured thanks to <a href="http://moonarts.org/" type="external">MoonArk</a>, an 8in-tall time capsule containing abstract nano art, music and poetry about mankind’s relationship with the moon.</p>
<p>Devised by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the capsule is expected to be shot to the moon with the help of SpaceX and an Astrobotic lunar lander in 2019.</p>
<p>Astrobotic, a US robotics company, is building a lunar delivery spacecraft as part of a Google <a href="https://lunar.xprize.org/teams/astrobotic" type="external">competition</a> to encourage privately-funded missions to the moon.</p>
<p>Divided into four chambers, the MoonArk’s design had size restrictions due to the high costs of delivering materials into space. And yet it contains hundreds of examples of art. To overcome the delivery cost – nearly $1 million per pound – the project’s organizers say 250 artists, designers and researchers were drafted in to create a “nearly weightless” capsule.</p>
<p>The result is a miniature world of platinum disk etchings, surrealist images, and music.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/401495-russia-china-joint-space-2018/" type="external">READ MORE:&#160;Russia and China to work together on space explorations, Moon missions from 2018</a></p>
<p>The payload includes an Anatolian love song, ‘Was her Face the moon or sunlight?’, as well as text messages exchanged by a married couple.</p>
<p>A layout of the design also shows how a diamond and samples of ocean plankton will be included on board the curious gallery.</p>
<p>A duplicate of the capsule has been created to be displayed on Earth. Mark Baskinger, the project director of MoonArk, suggested the concept centers on mankind’s moon legacy.</p>
<p>“Our time with it here is only a minute fraction of the time it will likely spend on the moon waiting for someone to discover it,” Baskinger said in a <a href="http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/september/moonark-thrival.html" type="external">statement</a>.</p>
<p>“My hope is that the MoonArk raises conversation about humanity expanding outward into space, our attempts to communicate forward and the traces we leave behind.”</p> | Cosmic culture: Nano capsule will take art to the moon | false | https://newsline.com/cosmic-culture-nano-capsule-will-take-art-to-the-moon/ | 2017-10-03 | 1 |
<p>There’s been plenty of innuendo and chatter about Barack Obama’s religious affiliation and beliefs lately, but both Obama and rival Hillary Clinton have described their faith with little room for extrapolation in recent months. Here’s what they had to say.</p>
<p>Christianity Today:</p>
<p>Barack Obama: I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals.</p>
<p>There is one thing that I want to mention that I think is important. Part of what we’ve been seeing during the course this campaign is some scurrilous e-mails that have been sent out, denying my faith, talking about me being a Muslim, suggesting that I got sworn in the U.S. Senate with a Quran in my hand or that I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag. I think it’s really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam. I am respectful of the religion, but it’s not my own.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/januaryweb-only/104-32.0.html?start=2" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>CBNNews.com:</p>
<p>Hillary Clinton: I believe in the father, son, and Holy Spirit, and I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions in my years on this earth.</p>
<p>Reporter: Can I ask you theologically, do you believe that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened, that it actually historically did happen?</p>
<p>Senator Clinton: Yes, I do.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/334482.aspx" type="external">Read more</a></p> | News Flash: Obama, Clinton Claim Christian Faith | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/news-flash-obama-clinton-claim-christian-faith/ | 2008-03-07 | 4 |
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<p>Adele apologizes before restarting a performance tribute to George Michael at the 59th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP)</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES — Even though Adele flubbed one of her live performances at the Grammys, she walked away the belle of the ball: She took home all five awards she was nominated for Sunday night, including album, record and song of the year.</p>
<p>She beat Beyonce in the top three categories with her comeback album “25,” and repeated her accomplishments from 2012, when the British star also won album, song and record of the year at the Grammys. She’s the first artist in Grammy history to sweep the top three categories twice, and now has a total of 15 Grammys.</p>
<p>Adele used her speech to honor Beyonce and her groundbreaking “Lemonade” album, which was also nominated. And backstage, she told press she voted for Beyonce when putting in her ballot for album of the year.</p>
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<p>“But I can’t really accept this award. And I’m very humble and I’m very grateful and gracious, but my artist of my life is Beyonce. This album you made, the ‘Lemonade’ album, is so monumental,” Adele said to her fellow singer at the Staples Center in Los Angeles when accepting the album of the year trophy. “The way you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel is empowering. And they stand up for themselves. And I love you. I always have.”</p>
<p>The night for Adele wasn’t all good though: The singer, who had trouble with her live performance at last year’s Grammys, asked to restart her tribute to George Michael, telling the audience: “I can’t mess this up for him.” She stopped and used an expletive after singing some of a new arrangement of Michael’s “Fastlove,” as videos and photos of Michael played in the background. She re-sang the song and earned applause and support from the crowd, though Adele was teary eyed.</p>
<p>Michael died on Christmas Day. A number of other icons were honored Sunday, including Prince: Bruno Mars — rocking a glittery, Prince-like purple blazer — worked the guitar like a pro while singing the icon’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” The Time — who worked closely with the Prince — brought the audience to its feet with funky performances of “Jungle Love” and “The Bird.”</p>
<p>“Make some noise for Prince y’all,” Mars yelled.</p>
<p>Mars was also a winner Sunday — he won for his producing work on Adele’s album. Adele’s other wins included best pop vocal album and pop solo performance.</p>
<p>Until Adele’s abrupt restart, Beyonce was the talk of the show. In glittery gown, gilded crown and gold choker, a pregnant Beyonce took the Grammy stage in a lengthy performance of two songs from her critically acclaimed album “Lemonade.” She was introduced by her mother and former stylist, Tina Knowles: “Ladies and gentlemen, with my mother’s pride, my daughter, Beyonce.”</p>
<p>Beyonce sang on top of a long table and later sang while sitting down in a chair that tilted alarmingly backward, still hitting high notes. She performed the songs “Sandcastles” and “Love Drought.”</p>
<p>She earned a loud applause from the audience, including daughter Blue Ivy and husband Jay Z. Beyonce, who walked into the show with nine nominations, only won two: best music video (“Formation”) and urban contemporary album (“Lemonade”).</p>
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<p>“My intention for the film and album is to create a body of work that would give voice to our pain, our struggles, our doubts, and our history, to confront issues that make us uncomfortable. It’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty, so they can grow in a world, where they look in the mirror, first with their own families as well as in the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House and the Grammys and see themselves,” said Beyonce, reading from a card. “This is something that I want for every child of every race, and I feel that it’s vital that we learn from the past and recognize our tendencies to repeat our mistakes.”</p>
<p>Beyonce’s speech wasn’t the only political moment: A Tribe Called Quest, along with Anderson .Paak and Busta Rhymes, gave a rousing performance and shouted “resist, resist!” at their end of the performance, which featured a number of people onstage, including women in hijabs.</p>
<p>Like Adele, David Bowie — who died last year from cancer — won all four awards he was nominated for. “Blackstar,” his final album released days before he died, won best alternative music album and engineered album, non-classical. The title track won best rock song and rock performance.</p>
<p>Before Sunday, Bowie only won one Grammy in his career — in the 1980s for a music video.</p>
<p>Adele and Mars worked overtime onstage, each performing twice. Adele kicked off the show with “Hello” and Mars and his groovy band gave a memorable performance of “That’s What I Like” — as Jennifer Lopez, Faith Hill, Rihanna and even some of the men in the audience watched closely, looking impressed.</p>
<p>Chance the Rapper won the first award in the live telecast for best new artist. He also won best rap album — the first streaming-only album to do so — and bested Drake and Kanye West.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think we were gonna get this one,” said Chance, who also won best rap performance.</p>
<p>Twenty one pilots won best pop duo/group performance for the hit “Stressed Out.” They removed their pants when accepting the award in homage to their earlier days when they watched the Grammys at home in their boxers.</p>
<p>Producer Greg Kurstin won four honors: He shared album, song and record of the year with Adele, and was also named producer of the year, non-classical.</p>
<p>In the pre-telecast, Beyonce’s younger sister, critical R&amp;B darling Solange, won her first Grammy for best R&amp;B performance (it was her first-ever nomination). Drake, who didn’t attend the live show, won best rap song and rap/sung performance for the smash hit, “Hotline Bling.”</p>
<p>West and Justin Bieber, nominated for album and song of the year, also didn’t attend the show.</p>
<p>Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” — which is nominated for an Oscar — won best song written for visual media. Best new artist nominees The Chainsmokers won best dance recording for the pop hit “Don’t Let Me Down,” while Simpson, an album of the year nominee, won best country album for “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.”</p>
<p>Joey + Rory won best roots gospel album for “Hymns,” and Rory Feek was emotional onstage as he remembered his wife Joey, who died last year from cancer.</p>
<p>Some actors won Grammys, too: Don Cheadle picked up best compilation soundtrack for visual media for “Miles Ahead,” where he is credited as a compilation producer, and Carol Burnett won the best spoken word album Grammy.</p>
<p>“The Color Purple” won best musical theater album, giving Jennifer Hudson her second Grammy and earning Tony winner Cynthia Erivo and “Orange Is the New Black” actress Danielle Brooks their first Grammys.</p>
<p>More from ABQJournal.com</p>
<p>1. RECORD OF THE YEAR Hello Adele Greg Kurstin, producer; Julian Burg, Tom Elmhirst, Emile Haynie, Greg Kurstin, Liam Nolan… continue reading »</p> | Adele sweeps Grammys Awards with 5 wins, while Bowie wins 4 | false | https://abqjournal.com/948530/could-beyonce-finally-win-album-of-the-year-at-the-grammys.html | 2017-02-12 | 2 |
<p>On January 6, 2007, two days after Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, about 1,000 activists laid down on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach to spell out the word “IMPEACH!” in 100-foot letters. Photos of the clear message to Pelosi taken from a helicopter appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, and on websites around the world (for photos and footage, see <a href="http://www.beachimpeach.org/" type="external">www.beachimpeach.org</a>).</p>
<p>On April 28, five days after Representative Dennis Kucinich filed articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, the second “Beach Impeach” event spelled out the words “IMPEACH NOW!” In the neighborhood of 1,500 people participated in that event, which also involved standing in formation to spell out “PEACE NOW!”</p>
<p>When by mid-summer Pelosi was still disinterested taking action against Cheney or Bush, Brad Newsham, the principal organizer of the first two events, was ready for a third. On September 15, he struck again on Crissy Field near San Francisco’s Marina district.</p>
<p>Newsham wrote in a September 7 email: “Today I managed to speak to the senior staff member in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco office, and through him I invited Ms. Pelosi to occupy the fourth seat in our helicopter. After all, there is going to be a crowd of impeachment-impassioned folks right there in her constituency, and maybe this would be a perfect time for her to at least have a bird’s eye view of them. When he said that Rep. Pelosi was not available that day, I invited him, the senior staff member himself, but he quickly said he was not available either — in fact no one from Pelosi’s office would be available that day. ‘So is this a dead end?’ I asked. ‘Yes.’ End of curt, even icy, conversation.”</p>
<p>As with the first two beach mobilizations, at the September 15 protest volunteers circulated with postcards and pens to generate constituent messages to Pelosi, while a photographer circled in a helicopter overhead.</p>
<p>I spoke to San Francisco resident Valerie Coshnear at the event’s end, who told me, “The last two times I did the Impeach-on-the-beach-thing, I did it with “E”s. I did not have to become any other letter. Just get up and down and do the wave thing, touch the sea wall, do the boogey woogey.”</p>
<p>Warming to the topic, Ms. Coshnear went on, “This time I wanted more of a challenge. I decided to be in the “M” in IMPEACH, which required moving to make up the the “N” in ” REASON:” and “TREASON!” [the second two words spelled out]. It was a wonderful letter to be in because previously I could only say “I think therefore I “M”, but today I was lying with over a thousand people in the grass at Crissy Field, tendrils of fog stretching from the tip of the Golden Gate swirling overhead. In our 100 foot letter alone, several hundred people who don’t buy the lies of those unconscionable traitors and warmongers in the White House, could lay down their bodies and say as one mammoth letter “We think, and are willing to move, therefore we ‘M.'” Other participants seemed equally giddy with enthusiasm, and Brad Newsham, who directed the sitting-to-standing human wave activities from a step ladder, was jubilant afterward. (It was also the cabdriver/writer/activist’s birthday, and the assembled protestors serenaded him with “Happy Birthday to You” several times.)</p>
<p>Like many of those I spoke to at Crissy Field, Newsham was pleased that anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan recently threw her hat into the ring to run against Pelosi. Sheehan committed to running against the veteran politician because of the Speaker’s refusal to push impeachment.</p>
<p>“Cindy is a Voice of the People ­ the freshest one I’ve heard recently,” he told me. “She strikes me as uniquely un-bought, and seems fueled not by ambition but by the pain of having her son ripped away from her by a band of criminals. Imagine a House of Representatives full of people like Cindy — like us — instead of the elite who have eternally toyed with us.”</p>
<p>Sheehan’s son Casey was killed in Iraq, which led her to camp out near President Bush’s vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas, to send an unwavering anti-war message to Bush and the entire world.</p>
<p>Sheehan’s statement upon launching her candidacy clearly showed she was out to rock the boat: “An electorate disgusted with the policies of the Bush regime put the Democrats in the majority in Congress in November ’06. We voted for change, however, Congress, under the Speakership of Ms. Pelosi has done nothing but protect the status quo of the corporate elite and, in fact, since she has been the Speaker, the situation in the Middle East has grown far worse, with Congress’ help, and recently more of our essential freedoms were given to BushCo by Congress. That is not what we elected them to do!”</p>
<p>In a commentary largely supportive of Sheehan’s initiative, Nation Magazine political corresponent John Nichols noted, “Pelosi has all the advantages of incumbency — and more. Closely tied for decades to the Democratic political establishment of San Francisco, Pelosi and her campaign team know just about everything there is to know about winning elections there. And, as the Speaker of the House, she has the ability to deliver both on the practical and egotistical needs of the city by the bay. Additionally, she has the ability to raise and spend more money than any opponent.”</p>
<p>But given that 58% of San Franciscans voting in November 2006 endorsed Proposition J, which called for impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney, on one of the most important issues of the day Sheehan is clearly more in line with the majority of Pelosi’s constituents than the Speaker. It should be an interesting campaign.</p>
<p>BEN TERRALL is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:bterrall@igc.org" type="external">bterrall@igc.org</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The Streets of San Francisco | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/09/21/the-streets-of-san-francisco-2/ | 2007-09-21 | 4 |
<p>Berlin</p>
<p>Darkness has finally fallen on the 4th of July in Berlin:&#160; almost eleven in the evening and the rain has let up just enough for the Americans to start their fireworks.&#160; I can hear them pounding away to celebrate the official opening of the new American embassy today next to the Brandenburg Gate with George Bush, the Elder, cutting the ribbon.</p>
<p>A block away from where I’m now writing, framed in one of the large window of this Art Nouveau apartment, shines the newly renovated clock tower of the Schöneberg Town Hall where Willy Brandt held forth as Berlin’s Mayor during some of the hottest days of the Cold War, and where Kennedy made his famous&#160; “Ich bin ein Berliner“ speech. The square-jawed figures atop the Town Hall look-on impassively as the rockets glare redly over the center of the action in the New Berlin.</p>
<p>I began my celebrations as any true patriot, especially a musical one, would: with a trip to the Schöneberg District’s incomparable Hans Wurst Nachfahren, Puppet Theatre. Luckily I had my kids in tow, since I suspect that unattached and unshaven men appearing at morning performances of children’s theatre is a practice likely frowned on even in this notoriously permissive city.</p>
<p>We could hardly believe our luck that this morning’s show was the Brementown Musicians, with score by the Kurt Weill of modern puppet theater, Rainer Rubbert. This is in no way meant to be a back-handed compliment to the composer.. If I had to choose from the embarrassment of riches in Berlin’s operatic treasure chest – there are still three world-class opera houses in this city of little more than three million residents – I would go for a Rubbert show over Verdi, Wagner, or Mozart at the Deutsche Oper, the Komische Opera, or the Staatsoper, the ascendant house of the three, one ruled by the despotic and politically-connected Daniel Barenboim.</p>
<p>Rubbert has “serious“ credits to his name, and is currently at work on a full-length, five act opera called Kleist, whose historical protaganist commits suicide after shooting his mortally-ill female companion. I didn’t bother to inform my own kids on the subject matter of the composer’s current project.&#160; I’m not sure if plumbing the depths or entertaining the kiddies is a more demanding task.</p>
<p>Rubbert’s score for The Brementown Musicians calls for a small ensemble of instruments accompanying four voices, those of the puppeteers, each of whom plays one of the animals and one of the robbers.&#160; The music achieves the near impossible, that which only the rarest of books and theatre for children also manages: to captivate the young and unjaded, while offering complexity, depth, irony, and many other good things to the overseers of the underage. Show me another composer who can take of a minor swing groove, lace it with contrapuntal ingenuity, and use melodic contour, harmonic emphasis to profile each character and I’ll call him or her a genius, too. Yet clever fugues, and winking quotations from the composer’s vast lexicon, one that extends from Motown to Berg to Bach and to the folk songs of the Alps and to many other styles, are never overdone or self-servingly intrusive.&#160; Never has erudition been so fun as at the Hans Wurst Puppet Theatre on the Winterfeld Platz in Schoeneberg, Berlin. To be in the hands of a skilful and tasteful and endlessly inventive composer with excellent, characterful, and unabashedly natural singers, who also happen to be fabulous actors and puppeteers—all before eleven o’clock in the morning–is enough to restore all faith in the goodness of humanity and the world itself! The small black-box theatre in a charming early 19th-cenury building near one of Berlin’s best children’s playground’s was packed with two school classes.&#160; If Mr. Rubbert’s Kleist makes it to the Met – as it should, but doubtless will not – he’ll never find as honest and accurate a bunch of critics as these children. They demanded an encore and duly got one. Thus armed by the uplifting qualities of great and practical art, I deposited my own kids with friends and cycled through the gathering downpour towards the Brandenburg Gate to see if I would indeed be able to exercise my highly developed skills at Schadenfreude. What right-thinking visitor to Berlin would not similarly yearn for a wash-out of the Americans’ Big Show? The German newspapers were for the most part negative in their reaction to the American Embassy, designed by Buzz Yudell and John Ruble back in 1995, and radically adjusted—and shrunk—in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, not to mention the Nairobi attack of 1998, and the obsessive security concerns of American embassies the world over.</p>
<p>Snuggling ostentatiously alongside the Brandenburg Gate, the completed American Embassy fills in the last open spot on the Parisier Platz.&#160; While the German architecture critics hammered the new building, allow me to strike a momentarily defensive tone and point out that it isn’t as bad as the ersatz fortress of the French Embassy across the plaza, though Jens Bisky, writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung was certainly right to complain about the entrance to the new American building with its goofy little S-shaped canopy. Bisky complained that this dumb detail makes the building&#160; look like ‚“a provincial swimming pool.“&#160; My answer to that: “is there anything more American than an provincial swimming pool?“</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Tagespiegel, the West Berlin newspaper of Cold War vintage and viewpoints, saw promise in the building, while recognizing some of the silliness in its already dated brand of flippant post-modernism. Putting a brave face on things, Stephan-Andreas Casdorf argued that although the building looked like a “Court House in Fresno“ – believe me, it doesn’t – it nonetheless helped to make a now–complete set of buildings flanking the Brandenburg Gate a “friendly ensemble.“</p>
<p>Friendly if you a turn a blind eye to the sunken bollards that can spring up with the press of a button should terrorist tanks come blasting out of the heavily forested Tiegarten park across the street.</p>
<p>What no one seems to ask is why there is an embassy in the first place. In this age of high-definition communications and jet travel what real purpose can it serve.&#160; The New American Embassy is huge and one has to ask what all those people are doing in there, especially the ambassador himself, William R. Timken, Jr. a fat-cat industrialist and former chairman of the National Manufacturers’ Association. He’s been in the job for almost three years and still doesn’t speak any German. &#160;One can hardly imagine that his is a nuanced approached to diplomacy at any level. In an interview published today in the special insert on the Embassy published in the Tagespiegel, Timken had the diplomatic sensitivity to argue that it was a good thing that the old Blücher Palace had been conveniently destroyed by allied bombs, so that the glorious new embassy could be designed and built on the cleared spot.&#160; Apparently oblivious to the heated discussions over the last several years in Germany surrounding the saturation bombing that destroyed nearly two hundred&#160;of the country’s &#160;cities, Timken would unlikely be forgiven if he similarly thanked Osama for clearing away the loathsome Two Towers to allow a fresh architectural start for that expensive piece of real estate at the tip of Manhattan.</p>
<p>Himself a puppet, Timken would be advised to work on his German by spending his mornings at the Hans Wurst Theater and ask himself why a singing donkey on his way to Bremen has more to contribute to this city and to the world than he does.</p>
<p>DAVID YEARSLEY teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of <a href="" type="internal">Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint</a>His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by <a href="http://www.musicaomnia.org/index2.htm" type="external">Musica Omni</a>. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:dgy2@cornell.edu" type="external">dgy2@cornell.edu</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Rubbert Shines, as US Envoy Puts Foot in His Mouth | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/07/05/rubbert-shines-as-us-envoy-puts-foot-in-his-mouth/ | 2008-07-05 | 4 |
<p>“Capitalism is nothing more than a bandit’s practice.”</p>
<p>—Alain Badiou</p>
<p>In Tired City, Tim Hortons urges you to wear a red poppy on the Day of Remembrance.</p>
<p>The interface between Tired City and its deepraged others shifts daily, hourly.&#160; There are consolidations, losses, reprises up and down the line.&#160; The line itself is serpentine, labile, legion.&#160; Hot spots shimmer in and out of existence.</p>
<p>Two legs jut from beneath a Toronto cement truck like those of a witch under a displaced Kansas home.&#160; These legs suggest what is at stake besides witches.&#160; The drum of the stopped truck spins idly.&#160; From the cement-truck scene there are laments for content but not quite yet for form.&#160; The foreground screams will yield to that high thin keening punctuated with the delight that is another way entirely.&#160; But not now.&#160; A white ghost bike will be locked near the scene as a memorial and linger for a while.</p>
<p>Tired City is the urban avatar of the empire and to the extent that it is the empire it must grow or die.&#160; It exudes a destiny manifest in stone, of a necessary, incontestable evil, a fixed law of democracy and of leaders by which we all must supposedly abide.&#160; Its consolatory speech is of lesser evil and donuts.</p>
<p>Tired City is the law of increase.</p>
<p>But the very fact of its growth signals to the peds that if Tired City grows, it is not today what it was yesterday.&#160; It is essentially unstable, though its facades and halls of justice imply otherwise, though these structures tender sermons in stone that the media and priests parrot to the masses.&#160; “It has always been thus,” say the ministers, congratulating themselves on their pragmatism.&#160; “A globe speaks only to itself, comes round only upon itself, completes the logic of itself.&#160; The system is closed.”</p>
<p>It is the way of the world, imply the ministers, many of whom are professors and who therefore profess.&#160; It is the way of world.&#160; A globe is a law to itself, curving back on itself forever.&#160; Globalization…happens.&#160; What can you do?</p>
<p>At the sign of the tree’d pothole no tree yet grows in the city.&#160; It appears that failure will be with us always, though we have no banner but this tree.&#160; It is not the leaders merely but the people themselves, each with their leaders established in their minds as a fixed idea, who will knock down any tree planted in a pothole, even at this late hour in the history of the world.&#160; “It has always been thus.”&#160; The claims of Tired City appear to come from without, from the sensorium.&#160; But Tired City is also within—a full replica of that dull city is reproduced wherever it is needed, and its destiny is manifest in the mind.&#160; “Take me to our leader,” demands the citizen, who is herself a little franchise, who is himself the round world in little. &#160;“Take me away from…here.”</p>
<p>Even the bicycles are conscripted into the anxious groupie temporality of Tired City.&#160; They roll along in the spillways while the dashes and hyphens of fantasized protection sputter in and out of existence: “bike lanes.”&#160; The riders of the bikes accept their place as annotation in the margins of the main text of Tired City.&#160; Fight and flight merge, become a single sustained response from the tired wannabees.&#160; The city attenuates as its spacetime is stretched by all these exertions.&#160; Unless, like Manhattan, it is on an island that will keep it compressed, the city will become boring as the tires insist on their dull stretch into suburbs.&#160; Attenuation.</p>
<p>Suburban drivers fatten into their vehicles, become skinned by the plasteel. &#160;Minivans are the exoskeletons of a new creature.&#160; On city streets ravaged by suburban drivers the peds peer through smoked glass to see flesh extrusions, lappings, puddlings.&#160; The flesh like liquid takes the shape of its container, jostles into crannies and nooks of the pods.</p>
<p>On go the cyclists, next to their thick-tired superiors.&#160; Tires too thin for obstacles at these speeds betray riders from time to time, and they tumble into hastily arranged tableaux of embarrassment or death, arms akimbo.&#160; In shame and death, the pedalers are peds once more, their feet touching the earth without the mediation of tires.</p>
<p>The spin doctors of Tired City go round and round.&#160; Rubber hits roads hauled halfworlds in liquiform on tankers, to coagulate here onto ravines and urban wetlands like warblood.</p>
<p>Still the sun shines.</p>
<p>And where the sun shines, the system exceeds itself.&#160; The stretch marks in the dried black desert blood of the streets tell the same story, of excess, tumult, instability.&#160; Not cracks merely, but a trillion microfissures, a whole skein of undoing cut through the xyz of the scab cluster.&#160; A proportional prophecy, precisely as immense as the system.</p>
<p>Henry Ford sent an emissary to the jungle for rubber for his tires, and there was madness, and the jungle thrust back.</p>
<p>You think we’re being poetic?&#160; Then consider the theme of rage lashed into the cadences and syntax of this poem: the last driver hung in the entrails of the first minister.&#160; We have our dead, and we have grown bold, if not sinister.</p>
<p>Failure for us is nearly certain, except for this:</p>
<p>Growth, for Tired City, is a need, and is a need not, after all, just another lack, a puncture, a bleed?&#160; Tired City has been with us for generations now, and we have forgotten that Tired City is a radical upstart, born in crisis, lurching from mishap to mishap, feeding on desert blood to thrive, a congeries of overcorrections.</p>
<p>Taking one to know one, Tired City calls one who fights it a “radical.”&#160; But Tired City is neither the earth nor the Earth, and it does not have the temporality of stone, of slow, solid permanent things long situated in their ecosystems.&#160; It is a tire on a wheel—no more stable than that.&#160; True, it has an internal logic, as do all things circular.&#160; But like any wheel, it is rampant.&#160; Its trajectory is the career, the careen, the car embedded in its primary syllables, its prime mandate.</p>
<p>The long argument is not so long, seen in the light of such instability.&#160; Not so long.</p>
<p>So long.</p>
<p>Up and down the line the peds, who are dangerous in a way not anticipated in the dualistic creeds of the ministers, who see only “with us or against us,” are un-inventing the wheel.&#160; Utopianists, practical as paydirt, are un-inventing the wheel.&#160; What will happen next is foretold in the cracks, but also in the prophecy of past deeds.</p>
<p>In seed form, the tree that will tree the first pothole is gathering itself, preparing to grow toward its own symbol, to become in fact what it has been as latency, as beautiful idea.&#160; In the meantime all that is not Tired City comes to its own sort of fruition in the undesignated spaces, not just in the margins but in all manner of strange inward parts, envaginated bits, pockets, vacuums in space with as-yet undisclosed and difficult-to-characterize histories.&#160; Some leaderless, unquantifiable city other than the exhausted one is already in our midst.</p>
<p>And it is good.</p>
<p>David Ker Thomson is a once-and-future professor at the University of Toronto.&#160; <a href="mailto:Dave.thomson@utoronto.ca" type="external">Dave.thomson@utoronto.ca</a></p>
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<p /> | The Long Argument | true | https://counterpunch.org/2010/11/05/the-long-argument/ | 2010-11-05 | 4 |
<p>The measure hasn't even been approved, but the town of Deer Trail, Colo., has more applications for drone hunting licenses than it can process - nearly 1,000 at last count.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Voters in Deer Trail will decide whether to allow the controversial idea of issuing hunting licenses to shoot down U.S. military drones next month, according to <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/town-inundated-applications-drone-hunting-permits-8C11087011" type="external">NBC News</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="" type="internal">idea was brought to the town</a> board by resident Phillip Steel, who drafted an ordinance that would create hunting licenses and offer bounties for anyone who shoots a drone down in the community, located about 60 miles east of Denver.</p>
<p>Steel is opposed to drones of any type flying over his town, but&#160;since it is against the law to destroy federal property, he said it is probably merely a symbolic ordinance.</p>
<p>After the town board failed to decide the matter in a tie vote of 3-3, the measure was moved to a vote of the 380&#160;voters in Deer Trail, according to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/07/colo-town-board-votes-on-drone-hunting-proposal/" type="external">Fox News</a>.</p>
<p>Town Clerk Kim Oldfield said the town has been inundated with applications for the permits. She has received $25 checks per application from all over the country - and from as far away as Great Britain and Canada.</p>
<p>"I stopped counting when it hit 985," she said, according to NBC News. "Our intention is really not to allow people to shoot things out of the sky."</p>
<p>Oldfield is holding the uncashed checks until voters decide the issue, and if it doesn't pass, the payments will be returned.</p>
<p>Steel said that while some see the proposed ordinance as a novelty, he is serious about the surveillance aspect. He has already sold about 150 permits online and donated part of the proceeds to the town.</p> | Colorado town overwhelmed with drone hunting license requests | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2013/09/07/colorado-town-overwhelmed-with-drone-hunting-license-requests-82874 | 2013-09-07 | 0 |
<p>TOLEDO (OH)Toledo Blade By <a href="mailto:yonke@theblade.com" type="external">DAVID YONKE</a> BLADE RELIGION EDITORA social worker employed by a local Catholic parish has been reprimanded by the state for saying that a man who claims her parish priest abused him "could be a threat to children."Trina Shultz improperly used her credentials when she wrote a letter to Jon Schoonmaker in defense of the Rev. Joseph Schmelzer, according to a ruling by the Ohio counselor and social worker board.Mr. Schoonmaker’s allegations of sexual abuse against Father Schmelzer, pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Van Wert, led to the priest being put on a leave of absence in January while a church tribunal investigates the charges.Ms. Shultz, a St. Mary’s parishioner, has been a licensed social worker since 1986 and serves as a pastoral associate at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Delphos, Ohio.The state board said in its May 16 reprimand that she violated professional standards when she wrote in a Feb. 16 letter that Mr. Schoonmaker could be a threat to children because of his anger. The board ruled she "had never performed any professional evaluation or assessments in reaching this conclusion."</p> | Woman rebuked for letter to victim Social worker called priest accuser a threat | false | https://poynter.org/news/woman-rebuked-letter-victim-social-worker-called-priest-accuser-threat | 2003-05-29 | 2 |
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<p>Upon discovering the massive trading blunder now rocking his company, Jamie Dimon grew queasy and pushed JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) into disaster mode, including setting up a war room and sending out a financial SWAT team, according to a published report.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The behind-the-scenes account shows how concerned execs at the No. 1 U.S. bank by assets were about the failed hedging strategy, which it disclosed last week has led to more than $2 billion in losses in just weeks.</p>
<p>"The big lesson I learned: Don't get complacent despite a successful track record," Dimon told The Wall Street Journal. "No one or no unit can get a free pass."</p>
<p>According to the Journal, Dimon lashed out on April 30 at colleagues who handed him summaries and analyses of the losses by the bank’s chief investment office. Throwing down the papers, he yelled, “I want to see the positions!...Now! I want to see everything!”</p>
<p>Ina Drew, the chief of the CIO, was eventually ousted last week in the wake of the disclosure.</p>
<p>JPMorgan relied on the CIO to hedge its massive exposures, but the office expanded in recent years into essentially massive directional bets. Tellingly, last year risk-control caps were removed that had required traders to exit position when losses exceeded $20 million, however Dimon wasn’t aware of those changes, the Journal reported.</p>
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<p>According to the paper, in an April 9 operating-committee meeting, Dimon questioned Drew about a Journal story breaking the CIO’s massive positions, but she told the group the trades would work out, saying: “We can ride this out.”</p>
<p>Those reassurances led to Dimon’s infamous statement to investors on an April 13 earnings call that concerns about the CIO trades were a “complete tempest in a teapot.”</p>
<p>Despite those comments, the CIO’s books were registering losses at the end of April and into early May of about $200 million a day, a source who had a direct conversation with Dimon told FOX Business’s Charles Gasparino.</p>
<p>Dimon delayed disclosing the losses in a scheduled quarterly filing on April 27 because he didn’t have a full understanding of the impact of the trades, the Journal said.</p>
<p>After growing frustrated with daily summaries of the losses, Dimon demanded to see specific positions on April 30, which led him to grow queasy, the Journal reported.</p>
<p>Dimon, who was leaving sleep over the matter, set up a war room on the 48th floor of JPMorgan’s Park Avenue headquarters in Manhattan that was led by risk chief John Hogan, the paper said.</p>
<p>The following week JPMorgan also staged a mock conference call with investors for Dimon, quizzing him on the losses. Senior execs came in on Mother’s Day to help set up a SWAT team gathering documents to respond to a slew of probes into the losses.</p>
<p>The disaster has helped wipe out more than $25 billion of JPMorgan’s market cap so far. Shares of the big bank slid 0.45% to $33.78 Friday morning, leaving them up less than 2% on the year.</p> | Report: JPMorgan, Dimon Leaped into Disaster Mode Over CIO Blunder | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/05/18/report-jpmorgan-dimon-leaped-into-disaster-mode-over-cio-blunder.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
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<p>A sign reading “Stop the Transcanada Pipeline” stands in a field near Bradshaw, Neb., along the Keystone XL pipeline route through the state. (The Associated Press)</p>
<p>The Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to rule within weeks on whether the Nebraska Public Service Commission must review the pipeline before it can cross the state, one of six on the pipeline’s route. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman gave the green light in January 2013 without the panel’s involvement.</p>
<p>The commission’s possible role is part of the tangled legal and political history of the pipeline and raises questions about whether it will continue to be snagged even if the Senate votes to approve it next week as expected. The House voted 252-161 Friday to move forward with the project. President Barack Obama, who has delayed a decision pending the resolution of the Nebraska issue, has not said whether he would sign the legislation.</p>
<p>The proposed crude-oil pipeline, which would run 1,179 miles from the Canadian tar sands to Gulf coast refineries, has been the subject of a fierce struggle between environmentalists and energy advocates ever since Calgary-based TransCanada proposed it in 2008.</p>
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<p>“I don’t know if they think they can just override Nebraska,” said Randy Thompson, one of three landowners who filed suit to challenge the state’s approval process. “If we win our case, I assume TransCanada is going to have to go back to the drawing board.”</p>
<p>A district court in February ruled that a law that gave Heineman the authority to approve the project ran afoul of Nebraska’s constitution.</p>
<p>While there’s no way to tell how the Nebraska Supreme Court will rule on the issue, the justices tend to defer to the lower courts’ decisions, said Anthony Schutz, a University of Nebraska associate law professor.</p>
<p>“The separation of powers argument is a pretty powerful argument,” Schutz said. “We’ve spent a lot of time since the early 1900s finding ways to distribute executive power, and the governor is left with a fairly limited realm of authority.”</p>
<p>The high court has two justices appointed by Heineman, a Republican, and five by former Democratic Gov. Ben Nelson.</p>
<p>Project supporters say the pipeline should now be ready to go forward even if TransCanada has to seek the state’s approval once again.</p>
<p>“We believe the federal government has taken entirely too long to make a decision. I don’t see any issue with the Senate voting on it and the president approving it” before the Nebraska issue is resolved, said Ron Kaminski, business manager for the Labors’ Local No. 1140, an Omaha-based union that supports the project.</p>
<p>The elected Nebraska Public Service Commission regulates “common carriers” used to transport goods, energy and people. The panel includes four Republicans and one Democrat. The commission generally takes about seven months to approve or deny an application, said Dave Domina, an attorney for the landowners.</p>
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<p>The Nebraska attorney general’s office has argued that the 2012 law was constitutional.</p>
<p>The resistance to the pipeline remains strongest in Nebraska on the pipeline’s route. Governments of the other states have been supportive, citing the construction jobs it would create. A majority of Nebraska residents now support the pipeline, according to independent surveys, but pipeline opponents say 115 of 515 Nebraska landowners along the proposed route have refused to sign agreements with the company.</p>
<p>Even if the project wins final approval, property owners want assurance that money will be set aside for land restoration in the event of any leaks, said Jane Kleeb, executive director of Bold Nebraska, a leading opposition group.</p>
<p>Kleeb said she’s still hopeful Obama will veto legislation that approves the Keystone XL.</p>
<p>“I have no option but to be optimistic,” Kleeb said. “These farmers are the reason I do this every day.”</p>
<p>Dan Frost, a Denver attorney who specializes in pipelines and infrastructure projects, said regulatory agencies like Nebraska’s Public Service Commission would subject a project to a more thorough review than a governor would.</p>
<p>“Generally speaking, they’re less politically charged and more technical in nature,” Frost said. “… I think they’re more inclined to look at the project’s technical merits.”</p>
<p />
<p /> | Obscure Neb. panel may hold sway over pipeline | false | https://abqjournal.com/497167/obscure-neb-panel-may-hold-sway-over-pipeline.html | 2 |
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<p>HARRISBURG, Ill. (AP) — The show will go on at a southern Illinois high school where theater props for "Seussical the Musical" were recently stolen.</p>
<p><a href="http://thesouthern.com/news/local/communities/harrisburg/after-set-pieces-stolen-the-show-will-go-on-for/article_3571feed-0a99-5981-a77e-3dfee59c4be5.html" type="external">The Southern Illinoisan</a> in Carbondale reports homemade props worth up to $15,000 were taken from a trailer, which was found empty in Pope County just before a theater festival.</p>
<p>Harrisburg High School was chosen to perform the Dr. Seuss-inspired musical at the Illinois High School Theatre Festival, which runs Jan. 11-13 at Illinois State University.</p>
<p>Once word spread, volunteers rebuilt sets, people gave donations and schools in other towns also pitched in.</p>
<p>The school has performed in the festival two other times. It's the first time they'll do a full musical production.</p>
<p>The students are putting on a free performance of the musical Tuesday to thank volunteers and donors.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Southern Illinoisan, <a href="http://www.southernillinoisan.com" type="external">http://www.southernillinoisan.com</a></p>
<p>HARRISBURG, Ill. (AP) — The show will go on at a southern Illinois high school where theater props for "Seussical the Musical" were recently stolen.</p>
<p><a href="http://thesouthern.com/news/local/communities/harrisburg/after-set-pieces-stolen-the-show-will-go-on-for/article_3571feed-0a99-5981-a77e-3dfee59c4be5.html" type="external">The Southern Illinoisan</a> in Carbondale reports homemade props worth up to $15,000 were taken from a trailer, which was found empty in Pope County just before a theater festival.</p>
<p>Harrisburg High School was chosen to perform the Dr. Seuss-inspired musical at the Illinois High School Theatre Festival, which runs Jan. 11-13 at Illinois State University.</p>
<p>Once word spread, volunteers rebuilt sets, people gave donations and schools in other towns also pitched in.</p>
<p>The school has performed in the festival two other times. It's the first time they'll do a full musical production.</p>
<p>The students are putting on a free performance of the musical Tuesday to thank volunteers and donors.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Southern Illinoisan, <a href="http://www.southernillinoisan.com" type="external">http://www.southernillinoisan.com</a></p> | Illinois high school to perform musical despite stolen props | false | https://apnews.com/amp/7928e7a9b2ae48488b0d6aa910585c88 | 2018-01-09 | 2 |
<p>Editor’s note: This story was edited after posting to correct an error.</p>
<p>By Bob Allen</p>
<p>After the weekend release of a missionary imprisoned two years for allegedly planning a “religious coup d’etat” in North Korea, a Southern Baptist Convention leader said that according to “a Christian worldview” the nation’s totalitarian regime should fall.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/11/10/the-briefing-11-09-14/" type="external">podcast</a> briefing Nov. 10, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., described North Korea’s view that American detainee Kenneth Bae’s work with a Christian evangelical organization posed a threat as more than just the delusion of a “paranoid state.”</p>
<p>“The North Korean regime is indeed paranoid, but when it comes to its opposition to Christianity, we might say the North Korean government is at least on this one issue thinking rather clearly,” Mohler said. “Because there is no worldview more directly at odds with the worldview of that paranoid state than the worldview of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”</p>
<p>On Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the release of both Bae, a Korean-American from Lynnwood, Wash., and fellow prisoner Matthew Todd Miller from Bakersfield, Calif. That came after James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, traveled to Pyongyang as an envoy of President Obama on a secret mission seeking their release.</p>
<p>The U.S. government facilitated their return to the United States on a government jet that landed late Saturday night at an Air Force base in Washington State. President Obama called it “a wonderful day for them and their families” and praised Clapper for “doing a great job on what was obviously a challenging mission.”</p>
<p>Miller, 25, was sentenced Sept. 14 to six years of forced labor for planning “hostile acts” of espionage under guise of seeking political asylum after reportedly tearing up his tourist visa.</p>
<p>Bae, 46, served two years of a 15-year sentence stemming from his arrest in November 2012 while leading a tour through his China-based business allegedly used as a front company to bring missionaries into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.</p>
<p>A spokesman for North Korea’s Supreme Court released a <a href="http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2013/201305/news09/20130509-15ee.html" type="external">statement</a> in 2013 alleging that between 2006 and October 2012 Bae “set up plot-breeding bases in different places of China for the purpose of toppling” the government.</p>
<p>The official said Bae committed “hostile acts” including preaching sermons critical of the North Korean government at churches in the U.S. and South Korea. He also allegedly planned to bring in at least 250 students trained as missionaries on tourist visas in a project called “Operation Jericho,” named after the story in the Book of Joshua about Israelite spies who infiltrated the ancient city of Jericho prior to its conquest.</p>
<p>After his sentencing, Bae’s sister <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/world/asia/north-korea-american-sentenced" type="external">said</a> on CNN that her brother “is not a spy” and never had any evil intentions toward North Korea or any other country. Upon his release, Bae’s family thanked the government of North Korea for allowing him to return home.</p>
<p>“We believe that God is with people who endure hardship, and that he never leaves them,” Bae’s sister Terri Chung said in a <a href="http://freekennow.com/its-finally-happening-kenneth-bae-is-coming-home/" type="external">statement</a> Nov. 8. “It is with great joy and with thankfulness to God to see Kenneth released. Our family could not have been sustained without the knowledge that Kenneth was in God’s care, when it seemed we were helpless to do anything.”</p>
<p>Over the weekend Bae’s sister <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kenneth-bae-bears-no-anger-after-two-years-north-korean-n244751" type="external">told</a> media that her brother “still has a tremendous heart for North Korea” and “bears no ill will” toward the country that locked him up.</p>
<p>Mohler said Bae “was not planning a religious coup d’état in the political sense, but any Christian looking at the nation of&#160; North Korea has to hope that there will be a toppling of that regime, not only for the good, the flourishing and the freedom of the people there, but also for the freedom of preaching the gospel,” Mohler said.</p>
<p>Previous stories:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">North Korea sends South Korean Baptist missionary to labor camp</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Obama stresses religious freedom at prayer breakfast</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">State of the Union draws attention to U.S. missionary jailed in North Korea</a></p> | SBC leader says North Korea partly right about Kenneth Bae | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/sbc-leader-says-north-korea-partly-right-about-kenneth-bae/ | 3 |
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<p>Many workers may dream about retiring on Waikiki Beach or the South of France one day, but high-priced, urban centers and tourist hotspots are unrealistic for many retirees on fixed incomes. One way to stretch your nest egg is to move to a less popular, more affordable area. About 11% of 55 to 64 year-olds said they planned to buy a different home within the next three years, according to a 2009 survey by MetLife Mature Market Institute. About 6% had definite plans to buy sometime after that and 12% weren't sure if they would. AARP Magazine helps retirees decide in its 2011 Most Affordable Cities for Retirement list. Magazine staff combed financial data for more than 350 American cities in search of the best communities for older people with particular emphasis on housing cost, cost of living, unemployment rate, tax rates and economic stability, says Editor Gabrielle Redford. “But we also considered other factors since we wanted to make sure these cities were liveable as well,” she says. That means climate, recreation, crime, health resources, airport accessibility, mass transit and arts and culture are also important determiners. Here's a roundup of their picks (in no particular order) and why they make sense for retirees.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Ten Affordable Cities to Retire in the U.S. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/slideshow/personal-finance/2011/08/23/ten-affordable-cities-to-retire-in-us.html | 2017-02-08 | 0 |
<p>In her review of Michael Novak’s autobiography&#160;Writing from Left to Right: My Journey from Liberal to Conservative, my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Mary Eberstadt&#160; <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/359605/catholic-all-seasons" type="external">writes</a>:</p>
<p>Throughout his writing, he embraces lines of argument and alternative ideas, admiringly turning them this way and that, with an intellectual openness rare to see—especially among intellectuals.</p>
<p>This quality of intellectual openness–in areas ranging from politics and political philosophy to religious faith–is among the more impressive qualities an individual can possess. And among the most rare as well.</p>
<p>I say that because most of us, to one degree or another, struggle to maintain genuine intellectual open-mindedness. By that I mean we approach a subject with a particular point of view–and once we settle on it we’re very reluctant to revisit our judgments&#160;and the empirical basis for them.</p>
<p>For example, choose a subject on which you have strong opinions–the Affordable Care Act, the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, same-sex marriage,&#160;Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, climate change, educational choice and teacher unions, gun control, tax rates, income inequality, and more –and think about how you react to the best arguments of those with whom you disagree and new evidence that seems to weaken your claims. (Hint: The odds are better than not that it will be negative rather than positive, hostile rather than intrigued, defensive rather than engaged.)</p>
<p>The flip side of this is confirmation bias, the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs and hypotheses. The instantaneous reaction most of us have when our views are challenged is to (a) go out in search of arguments and data to refute those who challenge our views and (b) selectively embrace information that restores and re-validates our pre-existing views.</p>
<p>Now there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, and there can be a lot right with it. The back-and-forth can create a dialectic in which truth can emerge. Nor am I arguing that people should live in a state of perennial doubt and uncertainty when it comes to basic worldviews. We all need to place an interpretive frame around a set of facts, experiences and observations. And of course none of us have the time or energy to research in detail, and on an on-going basis, our views on dozens and dozens of different matters. We often defer to experts whom we trust. What complicates matters even more is that, as the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, emotional intuition is the “elephant” and rational deliberation is the “rider”–with reason usually the servant to one’s own intuitions.</p>
<p>Intuition, it needs to be said, is not only powerful, it’s valuable. It can detect things that are beyond our intellect and help shape our moral sense. “The heart has its reasons which reason itself does not know,” Pascal&#160; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pascals-Pensees-Blaise-Pascal/dp/1484076206" type="external">wrote</a>. The problem is when we hold to a view that actually&#160;does&#160;require amendment or revision. How open are we to do so; and at what point, if any, are we willing to re-examine what we thought to be true? And do we understand that even the truths we see are only partial truths, that we can see things in part but never in whole?</p>
<p>If we close off the possibility of change, self-reflection, and even self-criticism, then we are subordinating truth to ideology. We will disfigure reality in the service of dogmatism. And there is quite enough of that going on already.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.</p> | Subordinating Truth to Ideology | false | https://eppc.org/publications/subordinating-truth-to-ideology/ | 1 |
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<p><a href="//videos/37/62585" type="external" /></p>
<p>RUSH: We have Tom in Columbia, Missouri. Hi, Tom. Great to have you on the program. Hello.</p>
<p>CALLER: Hey, Rush, I will say fellow former Overland Park, Kansas, resident. Dittos.</p>
<p>RUSH: Thank you. I used to live there — and you did, too, obviously.</p>
<p>CALLER: Yes, sir. Rush, there’s a hundred things I could to talk to you about, but I will tell you that I’m a grandson of Patrick Henry — a great, great, a lot of great-grandsons.</p>
<p>RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait! Whoa. You are the great grandson of “Give me liberty or give me death” Patrick Henry?</p>
<p>CALLER: Yes, that’s correct.</p>
<p>RUSH: No kidding?</p>
<p>CALLER: That’s correct. Rush, my wife and I, we don’t have any kids, so your children’s books… We listened to the first one on a road trip. We really enjoyed it. <a href="http://www.rushrevere.com/index.php" type="external">The Rush Revere and The First Patriots</a> was in my Kindle queue for quite awhile, for several weeks. I finally got around to reading it a couple days ago. Rush, I know this is a children’s book, but this book had a profound impact on me.</p>
<p>RUSH: Really? That’s cool.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>CALLER: Your conversations with Patrick Henry? You brought him to life. If there’s one person that I could go back and talk to in history it would be him, and the way you brought him to life in this book? Rush, it made me feel like I was sitting there listening to your conversation, and you made him exactly how I thought he would be.</p>
<p>RUSH: Oh, wow. You do not know… I’ve got chills and tingles going up my spine here. This is just… You can’t possibly know how you’ve made my day here.</p>
<p>CALLER: Well, Rush, it made my day when I read that. So I just wanted to tell you that. I’m glad I got through to tell you that. Seriously, Rush, you do not know. It was just the profound impact.</p>
<p>RUSH: It’s just mind-boggling.</p>
<p>CALLER: I had to go back and read through it again, and I was disappointed when you had him in Virginia. When that conversation, that meeting was done, I was like, “No, this can’t be all,” and then when you were back with him in Philadelphia, I was thrilled.</p>
<p>RUSH: That’s right. Look, hang on. I want to send you the new book when it comes out. Mr. Snerdley needs to get your address. Do not hang up, Tom.</p>
<p>BREAK TRANSCRIPT</p>
<p>RUSH: I want to go back for just a moment here and talk about our last caller, Tom, from Columbia, Missouri, the great, great grandson of Patrick Henry. I don’t have the words to tell you what his call meant to me and to all of us that work on the Rush Revere Adventure Series. We’re a tight little team with our heads down and doing a whole lot of work to get these books right, make sure the mission survives in each one of them and so forth.</p>
<p>His call was exactly what we are trying to do. We want to bring these great figures from American history to life for people so that they can actually experience who these people were. Not just read about them in a dry, abstract way, in a recounting of history kind of way, but actually go back to these seminal events in American history and take children, our primary target audience, back to these events and let them live them in ways that they can understand and enjoy and be inspired by.</p>
<p>Here is the great, great grandson of Patrick Henry, an adult, who was moved by the books in exactly the way that we are trying to achieve. I hope you’ll forgive me for talking about this. You might think it’s somewhat of a private matter, but how good that makes me feel, all of us who work on these books feel, because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here. His reaction to it, personal for him, being that Patrick Henry is his great great-grandfather, but brought him back to life.</p>
<p><a href="" type="external" />These are great people. These were crucially important people. And we want everybody to know them, who they were, what they sacrificed, what they believed in, what they gave up, what they contributed and so forth. I mentioned the other day, we’ve got a Rush Revere Facebook page. It’s been out there for a while, but we’re really pumping it now. It’s <a href="" type="external">Facebook.com/RushRevere</a>. We want this page to have something for everyone. We’re going to have personal interviews, behind the scenes lesson plans and so forth. If you go there today, for example, you’ll see a green post for Destination Education.</p>
<p>Our goal is to create free downloadable lesson plans for parents and teachers and families to use to continue education in American history. To go beyond the books. You know, use the books as a starting point or as a reference, source material, and to have them essentially be a launching pad for people that want to know more and to make that more available. Right there at the Facebook page.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.rushrevere.com/index.php" type="external">Rush Revere website</a> is up and running, and that has got its own content as well which is related to the characters in the book, in the series. Young readers and fans can send e-mails to the characters and get replies from Liberty the Talking Horse, many people’s favorite character and so forth.</p>
<p>So it’s a really rewarding thing when I get phone calls like that. A, I’m thankful they got through, that Tom got through. The second thing I’m thankful for is that Snerdley allowed the call through. You never know, some people don’t bring it off when they call and they get rejected. It’s just one of those things that happens. But this all worked out and the guy made it through. He was just fantastic. We ran out of time with him, up against the well-known hard break. I could not be flexible by even a second. So, again, thanks to Tom in Columbia.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the third book has just been announced and it’s out there for pre-order now. Rush Revere and the American Revolution, and we can’t wait for this one to hit. We are so excited because this is a two-fer. It’s the usual Rush Revere Adventure Series, which goes back in time to seminal events in the American Revolution. But we combine a modern-day story with it in dedication to the US military.</p>
<p>So many children of military families have a tough time dealing with Mom or Dad being deployed for long periods of time. And despite knowing that Mom and Dad are in the military, it’s still tough, the separation is tough. Sometimes these kids feel personally abandoned, even though their instincts tell them that’s not what’s happening. They have a tough time dealing with it. When I found out this was a real event, a real thing that happens to a lot of military families, we incorporated a story with one of the characters whose father is deployed to Afghanistan.</p>
<p>He’s one of the time travelers, one of the students in Rush Revere’s history course who time travels with the crew. He learns via American history what his dad today is doing and how important it is. I don’t want to give the whole story away, obviously, the character is Cam, but we’re so excited about this. We love the military so much. We’re just in literal awe of what they do. So the next book is a tribute and a dedication to them as well as the standard mission of teaching the truth of American history to young people.</p> | A Descendant of Patrick Henry! | true | http://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/10/15/a_descendant_of_patrick_henry | 2014-10-15 | 0 |
<p>Saddam Hussein’s American nurse, in an interview with his hometown paper, revealed what life was like for the former dictator during his <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6222159.stm" type="external">last years</a>. He would save scraps from his meals for birds, tend to a patch of weeds and once asked why the U.S. had invaded, saying: “The laws in Iraq were fair and the weapons inspectors didn’t find anything.”</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p>[Master Sgt. Robert] Ellis, from St. Louis, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Saddam Hussein was held in a six-foot by eight-foot cell with a cot, table, two plastic chairs and two wash basins.</p>
<p>When he was allowed to go outside, Saddam Hussein saved bread scraps from his meals to feed to the birds, Sgt. Ellis said.</p>
<p />
<p>The former leader also watered a patch of weeds.</p>
<p>“He said he was a farmer when he was young and he never forgot where he came from,” Sgt. Ellis said.</p>
<p>He said Saddam Hussein never gave him trouble and complained little.</p>
<p>“He had very good coping skills,” Sgt. Ellis said.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6222159.stm" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Saddam the Gardener | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/saddam-the-gardener/ | 2007-01-01 | 4 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>From <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/13/protesters-counter-protesters-clash-in-downtown-seattle.html" type="external">Fox News</a>:</p>
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<p>Seattle police have made a string of arrests and confiscated weapons as opposing groups of protesters converged downtown on Sunday.</p>
<p>As hundreds gathered in the area, police ordered the protesters and counter-protesters in the area to disperse. Officers used pepper spray and “blast balls,” similar to flash-bang grenades, in an effort to keep the two groups away from each other, The Seattle Times reported.</p>
<p>One rally was organized by pro-Trump group Patriot Prayer. The counter-protest was planned by Solidarity Against Hate. Both events were planned prior to Saturday’s deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va.</p>
<p>A barricade separated the two groups in downtown Seattle, where law enforcement stood by dressed in riot gear. It’s unclear exactly how many arrests they made.</p>
<p>People carrying signs opposing the KKK and showing support for Charlottesville marched to downtown Seattle where the Patriot Prayer’s rally was stationed, rallying in support of free speech and freedom.</p>
<p>The pro-Trump group has held similar events throughout the Pacific Northwest, often drawing counter-protesters. …</p>
<p>Charlottesville descended into violence Saturday after neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members and other white nationalists gathered to “take America back” and oppose plans to remove a Confederate statue in the Virginia college town, and hundreds of other people came to protest the rally. The groups clashed in street brawls, with hundreds of people throwing punches, hurling water bottles and beating each other with sticks and shields.</p>
<p>Eventually, a car rammed into a peaceful crowd of anti-white-nationalist protesters, killing a woman. A state police helicopter monitoring the events crashed into the woods, killing two troopers. In all, dozens of people were injured. The cause of the crash is under investigation.</p>
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<p>What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.</p> | CHART: How The Liberal Media Reacts To Tragedy | true | http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/chart-liberal-media-reacts-tragedy | 0 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ These New Mexico lotteries were drawn Monday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>4-4-5</p>
<p>(four, four, five)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>3-1-6</p>
<p>(three, one, six)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $62 million</p>
<p>Roadrunner Cash</p>
<p>07-09-21-22-33</p>
<p>(seven, nine, twenty-one, twenty-two, thirty-three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $31,000</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ These New Mexico lotteries were drawn Monday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>4-4-5</p>
<p>(four, four, five)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>3-1-6</p>
<p>(three, one, six)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $62 million</p>
<p>Roadrunner Cash</p>
<p>07-09-21-22-33</p>
<p>(seven, nine, twenty-one, twenty-two, thirty-three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $31,000</p> | NM Lottery | false | https://apnews.com/amp/87a474d8f8cb41cc8a7b76310b537ee8 | 2018-01-16 | 2 |
<p>There is never a dull moment at UCLA when the liberals and loonies are out. On Thursday, a woman was spotted in front of the UCLA library protesting for abortion “on demand” and complaining that women are “enslaved by their reproductive systems.”</p>
<p>The unidentified pro-abortion protester wore white pants with red marks to look like she bled in them while holding a sign that read, “Abortion on demand and without apology.”</p>
<p>Click on the link below for the video:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">img_5499.mov</a></p>
<p>The woman's rant went like this:</p>
<p>Abortion is not murder and women are not state-regulated incubators. Women should have safe, legal and accessible rights to abortion. Otherwise they are simply state regulated incubators and they are enslaved to their reproductive systems and reduced to merely breeders. people who are fighting against abortion are not fighting for the lives of babies. They are fighting to enslave women to Dark Ages ideology. The people who are fighting against abortion are also fighting against birth control, contraceptives and sex education. People who stand outside of abortion clinics and prevent women from getting access to abortion kneel on their knees and pray, “Dear God please take this curse of independence away from women.” In these words you can tell that the argument is not about babies. it is about keeping women from being independent and [inaudible] autonomous human beings. Without this basic right, women cannot be free. Abortion on demand and without apology.</p>
<p>Haley Nieves, a second-year political science major and Bruin Republicans board member, told The Daily Wire she saw the protest on her way to class but it was over before she could talk to the woman with the bloody pants.</p>
<p>“The most interesting thing was that plenty of pro-choice people were even disgusted by her because they thought that her slogan of ‘abortion on demand’ was too radical,” Nieves said.</p>
<p>UCLA students are currently enrolled in their third week of the academic winter quarter.</p> | WATCH: It's Just An Ordinary Day For Looney Pro-Abortion Protesters at UCLA ... | true | https://dailywire.com/news/2808/watch-its-just-ordinary-day-looney-pro-abortion-pardes-seleh | 2016-01-21 | 0 |
<p>A traffic pileup shut down part of a Michigan highway Friday as an estimated 30 to 40 vehicles crashed, flipped or spun out amid whiteout conditions and a slippery roadway.</p>
<p>At least five people were hospitalized in the wake of the smash-up, most with minor injuries — although one person may have a head wound, Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski said.</p>
<p>"The snow was making the roads very slippery," Mioduszewski said, adding that rescue crews were at the scene and that authorities were draining track-trailers' diesel fuel tanks before pulling them from the road.</p>
<p>Mioduszewski said the north- and southbound lanes of US 127 have been closed. Authorities expect the stretch of the highway between Alma and Mount Pleasant to be closed for several hours. The route is a main artery in the central part of the state.</p>
<p>This is a developing story. Please check back for more updates.</p> | Traffic Pileup Snarls Michigan Highway | false | http://nbcnews.com/news/us-news/traffic-pileup-snarls-michigan-highway-n35756 | 2014-02-21 | 3 |
<p>The current strike wave in Vietnam can be traced to a seemingly benign statement by Adidas officials last year, attempting to explain a sharp increase in profitability. Since the German shoe giant’s acquisition of the Reebok brand, it gained new leverage over supplier factories. This predatory relationship with the mainly Taiwanese and S. Korean sports shoe manufacturers collided with a rising rate of inflation, bringing the near-subsistence wage to a level workers would not tolerate.</p>
<p>The largest indirect employer of Vietnamese workers is the Nike brand. Last December, the company told producers of a U.S. television documentary that there had recently been 10 strikes in its 35 supplier factories; since that time, 31,000 more contract-workers have launched strikes–one over forced overtime and the other for higher pay. Indeed, fully 85% of strikes in Vietnam have taken place in foreign-investment factories producing for export, according to government figures.</p>
<p>The documentary aired by CNBC went on to quote observers averring that Nike was the corporate-responsibility “gold standard” amongst shoe and apparel companies. How to explain this paradox? A good bit of the problem is related to how the “sweatshop” story has been (mis)reported over the last decade.</p>
<p>When Hannah Jones, the top CSR person at Nike had to deal with the wages question, she merely scolded the CNBC reporter for asking: “there is no magic wand” and, “we don’t think there’s anything, you know, that you can suddenly do overnight like flipping the switch and artificially hiking wages in factories.”</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is that this former BBC staffer almost never has to deal with the media and it is extremely rare for the company to be asked about wages paid to its 900,000 mostly-Asian contract employees; the triumph of PR/Corporate Social Responsibility is “re-defining ‘success.'” For example, Nike won an award last month for producing the “best CSR report,” according to a recent “news” story.</p>
<p>Indeed, Ms. Jones spends her days holding court, so to speak, as THE top global practitioner in the burgeoning CSR field, addressing audiences all over the world on corporate citizenship, the triple bottom line, incentivizing suppliers and creating systemic changes. She’s a rock star in the PR/CSR biz. With such a strike wave going on, one would think that Ms. Jones would be more earnest–rather than patronizing and dismissive. (And non-responsive, it must be said.)</p>
<p>The documentary team left the real story on the cutting-room floor–brave workers standing up to brutal bosses in a system with no tolerance for independent unions. They had interviewed workers sacked–and jailed overnight – for leading the forced overtime strike but did not use it in the nine-minute segment on Nike’s Vietnam suppliers.</p>
<p>A few months ago on the day before I arrived in Vietnam to talk with workers, four leaders of the banned “United Workers &amp; Farmers Organisation” were convicted of “posting to a reactionary web-site, abusing democracy and spreading distorted information to undermine the state”–the UFWO founder, Doan Van Dien, received a 4-year sentence.</p>
<p>At the factory which had a strike in April, twenty were forced to resign (meaning that they do not receive severance pay) and four were detained by security forces for passing out leaflets urging workers to hold out for the 20% raise they demanded instead of accepting a Party-run union agreement with management providing only 10%.</p>
<p>There could be many more disciplined for leading the resistance; the only information that I have comes from these two factories. Hopefully, the more courageous bloggers in that part of the world will soon begin to act as a conduit for information about fired activists and we can begin some cross-border solidarity efforts.</p>
<p>JEFF BALLINGER is teaching and researching industrial relations at Webster University in Vienna. He can be contacted at <a href="mailto:jeffreyd@mindspring.com" type="external">jeffreyd@mindspring.com</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/04/16/squeezed-vietnamese-workers-strike-back/ | 2008-04-16 | 4 |
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<p>The president is looking to get insight and support from leaders and lawmakers regarding the looming fiscal cliff and will sit down with top executives from the business community on Wednesday to discuss how to lower the national debt and reignite economic growth.</p>
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<p>“Businesses are on the front lines, they see things and can explain how they impact their business’ balance sheets, hiring and investing practices and financial decisions,” said Kenneth Wisnefski, owner and founder of <a href="http://www.webimax.com/" type="external">WebiMax Opens a New Window.</a>, an online marketing firm with 100 employees. “[Lawmakers] are always speaking about growing small businesses, but they are so disconnected with what a small business is; any business insight will help these negotiations.”</p>
<p>According to Chris Edwards, CATO’s director of tax policy, big businesses produce most of the U.S.’s exports and contribute to half of the country’s GDP, making them a logical party to bring into the discussions. “Big businesses are crucial to our economy, they invest the most in research and develop and technological advancements come from these corporations.”</p>
<p>Holding talks with business leaders can reinforce the urgency of the deficit problem and sway both sides that action is necessary.</p>
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<p>“They can provide their views on the degree of balance that businesses are looking for: the need to raise revenues as well as reform spending. There will be no deal without that, and the fact is that those who oppose it need to hear from business that business supports this idea,” said Robert Shapiro, former under secretary of commerce for Economic Affairs, IMF advisor and current chairman of Sonecon.</p>
<p>Businesses need the fiscal cliff to be avoided and the deficit to be under control to protect their future growth, but they aren’t interested in the politics of the deal, according to Shapiro.</p>
<p>“They want a resolution, they want solid growth. The impact on growth comes from resolving the terms. As far as they are concerned, how we resolve our deficit problem is a political matter which has been settled by the election, they just need to know it will be avoided.”</p>
<p>Going off the fiscal cliff brings a series of tax increases and spending cuts that Shapiro said will be a “terrible shock to our economy and halt any growth potential.”</p>
<p>The business community has increasingly called for lawmakers and the administration to work together to avoid falling off the cliff. On Tuesday the Technology CEO Council submitted a letter addressed to the president and lawmakers urging them to “work together and pass concrete legislation that (1) forestalls much of the across-the-board spending cuts and immediate tax increases often called the 'fiscal cliff' and (2) implements a pro-growth framework for long-term fiscal sustainability.” The letter was signed by Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) Chairman Michael Dell, IBM (NYSE:IBM) Chairman Ginny Rometty and Intel (NYSE:INTC) CEO Paul Otellini.</p>
<p>No matter what topics are discussed, Wisnefski wants the meeting to bring a clear plan of action—whether he likes it or not. “I would rather have the information on their plan of action, whether I agree or not, so I can react and plan for it. For businesses right now, the worst part is the uncertainty out there.”</p>
<p>Worrying about the fiscal cliff, and the impending consequences if a deal isn’t reached preoccupies businesses, said Ty J. Young, president and CEO of investment company <a href="http://www.tyjyoung.com/" type="external">Ty J. Young Inc Opens a New Window.</a>. “Not knowing makes you defensive, which means you can’t play offense. If you are defensive you spend your time and energy looking for ways to avoid risk instead of looking for opportunities to grow and expand.”</p>
<p>Following his victory last week, Obama said he wants to build a consensus to avoid the fiscal cliff, but stood firm against raising taxes on high-income earners.</p>
<p>“I want to be clear. I'm not wedded to every detail of my plan. I'm open to compromise,” he said in the East Room of the White House. “I'm open to new ideas. I'm committed to solving our fiscal challenges.... I am not going to ask students and seniors and middle class families to pay down the entire deficit while people like me making over $250,000 aren't asked to pay a dime more in taxes.”</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Obama met with labor leaders including Richard Trumka from the AFL-CIO, Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union and Lee Saunders from the American Federal of State, Country and Municipal Employees. At the end of the week, Obama will sit down with lawmakers to try to craft legislation.</p>
<p>Getting as much information from a variety of opinions and insight can be beneficial, but Dean Baker, co-chairman of <a href="http://www.cepr.net/" type="external">Center for Economic Policy and Research Opens a New Window.</a>, called the discussions mostly symbolic, and says that it is unlikely the president will hear something he hasn’t heard before.</p>
<p>Experts expect corporate tax rates to be on the list of items to hash out. “Obviously [businesses] have an agenda, they are pushing for lower tax rates, they want to make it seem that if tax rates go up something horrible will happen to economy, but we’ve been there where the economy does well even with higher corporate tax rates,” said Baker.</p>
<p>Edwards disagreed, noting the country’s corporate tax rate is the highest in the world and that it needs to be reduced to keep the U.S. competitive.</p>
<p>“Cutting the tax rate should be the first thing to tackle in the New Year -- it would help Obama’s image of being anti-business and it would make the economy grow stronger, which in turn provides the government more revenue.”</p>
<p>Edwards advised the president to take the opportunity to learn more about the businesses and understand how they make investment decisions. “A year ago people started noticing that big corporations were holding onto cash and not spending it. We need those companies to invest here in the U.S. and China but they are worried about the macro-economic stability and we need them to open up plants here in the U.S., not Mexico or China</p>
<p>"State governments do a better job these days listening to corporations to lure them to build plants and facilities.”</p> | What the President Can Learn from Business Executives | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2012/11/13/what-president-can-learn-from-business-executives.html | 2016-03-03 | 0 |
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<p>DALLAS - A sailboat once owned and raced by President John F. Kennedy is expected to sell for about $100,000 when it goes up for auction in Dallas.</p>
<p>Heritage Auctions is offering up the Star Class sailboat named Flash II on Monday.</p>
<p>The 22-foot-long sailboat was owned and raced by the future president and his older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, from 1934 to 1940.</p>
<p>Mark Prendergast of Heritage says the boat has been painstakingly restored. He says, "Not only is it a piece of American history, it's also seaworthy and ready for adventure."</p>
<p>The sailboat's most recent owner is a Houston man who purchased it in 2005.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | JFK's sailboat up for auction in Dallas | false | https://abqjournal.com/586510/jfks-sailboat-up-for-auction-in-dallas.html | 2 |
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<p>(By Juan Cole)</p>
<p>10. Tunisia suffered the assassination of two leftist politicians, <a href="" type="internal">provoking demonstrations bigger</a> than the ones that brought down the government of dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali in 2011. The second of these assassinations, this summer, provoked students, youth activists and the major national labor union to mount concerted demonstrations demanding that the elected government of the center-right Muslim Renaissance Party (al-Nahda) step down. Protracted negotiations among adherents of the religious Right, leftists and secularists finally led only a couple of weeks ago to the installation of technocrat Mehdi Jomaa as caretaker prime minister. He and his neutral cabinet will oversee a referendum on a new constitution, which is just about drafted, and then new elections for a four-year parliament. Just yesterday, the Ansar al-Sharia leader suspected of complicity in the assassinations was apprehended in Libya. Of all the Arab countries, Tunisians have conducted their politics with the greatest maturity and sense of compromise (although it does not look that way to Tunisians caught up in the passions of the moment). The Tunisian economy also looked up this year for the first time since the revolution, with a 2.3% growth rate, which is expected to double next year.</p>
<p><a href="" type="external">Euronews reports on discontents in Tunisia</a></p>
<p>9. Yemen: Yemen has seen a further deterioration of security. There has been hard fighting between radical Zaidi Shiites (Huthis) and hard line Sunni fundamentalists (Salafis). Some areas of the country have seen terrorism by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and AQAP tried to assassinate the president. The Yemeni government behind the scenes continues to allow the US to carry out drone strikes on suspected al-Qaeda operatives. In mid-December one such attack seems to have gone wrong and hit a wedding convoy. There has also been a growth of demonstrations and violence by southern secessionists and federalists who want more autonomy for south Yemen (which was an independent country 1967-1991). The government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour doesn’t seem to have been terribly relevant to most of what has been going on in the country. New elections are scheduled for February <a href="" type="external">but seasoned observers doubt they will take place then</a>. Aside from intractable political divisions and some ominous extremism, Yemen faces problems in having enough water and food. A third of children are food insecure and thousands go to bed hungry.</p>
<p>8. Iraq: The country’s low intensity conflict heated up in 2013, leaving at least 8,000 dead in bombings and shootings. It was the worst death toll since 2008. Iraq’s security declined in part because the Syrian Civil War led to a resurgence of Sunni extremism. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria even established itself in both countries. This is not a civil war but a low-intensity guerrilla war. At the same time, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seemed determined to interpret the peaceful demonstrations against his Shiite government by Sunnis in Ramadi and Falluja as a form of terrorism. In the past few days he had a Sunni parliamentarian arrested in a violent way that left the man’s brother and possibly his sister dead. In reaction, on Monday 44 Sunni members of parliament resigned. Also on Monday, al-Maliki’s troops forcibly cleared out a protest sit-in of Sunnis in Falluja that he maintained had become infested with “al-Qaeda” and blocked traffic to Jordan. Al-Maliki’s unwillingness to run the Iraqi government in an inclusive way and to reach out to the Sunnis is responsible for some of the country’s deep division. On the other hand, Iraq now produces 10,000 MW of electricity (though demand runs to 14,000 MW), and is making arrangements to import another 500 MW from Iran, along with Iranian natural gas. Iraq is now the biggest importer of Iranian goods, taking 70% of them. The economic integration of Iraq into the regional Iranian market helps explain PM al-Maliki’s increasingly warm relations with Tehran and his support for the government of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, another issue on which Iraqi Sunnis differ with him. Iraqis don’t have age-old hatreds. Most of the trouble comes from the sectarian way the US ran the place.</p>
<p>7. Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai was prevailed upon by Washington to call a Loya Jirga or congress of elders, who agreed to the proposal that some thousands of US troops would remain in that country after December 2012. The US military needs a Status of Forces Agreement with Afghanistan indemnifying American troops from prosecution in Afghan courts for actions undertaken in battle. The UN authorization for US troops in Afghanistan is lapsing, so a bilateral treaty is necessary. Despite having gained the assent of his hand-picked elders, Karzai quixotically announced that he would not sign a SOFA and would leave that to his successor (who will be elected beginning in April). The US was upset, saying that if they are going to get all 50,000 US troops out of the country by the end of 2014 they need a year lead time. But Karzai has refused to budge. Washington is fearful that if all foreign troops do leave at the end of next year, the Taliban will have Kabul for lunch soon thereafter.</p>
<p>6. Pakistan: Pakistan had the first successful transition from one civilian government to another civilian government in its history (it was founded in 1947). Muslim League warhorse Nawaz Sharif regained the prime ministership (he had been prime minister in the 1990s but was overthrown by a military coup led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is now on trial for treason). In the northwestern province of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa, former cricketer Imran Khan’s Justice Party (Tehrik-i Insaf) formed a provincial government and came in third in the national parliament, signalling a challenge to the country’s formerly two-party system. Pakistan suffers from high levels of corruption, from a too-high birth rate, from lack of sufficient government investment in infrastructure, and from poor security because of bombings and shootings by the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, based in the northwest tribal areas. The country also does not generate enough electricity, despite massive solar potential and substantial wind and wave potential. Instead the country is taking a $6.9 bn loan from China to build nuclear reactors.</p>
<p>5. Turkey: Turkey has been an economic, political and social success story during the past decade, becoming the world’s 17th largest economy and expanding trade with the Middle East and Europe. Its prime minister Tayyip Erdogan led the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to three victories at the polls. His center-right, Islam-inflected party seemed to offer a way out of intractable struggles between intolerant secularists and committed Muslims. But in 2013 the AKP success story unraveled. In June, youth protests at Gezi Park in Istanbul against AKP commercialization of public space were met with a brutal crackdown, changing the domestic and international perception of Erdogan and his government. Then in December, a long-simmering political conflict inside Justice and Development exploded onto the front pages. Erdogan’s supporters and followers of the religious order, the Gulen movement lead from Pennsylvania by Fethullah Gulen broke with one another decisively. Police alleged to be Gulenists came after the sons of two major cabinet members in Erdogan’s government for corruption, forcing their resignation. Then questions were raised by Erdogan’s son. Anti-Erdogan protest broke out this weekend against Erdogan in Istanbul. Turkey is having local elections in March and presidential elections in the summer, when Erdogan hopes to run for president. How the new cloud of corruption allegations and his heavy-handedness with protesters will affect Erdogan’s chances of becoming president must be preoccupying his campaign team this winter.</p>
<p>4. Lebanon: The country is deeply divided over the Syrian attempted revolution. Most Lebanese Shiites and Christians support Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Most Sunni Lebanese tilt toward the Sunni rebel forces. The memories of Lebanon’s horrible civil war (1975-1989) are still recent enough to dissuade most Lebanese from turning to violence. But internal politics is tense and there have been some firefights and bombings. The polarization was increased last spring when the Lebanese Shiite party-militia, Hizbullah, sent troops over the border into Syria to help the regime retake the town of Qusayr, which is important for smuggling routes. Radical Sunni Salafis in Sidon rebelled against the government and were crushed by a joint Hizbullah-Lebanon army effort. The March 14 movement, which groups most Sunnis with some other political forces who objected to Syrian dominance of Lebanon, lost one of its prominent members to a car bomb just a few days ago. Hizbullah’s decision to intervene directly in Syria, probably influenced by Iran, may yet contribute to a destabilization of Beirut.</p>
<p>3. Iran: Iran had presidential elections last summer, ushering out the quirky populist conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and bringing in Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani is a savvy man, and had headed up Iran’s negotiations with Europe over its nuclear enrichment program in the early zeroes of the last decade. Formerly a hard liner opposed to the reforms of then President Mohammad Khatami, Rouhani now seems to want to heal the wounds of the 2009 protests. He and foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have engaged with the Obama administration and the other 4 UN Security Council members plus Germany in an attempt to convince the world powers that it is not seeking an atomic bomb, but just making fuel for its nuclear reactors. President Obama has put the chances of these negotiations at only 50%. But if they succeed there could be a realignment of US interests in the Middle East (Iran is the second most populous country in the Middle East and has oil and gas, so could be a huge market for American goods if it opens up and US sanctions lapse). Saudi Arabia is angered about Washington playing footsie with Iran and refusing to intervene in Syria, and has been cozying up to China instead.</p>
<p>2. Syria: The Syrian civil war went from being a difficult struggle to being a world class horror show. Some 115,000 have been killed in the fighting, The al-Assad government seemed to be in slow-motion collapse until last spring, when Hizbullah restored al-Qusayr to government control and Iran uppped its support for Damascus, as well. Syria is 40% Alawite Shiite, Christian, Druze and Kurd, and these tend to support the government. Some secular or well-off Sunnis do as well. Religious Sunnis and lower middle and working class members of that minority tend to support the rebels. The country is too evenly divided for any one side completely to win. The use of sarin gas, allegedly by regime troops, in East Ghouta in August set off a diplomatic frenzy and almost brought the US into the Syrian war. President Obama, having drawn a red line on chem looked as though he might intervene. But the Arab League declined to call for foreign intervention. The British parliament voted against. Belgium and other NATO states were opposed. In the end, Obama agreed to a Russian inspection program. He likely dodged a political bullet, since there is no obvious way that US troops sent into Damascus could make much of an impact.</p>
<p>1. Egypt saw a major counter-revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalist government in Egypt ran the economy into the ground and alienated all the other political forces. By June of 2013 it had a 19% approval score according to a Pew Charitable Trust opinion poll. The Youth Rebellion (Tamarrud) movement circulated millions of copies of a petition asking then President Muhammad Morsi to subject himself to a recall election. On June 30, millions of Egyptians came out into the streets to demand he step down. Morsi refused to compromise, and on July 3 the military made a coup, imprisoning Morsi. They then <a href="" type="internal">asked the street crowds for permission to wage a “war on terror,”</a> which they received. The military had 2000 Muslim Brotherhood leaders arrested. In August they bloodily cleared the Rabi`a al-`Adawiyyah Square of thousands of demonstrators. Some 1000 Muslim Brotherhood members have died in the course of the crackdown. Some may have been violent but most were not. Just last week, a terrorist attack on the security directorate in Mansoura led the military-appointed government (a mouthpiece for the junta) to brand the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and to menace anyone supporting it with long jail terms and huge fines. The junta also brutally arrest leftist youth protesters who defied a hastily enacted “law” demanding that prior permission be applied for when demonstrations were planned. The law has been widely rejected and challenged. Ahmad Maher of the April 6 Youth Organization and Alaa’ Abdel Fattah, a prominent dissident and blogger, are both in police custody. Maher has been sentenced to 3 years hard labor. This would sort of be as though the Continental Congress sentenced George Washington to 3 years hard labor for protesting after the British had been defeated. A new constitution was drafted by military-appointed “liberals” and intellectuals, which is less theocratic than Morsi’s but still problematic. Egypt has entered an era of full-blown repression. Many Mubarak cronies are being restored to their positions. The massive crackdwon on and attempt to erase the Brotherhood will radicalize its cadres. It is hard to see stability or substantial Western investment under these circumstances. Egypt’s politics has entered a dead end, perhaps for years.</p>
<p>It is a region in more political flux than any other in the world. It is a region riven by divisions between nationalists and fundamentalists. Socialists and proponents of the Market have butted heads. The Neoliberal preference for market solutions to everything largely has been a disaster wherever it was tried with the possible exception of Turkey (stay tuned). The sectarian divisions between Sunnis and Shiites in the eastern stretches of the Middle East haven’t caused conflict in themselves, but they have been mobilized for reasons of economics and power interest in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. The upheavals of 2011 have produced some positive changes, but elites have often attempted to put that genie back in the bottle and restore censorship and authoritarian rule. They haven’t yet succeeded, and a lively free press is uncowed and eager to get the stories. As for the future, I try to remind people that France went through two republics, two empires and two monarchies before it settled down in the Third Republic. The Middle East is like that nowadays, though many more people have been killed in Syria now than died in the Vendee in the 1790s.</p>
<p>The region would be less salient to the US and its allies if it weren’t a major source of oil and natural gas in the world. Moving to green energy as quickly as possible would reduce the influence of the Gulf oil monarchies, not to mention that it might help keep us from being cooked by climate change.</p> | Top Ten Middle East Stories 2013: How the Region has Changed | true | http://juancole.com/2013/12/stories-region-changed.html | 2013-12-31 | 4 |
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<p>HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — The top officer at U.S. Strategic Command said Saturday an order from President Donald Trump or any of his successors to launch nuclear weapons can be refused if that order is determined to be illegal.</p>
<p>Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of Strategic Command, told a panel at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday that he and Trump have had conversations about such a scenario and that he would tell Trump he couldn’t carry out an illegal strike.</p>
<p>“If it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen. I’m going to say, ‘Mr President, that’s illegal.’ And guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?'” Hyten said.</p>
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<p>“And we’ll come up with options with a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that’s the way it works.”</p>
<p>In the event that Trump decided to launch a nuclear attack, Hyten would provide him with strike options that are legal.</p>
<p>The command would control nuclear forces in a war.</p>
<p>The comments come as the threat of nuclear attack from North Korea remains a serious concern and Trump’s critics question his temperament. Trump’s taunting tweets aimed at Pyongyang have sparked concerns primarily among congressional Democrats that he may be inciting a war with North Korea.</p>
<p>During testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month, retired Gen. Robert Kehler who served as the head of Strategic Command from January 2011 to November 2013, also said the U.S. armed forces are obligated to follow legal orders, not illegal ones.</p>
<p>Hyten said he’s talked it over with Trump.</p>
<p>“I think some people think we’re stupid. We’re not stupid people. We think about these things a lot. When you have this responsibility how do you not think about it?” he said.</p>
<p>He said he would not obey an illegal order.</p>
<p>“You could go to jail for the rest of your life,” he said.</p> | US general says illegal nuclear launch order can be refused | false | https://abqjournal.com/1094922/us-general-says-nuclear-launch-order-can-be-refused.html | 2017-11-18 | 2 |
<p><a href="https://21stcenturywire.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/tom_myra.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Nicholas Myra <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire</a> Guest Columnist</p>
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<p>A disturbing shift has occurred over the weekend in Britain. What are they trying to hide, and why?</p>
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<p>A very noticeable pressure has been building against Britain’s elite establishment composed of politicians, highly paid media executives and celebrities, over the ugly issue of pedophilia and child abuse – a crime which has, for generations, been allowed to be carried out in secret.</p>
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<p>Since Friday’s assessment of David Cameron’s most embarrassing TV challenge by seemingly harmless personality Philip Schofield, the whole national conversation is now being engineered by Downing Street and top media executives, to rotate away from Jimmy Savile and MP Tom Watson’s call for a rooting out of organized pedophilia in government – and over to protecting the allegedly fragile reputations of hereditary elites like Lord McAlpine, who according to major newspaper editors and TV pundits, have suddenly become victims of a ‘witch-hunt’ for paedophiles.</p>
<p>Lord McApline: “I never abused children’.</p>
<p>Following a rather obvious, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2231286/George-Entwistle-The-disastrous-24-minutes-BBC-interviews-led-downfall-Director-General.html" type="external">internally staged damage control event</a>, where the embattled BBC Director General George Entwistle went on BBC Breakfast Show and the Radio Four Live programs to fall on his sword for ‘bad journalism’ over last week’s Newsnight set-up – Entwistle resigns. Now the government are crying witch-hunt. It’s an attempt to apply a new spin to the old spin, where the public are now expected to feel sorry for Lord McAlpine and any other ‘proper person’ like him, for being accused of child abuse, or pedophilia.</p>
<p>This is the latest effort by Downing Street spin doctors and certain media executives and hired writers, to shut down any serious debate on paedophiles in power, and close the doors on any more fruitful external or internal investigations.</p>
<p>They really hope to end it here with Jimmy Savile and Sir Peter Morrison, and maybe throw in the clown Gary Glitter for good measure.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Why? Because when it comes to its children, parents nationwide will not accept the standard government cover-up inquiry and perverting the course of justice. The nation will not let go of this issue, because it’s out there, and because 9 out of 10 plebs agree that pedophiles should be eradicated from all public institutions.</p>
<p>Up until this week, the major media gatekeepers were locked into a spiraling narrative which they could not escape because the implications towards the people involved threatened to entire power structure – because they are very afraid about what people will find out. In their dark world of cloak and dagger, the most coveted prize of all is dirt. It’s the most valuable form of currency behind the scenes. Newspaper editors, executives, TV producers, police, MI5, lawyers, MPs, Ministers and gangsters are constantly trafficking in information about each other in order to gain an advantage. In this black market of classified information, reports of pedophilia, child abuse – and also homosexuality, are as good as gold.</p>
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<p>The key word here is classified.</p>
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<p>Gatekeepers and Consensus Makers</p>
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<p>David Aaronovitch published his column in the Times on&#160; Thurs Nov 8, 2012, entitled, ‘ <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/davidaaronovitch/article3593478.ece" type="external">Beware of a modern Salem over child abuse’</a>. This was 24 hours before another intellectual giant, Prime Minister David Cameron went on national TV and cried ‘witch-hunt’ when ambushed by housewife pin-up Schofield. Predictably, <a href="https://audioboo.fm/boos/1048447-sack-schofield-for-salem-style-witch-hunt-aaronovitch" type="external">Aaronvitch has led the charge calling for the sacking of Philip Schofield on LBC Radio</a>. Aaronovitch also stating on air that some of the allegations against Jimmy Savile “may not be true”, quite a shocking sympathetic stance regarding the nation’s worse-ever child abuser. Pretty shocking.</p>
<p>Aaronovitch’s ‘witch-hunt’ is a rather hysterical claim. Yet, it’s hard to believe that the great and the good would be crying scared so much to scream “witch-hunt!”, but there you have it. If this scandal wasn’t so serious, I’d be laughing right about now.</p>
<p>On its surface, the new witch-hunt talking point sounds like a desperate establishment meme, from an elite criminal ring who are now in such a panic as to try and equate the very serious and documented problem of organized paedophilia operating through positions of power, in government, the media, the police – and the judiciary, with a sensational event which happened in colonial Massachusetts. No, we have stacks of forensic evidence, and police reports that prove that, unlike witches in Salem, paedophiles in British institutions do actually exist.&#160;</p>
<p>Rather ironically, the cause of that old Salem witch hunt was guilty men in power trying to cover-up and silence anyone who dared speak of their heinous crimes.</p>
<p>Paedophiles and sexual deviants in positions of power – is a reality, not a <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/davidaaronovitch/article3593478.ece" type="external">‘conspiracy theory’</a>, as the Times writer Aaronovitch hoped to define it, by denying it exists. Documents in the Belgium child rape and murder case pointed at the involvement of both Belgium AND Dutch politicians, judiciary and police – all taking part in the Mark Dutroux child abuse scandal, but writers like Aaronovitch will tell you that it’s just another ‘conspiracy theory’. The UK’s police and security services do have reams of evidence, but unfortunately for us the public, most of these crimes are sealed by government D Notices, while the rest are buried through internal institutional investigations.</p>
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<p>It was also more than a little disturbing to watch how Aaronovitch is said to have spoken to “a Senior BBC journalist”, whom he claims, like Aaronovitch, was “deeply skeptical” about child abuse victim Steve Messham’s testimony. Notice how David Aaronovitch doesn’t name the journalist, but is clearly using his column to draft a conviction – for all we know, David Aaronovitch could just be making things up to spread false information – just like those pesky internet blogs he says he loathes. Anyhow, I think it’s pretty darn safe to say here that the last person I would call on would be a BBC journalist for a second opinion when it comes to child abuse cases (I cough here).</p>
<p>So here we have it, a senior&#160;Times columnist who appears to be using his column in a national daily newspaper to deliver his own verdict in the North Wales Child Home scandal by trying to convince the public that victim Messham’s testimony was “shaky”. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he has an ulterior motive, maybe ‘moonlighting’ as they say, but it’s really so hard to tell these days who’s who in the world of big money media.</p>
<p>Aaronovitch: Drafted in again to protect the establishment line.</p>
<p>I suppose that Aaronovitch might also be a little upset to know that fixer Sir Jimmy Savile was also acting as a go-between for Israel and Britain.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">What was Jimmy up to in Israel?</a> I can tell you this much – it’s no secret in Whitehall. That’s not a conspiracy theory by the way, and as upset as some folks might be about it, you can’t rewrite history.</p>
<p>Moreover, writer David Aaronovitch also made a highly questionable, and arguably insensitive, if not bizarrely inappropriate statement in the same article:</p>
<p>“The unattractive (because complicating) truth is that sometimes people do lie about being abused. Sometimes it’s for money, sometimes for attention, sometimes because that’s what they infer their listeners want to hear.&#160; Or fantasy has become solidified as fact, the dream as daylight”.</p>
<p>Pretty shocking stuff. Aaronovitch’s statement about victims ‘fantasizing’ about their abusers, is designed to support his rather disingenuous ‘witch-hunt’ thesis, when it appears a paragraph before his own self-styled verdict on Steve Messham’s ‘shaky’ testimony, and this type of statement in the face of what is clearly a national institutional problem almost looks again like Aaronovitch has been put up to help steer public opinion completely away from a problem. His statement is Salem in reverse. Shame on you David.</p>
<p>Aaronovitch has a history of making some rather ridiculous statements, and then cleverly covering his own tracks. Whether it’s defending the mythology of WMD’s in Iraq (after his pro-war campaigning for Gulf War II, he tries to cover his tracks in 2004 saying, “From the outset of the&#160;Iraq&#160;debate I was a&#160;WMD&#160;agnostic”), or <a href="http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/48887/what-did-he-hope-achieve" type="external">defending Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians</a>, Aaronovitch has a pretty shameless record as an establishment gatekeeper, whilst touting some sort of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Aaronovitch" type="external">Marxist</a>pedigree. As a former Observer columnist, he is the classic example of a 20th century media-annointed, intelligentsia gatekeeper who typically writes a column per week, appears on the odd panel, looks to be busy by writing a few mediocre history books debunking ‘conspiracy theories’ – and somehow gets paid handsomely for it. His job it seems, is to put his own memes out there into the public conversation in order to get people thinking along received establishment wisdom. The irony here is, when it comes to opinion forming, when it’s all said and done, more people will have read our article here on this website than David Aaronovitch’s piece for the Times – thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s subscription firewall at the <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/davidaaronovitch/article3593478.ece" type="external">Times.co.uk</a>.</p>
<p>Tories in Arms</p>
<p>Mellor: Here’s one guy who shouldn’t be calling anyone ‘weird’.</p>
<p>The great thing about a Tory is, they will come out to defend their own, even if it’s a bit off key. Another much celebrated (although slightly odd) Tory politician turned media intelligentsia figure, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/11/david-mellor-steve-messham-weirdo" type="external">David Mellor, has also come out this weekend in support of pal Lord McAlpine to help discredit Steve Messham</a> by labeling the abuse victim a “weirdo”. Here Mellor is joining the fight to protect the elite, but his motives are obvious. Tim Loughton, a Conservative MP has rightly pointed out that victims could now fear being “taken out to dry” by the media if they name any public figures as paedophiles – something I’m sure the Tory government would hate to have happen now.</p>
<p />
<p>The latest rewriting of history is underway with North Wales Child Homes <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20269114" type="external">latest ‘photo swap’</a>– enter stage left, ‘Jimmy’ McAlpine, because it doesn’t take a Times reader to figure out that Steve Messham would have looked at images of McAlpine prior to yesterday, “Oops, we made a mistake”. He’s either been threatened or bribed, or both. Would this have been done if McAlpine was not guilty?</p>
<p>This latest establishment stunt is designed to stop the momentum of the revelations about elite involvement in Savile’s activities, and to discredit information on the internet about elites involvement paedophilia.</p>
<p>So Aaronovitch and Mellor’s gatekeeping on the issue of institutional pedophilia in Britain is just one example of how members of the media regularly conform, and in some cases, streamline, to Whitehall’s desired talking points on any major issue involving national security – and make no mistake here, paedophiles in government is a national security issue, just ask the Russians and the Israelis. The media, for the most part, also did this before and during, the war with Iraq. The same thing is happening with this paedophile scandal, and it should sicken the public. It’s a vile exhibition of symbiotic members of the establishment covering each others asses – figuratively, and literally.</p>
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<p>Savile: A friend if the elite, protected by the police, the royals and media.</p>
<p>So Pope Entwistle has resigned (aka sacked). Big deal. A new Pope will replace him. No matter how many Director Generals they sack, no matter how many Tory heads cry “mistaken identity!”, the fact is that Sir Jimmy Savile was not working alone and the BBC are beyond guilty with their shameful cover-up. The BBC are officially a damaged brand.</p>
<p>Jeremy Paxman is said to be upset over Entwistle’s departure, and will probably resign next.</p>
<p>Could it be that the system is so corrupt it cannot be trusted to investigate itself?</p>
<p>I would sincerely hope that the public will be the judge of that one – and not highly paid media gatekeepers and secretive politicians.</p>
<p>Investigations – as well as debates on child abuse, need to be opened up, not closed down. Those who are trying to shut either of these down, are very probably covering for the guilty in power.</p>
<p>More and more revelations will be forthcoming. The gilded age of paedophiles could soon be over, because no matter how hard they&#160; try, they cannot rewrite history now.</p>
<p>….</p>
<p>Writer Nicholas Myra is a former actor and television producer, now a community youth worker, and originally hailing from Tipperary, Ireland. Myra spends his winters in the UK and his summers touring Europe and North Africa by Harley Davidson.</p>
<p />
<p>RELATED:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Trouble with BBC ‘Children in Need’ Ambassador Max Clifford and Tory MP Alan&#160;Clark</a></p>
<p>RELATED:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">THE BBC: ‘IT’S THE VATICAN AND THE MAFIA ALL ROLLED INTO&#160;ONE’</a></p>
<p>RELATED:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">‘HE’LL FIX IT!’ SIR JIMMY WAS A CHILD ‘FIXER’ FOR THE ELITE</a></p>
<p>RELATED:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">‘I RAN THE GAUNTLET OF PEDOPHILES IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY’</a>– <a href="" type="internal" /></p> | Gatekeepers Attempt to Erase Paedophilia: BBC and Gov’t Operatives Still Hoping To Stop Hemorrhaging of Public Confidence | true | http://21stcenturywire.com/2012/11/11/an-attempt-to-erase-history-bbc-and-downing-street-hope-entwistle-sacking-will-stop-the-hemoraging-of-public-confidence/?fb_source%3Dpubv1 | 2012-11-11 | 4 |
<p>A measure of U.S. consumer sentiment rose swiftly in the first half of October to its highest level since 2004, a positive sign for household spending this fall.</p>
<p>The University of Michigan on Friday said its preliminary reading on consumer sentiment was 101.1 in October, up from 95.1 in September. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a preliminary reading of 95.3 for October.</p>
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<p>"This 'as good as it gets' outlook is supported by a moderation in the expected pace of growth in both personal finances and the overall economy, accompanied by a growing sense that, even with this moderation, it would still mean the continuation of good economic times," said Richard Curtin, the Michigan survey's chief economist.</p>
<p>The index, which jumped following last year's presidential election, was up 15.9% in October from a year earlier.</p>
<p>An index tracking current economic conditions climbed to 116.4 in October from 111.7 in September. An index tracking expectations about the future was up to 91.3 in October from September's 84.4.</p>
<p>Other measures of consumer confidence remain high. Confidence among American consumers fell only slightly in September after two major hurricanes struck the U.S.</p>
<p>Stronger consumer sentiment has translated into increased spending in some pockets of the economy, though recent hurricane activity continues to cloud the underlying economic picture. Spending at U.S. retailers rebounded strongly last month, boosted by surging car sales and higher gasoline prices in the wake of several devastating hurricanes, the Commerce Department said Friday.</p>
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<p>Write to Sarah Chaney at sarah.chaney@wsj.com</p>
<p>A measure of U.S. consumer sentiment rose swiftly in the first half of October to its highest level since 2004, a robust sign for household spending this fall.</p>
<p>The University of Michigan Friday said its preliminary reading on consumer sentiment was 101.1 in October, up from 95.1 in September. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a preliminary reading of 95.3 in October.</p>
<p>The rise in sentiment was propelled by strong gains in consumers' view of current and future economic conditions.</p>
<p>"Confidence continues to be supported by the soaring stock market and conditions in the labor market which, looking through the disruption caused by the hurricanes in September, still look very strong," said Andrew Hunter, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, in a note to clients.</p>
<p>Still, the early October increase also reflects "an unmistakable sense among consumers that economic prospects are now about as good as could be expected," said Richard Curtin, the Michigan survey's chief economist.</p>
<p>"This 'as good as it gets' outlook is supported by a moderation in the expected pace of growth in both personal finances and the overall economy," Mr. Curtin said. The latest survey offered no indications that consumers anticipate an economic downturn in the near future, he said.</p>
<p>The index, which jumped following last year's presidential election, was up 15.9% in October from a year earlier.</p>
<p>An index tracking current economic conditions climbed to 116.4 in October from 111.7 in September. An index tracking expectations about the future was up to 91.3 in October from September's 84.4.</p>
<p>Other measures of consumer confidence remain high. Confidence among American consumers fell only slightly in September after two major hurricanes struck the U.S., the Conference Board said in September.</p>
<p>Stronger consumer sentiment has translated into increased spending in some pockets of the economy, though recent hurricane activity continues to cloud the underlying economic picture. Spending at U.S. retailers rebounded strongly last month, boosted by surging car sales and higher gasoline prices in the wake of several devastating hurricanes, the Commerce Department said Friday.</p>
<p>Write to Sarah Chaney at sarah.chaney@wsj.com</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 13, 2017 10:57 ET (14:57 GMT)</p> | U.S. Consumer Sentiment Surged in Early October -- Update | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/13/u-s-consumer-sentiment-surged-in-early-october-update.html | 2017-10-13 | 0 |
<p>Photo courtesy coachella.com</p>
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<p>The tenth installment of <a href="http://www.coachella.com" type="external">America’s hottest music festival</a> is only one week earlier than usual this year, but it sure feels like it snuck up on me. Holy palm trees, it’s this Friday, and I’m not ready! I need to get new crazy-colored board shorts, hipster vintage T-shirts, and decide on a poolside cocktail! More than anything, though, any festival attendee with a serious interest in music needs to start planning early, picking priorities from the cornucopia of quality acts. For the next three days I’ll take a look at the lineup, splitting things up into admittedly imperfect “rock,” “hip-hop” and “electronic” categories, for lack of a better idea. Today: rock.</p>
<p>Franz Ferdinand</p>
<p>As usual, I was <a href="" type="internal">a bit skeptical</a> of the Scottish combo’s new album, but it’s really grown on me, especially the “My Love’s in Jeopardy” strut of “No You Girls.” Their live shows are always fun, and their Friday appearance will probably be a big crowd-pleaser for an audience who’s kind of forgotten how much they love “Matinee.”</p>
<p>Franz Ferdinand – “No You Girls”</p>
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<p>Silversun Pickups</p>
<p>The Smashing Pumpkins-y Los Angeles foursome has a <a href="http://www.myspace.com/silversunpickups" type="external">brand new album</a> out tomorrow that’s <a href="http://dangerbirdblog.com/?p=557" type="external">getting good reviews</a>, and their concerts tend to erupt into My Bloody Valentine-style ecstatic feedback fests. Which I mean as a compliment.</p>
<p>Silversun Pickups – “Panic Switch”</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p>My Bloody Valentine</p>
<p>Speaking of the fuzziest noisemakers around, they’re going to be there too, on Sunday night, which I suppose is appropriate, since an exhausted crowd can just lay back on the grass and let the wall of sound wash over them like a pink tsunami. I just hope I’m not too tired to enjoy it, and I’m also a little skeptical of seeing the band outdoors—the last time I saw them, in 1992, was at a small club in Minneapolis in the freezing cold, and the sound seemed to reverberate and crystallize around us. How will it feel as it spreads out amongst palm trees, I can’t even predict.</p>
<p>My Bloody Valentine – “Realise”</p>
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<p>Glasvegas</p>
<p>Another Scot combo, this band is down on the fourth line of the Saturday lineup, but I predict a capacity crowd, whichever stage they’re stuck on. While their distorted sound, again, owes much to the legendary Valentines, but the lyrics ring out over the top clear as day, in a way that’s destined to be dramatic under the desert sky.</p>
<p>Glasvegas – “Geraldine”</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p>No Age</p>
<p>Listed way down on Sunday’s schedule, the Los Angeles punk combo may be so early that most hungover attendees will miss them. But their metallic, adventurous take on hardcore is worth pulling yourself out of the pool for.</p>
<p>No Age – “Eraser”</p>
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<p>Leonard Cohen</p>
<p>As much as I adore the 74-year-old singer/poet/monk, I’m a bit concerned that his music is best heard in a smoky cabaret, not a hot and noisy festival. But “Hallelujah” will get everybody singing along.</p>
<p>Leonard Cohen – “Hallelujah”</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Paul McCartney</p>
<p>You know, as much of a Beatles fan as I admittedly am, I wasn’t really that excited for Sir Paul; plus I was kind of resentful of his presence, which in my opinion jacked up the cost of area rental houses. But then I read the ecstatic reviews of his <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1608627/20090406/beatles.jhtml" type="external">appearance at David Lynch’s TM benefit last week</a>. Apparently his backing band (sans Ringo) is spectacularly tight, as I guess they would be, and the experience is just as joyful and giddy as an actual Beatles show. Plus, I think the guy has some experience with large-ish crowds.</p>
<p>The Beatles – “I Saw Her Standing There”</p>
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<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Coachella Preview: Rock | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/coachella-preview-rock/ | 2009-04-13 | 4 |
<p>The latest on developments in financial markets (All times local):</p>
<p>4:00 p.m.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Stocks pulled back on Wall Street, giving back some of their gains from a day earlier.</p>
<p>Retailers and advertising companies had some of the steepest drops Wednesday as investors worried about their earnings.</p>
<p>Lowe's sank 3.7 percent after reporting second-quarter earnings that were weaker than analysts expected. La-Z-Boy plunged 20 percent.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index fell 8 points, or 0.4 percent, to 2,444.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average lost 87 points, or 0.4 percent, to 21,812. The Nasdaq composite fell 19 points, or 0.3 percent, to 6,278.</p>
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<p>Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.17 percent.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:45 a.m.</p>
<p>Stocks are slipping in midday trading on Wall Street as the market gives back some of the big gain it made a day earlier.</p>
<p>The market started broadly lower Wednesday, but the losses moderated as the morning progressed.</p>
<p>Retailers and health care companies did worse than the rest of the market.</p>
<p>Lowe's sank 6 percent after reporting second-quarter earnings that were weaker than analysts expected. Johnson &amp; Johnson fell 1.1 percent.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index fell 4 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,448.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average lost 43 points, or 0.2 percent, to 21,856. The Nasdaq composite fell 9 points, or 0.1 percent, to 6,288.</p>
<p>Small-company stocks did better than large ones. The Russell 2000 index edged up 1 point to 1,372.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Technology companies and retailers are leading U.S. stocks lower in early trading on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Lowe's sank 5 percent early Wednesday after reporting second-quarter earnings that were weaker than analysts expected. Seagate Technology fell 4.4 percent.</p>
<p>La-Z-Boy dropped 18 percent after its earnings missed estimates. The company said its most profitable business, upholstery manufacturing, struggled and costs were high because of acquisitions.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index fell 8 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,444.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average lost 68 points, or 0.3 percent, to 21,829. The Nasdaq composite fell 21 points, or 0.3 percent, to 6,275.</p> | Markets Right Now: US stocks pull back after a 2-day rally | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/23/markets-right-now-stocks-fall-in-early-trading.html | 2017-08-23 | 0 |
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<p>The Environmental Health Department said Monday that although the wildfire smoke over Albuquerque is impacting visibility, air pollution levels do not warrant a health alert at this time.</p>
<p>The Environmental Health Department said it is actively monitoring particulate pollution levels and will continue to issue updated statements if needed.</p>
<p>Numerous large wildfires are burning in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Northwesterly winds pushed the smoke into Colorado and Kansas then a backdoor cold front further pushed it into New Mexico from the east and northeast. Although a high pressure system over the Four Corners will continue to circulate the smoke over New Mexico today, thunderstorms will likely reduce the haziness and particulate levels this afternoon and evening.</p>
<p>Although particulate levels do not warrant a health alert, forest fire smoke cause eye or lung irritation, and individuals who are sensitive to such issues may wish to consider remaining indoors.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>People with asthma, chronic bronchitis or other respiratory illnesses are advised to limit their outdoor activity.</p>
<p>Children and the elderly may also be affected and want to minimize their time outside.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | NM health alert due to smoke dropped, officials monitoring | false | https://abqjournal.com/633253/nm-health-alert-still-in-effect-monday-morning.html | 2 |
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<p>The US Supreme Court has taken up the issue whether the executive branch can detain people indefinitely merely by declaring them to be suspected terrorists or illegal enemy combatants. The case is a habeas corpus issue and, therefore, of the utmost importance. Without the protection of habeas corpus, government can lock away anyone on the basis of unsubstantiated charges as the Guantanamo detainees have been for nearly six years.</p>
<p>Reporting on the Court’s deliberations about Odah v. US and Boumediene v. Bush, Tom Curry, a national affairs writer for MSNBC, reports that Justice Stephen Breyer suggested to US Solicitor General Paul Clement that the executive branch could indefinitely hold people such as those in Guantanamo prison if Congress were to pass “some special statute involving preventive detention and danger, which has not yet been enacted.”</p>
<p>According to Curry, senators Dianne Feinstein and Arlen Specter regard a preventive detention statute as a possibility worth considering.</p>
<p>Pray that Curry has misunderstood Breyer. A different interpretation of Breyer’s remarks is that the justice was telling Bush’s solicitor general that in the absence of a preventive detention statute there is no legal basis for holding the detainees.</p>
<p>If there were such a statute, the case before the court would be its constitutionality.</p>
<p>Support for the latter interpretation comes from House Judiciary Committee member Jerrold Nadler (D,NY). Rep. Nadler thinks Breyer was merely “thinking out loud,” not “floating an idea” and inviting Congress to pass an unconstitutional statute. Nadler believes that Breyer was telling Clement that as there is not even a preventive detention statute, the executive branch has no basis for holding the Gitmo detainees.</p>
<p>That Feinstein, Specter, Jon Kyl, and other US senators think it is “worth considering” for Congress to overturn habeas corpus, the greatest bulwark against tyranny, indicates how much the US constitutional tradition has been lost. The importance of the case seems to be completely over the heads of the media, who appear to be looking for a technical solution that permits people accused without evidence to be held forever. The American press apparently believes that the US government can make no mistake or behave improperly and that the detainees, actually comprise, in Senator Kyl’s words, “a danger to our troops.”</p>
<p>It is a “danger” that the Bush regime has been unable to prove even with torture and secret evidence. Half of the detainees have had to be released. According to news reports, the regime has been able to create cases against only 14 of those remaining. After all the years of illegal detention, harsh treatment, and denial of access to attorneys, the Bush regime has come up with 14 cases, and they are probably fabricated.</p>
<p>Where is the rule of law when hundreds of people can have years stolen from their lives?</p>
<p>It is uncertain how the court will decide the case. Bush’s solicitor general has told the justices that they should trust the executive branch to correctly balance “the interests of the prisoners” with the administration’s ability to “prosecute the global war on terror.”</p>
<p>In other words, it is Waco all over again. The executive branch runs roughshod over the US Constitution and then demands, “trust us,” which means don’t take away any of the illegitimate power that the executive branch has claimed and exercised or hold anyone accountable for abusing executive power. Unfortunately for the future of liberty in America, a number of the Republican justices see the issue as one of the separation of powers. The Republican justices or most of them are, or were, members of the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers committed to increased power for the executive. These Republican justices will be inclined to decide the case in the interest of executive power.</p>
<p>The Federalist Society is a product of a past time when Republicans were said to have “a lock on the presidency” but could not get their agenda into law because the Democrats had a lock on Congress. Republican frustrations manifested themselves in attempts to heighten the president’s powers so that a Republican agenda could prevail over a Democratic Congress. Like generals who fight the last war, the Federalist Society is stuck in its assault on the separation of powers in the interest of “energy in the executive.”</p>
<p>Many Federalist Society members join for social reasons and for net-working, as the society provides the pool of attorneys for Republican appointments to the federal bench and for Department of Justice appointees. Many members mistakenly think that the society stands for “original intent,” but as their real interest is career-driven, they don’t pay much attention to the society’s assault on the US Constitution.</p>
<p>Kings exercised the power to throw into dungeons people who offended them or whom they regarded as a threat. Once arrested, a person could be locked up forever without charges or evidence brought before a court. Habeas corpus was an English invention that provides quick release of a person unlawfully held by orders of the executive.</p>
<p>The Bush Regime has made the most determined assault the Anglo-American world has seen on the principle of habeas corpus. The previous assault was by Stuart kings who destroyed their rule by proclaiming the “divine right of kings.” Now Americans are faced with Bush/Cheney and the solicitor general of the US Department of Justice (sic), Paul Clement, proclaiming the divine right of President Bush and his Justice (sic) Department.</p>
<p>We must all pray that there are not enough Federalist Society members on the Supreme Court to uphold a Benthamite ruling of preventive detention.</p>
<p>Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was the Englishman who renewed the assault on liberty, which centuries of English reforms had created. Bentham believed that tyranny was no longer a problem, because people were empowered by democracy to control the government. He argued that any restraint placed on government’s powers would limit the ability of government to do good. To protect citizens from crime, Bentham favored preventive arrest of everyone whose social class, bone structure or other chosen indicator suggested a proclivity toward crime. “The greatest good for the greatest number.”</p>
<p>The Bush regime is comprised of modern day Benthamites. Their agenda is to overthrow the civil liberties that make law a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of the state. As anyone can be declared a suspect, the weapons that Bush would use to fight “the global war on terror” would soon be turned on the American people. Without habeas corpus, there is no liberty.</p>
<p>PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of <a href="" type="internal">The Tyranny of Good Intentions.</a>He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com" type="external">PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | It’s Waco All Over Again | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/12/12/it-s-waco-all-over-again/ | 2007-12-12 | 4 |
<p>Need a loan?&#160; Plenty of small businesses do.&#160; The administration wants to show they're helping entrepreneurs secure funding.</p>
<p>"As we restore a more stable financial system with better protection for consumers and investors we want to make sure that we focus everyday on trying to make sure that how we rebuild that core strength of our system that was so important to the growth of so many world class companies today," said Secretary of the Treasury <a href="" type="internal">Timothy Geithner</a>.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The Treasury Department hosted officials to talk about taking a startup company from the beginning to profitability and the difficulties they meet securing access to public markets.</p>
<p>"The recession made the hurdles higher for America's entrepreneurs," said Karen Mills SBA Administrator.&#160;"They're having to wait longer to get access. They have to show more cash... they have to access more cash and more customers before they even talk to somebody about the next stage of financing. And too many of them are finding that hurdle too high."</p>
<p>Many small companies choose to avoid the trading environment - declining to offer stock in their businesses to investors.</p>
<p>The idea of standing at attention when Fidelity calls, of wining and dining hedge fund managers, of setting earnings expectations and beating them routinely in an age in which stocks are traded every three months ...all these things make the decision to keep going alone and to go public a more difficult and unappealing decision," said AlexLasky, president and founder of OPower.</p>
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<p>Though without investors, stockholders or willing banks - business plans often go nowhere.&#160; Some business owners are calling for more predictable tax and oversight policy and more government loans.&#160; Though current programs have mixed results and there is trillions in mounting government debt .</p> | Helping Entrepreneurs With Funding | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/03/28/helping-entrepreneurs-funding.html | 2016-03-23 | 0 |
<p>It is perfectly obvious that the barrage of criticism accompanying the statements made by Charles D. Stimson arises from a misunderstanding as to what people think Mr. Stimson thought he was talking about. It wasn’t what they thought.</p>
<p>Mr. Stimson is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. Before George Bush there was no deputy secretary of defense for detainee affairs much less a deputy assistant. That was because the concept of “detainee” had not yet been invented. Creation of The Office of Detainee Affairs was announced in 2004 and its mission was to be responsible for strategy, development and policy recommendations pertaining to treatment of detainees and to handle reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Before its invention a person who was apprehended for criminal conduct was called a “prisoner” and his condition was described as being “in prison” or “imprisoned”. A prisoner would discover in due course whether being a prisoner was a permanent condition i.e. for life, or finite i.e. for a term of years or until acquittal by a jury of the person’s peers. After he began his wars, George Bush invented a new word.</p>
<p>The invention was surprising because George Bush has never been perceived by even his doting mother, as a man of letters. (His decision to deliver the gospel of Iraqi escalation from the White House library added a touch of irony to the occasion.) By introducing the word “detainee” into the language when referring to those who would otherwise be referred to as “prisoners”, he changed the criminal law landscape insofar as it affects those encapsulated by the word in a most unexpected way. Here’s how.</p>
<p>Guests who are late for dinner will call to say they have been detained but will be along shortly. Being a “detainee” suggests that at most any moment the person detained will find him or herself back in civilian life with sufficient government supplied funds to buy a bus ticket home. Unfortunately for those detained by Mr. Bush, however, he, having invented that particular use of the word has, as he has with so many of his inventions, given it new meaning. Someone detained by Mr. Bush will not simply be a few minutes late for a dinner. The person detained may never get to the dinner and, worse yet, may spend the rest of his or her life wondering why not since Mr. Bush has decreed that someone who being detained and misses dinner, is not entitled to know the reason for the detention. In that respect detainees differ from prisoners, the latter being entitled to know why they are what they are.</p>
<p>All of the foregoing is by way of explaining that Charles D. Stimson, Esq. is not, if you accept my analysis and ignore his words, the dim-witted oaf he appears at first blush. He is simply confused by Mr. Bush’s use of the word “detainee”.</p>
<p>In the second week of January Mr. Stimson told Federal News Radio that corporations using law firms representing those detained in Guantánamo should sever their ties to those law firms. In a Wall Street Journal editorial echoing Mr. Stimson’s sentiments, Robert Pollock quoted an administration official (who may well have been Mr. Stimson) as saying: “Corporate C.E.O.’s . . . should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers [lawyers representing Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski et al earned millions] and representing terrorists [who pay nothing]”. Although Mr. Stimson didn’t say it, I’m sure he was only thinking of what was in the best interests of the law firms.</p>
<p>Mr. Stimson’s actual words saying companies should sever ties with law firms representing detainees because the detainees (who have not been tried or convicted) are responsible for the absolutely awful financial times that befell many companies after 9/11 seem to contradict my analysis. I give him the benefit of the doubt. As a lawyer he can’t have intentionally said such a foolish thing knowing that none of the detainees has been convicted of anything. Furthermore, the company that had the worst year after 9/11 was Enron. Its problems had nothing to do with 9/11.</p>
<p>I attribute the seeming contradiction between my analysis and Mr. Stimson’s words to a brief and uncharacteristic moment of misspeaking by him. I describe it as uncharacteristic because he is a man of great self-importance. In a 2006 interview with the magazine of Kenyon College, his alma mater, he said he was learning “to choose my words carefully because I am a public figure on a very very controversial topic.” If he routinely made such foolish statements it would belie his assertion that he chooses his words carefully unless he really believes what he said about the detainees. If he believes what he says he should have described himself to the magazine as a “public fool on a fool’s errand” since that is what he obviously is.</p>
<p>CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI is a lawyer in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu" type="external">Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu.</a>Visit his website: <a href="http://hraos.com/" type="external">http://hraos.com/</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Corporate Advice from the Office of Detainee Affairs | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/02/06/corporate-advice-from-the-office-of-detainee-affairs/ | 2007-02-06 | 4 |
<p>When Thomas Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" sold in 1921 to railroad millionaire Henry E. Huntington, for around $700,000 (reports vary), it got the same blanket coverage, for being the most expensive painting ever, that Munch's "Scream" got in May when it broke all auction records - and got again today ( <a href="" type="internal">including from me</a>) with the revelation that the buyer was New York financier Leon Black.</p>
<p>For a while "The Blue Boy" was iconic in the way Munch's picture is now: It was what my grandfather, a grocer, always mentioned when famous artworks came up, and my wife tells me her grandmother kept a print of it on her wall. And now it's sunk to being just another mostly-forgotten Old Master picture. Even memories of pricetags eventually fade. (Another nice realization: "The Blue Boy" was only 151 years old when Huntington bought it - not that far from the 117 years between "The Scream" and its sale.)</p>
<p>Writing about Black's $120 million purchase, I came across some interesting things about "The Blue Boy".</p>
<p>First, even converted into today's dollars, the Gainsborough's record price would only be about one twelfth what Black paid for "The Scream".</p>
<p>And second, as I didn't have room to mention in my story, its price represented 1/65th of Huntington's net worth - about $45 million, or $600 million today - which is less than half the 1/28th share that Munch's picture takes up of Black's, which <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/leon-black/" type="external">Forbes estimated at $3.4 billion</a>. (This wealth, absurdly, makes him only number 330 on Forbes's list of billionaires.) Such numbers help us realize how much richer today's tycoons are than the infamous robber barons, but also how much more they spend on art. To spend the same proportion of their wealth (let's call it their "art share") they have to lay down five times as much money, in constant dollars. No wonder there's so little wealth to go around to everyone else, and that art prices have soared.</p>
<p>For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit <a href="http://blakegopnik.com/archive" type="external">blakegopnik.com/archive</a>.</p> | Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik | true | https://thedailybeast.com/gainsboroughs-blue-boy-is-the-daily-pic-by-blake-gopnik | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Harris-Hanlon Funeral Home "fully engulfed" by flames this morning.</p>
<p>A fire of still unknown origin has destroyed Moriarty’s only funeral home at 807 Central Highway 66, and residents in the area have been evacuated because of concerns over chemicals in the building, a Torrance County dispatcher said.</p>
<p>A police officer on patrol spotted the fire around 4 a.m. today, the dispatcher said. The fire reportedly started around 3:30 a.m. and about 15 homes&#160;within half a mile of the home were evacuated, KOB-TV news is reporting. It took firefighters about three hours to get the fire under control, the station reported. Residents were allowed back in their homes around 7:30 p.m., according to the KRQE News 13 Web site.</p>
<p>The owner of the funeral home told Eyewitness News 4 that there were no remains in the building and that no services had been scheduled for the near future, according to the station’s Web site.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | 7:15am — Moriarty Funeral Home Burns | false | https://abqjournal.com/21846/715am-moriarty-funeral-home-burns.html | 2 |
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<p>Sept. 20 (UPI) — Tropical Storm Jose is forecast to stay safely off the U.S. East Coast but residents should experience dangerous surf and rip currents through Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.</p>
<p>In its <a href="http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT2+shtml/201433.shtml" type="external">5 p.m. advisory</a>, Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said Jose was about 145 miles south-southeast of Nantucket, Mass., with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph. It’s moving northeast at 8 mph.</p>
<p>Jose is expected to pass well to the east of the New Jersey coast Wednesday and “meander off the coast of southern New England during the next few days,” the NHC said.</p>
<p>“Jose is currently moving along the edge of the Gulf Stream, and is expected to remain over this oceanic environment for a few more days,” NHC staff forecaster John Cangialosi said. “These relatively cool waters, a progressively drier airmass and an expected increase in wind shear should cause a gradual weakening trend during the next several days.”</p>
<p>Jose is not expected to make landfall, but tropical-storm-force winds could extend 230 miles from the storm’s center.</p>
<p>Tropical storm warnings were in effect from Woods Hole, Mass., to Sagamore Beach, Mass. — which includes Cape Cod — and Block Island, R.I.; Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.; and Nantucket, Mass.</p>
<p>“Swells generated by Jose are affecting Bermuda and much of the U.S. East Coast and will likely cause dangerous surf and rip current conditions during the next several days,” the NHC said.</p>
<p>Jose became the 10th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season on Sept. 5.</p> | Tropical Storm Jose to produce dangerous surf along U.S. East Coast | false | https://newsline.com/tropical-storm-jose-to-produce-dangerous-surf-along-u-s-east-coast/ | 2017-09-20 | 1 |
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<p>The Gladiators are 4-4 in their 12-game season, half a game behind the idle Amarillo Venom (4-3) for the third and final playoff berth in the Southern Division. First-place Texas is 7-1.</p>
<p>Friday's loss comes six days after Texas defeated Duke City 68-63 at Tingley Coliseum.</p>
<p>Gladiators quarterback Taylor Genuser, who took over for injured starter Bryan Randall last week and threw five TD passes, had three more scoring throws Friday, but also five interceptions.</p>
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<p>Duke City also was foiled by penalties - 14 for 105 yards.</p>
<p>Sedrick Johnson, who had three TD receptions last week for the Gladiators, had two Friday. Dello Davis had the other receiving TD, in addition to a 50-yard score on a kickoff.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Leading the way defensively for Duke City was Ray Berry with seven tackles.</p>
<p>The Gladiators return to action May 7 with a road game against the Mesquite Marshals (1-6). On March 26, Duke City beat Mesquite 70-24 at Tingley Coliseum.</p>
<p>Duke City's next home game is May 28 against Amarillo.</p>
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<p /> | Indoor football: Gladiators tumble on road against Revolution | false | https://abqjournal.com/766161/gladiators-tumble-on-road-against-revolution-4921.html | 2 |
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<p>Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in January under the pseudonym Anna Whitlock. It is among the most shared pieces of content about Hillary Clinton of the entire 2016 election. The writer has now come forward publicly: It is Karoli Kuns, managing editor of&#160;Crooks and Liars.</p>
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<p>I have a confession to make: In 2008, I was one of the most ardent Hillary Clinton haters on the planet. I was ferocious about how much I didn’t want her to win the primaries, and I rejoiced the day she gave her concession speech.</p>
<p>I believed with all of my heart in Barack Obama in 2008, and saw Hillary Clinton as the one single impediment to his election and a soaring presidency. I believed in the “fierce urgency of now.”</p>
<p>I was impressed but unmoved by Hillary’s concession speech, still not ready to forgive the anger and harsh rhetoric which became so much of the 2008 primary campaign.</p>
<p>It was not until President Obama nominated Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State that my attitude began to soften, and it’s here I want to begin.</p>
<p>She was a great Secretary of State. Secretary John Kerry may be basking in the credit for closing the deals, but he walked through the doors Secretary Clinton opened for him.</p>
<p>Her tenure as Secretary of State, of course, led to the bogus email scandal, which in turn led to the slow-drip release of the emails on her home server. I decided I was going to read them.</p>
<p>In those emails, I discovered a Hillary Clinton I didn’t even know existed.</p>
<p>I found a woman who cared about employees who lost loved ones. I found a woman who, without exception, took time to write notes of condolence and notes of congratulations, no matter how busy she was. I found a woman who could be a tough negotiator and firm in her expectations, but still had a moment to write a friend with encouragement in tough times. She worried over people she didn’t know, and she worried over those she did.</p>
<p>And everywhere she went, her concern for women and children was clearly the first and foremost thing on her mind.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>In those emails, I also found a woman who seemed to understand power and how to use it wisely. A woman of formidable intellect who actually understood the nuances of a thing, and how to strike a tough bargain.</p>
<p>I read every single one of the emails released in August, and what I found was someone who actually gave a damn about the country, the Democratic party, and all of our futures.</p>
<p>She watched along with all of us as the Affordable Care Act made its way through Congress, with the same anxiety and aggravation many of us felt, and she rejoiced when it finally passed. She knew the Democrats who voted against it in the House, and she knew the ones who put their political careers on the line in support of it.</p>
<p>The Hillary caricature you see in the press is not the Hillary Clinton I came to know by reading those emails.</p>
<p>Yes, she had powerful friends in powerful places — though I didn’t actually see any emails from Goldman Sachs. And yes, she approached those friends the very same way she approached people on her staff, or people she met in the course of being Secretary of State. She rejoiced in their joys and shared their sorrows. They weren’t just ticks on a political scoreboard. They were friends.</p>
<p>You could tell there were some squabbles internally with other members of the Obama administration, but there was also unflagging, utmost respect for the man who occupied the White House – the office she fought so valiantly to attain.</p>
<p>It’s a hard thing to swallow one’s pride and step to the side, but Hillary did it with class and with dignity. Not only that, she made the most of every minute of her tenure as Secretary of State. Not a day went by where she shirked the duty vested in her.</p>
<p>In short, she proved herself beyond what any other candidate has done, and she did it professionally, assertively, and without drama.</p>
<p>Here’s something else I learned about her through those emails: She’ll fight. And she’ll fight hard. She won’t shy away from a renegade Congress and she won’t always play nice. But she does play by the rules, which is more than I can say for a lot of the candidates on the other side.</p>
<p>Here’s one more reason I believe in Hillary. My daughter first voted in 2012. This will be her second general election, and she is excited to have our first woman president succeed our first African-American president. She, too, believes that Hillary Clinton is someone who will not only preserve President Obama’s legacy, but build one of her own, one of inclusion and inspiration.</p>
<p>That’s history she – and I – can both believe in.</p>
<p>[Originally published 1/28/16]</p> | I Was One of the Most Ardent Hillary Haters on the Planet…Until I Read Her Emails | true | http://bluenationreview.com/i-was-a-hillary-hater-until-i-read-her-emails/ | 2016-06-17 | 4 |
<p>RABAT, Morocco — Travelers passing through a small Canary Islands airport this week may have met a slight woman in a pink headscarf who says she’s starving herself to death.</p>
<p>Her name is Aminatou Haidar. The 42-year-old activist was expelled from Morocco on Nov. 13, on her way home from winning a prestigious <a href="http://www.civilcourageprize.org/honoree-2009.htm" type="external">international human rights award</a> in New York City.</p>
<p>The Moroccan government says Haidar — who advocates independence for Morocco’s disputed Western Sahara territory — made a spectacle of renouncing her Moroccan citizenship upon arriving home. Speaking by phone from the island of Lanzarote, Haidar insisted this isn’t so. She said she’s been illegally deported and vowed to fast until Morocco lets her return, or “until death.”</p>
<p>At first, the row might seem like another grim chapter in one of Africa’s longest-running territorial feuds. But longtime Morocco observers say Haidar’s expulsion underscores a trend of rising repression as the Moroccan government has increasingly cracked down on dissidents and journalists in the last six months.</p>
<p>Even as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent her recent visit here praising Morocco’s democratic gains, some human rights groups are saying it’s time to rethink Morocco’s reputation as the grand exception among repressive Arab states.</p>
<p>“Beyond the facade of openness there are serious problems,” said Abdeslam Maghraoui, a political scientist and Morocco specialist at Duke University. “During the past six months we’ve seen a real deterioration.”</p>
<p>In recent weeks, police in the disputed Western Sahara region have begun breaking up interviews between foreign journalists and activists who want a referendum on independence.</p>
<p>This follows a series of moves punishing the press for publishing stories Moroccan authorities found objectionable. “There has been an escalation and it’s on an unprecedented scale,” said Ahmed Ben Chemsi, the editor of the Moroccan newsweekly Tel Quel. “It’s happening to too many newspapers at the same time to think that it’s a coincidence.”</p>
<p>In October, newspaper publisher Driss Chahtane, of the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Michaal, was handed a year-long prison sentence for running an article about the king’s health. The two journalists who wrote the piece, Rachid Mahamid and Mustapha Hayrane, were fined and given sentences of three months each.</p>
<p>For publishing an item on the same bit of news — an unnamed medical source claimed the king was recovering from a stomach virus — Ali Anouzla, the editor of the daily Al-Jarida Al-Oula, received a one-year suspended jail sentence.</p>
<p>In September, authorities closed down another Arabic-language paper, Akhbar al-Youm, for publishing a cartoon depicting the king’s cousin.</p>
<p>In August, authorities seized and destroyed the entire print run of the country’s premier news magazine, Tel Quel, for daring to publish results of a survey on the king’s popularity. In that apparently controversial poll, a whopping 91 percent of Moroccans said they approved of the king.</p>
<p>Morocco’s communication minister Khalid Naciri rejected any notion the government has adopted a newly combative attitude toward the press, saying the recent prosecutions targeted a small minority who’d broken laws requiring journalists to show “due respect” for royalty.</p>
<p>“What is forbidden here is what is forbidden in all democratic countries — insults, defamation and lies,” Naciri said. “The reality is that there are hundreds of newspapers in Morocco that express themselves freely.”</p>
<p>International observers disagree.</p>
<p>“There is no doubt that this year has been among the worst periods for independent media in Morocco,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the Middle East and North Africa coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York City. Dayem says the press crackdowns reflect the government’s increasing disregard for human rights. “Morocco at a certain point of time was on a very promising trajectory,” he said. “But I think they’ve failed to follow through on those reforms.”</p>
<p>Yet it was just those reforms that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed without reservation during her visit to Morocco last month, citing progress Morocco has made on democracy and human rights in the decade since King Mohammed VI assumed the throne.</p>
<p>“The United States has watched with great admiration the progress that Morocco has achieved under his leadership,” Clinton said during a Nov. 2 appearance, in which she reaffirmed that America backs Morocco on Western Sahara.</p>
<p>The closest Clinton came to addressing the recent crackdown was saying she wanted “to see an emphasis on freedom of the press and freedom of expression throughout the region in every country” during a Nov. 3 meeting, in response to a direct question about press freedom in Morocco.</p>
<p>Days after Clinton left, the king took a hard line against opposition voices, singling out independence activists in Western Sahara.</p>
<p>“One is either a patriot or a traitor," he said in a Nov. 6 speech celebrating the territory's 1975 annexation. "One cannot enjoy the rights and privileges of citizenship, only to abuse them and conspire with the enemies of the homeland."</p>
<p>At least some here see a connection between Clinton’s public support and the king’s ultimatum. “There has to be a relationship,” Ben Shemsi said. “Clinton supported Morocco strongly and I think he feels more emboldened.”</p>
<p>An official with Morocco’s foreign ministry dismissed this idea as “pure speculation of press.” The official, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about Western Sahara issues, instead characterized the move against Haidar and other activists as “a decision to say enough is enough.”</p>
<p>A week after the king’s speech, airport police in Laayoune, Western Sahara’s main city, detained Haidar on her way home. The activist said she had left the nationality line blank on her entry documents, and wrote “Western Sahara” in the address section. Though she said she has been filling out the paperwork the same way for years, this time the police objected. She said authorities confiscated her passport, interrogated her for 24 hours, then ordered her expelled.</p>
<p>Moroccan officials dispute this account, saying Haidar renounced and willingly signed away her citizenship in the presence of family members and a government prosecutor. In a statement released Monday, Morocco’s foreign minister, Taib Fassi Fihri, characterized Haidar’s hunger strike as a bid to disrupt upcoming peace talks between Morocco and the Polisario Front, an independence movement representing about 125,000 displaced Western Sahara residents living in Algerian refugee camps.</p>
<p>“Aminatou Haidar is not a human rights activist, but a Polisario agent,” the statement said.</p>
<p>Although Haidar spoke with GlobalPost a few days into the strike, her supporters at Arrecife airport said on Tuesday she is no longer able to give interviews.</p>
<p>Haidar has subsisted on nothing but sugar water for the past three weeks and renounced medical care on Monday evening, said Man Chagaf, a Saharawi supporter who has been with Haidar since the hunger strike began. Chagaf described her condition on Tuesday as “stable but quite weak.”</p>
<p>Moroccan officials last week said Haidar could be issued a new passport if she formally apologizes to the government. But the mother of two continues to court death, staunchly maintaining she has nothing to be sorry about.</p> | Morocco cracks down on critics and journalists | false | https://pri.org/stories/2009-12-10/morocco-cracks-down-critics-and-journalists | 2009-12-10 | 3 |
<p>Any lingering question as to whether Blackwater USA security contractors were to blame in the Sept. 16 shootout in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead and 12 wounded may be cleared up by a videotape of the incident, which was reportedly filmed from a nearby police station.</p>
<p>ABC News:</p>
<p>“On the tape, there was nobody shooting at the Blackwater guards,” said Gen. Hussein Kamal, Iraq’s deputy minister of interior for intelligence, who has seen the videotape. “I believe they overreacted.”</p>
<p>The Blackwater shootings have become a major source of friction between the U.S. and Iraqi governments.</p>
<p />
<p>Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice called Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to apologize after the Sept 16 incident, but Maliki is still furious, and on Sunday he said it was “a serious challenge to the sovereignty of Iraq” and “cannot be accepted.”</p>
<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/WN/IraqCoverage/story?id=3640457&amp;page=1" type="external">Read more</a></p> | More Bad News for Blackwater | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/more-bad-news-for-blackwater/ | 2007-09-24 | 4 |
<p>ATLANTA (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday evening's drawing of the Georgia Lottery's "Fantasy 5" game were:</p>
<p>14-21-26-32-34</p>
<p>(fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-six, thirty-two, thirty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $972,000</p>
<p>ATLANTA (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday evening's drawing of the Georgia Lottery's "Fantasy 5" game were:</p>
<p>14-21-26-32-34</p>
<p>(fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-six, thirty-two, thirty-four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $972,000</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'Fantasy 5' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/1862a6bea9bb48bba690d9d292f40216 | 2018-01-20 | 2 |
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<p>A brief summation of the state of Class 5A boys basketball as we hit the season’s midway point:</p>
<p>Albuquerque High looked terrific as it started 5-0, but the ‘Dogs are reeling, having lost five in a row. Sandia is certainly a viable contender, as is Valley. Rookie Atrisco Heritage is the division’s most pleasant surprise.</p>
<p>Wild cards such as Rio Rancho and Manzano are far too unpredictable to get a firm handle on just yet. Volcano Vista has as much raw talent as anyone, but the Hawks have been enigmatic and erratic, to put it mildly.</p>
<p>Hobbs, Clovis and Las Cruces could blossom into factors at the state tournament, but there is no visual evidence, at least not yet, that any of them are capable of handling Albuquerque’s elite.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Then there’s La Cueva, which has won a dozen straight games and is the hottest team going.</p>
<p>As of this morning, however, it might not necessarily be a stretch to suggest that any road to a state championship will still eventually go through defending state champion Eldorado.</p>
<p>“Definitely,” Eldorado guard Kane Martinez said. “At the end of the day, we’re gonna be them.”</p>
<p>The Eagles (9-3) were simply stunning Friday night against Las Cruces, running the very talented Bulldawgs out of the gym in a 94-63 thrashing of a group that some consider the most serious threat to the Albuquerque establishment in March.</p>
<p>This was probably Eldorado’s most complete performance of the season, although the Eagles haven’t exactly been playing at this pristine level from the start.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I honestly have no idea why,” Eagles senior guard Cullen Neal said after a 40-point night. “If we can come out like that the rest of the year, we’ll be super hard to beat.”</p>
<p>Indeed, when Eldorado sets its mind to it, almost nobody can match up with their athleticism, ability, size and experience.</p>
<p>Las Cruces (10-5) was coming off a victory over a 14-0 team from El Paso. But the Eagles were on the verge of mercy-ruling Las Cruces the entire second half.</p>
<p>“It was just flowing tonight,” Neal said.</p>
<p>All of Eldorado’s starters put in only about three quarters of work, and EHS coach Roy Sanchez was afforded the rare luxury of getting his bench — which might be the only real question mark with this team — quality minutes.</p>
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<p>“It’s like when they play teams ranked ahead of us, or big-name teams, they get focused. They’re like on a mission,” Sanchez said.</p>
<p>Eldorado exploded with a 52-point first half. The Eagles outscored the Bulldawgs 32-7 in the second quarter alone. Not coincidentally, Neal had 19 points in that quarter, including consecutive 3-pointers to begin the quarter for a 26-16 lead.</p>
<p>At 28-18, Eldorado scored 13 in a row. Neal had six points in that run, Toben Brazier the last five.</p>
<p>“There are a bunch of tough teams out there,” Brazier said, “but we’re the toughest team.”</p>
<p>After that 13-0 run, the Bulldawgs were done.</p>
<p>“Coach has been telling us, we have to play like that every game,” said Martinez, who had 12 points, as did Brazier. “But we don’t play like that every game.”</p>
<p>Neal said he hopes that little mystery is over now.</p>
<p>“After tonight,” Neal said, “I feel like we are ready to take it up a notch. But we gotta play like that all the time.”</p> | Eagles Nearly Flawless in Win Over ‘Dawgs | false | https://abqjournal.com/161691/eagles-nearly-flawless-in-win-over-dawgs.html | 2 |
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<p>While information about Apple’s new iOS app and retail plans have leaked out in various forms over the past few weeks, we now have the whole story thanks to a trusted source. On Thursday, Apple’s new retail store app for iOS will launch, and it will bring two major features with it.</p>
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<p>First, it will enable online ordering with retail store pick up. This has already started happening in a few stores in California and New York City Apple stores as well, and more stores will go live on Thursday.</p>
<p>If a customer orders an in-stock product, pick up will be available approximately 12 minutes after completing the order. Why 12 minutes? Well, the order goes through the system to the designated Apple Store in about 3 minutes. Apple’s back-of-house employees have 2 minutes to set all of the products aside on a shelf from the minute it was ordered. There is then a 7-minute grace period for employees to get everything else in order. Around 12 minutes after purchasing, customers will be able to walk into the Apple Store, skip lines, skip registers, get their products, sign for them and leave. We’re told Apple is really excited about this, and it’s something customers have been seeking for a while.</p>
<p>If a customer orders something that a retail store does not have in-stock, like a custom-configured machine, an accessory the store does not carry, or something like an engraved or gift-wrapped device, the customer will be a given a pick-up date right after the purchase is completed. Everything will have free shipping when sent to an Apple retail store. Once the order arrives at the Apple Store and is available for pickup, a push notification will be sent to the customer through the Apple Store app, letting him or her know the order is ready. We’re told the same 12-minute timeframe applies here as well: 12 minutes from the time the push notification is received, the customer’s order should be waiting to be signed for.</p>
<p>We have been told customers who opt to purchase online or through the app will be given priority when they walk into the store over a customer waiting for a retail specialist, and that Apple expects the majority of customers over the next few years to use the in-store pick up option as their default method of buying products. This will help with foot traffic in retail stores while also reducing the cost of shipping for Apple, and possibly even reducing the number of stores Apple needs to open to accommodate sales.</p>
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<p>Apple will offer customers the ability to return items purchased online to retail stores.Lastly, we’re told that Apple will be attributing revenue from items purchased in this manner to the retail store where the items are delivered and retrieved. This should help create new job opportunities since hiring at Apple Stores is based on sales. Apple is reportedly expecting a 30% increase in sales at retail stores from this program, and it will only be available in the U.S. for now.</p>
<p>The other major feature coming in Apple’s new app? Customer self check-out at retail stores. This is a huge deal and Apple is the first to be able to put it together. Here is how this will work: after you find the item you want to buy, like an accessory, you launch the Apple Store app on your iOS device and there will be an option to buy a product in the store. You scan the product with the camera on your device in the app, click purchase, and it will charge whatever credit card is associated to your Apple ID. You then just walk out of the store. Yes, we have been told that Apple will not be checking purchases which seems hard to believe, but this self check-out option will launch Thursday worldwide at all Apple retail stores.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/01/new-apple-store-app-launches-thursday-heres-how-it-will-change-apples-retail-operations/" type="external">This content was originally published on BGR.com Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bgr.com/" type="external">Opens a New Window.</a>More news from BGR:- <a href="http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/02/google-launches-official-gmail-app-for-iphone-ipad-and-ipod-touch/" type="external">Google launches official Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch Opens a New Window.</a>- <a href="http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/02/siri-said-to-be-driving-force-behind-huge-iphone-4s-sales/" type="external">Siri said to be driving force behind huge iPhone 4S sales Opens a New Window.</a>- <a href="http://www.bgr.com/2011/11/02/czech-carrier-refuses-iphone-4s-dumps-earlier-iphones-citing-apples-business-terms/" type="external">Czech carrier refuses iPhone 4S, dumps earlier iPhones citing Apple’s business terms Opens a New Window.</a></p> | How Apple's New App Will Change its Retail Operations | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/11/02/how-apples-new-app-will-change-its-retail-operations.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>After her deafening silence on the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, actress Alyssa Milano is back on her soapbox as the champion of women’s issues on social media.</p>
<p>Milano, <a href="" type="internal">who was called out</a> by her “Charmed” co-star, and Weinstein accuser, Rose McGowan for her silence, launched a hashtag campaign over the weekend where she asked women who have been sexually assaulted or harassed to tweet “Me Too.”</p>
<p>It is the type of slacktivism that Milano has become known for.</p>
<p>Last week she was <a href="" type="internal">one of many women</a> on Twitter to take a 24 hour break from the social media platform to protest McGowan’s ban from the website.</p>
<p>More than a week after the allegations against Weinstein were made known, Milano took <a href="http://patriotnotpartisan.com/general-commentary/my-comment-on-the-harvey-weinstein-scandal/" type="external">to her personal blog</a> to speak out against him and give an excuse as to why she hadn’t done it quicker.</p>
<p>“Even with these strong feelings—not just about Weinstein but about workplace sexism in general—this statement is complicated for me for personal reasons, she said. “Harvey has a wife, who I have had the privilege of working with for the last 5 years on Project Runway All Stars. Georgina Chapman is my friend. She is one of the most special humans I have ever met.”</p>
<p>“Harvey and Georgina also have two very young children who my children have known their entire lives,” she added. “It is because of my love for Georgina, India and Dashiell that I haven’t publicly commented on this until now. Please don’t confuse my silence for anything other than respect for a dear friend and her beautiful children.”</p>
<p>“While I am sickened and angered over the disturbing accusations of Weinstein’s sexual predation and abuse of power, I’m happy—ecstatic even—that it has opened a dialogue around the continued sexual harassment, objectification and degradation of women,” Milano continued. “To the women who have suffered any form of abuse of power, I stand beside you. To the women who have come forward against a system that is designed to keep you silent, I stand in awe of you and appreciate you and our fortitude.”</p>
<p>Many celebrities joined Milano’s campaign.</p>
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<p>Wake up right! Receive our free morning news blast <a href="" type="internal">HERE</a></p> | Is Alyssa Milano’s two-word hashtag to fight sexual assault too little, too late? | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2017/10/16/alyssa-milanos-two-word-hashtag-fight-sexual-assault-little-late-549090?utm_source%3DFacebook%26utm_medium%3DOwned%26utm_campaign%3Dods%26utm_term%3Dconservativenewstoday | 2017-10-16 | 0 |
<p>This spring, Vermont became the first state to require that manufacturers of certain high-price drugs justify substantial price increases. California’s Assembly and Senate have more recently passed bills requiring advance notice and justification. And at least eight other states are considering laws to demand that drug makers disclose their research and development costs. President Obama has sought similar authority from Congress. More forcefully, Californians will vote in November on initiative Proposition 61 that would require Medicaid and other state programs to pay drug prices won by the Veterans Administration. And, finally, the President has asked Congress to allow Medicare to directly negotiate prices with drug makers.</p>
<p>Some will say that these signal long overdue action on drug prices—the glass is half-full. Others will conclude that these efforts, though the best that’s politically feasible today, are mainly symbolic and incoherent responses (the Vermont bill, for instance, would affect no more than 15 drugs) and doomed to fail—the glass is 95 percent empty. Sadly, the second view is more accurate. Most politicians want to do enough to look good to voters, but not enough to actually hurt drug manufacturers.</p>
<p>This outburst of law, bill filings, and rhetoric on drug prices has four main roots. Extraordinarily high prices for new drugs—many having little clinical value—and dramatic price hikes on old drugs—even generics—are the most visible and emotionally resonant. Some increases have been particularly infuriating and have caused widespread public uproar, such as Martin Shkreli’s 2015 boost of the price of Daraprim, an anti-parasitic generic, from $13.50 to $750 per pill—one that’s available for $0.66 in the U.K. Gilead’s $84,000 price for a 12-week treatment of Sovaldi for hepatitis C upset patients after some insurers and Medicaid programs said they would not pay for the drug until clinical need became urgent.</p>
<p>The second root is the rising burden of drug costs on Americans’ insurance premiums and taxes. In 2015, after two years of double-digit increases, prescription drug costs reached $457 billion, or 16.7 percent of personal health care spending—which is enough to buy some 45 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers yearly (the navy operates about a dozen now). Another comparison: 2015’s drug spending was three-fourths as great as total spending on public K-12 education in the United States. Drug spending will overtake K-12 spending in 2023 at current and projected rates of increase.</p>
<p>This recent jump in drug costs was not expected. After quadrupling from 1994 to 2004, drug spending had risen very slowly from 2004 to 2013, owing to a combination of drugs going off patent and the introduction of relatively few very costly blockbuster drugs. U.S. drug spending has now resumed its growth due to a series of new blockbusters, sudden price increases on many existing drugs, and the recent failure of the main remedies for addressing high cost—which include raising patients’ out-of-pocket payments, pushing generics, and employing pharmacy benefits managers to negotiate prices.</p>
<p>The third root is that rising prices and spending have led employers and insurers to demand that patients begin to pay for a growing proportion of their medications out-of-pocket (OOP). Starting in the 1970s, health maintenance organizations popularized low co-payments for their members’ prescription drugs. Rising drug costs have led insurers to go back to imposing higher deductibles, higher dollar co-payments per prescription, and even very high co-insurance—a percentage of the total price of the drug. Insurers rationalize these by claiming they would impel notional consumers to shop by price, quality, and need. But the absence of valid or usable information about either quality or need makes this a hollow claim. Instead, the real motivation for imposing higher OOPs has been a desire to cut the burden on employers—by shifting some costs to patients and by cutting use of medications. Imposing higher OOPs is particularly detrimental to poor people, who cut drug use more sharply when faced with high OOPs.</p>
<p>The fourth root of recent actions on drug prices is the growing knowledge that Americans pay more for medications than do citizens of any other rich democracy. Only 4.4 percent of the world’s people, Americans provide drug manufacturers with 40 percent of their worldwide revenue, due to a combination of high prices and high usage rates. U.S. prices for brand-name drugs in 2012 averaged triple those of six other rich democracies tracked by the Canadian regulatory agency. We subsidize the starving Swiss. Total per-person spending here was two-thirds greater than in those six nations.</p>
<p>These conditions, and the lackluster response they have elicited from politicians, are a manifestation of the oppressive influence of drug manufacturers. There are four points to keep in mind here. First, drug makers fight fiercely to protect themselves; they are likely to spend at least $100 million trying to defeat California’s Proposition 61 initiative this November. Second, at drug makers’ behest, the United States is one of only two nations permitting direct-to-patient drug advertising—advertising that boosts sales. Third, the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) did not even try to limit drug prices, though it did attempt to address the cost of hospitals and doctors. Finally, in 2003, fearing that soaring drug costs would lead to federal or state price regulation, drug makers helped shape the new Medicare prescription drug benefit (Part D) to make sure it would subsidize meds for the elderly and disabled, thereby pre-empting pressure for price controls. Although approved by a Republican Congress and President, it was financed entirely through borrowed money and was made costlier by prohibiting Congress from regulating drug prices (though Congress has, since the Reagan era, regulated the prices Medicare pays to hospitals, doctors, and nursing homes). It also effectively prohibited importing low-price drugs from Canada. And it boosted drug makers’ revenues by shifting drug coverage for six million Medicaid patients to Medicare plans that pay higher prices.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, those selling drugs in the United States are far more powerful and influential than those who would constrain their prices or profits. Their political power and influence have five main sources. The first has to do with money; the others with the power of ideas.</p>
<p>This year, three of the six most profitable U.S. industries are generic meds, big pharma,and biotech. Profits finance substantial campaign contributions, lobbying, and also grants to sustain allied Astroturf grassroots patient organizations. They also finance data gathering and analysis to help drug makers fight prolonged battles with FDA regulators to win approval for meds that sometimes prove unsafe, and sometimes rely on surrogate end-points and other uncertain measures of efficacy. Profits stem from a combination of patent protection, weak competition within many classes of drugs, mergers and acquisitions among drug makers, successful marketing and advertising, and the stark failure of political efforts to limit prices.</p>
<p>A second source of power for drug makers is the gratitude from patients and families who benefit from prolonged lives and reduced disability and suffering thanks to these medications.</p>
<p>Third is ideology, both economic—the praise of drug makers by well-meaning free-market thinkers who suppose that high drug maker profits manifest efficient satisfaction of human demand—and political—the creative legal doctrine of commercial free speech that liberates drug makers to market their meds even for off-label uses for which neither safety nor efficacy have been directly demonstrated. Americans are susceptible to using meds whose benefits are marginal, even when their prices are high, because we exaggerate those benefits and don’t grasp just what we are giving up in return.</p>
<p>A fourth is the success of drug makers’ argument that high U.S. prices are needed to offset the low prices imposed by regulators in other nations, and thereby to generate the profits that finance the purportedly disproportionately innovative U.S. drug industry. (It is not clear why U.S. drug makers are imagined to be more innovative, since the world’s drug makers engage in equal opportunity pillaging and plundering of U.S. patients. The nationality of drug research is itself cloudy.)</p>
<p>And the fifth is drug makers’ argument that they need high prices to cover the allegedly high cost of research and of bringing a successful new medication to market. (It is nonsense to assert that drug makers set their prices to cover their costs. Businesses freely concede that their duty to their stockholders is to maximize profits, so they set prices accordingly. Bills that demand that drug makers itemize their costs are therefore nearly meaningless—except as a means of shaming drug makers.)</p>
<p>Drug makers like to claim they won’t undertake risky research without the big financial rewards that come from high prices. The promise of innovation persuades many Americans that high drug prices are warranted. An emotional and intemperate metaphoric formulation of the drug makers’ implicit position might be “give us all your money or you’ll die.”</p>
<p>But high profits don’t finance research. Instead, profits are what’s left after paying all costs, including those of research. In 2015, the five largest U.S. drug makers’ profits averaged more than one-third higher than their R&amp;D costs.</p>
<p>In the end, drug makers in the United States simply impose high prices because they can. They can because they operate under conditions approaching anarchy. Anarchy is what occurs in the absence of either a vigorous competitive free market for drug-making or competent government price regulation.</p>
<p>It is not unusual for narrow, wealthy political interests to trump broad, diffuse public interests. This is nowhere more evident than in the case of pharmaceuticals.</p>
<p>Americans have long and wrongly imagined that we can have all the health care—including drugs—that we want or might benefit from—without having to pay for it. We suppose there are no trade-offs, no opportunity costs. This belief is much weaker in other rich democracies. In the United States, it was unintentionally fostered by employers’ provision of health insurance through the job. Workers, therefore, imagined that this insurance is a warm personal gift from the employer. Roughly one-half of all Americans have health insurance through their job, and one-third of all health dollars flow through the wide invisible underground aqueducts of private insurance. This belief has undermined pressure to establish budgets for drug purchasing.</p>
<p>In other nations, on the other hand, it is clear to everyone that higher health spending means higher income, sales, or payroll taxes. Most other nations, therefore, establish either a single payer or a coalition of all payers to set an annual cap on health spending. The money is clearly finite; the challenge is how to spend it so that it does as much good as possible. It is equally clear to politicians, employers, unions, and voters that higher health spending means either reduced spending on education and job training, environment, infrastructure, defense, criminal justice, and everything else anyone might care about—or lower take-home pay. The neurons are connected.</p>
<p>One reason Americans disdain such budgets is our inbred preference for market remedies whenever possible. Unfortunately, functioning free markets are simply unattainable in health care, and the drug sector is no exception. That’s because not one of the six requirements for a competitive free market is met, or can be met, in the realm of pharmaceuticals. A market of small buyers and sellers doesn’t make the price; drug makers with patents or market power are dominant. Price competition among generics, biosimilars, and me-too brand name drugs does little to cut U.S. drug spending. Sovereign consumers don’t make decisions; they rely on physicians who are often swayed by drug makers’ marketing or detailers. Entry of new competitors can be hard; drug makers merge with competitors or acquire them to reduce competition; big vertically-integrated drug makers often finance smaller ones or buy up their discoveries. Information is asymmetric; patients lack it and doctors and drug makers have lots of it. Subtly, but importantly, the price of drugs doesn’t remotely track the cost of production. And the injunction that buyers should beware and mistrustful carries little weight in the absence of good information about which drugs are needed or valuable.</p>
<p>In the background of all this is Americans’ general mistrust of government and our fear that government might deny us access to a potentially beneficial drug or medical treatment. This is reinforced by a widespread fear that effective limits on drug prices will impair research, eventually causing us to die earlier than we otherwise would have.</p>
<p>A public that is angry about high drug prices and rising out-of-pocket costs, but is generally unwilling to support or fight for concerted political action to lower prices, is forced to settle for the best laws politicians are willing and able to pass. These include demands for disclosure of costs or of plans to boost prices. All these make for symbolic or feel-good or toothless legislation that drug makers will find easy to game, swat away, or water down by full-court presses on regulators. So Americans become even more cynical about politics and about governments’ ability to protect us.</p>
<p>In today’s world, the bill that can pass won’t work, and the bill that would work couldn’t pass—even if we could figure out what that bill might be. Since we can’t rely on a competent competitive free market, we must rely on changing the politics and on making government competent to act in the public interest to ensure affordable and effective medications. How could that possibly happen?</p>
<p>Other nations have been able to regulate drug prices, in part, because they have been able to count on Americans to finance a wildly disproportionate share of the world’s innovative research. The United States lacks that luxury; so we must take on the joint tasks of cutting our prices and making sure to continue promoting innovation. A key tactic is to cease relying on sky-high pill prices to pay the costs of successful research or deserved profits.</p>
<p>One mechanism for doing this would be for government to finance innovation by abolishing, or limiting, patents and, instead, awarding prizes in fair proportion to new drugs’ value. (A $100 billion prize for a safe and effective drug for Alzheimer’s would be conservative. The prize would be modulated over time as evidence grows on a new med’s efficacy, safety, and the averted costs of other treatments.) In return for the prize, a public body would license the innovation for production and sale at low prices—adequate to cover costs of manufacturing and distribution. The prize mechanism has been advocated by Sen. Sanders, who has reintroduced the Medical Innovation Prize Fund Act on several occasions, as well as economist Joseph Stiglitz.</p>
<p>An added benefit is that wasteful investment in copy-cat or me-too drugs would plummet as attention shifted to highly-prized innovation. To boost competition and to further support innovation, governments might publicly finance the fixed costs of small and mid-size drug research laboratories.</p>
<p>The prizes should be financed primarily by a pact among rich nations and secondarily by middle-income nations. Poor nations might pay prices that cover part or all of the cost of manufacturing. Nations lacking foreign exchange would simply receive meds as donations. Low market prices would deter diversion of donated meds for sale in wealthy nations.</p>
<p>This approach promotes innovation, while making its successes affordable for all. Because it excises research costs and profits from the price of the pill, the price need cover only the low incremental cost of producing most meds. That low cost means that prescription drugs constitute the best opportunity in the health care sector to win equity for all people.</p>
<p>Efforts to make existing drugs affordable should complement prizes that lower prices for new drugs. Existing law allows marching in on patents for unreasonably-priced drugs developed with public funds, as activist Jamie Love has proposed, or using eminent domain to take patents in exchange for reasonable compensation, an idea raised by Professors Aaron Kesselheim and Jerry Avorn at Harvard.</p>
<p>It is easy to describe, in the abstract, mechanisms and methods that would assure access, spur innovation, limit prices, and constrain total spending. It is harder to tell the story of successfully enacting those methods into law. But the story could go something like this: American patients, employers, and taxpayers gradually become unable and unwilling to finance business as usual in health care, and meds in particular. Hopes for cures through drug innovation turn to tragedy as increasing numbers of Americans are unable to afford many new high-price meds. They are not mollified by recent proposals that they mortgage their homes to pay for new drug treatments.</p>
<p>Angry and afraid, they and their families demand political action to make breakthrough drugs affordable. Employers and governments become increasingly sympathetic as they find themselves unable to afford new waves of high-priced meds that seem to benefit large numbers of patients.</p>
<p>At the same time, drug makers recall that the word “blockbuster” originally meant a very destructive bomb, not a lucrative market. They foresee an imminent end to their ability to extract so disproportionate a share of their revenue from American taxpayers and patients. Already the most nervous very well-dressed people in North America—today, 89 percent of biotech firms say they are worried about pressure to constrain their prices—see their persuasive power waning and decide to use their remaining political influence to negotiate a compromise.</p>
<p>This leads, sooner or later, to a politically bargained prescription drug peace treaty, one that respects humanity’s needs for new and better meds at low prices while rewarding innovators very generously. The path upward is reasonably clear. Unfortunately, though, we are climbing, for now, more slowly than the optimists hope.</p> | It’s Time to Confront the Drug Makers | true | http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/its-time-to-confront-the-drug-makers/ | 2016-08-08 | 4 |
<p>This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (August 29, 2017).</p>
<p>Gilead Sciences Inc. on Monday agreed to pay about $11 billion for Kite Pharma Inc., an ambitious bet on a new type of cancer therapy that is on the brink of becoming commercially available in the U.S.</p>
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<p>Doctors say Kite's main treatment, which is up for regulatory approval in the U.S. and Europe, could drastically improve treatment of patients with some of the most advanced cases of cancer. EvaluatePharma expects Kite's therapy to generate sales of $1.7 billion world-wide in 2022.</p>
<p>"This technology is really going to be transformative to the field," Gilead CEO John Milligan said in an interview.</p>
<p>The new breed of treatments, known as CAR-T -- or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell -- therapy, work by extracting a cancer patient's T-cells, a type of immune cell. The T-cells are then genetically modified outside the body to make them more effective at hunting down and killing tumors, and then re-injected into the patient.</p>
<p>Several other companies also are developing CAR-T treatments -- including Switzerland's Novartis AG, which already won a key regulatory nod in the U.S. earlier this year, and is expected very soon to get the first official green light to start offering the treatment.</p>
<p>Gilead, of Foster City, Calif., had been looking for an acquisition to diversify its portfolio beyond its leading position in infectious-disease treatments and provide a new revenue stream as sales of the company's hepatitis C drugs decline.</p>
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<p>The deal for Kite, of Santa Monica, Calif., would be one of Gilead's biggest, on a par with the company's $11 billion purchase of liver-disease drugmaker Pharmasset in 2012. Through that acquisition, Gilead gained hepatitis C therapies that are among the world's top-selling drugs.</p>
<p>Now Gilead is betting that Kite can provide a similar payoff. Dr. Milligan said Kite's technology could be used beyond its initial focus on an advanced form of lymphoma to other blood cancers including multiple myeloma and perhaps in combination with other immunotherapies.</p>
<p>While promising, CAR-T treatments won't be like other drugs that win FDA approval, and then quickly wind up on pharmacy shelves and hospitals. The rollout of this new breed will be complicated by unresolved questions.</p>
<p>Manufacturing and delivery are more complex than for a typical drug. In the U.S., only a few dozen specialized hospitals are currently qualified to provide CAR-T treatments, which require retrieving, processing and then returning immune cells to the patient, as well as monitoring side effects. Novartis said it expects between 30 and 35 centers to be certified to offer the treatment by the end of the year.</p>
<p>Some of the therapies that various companies were working on have produced serious, even deadly, side effects during development. Dr. Milligan said doctors have learned how to cut the risk of side effects, and Gilead and Kite would work on developing improved treatments.</p>
<p>Expense could also present a hurdle: A study by England's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, an official body that analyzes the cost-effectiveness of medical treatment, said CAR-T procedures could command a price of up to GBP528,600 (about $681,000).</p>
<p>The cost is similar to the total costs of some other cancer therapies taken over the course of several years, according to Stephan Grupp, who was part of the team that first developed Novartis's treatment at the University of Pennsylvania. But CAR-T therapy is conducted only once, creating a comparatively steep one-time payment.</p>
<p>Novartis hasn't yet disclosed the price it plans to charge for its treatment, called CTL019, which has been shown to dramatically raise the chances of survival for children and young people with leukemia who don't respond to standard treatment, or who suffer a relapse.</p>
<p>So far, CAR-T therapies have been tested only on certain types of blood cancer. Kite Pharma's leading CAR-T treatment, known as axi-cel, is aimed at patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, for whom standard therapy has failed.</p>
<p>Kite and Novartis are both investigating several more CAR-T therapies for various forms of blood cancer. Novartis is also conducting early-stage CAR-T trials for certain types of brain and lung tumors.</p>
<p>Dr. Milligan, Gilead's CEO, said the company had been eyeing Kite for months and decided to make a move after Kite asked the FDA to approve axi-cel and Gilead watched the performance of treatments from Novartis and others.</p>
<p>Deal talks began in earnest during a dinner in June at the home of Kite CEO Arie Belldegrun overlooking the University of California, Los Angeles, campus where he teaches and practices medicine, Dr. Milligan said.</p>
<p>"We are excited that Gilead, one of the most innovative companies in the industry, recognized this value and shares our passion for developing cutting-edge and potentially curative therapies for patients," Mr. Belldegrun said in a statement.</p>
<p>Gilead made its name selling treatments for HIV/AIDS. The biotech company surged in value after launching the hepatitis C treatments developed at Pharmasset. The drugs, Sovaldi and Harvoni, helped Gilead double its sales in 2014. It now has a market value of roughly $100 billion.</p>
<p>Last year Gilead had $30 billion in sales, including $9.1 billion from Harvoni and $4 billion from Sovaldi.</p>
<p>Yet the anti-viral drugs' commercial success has also come with some problems. Gilead faced public criticism and a Senate investigation for listing Sovaldi at $1,000 a day -- or $84,000 for a 12-week treatment -- even though the therapy cured most patients at a cost of less than a liver transplant.</p>
<p>The hepatitis C drugs' sales were squeezed in recent years when Merck &amp; Co. launched a rival treatment, forcing Gilead to offer steep discounts to health plans. And partly because of the drugs' success curing the disease, fewer patients needed treatment.</p>
<p>The company's second-quarter hepatitis C drug sales fell to $2.9 billion world-wide, down from $4 billion during the period a year earlier.</p>
<p>Gilead has faced pressure from investors and analysts to find new revenue sources. Management responded by touting its next generation of HIV/AIDS treatments as well as drugs in development to treat a liver disease known as NASH, for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.</p>
<p>But Wall Street said Gilead needed to do another deal. Gilead fanned speculation by hiring Alessandro Riva from Novartis to run its hematology and oncology division, as well as its former adviser, investment banker Andrew Dickinson, from Lazard Ltd.</p>
<p>Gilead's all-cash deal for Kite is expected to close in the fourth quarter, around the same time as the deadline for U.S. approval of Kite's main therapy.</p>
<p>Dr. Milligan said Dr. Belldegrun would help with the transition to new ownership and that Gilead would retain "nearly all" Kite's employees.</p>
<p>--Dana Mattioli contributed to this article.</p>
<p>Write to Jonathan D. Rockoff at Jonathan.Rockoff@wsj.com and Denise Roland at Denise.Roland@wsj.com</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 29, 2017 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)</p> | Gilead Bets $11 Billion On New Cancer Therapy -- WSJ | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/29/gilead-bets-11-billion-on-new-cancer-therapy-wsj.html | 2017-08-29 | 0 |
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<p>Sgt. Justin R. Pereira, from Gooding, Idaho, and Laika 5, a Tactical Explosives Detection Dog with <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/2nd-Battalion-23rd-Infantry-Regiment/160512884001048" type="external">2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment</a>, provide security as Afghan Border Police break ground on a new checkpoint March 25, in Spin Boldak district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. U.S. Army <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/8599283561/in/photostream" type="external">photo</a> by Staff Sgt. Shane Hamann, 102nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.</p>
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<p /> | We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for April 4, 2013 | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/were-still-war-photo-day-april-4-2013/ | 2013-04-04 | 4 |
<p>PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from an advocacy group that ran ads attacking former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith as he was running for the Republican nomination for governor in 2014.</p>
<p>The court on Thursday upheld a lower court decision that said the Legacy Foundation Action Fund waited too long to appeal a finding by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission that it failed to file campaign spending reports. The group says it wasn't engaged in political advocacy requiring it to file.</p>
<p>The commission fined Legacy $96,000 in November 2014 and a Superior Court judge said they missed the 14-day time frame for filing an appeal.</p>
<p>The high court agreed with that decision but also said it was not deciding whether Legacy could file other procedural challenges.</p>
<p>PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from an advocacy group that ran ads attacking former Mesa Mayor Scott Smith as he was running for the Republican nomination for governor in 2014.</p>
<p>The court on Thursday upheld a lower court decision that said the Legacy Foundation Action Fund waited too long to appeal a finding by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission that it failed to file campaign spending reports. The group says it wasn't engaged in political advocacy requiring it to file.</p>
<p>The commission fined Legacy $96,000 in November 2014 and a Superior Court judge said they missed the 14-day time frame for filing an appeal.</p>
<p>The high court agreed with that decision but also said it was not deciding whether Legacy could file other procedural challenges.</p> | Arizona Supreme Court tosses appeal of campaign fine | false | https://apnews.com/amp/b9317b89a59b4fab9d80f1110c54bd08 | 2018-01-25 | 2 |
<p>More than <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=234599" type="external">55 rockets</a> have been fired from Gaza into southern region of Israel since hostilities between Hamas and Israel renewed this week.</p>
<p>One man died Saturday from injuries sustained when a rocket fired from Gaza exploded in Beersheba. The attack was one in a wider barrage of rockets, with locals reporting hearing at least 11 explosions, the Jerusalem Post reported.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/110819/security-fears-douse-israeli-protests" type="external">See GlobalPost: Security fears douse Israeli protests</a></p>
<p>"After two days in which eight Israelis were killed in terror attacks and the south of the country found itself under the barrage of more than 20 missiles, the Israel Air Force retaliated with a series of air strikes against Gaza, killing at least two leaders of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee."</p>
<p><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/08/201181893519247218.html" type="external">Gaza residents</a> said three compounds controlled by the Hamas group that rules the enclave were hit.</p>
<p>Five of those killed were members of the Popular Resistance Committees, while the sixth was a young boy. Medical officials said that 17 others had been wounded, Al Jazeera reported.</p>
<p>The PRC confirmed to the AFP news agency that its leader had been killed, vowing that it would take revenge "against everything and everyone". The PRC spokesman also denied that the group was involved in the attacks on Thursday.</p>
<p>The Israeli military said that at least ten rockets had been fired from Gaza into southern Israel after the aerial bombing of Rafah. It said that two rockets fired at the city of Ashdod "caused damage and injuries at a synagogue and school", according to a statement.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Egyptian government has withdrawn its ambassador to Israel in protest over a cross-border shooting incident on Thursday that left five Egyptian security personnel dead, Al Jazeera reported.</p>
<p>The cabinet has also summoned the Israeli ambassador in Cairo to provide answers on how an Israeli helicopter apparently accidentally killed Egyptian border police while chasing armed men whom Israel suspected of being connected to an attack near the port city of Eilat earlier that day.</p>
<p>Hundreds of protesters attacked barriers outside Israeli embassy in Cairo through the night, demanding that Israel's ambassador be expelled</p> | More than 50 rockets from Gaza pound Israel | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-08-20/more-50-rockets-gaza-pound-israel | 2011-08-20 | 3 |
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<p>The Obama administration is nominating current World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a second term leading the 189-nation international lending organization.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew praised Kim for using his first term at the World Bank to effectively address "today's most pressing global challenges in innovative ways, from ending extreme poverty and tackling inequality to combating climate change."</p>
<p>Kim, the former president of Dartmouth College, was first tapped by President Barack Obama to head the World Bank in 2012. Since the creation of the World Bank after the end of World War II, its leaders have all been Americans while the International Monetary Fund, its sister lending organization, has always been headed by a European.</p> | Obama administration taps Kim for second term at World Bank | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/25/obama-administration-taps-kim-for-second-term-at-world-bank.html | 2016-08-26 | 0 |
<p>Livestock futures were mixed as traders searched for seasonal lows.</p>
<p>Lean hog futures for October rose before giving back most gains to close 0.1% higher at 61.4 cents a pound at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Later-month contracts were also higher.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Cattle futures, meanwhile, fell. CME most-active October live cattle futures dropped 0.7% to $1.054 a pound.</p>
<p>Both markets have been rattled by concerns about oversupply in recent weeks, pushing prices for wholesale red meat and slaughter-ready livestock down since peaking earlier this summer. Some analysts say markets now have room for a bounce.</p>
<p>Hog futures are at an unusually wide discount to the CME's lean hog index, which tracks the cash market. The index was at 75.68 cents a pound as of Wednesday, almost 15 cents higher than the October futures contract. Analysts say those will need to converge, creating incentive for traders to push futures up toward the index.</p>
<p>High hog slaughter numbers will likely limit gains in the near term, however. Slaughter numbers are expected to increase into September and October, the Steiner Consulting Group said in a note to clients.</p>
<p>Cattle futures, meanwhile, were under pressure as the week's cash trade trended lower. Meatpackers bought an estimated 4,000 head of cattle in Kansas at $1.05 a pound live on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said, in line with sales on Wednesday but below last week.</p>
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<p>Though feedlots are expected to produce large numbers of slaughter-ready cattle in the near future, that output will likely ease at the end of the year after the USDA reported a slowdown in the rate of young cattle placed in feedlots for fattening.</p>
<p>Write to Benjamin Parkin at benjamin.parkin@wsj.com</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 31, 2017 15:22 ET (19:22 GMT)</p> | Livestock Futures Mixed as Hogs Climb, Cattle Sag | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/31/livestock-futures-mixed-as-hogs-climb-cattle-sag.html | 2017-08-31 | 0 |
<p>The Latest on Google's new-product showcase (all times local):</p>
<p>11:15 a.m.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Google is introducing a hands-free camera that will automatically take photos and video for people looking to catch candid moments of their family, friends and pet.</p>
<p>The small, square device, called Google Clips, can be attached to something stationary so it can capture images of everything within its range of view. It will rely on artificially intelligence to know the best times to snap a photo or record video.</p>
<p>Google is promising that privacy controls built into Clips will give the camera's users complete control over which images they want to transfer to another device or share with someone else.</p>
<p>Clips will sell for almost $250 and will be available in stores in December.</p>
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<p>10:45 a.m.</p>
<p>Google is introducing wireless headphones as its new line of Pixel smartphones joins the shift away from a headphone jack.</p>
<p>Although they will connect wirelessly, the company's Pixel Buds will come with a short cord so you can drape them around your neck.</p>
<p>Google removed the headphone jack from the second generation of its Pixel phones to make them thinner and waterproof. The new phones also feature built-in stereo speakers.</p>
<p>Besides playing music, the Pixel buds work with translation software built in the new phones to make it easier to converse in different languages. The translation feature will also be made available in an update to Pixel models released last year.</p>
<p>The Pixel buds will sell for almost $160 and ship next month.</p>
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<p>10:30 a.m.</p>
<p>Google is borrowing from Apple's playbook as it takes on its rival in high end of the smartphone market.</p>
<p>The second generation of Google's Pixel phones unveiled Wednesday feature larger, brighter screens that take up more of the phone's front, changes that Apple is also making with its iPhone X scheduled to be released next month.</p>
<p>Both the Pixel XL and the 5-inch Pixel will also get rid of the headphone jack, something Apple did with the iPhone last year.</p>
<p>Google also souped up the already highly rated camera on the Pixel, boasting that it will take even better photos than the iPhone.</p>
<p>The smaller Pixel will sell for almost $650, $50 less than the iPhone 8. The Pixel XL will sell for almost $850, or $50 more than the iPhone 8 Plus. Prices for the iPhone X start at $1,000.</p>
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<p>10 a.m.</p>
<p>Google is introducing different sizes of its internet-connected speaker to compete against similar devices from Amazon and Apple.</p>
<p>The Google Home Mini unveiled Wednesday is a button-sized speaker covered in fabric. It includes the same features featured in a cylindrical speaker that Google rolled out last year in response to Amazon's Echo.</p>
<p>The Mini will cost almost $50, roughly the small price as Amazon's smaller speaker, the Echo Dot. The standard Google Home speaker costs almost $130.</p>
<p>The Google Home Max is a rectangular speaker with superior acoustics for playing music, mimicking Apple's HomePod.</p>
<p>Google is selling the Home Max for almost $400, $50 more than the HomePod. Both speakers are due in December.</p>
<p>Google's voice-activated digital assistant will serves as the brains for all the speakers.</p> | The Latest: A Google hands-free camera snaps pics by itself | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/04/latest-googles-wireless-headphones-can-auto-translate.html | 2017-10-04 | 0 |