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2016-04-20 00:00:00

(CNN)Donald Trump enjoys a wide lead among likely Republican primary voters in Connecticut, while Hillary Clinton is the favored candidates for Democratic voters there, a new Quinnipiac University poll shows. Coming off commanding victories in New York Tuesday, Trump and Clinton are now turning their attention to Connecticut and the four other Eastern states that hold their primaries on April 26. Trump won 60.5% of the vote in New York, while Clinton secured 57.9%. READ: New York primary: 5 takeaways In Connecticut, the billionaire businessman has the support of 48% of likely GOP voters, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich is supported by 28% and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by 19%, according to the Quinnipiac poll, released Wednesday. Only 5% are undecided, but 25% of those who named a candidate said they may change their minds before the primary. Nutmeg State Republicans want an outsider for president by a 59% to 33% margin, the polls shows, and among those who favor an outsider, 75% back Trump. "Connecticut Republicans have gone for outsider candidates, such as (former Senate nominee) Linda McMahon and (former gubernatorial nominee) Tom Foley. They continue that trend with Donald Trump," said Douglas Schwartz, Quinnipiac University's poll director, in a memo accompanying the results. Trump leads among both men and women, as well as residents with and without college degrees and those concerned about terrorism, the economy and government spending. Kasich is favored by voters aged 18 to 44, but Trump captures older respondents. Read: Ted Cruz's northeastern survival plan The race is tighter among the Democrats, but Clinton holds a 51% to 42% lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 6% undecided and 18% saying they may change their mind. The former secretary of state has strong support from African-Americans, who back her 66% to 25% among likely Democratic voters. Women back Clinton 55% to 38%, but men give Sanders the edge by 50% to 45%. Young voters overwhelmingly favor Sanders, by a 73% to 26% margin, while voters aged 35 and older remain solidly in Clinton's corner. Read: What's next for Bernie Sanders? Quinnipiac surveyed 823 likely Republican voters and 1,037 likely Democratic voters in Connecticut from April 12-18. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points for Republicans and plus or minus 3 percentage points for the Democrats.

2018-05-28

Recent days have witnessed a whirlwind of activity in U.S. relations with North Korea. Secretary of State Mike PompeoMichael (Mike) Richard PompeoCotton warns China: Crackdown on Hong Kong would be 'grave miscalculation' Pompeo expresses concern over North Korea missile tests Pompeo acknowledges 'places where ISIS is more powerful today' MORE told congressional leaders on May 24 that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “ghosted us” by refusing to allow meetings between the teams responsible for planning the June 12 Singapore summit. President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE then canceled the summit because of North Korea’s hostile comments, including comments directed at Vice President Mike PenceMichael (Mike) Richard PenceTrump adopts familiar mantra on possible recession: fake news The Hill's Morning Report - Trump on defense over economic jitters FEC chair calls on Trump to provide evidence of NH voter fraud MORE and National Security Adviser John Bolton, as well as skepticism that Pyongyang was truly committed to denuclearization.   North Korea’s response was diplomatic, rather than bellicose. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said the North is “willing to give the U.S. time and opportunities to reconsider holding the summit.” Kim lauded President Trump for “having made the bold decision … for such a crucial event as the summit.” North Korea is one of greatest challenges for the U.S. intelligence community. Having served as a senior clandestine services officer at CIA, responsible for collecting intelligence from the hardest targets, I expect President Trump and his team are relying on our intelligence experts to determine Kim’s motivation for applying diplomatic brinkmanship to the planned summit before retreating to a conciliatory approach when Trump called his bluff.     Starting in January, Kim softened his outward engagement in the region and with the United States. He sent his sister for a goodwill tour during the Olympics in South Korea, met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, released three U.S. hostages and, hours before Trump canceled the summit, dismantled three of the four tunnels at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site. North Korea claimed the fourth tunnel, which had been used for its first nuclear test in 2006, already had been destroyed. There were only journalist observers, rather than nuclear experts to verify the site’s destruction.   During the early stages of bilateral engagement, then-CIA Director Pompeo held private negotiations with Kim Jong Un that were not subjected to public scrutiny. Preparation for the summit, however, required overt diplomatic engagement and presented North Korea with an opportunity to posture for strategic advantage by probing U.S. red lines. Through decades of failed U.S. policy, North Korean leaders developed an expectation that sanctions relief would result simply for showing up to negotiate an agreement, which they would later break. The Trump administration has rightly forsaken this approach. The president’s letter and accompanying public statement made it clear: the U.S. military deterrent and sanctions would remain in full force as long as North Korea did not commit to negotiating in good faith.   North Korea’s hermit kingdom is arguably the world’s most closed country, with a near-bankrupt economy resulting from its national security ideology of juche (self-reliance) and songun (military-first allocation of national resources). Kim also has pursued the policy of byngjin, which involves developing North Korea’s economy while simultaneously maintaining its nuclear weapons program. Kim is acutely aware of the risks of his self-imposed isolation and the value of nuclear weapons for ensuring his dynastic regime security and survival. If he is the rational actor we assess him to be, then Kim would be extremely wary of eliminating the deterrent he believes made fellow autocrats Saddam Hussein and  Muammar Gaddafi vulnerable to regime change. For the United States, this means we should have realistic expectations as we continue to manage the threat from North Korea’s chemical/biological programs, nuclear weapons, and ICBM capability. Diplomatic engagement will be a long haul, with expected twists and turns going forward, as well as lack of immediate gratification for either side. The question is whether the latest conciliatory statement from North Korea’s vice foreign minister in response to Trump’s summit cancellation is truly a step forward, toward diplomacy, or another North Korean feint that will, in Secretary Pompeo’s words, result in reverting to “situation normal.” Daniel Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-05-15

The drop by stocks Tuesday — after the rally where the Dow posted an eight-day winning streak — is a good chance to pick up some defensive stocks, said Jamie Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group. "Even though the economy is charging right along, there's going to be a payback someday," Cox said Tuesday on CNBC's "Power Lunch. " "It's very possible that, with the new tax legislation, and some of the things that are going on, that the economy could go into recession in a couple of years," said the financial advisor. To be more precise, his time frame is one to two years, or by 2020. As a result, Cox recommended that investors insulate their portfolios with dividend stocks. Names that "aren't necessarily recession-proof," he said. "But they tend to be resilient." "Mobile services are a perfect example, because the last thing you're going to do during a recession is turn off your phone," Cox said. Companies with solid fundamentals are a buying opportunity as interest rates rise and prices drop during sell-offs, he said. "There's no business condition causing the stocks to fall," Cox said. "It's just the interest rates. So they'll go back up again." Some sectors to consider are telecom, utilities and consumer staples, Cox said. He recommended Duke Energy, Dominion Energy, AT&T, Verizon and Procter & Gamble. Cox pointed out that a company like Procter & Gamble was performing badly year to date. "But people need toothpaste," he said. "Like any other investment," Cox said, "it doesn't necessarily pay off right away. What you're trying to do is build your portfolio for income or whatever you're trying to do for the future." On Tuesday, stocks fell, with all major indexes opening lower. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 200 points, the S&P 500 shed 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq composite declined 0.8 percent. Meanwhile, the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury yield, hit its highest level since 2011 on Tuesday, at 3.09 percent. In addition, many market watchers fear the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates as many as four times this year. The first rate increase in 2018 was after the central bank's March meeting. But Cox said the likelihood of four hikes is small. At some point the positive effects for companies from the Republican tax law are going to wear off and some of those corporations "are going to stop buying things," Cox said. "That's going to cause a recession or slowdown in the economy." He warns investors not to assume, "stocks are going to stay up forever." "They're not going to," Cox said. "Particularly the high-flying ones. If there is a recession, the things that have been bid up the most are going to get hit the worst."

2020-02-13 00:00:00

TRIPOLI, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The only functioning airport in Libya’s capital Tripoli closed on Thursday after missiles were fired towards it, causing chaos and fear among passengers, airport authorities said. No further details were immediately available. It was not clear whether any projectiles struck the airport itself, located on Tripoli’s eastern outskirts, or its runways. After the destruction of Tripoli International Airport, south of the city, in factional warfare in 2014, Mitiga became the only airport running domestic and international flights in the capital region of northwestern Libya. Mitiga has been targeted with missiles on different occasions in recent years as OPEC member Libya slid into armed anarchy following the fall of leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. On Thursday, artillery shells hit the centre of the Libyan capital that eastern military forces have been trying to capture in a near year-long war, killing a woman and injuring four others, a health ministry source told Reuters. Libyan National Army (LNA) forces under former Gaddafi-era general Khalifa Haftar moved last April on Tripoli, where the current internationally recognised government is based. International efforts to defuse the conflict have been fruitless. (Reporting by Ahmed Elumami Writing by Amina Ismail Editing by Mark Heinrich)

2016-06-06

"It was inappropriate." Trump reacts to Gingrich saying it's 'inexcusable' to question a judge based on ethnicityhttps://t.co/oarWEmNzaa Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat O'Rourke: Trump driving global, U.S. economy into recession Manchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms MORE on Monday said he was caught off guard by Newt Gingrich’s defense of a judge overseeing lawsuits against Trump University. “I was surprised at Newt,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee said on Fox News's "Fox and Friends." "I thought it was inappropriate what he said.” Gingrich last weekend criticized Trump’s comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel's Hispanic heritage. “I don’t know what Trump’s reasoning was, and I don’t care,”  the former Speaker said in a Saturday email to The Washington Post.  “His description of the judge in terms of his parentage is completely unacceptable,” added Gingrich, who has previously endorsed  the real estate mogul and has been mentioned as a possible Trump running mate. Gingrich on Sunday doubled down on his criticism of Trump, calling it “inexcusable” and “one of the worst mistakes” the billionaire has made. Trump said last week Curiel is biased against the billionaire because of Trump's immigration policies. “I’m building a wall,” he said of his proposed boundary along U.S. border with Mexico. "It’s an inherent conflict of interest.” Curiel is of Hispanic heritage but was born in Indiana. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-07-10 13:46:00

As a women-led boxing and martial arts gym run along anti-fascist community principles, Solstar is among the first of its kind in the UK. When it opened in February 2016, both Gilbert and Lamont were determined to build a space where women could learn practical fighting skills without the machismo. Lamont has competed in MMA, trained in boxing and jujitsu, and was the first woman in 15 years to gain a Taekwondo black belt classification at her gym. Gilbert, who started her boxing career at university in 2012, now fights for Islington Boxing Club and won in her weight category in the prestigious London Development Championships last year. Gilbert is blasé as she recalls her first experience at an amateur boxing club: “I was the first woman in 100 years and they haven't had another one since. But I was stubborn, I stuck it out and refused to go away and eventually they had to notice me.” She adds, “It’s the general culture. Even in my current competitive gym, which has arguably the largest female squad in the country, men still outnumber us six or seven to one.” Solstar, while a relatively small club, still boasts an average 50:50 gender ratio. The classes themselves are held at a local community centre, with two classes per week—boxing on Tuesdays and Muay Thai on Thursdays. Gilbert takes the reins for Tuesday’s lesson while former World Muay Thai Council champion Anna Zucchelli leads on Thursdays. Sometimes 30 students turned up, though the average class size now clocks in at a more manageable 10 to 15. Watch: Nairobi's Box Girls Fight Back Lamont remembers a male instructor’s unfriendly reception that only reinforced her quest for a more women-inclusive gym. “I phoned up one club instructor when I first moved into MMA,” she says. “He was very off with me. I told him I had experience, I’d done it before and he just wasn’t enthusiastic. For me, if a woman steps into a gym, regardless of the level, they should be met with twice as much enthusiasm.” Solstar distinguishes itself from other gyms in its intersecting principles of feminism and anti-fascism. “We would describe ourselves as a ‘red’ gym or a left-wing gym,” explains Lamont. “It is a space for people to train who are trade unionists, campaigners, or consider themselves politically progressive.” It’s about solidarity, adds Gilbert: “There’s a sense of team spirit when you can walk into a room and know you have shared principles with the people that you’re training with.” While there are left-wing gyms in the UK, the two found that these spaces weren’t always inclusive. None were fronted by women. “How are you going to advance things for people if you don’t represent those people?” asks Gilbert. Lamont nods in agreement: “I think that all progressive movements should be women-led. There should be at least equality. I don't see how you can call yourself progressive if women aren’t at the forefront of anything you do that’s left-wing.” Solstar is connected to left-wing gyms both in the UK and globally—the two founders recently returned from an anti-fascist boxing conference in Ghent, Belgium. Boxing and martial arts gyms are traditionally anti-fascist, explains Lamont, “because it’s about training people to be aware of themselves on the street. It’s about equipping people with the ability to defend themselves.” Self-defence is something that Solstar are integrating into their classes, specifically for the benefit of female participants. “We’re teaching people how to survive,” explains Gilbert. Lamont says that the greatest thing she learnt doing martial arts was not necessarily how to hit someone, but how “to be hit and not go to pieces.” “I've heard so many recollections of women who have been sexually or physically assaulted where they’ll say ‘I was so petrified I froze,’” she says. “If we can stop that and train people to click out of that [mindset], then I think we’ve achieved something.” Are they afraid that the far right will infiltrate the space that they have worked hard to build? “They know about us,” Gilbert says. “They say the left is getting organized!” The two co-founders have an extensive history of activism. Lamont has been involved in protest movements since the 90s and is currently a trade unionist. As a hunt saboteur, she also disrupts fox hunts in the UK. Gilbert’s day job is in climate science—she studies the melting of the Antarctic ice shelves as part of her PhD. In 2016, she narrowly avoided jail for protesting the now-greenlit third runway at Heathrow Airport. Still, Lamont and Gilbert shy away from the idea of Solstar being a form of protest. “It’s a form of resistance as opposed to a form of protest,” Lamont says firmly. “To me, protest is a reaction to something particular, whereas resistance is about building strength and building something in the community that can then be relied upon. It's about bringing people together and it’s about making the left stronger, both physically and mentally.” The club also has unusual allies in the local Turkish and Kurdish community. Solstar currently operates out of a community centre run by Gik-Der, the Refugee and Workers Cultural Association (RWCA), an organization founded in 1991 “by migrants fleeing political and racial persecution in their home countries of Turkey and Kurdistan.” Like Lamont and Gilbert, Gik-Der support the ongoing Kurdish democratic revolution in Rojava. Lamont is grateful for the support of the local community: “That’s the really important part of this—we work from a migrant refugee centre. They said come and use the space for free, we would be so pleased for you to use it. So we had this space that was left-wing, anti-fascist, progressive, feminist, and so we wanted to do something that would reflect their politics as well as our own.” Solstar members help out with community festivals and with English and math lessons for local kids, and the club is also working on offering martial arts classes to local women. “We’re going to fundraise to provide a creche with a childminder, as local Turkish and Kurdish women said they were unable to attend [classes],” says Lamont. “It's really about working out what the obstacles are stopping women from training and removing those obstacles.” Accessibility is everything—classes are only £5 for that reason, and students can negotiate if they are unable to afford the fee. “We made a decision early on,” Lamont says. “Do we want to be this underground martial arts club where nobody knows who we are and we don’t put our names and photographs online? And then we decided that defeated the whole purpose—we’re just going to be really open.” “I think it’s important for us to be visible because we are at the forefront of a progressive movement,” states Gilbert. “We are the first women-led, left-wing gym, and that's important to advertise. Because apart from anything else, it shows that it’s possible—women can lead a martial arts gym.”

2017-12-07

Dec 7 (Reuters) - Hooker Furniture Corp: * HOOKER FURNITURE REPORTS HIGHER SALES, INCOME AND INCREASED DIVIDEND * - BOARD DECLARED QUARTERLY CASH DIVIDEND OF $0.14 PER SHARE, AN INCREASE OF 16.7% OR $0.02 PER SHARE * - CONSOLIDATED INVENTORIES STOOD AT $83.6 MILLION AT QUARTER END * - “Q3 HAD MIXED RESULTS, IN THAT RETAIL WEAKENED SIGNIFICANTLY ACROSS ALL SEGMENTS IN SEPTEMBER” Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2016-06-13

MANILA (Reuters) - Chinese coast guard vessels prevented a Philippine nationalist group from planting a Filipino flag on a rocky South China Sea outcrop, the group said on Monday, the latest territorial standoff between the two countries. The incident between the coast guard and the Kalayaan Atin Ito (Freedom It’s Ours) group took place at the disputed Scarborough Shoal on Sunday, just as foreign ministers from Southeast Asian countries and China prepared for a meeting in Kunming to discuss territorial rows in the hotly contested waters. Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea and the move by the Filipino nationalists comes as the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague prepares to deliver a ruling on a complex case brought by Manila that could dent China’s sweeping sovereignty claim. “They refused to allow us to get near Scarborough Shoal,” Joy Ban-eg, leader of the Kalayaan Atin group, told reporters. “There was a standoff until we decided to leave.” Ban-eg said 15 Filipinos and an American joined the 16-hour voyage to the Scarborough Shoal to mark the Philippines’ 118th Independence Day and to find out if local fishermen could freely go there. The shoal, seized by China after a three-month standoff in 2012, is a bone of contention for the Philippines and its president-elect, Rodrigo Duterte, has vowed not to give way over the right of his country to sail there freely. The attempt to plant the flag comes after Duterte himself pledged during his election campaign to do the same, but on China’s manmade islands in the Spratlys, using a jet ski. The wooden-hulled fishing boat came close to shoal when China’s coastguard blocked them and ordered them to go back to the Philippines, the group said. Five Filipinos jumped on the water and tried to swim to the shoal but were chased down by Chinese sailors on rubber dinghies who sprayed them with water and tried to take their cameras and bag, which contained a Philippine flag, they said. Philippine defense and military officials declined to comment on the incident. Beijing stressed that the shoal belonged to China. “The Scarborough Shoal has been China’s territory since ancient times,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a regular briefing in Beijing. “We urge the Philippines to respect China’s sovereignty and refrain from taking provocative actions.” Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan; Editing by Martin Petty and Nick Macfie

2020-01-21 00:00:00

Jan 21 (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp on Tuesday reported a surprise rise in revenue, its first in six quarters, benefiting from its high-margin cloud computing business. Revenue from the cloud business, which is crucial as IBM pivots away from its established businesses including mainframe servers, rose 21% to $6.8 billion in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31. Over the past few years, Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty has been trying to shift the company's focus to the cloud through acquisitions and also by selling some of IBM's legacy businesses. IBM bought Linux maker Red Hat Inc in a $34 billion deal last year, its biggest acquisition so far, in a push to expand its subscription-based software business and counter falling software sales and declining demand for mainframe servers. IBM recorded a marginal rise of 0.1% in revenue to $21.78 billion in the quarter, compared with a drop of nearly 1% predicted by analysts on average, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. IBM's net income rose to $3.67 billion, or $4.11 per share, from $1.95 billion, or $2.15 per share, a year earlier, when it took a charge of $1.9 billion related to the U.S. tax overhaul. Excluding special items, the company earned $4.71 per share, above analysts' expectation of $4.69. (Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

2016-05-13 15:30:47

In an effort to limit profiteering, the hit musical “Hamilton” took two steps this week intended to make reselling tickets more difficult. The producers have long sought to limit reselling by capping the number of tickets that could be purchased per person. This week, Ticketmaster canceled purchases that exceeded those limits; on Wednesday night, the show’s producers abruptly released those tickets for sale. This was announced via Twitter, and the tickets (neither “Hamilton” nor Ticketmaster would reveal the number) were quickly snapped up by new buyers. The Twitter post from “Hamilton” promoting the sale has since been deleted. (The limits on purchases — intended to prevent brokers from buying batches of tickets and then reselling them at huge markups — vary over time. Right now, according to the Ticketmaster website, there is a 14-ticket limit per person for performances within a seven-day period.) “When people exceeded the limits, we refunded them, and we pooled all the refunds and put them on sale,” said the show’s lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. The producers also announced via Twitter new rules for people waiting in line, often round-the-clock, outside the Richard Rodgers Theater, hoping to buy the few tickets released by the box office just before each show. Tents and chairs are now prohibited, and last-minute buyers must go directly from the box office into the theater. The hope is to reduce the role of line-sitters paid to camp overnight. “There are brokers who hire people to stand in line for them — they set up tents, they sit in chairs with sleeping bags — and we don’t want a tent city that encourages brokers to resell,” Mr. Seller said. He noted that only a handful of tickets become available last-minute for any performance, and said: “We want to ensure that if anyone has perseverance, they are a beneficiary of the line. But this camping out has to stop, because it had crossed over into public nuisance.” A visit to the theater Friday morning found about 10 people lined up hoping to buy tickets to the 8 p.m. performance; some had been there for 19 hours, with another 10 hours to go until showtime. There were no sleeping bags or tents in sight — several people said they had slept on bathroom towels or blankets — but a few people sat in folding chairs, despite the new rules. (The tickets released at the last-minute, often loosely described as “cancellations” and sold at full price, are separate from the $10 tickets that are released for each performance via digital or in-person lottery.) On two theater chat boards, unnamed ticket holders who were planning to travel to New York to see “Hamilton” complained that they were unfairly caught up in the crackdown, and had lost their tickets to the show. Ticketmaster declined to comment for this report.

2016-10-31

This piece originally appeared on CommentaryMagazine.com. The irony is delicious. Democrats spent the last few months of praising FBI Director James Comey as a man of integrity and defending him against a deluge of attacks from Republicans who were angered by his decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton despite what he called her "extremely careless" handling of classified information. But Comey's shocking announcement on Friday that he was re-opening the investigation has made him Public Enemy One as far as Clinton and her supporters are concerned. For a law enforcement agency to act in such a matter toward an active candidate is a blatant intervention in the presidential election. It is not unprecedented but it is highly problematic. Yet the Democrats' high dudgeon rings false. After all, Comey's refusal to act on Clinton's clear violation of security regulations — when so many lesser officials have been severely punished for carelessness — was also a function of politics. The difference being that his initial decision favored the Democrats while Friday's move inconveniences them. Comey's zigzag course through the maze of the email controversy is perplexing for both sides but the responsible party for this disruption is, as it was all along, Clinton. It was her obsession with secrecy — which critics not unreasonably think is rooted in the desire to obscure the truth about the conflicts of interest between what even their own retainers call "Clinton Inc." and their foundation and government business — that necessitated the use of an insecure, private e-mail server in the first place and led us all down this tangled path. The former secretary of state is no more an innocent victim of an FBI October Surprise than was Donald Trump when the release of an Access Hollywood tape exposed him as a sexual predator. That's the main point we should be taking away from this episode. It's not just that Americans are faced with a choice between two deeply flawed major party presidential candidates. It's that their supporters are so blinded by their dislike of the other side that they are largely in denial about their own nominee's manifest unfitness for high office. That's easy to see with Republicans and Trump. His ignorance about the issues, embrace of simplistic and wrongheaded policies that are at odds with conservative principles are no secret. Nor is his willingness to appeal to the basest instincts of the electorate. The same is true of his bad character — a quality that most Republicans used to think was an important consideration when the person they were judging was Bill Clinton. To his base of supporters, Trump's flaws are unimportant. It's not so much that they have made a reasoned judgment about his strengths and weaknesses but that they have simply decided to pretend the latter is a function of liberal media bias or establishment malice rather than the unpleasant truth. Yet Democrats are just as guilty of doing the same thing with their candidate. The gang tackle of Comey this weekend is merely the latest example of how Democrats have hypnotized themselves into thinking that the Clintons' baggage train of scandals involving their foundation and her emails is the creation of that same "vast, right-wing conspiracy" that Hillary's been complaining about for two decades. While we don't know exactly what will be found in these new emails, we already know the Clintons believe obeying the rules is for other people and that she endangered national security to feed her desire for secrecy and repeatedly lied about it. So to spin this latest twist in the story as much ado about nothing is disingenuous. The unwritten main plank in the 2016 Democratic platform is a vow to ignore evidence of the Clintons' corruption. While, as is true on the other side with Republicans and Trump, it is possible to argue that she is the lesser of two evils, what we are hearing instead is a brazen refusal to even consider the possibility that they are saddling the nation with a flawed president who will be weighed down by scandals her entire time in office. Just as Republicans should have been holding Trump accountable for the October Surprise that seemed to wreck his long shot chances of pulling off an upset, Democrats should be blaming Clinton for what has happened, not the FBI. What the country is contemplating is not only two unfit candidates for president but also two parties that haven't the courage to face the truth about their nominees. That bodes ill for the republic no matter which of them wins next month. Commentary by Jonathan S. Tobin, a senior online editor and chief political blogger for Commentary Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @TobinCommentary. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter.

2018-02-20 08:05:00

Courtney Love shared a heartbreaking tribute to late husband Kurt Cobain on what would’ve been the Nirvana frontman’s 51st birthday. The 53-year-old singer posted a throwback black and white photo on Tuesday, showing her cuddled into the chest of Cobain, who wrapped his arm around her in the candid shot. “Happy birthday baby,” she captioned the image on Instagram. “God I miss you.” On April 5, 1994, Cobain committed suicide at his Seattle home with a 20-gauge shotgun after a lengthy battle with drugs and depression. He was 27. He left a suicide note. At the end, he wrote, “Please keep going Courtney for Frances,” referring to the couple’s then 1½-year-old daughter Frances Bean. “For her life will be so much happier without me. I love you. I love you.” After both her parents struggled with drug abuse, Frances, now 25, shared an Instagram post last week from the island of Oahu in Hawaii celebrating her second anniversary of being sober.   “I thought I would start this post by using a pure moment in Oahu amongst nature, with my love,” she wrote in the caption, referring to boyfriend Matthew Cook. “This moment is a representation of who I am on February 13th, 2018. It feels significant here, now because it’s my 2nd sober birthday.” “It’s an interesting and kaleidoscopic decision to share my feelings about something so intimate in a public forum,” she added. “The fact that I’m sober isn’t really public knowledge, decidedly and deliberately. But I think it’s more important to put aside my fear about being judged or misunderstood or typecast as one specific thing.” WATCH: @Courtney Love's life outside of the spotlight; star bond with daughter Frances Bean and more: https://t.co/jGJ0mfxdGD pic.twitter.com/YfH9EzELBY — Good Morning America (@GMA) June 7, 2017 During an appearance on Good Morning America last year, Love said Frances reminds her of her late husband. “She looks a lot like him,” the rocker said. “She’s enigmatic like he was. She’s got a very dry, kind of, sick sense of humor that he had. I mean, he had a really sick sense of humor, but dry.” She added of Frances, “She’s able to cut people down with one line like he was able to do.”

2019-05-22 16:25:00

Kelly Clarkson‘s daughter might just follow in her footsteps! While on set for the Red Nose Day edition of Hollywood Game Night (airing Thursday), the singer, 37, opened up exclusively about her 4-year-old daughter River Rose taking after her showbiz ambitions. “Our little girl loves dancing and gymnastics. She wants to dance, that’s her big thing. And she wants to sing like mommy, which I’m going to try and steer her clear of,” joked Clarkson. While Clarkson — who is also mom to 3-year-old son Remington, stepdaughter Savannah and stepson Seth — has been a star for years, the singer revealed her kids don’t really focus on her fame. “I think they look at me as ‘Mom,’ so they don’t really even [think about it],” she said. “[Remington] has no idea. They’re just very normal. We’re not like, in the scene, ever.” Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Parents newsletter. Along with husband Brandon Blackstock, 42, Clarkson is used to playing dress-up and games with her younger children, but the star admits she gets super competitive when it comes to playful competitions such as Hollywood Game Night, which is raising money with Red Nose Day to help children living in poverty. “I’m very competitive. I love it. I just love the sport of it,” she said of competing against stars such as Jennifer Garner, Sean Hayes, Kenan Thompson and Thandie Newton. “I love the cause. It was really fun. It’s just a really cool thing and an easy thing to be a part of. My husband and I grew up very differently than how we are financially now,” she added. “It’s very hard sometimes when it’s a blessing when you can give your kids everything, but it’s also kind of a crutch, a little bit because you want to paint a reality that is of everyone, not their own.” Host Jane Lynch, 58, agreed that Clarkson was the “most competitive person I’ve ever encountered,” but stressed that she also has “the hugest heart.” Added Hayes, 48, after the taping: “We were on the same team last year and we just screamed in each other’s faces the entire time! We really worked well with each other and kind of brought out the competitive monsters that we are.” Red Nose Day was launched by the non-profit organization Comic Relief and has raised over $1 billion worldwide since the campaign’s founding in 1988. The Red Nose Day Special airs Thursday at 8 p.m. on NBC, with the Red Nose Day edition of Hollywood Game Night following right after.

2016-02-11 18:27:09

Fashion Diary 22 Photos View Slide Show › Los Angeles — Lady Gaga wriggled free of a crowd that all but engulfed her at the Hollywood Palladium Wednesday night, pausing just long enough to blow a virtual kiss in Hedi Slimane’s direction. Mr. Slimane, who was about to unveil his fall 2016 Saint Laurent men’s and women’s collections, was nowhere in sight. No matter. Lady Gaga, who was in Los Angeles preparing for her own star turn at the Grammy Awards on Feb. 15, had flown in early, expressly for the show, she said. She was one in a constellation of rock ’n’ roll legends to grace the proceedings, their widely touted presence having turned the event, weeks in advance, into the most coveted ticket in town. “I’ve known Hedi for years,” the entertainer cooed. “He’s such an incredible man. He really made it cool for us to dress like rock stars again.” Similar sentiments were echoed all around the huge arena during the champagne-saturated cocktail hour. An exultant Linda Ramone, who had been featured in the teaser video promoting the event, showed off a blinding white fox chubby. “Hedi gave it to me,” she said a bit smugly. In Ms. Ramone’s dry assessment, Los Angeles has never been much of a fashion town. “But maybe he could change that.” Mr. Slimane, a Los Angeles denizen for the last eight years, has labored mightily to woo this crowd, his shows candid homages to the fevered rock scenes of the ’70s and the early ’90s. Wednesday night, lured by the prospect of high-voltage glamour and, perhaps, as some skeptics suggested, by sums that can vary from $20,000 to $100,000 per appearance, those stars returned the favor. The oddly reverent celebrity mash-up was in fact the show. It included rock legends (Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, Courtney Love among them) mingling with entertainment and fashion luminaries like Justin Bieber, who posed for a snapshot with Grace Coddington of Vogue; Jane Fonda; and the Fanning sisters, Dakota and Elle, their eyes rimmed in much the same glitter the models would flaunt on the runway. The scene “was like an episode of ‘South Park,’” said Carole Sabas, a French fashion correspondent living in Los Angeles. “You know, like when someone asks, on the show, ‘Where’s Demi Moore?’ and she arrives on cue.” Or “Where’s Sylvester Stallone?” and the actor obliges with a cameo. As he did last night, making a splashy entrance on a carpet that was, in keeping Mr. Slimane’s brooding aesthetic, the color of soot. Had Mr. Stallone, nominated for his supporting role in “Creed,” come to shop the runway for something to wear on Oscar night? “I’m here as an observer and patron,” he said grinning broadly. “And I’m always ready to buy something new.” The setting itself was a protagonist. “My dad used to go dancing here in the 1940s,” said Liz Goldwyn, the writer and filmmaker and a daughter of the film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. “It’s been an integral part of Los Angeles culture for such a long time.” Guests had begun streaming into the space at 7 p.m., but it was close to 9 before the staff began peeling black vinyl off the floor to make way for the models. They arrived to PyPy’s raucous soundtrack of “She’s Gone,” introducing a reedy David Bowie look-alike wearing a three-piece evening suit, Wayfarers and theatrical fedora. The Bowie references weren’t much of a surprise; the real shock arrived in the form of culottes, skirts and dresses with hemlines that plummeted to the models’ calves. What? The return of the midi? Seemed so. But if anyone can sell that once-tricky proposition to doting fans, surely it is Mr. Slimane, whose eye rarely strays from the bottom line. Swishy long dresses, their waists cinched by wide patent leather belts; pussycat bows; fur chubbies; operatic butterfly sleeves, and other hallmarks of Yves Saint Laurent’s early ’70s collections were a naked (and some would say shameless) nod to the Master himself. Mr. Slimane, a devout student of the YSL archives, had sealed his standing in the style-o-sphere by spiking such Saint Laurent classics with a touch of L.A. decadence and exporting that look to the runways of Paris. Now, in a coy fashion turnabout, “he is bringing a touch of old Paris to Los Angeles,” Ms. Sabas said. When the last model drifted off the catwalk, Mr. Slimane, wearing a claret-tone blazer, took a rare bow. He was greeted by a standing ovation led by Lady Gaga herself. “That was weird, don’t you think?” Juju Sorelli, whose shop, the Evil Rock ’n’ Roll Hollywood Cat, caters to young Los Angeles rock groups like Gateway Drugs and Paranoia, said afterward. “But then, this isn’t a style crowd,” Ms. Sorelli said. “Maybe these people think this how you’re supposed to behave at the end of a fashion show.”

2020-03-19 17:11:00

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada. Updated at 12:45 p.m. (EDT): Social distancing needs to be done right—right now—to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Medical Officer, on Thursday, shortly before Ontario announced its second death. Canada’s case count climbed to 772 on Thursday morning, Tam said. The daily “shock increase” in Canadian cases with no known links to travel are particularly concerning, Tam said. Tam said social distancing is the only way for Canadians to reduce opportunities to virus spread, particularly in at-risk regions such as First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities. “We don’t just need to flatten the curve; we need to plank it,” Tam said, referring to the steep progression of COVID-19 cases around the world. Health professionals have administered more than 55,000 COVID-19 tests across Canada, Tam said, 10,000 in the past 24 hours alone. The Canada-U.S. border will likely close overnight on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced earlier Thursday. Trudeau also reiterated the importance of social distancing but would not commit to how long it will last, only saying it could be weeks or months. Trudeau did not announce additional financial support to the $82 billion he detailed Wednesday, but said Canada will continue to assess individual and business needs as virus spread continues. When asked if Ottawa will restrict movements between provinces, Trudeau said the government is “not ruling anything out.” Once the Canada-U.S. border closes, all entry to Canada will be barred for non-essential travellers, including tourists. Canadians will always be allowed back home, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland reiterated. She also said irregular asylum seekers will still be allowed in the country. All asylum seekers will have to spend 14 days in quarantine upon entering the country, Freeland said. At least 77 Canadians are stuck on a trans-Atlantic cruise ship that has confirmed COVID-19 cases aboard. Costa Luminosa, which has more than 1,400 people on board, is heading for the port of Marseille in southern France. Global Affairs Canada said it is standing by to support the Canadian passengers, but Trudeau said he doesn’t have specific details about the ship yet. Newfoundland and Labrador introduced the strictest measures in Canada—including the threat of jail time—to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as cases of the virus in the country surpassed 700. On Wednesday, the province joined Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia by calling a public emergency, and banned most non-essential services, including public gyms, bars, and theatres. Only restaurants that can enforce social distancing are allowed to operate at half capacity. Prince Edward Island furthered its effort by announcing that all government-run liquor and cannabis stores are closing on Thursday at 2 p.m. local time. Health Minister for Newfoundland and Labrador, John Haggie, announced strict penalties for people and businesses that fail to comply with provincial orders.Those who don’t comply face fines of up to $2,500 and jail time of up to six months. Corporations will see fines of up to $50,000. Reoffenders will face steeper penalties, the province said. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced several measures to economically support Albertans on Wednesday, including a six-month interest-free moratorium on student loan payments, deferrals on utility payments, and $572 for Albertans who are stuck in isolation because of COVID-19. Kenney is also deferring corporate tax payments until August 31, and said he expected social distancing measures to last for months. Many small businesses say they will not survive long-term social distancing. A report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) said more than half of Canada’s small businesses have seen a steep decline in revenue since Canada’s public health officials started doubling-down on social distancing calls last week. According to the report, about one quarter of small shops can only last one month in the current state before they’ll be forced to shut down. The hospitality, arts, retail, and personal services industries are the hardest hit, with many businesses already engaging in temporary layoffs or reduced hours for staff. In Quebec, two major unions representing two-thirds of the province’s construction workers are calling on Quebec to shut down all construction sites over unsafe conditions. According to their letter to the premier, there is often a lack of soap and water for handwashing, and many sites use portable toilets, which don’t offer running water. The union added that construction staff often work in close proximity to one another. Trudeau’s Thursday address comes a day after Trudeau closed the U.S.-Canada border and announced up to $27 billion in direct support and up to $55 billion in tax deferrals for many Canadian hardest hit by the COVID-19 economic downturn, including a six-month interest-free moratorium on student debt payments, funding for homeless and women’s shelters, and an emergency relief fund akin to employment insurance for people aren’t eligible for EI—gig workers, freelancers, for example—who have to stay home because they’re sick with or at risk of COVID-19. People taking care of a loved one who contracted the virus are also eligible for financial support. Canada’s territories—Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut—have not seen any cases yet. But Dr. Michael Patterson, Nunavut’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, said COVID-19 could have devastating impacts because the territory struggles with overcrowded housing, making social distancing difficult. Aside from Iqaluit, remote communities in Nunavut depend on air traffic for testing. Because the weather can cause flight delays, it could impact how quickly results can be produced, a spokesperson from the Nunavut Department of Health told CBC News. Cases of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continue to surge. As of Wednesday night, the number of confirmed or presumed cases surpassed 700—an almost 100-case increase from Tuesday. There are eight deaths in Canada so far. Every province is affected: British Columbia: 231 Alberta: 119 Saskatchewan: 16 Manitoba: 15 Ontario: 251 Quebec: 94 Newfoundland and Labrador: 3 New Brunswick: 11 Nova Scotia: 12 Prince Edward Island: 1 There are more than 250,000 COVID-19 cases globally, with just over 9,000 deaths. This is a breaking news story. We will continue to update it as it unfolds. Follow Anya Zoledziowski on Twitter.

2017-07-13 20:52:00

Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner are remembering their late son, Johnathan, who they lost a year ago today. The Married at First Sight alums honored their firstborn by turning a portion of their yard into a memorial. “A year ago today was one of the most difficult, saddest days of my life … today is our angel baby’s heavenly birthday,” Otis, 31, wrote Thursday on Instagram. “We wanted to remember him & honor him so we planted a beautiful tree front & center in our yard. Every day we can see it, watch it grow, and be reminded of him,” the reality star shared, along with photos of the couple planting their tree together. Otis and Hehner, 36, lost their son last July, four months into her pregnancy. Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. “He was only here with us for a short time, but he’ll always be in our hearts! … We will always love you sweet little Johnathan. Thanks for being a great big brother to your little sister,” she concluded. A year ago, Otis published a blog post about the profound loss. “He was given to us so graciously by God, and then God took him away way too early. My heart hurts so bad. Losing our baby has been the most terrible experience. I wish no one would ever have to endure this,” she described. FROM PEN: Figure Skating Star Nancy Kerrigan Opens Up About Her 6 Miscarriages In April, the pair shared exclusively with PEOPLE they’re expecting a baby girl later this summer. In addition, the parents-to-be found out they were expecting their “rainbow baby” in December 2016 on what would have been the due date of her first child. Last month, the expectant mom was thrown a surprise baby shower in New Jersey by her sister-in-law, Kerri-Ann Hehner. Otis and Hehner wed on Married at First Sight back in 2014. After a year of marriage, Jamie and Doug made it official once more with a vow renewal.

2019-05-10 00:00:00

TOKYO (Reuters) - Suzuki Motor Corp on Friday forecast a 1.7% rise in profit for this year, anticipating limited growth due to an expected sales tax rise in Japan as well as uncertainty in the economic outlook in India, its biggest market. Japan’s fourth-largest automaker expects operating profit of 330 billion yen ($3.01 billion) in the year through March 2020, lower than the 362.2 billion yen average of 22 analyst estimates compiled by Refinitiv. In the year just ended, profit fell 13.3% to 324.4 billion yen from the previous year’s record high. The compact car maker took a hit from a weaker Indian rupee, while costs related to a domestic vehicle recall stemming from improper vehicle inspections also weighed on its bottom line. Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Christopher Cushing

2017-09-27 01:56:00

Former President Barack Obama was among the millions of parents who sent their kids off to college this fall — and like many, he shed some tears. The 44th commander-in-chief recently revealed he was overcome with emotions when he and wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama moved their 19-year-old Malia into her campus residence at Harvard University in August. “For those of us who have daughters, it just happens fast. I dropped off Malia at college, and I was saying to Joe and Jill [Biden] that it was a little bit like open-heart surgery,” Obama, 56, said at the Beau Biden Foundation‘s golf and tennis invitational at Delaware’s Wilmington Country Club on Sunday, according to a video shared by WDEL radio. “I was proud that I did not cry in front of her,” Obama also joked. “But on the way back, the Secret Service was off, looking straight ahead, pretending they weren’t hearing me as I sniffled and blew my nose. It was rough.” Last June, Malia graduated from Washington, D.C.’s private Sidwell Friends School, and opted to take a gap year before starting at Harvard. The proud father of two also said that Malia’s momentous Harvard sendoff was “a reminder that, at the end of our lives, whatever else we’ve accomplished, the things that we’ll remember are the joys that our children – and hopefully way later, our grandchildren – bring us.” Though Malia briefly delayed the start of her college years, Obama told PEOPLE in December 2016 that his older daughter – and her younger sister Sasha, 16 – were “ready to get out, just out from their parents’ house.” The mother of two added, “Malia’s going off to college. She’s a grown woman.” Beau fought to protect the most vulnerable among us. Thanks to my friend @barackobama for honoring his life’s work with the @BeauBidenFdn. pic.twitter.com/oHAb6mc6fT — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 25, 2017 And earlier this month, Obama shared the three pieces of advice he and his wife have tried to impress upon their daughters, including the importance of being kind, considerate, empathetic and hardworking. “These are the tools by which you can shape the world around you in a way that feels good,” he said. Former Vice President Biden created the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children in 2015 to honor his late son’s legacy in “protecting the most vulnerable among us,” including protecting children from abuse.

2018-07-27 16:43:00

Anything half popular will become a porn parody thanks to companies like WoodRocket and Pornhub, which have been churning out adult movies like Jurassic Wood, Dragon Boob Z , Oversnatch, and the classic Metal Rear Solid: The Phantom Peen. In that tradition, WoodRocket has just released Fortnut—a porn parody of the mega-popular video game Fortnite. It’s got everything you want from a 20-minute porn parody: terrible acting, horrifying puns, pornography, and...biting commentary about free to play monetization. The video opens with a streamer—played by Missy Martinez—setting up her team to play some Fortnut. We zoom in on the characters. There’s a skeleton, two people with default skins, and a man with a testicle for a head done in the style of Fortnite’s Tomato Man skin. Testicleman immediately digs into the default-skinned noobs, mocking them for not spending cash to get a sweet skin. April O’Neil—acting in the film and also its writer—isn’t having it. “Sorry I save my real money for real things,” she says. Later, when Testicleman is shot down during the match, the woman taunts his corpse. “I guess the money you spent on skins should have been spent on not dying in the first few minutes of the game, dick.” Fortnite is a free-to-play game and the only way to change the default skin is to spend in-game currency to unlock a new one. Players can grind out that in-game currency but, without spending money, it’ll take forever. Players who drop a few dollars for a battle pass or just spend money to get in-game currency can have a wealth of cool cosmetics. But that doesn’t make them good at the game. In my time playing Fortnite, I’ve been destroyed by players in default skins more times than I can count. As far as monetization of free-to-play games goes, Fortnite is pretty chill. But the lack of progression for those without a battle pass has definitely stopped a few of my friends from investing time in the game. And Fortnut proves that even porn parodies hate microtransactions.

2018-01-08

KABUL (Reuters) - In a country not short of problems, a looming pensions crisis that could cripple Afghanistan’s budget in coming years is a new headache for a government dependent on increasingly war-weary foreign donors. Pension liabilities - set to swallow the equivalent of a third of the current $5 billion budget within 15 years unless something is done - typify accumulated problems the government is now trying to tackle. “Previously, they kicked the can down the road and it’s snowballing right now and needs to be fixed,” said Deputy Finance Minister Khalid Payenda. Many countries face pension problems but it is especially unwelcome in Afghanistan, struggling to restore an economy shattered by four decades of war. Provisions that award government workers with service of 40 years benefits equivalent to full final salary were originally introduced to compensate for low pay. Many pensioners, who complain that actual benefits are meager and often paid late, would be surprised to hear the system described as generous. But with no separate pension fund to generate investment income and benefits paid directly from the Treasury, payments are set to spiral out of control as more of almost 900,000 government workers retire over coming years. “The economics of it doesn’t work. It’s not sustainable and at a certain point it will explode,” Payenda said from his office in the ministry, where he is overseeing a drive to make the budget more transparent and spending more efficient. “It’s the start of a process but it will take a few years,” he said, adding that it was vital that foreign donors showed “understanding” and do not cut off funds abruptly. Although down since most international troops withdrew in 2014, foreign aid still accounts for 54 percent of the budget. But donor willingness is not eternal and most funding pledges run only to 2020. While progress has been made in increasing revenues, preparing for a reduction in aid is urgent, especially given likely disruption around presidential elections next year. As in each of the past eight years, parliament is wrangling over budget approval, an opaque process that has encouraged backroom deals, waste and corruption. “There are leakages, bloated structures and there is unnecessary expenditure on conspicuous items,” Payenda said. “We want to see where there are problems and fix them.” As long as security accounts for 40 percent of spending, Afghanistan’s public finances will be unbalanced and the room for investment to boost revenue in areas like mining or agriculture limited. But there are many areas where improvements are possible. Due to weak administrative capacity, funds assigned to ministries are often not fully used, with unspent amounts carried over to following years, reducing accountability and making it harder to track real spending. In future, the government plans a “use it or lose it” approach. On pensions, a special fund will need to be set up to separate contributions and benefits from regular Treasury funds. Both benefits and government contributions may have to be cut, a process fraught with political risk. But more open processes to allocate funds are key, Payenda said. “Reasonable people will listen and unreasonable ones can’t shout at you because of what the others will think.” Reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Robert Birsel

2017-04-12

President Trump is threatening to withhold key ObamaCare payments as a way to force Democrats to the negotiating table on healthcare, according to The Wall Street Journal.  The Journal reported that Trump made the threat in an interview on Wednesday. “I don’t want people to get hurt,” Trump said. “What I think should happen — and will happen — is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”  If Trump follows through on what the Journal is reporting, he could use the ensuing chaos in ObamaCare's insurance markets to try to back Democrats into making a deal on repealing the law.  Senate Democratic Leader Charles SchumerCharles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerLewandowski on potential NH Senate run: If I run, 'I'm going to win' Appropriators warn White House against clawing back foreign aid Colorado candidates vying to take on Gardner warn Hickenlooper they won't back down MORE (N.Y.) said in response to the comments that "President Trump is threatening to hold hostage health care for millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him, to achieve a political goal of repeal that would take health care away from millions more." "This cynical strategy will fail," Schumer continued. "Our position remains unchanged: drop repeal, stop undermining our health care system, and we will certainly sit down and talk about ways to improve the Affordable Care Act." Trump did not definitively say whether he would seek to cancel the payments, known as cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), or whether Congress should appropriate the money, according to the Journal. In fact, Trump also acknowledged he might continue the payments so he would not be blamed for chaos in the system. He also cautioned: “That’s part of the reason that I may go the other way." "The longer I’m behind this desk and you have ObamaCare, the more I would own it,” he said. At issue are the CSRs, which reimburse insurers for giving discounted deductibles to low-income ObamaCare enrollees. House Republicans sued over the payments, arguing they were unconstitutional without a congressional appropriation.  That lawsuit is ongoing, but the Trump administration could drop its defense and cancel the payments. That would be likely to cause insurers to spike premiums or drop out of the ObamaCare market altogether.  The administration said last week only that it would continue the payments during the lawsuit. Insurers are pushing hard for more certainty as they try to plan whether to participate in ObamaCare markets next year. They say they may have to hike premiums or drop out anyway due to the uncertainty.  Some top congressional Republicans have called for appropriating the money, which could override any decisions made by the Trump administration and keep the payments flowing.  Updated at 6:23 p.m. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-05-15

Cryptocurrency is going legit in a big way. Leading U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is going after institutional investors with four new major products, all of which cater to the needs of professionals and big institutions, making it easier for them to trade cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple.  The new products address many of the issues that big investors such as hedge funds face when trying to enter the cryptocurrency market, providing liquidity, safe storage of assets, quality support and advanced products such as OTC (over-the-counter) and margin trading. If institutional investors take the bait — and judging by announcements from banking giants such as Goldman Sachs, they will — Coinbase’s new tools will clear the path for an even larger outpouring of money into cryptocurrencies. Coinbase Custody, launched in partnership with "an SEC-regulated broker-dealer," provides safe storage of cryptoassets, paired with third-party auditing. Coinbase claims it'll draw on its experience of storing more than $20 billion in cryptocurrency to make this the "most secure crypto storage solution available." Coinbase Prime is a platform with all the bells and whistles institutional investors are used to, and by the end of the year it should have advanced tools such as margin trading, algorithmic orders and multi-user permissions. Note that individual investors should use Coinbase's trading platform GDAX; Prime is for institutions and professionals only. Coinbase Markets is a centralized liquidity pool for all Coinbase products, which, besides Coinbase's digital wallet and exchange, include trading platform GDAX and now Prime. This product will be headquartered in Coinbase's new office in Chicago.  Coinbase claims that more than 100 hedge funds announced plans to trade/invest in cryptocurrency in the last few months alone.  Finally, the Coinbase Institutional Coverage Group will work from Coinbase's New York City office to provide support to clients including research and market operations. This is a major upgrade to Coinbase's product lineup, which has so far been mostly oriented toward individual investors. “There is clear demand from institutional clients and financial services professionals for more specific solutions with regard to cryptocurrencies that address their sophisticated needs,” Adam White, Vice President and General Manager of Coinbase Institutional, said in a statement. Coinbase claims that more than 100 hedge funds announced plans to trade/invest in cryptocurrency in the last few months alone.  Coinbase was reportedly adding more than 100,000 users per day in late 2017, when the cryptocurrency craze — and Bitcoin price levels — was going off the charts. The company reportedly had more than $1 billion in revenue in 2017, and valued itself at $8 billion in April 2018.  Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.

2016-12-05 00:00:00

Dec 5 (Reuters) - Neusoft : * Says Neu Science & Technology Industry sold 5 percent stake in it during Nov. 19, 2014 to Dec. 2, 2016 * Says Neu Science & Technology Industry holds 12.6 percent stake in it now, down from 17.6 percent Source text in Chinese: goo.gl/PVOvnl Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)

2016-03-17 05:35:04

By the Book The author, most recently, of “The Ancient Minstrel” is an inveterate reader of cookbooks, including Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain and Gabrielle Hamilton. What books are currently on your night stand? Unfortunately, I can’t read novels while I’m writing them because of the imitative nature of the brain. So I get along with a few European mysteries and lots of poetry. What’s the last great book you read? I reread the “Selected Poems” of Antonio Machado recently, after my wife died. I found it helped to study Machado, whose grave I once visited in Collioure, France, where people leave flowers and poems on his grave. I stayed in the rooming hotel where he died. I don’t think this is necromancy but reverence. You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job. I now find myself in an occasional state of surprise that I’ve made a living as a novelist for quite some time, the opposite of what I expected. It was pretty brutal up until I was 40, but then I refused to accept any of the frequently offered jobs teaching writing. I believed someone should stay outside of academia. We scraped by on occasional journalism. I had a breakthrough with the novellas called “Legends of the Fall.” My agent at the time said, “No one has ever read novellas,” but they seemed to enliven general curiosity. The most mail I ever got for a work was after I published the novella “The Woman Lit by Fireflies” in The New Yorker. Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets – working today do you admire most? I read obsessively Michael Ondaatje, Louise Erdrich, Colum McCann, Sherman Alexie, Guy de la Valdene and my old friend Tom McGuane. I can read nonfiction anytime, and now on my night table is a splendid book about the Bahamas by Chris Dombrowski called “Body of Water,” to be published this fall by Milkweed Editions. I am also an inveterate reader of cookbooks, including Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain and Gabrielle Hamilton, among many others. Tell us about your favorite short story. Recently I was very struck by the short stories of Lucia Berlin. I’ve never been a true fan of the short story and have only published a single example of my own. In my early past, my passion was for Isak Dinesen’s work. And about your favorite poem. I suppose my favorite poem is ultimately “Leaves of Grass,” by Walt Whitman, and then my early addiction for Rimbaud and Apollinaire. (I was especially pleased when my own selected poems were published in France last year.) Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid? I like nonfiction, fiction and poetry and generally avoid biography. What moves you most in a work of literature? Do you find yourself returning to certain themes as a reader? What moves me most is style, the quality of the writing rather than the story being told. Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? My original favorite fictional hero was Heathcliff in Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” (I also loved the character of Dalva, who I created.) My favorite antihero is Stavrogin in Dostoyevsky’s “The Possessed.” There are lots of villains in “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” by Khaled Hosseini. What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? As a child I was an obsessive reader, as was everybody in my family all winter long with my father. I think I was only 8 when I read Edward Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Early on in our childhood, our parents bought us the 12-volume set called “My Book House,” which had a great influence on me. I spoke with Robert Duncan about “My Book House,” who also read them early on, to his delight. Youthful reading can be a melancholy procedure. Your credibility is so forlorn you believe everything you read. Later the feeling became quite humorous. “The little cripple boy drew on his cowboy boot. Unfortunately, there was a small rattlesnake in the boot, which bit and slowly killed him. His dog tried to revive him and the snake fatally bit the dog on the nose. Now there were two friends slumped in death on the porch.” That sort of thing. Otherwise my faithful reading boyhood was quite pleasant, although I lost my left eye at the age of 7, when a little girl shoved a beaker in my face. This only led to harder work finding alternative realities in books. At age 21, my favorite people, my father and sister, died in an auto accident. This served to fuel me to write totally without compromise. If people you love can die in an accident, you refuse to step back from your work. What book that you read for school had the greatest impact on you? I remember in the seventh grade I did a project where I had to read all of Willa Cather’s books, which were wonderful. If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be? The King James Version of the Bible. Also the works of Dostoyevsky. I read the Bible over and over in my youth, and the Judeo-Christian sensibility focused the world for me, for better or worse. Now, at my advanced age, I wonder how we are taught to believe something, but then we fail to learn how not to believe it. I find that I still believe in the Resurrection, though I improved it somewhat in a poem: In the forty days in the wilderness Jesus took along a stray dog from town. When they got back home Jesus told the dog he had to go off to Jerusalem to get crucified. Jesus stored the dog in his tomb and after he himself was brought there they ascended into heaven together. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? The works of Dostoyevsky, to enrich his nature. What author living or dead would you most like to meet and what would you like to know? I always wanted to meet Gabriel García Márquez, who has a jubilant nature. I would wonder what made his spirit so rambunctious. Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel as if you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing? I don’t get very far into disappointing books before I abandon them. Life is short and brutal. Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite or the most personally meaningful? I think that my “Dalva” has the greatest range. Many of my readers I hear from concur. The origin of the book came, oddly, in a dream where she is sitting on the balcony in Santa Monica, looking at the Pacific and thinking of her youth and family in the Sandhills of Nebraska, a beautiful but largely unknown area. With “Dalva,” I got to establish my own universe. At the time, in my 30s, I largely misunderstood women, and it was time to catch up. Who would you want to write your life story? Myself, the only possible writer! What do you plan to read next? No plans. I’m waiting for what comes along.

2016-09-05

Sept 5 (Reuters) - Brilliance Technology Co Ltd * Says its Shenzhen IPO 7,623.7 times oversubscribed in online tranche Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/2c5E43v (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)

2017-02-21 00:00:00

Feb 21 (Reuters) - DigiTouch SpA: * Data management platform Audiens signs agreement with The Trade Desk for the supply of its cross-device data * Audiens is a DigiTouch brand Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2019-06-04 00:00:00

It’s been a long road to market for the Galaxy Home, and now, Samsung CEO Hyun-suk Kim (who manages the company’s consumer electronics division) has given yet another release window for the product: sometime in Q3 2019, according to an interview with The Korea Herald. “The Galaxy Home speaker, which will be the center of Samsung’s home appliances, is planned to be launched in mid-second half of the year,” commented Kim, which The Korea Herald clarifies that other Samsung executives have said refers to the third quarter of this year. The Galaxy Home was originally announced in August 2018 when the company also unveiled the Note 9. And while Samsung has showcased the product at various events since then, the company still has yet to release it. Previously, Samsung CEO DJ Koh had promised an April ship date for the Bixby smart speaker, which the company missed. And when reached for comment in May, Samsung representatives told The Verge that the company was “planning to launch Galaxy Home in the first half of 2019,” which would have given the company until the end of June. But based on Kim’s recent statement, it would seem that the company won’t be shipping by then either. Samsung’s Q3 ends on September 30th, so assuming there aren’t any more delays, we should see the Galaxy Home by then. Samsung will have plenty of chances to do so — presumably the company will have an August event for the Galaxy Note 10, as well as IFA 2019 in September, both of which could serve as good launch dates. It’s also possible that the Galaxy Home won’t be alone when it does launch — a smaller (and still unannounced) Galaxy Home Mini recently passed through the FCC, meaning that Samsung could be planning to sell multiple sizes of its smart speaker whenever it does finally ship.

2017-05-18

May 18 (Reuters) - Formula Systems 1985 Ltd * Formula Systems 1985 Ltd - consolidated revenues for Q1 increased by 19% to $310.9 million, compared to $262.2 million in the same period last year * Formula Systems 1985 Ltd - Q1 consolidated net income attributable to Formula’s shareholders was $0.2 million, or $0.01 per fully diluted share Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2020-02-27 00:00:00

On Monday, a friend texted me an ominous screenshot in which Spotify told her that she was in the top 3% of Taylor Swift fans. "I felt immediately flattered and then I felt dumb for feeling flattered," she said about the experience. I was impressed at her dedication, until I stumbled upon a tweet from somehow who was in the top 1% of Taylor Swift fans. Admittedly, Swift is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. One percent of her monthly listeners is over 388,000 people. But the fact that this Taylor Swift stat was making this way onto people's phones, seemingly without explanation, was giving me pause. “At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience," a spokesperson told Refinery29. "Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have any further news to share at this time.” What appeared to start with Swift, at least in my circles, has rippled out over the week, with fans of everyone from Sufjan Stevens fans to Death Cab For Cutie being informed of their dedication. The New York Times attempted to get to the bottom of the mystery on Thursday and was provided a similar statement, and pointed out that this is one of many ways that Spotify flexes their data. At the end of each year, we're served our Spotify "Wrapped," which at the end of the last decade gave us a snapshot our music listening habits since 2010. But at least that one makes sense. If anything, this feature is just one big read. Just when you think no one can hear you listening to "The Man" over and over again on your commute, know Spotify always does.

2016-09-15

Sept 15 (Reuters) - Amgen Inc : * Amgen presents positive data at EHMTIC 2016 demonstrating erenumab significantly reduces monthly migraine days in patients with chronic migraine * No adverse event was reported in greater than five percent of patients treated with Erenumab * Amgen Inc says results from phase 3 studies investigating Erenumab in episodic migraine are expected later this year * All groups showed numeric improvements in cumulative monthly headache hours * Phase 2 results showing Erenumab demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in monthly migraine days compared with placebo in patients with chronic migraine * Safety profile of Erenumab was similar to placebo across both treatment arms Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2016-02-25

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is setting up a vote on legislation aimed at tackling drug addiction that has earned rare bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. The vote will be the culmination of weeks but slow but steady progress on bills to fight opioid addiction, which have attracted attention from top government leaders from McConnell to President Obama over the last several weeks. McConnell's move means the Senate will take a first vote early next week, unless senators can get an agreement to skip over procedural hurdles.  While the bill has been in the works since before the recent Supreme Court nominee drama, some Democrats see the upcoming vote as the GOP's attempt to find a distraction. "Obviously they're trying to change the subject," one Democratic leadership aide said. Democratic leaders have not said they would hold up legislation because of the GOP's Supreme Court position, but they have vowed to keep up the pressure during the key election year. "Just because they're doing this on the floor doesn't mean that people aren't going to pay attention to the Supreme Court [fight]." Both parties insist that the bill will pass with support from both parties, and no senators have said they will oppose the legislation. But several Democrats, led by Sens. Chuck SchumerCharles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerLewandowski on potential NH Senate run: If I run, 'I'm going to win' Appropriators warn White House against clawing back foreign aid Colorado candidates vying to take on Gardner warn Hickenlooper they won't back down MORE (Ill.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) have pressed for $600 million in emergency funding to tackle the opioid epidemic. "This commitment should also be matched with desperately needed emergency funding for our first responders and treatment providers," Sheehan said in a statement Thursday. Neither Sheehan nor Schumer has said they would reject the package if it doesn't include the funding. Read more here: http://bit.ly/1oKYBP1 OBAMACARE REPLACEMENT TEAM HAS A MISSION STATEMENT: The four GOP chairman charged with coming up with a replacement plan for ObamaCare offered a glance at their goals for this year. The leaders of the House Budget, Ways and Means, Education and Workforce, and Energy and Commerce committees released a six-paragraph mission statement, which uses bullet points to outline 10 "key principles." The group, along with some rank-and-file members from those committees, met Thursday in their ever-difficult task of finding ways to replace the Affordable Care Act. Many Republicans have said they don't expect a healthcare plan to come out until after the 2016 election – six years after the law was passed. CRUZ THREATENS FLINT DEAL: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is among a group of lawmakers putting a hold on a deal to provide aid for Flint, Mich., which has been a major priority for Democrats. Negotiators this week reached an agreement on a $250 million package that would aid Flint, which is suffering a severe water quality crisis, and other parts of the country with contaminated drinking water. The bulk of the package, $200 million, would go to expand and finance a pair of loan programs to help states and localities improve drinking water infrastructure. The deal is tied to a major energy bill, which stalled in the Senate earlier this month when lawmakers were unable to agree on Flint aid. Read more here. http://bit.ly/1p9PN53 CLINTON NABS MILLION-DOLLAR AD BUY FROM PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Planned Parenthood's political arm is unfurling a multi-platform, seven-figure ad buy in support of Democratic primary front-runner Hillary Clinton. The ads will target Michigan, Texas and Virginia ahead of their early March primaries. Planned Parenthood, which remains under attack in Congress and GOP state legislatures, has given Clinton its first-ever endorsement for 2016. Read more here. http://bit.ly/24rZtrS OBAMA SEES 'PROMISING PATHWAY' TO FIGHT ZIKA: President Obama on Thursday expressed confidence about the nation's ability to beat the Zika virus, striking a more optimistic tone than some of his own federal researchers. "We actually think there's a promising pathway for diagnostics and vaccines on this," Obama said in a packed White House auditorium. "It's not a real complicated virus, apparently." Obama's optimistic remarks about understanding the science behind the Zika virus contrast with the more cautious language used by most officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In multiple appearances on Capitol Hill over the last two weeks, top Center for Disease Control officials have described an aggressive effort to catch-up with the murky science of the virus. Read more here: http://bit.ly/1VHRrFp THE NEVER-ENDING 'WASHINGTON EXEMPTION' SAGA: Alternatively described as the Senate's never-ending nominee-blocking saga. Sen. David VitterDavid Bruce VitterGrocery group hires new top lobbyist Lobbying World Senate confirms Trump judge who faced scrutiny over abortion views MORE (R-La.) is in his final year in office, but he isn't giving up the fight against the so-called "ObamaCare exemption" that he says keeps members of Congress from the most hurtful parts of the law. Vitter said Thursday he plans to block the nomination of Beth Cobert to lead the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). WHAT WE'RE READING: Fight for healthcare co-op funds looms (Wall Street Journal) HealthNet says quarterly membership in Obamacare plans declined (Reuters) Zika exposes class differences in Brazil, where most victims are poor (Washington Post) Airlines say Zika may already be impacting travel (Reuters) IN THE STATES: Massachusetts governor growing frustrated with lack of movement on opioid bill (WBUR) Delaware Medicaid budget reports $28M shortfall (Delaware Online) Oklahoma Supreme Court reverses abortion ruling (The Oklahoman) ICYMI FROM THE HILL: McConnell moving forward with drug abuse bill http://bit.ly/1OynB0m Senate approves Obama's FDA nominee http://bit.ly/1VHOHrB Send tips and comments to Sarah Ferris, [email protected], and Peter Sullivan, [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter: @thehill, @sarahnferris, @PeterSullivan4 View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-07-11 00:00:00

The effects of Scandal follow me everywhere I go. I look at coats through the lens of Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her fantastic fashion sense. I compare all fast-talking, fast-walking political soaps to the late Shonda Rhimes sudser. I now have an impeccable radar for when shows start laying the groundwork for a possible romantic reconciliation between a beloved train wreck of a couple. Those Olitz-detecting alarm bells officially started going off while watching Tuesday night’s Younger installment, “Big Little Liza.” After years of on-again, off-again merry-go-rounding, the diabolical minds over at TV Land's Younger just might be trying to get Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) and Josh No Last Name (Nico Tortorella) back together. The panic-inducing moment in question popped up in the middle of “Big Little Liza,” directed by Younger star Miriam Shor, as Josh gets into his Drake-like feelings over whether or not he should give up his tattoo parlor, the very creatively named Inkburg. Liza says no, but Josh says yes, because his options are either letting go of the shop or agreeing to a whopping 10-year lease. That kind of commitment is difficult and scary, especially for Josh, whose green card marriage has already imploded. In Josh’s opinion, nothing is keeping him in New York City — so why not give himself an escape hatch? Considering the fact that NYC is one of the most expensive American cities to live in, and hipsters everywhere need tattoos, Josh’s boozed-up argument actually makes a lot of sense. Yet, Liza doesn’t see it that way. She tells him all of his tattoos are commitments to himself, and he “can’t go wrong” continuing to invest in himself. True, but Josh has two very smart questions: “How can I be sure this place is my future? What’s keeping me here?” Liza responds that he has lots of friends, adding, “You have me.” A very sad, drunk Josh shoots back “I don’t have you.” As he stares at her mouth, it feels like the pair might kiss at any second. They don’t, but the tattoo artist’s displeasure over this fact hangs above them. If this were a one-off emotionally loaded conversation followed by Liza finding emotional fulfillment with another man, this scene wouldn’t be such a warning sign of romance to come. But, Liza is soon duped by her latest possible love interest, Don Ridley (Christian Borle), who tried to out her true age to the world via surprise Vanity Fair profile. Charles Brooks (Peter Hermann) isn’t even a factor in “Big Little Liza.” The only positive interaction Liza has with a guy goes to Josh, when she gives a rousing speech to Josh about how she isn’t going anywhere, and his roots are in New York (with her). “I will be at your side,” she promises at the close of the episode. “We commit to you. I commit to you.” It turns out Liza’s entire monologue is unnecessary since Josh isn’t going anywhere — he’s just getting a bigger sign. But now, all of Liza’s declarations of commitment and fidelity are out there, no matter how much she swears it’s platonic commitment and fidelity. When the pair hugs over the continuation of Inkburg, Josh’s final words — “I’m not ready to give up yet” — has obvious double meaning: he’s not giving up on the business or a romantic future with Liza. Both halves of the duo realize this, as their respective mile-long stares signal. While watching all of this Liza-Josh drama, the Olivia-Fitz madness of yore is quickly conjured. The days of Olivia reminding Fitzgerald “Handsome Man-Baby” Grant (Tony Goldwyn) who he is with booming intensity come to mind. Or the times Fitz managed to stop crying about all of his privilege long enough to tell Olivia to put that white hat back on. Liza and Josh’s scenes feel particularly Olitz-y since they follow the familiar Scandal formula of very slowly hinting a love resurgence is on the horizon. The former pair’s emotional chat in “Big Little Liza” isn’t the first time someone has suggested that maybe, just maybe, this romance isn’t dead yet. A few weeks ago, in “The End Of The Tour,” Josh’s roommate Lauren Heller (Molly Bernard) tells him it’s all going to click with some lucky lady soon. “What if it already did?” Josh asks. “What if it’s Liza?” Lauren doesn’t immediately shoot the possibility down, and instead promises nothing will keep Josh from Liza if it’s meant to be. If Charles has any interest in stopping a Liza-Josh reunion, he'd better ditch his Aubrey Graham-ish emotions over Liza's admittedly egregious lying as Younger. The book editor is officially getting a divorce from wife Pauline (Jennifer Westfeldt), as a sneak peek for next week’s “Sex, Liza and Rock & Roll” confirms, leaving Charles legally and ethically open to settling down with Liza. Who says a love triangle needs to be settled by a show's fifth season? Looking for more theories, recaps, and insider info on all things TV? Join our Facebook group, Binge Club. The community is a space for you to share articles, discuss last night’s episode of your favorite show, or ask questions! Join here.

2017-03-29 18:25:22

President Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order to tackle what he’s called the “total epidemic” of opioid abuse and addiction. The main objective of the order is to create a commission that’s tasked with publishing a report on what to do about America’s deadliest drug crisis ever. The administration’s decision to prioritize this urgent public health issue is promising. But drug policy experts are already calling the commission a meaningless step in the battle against the opioid problem, particularly since Trump wants to cut funding for opioid treatment. And the desperate need for better treatment is just one of the things we already have a lot of expert advice and scientific evidence on — more than enough to take concrete action right now. The commission will be led by Chris Christie, and include Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, yet many of the key anti-drug positions in government — the “drug czar,” the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — haven’t even been filled, and are absent from this panel. “It’s bizarre to create a new entity outside of government to dig into things that have already been dug into, to not use the expertise you have, and not have the commission report to the president,” said Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford. At best, this is a redundant exercise that may bring some political attention to opioids. At worst, Humphreys said, it’s an “empty gesture.” We know the epidemic of opioid abuse is one of the most pressing public health challenges in the United States today. In 2015, there were 52,000 overdose deaths — more than 30,000 linked to opioids, which is the most of any other year on record. As Vox’s German Lopez has explained, drug overdoses now kill more people than car crashes, gun violence, and HIV/AIDS. “Opioid abuse has become a crippling problem throughout the United States,” Trump said today. “And I think it’s almost untalked [sic] about compared to the severity that we’re witnessing.” But it’s actually not “untalked about.” There have been many, many reports about how to address the opioid problem. Most recently, the nonpartisan office of the Surgeon General came out with a report that included clear, evidence-based suggestions about what steps need to be taken. The long and short of it is that America must double down on treatment options for addicts, and make sure insurers cover those benefits. As the Surgeon General’s report stated, “Substance use disorder treatment in the United States remains largely segregated from the rest of health care and serves only a fraction of those in need of treatment.” Only 10 percent of people with an addiction of any kind get treatment, and more than 40 percent also have a mental health condition, yet fewer than half get treatment. Others, including the American Medical Association Task Force to Reduce Opioid Abuse, have called for the urgent need to address this “treatment gap.” So we already have reports. We already have opioid task forces. We already have reams of expert advice. We also have at least three government agencies that deal with drug problems — the White House Office for National Drug Control Policy (colloquially referred to as the nation’s “drug czar”), which coordinates America’s anti-drug spending; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which administers the block grant for addiction treatment in the US. Trump hasn’t filled the key appointments in these agencies, which are all crucial to combatting the addiction problem. That’s not to mention the fact that the Surgeon General is not a political appointee; he’s still in his office and could be tapped for advice. Instead, Trump is coming out with this commission … to create another report. The only thing about the commission that makes sense to Humphreys is the appointment of Chris Christie, who will lead the effort. With his progressive policies around opioids in New Jersey, and his personal stake in the epidemic after watching a close friend battle addiction, Christie is probably the single best person in the GOP to tackle drug policy. Still, though, the commission seemed almost designed to not have much of an impact, Humphreys said. In addition to the dearth of experts from government in the mix, there have been reports that the group will report to Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner instead of the president himself. (The commission is part of the White House Office of American Innovation, chaired by Kushner.) “In Washington, that’s death,” said Humphreys. “When you put somebody down in the bureaucracy in charge, that signals [people] don’t need to put much effort in.” The Trump administration has actually been moving in the opposite direction of what experts say is needed to curb the epidemic of opioid abuse. As Vox’s Lopez wrote, “[Trump’s] recent budget plan wouldn’t increase funding for drug treatment above what Congress already approved. In fact, Trump has proposed $100 million in cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s mental health block grants, which could ultimately impact some addiction services.” Painkiller addiction disproportionately affects low-income Americans, many of whom rely on Medicaid to get their health care. The Obama administration made treatment for mental health and addiction an essential health benefit through the Affordable Care Act. One of the most useful things Trump could do is expand Medicaid in every state and continue to ensure coverage of opioid treatment. Yet, the Obamacare replacement plan the GOP was trying to push through Congress last week would have cut funding Medicaid expansion, pushing people off their health care — and their addiction treatment. The GOP was also talking about getting rid of the essential health benefit requirement, which would drop addiction treatment from the health services insurers must cover. If this administration wants to have an impact on the epidemic, it would expand Medicaid in every state, it would increase funding for drug treatment, and it would spend the billion dollars allocated to the opioid problem through the 21st Century Cures Act. How to solve the opioid crisis isn’t a mystery. We know what to do. We don’t need more expert opinion. We need action.

2017-12-21

Dec 21 (Reuters) - Harbert Discovery Fund: * HARBERT DISCOVERY FUND - UNDER STANDSTILL AGREEMENT, HARBERT AGREED TO NOMINATE 7 PERSONS FOR ELECTION TO QUMU’S BOARD AT 2018 ANNUAL MEETING * HARBERT DISCOVERY - AUTHORIZED NUMBER OF QUMU DIRECTORS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING 2018 ANNUAL MEETING TO REMAIN AT 7 AT ALL TIMES DURING STANDSTILL PERIOD * HARBERT DISCOVERY FUND - PURCHASED QUMU SECURITIES BASED ON BELIEF THAT SECURITIES WERE UNDERVALUED, REPRESENTED ATTRACTIVE INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY Source: (bit.ly/2zcpnnG) Further company coverage:

2017-06-29

After many delays that disappointed space fans around the U.S., NASA finally managed to launch its mission early Thursday to, for the first time, create ephemeral, glowing clouds.  In other words, NASA created human-caused auroras, of sorts. The suborbital sounding rocket took flight at 4:25 a.m. ET Thursday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and released its payload — which consisted of 10 vapor-filled canisters — shortly afterwards.  Once at altitude, those canisters produced green-blue and red artificial clouds that should allow scientists to learn more about how particles move through space. The wait is over! The Terrier-Improved Malemute launched this morning, June 29, at 4:25 a.m. An early Independence Day fireworks display!! pic.twitter.com/Y5x6Oz2hu8 — NASA Wallops (@NASA_Wallops) June 29, 2017 The artificial auroras were seen by skywatchers up and down the East Coast of the United States.  "Wallops received nearly 2,000 reports and photos of the cloud sightings from areas as far north as New York, south to North Carolina, and inland throughout Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and points in-between," NASA said in a statement.   If you were out for an early morning stroll and happened to look up as the artificial clouds were created, you could probably be forgiven for thinking that you actually spotted a UFO.  The bright clouds created by this mission look somewhat eerie in video footage. The blinking auroras started off as a bright blue-green color and then fade to a deeper hue of blue in the sky. It took NASA 11 launch attempts to get this mission off the ground, in part because of strict weather requirements. Mission controllers needed totally clear skies for this launch in order to be assured that they would see the colorful vapor when it was released from the canisters.  And luckily, they got it on Thursday. Finally.

2017-10-16

LONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will host a meeting on Tuesday with developers and local housing associations in a bid to encourage the industry to build more homes and tackle soaring prices, an industry source said. The housing industry says Britain needs to build around 250,000 properties a year just to meet pent-up demand, which has pushed up prices and rents, stopping many younger people from getting onto the property ladder. The target is routinely missed. PM May has called the housing market broken and vowed to spend an additional two billion pounds ($2.7 billion) to create a new generation of affordable housing. The source, who declined to be named because the meeting is not public, said the meeting was expected to cover a range of issues facing the industry. May’s office declined to comment on the meeting. ($1 = 0.7528 pounds) (Reporting by Kate Holton and William James; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

2018-01-30 15:00:00

A computer security exploit developed by the US National Security Agency and leaked by hackers last year is now being used to mine cryptocurrency, and according to cybersecurity experts the number of infections is rising. Last April, a hacking group called the Shadow Brokers leaked EternalBlue, a Windows exploit that was developed by the NSA. Less than a month later, EternalBlue was used to unleash a devastating global ransomware attack called WannaCry that infected more than 230,000 computers in 150 countries. A month later, in June, the EternalBlue exploit was again used to cripple networks across the world in an even more sophisticated attack. Now, security researchers are seeing the EternalBlue exploit being used to hijack people’s computers to mine cryptocurrency. “EternalBlue, which was previously only used by nation state actors, is now becoming much more commonplace in malware leveraged by your average cybercriminal,” Bryan York, director of services at CrowdStrike, told me on the phone. This new attack—called WannaMine—may seem like less of a threat than WannaCry because it doesn’t lock users out of their computer. But CrowdStrike noted in a blog post laying out its findings on WannaMine that the company has observed the malware “rendering some companies unable to operate for days and weeks at a time.” WannaMine infections are also hard to detect because it doesn’t download any applications to an infected device. WannaMine was first discovered by Spanish firm Panda Security last October. Last week, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike claimed in a blog post that it’s seen the number of reported instances of WannaMine infections increase in the last few months. According to CrowdStrike’s York, there are a number of ways WannaMine can infect a computer, ranging from a user clicking on a malicious link in an email or webpage to targeted remote access attack by a hacker. Once the WannaMine script has infected a computer, it uses two normal Windows applications—PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation—to do its dirty work. WannaMine doesn’t resort to EternalBlue on its first try, though. First, WannaMine uses a tool called Mimikatz to pull logins and passwords from a computer’s memory. If that fails, Wannamine will use EternalBlue to break in. If this computer is part of a local network, like at a company office, it will use these stolen credentials to infect other computers on the network. The use of Mimikatz in addition to EternalBlue is important “because it means a fully patched system could still be infected with WannaMine,” York said. Even if your computer is protected against EternalBlue, then, WannaMine can still steal your login passwords with Mimikatz in order to spread. After breaking in, the WannaMine worm uses the infected computer’s CPU to mine a cryptocurrency called Monero quietly in the background (Monero is popular with malware miners because it can be generated with consumer hardware like CPUs rather than expensive specialized equipment). To the average user, nothing will have seemed to have changed—their computer may be noticeably slower, but that’s about it. For companies hit by WannaMine at scale though, the cumulative effects can be disastrous, York told me. He cited a client that recently came to CrowdStrike for help after their network was infected by WannaMine, which York said was using so much CPU power that it totally shut down their service. “The implications of cryptocurrency mining aren't just, ‘Oh darn, I lost some of my CPU,’” York said. “It's actually getting in the way of how businesses conduct their operations and causing down time.” WannaMine isn’t the first malicious cryptocurrency miner to propagate using EternalBlue. This title belongs to Adyllkuzz, but WannaMine is more sophisticated because it is “fileless.” while Adylkuzz downloaded an application to the victim’s computer, WannaMine merely takes advantage of tools found on any Windows computer to do its business. This makes it much harder for antivirus programs to identify. “This is important,” York said, “because many legacy antivirus products have trouble blocking malware that doesn’t write files to disk, making WannaMine more difficult to remediate from a system.” “Ransomware gives the victim an option to pay or not pay,” York added . “With WannaMine, so long as the attackers are able to maintain persistence on the system, they’re making money off of it. The increasing sophistication of cryptocurrency miners is something that I think we’ll continue to see in the future.”

2017-07-10

July 10 (Reuters) - LASTMINUTE.COM NV * 1H2017 REVENUES ARE EXPECTED TO BE SLIGHTLY DOWN (-4.5%) AGAINST REVENUES IN 1H2016 OF EUR 133.2M * GROUP EXPECTS A CONSISTENT DECREASE OF H1 ADJUSTED EBITDA IN A RANGE OF 45-47% VERSUS LAST YEAR; IN 1H2016 ADJUSTED EBITDA WAS EUR 17.3M * H1 NET PROFIT WILL BE LOWER THAN IN SAME PERIOD OF LAST YEAR, DECREASING TO AROUND -EUR 1.5-2.0M FROM +EUR 4.1M IN 2016 * FOR 2017, MANAGEMENT CONFIRMS FULL YEAR GUIDANCE IN LINE WITH 2016 RESULTS AT REVENUE AND EBITDA LEVEL Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2018-04-30 14:00:00

“It’s actually easy, once you get used to doing it,” 16-year-old Azzara Makan told me when I asked how her routine has changed in recent months. “There’s a bucket in the shower to catch grey water, then you use that water later to flush the toilet.” Makan’s calm acceptance is common in Cape Town, South Africa, where residents are facing an unprecedented water shortage. In this city of almost 4 million people, municipal water has been placed under drastic restrictions in order to push back ‘Day Zero,’ when the city’s government will be forced to shut off residents’ taps. If and when Day Zero arrives, the government has told its citizens to expect to wait each day at military-guarded stations around the city to collect water for their personal consumption. Originally forecast for April, and then June, Day Zero has now been indefinitely pushed back as a result of reduced pressure across the system and a dramatic reduction in water usage by residents. As a result, Western media—which published frequent reports on the dystopian-sounding Day Zero earlier this year—has now largely lost interest in the crisis. Yet Cape Town remains under strict ‘6B’ water restrictions. Each person is allotted a daily limit of 50 litres (13 US gallons). For perspective, in the US, the average eight-minute shower uses 65 litres. Because of current water use restrictions, the days of filling swimming pools or washing cars using municipal water are over. The people I spoke with were trying to maintain optimism and find ways to adapt. Makan agreed that life would get even more challenging if and when Day Zero arrives. “It’ll get difficult if they expect us to queue every day for water,” she told me. “Then I won’t be able to go to school anymore.” In a city with a great divide between rich and poor, socio-economic status dictates how the crisis is experienced. In a recent column in News24, it was said the poorest citizens have lived under Day Zero-like conditions for years. What has changed for many is a newfound obsession with water usage, and more importantly, avoiding wasting water. Neighbours can track each others’ real-time water usage on a public website. I heard many refer to this tool as a way to keep their neighbours honest and see which areas are using more than they should. For those living outside of Cape Town, the assumption is that the water shortage is a result of climate change. Cape Town has had three straight years of drought—a dry period that experts believe should occur once every 300 or 400 years. Without consistent rainfall, the city’s reservoirs have not filled. As far back as 1990, there were reports that Cape Town’s water supply was reaching dangerously low levels, and was developing an over-reliance on rainwater for municipal water. Mismanagement is partly to blame, along with a population that outgrew its infrastructure. Tony Turton, an environmental advisor and leading voice on the South African water crisis for over a decade, believes the current situation has been exacerbated by climate change, but not caused by it. He told me the country’s complicated politics are also complicit. “Water has been weaponized by the ruling ANC [African National Congress] under the Presidency of Jacob Zuma,” Turton said in an interview. Although Zuma stepped down in February, Turton believes the government used water scarcity and its controlling power over the dams surrounding the city to punish the opposing minority party, the Democratic Alliance, which governs Cape Town. The ANC reportedly delayed funds to aid the crisis and did not recognize the region as drought-stricken until late 2017. The city’s deputy mayor, Ian Neilson, agrees that politics have complicated the picture, although he expressed this view less emphatically than Turton. “We’d like the ANC to come to the party a bit more on this,” he told me, implying that the national government could be doing more to help. “But, let’s not forget that the people of this city have done wonderful things. We’ve cut our water usage in half in just a year’s time.” This is no small feat, and to achieve it, Cape Town residents have become obsessed with water usage by necessity, partly due to a proposed doubling of water prices over the next two years. I met with Joshua de Swardt, the head bartender at the Café Caprice, a hotspot in idyllic Camps Bay Beach. The Caprice has done everything it can to be fully self-sustaining in preparation for Day Zero. “Soon, there will be no more strawberry daiquiris on the menu, no more frozen margaritas,” Joshua told me, explaining that these drinks use up to three glasses of water to make. The goal is to be completely off the municipal water grid, if and when the city goes dry. Behind the restaurant are giant tanks to catch rainwater, and a filtration system to turn it into usable water. I asked if de Swardt if he'd leave Cape Town if the water runs out. “No way, man,” he said. “This is home.” Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter .

2017-10-10

A year after releasing the first Arlo Pro security camera, Netgear is back with another one. The newly announced Arlo Pro 2 is a minor update that rounds out the camera with some sorely missing features: the new model supports 1080p video capture (instead of just 720p) and also offers the ability to set alert zones, so that you can tell the camera to ping you when, say, someone is walking on your lawn but not when someone’s walking on your sidewalk. That feature was supposed to launch on the original camera, but apparently never did. In addition to the updated camera, Netgear is also launching a new subscription plan and some accessories. If you don’t pay anything, you’ll get the past seven days of recordings — only triggered when there’s motion or sound — stored for free by Netgear. Netgear has already offered subscription plans to extend that time limit, but now it’s offering an option to extend how much you record, too: for $99 to $299 per year, it’ll store 24/7 recordings from an Arlo camera for between 14 and 60 days. The new camera works wired or off of a battery, and Netgear is also launching a $79.99 solar charger to keep the camera going indefinitely. The camera is once again weather-proof, but Netgear says it’s meant to be used indoors or out. The Arlo Pro 2 will sell for $219.99, which is on the pricier side for security cameras (it looks like the original will remain available for a lower price). Nest’s outdoor camera, Ring’s spotlight camera, and Canary’s weatherproof camera all offer 1080p video for $199. That’s not dramatically cheaper, but the price adds up if you’re planning to install several of these around a home or business. Given the higher price, Netgear has to be banking on its features and storage service being a better offering, and it’s hard to say just from looking at the details that it is.

2019-08-24 00:00:00

BIARRITZ, France (Reuters) - Iran’s foreign minister paid a visit to a G7 summit in France on Sunday, an unexpected twist to a meeting already troubled by differences between U.S. President Donald Trump and Western allies over a raft of issues, including Iran. A White House official said France’s invitation to Mohammad Javad Zarif for talks on the sidelines of the gathering in the southwestern beachside town of Biarritz was “a surprise”. Zarif met his French counterpart to assess what conditions could lead to a de-escalation of tensions between Tehran and Washington, a French official said. Zarif also saw French President Emmanuel Macron during his brief stay, but the White House official said the Iranian minister did not meet any U.S. officials before he flew out of Biarritz airport. European leaders have struggled to calm a deepening confrontation between Iran and the United States since Trump pulled his country out of Iran’s internationally brokered 2015 nuclear deal last year and reimposed sanctions on the Iranian economy. Earlier on Sunday, Trump appeared to brush aside French efforts to mediate with Iran, saying that while he was happy for Paris to reach out to Tehran he would carry on with his own initiatives. Macron has taken the lead in trying to defuse tensions, fearing that a collapse of the nuclear deal could set the Middle East ablaze. He met Zarif on Friday ahead of the G7 summit to discuss ways of easing the crisis, including reducing some U.S. sanctions or providing Iran with a compensation mechanism. Iran wants to export a minimum of 700,000 barrels per day of its oil and ideally up to 1.5 million bpd if the West wants to negotiate with Tehran to save the 2015 deal, two Iranian officials and one diplomat told Reuters on Sunday. However, Trump’s fellow G7 leaders failed on Saturday to persuade the U.S. president to reissue oil sanction waivers that were granted last year to some buyers, but which came to end in May, a European diplomat familiar with the discussion said. Trump, a turbulent presence at last year’s G7 gathering, insisted on Sunday that he was getting along well with other leaders of a group that also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. But rifts emerged on issues from his intensifying trade war with China to the nuclear ambitions of both Iran and North Korea, and the question of whether Russian President Vladimir Putin should be readmitted to the group. Russia was excluded from what used to be the G8 in 2014 after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and then backed an anti-Kiev rebellion in the industrial region of Donbas in eastern Ukraine. A European official who declined to be named said Russia was the thorniest issue discussed over dinner on Saturday. “(The conversation) became a bit tense over this idea of the G7 being a club of liberal democracies ... that point was clearly not shared by the U.S. president,” the official said. Trump’s argument was that on a number of issues, like Iran and Syria, it made more sense to have Putin involved in the talks given that Russia is a key player there. New British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday congratulated Macron for hosting a difficult encounter. “You’re doing well,” Johnson said on the sidelines of the summit. “You did very well last night, my God, that was a difficult one, you did really, you did really well.” The G7 gathering is taking place against a backdrop of worries that a global economic downturn could be exacerbated by the escalating tariff war between Washington and Beijing. Britain’s Johnson voiced concern on Saturday about creeping protectionism and said those who support tariffs “are at risk of incurring the blame for the downturn in the global economy”. Sitting across from Trump on Sunday, he said: “We’re in favor of trade peace on the whole, and dialing it down if we can.” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warned other leaders of the dangers of protectionism and urged Washington not to carry through on its threat to impose tariffs on German autos. However, the White House doubled down on its aggressive stance toward trade with China. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham, explaining what Trump meant when he said earlier on Sunday that he had had second thoughts after announcing more tariff raises on Chinese goods last week, said that he simply regretted not hiking them higher. Looking to broaden the gathering, Macron invited several African leaders to discuss problems facing their continent, while leaders from India, Australia, Chile and Spain joined the group for dinner on Sunday where the focus was on the environment and other issues. However, senior U.S. officials accused Macron of looking “to fracture the G7” by focusing on “niche issues” rather than major global concerns. France denied this, pointing to Sunday’s initial session covering the economy, trade and security - areas that used to draw easy consensus but are now sources of great friction. Trump up-ended last year’s G7 meeting in Canada, walking out early and disassociating himself from the final communique. Amid the wrangling this time around, some potential positives emerged, with Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreeing in principle to core elements of a trade deal. “It’s billions and billions of dollars. Tremendous for the farmers,” Trump said. However, the two men appeared at odds over North Korea’s series of short-range missile launches. Trump, who prizes his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said the launches did not violate an agreement and were in line with what others were doing. Abe, sitting across from him, said they breached U.N. resolutions. At the start of the day, Trump said Britain would have a major trade deal with Washington after it leaves the European Union. Asked what his advice on Brexit was for Johnson, he replied: “He needs no advice, he is the right man for the job”. While the transatlantic rift is the most stark, there are also deep divisions within the European camp, with Johnson making his G7 debut at a time when he is struggling to persuade EU capitals to renegotiate Britain’s exit from the bloc, which Johnson has said will happen on Oct. 31 come what may. Reporting by Richard Lough, John Irish, Crispian Balmer, Marine Pennetier, John Chalmers, Jeff Mason, William James, Andreas Rinke and Michel Rose; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by William Maclean, Crispian Balmer and Frances Kerry

2016-09-28 00:00:00

Donald Trump said he was smart not to pay federal income taxes and that they would be "squandered" during the first presidential debate — and that was just while he was interrupting Hillary Clinton. Trump's interjections were notable for their frequency as well as their substance. Watch as he racks up the interruptions high score during Monday night's debate.

2019-08-02 14:42:00

In 1992, Jill Johnston wrote for the Book Review about Robert Bly’s 1990 book “Iron John,” in which he analyzed classic fairy tales and applied them to 20th-century masculinity. Bly became a champion of men at a time when many males were enduring a crisis of masculine identity in the wake of feminism. He and others (Susan Faludi covers them with panache in her best-selling book, “Backlash”) began seeing what they euphemistically called “soft males” — limp men with low self-esteem and a heightened vulnerability to women, men suffering a remoteness from their fathers and a feminization of sorts because of the women’s movement. The backlash has hit women along every front, and “Iron John” has been its most successful literary product. The story of its author, in itself and as cloaked in the book, tells us something about the difficulty many men have in establishing a sense of themselves as sons of their fathers — i.e., as heirs to the patriarchy. It also demonstrates the threat posed to many men by even a hint of women’s freedom. Bly, like Jung before him, is caught up in the “archetypes” of the masculine and the feminine. Men and women are defined by a given nature, fixed and unalterable, cast as opposites (the feminine embodying Eros, the masculine Logos) in a system reflecting the political status quo, under the guise of political ignorance. Bly never grasped, it seems, the core concept of feminism, that the attributes of masculinity and femininity are cultural fabrications, rooted in a caste system in which one sex serves the other. You can tell he missed the point and instead imagined that feminism meant the idealization of “the feminine,” the reclamation of the Great Mother, when he says, “More and more women in recent decades have begun identifying with the female pole, and maintain that everything bad is male, and everything good is female.” Read the rest of the review. An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of the author of “Iron John.” He is Robert Bly, not Richard.

2019-10-07 00:00:00

Last Friday, Ryan Helsley could have said nothing. A 25-year-old rookie pitcher in the relief rotation for the St. Louis Cardinals, Helsley is currently playing in his first-ever Major League Baseball playoff series, against the Atlanta Braves. After the Cardinals claimed Game 1 last Thursday night in Atlanta, Helsley could have put his head down and just receded into the background. He didn’t, and thank goodness for it. Helsley is a citizen of Cherokee Nation, and after witnessing the Atlanta home crowd’s infamous tomahawk chop and chant up close—in which fans raise their elbows up and chop their arms down while imitating a made-up Native war chant—he told the St. Louis Dispatch exactly how he felt watching the fans pretend to be their imagined version of him and other Natives. “I think it’s a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general,” Helsley said. “Just depicts them in this kind of caveman-type people way who aren’t intellectual. They are a lot more than that. It’s not me being offended by the whole mascot thing. It’s not. It’s about the misconception of us, the Native Americans, and it devalues us and how we’re perceived in that way, or used as mascots. The Redskins and stuff like that... That’s the disappointing part. That stuff like this still goes on. It’s just disrespectful, I think.” The Braves, in response, voiced their concern. On Saturday, the team released a statement claiming that it is taking Helsley’s concerns “seriously,” adding that it will “continue to evaluate how we activate elements of our brand.” It was a say-nothing series of words, clearly forced into being by the simple fact that it’s a bad look to have a Native person on an opposing team, in the playoffs, call them out for their foot-dragging. Just this past spring, the Braves, supposedly in the middle of undefined efforts to curtail their fans’ continued use of the motion and chant at home games, designed, printed, and sold t-shirts in the official team store that featured basic instructions for fans on how to do the tomahawk chop. Given the fact that this feat of fandom barely requires instructions—just show up and follow along with the crowd—it was hardly an accidental branding decision. “The Braves” is a vague, amorphous team name, but its reference has always been crystal clear. In 1912, the team, then located in Boston, were bought by James Gaffney, a member of Tammany Hall, which chose to use a nondescript Native chief as their own symbol. Gaffney changed the team name from Rustlers to Braves and changed the logo to that of a Native man wearing an eagle-feather headdress. As the team moved to Milwaukee and then Atlanta, the name and the logo moved with it. In 1983, the Braves retired their racist mascot, Chief Noc-A-Homa, a character for whom the team went as far as to build a teepee in the left field bleachers of Fulton County Stadium; the mascot would perform what could only loosely be described as a war dance whenever a Braves player hit a home run. But the team lost 19 of its next 21 games and Chief Noc-A-Homa and his teepee were brought back at the behest of the fans. The team finally retired him for good in 1986. Three years later, the logo was changed to a cursive stenciling of the word “Braves,” which sat above a tomahawk. (The stadium mascot Atlanta used at home games for the next three decades was one by the name of Homer, a human-like character with a baseball for a head that wore a Braves uniform, a clear rip-off of Mr. Met. The team recently updated their mascot to a character called Blooper, a clear rip-off of the Phillie Phanatic.) The discontinuation of Chief Noc-A-Homa and the logo alteration were supposed to be the first steps toward the franchise understanding and correcting its decades-long capitalization on harmful pseudo-Native imagery; instead, it was followed by a quick backwards hop that has extended all the way into the 2019 playoffs. In 1991, the tomahawk chop and accompanying chant rooted itself into the psyche of Atlanta Braves fans with little concern by team management or its fan base. Deion Sanders, a dual-sport standout for the baseball and football teams of Florida State University, brought the chop with him to Atlanta when he made the jump to the pros that year. Florida State, unlike the majority of sports programs with Native mascots, has long been an active partner with the namesake for its mascot, the Seminole Tribe. The motion is among a number of Seminole-themed crowd traditions that FSU works into its sports events, the most famous being the horse-riding live Seminole mascot that thrusts a spear into midfield ahead of every football game. In these specific instances, FSU obtained the approval of the Seminole Tribe, one of the major political players in the Sunshine State thanks to the sovereign nation’s robust financial health. As long as the Seminole approve of the proceedings, it matters little what any one else, Native or not, thinks about them. That kind of proactive consideration for the desires and feelings of Native nations and their people, unfortunately, is a rarity in the world of professional sports. Atlanta, like their MLB counterparts, the Cleveland Indians—or the NFL’s Washington R-words and Kansas City Chiefs, or the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks—did not initially exist as partners with any Native nations, nor do they now. They did not and have not sought approval before hawking the latest fad for a quick buck or a tone-deaf crowd motivator. None of these franchises represent a singular Native nation. Instead, in choosing such opaque terms for team names, they have chosen to continue to represent a harmful pan-Indian view of this country’s Indigenous people. As with the Washington NFL team’s repeated attempts to justify the use of a slur and a caricature as a mascot, the extent to which a massive rebranding effort to right these wrongs is wholly dependent upon the bottom line. The billionaire owners of Native-themed sports franchises in this nation continue to feel unbothered by the fact that their teams are a direct product of the historicizing and erasure of modern Native people, because to feel bothered and to act on that feeling would cost them money. If Helsley were just a random Cherokee Nation citizen phoning the Braves front office line—or an activist speaking with the press, or a journalist writing a column, or even the entirety of the National Congress of American Indians—it stands to reason that no statement would have been issued, and the fans would have been unimpeded in the continued use of the tomahawk chop. I grew up a Braves fan, because they were the closest MLB team to my hometown in North Carolina, and because TBS carried all of their games when I was a kid. I have been to Turner Field and I have done the tomahawk chop. I even had a foam tomahawk in my childhood bedroom for an extended period of time. As is the case with the R-word or Chief Wahoo, I grew to understand that the belief I used to justify the use of these practices as a kid—of believing that these twisted forms of representation were better than being wholly secluded to the history books and the hellish depictions popularized by Spaghetti Westerns—didn’t hold weight when pressed with even the lightest application of critical thought. Native people are not and have never been a singular blob with interchangeable cultural practices and societal structures. There are hundreds of tribal nations, each with their own histories and their specific beliefs and ways of life. What the existence of the Washington NFL team and the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves, and all their minor league and amateur offshoots, accomplish in their continued existence is antithetical to this fact. They exist not as a reminder to white people that we exist, but as a reminder that we existed, in the same vein as the Minnesota Vikings, the Pittsburgh Pirates, or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. While flying back home this weekend after a trip to see family in Virginia, I spied at Reagan National Airport dozens of R-word shirts and memorabilia, two Kansas City Chiefs jerseys, and one Chief Wahoo hat. Last night, watching the Chiefs play the Indianapolis Colts during the Sunday night NFL showcase, the broadcast’s cameras and stadium mics picked up fans doing the chant and the chop at least a half-dozen times. To them, that is who we are: A decoration, an archaic people locked in the past. That is, until we’re not; until we’re standing on the field of play, looking at the scores of frothing smiles and swinging arms and callous chants, wondering who the hell this is all for. Then, all of a sudden, it’s time to look at different ways to “activate elements of our brand.” Nick Martin is a staff writer at The New Republic.

2019-09-27 05:00:15

5 places The summer crowds have faded in this bohemian Cape Cod haven. But the designer and home goods retailer is a fan of P-town in autumn and shares his go-to spots. Provincetown, Mass., the artsy beach town on the frothy final wisp of Cape Cod, swells with sandy-toed visitors in the peak summer months. With autumn upon us, the crowds have all but disappeared. But John Derian, the New York City-based designer and home goods retailer, says he loves this time of year in P-town. Since 2007, he has decamped to his getaway home, an antique of a house built for a local sea captain in 1789. An outpost of his flagship New York store, John Derian Company, is in his property’s carriage house. After the tourists are gone, Provincetown is “beautiful and quiet,” Mr. Derian said. “It’s a small town that’s also like a city. I can walk out of my house and get a coffee.” The designer has made a career out of resuscitating paper — turning antique illustrations and postcards into decoupaged glass plates and more. It’s perhaps not surprising that Mr. Derian is at home here, having grown up in Watertown, Mass., spending two weeks of every childhood summer on Cape Cod. He shares his five favorite spots. “Every town needs a used bookstore like Tim’s; its authenticity adds a layer only a used bookstore can,” Mr. Derian said of this shop in an 1840s house with weathered signage and a well-trod brick walkway. In a community known for its sizable gay population — the city says 66 percent of the population identifies as LGBTQ — the shop also has a large gay literature section. Most books are $5-and-under beach reads, though the proprietor, Timothy Francis Barry, said the store also has a healthy stock of signed books from local legends, including Mary Oliver and Norman Mailer, who were frequent customers. 242 Commercial Street; 508-487-0005, no website “You’ll walk in the library, have no idea anything is going on, go up one flight and there’s a model of the Dorothea!” said Mr. Derian, referring to a 66-foot-long replica of a schooner that in 1907 won the Fisherman’s Race in Massachusetts Bay without a fore-topmast (a major feat in the sailing world). The library holds some 40,000 volumes and is housed in an 1860 former Methodist church. Ascend to the mezzanine level for a view of Provincetown harbor. 356 Commercial Street; provincetownlibrary.org Victor Powell, a local artist, started making custom sandals (starting at $280) here in 1974, when there were 21 leather shops in Provincetown; he’s since outlasted them all, and done a runway show for the designer Michael Kors and made footwear for Cardinal O’Malley, the leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Mr. Derian has two pairs and considers the shop, where your feet are traced and sandals are made by the next day, a “magical, very hippie place.” Leather choices range from English bridle to snakeskin and alligator. Shoes range from $280 to $600. 323 Commercial Street; victorpowellsworkshop.com This fount of beach-ready picnic fare in Provincetown’s West End does “the best frosting on a cupcake ever — you want to ruin any diet, you just have to have one,” Mr. Derian said. Everything from the vegan, gluten-free brownie to the gazpacho-to-go is made in the kitchen of the early-19th-century building in which it is housed. “I feel like they should do a book; they have such a great twist on all their baked goods.” 93 Commercial Street; ptownrelish.com “Ninety percent of the time, you’ll see whales” from this 1816 lighthouse, which is open for tours until mid-October. Climb 41 steps to the lamp room, which has used a LED lantern since 2014 — and you may spot humpback, right and minke as well as finback whales circling in the deep waters below. Mr. Derian recalled seeing “20 whales and dolphins jumping” when his flight once passed over the lighthouse. Race Point Road; racepointlighthouse.org 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you’ll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world.

2018-04-26 00:00:00

With North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in sitting down for talks, and a summit between Kim and President Trump looming, denuclearization is at the top of mind in Washington — but it's not the only issue on the table. Why it matters: Trump and Kim will have to balance a number of competing interests if they want to reach any sort of lasting accord. South Korea is pushing for a permanent peace deal to replace the current ceasefire, per Yonhap News. Seoul also wants to work towards reunification, though they're not expecting to get there any time soon. Japan is focused on the abduction of its citizens (which Trump has said he'll raise with Kim), and wary of the idea of winding down sanctions on the North Korean regime. "Japan wants to punish North Korea," Jim Walsh, an international security expert at MIT who has taken part in previous negotiations with North Korea. If an eventual deal leaves intact the North’s short and medium-range missiles, which could target Japan, it “might show the U.S. sees its own homeland security as more important than its allies,” says Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School’s China Center. “The Russians, above all, are interested in demonstrating that they are still a major global power, and that Russia’s opinion matters, including in the context of North Korea,” Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation says. The Russians, “as a matter of course, don’t like to be left out of anything,” says Rapp-Hooper. Russia also doesn't like the idea of "the U.S. and China getting too close and cooperating on North Korea," Yuki Tatsumi of the Stimson Center told Axios, so they're willing to offer North Korea a lifeline if China squeezes too hard. China is interested primarily in stability on the peninsula, including avoiding conflict or a humanitarian crisis, given its mutual defense pact with the North and their shared border. But beyond that, China, like Russia, also wants to make sure “no grand bargain with North Korea that leaves them out” is drawn up, Rapp-Hooper said. China also has an interest in rebuilding its relationship with North Korea along the way.

2016-06-24 15:27:00

I don't know how it happened, but over the last decade or so, the internet became obsessed with cephalopods. Octopi, squids, cuttlefish, you name it—anything with tentacles and big, saucer-shaped eyes eventually became its own viral sensation. And while I have my own suspicions regarding why these humble, yet wonderful, cephalopods gained sticky (heh) traction online, I'd be remiss to ignore the undeniable influence that was the "octopus running," or "nope nope nope octopus" meme. For the unfamiliar, at one point during the early 2000s, someone created a delightful GIF of a veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) scampering across the seafloor, and released it onto the internet. These days, the GIF is more commonly searched for as the "nope octopus," but it reportedly first appeared on June 13, 2012, when a Redditor "submitted an animated GIF of an octopus walking across an ocean floor with the caption 'nope nope nope nope' to the /r/funny subreddit, garnering upwards of 3,100 up votes and 40 comments." As far as I can tell, the GIF's original source is a video created by Australia's Museum Victoria in 2009. According to the museum's website, the video was shot by researchers Julian Finn and Mark Norman who spent more than 500 hours studying veined octopus behavior in Bali, Indonesia. A corresponding paper, which claims to have documented the first-ever observed case of tool use by an invertebrate, was published that year in Current Biology. But the video also managed to capture a unique behavior called "stilt-walking," which is that goofy two-tentacled strut the Australian researchers described as "ungainly and clearly less efficient than unencumbered locomotion," by which the octopus "gains no protective benefits." Damn. This seemingly impractical attribute was first noticed in 2005 by marine biologist Christine Huffard. While conducting field work near Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the researcher from University of California, Berkeley saw that two species of tropical octopus had a strange habit of becoming bipedal when threatened. "It was easy to get them to act defensively when you're chasing them with a camera, and we got footage of the coconut octopus walking on two arms. It was hysterical to see. We laughed, and our masks filled up a little bit with water," Huffard told Science Friday. According to Huffard, whose research on stilt-walking was later published in Science, both the veined octopus and algae octopus (Octopus aculeatus) use this behavior as a nifty defense mechanism against predators. When threatened, the tiny octopi will either raise or coil six of their tentacles while "tip-toeing" on the other two, which allows them to escape while remaining inconspicuously concealed (sort of). Even though an octopus' primary defense is often its masterful camouflage—which it controls using color-changing cells called chromatophores—when startled, it will often forgo its disguise for the sake of speed. By walking upright, the octopus is somehow able to maintain its camouflage while simultaneously fleeing the scene. As far as the biomechanics of stilt-walking go, Huffard discovered that three bands of contracted muscles within each tentacle allow the octopus to remain stable while it pushes off from the sand. At the same time, hydrostatic pressure created by fluid-filled chambers throughout the octopus' body are responsible for keeping its shape as it jets forward through the water. Engineers currently working on soft robotics have actually mimicked this locomotion technique, which I covered earlier this year when Italian researchers successfully created two underwater "octobots." Interior cables within the robots' arms replicated the musculature of real cephalopods, and even allowed them to stilt-walk across the seafloor, although the end result was decidedly less graceful. So far, only a few octopus species have been observed stilt-walking, but Huffard tells Science Friday that the goofy behavior is probably more common than we think. And while it's a bummer to discover that our beloved meme is actually just a stressed-out octopus, it's still an encouraging reminder that there's so much cephalopod love on the internet.

2016-03-15 01:46:16

Ducks 7, Devils 1 ANAHEIM, Calif. — Jakob Silfverberg scored three goals for his first N.H.L. hat trick, leading the Anaheim Ducks to a 7-1 rout of the Devils on Monday night. Corey Perry scored his team-high 29th goal, Nick Ritchie had his first in 25 N.H.L. games, and Ryan Kesler got the go-ahead goal early in the second period. Andrew Cogliano added a goal and two assists, helping Anaheim beat the Devils for the fifth straight time. The former Anaheim forward Devante Smith-Pelly scored for the Devils, who failed to complete a sweep of their three-game California trip after a 3-0 win over the San Jose Sharks and a 2-1 overtime victory against the Los Angeles Kings. The Ducks remained 2 points behind the Pacific Division-leading Kings, who won, 5-0, at Chicago. Kesler put the Ducks ahead, 2-1, at 3 minutes 44 seconds of the second period with his 15th goal, using defenseman David Schlemko as a screen and beating Keith Kinkaid to the stick side with a one-timer from 30 feet out. Kinkaid was making his fourth straight start in place of the injured Cory Schneider. Silfverberg got his first goal of the night at the five-and-a-half-minute mark, jumping on a loose puck in the slot and whipping it past Kinkaid’s stick after Josh Manson’s shot was blocked by Schlemko. At that point, Devils Coach John Hynes used his only timeout to try to slow down the Ducks’ momentum. But it was no use. Silfverberg made it 4-1 at 9:56 of the period, converting a perfect setup by Kesler from behind the net. Silfverberg completed his hat trick with 12:47 remaining. Cogliano opened the scoring 32 seconds after the first intermission, converting a rebound of Silfverberg’s slap shot from the top of the right circle. The Ducks’ lead lasted 37 seconds, as Tyler Kennedy carried the puck behind the net and set up Smith-Pelly in front for his 10th goal. The Ducks, who did not have a power-play opportunity against the Devils in their 2-1 victory at Newark on Dec. 19, got their only one in the rematch when the former Ducks forward Kyle Palmieri was sent off for hooking Clayton Stoner at 6:05 of the second. This was the 12th time the Devils have played all three California teams on a trip. The only time they swept was in November 2000, when they beat the Ducks by 5-2, the Kings by 6-1 and the Sharks by 3-2. Martin Brodeur stopped 71 of 76 shots in those games.

2018-08-21

Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Kelly Marie Tran has spoken out publicly for the first time since she disappeared from social media in June. Many blamed Tran's exit from Instagram on internet trolls who had showered her with hateful messages following her breakout role in director Rian Johnson's 2017 Star Wars movie.  She doesn't share any specifics in a new essay published in the New York Times, opting instead to speak more broadly about society's latent racist tendencies and her own cultural erasure. "It wasn't their words, it's that I started to believe them," she wrote. "Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories." Multiple times throughout the essay, Tran discusses how "their words" carried her back to her younger years, and to an internalized feeling that she didn't belong.  "That feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from," she wrote. Over the course of the powerful essay, Tran describes various moments in her life when her existence in America as a non-white person left her feeling like a background player in civilized society. And how popular entertainment indirectly reinforced that feeling. "Because the same society that taught some people they were heroes, saviors, inheritors of the Manifest Destiny ideal, taught me I existed only in the background of their stories, doing their nails, diagnosing their illnesses, supporting their love interests — and perhaps the most damaging — waiting for them to rescue me." Over the course of the piece, Tran charts the various ways her own history with racism and the more insidious sense of "othering" have strengthened her present-day resolve to work toward a more inclusive world. The essay is, ultimately, a statement of intent.  "You might know me as Kelly," she wrote in the closing portion of the piece. "I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a Star Wars movie." "I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair." "My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started."

2019-01-10

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Industrial groups Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and Alstom (ALSO.PA) are discussing additional divestments with the European Commission to win approval for their plan to create a joint Franco-German rail champion, sources told Reuters. The move is meant to overcome concerns from antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who in December voiced her doubts over the impact that their deal would have on high-speed trains. Three sources close to the talks said on Thursday fresh concessions were being made by the two firms to convince the EU Commission. The companies have made additional concessions to extend the geographical scope of their earlier offers and are now detailing their plan with Brussels. Siemens and Alstom had already offered to sell either one of their high-speed train-making businesses and the bulk of Alstom’s signaling business in Europe in addition to some Siemens signaling assets. But these offers were seen as not sufficient by Britain’s CMA competition watchdog and its counterparts in the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. The regulators said in December they were worried about the supply of very high-speed rolling stock for trains such as the Eurostar which links the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The Commission’s current deadline to decide on the operation is February 18. A spokesman for Vestager declined to comment. On Wednesday in a speech in Germany Vestager said she was in favor of fostering European industrial champions. But she stressed: “We can’t build those champions by undermining competition.” Two senior EU officials told Reuters there was some support within the EU commission over the deal, if sufficient remedies were offered. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, Peter Maushagen, Alexander Huebner, and Alastair Macdonald; Writing by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Alexandra Hudson

2016-07-04 13:00:00

When Donald Trump opens his mouth, the output can seem like the work of a demented Markov chain, a poorly trained algorithm trying its hand at rhetoric. Key words—"great again," "let me tell you," "we don't win anymore"—end up strung together by exceptionally weak ligaments. His syntax seems generated on the fly, word to word, each stumbling straight into the next, bound by the barest loyalty to grammar. As only he could, Trump's brought the state of political speech down to the state of the art of machine speechwriting. This past winter, a graduate student at the Technical University of Denmark earned significant attention for the politicians he was crafting in Python. During an academic exchange at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Valentin Kassarnig had published "Political Speech Generation," a paper that applied machine-learning techniques to speechwriting. For many, his research was an occasion to ask whether rhetoric will eventually be a branch of applied robotics. No, the consensus seemed to be - the output is too rough, too tangled. We expect better from our elected representatives. But in a world where Trump can win the Republican nomination—can poll competitively with one of the most polished Democrats in town—is it still clear that algorithmic talking points aren't good enough? Speech seems to require less style than most imagined, and if crummy, consistent rhetoric can get the job done, it's worth asking why speechbots haven't spread further. Kassarnig's text engine was trained on Convote, a collection of Congressional speech snippets from 2005. For each set of its own remarks, it picks a random opening line—"Mr. Speaker, I rise today…"—and then applies two models to build what follows. One, a language model, hinges on the odds that a word will follow the block of five before it; it helps maintain the output's resemblance to good syntax. The other, a topic model, judges how likely a speaker is to hit certain points given the issues that have already cropped up. The results were muddled but recognizable: "I rise in full support of this resolution and urge my colleagues to support this bill and urge my colleagues to support the bill. Mr. Speaker, supporting this rule and supporting this bill is good for small business." The algorithm's speeches sound less mechanized than nervous, halting in the human way. When we spoke, Kassarnig seemed as surprised by the engine's realism as he was by all the popular interest in his work. "I didn't use very sophisticated models," he said, "I used the very basics." The tool's accessible too; Kassarnig guessed that it would be "fairly easy" for others to plug their own rhetoric datasets into his architecture. The project is available on GitHub for revision or extension. A Congressman could clone a copy today. So why hasn't software eaten the speechwriting world? Granted, this specific algorithm has flaws. Kassarnig says the topic model in particular needs work; his speeches make digressive leaps from Social Security, say, to National Marine Sanctuaries. But elsewhere in the field of text-as-data, that problem is under algorithmic study too. Last fall, Northeastern University professor Nick Beauchamp launched another round of "robot speechwriting" coverage with an approach that used feedback from volunteers, recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, to optimize the topic structure of short texts. Beauchamp told me he was thinking, in fact, about ways that he could join his machinery to Kassarnig's work, with an eye to generating more powerful and more natural speeches. The missing ingredient is a market, an appetite. But couldn't some backbench politician—some minor executive, or else the leader of a struggling nonprofit—settle for open-source speeches? If the prose isn't sterling, at least it comes cheap compared to artisanal product. For Vinca LaFleur, a partner at West Wing Writers and a former writer for President Clinton, ethics are a key obstacle. "I would never recommend that someone use something like this," she said. "This a very personal endeavor, it's a very human endeavor, and it's about real people connecting with issues that real people face." That stance, though, isn't unanimous. "I don't see how a machine could make democratic politics any more bogus," Barton Swaim, author of The Speechwriter, wrote in The Washington Post. Kassarnig was untroubled too. If remarks aren't a speaker's own work, he said, "it doesn't matter whether it originates from another person or a machine." In fact, Beauchamp suggested that the ethical considerations point the other way. The spread of artificial speechwriting could be a story about equality and democratization; political spin is already omnipresent, but access to quality manipulation is restricted. "If you imagine a world where everybody has access to equally good, automatically-generated stuff," he suggested, "on the one hand it's a nightmare world where everybody is fighting with the sharpest knives possible. But on the other hand, it's a little bit better than the previous world, where only the rich and powerful had the sharpest knives." When we dream of electric writers, a wordsmith in every pocket, we imagine a fair fight.

2019-12-04 00:00:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would use taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for $3.2 trillion in promised investment in infrastructure, higher education and healthcare, according to an outline of his plans if he captures the White House. The outline, which puts numbers to several policy proposals for the first time, would implement a new minimum fee on companies that report a profit on their books but manage to pay far less than the official tax rate, which could affect companies such as e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. Biden’s campaign team estimates his minimum tax of 15% on the income the most profitable companies report on their books would raise $400 billion, which would help pay for a $1.7 trillion investment to pay for proposed climate change and other infrastructure development. The former vice president earlier this year criticized Amazon’s $0 federal tax bill in 2018 and said no company making billions in profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers. Amazon has said it pays “every penny” it owes. Companies can lower their tax bills in a number of ways, including by taking credits for making certain investments or reporting losses to tax collectors years after they took place. Policy proposals have differed widely among Democrats vying to win their party’s nomination to face U.S. President Donald Trump in the November 2020 election. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, has proposed spending $20.5 trillion over a decade on healthcare alone to implement a Medicare for All system that she said would lower costs and improve care. That would also be paid for partly by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. The Biden campaign is coupling the minimum tax with a higher overall corporate tax, sanctions on companies that facilitate tax avoidance, ending some oil-and-gas subsidies and more taxes on some corporate income earned abroad, according to the details, which were first reported by Bloomberg News. Biden also proposes paying for $750 billion in investments in healthcare and the same amount for higher education with other taxes that largely hit high-income earners, such as charging a higher rate on wealthy people’s capital gains and dividends. Biden campaign policy director Stef Feldman said in a statement that the candidate “is committed to being transparent with the American people about the smart and effective ways he’d pay for the bold changes he’s proposing.” Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall

2017-09-22 00:00:00

5:57 PM PT -- Pattiz tells TMZ, “This guy must be crazy. I’ve never met alone with him. I didn't hire him or fire him. I barely know who he is. The fact that I'm a law enforcement reserve is well known as I have public service awards in my office. He adds, "I didn't and would never act in the manner that's been described. We have received no lawsuit but I presume this is in response to our letting him know today that we are going to sue him. His allegations are absurd.” An attorney for Podcast One tells us they're suing Hernandez for stealing intellectual property -- and they have no idea why he was canned from his most recent job. Norm Pattiz, the entrepreneur behind PodcastOne and Westwood One, had a bad habit of whipping out a loaded gun and knife during meetings with a producer ... according to a lawsuit. Raymond Hernandez says Pattiz brandished a handgun in their office on multiple occasions, and also bragged about his deep ties with law enforcement. In the docs, obtained by TMZ, he says the broadcasting mogul would sometimes place the gun on his desk with the barrel pointed at Hernandez. According to the suit, the boss man flaunted the firepower in order to intimidate Hernandez -- who says he was told to juice the numbers on podcast downloads in order to boost advertising revenue. Hernandez says he let it be known around the office he wasn't comfortable fudging numbers, and was fired shortly thereafter. Hernandez says the gun play was also motivated by revenge. Last year, comedian Heather McDonald aired a recording of Pattiz sexually harassing her while she was on the job -- he made a comment about supporting her breasts. In the docs, Hernandez says Pattiz thinks he leaked the audio to Heather, and eventually pressured Hernandez's new employer to 86 him. Hernandez, with his attorney Rob Reichman, is suing Pattiz for assault, wrongful termination and whistleblower retaliation. We've reached out to Pattiz ... so far no word back.

2018-03-27

FBI Director Christopher Wray is doubling the number of FBI personnel tasked with responding to records requests from House Judiciary Chairman Bob GoodlatteRobert (Bob) William GoodlatteImmigrant advocacy groups shouldn't be opposing Trump's raids Top Republican releases full transcript of Bruce Ohr interview It’s time for Congress to pass an anti-cruelty statute MORE (R-Va.), he said in a statement Tuesday night. Up until Tuesday, 27 dedicated staffers were working to process Goodlatte's request. The committee has received about 3,000 documents so far. Wray said while there is a very large number of documents to provide, "I agree that the current pace of production is too slow." Goodlatte — who along with House Oversight and Government Committee Chairman Trey GowdyHarold (Trey) Watson GowdyRising star Ratcliffe faces battle to become Trump's intel chief Cummings announces expansion of Oversight panel's White House personal email probe, citing stonewalling Pelosi says it's up to GOP to address sexual assault allegation against Trump MORE (R-S.C.) is investigating alleged bias at the Justice Department — last week issued a subpoena to obtain documents related to how the FBI handled its probe into Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonTop Sanders adviser: Warren isn't competing for 'same pool of voters' Anti-Trump vets join Steyer group in pressing Democrats to impeach Trump Republicans plot comeback in New Jersey MORE’s email server and potential surveillance abuses. Conservatives on the two committees have become increasingly frustrated with what they say is the slow pace with which the Justice Department has turned over documents, leading to slow-going in the probe. Specifically, lawmakers want to see a tranche of over a million documents examined by Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is conducting a parallel probe into decisionmaking during the 2016 election. "Quite candidly, if you're a FOIA applicant, you have a better chance of getting information," Gowdy told The Hill in an interview last week. Democrats have called the Goodlatte-Gowdy probe a partisan distraction aimed at muddying the waters around special counsel Robert MuellerRobert (Bob) Swan MuellerTrump calls for probe of Obama book deal Democrats express private disappointment with Mueller testimony Kellyanne Conway: 'I'd like to know' if Mueller read his own report MORE's investigation into President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE's campaign and Russia. DOJ spokesman Ian Prior said in a statement last week that officials are carefully combing through the documents page-by-page to protect certain sensitive information. The committee has been receiving documents on a rolling basis every 10 to 14 days, he said. He also pushed back on the breadth of the document request, saying the DOJ believes there are 30,000 documents relevant to the committee's inquiry and describing the 1.2 million document request as "substantial." Fifty-four FBI staff members, working in two shifts from 8 a.m. to midnight, will now work to "expedite" the project, according to Wray. -- Olivia Beavers contributed. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2020-01-09 00:00:00

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she’ll likely send the articles of impeachment to the Senate “soon” but declined to provide any more details on a timeline, continuing a standoff with Senate Republicans over the terms of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Pelosi, at a Thursday news conference, remained steadfast in her demand that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell first detail the framework for the trial before she relents. “We need to see the arena in which we are sending our managers. Is that too much to ask?” Pelosi told reporters, adding that she won’t hold the articles “indefinitely.” “I’ll send them over when I’m ready,” Pelosi said when pressed again about her timeline. “And that’ll probably be soon.” Pelosi’s comments indicate that the stalemate with McConnell over the impeachment trial could continue into next week and beyond, as Capitol Hill’s two most powerful leaders remain at an impasse with both refusing to compromise. Pelosi on Thursday continued to make the case for withholding the articles, saying it’s only fair Democrats first know the blueprint of the trial so she knows how to assemble her team of “impeachment managers” who will prosecute the case against Trump. But McConnell too is showing no signs of relenting. On Thursday, McConnell read a series of statements from Democratic senators quoted in POLITICO who called for Pelosi to wrap up her standoff with the Senate. He also told Republican senators in the afternoon that he expects Pelosi to transmit the articles of impeachment as soon as Friday, though senators stressed that the Kentucky Republican had no inside information on timing. Some senators began bracing themselves for the trial to begin sometime next week, possibly Monday or Tuesday. “He expects them at some point here very soon,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in an interview. “The sense is that even if they got here at this very moment right now, there’s still a process involved to notify the White House and chief justice and turning it all around. So it sounds like to me the earliest we can get on that would be the Monday when we get back.” In the interim, McConnell indicated the Senate will continue confirming nominees and suggested further delay could lead to approval of Trump's new trade deal. "If the speaker continues to refuse to take her own accusations to trial, the Senate will move forward next week with the business of our people. We will operate on the assumption that House Democrats are too embarrassed — too embarrassed — to ever move forward," he said on the Senate floor. Pelosi brushed off McConnell’s taunting, saying it’s the Senate Republicans who are afraid of the trial, which is why they’re refusing to call other witnesses or demand documents withheld by the White House. The longer Pelosi holds the articles, the more likely a Senate impeachment trial conflicts with the Democratic presidential primaries. The Iowa caucuses are Feb. 3 and the New Hampshire primary is Feb. 11. After McConnell announced he had enough votes within his own caucus to steamroll Democrats and push through a partisan package of trial rules, even Senate Democrats started to openly push Pelosi to send over the articles. Meanwhile, Pelosi has largely kept her members in the dark on her next steps on impeachment. And the topic has been noticeably absent from private caucus and leadership meetings this week, with the conflict with Iran dominating discussions. “I support the speaker’s decision to hold the articles until we get some clarity on what exactly the kangaroo court is going to look like in the Senate,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Thursday morning. But he would not comment on how long he believes the impasse could last. “I’m not going to put a timeline on it one way or another,” he said. “I don't respond to the whims of the Senate one way or the other.” “I think her request is pretty reasonable,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), another member of Pelosi's leadership team, said in an interview. That sense of unity appeared to shift somewhat on Thursday morning, when House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told MSNBC that he believed "it's time" to transmit the articles across the Capitol. It didn’t last long: Smith quickly issued a statement walking back his remarks. But other cracks have begun to show. Rep. Ben McAdams (D-Utah) told reporters on Thursday morning that he wants the articles sent to the Senate. “I think it’s time,” said McAdams, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the House, who flipped a GOP district that Trump handily won in 2016. Still, the vast majority of Pelosi's caucus continues to publicly stand behind her, despite some frustrations members have expressed privately. Pelosi has held the articles for more than three weeks, since the House impeached Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Dec. 18. The speaker refused to send the articles to the Senate in a bid to pressure McConnell to negotiate with Democrats on the terms of the trial. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had been demanding McConnell agree to call witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton and request key documents related to the Ukraine scandal that have been blocked by the Trump administration. McConnell refused and even openly mocked Pelosi and Schumer’s pressure campaign against him. “I’m not responsible to Mitch McConnell or anybody else, except my members,” Pelosi said Thursday. Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

2018-03-05

March 5 (Reuters) - Wolters Kluwer Health: * WOLTERS KLUWER HEALTH - EXPECTS ACQUISITION TO HAVE AN IMMATERIAL IMPACT ON ADJUSTED EARNINGS * WOLTERS KLUWER HEALTH - FIRECRACKER WILL BECOME PART OF HEALTH LEARNING, RESEARCH & PRACTICE GROUP * WOLTERS KLUWER HEALTH SAYS SIGNED AGREEMENT TO ACQUIRE FIRECRACKER, AN ADAPTIVE LEARNING, ASSESSMENT, AND STUDY-PLANNING SOLUTION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2017-06-28 00:00:00

Neil Gorsuch’s first term fulfilled conservatives’ wildest dreams Neil Gorsuch’s first term fulfilled conservatives’ wildest dreams Neil Gorsuch accomplished a lot during his first term as a Supreme Court justice. He scolded some of his colleagues for ignoring the Second Amendment, issued a surprising number of separate opinions, and aligned himself with the court’s most right-wing justice, Clarence Thomas, time and again. That bold, conservative attitude defined Gorsuch’s inaugural weeks on the bench. While measured and vague responses during his confirmation hearing led many to question the conservative chops Donald Trump’s nomination promised, legal experts say Gorsuch all but eliminated those worries for Republicans and confirmed them for liberals. “To a stunning extent, Gorsuch in his first months on the court has shown himself to be at the far right of the justices, more than I think even his opponents expected,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and professor of law at the University of California at Irvine School of Law. Gorsuch particularly revealed his roots on Monday, the last day of the Supreme Court’s current term. He alone joined Thomas in a scathing dissent of the court’s decision to reject a challenge out of California about the right to carry guns outside of the home. The High Court hasn’t heard a Second Amendment case in seven years, and in their opinion, the two justices called its treatment of the Second Amendment as a “disfavored right” “a distressing trend.” Neil Gorsuch accomplished a lot during his first term as a Supreme Court justice. He scolded some of his colleagues for ignoring the Second Amendment, issued a surprising number of separate opinions, and aligned himself with the court’s most right-wing justice, Clarence Thomas, time and again. That bold, conservative attitude defined Gorsuch’s inaugural weeks on the bench. While measured and vague responses during his confirmation hearing led many to question the conservative chops Donald Trump’s nomination promised, legal experts say Gorsuch all but eliminated those worries for Republicans and confirmed them for liberals. “To a stunning extent, Gorsuch in his first months on the court has shown himself to be at the far right of the justices, more than I think even his opponents expected,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and professor of law at the University of California at Irvine School of Law. Gorsuch particularly revealed his roots on Monday, the last day of the Supreme Court’s current term. He alone joined Thomas in a scathing dissent of the court’s decision to reject a challenge out of California about the right to carry guns outside of the home. The High Court hasn’t heard a Second Amendment case in seven years, and in their opinion, the two justices called its treatment of the Second Amendment as a “disfavored right” “a distressing trend.” In fact, in all 15 cases Gorsuch weighed in on during his first term, he sided with Thomas, who identifies as an originalist, just as Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch replaced, did. Originalists rely on a unchanging and strict interpretation of the Constitution, instead of considering it a “living document.” During his time on the 10th Circuit, Gorsuch also embraced originalism. “Gorsuch is likely to be another conservative anchor of the court,” constitutional law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Adam Winkler said. “It’s not a short term strategy but a reflection of his clearly held views about the law.” “He does not have a rookie’s fear of asserting his strong beliefs.” — Adam Winkler In his notable opinions this term, Gorsuch wrote a dissent to the court’s decision to strike down an Arkansas law that prevented same sex couples from listing both parents names on their child’s birth certificate. Gorsuch disagreed with the way the court reversed the decision, called a “summary reversal,” which happens when a lower court clearly erred based on well-settled case law. But Gorsuch didn’t think the state’s argument for the necessity of tracking biological lineage went against prior cases, hammering home the rigid interpretation of precedent he made clear during his confirmation hearing. And Gorsuch agreed with another one of the court’s decisions to allow religious organizations access to government money — except for a single footnote written by Chief Justice John Roberts, which restricted the case to just playgrounds. Alongside Thomas again, Gorsuch wrote in his concurrence that denying funds solely because an institution is religious would constitute discrimination “anywhere else” too. Under Gorsuch’s reasoning, the decision could also apply to school vouchers, as many school-choice advocates hoped. Joining Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, Gorsuch also would have allowed all of Trump’s travel ban to take effect immediately. “He seems to be going out of his way to communicate that he’s going to be a very, very conservative justice,” Chemerinsky said. “I do think it is unusual for a justice to be so clearly and outspokenly ideological from the first days on the Court.” New justices often take their colleagues temperature before asking questions during oral arguments or making any big moves. But from day one, Gorsuch dove right in. Just thirteen minutes into hearing his first case, the former 10th Circuit justice lobbed a matter-of-fact question about applicability of the law at the lawyer arguing in front of him and his eight colleagues. And Gorsuch continued to dominate the oral arguments that day. “He does not have a rookie’s fear of asserting his strong beliefs,” Winkler said. Just this term, for example, Gorsuch wrote more separate opinions than Justice Elena Kagan, the last judge appointed to the bench, wrote in her first two years.

2019-10-26 00:00:00

TAIPEI (Reuters) - More than 100,000 people thronged the streets of Taiwan’s capital Taipei on Saturday for East Asia’s largest Pride march, months after the self-ruled island began formally allowing same-sex marriage, the first place in Asia to do so. Proudly democratic Taiwan is a bastion of liberal values in a part of the world where in many countries homosexuality remains illegal. Since legalization on May 24, more than 2,150 same-sex couples have married in Taiwan, government data shows. Organizers say more than 200,000 people are marching through the streets of Taipei, in a parade that will end in the evening outside the Presidential Office. Chi Chia-wei, an activist who brought a case to Taiwan’s constitutional court that led to a landmark court ruling on same-sex marriage in 2017, told Reuters that everyone was extremely happy. “We used to be worried and fearful, but we have accomplished it, so we are all joining the Pride parade with joy,” he said while standing on a balcony waving a big rainbow flag to the crowds below. President Tsai-Ing-wen and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party have supported the event. “We hope you have your glad-rags on, because this year’s celebration should be a special one after the passing of #SameSexMarriage legislation, with over 200,000 people expected to attend from all over the world!” Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry wrote on its Facebook page. Tony Ho, a 23-year-old graduate student, said he’d like to thank Tsai for delivering on her promise of marriage equality. “I’ll vote for her. She guards Taiwan’s sovereignty and supports the gays. Thank you!” he said, carrying a sign that read “only vote for Tsai Ing-wen in 2020”, a reference to January’s presidential election. Same-sex marriage remains illegal in Taiwan’s giant neighbor China, which claims Taiwan as its sacred territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under Beijing’s control. “Taiwan is an independent country with an advanced civil society and a liberal environment. That’s completely different from China,” said Peng Yuhao, a 24-year-old sales representative. A small group shouted their support for anti-government protests in Hong Kong, which have roiled the former British colony for the last four months. “Taiwan’s democracy supports homosexuals. Taiwan’s homosexuals support Hong Kong,” a group of about 50 people chanted. Still, same-sex marriage has not had an easy ride in Taiwan. Late last year, Taiwanese voters opposed same-sex marriage in a series of referendums, defining marriage as being between a man and a woman in civil law. Editing by Stephen Coates

2019-12-18 00:00:00

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Agreements that let Facebook and other firms send European citizens’ data to the United States and other countries are valid, a key EU court adviser said on Thursday, although he left room for such transfers to be blocked if European data protection standards are not met in countries receiving the information. The case is based on a challenge by Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, who argued that Facebook’s contracts do not protect data to European levels, especially given concerns about activities by U.S. spy agencies. Schrems had also called on Ireland, where Facebook has its European headquarters, to act against the company because it is subjected to U.S. surveillance laws, which he believes could threaten Europeans’ rights. Schrems successfully fought against the EU’s previous ‘Safe Harbour’ privacy rules in 2015. Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe, advocate general (AG) at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), said the agreements used by many companies including Facebook to underpin activities such as outsourced services, cloud infrastructure, data hosting and finance are legal. The court, which follows such recommendations in four out of five cases, will rule in the coming months. However, he added privacy regulators must prohibit such data transfer when laws of the countries receiving the data, such as the United States, conflict with the data protection requirements of the agreements, known as standard contractual clauses. Schrems said he was “generally happy” with the legal opinion. “Everyone will still be able to have all necessary data flows with the U.S., like sending emails or booking a hotel in the U.S.,” he said. “Some EU businesses may not be able to use certain U.S. providers for outsourcing anymore, because US surveillance laws requires these companies to disclose data to the National Security Agency (NSA).” “It is really upon the United States to ensure baseline privacy protections for foreigners. Otherwise no one will trust U.S. companies with their data.” The opinion calls into question the sufficiency of U.S. data protections, said Caitlin Fennessy, research director at the International Association of Privacy Professionals. “This suggests a near-term diplomatic solution will be critical,” she said. Facebook said in a statement, “We are grateful for the Advocate General’s opinion on these complex questions. Standard Contractual Clauses provide important safeguards to ensure that Europeans’ data are protected once transferred overseas. SCCs have been designed and endorsed by the European Commission and enable thousands of Europeans to do business worldwide.” The court should follow the adviser’s opinion on the clauses, said Patrick Van Eecke, global chair of law firm DLA Piper’s data protection practice. “In an open and global economy which is highly dependent of data flows crossing the national borders of countries or regions, putting up hurdles prohibiting international data transfers is not good for business and not good for people either,” he said. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, Facebook’s lead regulator in the EU, welcomed the advocate general’s opinion noting that it “illustrates the levels of complexity associated with the kinds of issues that arise when EU data protection laws interact with the laws of third countries, to include the laws of the United States. The case is C-311/18 Facebook Ireland and Schrems. Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle in Vienna, Graham Fahy in Dublin, Peter Henderson in San Francisco and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; editing by Kirsten Donovan, Jason Neely and Alexandra Hudson

2017-11-09

Nov 9 (Reuters) - Nvidia Corp reported a 54.6 percent rise in quarterly profit, driven by strong demand for its graphics chips used in gaming devices, data centers, autonomous vehicles and also by cryptocurrency miners. Net income rose to $838 million, or $1.33 per share, in the third quarter ended Oct. 29, from $542 million, or 83 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $2.64 billion from $2 billion. (Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

2019-01-29

Venture capital-backed financial technology companies raised a record $39.57 billion from investors globally in 2018, up 120 percent from the previous year, according to research by data provider CB Insights published on Tuesday. Funding was raised through 1,707 deals, up from 1,480 in 2017, the research said. The surge in funding was due in large part to 52 mega-rounds, or investments larger than $100 million, which were worth $24.88 billion combined, the research said. A $14 billion investment in Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, accounted for 35 percent of total fintech funding alone last year, the research said. In the last three months of the year, five companies joined the coveted ranks of fintech "unicorns", or companies valued at more than $1 billion. These include credit card provider Brex, digital bank Monzo and data aggregator Plaid. Venture capital investors have been pouring billions of dollars into fintech companies, in the hopes that they can gain market share from incumbent financial institutions by offering easier to use and cheaper digital financial services. Fintechs have emerged globally across all sectors of finance, including lending, banking and wealth management. While the large rounds minted new unicorns and led funding to hit a record high in 2018, CB Insights estimates these will likely delay initial public offerings. "IPO activity is likely to remain lackluster in 2019," the research reads. Asia saw the biggest jump in number of deals in 2018, growing 38 percent from the previous year and accounting for a record $22.65 billion, according to the study. In the United States, fintechs raised a record $11.89 billion through 659 investments, while the number of deals dropped in Europe, but funding reached a record $3.53 billion.

2017-06-05 00:00:00

"Yesterday I was bored, so I decided to tell him that from then on my conversation with him would be my shopping list. I found it terribly amusing. Then he started to answer me, and I tweeted both screen captures in the afternoon. It was really funny," he said. "Crying." "I'm jealous" "Hahahahahaha I need more characters to laugh." "This is simply glorious." "I peed myself hahaha." "You are right." This post was translated from Spanish.

2017-01-10 00:00:00

If you haven't gotten over Apple removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, then make it your New Year's resolution to do so because Android phones are almost certainly going to follow suit and gut the port. Word on the street is HTC's next flagship phone, expected to be unveiled on Thursday, will be the latest phone to kill the headphone jack. Images posted to Weibo (via Android Police) claiming to be HTC's unannounced phone reveal a device that borrows ideas from the LG V20. Specifically, the little secondary display that sits on top of the main screen. Unannounced HTC 'Ocean Note' Leaks with glass frame and secondary ticker display https://t.co/EGEhGWlare pic.twitter.com/RSDqIfBQRn — Android Police (@AndroidPolice) January 10, 2017 The phone, codenamed "Ocean Note," looks to ditch the all-aluminum design that HTC proudly championed with last year's flagship HTC 10, in favor of a glass design (a trend for this year's flagship phones, it seems). The leaked images of the "Ocean Note" phone match those from an earlier leak, from none other than Evan Blass a.k.a. @evleaks. Last week, Blass published a video revealing HTC's plans to deliver phones that emphasize customization. And as you can see in the image above, it sure looks like HTC will release its next flagship in multiple colorways. While the Weibo leaks don't reveal anything in terms of specs (camera resolution, screen size, battery life?), Blass has some: 5.7-inch screen, Snapdragon 821 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage and Android 7.0 Nougat. It all sounds pretty good, but the feature you're going to mourn the most is the headphone jack.  Nooo! Why would HTC cut that? The only thing good left about Android is that most of them still have headphone jacks, you say! Well, we hate to break it to you, but HTC's already started its transition away from the headphone jack. The Bolt, released last November, was the company's first phone to nix the audio jack.  And Samsung's rumored to be killing the jack, too, on the Galaxy S8, this April. Motorola's already dumped it on its flagship Moto Z devices. Same goes for LeEco's phones. With more phone makers axing the jack, it's time to come to terms with the fact that it's soon going to be a wireless, USB-C and Lighting-based headphone world. For smartphones, at least. The sooner you accept the headphone jack's death in phones, the sooner you'll be able to appreciate the upcoming crop.

2017-10-10 06:55:03

Fresh off its first Emmy win for “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Hulu is dropping prices in an effort to attract new subscribers. The streaming service is lowering the cost for its entry-level, ad-supported plan from $7.99 per month to $5.99 per month – a price that undercuts rivals’ Netflix and Amazon Prime Video’s lowest monthly plans, at $7.99 and $8.99 per month, respectively. The move comes around the same time as a price increase from Netflix, which sees the streaming service raising the prices on its two most popular plans, which allow for things like more simultaneous streams or 4K support. However, Netflix’s price changes didn’t affect its lowest-cost plan – the $7.99 per month tier that allows users to stream on one screen at a time. In Hulu’s case, though, the price drop isn’t permanent – it’s promotional. The company hopes to attract new customers – including those who may be tempted to sign up to stream Hulu’s breakout hit attracting critical praise, “The Handmaid’s Tale” – but may not be sure that a single program is worth the cost. Customers will be able to take advantage of the reduced pricing through January 9, 2018  – an offer that’s only available to new or returning subscribers. That price will stay the same for a year, then will revert to the regular $7.99 per month price. Hulu also offers a commercial-free tier ($12/mo) and live TV service ($40/mo), but these are not included in the special offer. The company didn’t publicize the price drop. Instead, it began sending out marketing emails a couple of weeks ago, on September 21, enticing former subscribers to return, according to a report from Variety. That was just ahead of Netflix’s price increase, announced last week. This isn’t Hulu’s only recent effort in making its service more affordable in the increasingly competitive streaming market. In September, Hulu and Spotify partnered to introduce a cheap $4.99 per month streaming bundle aimed at U.S. college students. The bundle includes the ad-supported version of Hulu along with Spotify Premium. The company said at the time more bundles of the two services would arrive in the future.

2019-03-20 05:01:21

Living in The Suffolk County hamlet, which has long stretches of parkland along the Long Island Sound, grew up around a now-defunct state hospital. 10 Photos View Slide Show › Kings Park is the kind of place where families put down roots, often for generations. Just ask Edward R. Wehrheim, who lives in the same Kings Park house that his grandparents, and then his parents, owned. “People tend to stay, and their children tend to stay,” said Mr. Wehrheim, 70, the supervisor for the Suffolk County town of Smithtown, where Kings Park is one of several hamlets. “You have a lot of shoreline, and people gravitate to that,” he said, referring to the large stretches of parkland along the Long Island Sound and the Nissequogue River. Also appealing: the school system and Kings Park’s location on a Long Island Rail Road line. N.Y. Kings Park 1 mile suffolk Smithtown Bay New York City nassau CALLAHANS BEACH Fort Salonga SUNKEN MEADOW STATE Park Nissequogue Kings Park Bluff SUFFOLK COUNTY NISSEQUOGUE RIVER STATE Park Kings Park SMITHTOWN L.I.R.R. SAN REMO E. MAIN ST. Kings Park station Nissequogue R. SUNKEN MEADOW STATE PKWY. Commack JERICHO TPKE.A By The New York Times The hamlet grew up around a state psychiatric hospital that treated patients for more than a century, before closing in 1996. Many of the old hospital buildings remain, because of the cost of demolition; they stand as eerie reminders of an earlier era’s approach to treating the mentally ill. Part of the old hospital property is now Nissequogue River State Park. The beaches and open space were a draw for Jenna Castoro, 40, and her husband, Chris Castoro, 45, who moved to Kings Park in October 2017 from Hicksville, N.Y. They paid $499,000 for a four-bedroom ranch house with a pool, Ms. Castoro said, and “we got a lot more for our money here.” Ms. Castoro said they enjoy relaxing at the beach after work on summer evenings, and they also appreciate the small class sizes at their 8-year-old daughter’s school. One downside, though, is the hourlong drive to their jobs in Nassau County — his in information technology, hers in hospital billing. “I love it,” Ms. Castoro said of Kings Park. “I just hate the commute.” Kevin Johnston, a retired high school English teacher and longtime resident, who is a member of the board of education, described the hamlet as “a slice of America: it’s comfortable, it’s homey.” A number of Mr. Johnston’s former students have returned after college, he said: “They hit a certain age, and they realize this is where they want to raise their kids.” Scott Paisley, an agent with Signature Premier Properties in Smithtown, who has lived in Kings Park for seven years, said buyers like the small-town feel. “It’s more laid-back, and a little quiet, but you’re only six minutes away from Commack and all the shopping on Jericho Turnpike,” he said. Kings Park’s own shopping district, on Main Street, has been the focus of recent revitalization efforts by the chamber of commerce and the Kings Park Civic Association, which have worked with two nonprofits, Vision Long Island and the Regional Plan Association. Plans call for drawing more people into the shopping district by encouraging multifamily and mixed-use construction in the area. To support such development, the state has authorized $20 million for sewer service for the Main Street area. Mr. Wehrheim said he expects sewer construction to start by 2020. Kings Park is part of the town of Smithtown, in western Suffolk County. It has a population of about 21,000, including about 4,000 residents in the section of Fort Salonga that is in the Kings Park school district and is generally considered part of Kings Park. The hamlet has mostly single-family houses, with a number of 1950s and 1960s subdivisions filled with ranch houses, colonials, split-levels and raised ranches. The San Remo neighborhood, near the Nissequogue River, was developed as a summer community in the 1920s, when the publisher of an Italian-language newspaper in New York City teamed up with a developer to offer free newspaper subscriptions to buyers. Prices there start at about $300,000 for an older bungalow on less than a quarter-acre and go up to about $700,000 for newer construction. Fort Salonga, at the western end of Kings Park, offers larger homes, of 2,200 to 5,000 square feet, on one- to two-acre wooded lots near the Long Island Sound. Prices there typically range from about $625,000 to $2 million, said George McKnight, of Century 21 McKnight Realtors, in Kings Park. There is one co-op community, which began life as a rental garden-apartment complex; one-bedrooms there range from about $220,000 to $260,000. And there is an age-restricted rental complex, Kings Park Manor, that offers apartments to tenants ages 55 and up, with rents starting at $1,400. Nordeen Accardi of Coldwell Banker, in Huntington, said she often works with buyers moving from New York City who start their searches in higher-profile Huntington, but then discover they can afford more land and a bigger house if they look east, to Kings Park. “We have to educate them,” Ms. Accardi said. Single-family home prices generally start in the mid-$300,000s and range up to around $1.2 million, with most of the pricier homes in the Fort Salonga area of the hamlet, Mr. McKnight said. As of March 10, the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island showed about 30 homes listed for sale in Kings Park, ranging from a three-bedroom ranch with an asking price of $359,900 to a newer stone house, with three master suites, for $1 million. The median home price in the 12 months ending March 19 was $450,000, up 2.5 percent from the same period a year earlier. As the supply of homes for sale is limited, Mr. McKnight said, properties that are appropriately priced tend sell in about a month. On Main Street, there are popular restaurants like Relish, Ciro’s and Cafe Red. The hamlet also has a couple of strip malls, including one just south of the train station that offers a supermarket, a T.J. Maxx, an Italian restaurant called Gino’s of Kings Park, and Professor’s Diner. The annual St. Patrick’s Day parade always draws a crowd. This year, the grandmasters were members of the Nally family, who have been in Kings Park for six generations, since their forebears immigrated from Ireland around 1900. Kings Park Day in June, sponsored by the chamber of commerce, features rides and music on Main Street. On Fridays in the summer, the Kings Park Civic Association sponsors live music on Main Street. And there is plenty for lovers of the outdoors to do. “We have two state parks — how lucky are we?” said Linda Henninger, president of the Kings Park Civic Association. The Governor Alfred E. Smith State Park, also known as Sunken Meadow State Park, has more than 1,200 acres, with a beach and a boardwalk along with picnic areas, running and walking trails, and a golf course. Nissequogue River State Park offers walking and biking trails, a soccer field and a marina. And the town of Smithtown runs Callahans Beach on the Long Island Sound and the Kings Park Bluff, a boat launch where the Nissequogue River flows into the Sound. The Kings Park Central School District serves about 3,100 students in five schools: Fort Salonga and Parkview elementary schools, for kindergarten through third grade; R.J.O. Intermediate School, for fourth and fifth grade; William T. Rogers Middle School, for sixth through eighth grade; and Kings Park High School, for ninth through 12th grade. In 2018, according to the New York State Education Department, 69 percent of Kings Park students in third through eighth grade were proficient in English language arts and 66 percent were proficient in mathematics, versus 45 and 47 percent statewide. The high school graduation rate in 2018 was 93 percent. Kings Park is about 45 miles east of Midtown Manhattan, on the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Jefferson line. The ride to Penn Station takes 67 to 97 minutes, depending on the time of day. The fare is $19 at peak times, $13.75 off-peak and $391 monthly. Drivers can take the Sunken Meadow State Parkway, which runs through Kings Park, to the nearby Long Island Expressway or Northern State Parkway. The drive takes between 90 minutes and two and a half hours at rush hour, depending on traffic. Fort Salonga was the site of a Revolutionary War-era British fortification known as Fort Slongo, which was destroyed in a 1781 attack by Continental soldiers who crossed the Sound from Connecticut. In the 1860s, an Episcopal minister from New York City founded the Society of St. Johnland, a rural refuge for the destitute near the Long Island Sound. The organization now runs a nursing home and rehabilitation center on part of the original property. But the event that really marked Kings Park was the opening of a mental institution serving residents of Brooklyn in the 1880s. The railroad changed the name of the train station from St. Johnland to Kings Park in 1891, to reflect the hospital’s link to Brooklyn, in Kings County. Kings Park Psychiatric Center housed as many as 10,000 patients at its peak in the 1950s. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.

2017-02-21 16:35:00

Karrueche Tran filed for a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown last week for threats she alleges he made towards her earlier this month and during their on-and-off relationship. In court documents obtained by PEOPLE, the model, 28, states Brown, 27, “threatened to kill me, to take me out to others,” “threatened to kill me over text messages,” “threatened to harass my friends” and “threatened to shoot me.” “Around the second week of February, he told a few people that he was going to kill me,” Tran added in her declaration. “He said if no one else can have me, then he’s gonna ‘take me out.&apos” Brown’s lawyer has not responded to a request for comment and Tran’s rep declined to comment. After a tumultuous on-and-off-again relationship, Tran and Brown officially split in late 2014. Aside from herself, Tran requested her mother, Cindy Adamson, and her brother, Raymond, be protected through the order as well because “they are my family and I don’t want them at risk.” The domestic violence restraining order requires Brown to stay at least 100 yards away from all parties. “He also threatened to harass my friends, in which there was an incident a few weeks ago where he told my friend he had to leave a party or else he was gonna get beat up and also threw a drink in another friend’s face,” reads Tran’s declaration. “This is why we decided to finally go through with the restraining order because he is starting to take action on his words.” Tran also alleges Brown “punched me in my stomach twice” and “pushed me down the stairs” several years ago, but no police report was filed during that time. These alleged incidents would have occurred while he was on probation for his assault against his ex-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. Brown was charged with making criminal threats and felony assault after beating Rihanna on Feb. 8, 2009. The singer later pled guilty to the charges and accepted a plea deal of community labor to avoid jail time. Six years and 1,000.5 hours of community service later, Brown finished serving his time for the assault in 2015. The restraining order is temporarily in effect under the next hearing date on March 9.

2016-04-29

The promise of Reddit's business has always been that it brings in millions and millions of eyeballs, hosts content that other websites use for themselves and has a highly engaged community that advertisers would love to reach. Now Reddit says it has bolstered its sales staff and put its energy toward actually making money from digital ads. Additionally, it's cutting ties with one high-profile project that wasn't bringing in significant cash. The Information's Amir Efrati reports that the Reddit-owned Reddit content farm Upvoted is officially dead, and that Reddit's $20 million 2016 revenue projection is well below its ambitious $35 million goal. But he and Fortune's Dan Primack, who wrote a lengthy profile of Reddit's leadership that also dropped today, suggest that there are signs of life in the company's sales unit, as big-name brands have started buying ads on the site. But even if Reddit is able to ink deals with big-name advertisers, as the two say, another scandal on the level of the celebrity nude hack or Gamergate could easily send those advertisers running. The core operations of Reddit are still run by unpaid moderators, who are responsible for maintaining the quality of Reddit's various subreddit forums. Last summer, many of these same moderators shut down the site in protest of how the company handled the firing a support staffer whom the mods adored. Though Reddit told Primack that the company keeps 70 percent of its advertisers from quarter to quarter (and mentioned high-profile brands like Google and Coca-Cola), how many of them would stick around if stolen nude photos of Hollywood celebrities began resurfacing in the community? Though things have been relatively quiet on Reddit — there haven't been any major scandals in the last few months — incremental changes to the platform don't really mean too much. Reddit is still at the mercy of thousands of moderators that it doesn't employ, and there are still plenty of people on Reddit who could create significant headaches for advertisers. As for Reddit's current cash situation, the company last raised over $50 million in late 2014 at a $500 million pre-money valuation. In the Fortune piece, Huffman flicks at the possibility of an eventual IPO, and hinted that another funding round could come within the next 12 months. Here's the company's statement, attributed to Jandali: Upvoted was created to support our growth strategy, not our revenue strategy. We were thrilled that it did well, attracting over six million unique users in four months. The change we're making will see Upvoted folded into Reddit.com, and is intended to make the user experience more seamless. Reddit's sales team has more than doubled since the beginning of this year, and will continue to grow as we launch new products and scale our mobile audience. When it comes to our ads business, the 10 percent fill rate reported in The Information is from over one year ago. Now, with full-fledged sales, product and leadership teams in place, this has dramatically increased — and we're just getting started. " —By Noah Kulwin, Re/code.net. CNBC's parent NBC Universal is an investor in Re/code's parent Revere Digital, and the companies have a content-sharing arrangement.

2020-03-12 00:00:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Europe’s Airbus on Thursday welcomed a move by Washington state to remove what it called “illegal subsidies” to Boeing, but said the U.S. planemaker had received billions of dollars in other subsidies and tax breaks. The Washington state Senate voted on Thursday to remove an aerospace tax break for Boeing that had been contested by the European Union, sending the measure to Washington state Governor Jay Inslee for a potential signature. Boeing said the move would bring the United States into compliance with World Trade Organization rules, but Airbus said it marked only “initial steps” and it remained to be seen how other aid provided to Boeing by the state of Kansas and some U.S. federal agencies would be addressed Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Sandra Maler

2017-07-03

Maine’s secretary of State is refusing to comply with a request from President Trump’s voter fraud commission to turn over information on its voters, making it the latest in a string of states to deny the request. In a letter to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who is the vice chairman of Trump’s commission, Matthew Dunlap cites a Maine statute that prevents the state from sharing the information requested by the commission because its request stated that “any documents that are submitted to the full Commission will also be made available to the public." “As a matter of law, that conflicts with state statute, what states that ‘information contained electronically in the central voter registration system and any informations for reports generated by the system are confidential,” Dunlap wrote. “It is not possible for my office to comply with the request and also comply with the law.” Dunlap, who serves on Trump’s voter fraud commission, is the latest state official to refuse the commission’s request for voter information, which includes names, political affiliation, voting history and the last four digits of the Social Security numbers of all registered voters. Maryland officials also announced Monday that they would not be complying with the commission’s request, with the Maryland Attorney General slamming it as “repugnant.” “I find this request for the personal information of millions of Marylanders repugnant,” Brian E. Frosh said. “It appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote.” A Maryland official also resigned from Trump’s voter fraud commission on Monday. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-02-21 06:14:13

Britain’s jobless rate unexpectedly rose unexpectedly for the first time in almost two years and pay growth remained modest, officials figures released on Wednesday showed. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent from 4.3 percent in the three months to December, according to the Office for National Statistics, the first increase since the three months to February 2016, as the number of jobless rose for a third monthly report in a row. The jobless rate increase left the Bank of England waiting for the stronger labor market that would justify a new interest rate hike. British government bond prices rose and sterling briefly fell against the American dollar according to the official figures, which showed the sharpest increase in the number of people out of work in almost five years. Separate data showed that Britain’s finance minister, Philip Hammond, was on track to meet his targets for further cutting the country’s budget deficit this financial year. Households lost spending power last year because of a jump in inflation, caused by the fall in the pound after the British vote to exit the European Union. But the Bank of England expects pay to pick up soon, a big reason it says interest rates are likely to rise faster and to a greater extent than it thought until recently. “With wage growth stuck in neutral, policymakers will need to think very carefully about a rate hike in May,” said Maike Currie, an investment director at Fidelity International. The number of Britons in work grew less than expected, rising by 88,000, about half the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of economists. The O.N.S. attributed the rise in unemployment to fewer economically inactive people — those neither working nor looking for a job — entering unemployment, rather than employed people losing their jobs. Workers’ total earnings, including bonuses, rose by an annual 2.5 percent in the three months to December, as expected and unchanged from the three months to November. Officials from the Bank of England may take encouragement from pay increasing 2.8 percent on the year in December alone. But that was still weaker than the 3 percent reading of British consumer price inflation for December. Excluding bonuses, earnings rose by 2.5 percent year on year against expectations for a 2.4 percent rise. The O.N.S. said the number of European Union nationals working in Britain rose by an annual 4.5 percent over the fourth quarter, the smallest increase since the third quarter of 2013. The number of Eastern European workers fell. Overall migration data have shown a drop in net migration from the bloc into the Britain since the “Brexit” vote. The O.N.S. also published its first estimate for productivity in the fourth quarter. Output per hour — the main measure of productivity — rose 0.8 percent in the three months to December from the previous three months, slightly slower than the third quarter’s 0.9 percent rise. That marked the strongest two quarters for productivity since the 2008-9 recession, the O.N.S. said. Separate figures showed that Britain’s government recorded a January budget surplus of 10 billion pounds (about $14 billion), slightly bigger than forecast, helped by a surge of income tax receipts that typically comes at the start of the calendar year. With two months left in the 2017-18 financial year, cumulative borrowing now stands at 37.7 billion pounds (about $52 billion), down 16 percent on the same point a year ago. In November, the official budget watchdog had forecast borrowing of 49.9 billion pounds (about $69 billion) for the full year. The finance ministry said Wednesday’s figures were considered strong.

2018-03-24 03:00:00

The funny couple open up about parenthood in a hilarious confess sesh Come back every weekday at 8:30 a.m. EST to watch People Now streaming live from the Meredith offices in New York City, and rebroadcast at 11:30 a.m. EST. Get the absolute latest in celebrity news, real-life people stories & the best of fashion and food. Want even more? Watch clips from yesterday’s People Now.

2018-11-20 00:00:00

Beto O’Rourke, the U.S. congressman who gave Ted Cruz a surprising challenge in the Texas Senate race, has backtracked on his pledge not to run for president. "I haven't made any decisions about anything,” O’Rourke told TMZ on Tuesday. In November — on the very day before the midterm election he narrowly lost to Cruz — O’Rourke said he would not be a candidate for the 2020 presidential election. "I will not be a candidate for president in 2020,” O'Rourke told MSNBC. “That’s, I think, as definitive as those sentences get.” Although he lost in Texas, O’Rourke garnered national attention among left-leaning voters. He raised a staggering amount of money, $69 million, more than any other candidate in Senate history. Even more strikingly, O’Rourke said that none of it was PAC money, a statement PolitiFact confirmed was true. Beto O’Rourke, the U.S. congressman who gave Ted Cruz a surprising challenge in the Texas Senate race, has backtracked on his pledge not to run for president. "I haven't made any decisions about anything,” O’Rourke told TMZ on Tuesday. In November — on the very day before the midterm election he narrowly lost to Cruz — O’Rourke said he would not be a candidate for the 2020 presidential election. "I will not be a candidate for president in 2020,” O'Rourke told MSNBC. “That’s, I think, as definitive as those sentences get.” Although he lost in Texas, O’Rourke garnered national attention among left-leaning voters. He raised a staggering amount of money, $69 million, more than any other candidate in Senate history. Even more strikingly, O’Rourke said that none of it was PAC money, a statement PolitiFact confirmed was true. "I don’t take a dime of PAC money: no corporations, no special interests,” O’Rourke said. Politico reported earlier this week that top Democratic donors and possible campaign staffers have been eagerly awaiting to hear O’Rourke’s next move. Still, O’Rourke isn’t alone in hinting at a 2020 bid: Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Michael Bloomberg have all given coy statements indicating they’re considering it too. Cover image: Representative Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat from Texas, gestures during a concession speech at an election night rally in El Paso, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018. Senator Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz won a second term, defeating a spirited and high-profile challenge from progressive Democratic House member O'Rourke. Photographer: Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images

2017-10-09

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Votorantim SA’s energy unit is in talks with global pension and sovereign wealth funds to create an integrated wind, solar and small-scale hydropower electricity joint venture in Brazil, two people with direct knowledge of the plans said. The unit known as Votorantim Energia SA has contacted Canada Pension Plan Investment Board over the creation of an integrated clean energy platform, the people said. Votorantim Energia has also discussed the plan with Singapore’s GIC Pte Ltd and several unnamed North American pension funds, one of the people said. According to the same person, the venture would focus on developing new and existing projects, adding that acquisitions or government licensing bids do not seem to be a priority. Neither person would unveil the size or the estimated value of the venture, noting that a deal is not imminent at this point. Such a venture would harness growing foreign interest in Brazil’s renewable and clean energy, as the government phases out subsidized funding for fuel and coal-powered plants and more industries adapt to sustainable electricity. A media relations firm working for São Paulo-based Votorantim declined to comment, as did Toronto-based CPPIB. GIC’s Singapore-based media office did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. The Votorantim conglomerate, Brazil’s No. 1 diversified industrial group, has doubled down on energy to diversify from core metals, cement, pulp and steelmaking. Clean energy projects often provide stable revenue and cash flow streams - generally a goal pursued by pension and sovereign wealth firms alike. Unlike most large economies, Brazil’s power grid is heavily reliant on renewable energy, with almost two-thirds of installed capacity coming from big and small hydropower dams and another 15 percent from biomass and wind farms, according to government data. The role of solar energy has grown in recent years, although it remains small. Still, years of harsher-than-expected droughts are forcing the government and investors to rethink the country’s dependence on hydropower electricity while accelerating a replacement of fossil fuels, Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho and other officials have said since May. “Certainly, a long-lasting opportunity for a venture like this seems to emerge with the ongoing policy shift,” said one of the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss the issue freely. Currently, Votorantim Energia has about 2.5 gigawatts in generation capacity from dams and other plants. The company’s 1.2 billion-real ($378 million) Ventos de Piauí wind farm project should start operating early next year with capacity of 206 megawatts. One of the people said Votorantim Energia also has an option to buy a wind farm in the same northeastern state of Piauí with about 360 megawatts capacity. A purchase of the asset could be finalized before year-end, the same person added. Among some cross-border deals in the sector, Canadian alternative investor Brookfield Asset Management Inc (BAMa.TO) is in talks to acquire control of renewable power firm Renova Energia SA (RNEW11.SA). AES Corp’s (AES.N) generation unit in Brazil bought the Alto Sertão II renewable power project from Renova in April. Reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal and Luciano Costa; Editing by Frances Kerry

2017-07-10

After a weekend of criticism of President Donald Trump's tweeted plan to create a cybersecurity unit in cooperation with Russia, the president posted on Twitter late Sunday U.S. time that he actually didn't think it would happen. Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time on Friday at the G-20 Summit in Germany. The U.S. president claimed that he had discussed allegations that Russia interfered with the U.S. election last year, including through hacking. But then Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that Trump accepted Putin's assurance that Russia didn't interfere. The White House later disputed that to NBC News. After the meeting, Trump sent a tweet saying he would work with Russia to create an "impenetrable" cybersecurity unit to keep "election hacking, & many other negative things" protected. That comment, coming as pundits began referring to the G-20 Summit as the "G-19 plus one" to signal how isolated the U.S. and Trump appeared, was met with "putting the fox in charge of the henhouse" derision — referencing repeated findings by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies that Russia was involved in wide-scale hacking campaigns. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican representing South Carolina, mocked his president's proposed cybersecurity partnership in a weekend interview with NBC's "Meet the Press." "It's not the dumbest idea I've ever heard, but it's pretty close," Graham said. Administration figures had earlier defended the cybersecurity plan. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on ABC Sunday talk show "This Week" that the plan was "a very significant accomplishment for President Trump." "This is a very important step forward. What we want to make sure is that we coordinate with Russia, that we're focused on cybersecurity together, that we make sure they never interfere in any democratic elections or conduct any cybersecurity [sic]," Mnuchin said. "This is like any other strategic alliance, whether we're doing military exercises with our allies or anything else." Trump's backtrack on his cybersecurity alliance with Russia came after The New York Times reported Sunday that his son, Donald Trump Jr., met with a lawyer who had access to the Kremlin in 2016 because she may have promised information potentially damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign. The report cited three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it. The meeting also included Trump son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner, and the then-chairman of Trump's campaign, Paul J. Manafort, the report said. The New York Times reported that when first asked on Saturday, Trump's son said the meeting was primarily about adoptions, with nothing about Clinton mentioned. But on Sunday, Trump's son issued a statement saying that the "claims of potentially helpful information" on the Clinton campaign were "a pretext" to set up a meeting on adoption of Russian children and a U.S. law blacklisting Russians suspected of human rights abuses. Manafort resigned from the campaign after news his firm had lobbied covertly for Ukraine's ruling political party. Acting for a foreign government or political party requires disclosure to the U.S. Department of Justice. The White House didn't immediately return CNBC's emailed request for comment, sent outside of office hours, on the reversal of the cybersecurity proposal or the New York Times report. Representatives for Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., didn't immediately return CNBC's emailed requests for comment, which were sent outside of office hours. A representative of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the U.S. election, declined to comment on the New York Times report. Correction: This article has been updated to clarify the source of the information on the discussion between Trump and Putin.

2017-08-02 19:56:54

For the last two months, I've been living with five new roommates: Four guys, and an Amazon Echo Dot. The Dot was something of a housewarming present purchased by my boyfriend when I moved in at the end of May, and it lives nestled on the bedside table. While I've only been living with the Dot for a short time, I've already found my favorite way to use the device: Sleep Sounds. Sleep Sounds is an Alexa skill that's free to enable on any Alexa-enabled device. The skill essentially acts as a white-noise machine, playing sounds like cicadas, frogs, city rain, and grandfather clock. My personal favorite is thunderstorms, which provides a soothing backdrop of steady rain and rolling thunder as I sleep. Alexa has more than 15,000 skills in all, and I've only sampled a few. In the months and years to come, I look forward to testing out all the device has to offer and getting used to having another computer in my home. Right now, I'm just slowly working on getting used to talking to Alexa and having her handle basic tasks for me. (Yes, I call it a "her." I live with four guys, it's nice to have some female company!) But for now, I couldn't be more satisfied with the Dot acting as a white-noise machine. Sure, there are cheaper machines on the market, and I've tried a $300 high-end version that I loved. But the Dot is small and unobtrusive, sounds good, and I can activate Sleep Sounds from bed (or even from across the room) with a simple phrase. For $50, you get what you pay for — along with all the other benefits of owning an Alexa device.

2018-01-13 00:00:00

The New York Times reports that the Department of Education sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency, saying it violated federal law by setting a "target" percentage for the maximum number of students that would receive special education services. Why it matters: From 2004 to 2017, Texas' target was 8.5% of enrollment, despite the state and national averages being around 12%, the NYT reports. Districts "were penalized for exceeding that benchmark." The difference in percentages of students served in Texas dropped from 11.6 to 8.6 from 2004 to 2016, per the NYT, which comes out to around 150,000 children. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said: "Every child with a disability must have appropriate access to special education and related services that meet his or her unique needs...Far too many students in Texas had been precluded from receiving supports and services." This is the "first major state monitoring decision approved by...Betsy DeVos," the Times reports. The Department ordered the Texas agency to come up with a plan that identifies neglected students and "figure out how to help them." Texas Governor Greg Abbott gave education officials seven days to draft a corrective action plan. A 2016 investigation by the Houston Chronicle launched the federal review, after revealing that students with blindness, autism, dyslexia, mental illness, and more were being ignored.

2017-04-28

(CNN)A Kansas City Jimmy John's cashier seemed unfazed after a man pointed a gun to his head during a robbery caught on video. The video shows the robber entering the sandwich store about 9:12 p.m. on Wednesday. He pretends to place an order at the service counter. About 30 seconds later, he pulls a gun out of the front pocket of his sweatshirt and points it at the cashier's head. The cashier reacts with a stoic expression, calmly opening the cash register. He pulls out all the cash and hands it over. He gives the robber the entire till, which the man ignores after he plucks one last bill from it. On Thursday, Kansas City Police released the security video asking for the public's help identifying the robber. By Friday, they announced that tips from the public had led to the arrest of a suspect. Police have not identified the cashier or the suspect. A manager at the Jimmy John's store would not comment.

2017-07-27 16:20:00

"Let's bake a cake," said no one ever on a 90-plus-degree summer day. Cakes are a budget-friendly and easily divvied up dessert option for group gatherings. But does anyone really want to turn on the oven in the middle of summer and sweat it out over a series of greased pans and messy batter bowls? No amount of layered, icing-covered dessert love could make that appealing. Before we give up altogether and dash out last-minute for a lackluster store-bought situation, there may be an enticing at home alternative: fridge cakes. Never heard of a fridge cake? Well, we hadn't either. That is until we happened upon Jean-Luc Sady's inventive cookbook of the same name. The term refers to a cake that is essentially baked — or rather, not baked — in your refrigerator. Say what?! That's right, there are no ovens involved whatsoever in the making of these sweet masterpieces. And get ready for the real cake-y kicker: All the book's recipes take around 25 minutes total (fridge and freezer time included). Add that to the fact that most of the ingredients can be scrounged up from on-hand pantry and refrigerator staples (e.g. packaged cookies, honey, butter, cream cheese, etc.). To get you started, we've included three of Sady's sweetest recipes ahead — from strawberry to salted caramel, and even an Oreo fudge stunner. So next time you're in a bind and need a last-minute dessert for that impending summer cookout, don't sweat it — just fridge it.

2019-10-15 00:00:00

The unofficial start to earnings season is off to a bullish beginning with companies like UnitedHealth, Johnson & Johnson and J.P. Morgan Chase all blowing past analysts' expectations, easing concerns that the China-U.S. trade battle would derail the economy. Of the 11 S&P 500 companies that reported earnings before the bell Tuesday, only two missed Wall Street's estimates. "Ahead of each earnings season in 2019 the consensus estimates were calling for negative earnings growth but as companies report we see results coming in better-than-feared," said Nick Raich, chief executive officer of The Earnings Scouting Report. Earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to decline by 4.6% for the third quarter, after growing by more than 3% in the second quarter, according to FactSet. This trend has not played out so far this season. Including those that reported Tuesday morning, 34 S&P 500 companies have reported third-quarter results and 26 of 34 companies have reported positive EPS growth, according to The Earnings Scouting Report. UnitedHealth shares surged 8% after raising its profit outlook, easing concerns that rising medical costs and election uncertainty would hurt its future earnings. The largest U.S. health insurer showed strength in its core business of selling health plans and its pharmacy benefits group. Johnson & Johnson shares climbed after better-than-expected drug sales outshined rising concerns about legal costs. And J.P. Morgan Chase jumped as much as 4% after the bank said revenue rose 8% to a record $30.1 billion, bolstered by its consumer banking operation offsetting the impact of lower interest rates. On the downside, major U.S. bank Goldman Sachs reported a rare miss in profit. Investment banking produced $1.69 billion in revenue, below the $1.72 billion estimate. Wells Fargo was the only other company to miss on earnings, as the embattled company navigates its restructuring operations. But Wells Fargo rose 1.6% as investors seemed to welcome the bank's new chief Charles Scharf, set to begin his role next week. Global growth worries and U.S.-China trade war fears have caused companies and analysts to be apprehensive and therefore give very conservative estimates, Raich added. "There's definitely a slowdown" but it's not as bad as feared, Raich said. When all 500 companies eventually report, Raich expects flat to upward earnings growth for the quarter. "That better-than-feared trend is persisting in the early reporters and that will persist the remainder of earnings season," said Raich. J.B. Hunt and United Airlines are set to report after the bell on Tuesday.

2016-09-13

Two outside information technology consultants involved in handling Hillary Clinton's private email setup repeatedly invoked their 5th Amendment rights at a House hearing Tuesday, while a former State Department information technology official defied a subpoena and failed to show up for the session. However, a former close aide to Bill Clinton who played a key role in setting up Hillary Clinton's email system — Justin Cooper — testified publicly on the arrangement for the first time at the House Oversight Committee hearing. Tech specialists Paul Combetta and Bill Thornton of the Denver-based Platte River Networks repeatedly cited their constitutional right against self-incrimination in response to questions from Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz about security issues related to Clinton's private email server. Meanwhile, former State Department technology adviser Bryan Pagliano did not show up at all, leaving an empty seat behind his name-card at the witness table. His lawyer said Pagliano was willing to invoke his 5th Amendment rights in a closed session, but not an open one. Chaffetz excused Combetta and Thornton after they invoked their 5th Amendment rights in response to several questions, but the chairman sounded angry about Pagliano's refusal to appear. "He made the decision not to appear and there are consequences for that," the chairman said. "We'll look at the full range of options, but if anybody's under any illusion I'm going to let go of this and let it just sail off into the sunset, they are very ill advised. ... I have no intention of going into executive session when he thumbs his nose at the United States Congress and wastes its time." A top adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said the witnesses' decisions to rely on their 5th Amendment rights reflects poorly on Clinton. "The fact that the individuals who maintained Hillary Clinton’s secret email server pleaded the Fifth shows once again why she can’t be trusted in the White House," Trump adviser Jason Miller said. "Clinton’s server clearly ran afoul of the law and these developments only further demonstrate that she lacks the judgment to be president." Democrats argued that the hearing — the panel's third about Clinton's email in recent days — amounted to a partisan attack on Clinton's presidential bid. "I believe this Committee is abusing taxpayer dollars and the authority of Congress in an astonishing onslaught of political attacks to damage Secretary Clinton’s campaign for president," ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings said. "This entire hearing is a contrived campaign photo op." Cummings also noted that Pagliano already invoked his 5th Amendment rights in a closed session of the House Benghazi Committee. "There's no legitimate reason for Republicans to force Mr. Pagliano to appear yet again before Congress just to assert his 5th Amendment rights," Cummings said. "This is an absolute abuse of authority." During about two-and-a-half hours of questioning Tuesday, Cooper said he became involved in setting up Clinton with personal email service as she was moving from the Senate to the State Department in January 2009. "Secretary Clinton had personal email on her BlackBerry and was looking for a new solution to use personal email," Cooper said. While Cooper offered some testimony highlighting the risks of Clinton's email setup, he also appeared to debunk some GOP theories about the case. Cooper said unauthorized efforts to log onto the Clinton server occurred "with some frequency," leading the Clinton team to implement new measures overseen by Pagliano. "As there was an increases in the failed login attempts, we made the Secret Service aware and they made some recommendations," Cooper said. However, Cooper said he wasn't familiar with all the techniques Pagliano implemented over time to address those worries. Democrats noted that the FBI found no evidence the Clinton system was successfully hacked, but Cooper said that if someone successfully guessed Clinton's password there might have been no trace of such a hack. Cooper also indicated that some of the computers he set up wound up in secure information spaces at the Clintons' homes, but said he did not recall working on the devices once they were in those rooms. While some have speculated that the Clintons were paying Cooper's legal bills, he said he's paying them himself. He also said that while he destroyed old Clinton BlackBerrys, he always sought to back up that information and move it to a new device. "It was not in any way to destroy or hide any information at all," Cooper testified. "In fact, the opposite would be the case in that I was going out of my way to preserve all the information that was on those devices." Asked why he sometimes smashed up the old electronics with a hammer, the longtime Clinton aide said: "I think it’s practical to not just throw an old device into a garbage receptacle where someone might pick it up and try to use it." Cooper said the impetus for putting Hillary Clinton's email on a private server came from her longtime aide Huma Abedin, who indicated to him it was preferable to have an in-house system maintained by Clinton's aides rather that one handled by a commercial service. However, FBI Director James Comey indicated in previous testimony that decision was ill-advised because it's hard for a handful of aides or consultants to match the large, full-time security teams at big internet firms. As the only witness to offer substantive answers Tuesday, Cooper won praise from Chaffetz, but the chairman said Cooper's unfamiliarity with security measures demonstrated how unwise it was for the Clinton team to try to manage its own server system. "You get huge brownie points from the committee for showing up and having the guts to actually answer questions. We're very grateful for that," the chairman said. "Here's the problem: it's you, Mr. Cooper, with no experience, no dual authentication, no encryption, up against the Chinese and the Russians. Who do you think's going to win that one? That's what scares the living daylights out of us."

2019-10-04

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Central Europe’s leading currencies should firm against the euro over the next year, lifted by solid growth once global worries calm, although the expected gains will be less than previously forecast, a Reuters poll showed on Friday. The Czech crown EURCZK=, Polish zloty EURPLN= and Hungarian forint EURHUF= have struggled to reverse losses suffered in the last two months as they come under pressure from U.S.-China trade tensions and Britain’s uncertain exit from the European Union. Friday’s poll showed the forint, which hit a record low of 336.28 to the euro last week, should regain some ground before the end of the year and firm the most over the next 12 months. The zloty and crown will likely tread water in the last quarter of 2019 before returning to gradual gains in 2020. Radomir Jac, chief economist for Generali Investments CEE, said local worries, such as relaxed monetary policy in Hungary and uncertainty over past foreign currency loans in Poland, have added to global risks. “As some of these factors should be clarified in the coming weeks and months, I would expect regional currencies to recover,” he said. “Domestic fundamentals are supportive, certainly in the case of the Czech crown and Polish zloty, and I think that also the Hungarian forint has room to recover a bit from record lows.” The median forecast in the poll saw Hungary’s forint climbing to 328.25 to the euro in the next year, up 1.5% from Thursday midday trade. In a September poll, analysts had forecast a rise to 317 in 12 months. (GRAPHIC: Hungarian forint - here) The forint has lost close to 4% so far in 2019, more than double the declines of the zloty or Romanian leu EURRON=. Amid global worries, Germany’s manufacturing sector - a key trade link for the central European region - is already battling recession. But central Europe has been resilient so far, with second-quarter growth between 2.0% and 4.9% thanks to domestic demand. Inflation remains high and central banks in the region are in wait-and-see mode even while the European Central Bank and U.S. Federal Reserve loosen their policy. But currencies have yet to benefit from interest rate differentials. In the case of the crown, which the poll forecast to rise by 1.0% to 25.50 to the euro in a year’s time, the Czech central bank (CNB) delivered its eighth rate hike in two years in May and continues to debate tightening. Commerzbank said despite short-term global worries, it expected the crown “to appreciate moderately against the euro over the forecast horizon, not least due to the solid domestic economy and the more restrictive CNB relative to other central banks.” (GRAPHIC: Czech crown - here) The poll was conducted before a European Court of Justice ruling on Thursday that favored Polish consumers who took out mortgages in Swiss francs, allowing them to ask Polish courts to convert their loans into the local currency. ING’s EMEA FX and IR strategist Petr Krpata said the ruling could have a “slow burning effect on the zloty as the court cases may take years to resolve.” The zloty is forecast to gain 0.9% to 4.30 to the euro over the next 12 months. (GRAPHIC: Polish zloty - here) Reporting by Jason Hovet and Miroslava Krufova; Editing by Mark Potter

2019-04-15

Why do people do such dumb things? In today's dumb thing, these kids decide to use the wheel of a gasoline-powered scooter to spin up a small merry-go-round at a park. Oh, don't worry, they have helmets on so everything should be fine. NO. Everything is NOT fine. This is why we can't have nice things.

2016-01-29 21:59:03

Op-Ed Contributor Bozeman, Mont. — THE armed siege of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, which continued Friday even after one of the occupiers was killed in a confrontation with authorities, is the latest battle in a Nevada family’s war with the federal government. It shows little sign of abating. Anger over the federal government’s control of hundreds of millions of acres across the West has been smoldering for over a hundred years. The takeover was part of a campaign that has its roots in the settlement of the West and the desire to transfer control of these lands — the national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and rangeland — to the states. The Oregon confrontation was led by two sons of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who led an armed standoff of his own against federal authorities in 2014 over his illegal grazing on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. The difference between the Bundys and many other ranchers who rage over federal control of land is that they believe God is on their side. I visited the Bundy family last year on their remote ranch and melon farm in southeastern Nevada for research I’m conducting on the history of Mormon culture and the use of public land. The Bundys are Mormons and interested me because of their extreme position against the government and their engagement of militia groups in their cause. They were welcoming and eager to answer my questions. What emerged in our three hours of conversation in the living room of their modest ranch house was a passion and a sense of entitlement that they believe is anchored in their deep history in the region. They also embrace a strange amalgamation of Mormonism, libertarianism and a right-wing reading of the Constitution. The Bundys trace their roots to some of the first Mormons who settled along an isolated and rugged stretch of the Virgin River, in a place so desolate that it seems impossible to make a living there. But they did, and in doing so, they put their stamp on it, in the Bundys’ view. From the moment their ancestors’ horses took a sip of water or ate the grass, “a beneficial use of a renewable resource” was created, Cliven Bundy told me. “That’s how our rights are created,” he explained. “So now we have created them and we use them, make beneficial use of them, and then we protect them. And that’s sort of a natural law, and that’s what the rancher has done. That’s how he has his rights. And that’s what the range war, the Bundy war, is all about right now, it’s really protecting those three things: our life, liberty and our property.” In Mormon doctrine, the American Constitution is a divinely inspired text that must be protected. This view goes back to the days of the prophet Joseph Smith, who believed the Constitution existed to provide religious freedom and agency, the right of people to choose how they lived. In 1840, Smith warned that “this Nation will be on the very verge of crumbling to pieces and tumbling to the ground when the Constitution is upon the brink of ruin; this people will be the Staff upon which the Nation shall lean and they shall bear the Constitution away from the very verge of destruction.” The Bundy family sees itself as that Staff. Mr. Bundy carries in his pocket a copy of the Constitution, which he believes draws its inspiration from the Bible. He told me: “Don’t we believe that Jesus Christ is basically the author of the Bible? Well, if the Constitution is inspired, who is the author? Wouldn’t that author be Jesus Christ again?” Mr. Bundy’s reading of the Constitution has been heavily influenced by the work of W. Cleon Skousen, a Mormon, fervent anti-Communist and right-wing political thinker who believed that most federal landholdings are unconstitutional. The Los Angeles Times reported that many Bundy followers in Oregon carried with them a copy of the Constitution annotated by Skousen. “That’s where I get most of my information from,” Cliven Bundy told the paper. But while Joseph Smith focused on the First Amendment as a bulwark against the persecutions of Mormons, the Bundys are focused on the 10th Amendment, which they believe severely restricts the federal government’s power to possess land. (Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have condemned the Oregon takeover and said in a statement that they were “deeply troubled by the reports that those who have seized the facility suggest that they were doing it based on scriptural principles.”) The Bundy worldview aligns closely with the states’ rights movement and efforts in the West to transfer federal lands to the states and local governments. Just last week, eight ranchers in Utah announced that they would stop paying grazing fees to the federal government and put the money into escrow until ownership of the federal land they lease is resolved. “This is as an act of civil disobedience in response to a long trail of abuses,” a lawyer connected to the effort told The Salt Lake City Tribune. Now the Bundy sons are in jail, and one of them, Ammon, in a statement issued by his lawyers, urged his followers to go home and hug their families. But a subsequent post on the Facebook page of the Bundy Ranch that has since been deleted issued this call to arms: “ALERT! From Ammon’s wife, Lisa: Ammon would not have called for the patriots to leave. We have lost a life but we are not backing down. He didn’t spill his blood in vain! Hold your ground … Ranchers come and stand! … Militia come and stand!” The war with the federal government over the West seems far from finished.

2016-08-12 17:10:00

From her war with the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998, to covering herself in honey to examine female sexuality, to a performance looking back on 9/11 through the eyes of multiple Liza Minnellis, one need only Google Karen Finley for a glimpse into the performance artist’s history of controversial work.  This year, Finley returns with Unicorn Gratitude Mystery, hosted by Spin Cycle at the Laurie Beechman theater in Manhattan. For it, she plunges into politics and creates cathartic impersonations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. “I had originally wanted to do an anniversary performance of my other show, Make Love, with the Liza Minnellis,” she tells The Creators Project. It would have been its 15th anniversary, but after watching the Democratic Convention, she built something else. “I had to speak to what was going on now. The artist acts as a historical recorder.” Wearing a shawl of daisies and colors, Finley dances onstage and begins Unicorn with cryptic lightheartedness: “The unicorn prefers the dragon roll to the sushi roll, and never likes styrofoam under any circumstances. It gets the job done without hands. It doesn’t exist so it never waits for the G train. It suffered to make good art.” With a jolt, her breathy praise turns to a bellow. “Damn your white preciousness and chivalry! Where were you when Sandra Bland fell, Eric Garner, the church in Charleston! Where were you?” The audience leans in and cheers one moment, before shooting back in their seats the next—stunned to grim silence. Finley’s second act begins with an imitation of an acceptance speech, filled with gratitude but progresses quickly into darker territory. She breaks into sudden outbursts, from jokes, “I am grateful you owe me money, so I can experience my own form of wanting to be paid back.” Over time, her character begins to impersonate Hillary Clinton, with brief moments of Bill as well. From the pantsuits to the infamous blue dress, the presidential pair is portrayed as both powerful and pitiable. In an almost frightening moment, she grabs a wrapped ice cream out of nowhere and squeezes it all over the blue dress hanging from her neck, explicitly referencing Monica Lewinski. “I wasn’t expecting it to explode onto the audience,” she tells The Creators Project, “but it ended up adding another layer of inclusion.” In a riveting third act, she transforms into Donald Trump, with blonde hair spilling out the front of her pants as she screams, “Somebody stop me!” She concludes with a speech on war, juxtaposing the femininity of never-ending apologies, and the masculinity of being raised to die. “I’m talking about transgressions, narcissism, power, sexual infidelity, denial, and particularly war,” she says. “Alongside constant political spectacle, we have been inundated, traumatized, by continued war and violence. Almost every week there is another traumatic shooting event. And it is truly horrible.” Finley continues with one more transformation, “The unicorn even has a relationship to Bernie. I’m not naming him, but there’s that sense of the hope, the well-wishes, the projection of an almost imaginary being. It’s also about whiteness, and the sense of mythical, imaginary attainment. I have it too… you just get connected to the trappings of a liberal life.” Karen Finley’s must-see show, Unicorn Gratitude Mystery, runs through August 21st at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in Manhattan. Learn more here.  Related: Artists Address the Women at the Heart of JFK's Assassination This Artist Captured Donald Trump in a Compromising Position 15 Artists Who Are Feeling The Bern

2019-07-15 00:00:00

CHICAGO, July 15 (Reuters) - Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) live cattle futures ended mostly lower on Monday as weak boxed beef prices fueled concerns about increasing supplies. Select-grade boxed beef was $189.21 per cwt on Monday afternoon, down 2.7% from a week ago, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data issued after the close of trading. Choice-grade boxed beef was $213.27, down 1.9% from a week earlier. The declines signal a buildup of beef supplies before the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a monthly report on Friday, is expected to report large numbers of cattle in American feedlots, traders said. As of June 1, there were 11.7 million head, the highest figure for that date since the USDA began tracking the data in 1996. Declining boxed-beef prices also raised concerns about potential weakness in demand, said Rich Nelson, chief strategist for Illinois-based broker Allendale. “We have concern about this wholesale beef,” he said. CME August live cattle futures settled up 0.025 cent at 108.500 cents per pound after reaching 108.975, the contract’s highest level since May 28. CME October cattle dropped 0.200 cent to 109.775 cents per pound. Other deferred contracts also declined, although some traders said they were impressed the market pared losses before the close of trading. CME August feeder cattle futures edged up 0.050 cent to 141.650 cents per pound. In the swine market, CME August lean hog futures settled down 0.550 cent at 80.100 cents per pound. October hogs rose 0.675 cent to finish at 73.900 cents. Expectations for China to boost meat imports supported deferred hog futures, traders said. China, the world’s top hog producer and pork consumer, is struggling to contain an outbreak of the fatal hog disease African swine fever, which has killed more than a million pigs. China’s agriculture ministry said on Monday it will carry out checks on local veterinary authorities in 10 provinces as it tries to slow the ongoing spread of the disease. China produced 24.7 million tonnes of pork in the first six months of 2019, down 5.5% from a year earlier, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, as African swine fever spread. Reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago Editing by Matthew Lewis

2019-09-04 00:00:00

President Trump on Tuesday presented a doctored version of an official National Hurricane Center map of Hurricane Dorian's path that appeared to show Alabama in the eye of the storm. Reality check: None of the original forecast maps featured the black loop that appeared on the map shown by Trump. Presumably, the loop was drawn on the map to make it appear as though Trump's false claim that Alabama was in the storm's path was true. (The National Weather Service has since debunked the claim.) In response, the White House provided a map it said Trump was shown on Sunday that displayed a large possible storm track that included a small piece of Alabama. It didn't say who produced the map. Trump also tweeted a map showing many possible storm tracks, including over Alabama. But the map was dated Aug. 28, days before the storm approached the coast. The big picture: This isn't the first time Trump has pulled something like this. April 2019: Trump tweeted a doctored video of Nancy Pelosi that made her seem drunk with the caption "PELOSI STAMMERS THROUGH NEWS CONFERENCE." January 2019: Gizmodo reported that photos posted to Trump's official Facebook page seemed altered to make himself look thinner and his hands longer. Trump faced insults about his hand size during the 2016 Republican primaries, which he adamantly refuted. November 2018: Then-White House press secretary Sarah Sanders shared an edited video on Twitter of a confrontation between CNN's Jim Acosta and a White House press official that made Acosta look aggressive. The video appeared to editorialize the incident to justify the removal of Acosta's press pass. The bottom line: The media has been focused on preparing for deepfakes, but amateur fakes coming from the White House are already happening. This story has been updated to include the Trump tweet and the White House response.

2017-05-06 00:00:00

Even for viewers familiar with the diversity of art forms cooked up by the Gutai artists and the attitudes that informed them, much of what is on display in this Yoshida show may come as a surprise. Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads For some time now, at home and abroad, the energetic art of Japan’s post-World War II, avant-garde Gutai group has been enjoying what is commonly known as “a moment.” Born of innovative art-making ideas and a creative spirit that emerged from the ashes of war, numerous Gutai creations are now recognized by modern-art historians as having anticipated such subsequent genres as happenings, performance art, mixed-media installation art, and high-tech kinetic art. More than half a century after 16 young artists from Osaka and Kobe, along with their mentor, Jirō Yoshihara, a 49-year-old businessman and scion of a wholesale cooking-oil company, founded the Gutai Art Association in southern Japan in 1954, many of the group’s concoctions still look and feel as fresh and unexpected as they did when they were first produced. Outside Japan, an apotheosis in the appreciation of the group’s accomplishments came in 2013 with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s presentation of Gutai: Splendid Playground. That exhibition examined in depth the development of the Gutai artists’ theories and working methods. The show also reflected a shift in critical thinking, which had begun to look beyond the modernist narrative’s familiar hot spots — Paris, Berlin, London, New York — to consider “peripheral” centers of modernist art-making, including Tokyo, Osaka and other places in East Asia, and bring them equally into that canonical tale. As numerous Gutai exhibitions in galleries and museums in Japan, Europe and the United States have raised the profile of the Japanese group as a whole, a number of others have shed much-deserved light on the individual achievements of some of this avant-garde movement’s most noteworthy participants. Among them: Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005); Kazuo Shiraga (1924-2008); Sadamasa Motonaga (1922-2011); Tsuyoshi Maekawa (born 1936); and Takesada Matsutani (born 1937). Now, the New York dealer Fergus McCaffrey, who has previously shown Shiraga’s and Motonaga’s vigorously abstract paintings, is showcasing the work of Toshio Yoshida, one of the less well-known but most experimental of the Gutai group’s members. The survey, Toshio Yoshida (1928-1997), will remain on view through June 24. Even for viewers familiar with the diversity of art forms cooked up by the Gutai artists and the attitudes that informed them, much of what is on display in this Yoshida show may come as a surprise. Compared to other Gutai members, relatively little has been documented about Yoshida’s early history. He was born in Kobe in 1928 and as a young man worked in a secretarial-administrative job at Jirō Yoshihara’s family company. Like his Gutai peers, he was aware that Yoshihara, who was based in Ashiya, near Osaka, was a passionate oil painter. Yoshihara had begun teaching himself how to paint in junior high school and, in addition to his business activities, had been giving younger artists lessons in Western-style, modernist, oil-painting techniques. Yoshida was among the founders of the Gutai Art Association, which was active through 1972, the year Yoshihara died. Yoshida regularly exhibited his work with the group and helped assemble its eponymous, periodically issued booklet-magazine, which chronicled and publicized its activities. Above all, like his fellow Gutai participants, Yoshida was keenly aware of the group’s fundamental dictates, which were enshrined in a manifesto Yoshihara had composed; it was first published in 1956. Dismissing “the art of the past” as “fraudulent,” that new-art tract’s cri de coeur declared, “Gutai art does not alter matter. Gutai art imparts life to matter. Gutai art does not distort matter. In Gutai art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance.” Yoshihara’s marching orders to his young charges were adamant: “Do something no one’s ever done before!” In some of Yoshida’s earliest works, from 1954, the artist gave tangible form to the Gutai spirit by pressing hot coals or a soldering iron against the surfaces of wood panels to make “burn paintings.” (Like many Gutai works, most of Yoshida’s creations are untitled or simply bear the Japanese name “Sakuhin,” meaning “Work,” and a number.) In those works, with pointed dabs or dark, rectangular burn marks, Yoshida devised remarkably vibrant and well-balanced compositions that bring to mind ancient East Asian ink-wash paintings, as well as the psycho-mysterious, “automatic” drawings of the Surrealists. (Yoshida’s wood-burning technique will remind some viewers that, in the mid-1950s, the Italian modernist Alberto Burri, who had made texture-rich “paintings” using scraps from burlap sacks, began producing torched-wood works of his own, as well as some made from melted plastic.) In “Sakuhin (56-12)” (oil on board, 1956), Yoshida calls attention to the inherent physical character and expressive potential of his material with a thick, broad, elbow-macaroni-shaped stroke of creamy-white oil paint on a square, black ground. His mark lies there in a void — one can imagine it stretching out endlessly on all sides — as if to declare, “I, a single brushstroke, am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end of any painting, the first and the last element of any painted image.” Gutai artists famously made paintings with their hands or unusual tools to push their paint around. Shiraga hung from a rope suspended over flat canvases on his studio floor to paint with his feet. Yasuo Sumi (1925-2015) used a soroban (a Japanese abacus) to make explosive, colorful compositions. In the sixth issue of Gutai, which was published in April 1957, Yoshida’s confrère, the artist Shōzō Shimamoto, who was known for shooting plastic bags filled with paint through a cannon at his canvases, wrote, “I believe that the first thing we should do is to set paint free from the paintbrush.” In his own notes, Yoshida once described the art-making methods he “would like to try,” including the placement of a helicopter inside a giant, roofless tank, whose inner walls would be lined with blank canvas. In such a setting, cans of paint would be attached to the vehicle’s propeller blades, releasing their colorful contents in a sputtering, splattering frenzy as the propeller rotated with increasing speed. The artist also imagined a grand spectacle in the sky over Osaka with colored gases and controlled lightning. In the 1960s, Yoshida veered toward the psychedelic in oil-on-canvas paintings made of up masses of colored dots in circular compositions set against solid-color grounds or expanding clusters of ever-larger dots. The resulting images resemble abstract, animated mandalas or depictions of some kind of souped-up cellular mitosis on a celestial scale. In other works, he used what appear to be patches of putty on board, which he slathered with paint, reveling in the audacity of the mix of colors and forms. In still other mixed-media paintings he “drew” with loops of hand-colored rope attached to their surfaces. In 1966, Yoshida came up with a soap-bubble-generating machine, whose frothy outpourings became free-form, kinetic, ephemeral sculptures. A year later, that gizmo was included in the 19th Gutai Art Association Exhibition. (Although Gutai art-making encompassed a variety of innovative forms, in time it was its members’ paintings that became emblematic of the movement; for one thing, it was easier to transport them for out-of-town exhibitions.) At McCaffrey, some of Yoshida’s most compelling works, which pulsate with raw energy, seem to reveal a latent, form-seeking impulse in the very materials of which they are made. These include such mixed-media paintings as “Sakuhin (61-10)” (1961) and “Sakuhin” (1963). Onto their surfaces the artist slaps layers of oil paint as thick as cake frosting, sometimes mixing them up with papier mâché to create goopy, creeping, multicolored crusts that evoke monster moss growing on otherworldly forest floors. In a recent e-mail exchange, Hoshihiko Yoshida, the artist’s eldest son, writing from Japan, described his father’s personality. “On the one hand,” he recalled, “he worked with perseverance and methodically; he also had a calm, easygoing side, like that of a small child.” When his father was developing his soap-bubble sculptures, Hoshihiko Yoshida noted, “he asked my advice about which detergent to use to make them really foam up.” Although he finds it hard to precisely describe his father’s creative spirit, Hoshihiko Yoshida remembered that the artist was fascinated by the cellular structures of plants and animals, and once proposed that maybe the universe is hexagonal in shape. “My image of him is that of someone whose personal independence was limitless,” his son recalled. This current New York gallery show suggests that Toshio Yoshida’s studious subversiveness both honored the Gutai group’s idealistic motivating principles and further elaborated upon them. With this high-profile presentation of his work, like Tanaka, Shiraga, and a handful of his Gutai peers before him, Yoshida’s own ideas and accomplishments may begin to emerge in their own light, apart from the collective history and identity of their legendary movement. For, now, twenty years after his death and some six decades since he joined that rebellious gang, Toshio Yoshida is enjoying what is commonly known as “a moment.” Toshio Yoshida (1928-1997) continues at Fergus McCaffrey (514 West 26th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through June 24.

2017-07-14

(Corrects first paragraph to say that Forssell has become new chairman of board’s nomination committee, not that Gardell would join the committee, as Gardell joined the committee on June 1) STOCKHOLM, July 14 (Reuters) - Sweden’s Ericsson said on Friday that Johan Forssell of Investor has replaced Petra Hedengran as the new chairman of the board’s nomination committee. Last month activist investor Cevian’s Christer Gardell joined the committee. Cevian has increased its stake in recent months to become the largest owner by capital in Ericsson, though long-time shareholders Investor AB and Industrivarden still control far more votes. Chairman Leif Johansson plans to quit before the company’s annual meeting in 2018 as the struggling mobile equipment firm tries to restore profitability. (Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Niklas Pollard)

2017-07-25

(CNN)An Australian cabinet minister is stepping down from his position after discovering he was made a dual Italian citizen without his knowledge. Resources minister Matt Canavan is the third Australian politician in two weeks to fall victim to the country's little-known dual citizenship clause, after two Greens party senators resigned earlier in July. The Australian constitution bars anyone who has citizenship in another country from standing for election. Speaking at a press briefing in Brisbane, Canavan said his mother had accidentally applied for Italian citizenship for him in 2006, and she only told him about it on July 18. "I was not born in Italy, I have never been to Italy and to my knowledge have never set foot in an Italian consulate or embassy. Until last week I had no suspicion that I could possibly be an Italian citizen," he said. Canavan told journalists he would be leaving cabinet and the ministry while the matter was resolved but would not be leaving parliament yet. "On the basis of the advice the government has obtained ... it is not my intention to resign from the senate. However given the uncertainty around this matter, I will stand aside until this matter is finally resolved," Canavan said. Greens leaders resign Earlier in July, the two deputy leaders of the Australian Greens resigned from the Australian Senate after discovering they were dual citizens. Scott Ludlam quit on July 14 after he was informed he was a New Zealand citizen by birth. Ludlam had left New Zealand when he was just three years old. Ludlam's resignation prompted his colleague Larissa Waters to investigate her citizenship. She announced on July 18 she would be resigning discovered she was a Canadian citizen. Waters was born in Canada but said in a statement she had been told incorrectly by her parents she had to actively seek citizenship to gain it. Section 44 of Australia's constitution says who "who is under any acknowledgment of allegiance obedience or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power" from serving in Parliament. Canavan is the first member of the governing Liberal National Coalition to discover he has a dual citizenship. The three resignations are likely to put pressure on other Australian politicians who have been born overseas to provide proof of their renunciation. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott had long been the subject of conspiracy theories around his citizenship status, as he was born in the United Kingdom, but has since provided proof he renounced it in 1993. Canavan to the High Court Speaking beside Canavan in Brisbane, Australian attorney general George Brandis said the former minister's future would be decided in the courts. "When the senate convenes on Tuesday week, the government will move to refer the matter to determination by the high court," he said. The citizenship crisis is unlikely to affect the makeup of Australia's Senate however. George Williams, dean of the University of New South Wales School of Law, told CNN earlier in July while the High Court would disqualify Waters and Ludlam and call for a ballot count-back, it would give the number two person on the Greens ticket the seat. "It's not likely that the total number off Greens will change, just that we'll see people from their party replacing them," said Williams. While calls for changes to Article 44 are likely to begin again, any tweaks to the Australian constitution can only be made through a national referendum.

2019-11-07 00:00:00

Nov 7 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - Xerox Holdings Corp has made a cash-and-stock offer for the maker of personal computers and printers HP Inc , the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. HP said that it has held discussions with Xerox in the past about combining the businesses, and received a proposal for such a combination on Tuesday. on.wsj.com/2NsiHwp - Federal prosecutors charged two former Twitter Inc employees and a Saudi Arabian national with spying on some users of the social-media platform who were critical of Riyadh and providing that information to the kingdom's officials. on.wsj.com/2PUKmrb - California is investigating Facebook Inc's privacy practices, the state's attorney general revealed Wednesday in a lawsuit that accuses the Silicon Valley tech giant of failing to adequately comply with information requests. on.wsj.com/2Nr2XcV - Alphabet Inc's Google is in discussions about changing its political ad policy, according to people familiar with the matter, about a week after Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc publicly diverged on how to handle those ads amid the spread of misinformation. on.wsj.com/2pQpzdL Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom

2017-05-12

Tesla has signed another deal with a utility, partnering with a Vermont utility to offer customers backup electricity for a fee. The California-based sustainable energy company will install several of its nearly 4,000-pound Tesla Powerpack battery units on utility land, and offer the much-smaller Powerwall battery packs for up to 2,000 individual customers. The deal is the latest with utilities in the United States and abroad. Vermont utility Green Mountain Power delivers electricity to three-quarters of the state's population. For a monthly fee of $15, or a one-time $1,500 fee, customers will receive backup power to their home for next 10 years, Tesla said. (Ten years is the warranty period during which Tesla guarantees their advertised performance level.) At the end of the program, Tesla will take back the batteries, said Green Mountain Power spokeswoman Kristin Carlson. Further deals may be in the works. "Obviously, we are looking to grow this program," Carlson said, "because we see this as our new energy future." Tesla said the batteries will eliminate the need for traditional, manually controlled, and fossil-fuel burning, backup generators. Green Mountain expects the electricity batteries will also allow the utility to reduce peak energy load by 10 megawatts, the equivalent to taking 7,500 homes off the grid. This will allow the utility to more cheaply meet the highest levels of demand — often on hot days when homes and businesses run air conditioners. "There is a time, usually in the summer when there is peak energy use, and that is when energy is most expensive," Carlson said. "So anything we can do to lower that will save money for customers." Green Mountain Power also plans to dispatch electricity aggregated from the batteries into New England's wholesale electricity markets when not needed by its own customers. Carlson said this will result in further savings for Green Mountain customers. Tesla has done energy storage deals with utilities in such places as Connecticut, California, Hawaii and the U.K.

2016-04-06 15:00:03

As the weather turns nicer, New York City parks are rolling out an array of free performances to be enjoyed in the sunshine. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and Bryant Park Presents announced their spring and summer programming on Wednesday, including movies, concerts, dance and theater. The newly refurbished Brooklyn Bridge Park will host the Dumbo Family Festival on April 23, with arts and crafts, games, and a wooden model of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Metropolitan Opera will present a recital on June 24 with Angel Blue, Ben Bliss and Alexey Lavrov. Later in the summer a series of outdoor movie screenings will be held at Pier 1, including “Singin’ in the Rain” (July 7), “American Graffiti” (Aug. 4) and “Selma” (Aug. 11). The rest of the season includes Shakespeare, jazz and children’s activities. More information is at brooklynbridgepark.org. Across the East River in Midtown Manhattan, Bryant Park will celebrate Shakespeare all summer long: the Drilling Company will perform a runthrough famous death scenes (April 22), “Much Ado About Nothing” (May 19-June 4), “As You Like It” (July 21-23), and “Measure for Measure” (Sept. 1-17). The In/ter\sect concert series, which puts jazz and classical musicians into unique ensembles, will feature Jonathan Finlayson, Ethan Iverson, Inbal Segev and many more on June 10, July 15 and Aug. 26. And modern dance companies, including the Amy Marshall Dance Company and Black Boys Dance Too, will perform Fridays from June 17-July 8. More information can be found at bryantpark.org.

2020-01-03 00:00:00

TORONTO/LONDON (Reuters) - Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals Ltd is weighing investment of around $1 billion to lift output at Africa’s biggest copper mine in Zambia, a company document seen by Reuters showed, despite a feud with state miner ZCCM-IH over project funding. The investment would add a decade of life and head off production declines at the Kansanshi copper mine, increasing annual production to 300,000 tonnes over time from an expected 235,000 tonnes last year, according to a company presentation given to Zambian government officials. But securing board approval, which would be needed over the coming year, is likely to be complicated by disputes between miners and the Zambian government over taxes and assets, according to analysts and miners with knowledge of the country. Western miners are on edge as Zambia and neighboring countries seek to increase their share of revenue from natural resources. Zambia hiked copper royalty taxes by 1.5 percentage points last year and introduced a new 10% rate when global prices exceed $7,500 per tonne, consultancy Verisk Maplecroft said. Mines Minister Barnaby Mulenga last month said copper miners would also have to account for the gold they produce to boost state revenue. “We do not anticipate any fresh investments to extend the life of copper mines while this, and increased taxation, hangs over miners,” Verisk Maplecroft senior analyst Indigo Ellis told Reuters on Friday. A source close to First Quantum said the plans will be presented to the company’s board this year but the project is unlikely to win approval without significant changes to Zambia’s tax regime. Shares of First Quantum extended losses after the Reuters story and were down 6.3% at C$12.44 on Friday afternoon in Toronto. First Quantum contemplated expanding Kansanshi in 2011 at a cost of $1.5 billion, but that project was shelved. Without investment, output would drop sharply from 2022 to about 130,000 tonnes by the middle of this decade, the presentation shows. Canadian-listed First Quantum is studying expansion amid a dispute with Zambian state miner ZCCM-IH over profits from the mine that have been set aside for the project. ZCCM-IH owns 20% of Kansanshi Mining PLC, with First Quantum holding the balance. First Quantum last month began arbitration proceedings against ZCCM-IH following a criminal complaint made by the state miner to Zambian police over a transfer by Kansanshi Mining to a First Quantum subsidiary. At issue is a transfer of $520 million, a separate document seen by Reuters showed. Two sources said the money had been set aside in a high-interest account to help fund expansion at Kansanshi. First Quantum was not available for immediate comment on Friday. ZCCM-IH did not immediately respond to a Reuters query. Sources declined to be identified as the information was not public. Reporting by Jeff Lewis in Toronto and Barbara Lewis in London; Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis

2019-11-20 00:00:00

Kacey Musgraves has hair that would make a 1960s Cher tip her hat. Lush, jet-black, and spilling down to her waist, the luxurious style has become as core to the country star's aesthetic as rhinestones and fringe. But this season, the singer-songwriter is mixing things up with a major first: curtain bangs. The star debuted the fresh look at last night's screening of The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show at the Metrograph in New York City. Like all of Musgraves' big-event and performance hairstyles, the style comes at the hands of Delgado, who actually appeared on the winter-wonderland red carpet with the country singer in her Instagram Stories. "Huge props to my glam angels who worked their wings off to serve all the looks for this holiday spectacular," Musgraves wrote in a photo caption. The pros accessorized her fresh bangs with Bambi-like lash extensions, thick black eyeliner, and a cropped white two-piece set. There's no video or photo confirmation that actual scissors were used in creating the bangs, which makes us think that Delgato might have clipped in a faux fringe. Either way, there's no denying the Cher comparisons, which might be the best compliment in the book for Musgraves, who celebrated her 31st birthday at Cher's Las Vegas show in August. Related Content:

2019-06-05 00:00:00

Former White House photographer Pete Souza trolled President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE over his state visit to the United Kingdom this week with throwback photos of former President Obama from his time in office. In one of a string of photos Souza shared to Instagram, Obama and former first lady Michelle ObamaMichelle LeVaughn Robinson ObamaJuan Williams: Democrats finally hit Trump where it hurts Michelle Obama to present Lin-Manuel Miranda with the Portrait of a Nation Prize Michelle Obama thanks her high school for naming new athletic complex after her MORE can be seen helping a grinning Queen Elizabeth out of a car. The caption of the photo, which was shared on the second day of Trump’s visit, reads: “She likes him better.” She likes him better. A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Jun 4, 2019 at 6:22am PDT In another, Obama can be seen speaking to the British monarch as she laughs. That photo is captioned: “He makes her laugh.” He makes her laugh. A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Jun 4, 2019 at 10:27am PDT Obama is shown in another photo playing with Prince William’s son, Prince George, with a caption reading: “The little ones can always tell a person of character.” The little ones can always tell a person of character. A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Jun 4, 2019 at 3:32pm PDT And in an open jab at the president, Souza shared a photo on Wednesday morning of Obama working on a speech while in London. “Back in the day when the President of the United States spent his early morning in London working on his speech instead of tweeting lies and insults,” Souza wrote in the caption.  Back in the day when the President of the United States spent his early morning in London working on his speech instead of tweeting lies and insults. A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Jun 5, 2019 at 6:08am PDT Souza has a history of hitting at Trump with past photos he has taken of Obama.  The former White House photographer even wrote a book released last year that juxtaposes images of both presidents from their times in office. The book was titled, “Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents.” View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-07-24

Washington (CNN)A federal judge in Arkansas blocked abortion restrictions that were set to take effect on Wednesday, dealing a victory to opponents of the laws who argued they violated Supreme Court precedent, were not medically necessary and imposed an "enormous burden" on a woman's ability to access abortion. The laws are the latest in a new wave sweeping across the country from emboldened states attempting to restrict access to abortion. The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to take up a similar case out of Louisiana for next term. District Court Judge Kristine Baker of the Eastern District of Arkansas issued a temporary injunction late Tuesday night concluding that the laws "cause ongoing and imminent irreparable harm" to patients. The judge held that the state "has no interest in enforcing laws that are unconstitutional" and that she would block the state from enforcing the laws while the legal challenges play out. Three different provisions were at issue. One effectively barred abortions starting at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Baker held that because the provision "prohibits nearly all abortions before viability," it is unconstitutional under court precedent. Another barred providers from performing an abortion if the woman's decision to terminate was based on a diagnosis that the fetus has Down syndrome. The judge ruled the law "is over-inclusive and under-inclusive because it prohibits nearly all pre-viability abortion based on Down syndrome when there is no record evidence that the Arkansas legislature has availed itself of alternative, less burdensome means to achieve the State's asserted interest through regulations that do not unconstitutionally prohibit a woman's right to choose but instead are aimed at ensuring a thoughtful and informed choice." A third required providers to be certified in obstetrics and gynecology, a provision Baker said "provides no discernible medical benefit in the light of the realities of abortion care, training, and practice in Arkansas and across the county." She noted that had the provision gone forward, it would have left the state with no surgical abortion provider. "In recent years, Arkansas has engaged in a targeted campaign against abortion care and the women who need it, enacting more than 25 laws aimed at obstructing and interfering with a woman's access to abortion care in the State, including at least 12 enacted in 2019 alone," lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood argued in court papers on behalf of the Little Rock Family Planning Services clinic. Arkansas defended the laws, calling them "common sense" regulations. "Each regulation benefits society, mothers, and the medical profession in a myriad of ways while imposing no real (or legally cognizable) burden on abortion access," Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas' attorney general, argued in court papers. Holly Dickson, legal director and interim executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said her group was "relieved." "Personal medical decisions are just that -- personal -- and politicians have no business barging into people's private decisions, shutting down clinics and blocking people from care that they need," she said.

2018-11-01 04:53:22

China’s search engine giant Baidu is continuing its partnership spree for Apollo, its open development platform for autonomous driving, after it inked a deal with Swedish automaker Volvo to develop level four self-driving passenger cars. “Autonomous driving has been our dream, but it’s coming true,” said Li Zhenyu, vice president and general manager of Baidu’s intelligent driving group, at the company’s annual conference today. Level four means the vehicles can drive on pre-mapped roads with little or no human intervention. The agreement came a day after Baidu and Ford forged an agreement to test self-driving vehicles on Chinese roads for two years. The American car giant’s self-driving system has already been fitted into Apollo, according to the duo’s joint statement. The Baidu-Red Flag autonomous passenger car The Baidu-Red Flag autonomous passenger car Baidu and Volvo, which is owned by China’s Geely, said they plan to mass produce the vehicles for the Chinese market, although there is no timeline for the promise. The deal marks Volvo’s first partnership to jointly develop autonomous vehicles in China. This is also the first time for Baidu to work with a non-Chinese automaker to mass produce level four passenger cars. Over the past few months, Baidu has signed a number of Chinese carmakers including BAIC and Red Flag onto Apollo amid a global race to mass produce autonomous vehicles. As of July, the Apollo ecosystem counted 116 partners, up from 50 a year ago. Baidu previously said its first batch of level four autonomous driving vehicles through the BAIC deal would be ready by 2021. Its level four minibuses with Xiamen King Long are already running in over ten locations throughout China, Baidu’s CEO Robin Li said during its Q3 earnings call on Tuesday. Baidu has also been expanding its Apollo network by linking up with the government. On Tuesday, it announced a collaboration with the Chinese city of Changsha, which has over seven million residents, to apply self-driving solutions to the city’s roads. Baidu is also in talks with Beijing and Shanghai for a similar tie-up.

2016-12-14 00:00:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Brexit minister David Davis said on Wednesday he was optimistic that the European Union would be helpful in the government’s quest not to have a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. “I’m optimistic that the European Union will be helpful to us on this. (EU Brexit negotiator) Michel Barnier, who’s an old sparring partner of mine, is also very seized of this,” Davis told lawmakers in a question-and-answer session. Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Kylie MacLellan; editing by Michael Holden

2018-07-17

close Video White House silent after Trump-Putin press conference President returns home to bipartisan backlash over his news conference with the Russian leader; Kristin Fisher reports from the White House, My fellow citizens: More than 20 months have passed since you elected me your president. Unfortunately, America remains polarized by that election, which was marked by Russian interference, FBI investigations into both candidates or campaigns, and questions whether some powerful federal agencies themselves tried to influence the outcome. We still have more questions than answers. Tonight I address you from the Oval Office to tell you the step I am now taking to ensure that the American people will finally get the complete story. At the heart of our democratic system is accountability. Inspectors general and special counsels and criminal prosecutions may all have a role here. Still, under our Constitution the primary accountability is to the American people via their elected representatives. Unfortunately Congress has been stymied in its subpoenas for documents that would fill the remaining holes in the story. These holes include what really prompted the FBI to begin its investigation of my campaign, as well as how parts of our government used a dossier full of salacious material that was never verified and was produced and paid for by my rival’s campaign. Even where Congress has access to key information—for example, the application for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant to spy on an American connected with my campaign—lawmakers cannot make the information public because it is classified. Keep reading William McGurn&aposs column in the Wall Street Journal.

2018-11-13

(Refiles to change dateline to Abu Dhabi (not Dubai)) ABU DHABI, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Jordan aims to increase natural gas imports from Egypt to cover a third of its demand eventually, the Jordanian energy minister said on Tuesday. Jordan began importing natural gas from Egypt two months ago but increasing imports significantly would depend on construction of a pipeline between Jordan and Iraq which has yet to be built. Hala Zawati, Jordanian minister of energy and mineral resources, estimated Jordan’s gas demands in 2019 at around 350 million cubic feet per day. “Jordan started receiving natural gas from Egypt since September. It’s on (an) experimental basis for the pipeline but we hope in the beginning of 2019 to increase these amounts,” she told reporters. “We have not yet agreed with Egypt. Now there are negotiations on how much will be pumped but we hope at least one third of the country’s requirements will be taken from Egypt,” she added, without giving a timeframe for reaching that goal. Asked about the pipeline which will eventually connect the southern city of Basra in Iraq with Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba, Zawati said: “We’ve had discussions with Iraq that started years ago. It was approved by the Jordanian cabinet, and now we are waiting for the Iraqi side to start working on the pipeline.” “It’s still there as an idea but has not (yet) materialized... the political situation did not allow for that pipeline to materialize.” (Reporting by Tuqa Khalid; editing by Jason Neely and Susan Fenton)