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2020-02-03 00:00:00

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LONDON (Reuters) - Businesses will have to take the same steps to prepare for the end of the Brexit transition period whether Britain strikes the Canada-style trade deal it is seeking, or a less comprehensive deal, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said on Monday. Speaking after Johnson set out Britain’s negotiating stance, the spokesman told reporters there were likely to be customs processes required as the government defines its new trading relationships. Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, writing by William James, editing by Kate Holton

2016-05-10 00:00:00

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According to mainstream women’s magazines, there are about as many types of female orgasms as there are brands of flattering workout pants. There’s the storied g-spot orgasm, the cutting edge "a-spot" ("anterior fornix") orgasm, the even more obscure "u-spot" (urethra) orgasm, the cringe-y sounding cervical orgasm, and for boring underachievers, the basic and accessible clitoral orgasm. Scientifically speaking, though, just how many orgasms are there? "Orgasm is the sudden, involuntary release of sexual tension."There’s no consensus yet from the medical community, in part because there’s disagreement about how to define an orgasm in the first place. Some researchers and sexperts favor a definition like the one sex educator Emily Nagoski provided in last year’s best-selling Come As You Are: "Orgasm is the sudden, involuntary release of sexual tension," a description that carefully omits mention of concrete physical markers. For others, like neuroscientist and psychophysiologist Nicole Prause, identifying a physical response is key. Knowing what, exactly, an orgasm is seems like a reasonable basis for determining where it originates and ultimately manifests — the apparent mission of proselytizers of increasingly elaborate orgasm types. What else are they trying to put a name to? In their efforts, they’re honoring — you guessed it — good old Sigmund Freud, who popularized the bifurcation of women’s sexual response into clitoral and vaginal over a century ago. Thanks to second-wave feminism, it’s widely accepted that his theory left a legacy of collective psycho-sexual baggage we’ve barely begun to slough off, but even he couldn’t have anticipated the climax cottage industry that his dubious claims about "sexual maturity" ushered in. If you’ve got the genitalia of a cis woman — meaning a vulva, a vagina, a clitoris, a cervix, and all the rest — you should, according to some experts, be able to "achieve" up to 10 different varieties of sexual release through skillful manipulation of your myriad private parts. But the best evidence suggests bodies simply don’t work like that. Let’s start with the fact that the vagina and clitoris are intimately connected to the point of near inextricability — and that’s not news. In 1966, Masters and Johnson excoriated the suggestion that they’re distinct: Are clitoral and vaginal orgasms truly separate anatomic entities? From a biologic point of view, the answer to this question is an unequivocal No … [T]here is absolutely no difference in the response of the pelvic viscera to effective sexual stimulation, regardless of [where] the stimulation occurs. Bodies are not assembled as cleanly as plumbing systemsVaginal and clitoral orgasms are not separate because the vagina and the clitoris, as anatomical structures, are not separate. Bodies are not assembled as cleanly as plumbing systems, in spite of what common parlance for our reproductive systems suggests. As one 2005 paper notes, "The anatomy of the clitoris has not been stable with time … To a major extent, its study has been dominated by social factors." By today’s best evidence, derived from meticulous cadaveric dissection, it is an organ that extends deep into the body on multiple planes, and constitutes far more than the small glans and hood that most of us think of as "the clit." When recognized in its complete, three-dimensional glory, it has something of a wishbone shape and comes into contact with the labia, urethra, mons, and vaginal walls. Because of its location against the top wall of the vagina, around the urethra, and along the labia, stimulation and pressure on any of these adjacent areas during sex necessarily applies pressure, friction, vibration, and so on, to the clitoris. "It is therefore problematic at best to define a ‘clitoral orgasm’ as a phenomenon distinct from a ‘vaginal orgasm,’" declared one intensive medical review from 2015. "An orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm!"Legendary sex educator Betty Dodson is particularly vehement on this point. "An orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm!" she told me, while lamenting our continued preoccupation with "vaginal" orgasm. "The clitoral body is the primary source of orgasm whether it’s stimulated externally, internally, or both." When I spoke with Nicole Prause, she too emphasized, "If something is put into the vagina, the clitoris is always displaced." In most cis women’s bodies, you can’t stimulate a vagina without stimulating the clitoris at the time. Internal structure of the clitoris aside, the external, visible portion of the clitoris (the glans) is also influenced by penetration, as plenty of sex position manuals indicate. Women who come from penetration without targeted manipulation of their glans may experience external clitoral stimulation through penetration regardless, due to general friction in that same area. Furthermore, pulling on the skin at the vagina’s vestibule results in some stretching of the glans and clitoral hood as well the vascular tissue of the urethra. (Our beloved u-spot!) The interwoven nature of these tissues is the cause of "ambiguity problems" when trying to identify the source of orgasm — but it’s only a "problem" if ideological values demand the artificial deconstruction of a body’s holistic, quirky functioning. The very structure of genitals renders orgasm parsing impossible. So what is an orgasm then, this experience that can’t be pinned to a specific hodgepodge of genital triggers? Anatomically, "an orgasm consists of highly stereotyped contractions, which means they always occur in the same type of pattern," says Prause. "It’s 8 to 12 contractions, that start about 0.8 seconds apart and increase in latency until they stop." It’s a pretty straightforward take that’s easy for researchers to verify in a subject — which can’t be said for Nagoski’s definition, mentioned above. ("Orgasm is the sudden, involuntary release of sexual tension.") An orgasm is not guaranteed bliss; quality variesNagoski’s stance prioritizes self-reporting over observable and quantifiable physical indicators, and doesn’t even mention genitals. Given how commonly women evince arousal noncordance — how often their bodies indicate arousal without being accompanied by a subjective sense of feeling turned-on, or vice versa — it’s understandable that this approach is generally positioned as the more feminist or otherwise women-friendly option. (Men also experience discordant arousal pretty frequently, but not as regularly women do.) But like Nagoski, Prause’s framing leaves plenty of room for subjective experience. An orgasm can fit both or either set of criteria yet be disappointing, unsatisfying, or not particularly powerful — something magazine articles rarely address when they’re exhorting their audience to go O wild. An orgasm is not guaranteed bliss; quality varies. But it’s hard to psych readers up for digging around in their anterior vaginal walls for 30 minutes, chasing an elusive experience that may prove underwhelming once obtained. Better to promise "new heights" of pleasure. If you can find the right spot, and leave it at that, any experience less than sheer ecstasy will seem like the fault of the body in question. Nagoski and Prause share something else in common in spite of divergent approaches to climax: both believe that orgasm is, essentially, a singular experience — meaning there is no "kind" or "type" of orgasm, only different ways of inducing it. Both researchers think there is no 'kind' or 'type' of orgasm"Some people base it on where the stimulation comes from," explains Prause, which is why articles about "nipple orgasms" and "anal orgasms" exist, but "there’s no physical evidence that supports the idea of different types of orgasm." No matter how they’re induced or what part of the body seems to be receiving the most stimulation, orgasms result in those stereotypical contractions. For a researcher like Prause, a so-called g-spot orgasm is indistinguishable from a so-called clitoral orgasm. We can glare back at Freud when looking to understand why our culture is so obsessed with detailing something that doesn’t exist (i.e., sexual climaxes that stem from different sources). The preoccupation with orgasm through vaginal penetration alone — and the quest to induce it in every woman — opened a Pandora’s box of possibilities for segmenting women’s genitals into discrete components with separate sensations and capacities. Lady privates, notoriously complicated as they are, have become regarded as a collection of parts before — if not altogether instead of — a cohesive whole. Our culture already sends women on a fruitless chase for pleasure in an area of their body not as fully primed to provide it as others, so why not add new zones to the list? If you’re diligently trying to engage a vagina without any clitoral side effect, why not try stroking the urethral opening (without touching the clitoris, because that’s sensible) while you’re at it? As an aside: how hell-bent are you people on getting or giving a UTI? This is the inverse of how we generally think and talk about men. "Penis" indicates an area of widely varying sensitivity and nerve distribution, but somehow this fact doesn’t inspire a mountain of articles on, say, how to get a guy off by stroking only the base of his shaft or petting his urethral opening. Mercifully, some academics are working to reverse this trend. One 2012 study, for instance, concluded that the "specialized tissues" of the vulva show a "unified response to sexual arousal." (The paper opens with the endearing complaint that "the anatomy of the vulva is typically presented with no unifying theme.") But the sanest voices in this discussion are drowned out by a sexist, sex-crazed pop culture with little to no interest in real anatomy. There’s nothing wrong with exploring one’s body for different types and degrees of pressure, but the overbearing cultural imperative for women to do so, with its transparent sociopolitical agenda, is a problem. The next time a person, daytime TV segment, or magazine article tries to imply you’re inferior because you don’t experience 12 different types of orgasms, remind yourself that they’re advocating the impossible, and looking pretty silly while they do it.

2017-03-17 13:28:00

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Beauty and the Beast, the live-action adaptation of the Disney classic, features a star-studded cast of actors bringing fan-favorite characters to life — and Luke Evans shines in the role of narcissistic villain Gaston. Although he’s been known for recently taking on a string of action roles, this isn’t the Welsh-born actor’s first time belting out a few tunes. Read on to learn more about the star, and find out how he ended up playing Disney’s muscular baddie. The 37-year-old started out on the West End playing parts in several well-known musicals. From Rent to Avenue Q and Miss Saigon, Evans made a name for himself in the theater world before he starred in his breakthrough role — the Boy George-penned musical Taboo. “All you’d hear was other people’s opinions, ‘Oh, it was wonderful!’ And I’m thinking, ‘Was it? Which bit?’ ” the actor told The Guardian. “You want to dig them for more, but then you sound self-indulgent. I was desperate to know whether the audience could see what I was feeling – whether psychologically it was coming through.” He became a full-blown action hero After his success in theater, Evans booked his first major film role, playing the sun god Apollo in 2010’s Clash of the Titans. He took on Greek mythology again in 2011’s Immortals, where he was upgraded to the king of the gods, Zeus. He continued to take on more physical roles, acting alongside Jason Statham in Blitz and later starring in The Hobbit trilogy. Playing dragon-slayer Bard the Bowman, Evans notched a new level of fame thanks to the blockbuster films. “It was very weird because for a long a time no one really recognized me from my films, but The Hobbit has totally changed that and I’ve had some really special moments, especially with youngsters,” he told Collider. Evans says he’s “happy” he gets the chance to showcase his chops as an action star — and his range as an actor. When asked by Women’s Wear Daily in 2014 about being a gay actor playing action-hero roles, he replied: “It’s good for people to look at me and think this guy is doing his thing and enjoying what he’s doing and successful at it and living his life. And that’s what I’m doing and I’m very happy.” From Coinage: The Cost of Beauty & The Beast‘s Wedding Registry Evans snarled as a bad guy in the Fast and Furious franchise. He joined the franchise for its sixth installment, playing a London-based brute named Owen Shaw who tries to keep Vin Diesel‘s Dom from the presumed-dead Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). After reuniting with Statham for Furious 7, the actor played the mysterious Scott Hipwell in the Emily Blunt-led The Girl on the Train. For more on Dan Stevens and Beauty and the Beast, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now. And check out Entertainment Weekly’s special edition The Ultimate Guide to Beauty and the Beast, on sale now. He came back to his musical roots for the Disney classic Evans’ first love was always singing, which made signing on to play Gaston all the sweeter for the star. The actor arguably steals the show with his impeccable vocals, and makes the vile war hero vying for Belle’s affection seem almost charming.   At the film’s premiere, the actor opened up to PEOPLE about Beauty and the Beast being the perfect way to show off his vocal skills again. “I sang for nine years of my career, and I was looking for the project that I was able to merge my musical side with my film career. This was it,” he said. “I met Bill Condon, the director, and I got to sing the song. I knew I could do it. I knew I could sing,” he added. “I knew I could do this role I was hungry to play, and I was also desperate to sing live on a performance stage, and this was it, and it just went really well.”

2020-01-01 00:00:00

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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strongly condemned U.S. attacks on Iran-allied militia group in Iraq, Iranian state TV reported on Wednesday, blaming the United States for the violence in the neighbouring country. “The Iranian government, nation and I strongly condemn the attacks,” state TV quoted Khamenei as saying. The U.S. military carried out air strikes on Sunday against the Kataib Hezbollah militia in response to the killing of a U.S. civilian contractor in a Friday rocket attack on an Iraqi military base. U.S. President Donald Trump accused Iran of orchestrating violent protests at the U.S. embassy in Iraq on Tuesday and said Tehran would be held responsible. Iran has rejected the accusation. “Again that guy (Trump) has accused Iran for the attacks. You cannot do a damn thing. If you were logical, which you are not, you would see that your crimes in Iraq and other countries have made nations hate you,” Khamenei tweeted. “If Iran decides to confront a country, we will do that openly ... If anyone threatens our nation’s interests we will fight back ... without any hesitation.” Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff

2019-09-05 00:00:00

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Health-test supplier uBiome Inc filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, aiming to complete a court-supervised sale in November after a federal investigation launched earlier this year prompted it to suspend sales of one of its product lines. In papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, Acting Chief Executive Curtis Solsvig III said uBiome’s goal in Chapter 11 is to close a sale by Nov. 18 that keeps 100 of its remaining workers employed on its Explorer product, a stool sample kit sold directly to consumers. To read the full story on Westlaw Practitioner Insights, click here: bit.ly/2k03DtX

2018-06-04 00:00:00

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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has sparked anger for kissing a woman on the lips after inviting her onstage with him. During an event with the Filipino community in South Korea on Sunday, Duterte asked two women to join him onstage to present them with books critical of the Catholic church. After kissing one woman on the cheek he gestured he wanted to kiss the second woman on the lips. She at first shook her head, but Duterte persisted and, according to the website Rappler, asked her if she was single before kissing and hugging her. Gabriela, a national alliance of women's groups in the Philippines, denounced Duterte's actions as the “disgusting theatrics of a misogynist president who feels entitled to demean, humiliate or disrespect women according to his whim.” While the incident was greeted with cheers from sections of the crowd in Seoul, it was met with disgust online. The woman Duterte kissed was identified as Bea Kim by the state-run Philippines News Agency, which quoted her as saying there was "no malice" in the kiss. Risa Hontiveros, a senator representing the opposition in the Philippines, called it a “despicable display of sexism and grave abuse of authority. President Duterte acted like a feudal king who thinks that being the President is an entitlement to do anything that he pleases. Even if the act was consensual, it was the President, possessed of awesome, even intimidating power, who initiated it.” She added that "uneven power relations were clearly at play. And president Duterte took advantage of that severe power disparity.” Duterte and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Duterte has a history of inflammatory behavior. Earlier this year he was criticised for telling soldiers to shoot female rebels in the vagina, while during the 2016 presidential campaign he called the 1989 rape and murder of an Australian missionary a "waste," and suggested he should have been "first" to sexually assault her.

2019-12-09 00:00:00

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Dec 9 (Reuters) - Finland’s Centre Carty said on Monday its leader Katri Kulmuni would be named finance minister in a new coalition cabinet due to be appointed this week. The government resigned last week after the Centre Party said it had lost confidence in Social Democrat Prime Minister Antti Rinne over his handling of a postal strike. The five parties in power decided to stay in coalition and continue with the same programmes but said they would change some ministers. Under the terms of the coalition, the Centre Party names the finance minister. (Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

2016-11-16

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Image: APThink back, if you will, to the halcyon days of 2012, when Donald Trump hadn’t yet strangled the presidency with his small, grubby orange hands. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” he tweeted on November 6 of that year.Today—almost exactly four years later—China finally chimed in. Shockingly, it does not endorse Donald Trump’s version of events.According to China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin, the country couldn’t possibly have invented climate change, because American presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were talking about climate change negotiations long before China knew about them.“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” he told reporters during United Nations talks in Morocco today.Unfortunately, he did not push back on the idea that climate change itself is a hoax, which probably would have been helpful.However, China’s stance on global warming has been looking better and better ever since Donald Trump promised to light the Paris Agreement on fire, among other disastrous environment-related statements, including one in which he vowed to get rid of the “Department of Environmental.”Will China Become a Leader on Global Climate Action?For the last few years, the United States has been a lukewarm leader on global climate action. Now, …Read more ReadCan we get off this horrible ride yet, mom? [Bloomberg]

2017-05-11 05:32:38

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A thief, your kids skipping school or paranormal activity? That’s the question that Lighthouse aims to answer with its new interactive assistant. By combining sophisticated sensors with computer vision technology, the Lighthouse team hopes to deliver an experience that brings more day-to-day value than a mere home security solution. Coming out of Stealth today, the company is equipped with $17 million in venture capital financing from Eclipse Ventures, Playground Global, SignalFire, Felicis Ventures and StartX. Once the Lighthouse device is out of the box and set up, it can monitor a room within your home and send the feed to your smartphone remotely. From within the mobile app, you can then search for events within historical footage. And if you want to set up a notification, you can arrange to be alerted when a key event occurs, like your kids coming home from school. To date, Lighthouse can distinguish between adults and children in a frame of video, but it’s unable to generalize, for example, to find footage of someone cleaning your home. This means you can search for “Adults who were in my kitchen between 9am and 10am?” but can’t search for “Did the maid remember to dust in my office?” While it’s unlikely that Lighthouse will be able to identify every single object in your home anytime soon, the list of things it can identify will surely increase in the near future. Alex Teichman, co-founder of Lighthouse and Jessica Gilmartin, GM/CMO Alex Teichman, co-founder of Lighthouse and Jessica Gilmartin, GM/CMO Having held the product, I can say that it’s well designed. It felt substantial in my hands with a weighted base and limited number of moving parts. The design was actually done by an expert on loan from Andy Rubin’s Playground Global . Alex Teichman, co-founder of Lighthouse, told me that his relationship with Playground Global has been one of the most integral parts of the company’s growth. Andy Rubin’s experimental venture fund is optimized to speed up the growth of startups. Checks come with workspace and teams of early employees that can help early stage hardware companies get off the ground. Lighthouse secured itself an industrial designer and an expert in 3D sensors, two things that are otherwise hard for a startup to get its hands on. Lighthouse will need those workers and then some if it hopes to simultaneously move the needle on R&D and deliver a product to market. The underlying computer vision models that power lighthouse share a lot of similarities with the technology underlying autonomous cars. The connection is so strong that Sebastian Thrun, known for his self-driving car work, is advising Lighthouse. Teichman conveniently completed his PhD working in Thrun’s lab at Stanford, while his co-founder Hendrik Dahlkamp was the first engineer at GoogleX. Some might find the concept of having eyes in their homes creepy. For me that’s less of a concern about privacy or cloud security and more about the statement a parent is making to their child when they opt to record their actions. Searching for events with Lighthouse Searching for events with Lighthouse But the Lighthouse team isn’t directive about how the product should be used — its strongest asset is its flexibility. It’s neither tattletale nor home security solution. Teichman even told me that some early users were using the camera and its sensors as a communication method, waving their hands to send a notification to the smartphone of the device’s owner. This ultimately led to a dedicated feature being rolled out to accommodate waving. Because Lighthouse is both a product and service (computation in the cloud is expensive), the same product is being sold for three different prices with different amounts of pre-paid service. For $399 you can order a Lighthouse device that comes with one year of service. An additional $100 increases that to three years and for $599 you can get five years of included service. After that point owners will have to pay $10 per month, something investors have to love about this particular product category. Everything is expected to ship in September.

2016-07-08 17:10:25

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26 Photos View Slide Show › At the last of the shows in Europe until September, the fashion crowd comes out to see the finery.

2016-06-21 06:41:00

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Starbucks added another nostalgic summer favorite to its list of scrumptious sweet beverages—and we were one of the first in line to try it out. The S’mores Frappuccino already took us back to summer camp and now the coffee chain is making us reminisce on ice cream truck runs with its new Double Double Fudge Bar Frappuccino. Inspired by the classic Fudgsicle, the chocolatey drink—which quietly made its debut on Saturday—offers a double dose of mocha sauce combined with vanilla syrup, Frappuccino Roast coffee and milk. Die-hard chocolate fanatics will be more than pleased. Blended with ice and topped with chocolate whipped cream to complement the mocha sauce, the taste more than delivers on its “double double fudge” promise. Really, it’s all your chocolatey dreams come true in four slurps. (Yes, the tall size is so good, it goes that fast. Go for the venti instead.) WATCH THIS: How to Make a Brownie Bits Milkshake For those who love chocolate but prefer not to overdose? No worries. Your barista will gladly swap the chocolate whipped cream out for the original. And if you’re a true Starbucks regular with a favorite barista who knows you by name, they’ll likely also drizzle it with caramel sauce. But because all good summer drink specials do come to an end, the Double Double Fudge Bar Frappuccino will only stick around for a few weeks while supplies last, according to a Starbucks spokesperson. This means penciling in your chocolate fix soon is not a bad idea.

2016-03-16 00:00:00

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* Fed holds steady, eyes two rate hikes this year * Materials best performing sector * Indexes up: Dow 0.57 pct, S&P 0.63 pct, Nasdaq 0.77 pct (Updates with further market reaction to Fed statement) By Laila Kearney NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - Wall Street gained on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged and signaled fewer rate hikes for the year. The Fed indicated moderate U.S. economic growth and “strong job gains” would allow it to tighten policy this year with fresh projections showing policymakers expected two quarter-point hikes by the year’s end, half the number seen in December. But the U.S. central bank noted the United States continues to face risks from an uncertain global economy. Because of that uncertainty, “the committee judged it prudent to maintain the current policy stance at this meeting,” Fed Chair Janet Yellen said. The decision to keep rates steady was in line with analyst predictions. “The market has been pricing two hikes at the most and their adjustment of the end of year forecast is consistent with two hikes,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin. “So yes, the market is basically saying, ‘We had it right.’” The Dow Jones industrial average was up 97.52 points, or 0.57 percent, to 17,349.05, the S&P 500 gained 12.69 points, or 0.63 percent, to 2,028.62 and the Nasdaq Composite added 36.51 points, or 0.77 percent, to 4,765.18. Eight of the 10 major S&P sectors were higher. Materials were up the most at 1.67 percent. Healthcare and financial stocks lagged. The S&P energy sector was up 1.29 percent as crude rose nearly 4 percent after major producers agreed to meet next month to discuss freezing output. In U.S. corporate news, shares of Oracle were up 4.5 percent at $40.47 after the enterprise software company’s quarterly profit beat estimates. LinkedIn was down 4.7 percent at $110.11 and Gap fell 1.7 percent to $29.21 after Morgan Stanley downgraded both stocks. Fossil was down 4.7 percent at $44.67 after Macquarie cut its rating on the stock to “underperform.” Mallinckrodt was down 9.3 percent at $53.98, continuing its slide for a second day, while fellow specialty drugmaker Endo International recouped some of its losses from Tuesday, rising 4.7 percent to $34.10. Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,393 to 619, for a 3.87-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the Nasdaq, 1,679 issues rose and 1,079 fell for a 1.56-to-1 ratio favoring advancers. The S&P 500 posted 34 new 52-week highs and 5 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 33 new highs and 62 new lows. (Additional reporting by Lewis Krauskopf in New York, additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Editing by Don Sebastian and Nick Zieminski)

2017-04-13 00:00:00

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BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil’s President Michel Temer denied on Thursday that he hosted a meeting in 2010 where an executive of engineering firm Odebrecht SA [ODBES.UL] was asked to arrange an illegal payment of $40 million to his political party. The graft accusation, which Temer dismissed as “a lie,” was made in plea bargain testimony by Marcio Faria da Silva, a former vice president of the industrial arm of scandal-plagued Odebrecht. Though potentially damaging to his credibility, and efforts to shore up Latin America’s biggest economy, Faria’s allegation does not threaten Temer’s hold on power. As president, he has temporary immunity for anything that occurred before he took office last year. The accusation was made public on Wednesday as part of a rash of plea bargain deals by 77 Odebrecht executives caught up in a massive corruption scheme. Faria said he met with Temer in 2010 in his Sao Paulo legal office, together with former lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha and Congressman Henrique Eduardo Alves, all members of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). At the meeting, the payment was requested as a 5 percent levy on a contract Odebrecht was seeking from state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s for the maintenance of assets in nine countries, Faria said. Temer confirmed in a video statement posted on social media that he took part in a meeting with a company executive in 2010 but there was no talk of an illegal donation. “It is a lie that in that meeting I heard any reference to money or any shady dealings between the company and politicians,” the president said. Earlier on Thursday, Temer’s office confirmed in a separate statement he met with Faria in 2010 in the presence of Cunha for a “quick and superficial” meeting, but denied that Alves participated. Representatives for Alves and Cunha, who is in prison pending trial on other charges, could not be reached for comment. The testimony by Faria was among dozens of plea bargain testimonies released by Supreme Court Justice Luiz Edson Fachin. Based on the testimony, Fachin ordered investigations into nearly 100 politicians as part of the Operation Car War probe into billions of dollars in bribes and illegal kickbacks on contracts with state companies, particularly Petrobras. The allegations come as Temer is trying to push an overhaul of Brazil’s pension system through Congress, part of a business-friendly agenda that has sparked a rise in Brazil’s stockmarket and currency. Congress is due to start discussions of the reform next week. Some lawmakers on Thursday said the government would look to speed up the passing of reforms now that so many politicians were under investigation, but admitted that such a move might prove difficult. In his testimony, Faria alleged that, while Temer did not speak about any figures, Cunha made it clear that a payment was expected. “He explained that we were seeking a contract with Petrobras. A commitment that it would be signed would require a very important contribution to the party,” Faria said, adding it was clear that a bribe was being sought. Once the contract was won, the payment was made in cash in Brazil and to foreign bank accounts, Faria said. He said the PMDB took 4 percent of the value of the contract, leaving 1 percent for the left-leaning Workers Party of then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Odebrecht’s former Chief Executive Marcelo Odebrecht, currently jailed for his part in the Car Wash scheme, said in a separate plea bargain deal that he had made available $40 million to Lula. He said the payment was negotiated via a minister, not with Lula himself. Lula also denied any wrongdoing on Thursday while hinting that he was gearing up for presidential elections next year, despite five court cases pending against him related to Operation Car Wash. Elected as Brazil’s first working class president in 2002 and returned to office four years later, Lula is ahead in opinion polls for the 2018 vote. “I will fight if they let me fight and I will prove that this country can be happy again,” Lula said, adding that “plea bargains have to be proved.” Reporting by Pedro Fonseca in Rio de Janeiro; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Andrew Hay and Tom Brown

2016-06-10

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The National Basketball Players Association and the NBA need to study concerns – “in a meaningful way that produces real data” – that the grueling pace of the 82-game season poses a risk to players' health and safety before any major decisions can be made regarding protocol or shortening the season, NBPA Executive Director Michele Roberts said. Player health and the risk of injury has been a popular topic of discussion during recent NBA seasons but the discussion was reignited this week following an extensive report released by ESPN detailing player concerns about the lengthy season. Recently retired Lakers star Kobe Bryant said that with a more player-friendly schedule, fans would get a better show on the court: "We can give the fans a greater show. If guys were able to get more rest and were healthier and all this other stuff, you wouldn't have players sitting out games, back-to-backs and all this other shit," Bryant said. "So everyone would get a maximum performance because players would be extremely well-rested and coming in looking to kick ass every single night and looking to put on a show for [the fans] every single night. The product that the fans would get would be better." In an interview Wednesday afternoon in her office at the NBPA office in Manhattan, Roberts said she sympathizes with fans who buy tickets for games on a night when the star player happens to be sitting out for rest. "I can sympathize with those fans who buy that one ticket to see LeBron [James] play, and his coach, of course doing the right thing, gives him some rest. We need to figure out ways to not disappoint our fanbase, yet at the same time get players the rest they need," Roberts said. "I applaud all the efforts by reporters to keep the story going, but frankly, we need to get to the bottom of producing some real meaningful data that can help us reconstruct the parameters of our season." Roberts noted that the NBA — "with our blessing and cooperation" – has reduced the number of back-to-back games and 4-in-5 series, "so there have been efforts to do something about the rest." An extra day of rest has been added to this year's NBA Finals, something Roberts herself noticed as a necessity when flying back and forth between Oakland and Cleveland last year. "I went to all the Finals games last year and I was completely exhausted — and I was flying commercial! There have been efforts to try to build in more rest days and frankly it's because the players are saying, 'You're impacting the quality of our work.' And fans are demanding that they not go to games and not see the stars." Whether or not the NBA should shorten the 82-game season is something Roberts says she can not discuss because it "could be the subject of negotiation," but in a statement provided to ESPN, the NBPA said it would "continue to work with the league to identify potential modifications to the schedule to keep our players rested and healthy so they can perform to the best of their ability for their fans." "If we need to reduce the season," Roberts said Wednesday, "then everyone knows that impacts money, but let's do it." In an accompanying report, ESPN says, "The NBA has quietly been gathering mountains of injury data since the 2012-13 season, according to sources with direct knowledge." "In 2014-15, the league started working with Quintiles, a Durham, N.C.-based health-care company that focuses on data analytics and has recently worked directly with the NFL's medical committees. Quintiles' mission: break the data down." David Weiss, vice president and assistant general counsel for the NBA, told ESPN that "no trends have been discovered so far." Roberts says she believes the issue of player health and rest during the season is "actually one I think we're gonna work out," but adds, "I want to do it right. I don't want to do it and then realize that we are relying on anecdotal evidence."

2016-10-21

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SINGAPORE, Oct 21 (Reuters) - China’s dairy producer Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial plans to raise up to 9 billion yuan ($1.33 billion) in a share private placement to help fund a stake acquisition in a Hong Kong-listed company and various projects, including one in New Zealand. Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co Ltd’s plan comes as Chinese companies, such as Beingmate Baby and Child Food Co Ltd, widen their global footprint in the dairy sector. Inner Mongolia Yili plans to use 4.6 billion yuan of the total proceeds from the private placement to acquire a 37 percent stake in China Shengmu Organic Milk Ltd, it said in a statement on the Shanghai stock exchange on Friday. The rest of the proceeds will go into a production facility in New Zealand to produce baby milk powder, a milk products project in China, as well as logistics and R&D investments. Inner Mongolia Yili’s shares will resume trading on Monday, after a suspension since Sept. 19. $1 = 6.7630 Chinese yuan renminbi Reporting by Lee Chyen Yee and Meg Shen, editing by David Evans

2019-10-24 00:00:00

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If Jon Jones really wants a piece of Francis Ngannou, The Predator tells TMZ Sports he's 1 million percent down to clash with the UFC superstar!!! Of course, it's not that simple ... Jon's the light heavyweight champ and currently fights at 205 lbs. Francis is the #2 ranked heavyweight ... and negotiations haven't even gotten started yet. But, Ngannou says the bottom line is that he's game ... IF Jon's serious about moving up a weight class and actually signing on the dotted line. "Listen, let's be clear about something. If that's what you want to know, if I would fight Jon Jones if he goes up to heavyweight, of course. I would say the same thing as he says, it's inevitable if Jon Jones goes to heavyweight. I'm gonna fight him." Francis is referring to a tweet Jones sent Tuesday night ... when a fan asked him if he could ever imagine himself fighting Ngannou. Jones -- who recently said none of the light heavyweight contenders excite him -- responded ... "I feel like that fight is inevitable." During our conversation with Ngannou, he also revealed the UFC offered him a crack at Alexander Volkov on November 9 -- with only 18 days notice -- but says he rejected the fight 'cause he didn't have time to prep and fighting a lower-ranked guy didn't make sense. Greg Hardy -- who we spoke to about the match on Tuesday -- ultimately accepted the fight. While he waits, Ngannou -- coming off KO's of Curtis Blaydes, Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos -- is clearly frustrated with the UFC ... 'cause he thinks they're dragging their feet booking him a fight. "I just want to tell the UFC to pay me some respect and give me a damn fight, that's what I'm asking for. I was expecting to have a fight by December to make my Christmas and New Year for my family," Francis tells us. "Hey, man ... I need a fight. I need to make money." Cash ... well, a Jon Jones fight would make hella money.

2019-07-10

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezOmar says US should reconsider aid to Israel Pro-Trump Republican immigrant to challenge Dem lawmaker who flipped Michigan seat 3 real problems Republicans need to address to win in 2020 MORE (D-N.Y.) accused Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiJohnson eyes Irish border in Brexit negotiations Mueller report fades from political conversation Five key players in Trump's trade battles MORE (D-Calif.) of repeatedly singling out newly elected women of color in the House, saying that the veteran congresswoman's criticism has become "outright disrespectful." Ocasio-Cortez made the remarks in an interview with The Washington Post late Wednesday after a day of heightened tensions between Pelosi and House Democrats.  “When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Post. “But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color,” she added. The remarks came hours after Pelosi, at a closed-door meeting of the caucus earlier Wednesday, admonished her party for openly attacking one another over policy disputes. Pelosi has consistently dismissed some of the policies floated by the more liberal members of the caucus, most recently using a New York Times interview over the weekend to question the influence of four outspoken freshmen known as “the squad” — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Ocasio-Cortez.  “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she said to The New York Times. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.” Ocasio-Cortez, who has been outspoken on a bevy of issues since being sworn in, responded to the comment on Twitter on Saturday, saying, "That public 'whatever' is called public sentiment." "And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country," she added.  In a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday, Pelosi called on Democrats to stop taking public shots at one another, according to a source in the room.  “You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK,” Pelosi said.  Pelosi's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.  Ocasio-Cortez has reportedly been urged to talk with Pelosi, though she told the Post she isn't interested in doing so. Ocasio-Cortez's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill. The Washington Post, citing lawmakers who know both lawmakers, reported that Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez have not met for a one-on-one meeting since the New York lawmaker declined Pelosi's request to join a committee focused on climate change.  Pelosi reportedly called out Ocasio-Cortez for rejecting the offer during a private progressive caucus meeting just days later, according to the Post. The House Speaker has since made comments dismissing the Ocasio-Cortez-backed Green New Deal and Ocasio-Cortez's surprise primary win over former Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), the Post noted.  “The third and fourth time [she insulted me], it was like, ‘This is unnecessary, but I'm not going to pick a fight over it. Whatever, I’ll be the punching bag if that’s what they want me to be,’” Ocasio-Cortez said.  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.

2016-05-24 00:00:00

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(Adds Monsanto, UniCredit, Poste Italiane, SABMiller, Gecina, PSA; Updates Shanks Group) May 24 (Reuters) - The following bids, mergers, acquisitions and disposals were reported by 2000 GMT on Tuesday: ** Monsanto Co, the world’s largest seed company, turned down Bayer AG’s $62 billion acquisition bid as “incomplete and financially inadequate” on Tuesday, but said it was open to engage further in negotiations. ** The world’s largest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev gained EU antitrust approval on Tuesday for its $100 billion-plus acquisition of SABMiller on condition it sell almost the whole of SABMiller’s beer business in Europe. ** French commercial property group Gecina said it would maintain its offer worth at least 1.5 billion euros ($1.67 billion) for Fonciere de Paris (FdP) after the company’s biggest shareholder backed a lower rival bid. ** Aircraft components maker TransDigm Group Inc said it would buy ILC Holdings Inc from private equity firm Behrman Capital for $1 billion to expand its spare parts business. ** Cartier owner Richemont is in exclusive talks to buy a controlling stake in Italian jewellers Buccellati from local private equity firm Clessidra, two sources familiar with the matter said. ** A long-delayed deal between UniCredit and Santander to merge their fund management businesses has been put on hold as the Italian bank looks for a new CEO, four sources with knowledge of the matter said. ** Italy plans to transfer 35 percent of Poste Italiane to state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, strengthening ties between the two groups ahead of a possible new Poste share sale on the market, four sources close to the matter said. ** The French government is weighing a possible sale of part or all of its 14 percent stake in PSA, the maker of Peugeot, Citroen and DS cars, Les Echos reported. ** Unilever NV, Henkel & Co KgaA AG, L’Oreal SA and other companies have submitted first-round bids in the auction for OGX shampoo maker Vogue International LLC, people familiar with the matter said. ** Nissan Motor Co is considering selling its 41 percent stake in auto parts supplier Calsonic Kansei Corp to raise cash for research and development in electric cars and artificial intelligence, the Nikkei newspaper reported. ** South Africa’s Ascendis Health Ltd said it bought two European companies as part of its plan to expand globally and diversify its pharmaceutical products. ** Dubai Group is in the process of selling its stake in Shuaa Capital and is also obliged to divest its holdings in EFG Hermes and Bank Muscat this year, the chief executive of Dubai Group’s parent firm said. ** PTT Exploration and Production Pcl (PTTEP), Thailand’s largest oil and gas explorer, said on Tuesday it was keen to buy a stake in Yadana gas field in Myanmar from Chevron Corp. ** Papua New Guinea may challenge the $2.2 billion merger between Oil Search Ltd and InterOil Corp if they fail to comply with anti-competition procedures, the country’s corporate watchdog said. ** Creditors of struggling South Korean shipper Hyundai Merchant Marine Co Ltd have agreed to a 680 billion won ($570 million) debt-for-equity swap, lead creditor bank Korea Development Bank said. ** Britain’s Shanks Group Plc is considering a bid for Van Gansewinkel Groep BV, Benelux’s largest waste management company, for an undisclosed sum, the companies said. ** A Chinese investment group has bought a 65 percent stake in Italy-owned sports media rights group MP & Silva, one of the investors Beijing Baofeng Technology Co Ltd said in a filing on Tuesday. $1 = 0.90 euros Compiled by Subrat Patnaik and Kshitiz Goliya in Bengaluru

2017-04-06

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Rep. Maxine WatersMaxine Moore WatersF-bombs away: Why lawmakers are cursing now more than ever Banks give Congress, New York AG documents related to Russians who may have dealt with Trump: report Maxine Waters: Force us to ban assault weapons 'or kick our a--- out of Congress!' MORE (D-Calif.) says Fox News host Bill O’Reilly should face jail time if he sexually harassed women. “They have treated women very badly,” she told host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s “All In” late Wednesday while discussing O’Reilly and Fox News. "This really is a sexual harassment enterprise. They need to go to jail. Bill O’Reilly needs to go to jail. “It shouldn’t be in America that you can sexually harass women and buy your way out of it because you’re rich.” Reports emerged last Saturday that five women accusing O’Reilly of harassment received a total of $13 million for agreeing not to pursue litigation or discuss their accusations. The women, who were reportedly paid by either Fox News or O’Reilly himself, alleged complaints including verbal abuse, unwanted advances, lewd comments and indecent phone calls. More than 30 companies have since decided to pull their ads from “The O’Reilly Factor,” O’Reilly’s prime-time cable program. 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 in a Wednesday interview defended O’Reilly as a “good person” who should not have settled with his accusers. Waters said later that day that Trump’s support for O’Reilly is unsurprising, given the president’s past treatment of women. “Don’t forget [Trump] talked about grabbing women in their private parts, and because he was important he could get away with it. And so they are two of a kind,” she said. Last month, O'Reilly mocked Waters for wearing "the James Brown wig." "I love her," he said during an interview on "Fox & Friends." "Maxine Waters should have her own sitcom." He later apologized. 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.

2018-04-04 04:03:28

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When you’re a company as large as Google, you need to make build versus buy decisions every day, whether that’s buying a company or building the software or renting time on an undersea cable or building your own. Today, the company announced that it’s decided to build another undersea cable. This one will run from Japan to Guam and from Guam to Australia. That’s a lot of territory, approximately 9,500 KM or almost 6000 miles, and it’s a major undertaking. The company doesn’t take a project of this scope lightly, but they felt that it was in their best interest from an economic and technical perspective. The cable has been dubbed JGA and will connect up with the existing Hong Kong-Singapore-Australia cable to build a ring that covers the Asia-Pacific region. Map: Google Map: Google “JGA is being co-built by NEC Corporation and Alcatel Submarine Networks. The JGA-South segment is being developed by a consortium of AARnet, Google, and RTI-C, while the JGA-North segment is a private cable being developed by RTI-C,” according to a blog post on the published on the project today. The decision to build the cable came down to an economic decision related to the sheer scale of Google usage, says Vijay Vusirikala, principal engineer at Google, whose specialty involves undersea cables. It becomes much more cost-effective to build their own cables than it does to rent time on somebody else’s when you reach a certain usage level. “This is essentially building infrastructure at scale and with scale getting the optimization benefits,” Vusirikala explained. The parts of an undersea cable. Diagram: Google The parts of an undersea cable. Diagram: Google “We have been using existing cables to connect to the different parts of the region. This announcement is part of the series of investments [we are making] to get us to scale and improve economics, he added. Today’s announcement is really just the beginning of a project that could take well into next year to complete. It starts with building the cables in factories. The cables are built to last and withstand the conditions of lying in an ocean bed. Each cable contains fibre cables made of extremely high quality glass that can carry 100 terabits of traffic. To put that in perspective, Google says this is equal to 63,000 photos per second, or more than 650,000 simultaneous HD video streams. While that’s going on a team of experts will map out the optimal routes for the cable to have the least amount of latency, while taking into account the easiest way to lay the cable. It’s a balancing act. Eventually they put the cable on big spools, put the spools on ships and lay the cable in the sea bed. Each cable has a repeater ever 80 KM that pushes the signal further on its journey down the cable. Michael Francois from Google’s Global Network Infrastructure team says these cables are built to last, but they can break occasionally. “They generally don’t fail once they are put in. They are [designed] to sit there a long time. Generally when something happens — it could be dropping an anchor on it and breaking through armoring of the cable. If it does break, it needs to be repaired by ship,” he said. The project is part of a network of 300 cables worldwide. There has been an uptick in the number the last couple of years as cloud providers and hyper scalers like Facebook, Amazon and others require more connectivity across regions. __ This video explains how the cable makes it from factory to sea bed.

2020-03-19 00:00:00

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(CNN)President Donald Trump shrugged off responsibility for providing more medical equipment and gear to strapped hospitals combating coronavirus, saying Thursday there are "millions" of masks available to workers but that it was up to individual states to ensure they are well stocked amid the pandemic. His comments contrasted sharply to pleas from health care workers who are running out of surgical masks and fear there won't be enough ventilators to treat patients who contract the disease. And it came as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began advising nurses they could begin using bandanas or scarves as makeshift masks when treating patients with coronavirus -- guidance Trump said he was unfamiliar with and that came as a surprise to the White House when it was reported early Thursday. Increasingly defensive in the face of questions about his administration's response, Trump said his administration was scaling up its purchase of masks but that states would need to sort out who gets them. He said "nobody in their wildest dreams" would have anticipated the need for more ventilators, which hospitals worry may run short as more patients require them. Only a day earlier, Trump said he was signing a Korean War-era law allowing the government to force industry to scale up production of necessary equipment. But he later suggested he was wary of utilizing the Defense Production Act and wanted governors to act first. "Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work," Trump said. "The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items, and then shipping. We're not a shipping clerk." In a conference call with all 50 governors later in the day from the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Trump was pressed on approving block grants to states as well as on the issue of protective equipment and testing kits, both of which some localities have complained are in short supply. Trump was largely self-congratulatory in his responses and delegated substantive answers to Cabinet officials and Vice President Mike Pence, who advised the governors that unless their states are "in the middle of critical response" they should go through normal supply chains to obtain the needed equipment. The issue of shortages in essential supplies needed to treat coronavirus has emerged as a fresh challenge to an administration already under scrutiny for its slow response to the outbreak. Lawmakers and governors have urged Trump to use his executive powers to scale up production and individual physicians and nurses have pleaded for a new influx of supplies. "This is really for the local governments, governors and people within the state, depending the way they divide it up," Trump said. He added that if he determines there are shortfalls in essential supplies he would invoke the Defense Production Act. And he suggested questions about his willingness to do so were evidence of media bias. "You don't know what we've done -- you don't know whether or not we've ordered -- you don't know if we've invoked it. You don't know what's been ordered, what's not been ordered," he said, even though in a tweet on Thursday evening he wrote he would only invoke it "it in a worst case scenario in the future." Earlier in the day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Trump to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of needed equipment. "There is not a day to lose," she said. "We must put more testing, more protective equipment and more ventilators into the hands of our frontline workers immediately." Speaking in the same briefing as Trump, Pence said 35 million medical masks were now available to hospitals after an increase in production by Honeywell and 3M. He attributed the change to legislation signed this week that loosened liability regulations on mask makers, allowing the in-demand N95 model to be used in hospitals. "It's a very important change," Pence said. Still, Trump and Pence's efforts to cast a rosy glow over the coronavirus outbreak appeared to contradict reality as health care workers raise concerns about supply shortages. "The President may say that things are being produced, but they sure as heck are not showing up in my state or in the states of all of my colleagues across the country," Dr. Megan Ranney said on CNN shortly after Trump spoke. "We need those masks and gowns now." Asked about the discrepancy between his own assessment that "millions" of masks were available and the anecdotal reports of strapped hospitals, Trump couldn't answer. "I cannot explain the gap," he said. "I'm hearing very good things on the ground." During a meeting between Trump and a group of nurses at the White House on Wednesday, a large portion of the conversation revolved around securing more personal protection equipment for health care workers on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a person who was in the room. In the discussion, the President sought to understand why there would be a shortage in that equipment now as opposed to the regular flu season, the person said. After some explanation, the President seemed to understand the concept that the supply was not currently meeting the demand. The nurses in the meeting applauded Trump for signing the Defense Production Act, and were taken aback when it appeared later he wasn't planning to use it right away to scale up production of badly needed equipment. "When I saw it on the television," said Dr. David Benton, a nursing industry representative who was at the meeting, "I thought, it's somebody writing the stuff for him." "It was so disassociated from what he said this morning at the news conference and what he said to us," Benton said, describing the tweet as "not connected to where the President was." Benton, the CEO of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, said the need for more supplies was raised several times over the course of the meeting at the White House, both in terms of the need for more personal protective gear and for more ventilators. "The President did ask about ventilators in terms of how important they were," Benton said. Members of the group "described to the President how critical these are in terms of getting people back on the road to recovery." This story has been updated with additional reporting.

2019-03-12 00:00:00

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Chrome 73 has officially rolled out to all users today, bringing with it several new improvements, including the long-awaited dark mode for macOS. (“Windows support is on the way,” the release notes read.) Dark mode was first announced for Chrome last month, but today’s release has made it official. It works pretty much as you’d expect: if dark mode is enabled on your computer (see here for macOS and here for Windows 10), Chrome will automatically theme itself appropriately to match, in what essentially looks like the browser’s regular darker Incognito Mode menu bars. (Incognito Mode while using dark mode on Chrome looks virtually identical, save for a new icon in the menu bar.) It’s technically not the first time Chrome has offered dark or themed options — Google has offered themes for Chrome (including dark mode-esque styles) in the Chrome Web Store for a while, but today’s update makes it more official on a system level. So, instead of having to switch back and forth manually, Chrome will simply just respect whatever your native settings are. Conversely, if you aren’t a fan of Chrome’s new darker duds, you can use the Chome themes to flip your color scheme back toward a lighter style, which seems to be the only way to change the color back short of flipping your entire OS settings back to light mode. Correction, 7:16PM ET: It looks like Windows isn’t supported quite yet, contrary to what we originally reported — it’s Mac for now.

2017-01-19 00:00:00

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Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry emerged unscathed from his hearing Thursday to become the next Energy Secretary, contritely rescinding his pledge to dismantle the agency and reversing course on years of comments dismissing climate change science. Perry, who had a short-lived run early in the Republican primary for the presidency, sought to reassure senators that he now believed that global warming was at least partially due to manmade causes — a stance echoed by several Trump administration nominees in their hearings — and vowing to maintain the agency's extensive research operations. Perry spoke softly to senators who peppered him with questions on topics ranging from nuclear testing to natural gas exports to cybersecurity. But it was his opening statement disavowing his 2011 promise to eliminate the Energy Department — which he also made when he forgot the agency's name during his famous "oops" incident — that appeared to set the tone for the nearly four-hour hearing. "My past statements made over five years ago about abolishing the Department of Energy do not reflect my current thinking," he said. “After being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of Energy, I regret recommending its elimination.” That statement appeared aimed at the many energy committee members who fear Perry may slash funding for the agency’s network of 17 national labs and curb DOE's research into renewable energy and climate change. But it was also a public admission that he had little understanding of some the agency’s core missions: maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and the cleanup of old Cold War nuclear sites sprinkled across the country. Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee offered few sharp questions for Perry, who is not expected to face resistance in succeeding current Energy Secretary Ernst Moniz. And in a sign of the bipartisan acceptance of his nomination, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) who was also considered by President-elect Donald Trump for the position, introduced Perry to the committee, saying he would “excel” at the job. The occasional flare-ups that did happen were largely over climate change. Although Perry walked back from statements he made in 2011 alleging that “a substantial number of scientists ... have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects,” he declined to agree with Democrats and say that humans had a significant impact on global warming, and he said he woiuld seek action in ways that don't compromise the economy. Climate hawk Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) sought to draw Perry out on his climate beliefs, but Perry dodged by saying that it was “far from me to be sitting before you today and claiming to be a climate scientist. I will not do that.” “I don’t think you’re ever going to be a climate scientist, but you’ll be running the Department of Energy,” Franken replied. And Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed the nominee to agree that climate change is a “crisis,” to which Perry politely filibustered by repeatedly citing the reductions in carbon emissions in Texas during his 14-year run in the governor's mansion there. Perry also aired his support for more traditional Republican positions on fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil, which DOE has limited purview over compared to agencies like the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. But he also pledged under questioning to use the agency's research muscle to advance the technology to capture pollutants from coal. “The fact is, I am certain — I feel positive — that some scientist, some incredibly capable man or woman ... has technology to be able to use coal in a way that is friendly, that is appropriate," Perry said. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, gave Perry high marks for his performance. "He handled the array of questions before him, and did so with a level of honesty. I think he handled himself very well," she told reporters after the hearing. She has not yet scheduled a vote on the Perry's appointment. While Perry’s three immediate predecessors at DOE earned doctorates in science or engineering, Murkowski noted that that hasn't been the standard atop DOE. “One of the biggest challenges facing the secretary of energy is the management of a large and very complex organization, thousands of employees and tens of thousands of contractors,” she said, adding that she did “not subscribe to the view that only a scientist can manage other scientists.” Here are other highlights from Perry’s hearing: Mum on Budget Perry stopped short of denying that major budget cuts were coming for the Energy Department of Energy. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) asked Perry about a report in The Hill today that staffers working on President-elect Donald Trump's transition are planning major cuts to government spending, including eliminating DOE units like the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy, along with cutting nuclear physics research and super computing. "I can’t tell you whether that’s true or not. From my perspective, moving America forward on the computer side for instance, is incredibly important. I have no question that the Trump administration will keep America strong and free. Technologies at DOE will take a very important role. I’m going to be an advocate for that, for these kinds of things." Sen. Mazie Hirono pressed the point forward, asking how the administration could pursue an "all of the above" energy strategy with these budget cuts. "Maybe they'll have the same experience I had and forget they said that," Perry said, Perry disavows climate questionnaire Perry criticized a questionnaire the Trump transition team sent to the agency seeking to ferret out the names of employees who had worked on climate issues. "That questionnaire that you reference went out before I was selected as the nominee to sit before the committee," Perry told Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), top Democrat on the committee. "I didn’t approve it. I don’t approve of it. I don’t need that information. I don’t want that information. That is not how I manage. I have a history of working with people that find that challenges that face us." DOE has rejected the request, but it still alarmed rank-and-file bureaucrats in the department who feared the new administration was beginning a climate witchhunt. Franken and Perry's buddy act Franken welcomed Perry to the hearing by thanking him for their meeting earlier this week, quipping, “Did you enjoy meeting me?” “I hope you are as much fun on the dais as you were on your couch,” Perry replied, eliciting a pause from the Saturday Night Live veteran, who murmured "Well...," before Perry, realizing the image he'd just conjured, interjected "May I rephrase that, sir?” “Please. Please. Oh my lord. Oh my lord,” said Franken, laughing. “Well, I think we found our SNL sound bite," Perry said. Cyber security Perry also promised Cantwell he would work to protect the federal government from "cybersnooping." "I feel very certain ... that we have in our scientific laboratories and private sectors the fertile minds, the technology and the ability to stop the cybersnooping, or for that matter the intentions to do harm to our people," he said. Perry was trying to reassure Cantwell after she referenced comments Trump made during the campaign downplaying U.S. intelligence agency warnings that the Russian government had hacked emails from Clinton associates and that he hoped more hacks would come.

2018-05-04 00:00:00

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Synthetic opioids, some of the most potent drugs, were involved in close to half of all opioid deaths in 2016 and 30% of overdose deaths overall, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Between the lines: Prescription drugs had been the primary cause of overdose deaths — in 2011, only 6% of overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids. But now these more dangerous, often illicit drugs, primarily fentanyl, are driving the ever-rising overdose death toll. Be smart: While prescription and synthetic opioids have grabbed the most attention in headlines and from the administration, deaths involving heroin, cocaine and even psycho-stimulants are also on the rise. Go deeper: Opioid prescription rates dropping across the country.

2019-11-09 00:00:00

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Top economists say the economic effects of climate change are just starting to be felt — and they're likely to start snowballing. Why it matters: Wildfires, floods, and other natural disasters could harm the nation's financial backbone, damaging vital electronic payment systems, causing bank failures, and disrupting the economy in myriad unanticipated ways. Driving the news: The Federal Reserve — arguably the most influential economic body in the world — held its first-ever climate change research conference on Friday, where economists sounded the alarm about the toll the U.S. economy could face. Among the findings: Global GDP per capita could fall 7% by 2100 in the absence of climate change mitigation effects, according to a paper presented by Hashem Pesaran, an economist at the University of Southern California. If countries abide by the Paris Accord, that would bring that loss down to 1%, the paper said. Extreme heat impacts the productivity of workers. For each degree the temperature rises above above a daily average temperature of 59°F, productivity declines by 1.7% — a figure that Sandra Batten, a senior research economist at the Bank of England, cited in research presented Friday. The big picture, via Axios' Amy Harder: The Fed's attention to the problem stands in stark contrast to that of President Trump, who mostly ignores the topic. He started the formal process to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement this week and is working to repeal virtually every climate-related policy his predecessor pushed. The Fed event took place in California, where increasingly destructive wildfires have pushed the state's top utility into bankruptcy. And it provided some of the firmest evidence to date that global warming could finally become a core issue in monetary policy, potentially influencing Fed decisions about interest rates. "Early research suggests that increased warming has already started to reduce average output growth in the United States," San Francisco Fed president Mary Daly said at the gathering, which the regional bank hosted. "And future growth may be curtailed even further as temperatures rise." The backdrop: Compared with other central bank across the globe, the Fed has been slow to acknowledge the impact a warming climate could have on the health of the global financial system. This week, however, a lineup of Fed officials have been making amends: "The U.S. economy has experienced more than $500 billion in direct losses over the last five years due to climate and weather-related events," Kevin Stiroh, a top regulator at the New York Fed, said in a speech. Fed governor Lael Brainard, one of the most senior policy makers, told the conference Friday that the effects of a warming climate could have implications for the all-important "neutral" rate — the level where interest rates are neither stimulating or slowing the economy. Her comments mark the farthest a top Fed official has ever gone in tying monetary policy to climate change. Brainard pointed out that increased spending on air conditioning or higher insurance premiums could have implications for economic activity and inflation — key factors the Fed looks at when setting monetary policy. On the other hand: Fed chairman Jerome Powell, who did not attend Friday's conference, has been measured in his comments on climate change. And not all Fed officials are gung-ho to factor it in to monetary policy. "Although addressing climate change is a responsibility that Congress has entrusted to other agencies, the Federal Reserve does use its authorities and tools to prepare financial institutions for severe weather events," Powell said in an April letter to Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari told Axios in an interview last month: "It's a reach for me to see how climate change affects the economic cycle over the next three to five years." Go deeper: The rising seas global warming has already locked in

2019-07-31 20:00:00

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Fishing shades can often look like your grandfather's cataract sunglasses, but they don't have to.Smith Optics' Barra sunglasses ($169) are a subtle hybrid between utilitarian angler and out-and-about urbanite.I wore them on my boat, the trout stream, and while driving to see how they fared. They shined through it all.Any angler worth their quiver of fishing rods knows that wraparound frames are the best bet for saving your eyes, keeping the crow's feet to a minimum, and, yes, spotting your prospective catch. But, let's face it: There's no avoiding them being mistaken for Grandpa's cataract glasses. For just such reason, I keep a pair of much more muted shades in my car so that the second I'm off the water, I'm back wearing my more neutral Persols or Ray-Bans.But I don't always have room (or forethought) to bring a second pair of more stylish shades along on my outdoorsy exploits, where I've come to learn that a pair of wraparounds is a near-essential piece of apparel. Still, I also just like the idea of paring down my pile of gear a little. That being the case, I'm always keeping an eye out for shades that will do the trick fishing, but won't repulse my city-slicking friends (these New Yorkers, let me tell you ...).My hunt will likely never end, but this spring I've found a pair that comes close, and that's reason enough to rejoice. Smith's Barra sunglasses are primarily designed for fishing but will leave your street-faring comrades none the wiser. SpecsLike many wraparound sunglasses, the Barras have a lot of curvatures (six points, to be exact), and are equipped with Smith's patented ChromaPop technology, which, in lay talk, works to separate confusion between the way light passes information to our brains. If that confuses you as it does me, read here. But, to keep things simple: Fishing, and specifically sight fishing, requires a keen ability to separate shades (specifically between the colors blue, green, and red). Fish will often appear as just shadows, and even more often, slight variations in hue from the waters in which they live. Barras come in a classic Wayfarer style, and 11 different colorways, from mirrored orange lenses down to gray, smoky ones. While mirrored lenses are a dead giveaway for fishing glasses, they do wonders cutting glare, and are a compromise worth considering when buying a pair, depending on how much you plan on fishing with them. For me, it was a simple decision since I have a couple of other pairs, but if you're only going to go with one pair of shades this summer, consider carefully.The other sneaky little fisher-friendly feature on these shades is that, while they're not a wraparound, they do have a little edge which is unnoticeable to most but makes all the difference in catching not all, but a good portion of the stray light that enters your eyes from the edges of the frames.They're plastic lenses, so you'll have to be careful with them (they'll scratch more easily than good glass, like what you'd find in a pair of Costas), and clean them especially well (otherwise they're prone to delamination). But they're lightweight, and they're extremely technical (you wouldn't get that much curvature in glass lenses, at least not without paying dearly).And, if you require a prescription, they're amenable. My field notesI took the Barras (in Gravy, Copper, with a mirrored bronze lens) out fishing in several different conditions. First, they came along fly fishing on a bluebird day in New York's Catskill Mountains. Standing atop a bridge over a world-renowned trout pool, I stood with four other seasoned anglers (whom, I might add, are all decidedly better trout anglers and spotters than I), and I was the only one able to note a trout hugging the bottom of the stream. I wasn't getting any reflection at all like I normally do with non-mirrored shades. The mirrors, per usual on just about any pair of shades, were doing their job, but so were the little tabs on the slide of the frames that cut the stray light.Then I brought them out the next day, which held a mix of fog and overcast skies. They still worked, but weren't quite as effective. I might have ditched the mirrors for such a day, but then I was still impressed with how illuminated everything looked in contrast with how it did when I pulled them away. Green leaves were still popping with near fluorescence, and I kept feeling duped into thinking it was a much sunnier day than it was. It's nice to be able to see in Kodachrome when Mother Nature is edging on the drabber, almost black-and-white side of things.Finally, I took them out on the salt for sunset, between thunderstorms. We had low light, but it occasionally beamed through the clouds. Still not a hint of glare, and I could still see down into the murky estuarine waters as well as I ever could with any other polarized lenses.I guess I ought to tell you they're comfortable, too. Very comfortable. I find that when I'm wearing sunglasses for 10 or 12 hours, especially wraparounds, I'll start to get a headache from the temple pieces. Ingeniously, Smith Optics opted to put silicone tips on them so that they give a little, and don't hug your temples so firmly (they'll still stay on nicely, mind you). It's a nice, simple touch that goes a long way on a long day. They've also got automatic locking hinges so you don't have to worry about them wobbling or flinging off.All in all, these are geared toward brighter days, but they seemed to do the trick for me in all of the conditions I encountered last weekend. Oh, and when I got home to Brooklyn (where the hippest of the hip reside, don't you know), I even received not one but two compliments — something I can't recall ever having happened with even a single pair of fishing sunglasses before.The bottom lineIf you're going to be hopping out of the boat and into a bar and grill or some sort of social setting where style matters, these shades are the most neutral option for anglers that I've found yet. The mirrored lens is a little flashy once you're off the water, at least where my more subdued style sensitivities are concerned, but they make all the difference when you want to put them to work. Your only trouble now is in finding your own preference of colors.Pros: ChromaPop technology, prescription-friendly, lightweight, suitable in most lighting conditions, somewhat balanced style between outdoorsy and urban (in other words, they're not bug-eyed wraparounds)Cons: Not cheap (but certainly still reasonable), no option for glassBuy Smith Barras from Backcountry for $169Buy Smith Barras from Orvis for $169 Subscribe to our newsletter. Find all the best offers at our Coupons page. Disclosure: This post is brought to you by the Insider Picks team. We highlight products and services you might find interesting. If you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. We frequently receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising sales team. We welcome your feedback. Email us at [email protected].

2019-10-22 15:14:00

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Skincare brand Sunday Riley has reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission after the brand admitted to encouraging employees to write positive product reviews on Sephora’s website under fake names. In an official press release, Sunday Riley agreed to settle with the FTC after being charged with misleading customers after posting product reviews at the direction of the company’s CEO, Sunday Riley, and failing to disclose that those reviews were written by employees.  “Dishonesty in the online marketplace harms shoppers, as well as firms that play fair and square,” said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in an official statement. “Posting fake reviews on shopping websites or buying and selling fake followers is illegal. It undermines the marketplace, and the FTC will not tolerate it.” According to the settlement, the FTC prohibits Sunday Riley from engaging in “similar allegedly illegal conduct in the future” and is not requiring the brand to give “any refunds to consumers, forfeiture of profits or admission of wrongdoing,” a spokesperson for FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. But there are some who believe the brand should have faced a harsher punishment including Chopra and FTC Commissioner Kelly Slaughter, who both voted against the settlement and released a joint statement disagreeing with the FTC’s decision. “This settlement sends the wrong message to the marketplace,” they wrote. “Dishonest firms may come to conclude that posting fake reviews is a viable strategy, given the proposed outcome here. Honest firms, who are the biggest victims of this fraud, may be wondering if they are losing out by following the law. Consumers may come to lack confidence that reviews are truthful.”  PEOPLE has reached out to Sunday Riley for comment. Last year a former Sunday Riley employee shared an email with the subject “Homework time – Sephora.com Reviews” on a Reddit thread titled, “[PSA] Sunday Riley Employee: We Write Fake Sephora Reviews,” which ignited the controversy. In the email, the brand’s employees were told to write “at least” three reviews over the course of two weeks to support the launch of Sunday Riley’s Saturn Sulfur Acne Treatment Mask and Space Race Fight Acne, Oil + Pores at Warp Speed Kit. “I’m sharing this because I’m no longer an employee there and they are one of the most awful places to work, but especially for the people who shop us at Sephora, because a lot of the really great reviews you read are fake,” the ex-employee wrote of the brand, which was founded in 2009 by Houston entrepreneur Sunday Riley. “We were forced to write fake reviews for our products on an ongoing basis, which came direct from Sunday Riley herself and her Head of Sales. I saved one of those emails to share here. Also, check out the glassdoor reviews for Sunday Riley, the ones that we weren’t asked to write, anyway, which are ACCURATE AF.” In the email, employees were told what product details to include in the reviews. “Credibility is the key to the reviews! When reviewing Saturn please address things like how cooling it felt, the green color, the non-drying mask effect, radiance boosting, got rid of your acne after a couple uses.” The story went viral once the anonymous Instagram account @esteelaundry, which shares beauty industry gossip, posted the news of the Reddit thread. Shortly after, Estee Laundry posted a comment from Sunday Riley’s Instagram account, in which the brand admitted to posting the fake reviews. “As many of you know, we are making an effort to bring more transparency to our clients. The simple and official answer to this Reddit post is that yes, this email was sent by a former employee to several members of our company,” the comment read. “At one point, we did encourage people to post positive reviews at the launch of this product, consistent with their experiences. There are a lot of reasons for doing that, including the fact that competitors will often post negative reviews of products to swing opinion. It doesn’t really matter what the reasoning was. We have hundreds of thousands of reviews across platforms around the globe and it would be physically impossible for us to have posted even a fraction of these reviews.” The brand concluded the statement by saying, “Client word-of-mouth, sharing how our products have changed their skin, has been the cornerstone of our success. In the end, our products and their results stand for themselves.”

2018-06-07

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(Repeats to additional subscribers with no changes to text) By Suvashree Choudhury MUMBAI, June 6 (Reuters) - India’s central bank on Wednesday tweaked an obscure old rule relating to the valuation of state government securities, a move that market insiders warn could pile more pain on state-run banks laden with bad debt. The Reserve Bank of India said investors in state government bonds will now have to value this debt at market prices, and not at a fixed mark-up that was allowed for years. The RBI move came as a surprise to bond traders who now warn that they expect the already slack demand for government debt to weaken further and drive up government and corporate bond yields even more. The RBI announced the measure at its monetary policy meeting, where it raised the repo rate to 6.25 percent, its first in more than four years. For years, the RBI had allowed investors in state government securities to value these holdings at a fixed markup of 25 basis points above the corresponding central government security. Given the spread between state and central government bonds is much higher than 25 basis points, this has allowed banks, to an extent, to mask actual trading losses, especially in recent quarters as yields have risen sharply on securities. “The state government bond valuation rule was used to hide the overall mark-to-market losses of banks,” said Ashish Vaidya, executive director and head of trading at DBS Bank in Mumbai. “Now no such window dressing will be allowed, which means that banks will no longer buy these state bonds, which will push up yields, even for central government securities and corporate bonds,” said Vaidya. He expects India’s benchmark 10-year bond yield to rise above 8 percent in the next few weeks as this move is likely to “cripple demand”, he added. The move is a body blow to state-run banks already reeling under bad loans and large trading losses following a rise of more than 50 basis points in yields since the fiscal year started in April. In a bid to soften the blow however, the RBI allowed banks to spread overall bond trading losses for the current June quarter over the next four quarters. This extends a similar concession banks received in the March quarter. The RBI also relaxed rules to allow banks to qualify a larger share of their bond holdings toward their liquidity coverage ratios, in a measure set by the Basel committee. “The negative impact of the state government valuation rule will outweigh the combined positive impact of the changes to rules around spreading out bond trading losses and liquidity coverage ratios, and that, too, at a time when there is already so much pain in the market,” said a senior bond trader who declined to be identified. (Reporting by Suvashree Dey Choudhury Editing by Euan Rocha and Clarence Fernandez)

2019-12-08 00:00:00

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MUMBAI (Reuters) - At least forty-three people were killed in India’s capital New Delhi on Sunday when a fire swept through a six-storey factory where laborers were sleeping, government officials said. The factory was making handbags and lots of raw material was stored inside the building due to which the fire spread quickly, local media reported. However, no details were immediately available on the cause of the fire. “Till now we have rescued more than 50 people, most of them were affected due to smoke,” Atul Garg, an official with Delhi Fire Services told reporters. Nearly 30 fire tenders were rushed to the spot and injured were admitted in four nearby hospitals, he said. The factory was operating in a congested residential area. “Have instructed concerned authorities to provide all possible assistance on urgent basis,” Amit Shah, India’s home minister, said in a tweet. The fire was doused and a team of National Disaster Response Force was searching the factory to find out if any more people were trapped, a police official told Reuters. The Delhi state government will conduct a probe and action will be taken against those responsible for the fire, Imran Hussain, minister of food and civil supplies, told reporters. Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Himani Sarkar

2018-06-27 20:03:02

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It was a drop of good news about the world’s oceans: The Belize Barrier Reef, the largest barrier reef system in the Northern Hemisphere, has been removed from the United Nations list of endangered world heritage sites. Unesco, the world body’s educational, scientific and cultural agency, said its heritage committee voted Tuesday to remove the reef from its list of threatened sites because it no longer faced immediate danger from development. “In the last two years, especially in the last year, the government of Belize really has made a transformational shift,” said Fanny Douvere, the coordinator of the marine program at Unesco’s World Heritage Centre. United Nations officials initially cited “mangrove cutting and excessive development” as the main concern when the reef was added to the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2009. They have also expressed concern about oil exploration. Since then, the Belize government has imposed a moratorium on oil exploration around the reef and implemented protections for coastal mangrove forests. Experts cautioned, though, that the long-term danger to the world’s reefs from climate change remains real. “The primary threats are all still there,” said John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The big one, of course, is ocean warming.” The world’s largest coral ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef, has been hit hard by rising temperatures in recent years. An underwater heat wave in Australian waters two years ago spurred a die-off of coral so severe that scientists say that reef will never look the same again. Scientists say they have observed signs of coral bleaching on the Belize reef. Bleaching occurs when unusually warm water causes the corals to lose plantlike organisms that help keep them alive. In 2015 and 2016, almost a quarter of the corals off the Belizean coast were affected by bleaching, according to a report by the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, an organization that monitors reefs. If most of the world’s coral reefs die, as scientists fear is increasingly likely, some of the richest and most colorful life in the ocean could be lost, along with income from reef tourism. In poorer countries, lives are at stake: Hundreds of millions of people get their protein primarily from reef fish, and a reduction of that food supply could become a humanitarian crisis. Australia successfully demanded that a chapter detailing damage to the Great Barrier Reef be cut from a 2016 Unesco report on threatened heritage sites so that it would not affect tourism. The Belize Barrier Reef system, which extends roughly 200 miles, was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1996. The system is made up of a series of coral reefs, cays and islands, many of which are covered with mangroves. Despite covering less than a thousandth of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to more than a quarter of marine fish species. The state of reefs is considered an important indicator of the overall health of the seas.

2016-02-01

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As we barrel toward the first contest of the 2016 primary season, the candidates are criss-crossing the state to corral last-minute support for what promises to be a close fight on both sides. Donald Trump attended a church service yesterday in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he attempted to put some cash in the Communion plate. “I thought it was for offering,” he said, laughing. Ted Cruz tried and failed to hug his daughter, while his rally in Des Moines was disrupted by a man who pretended to vomit in a trash can while yelling, “Ted Cruz looks so weird!” Marco Rubio, who is running in third place in Iowa, is trying to build some Rubio-mentum, not for the first time this campaign season. The other candidates in the establishment crab bucket—Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and John Kasich—will be spending the night in New Hampshire, an indication of where they think their fortunes lie. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is deploying the mayor of New York City to knock on doors in Iowa. “[T]he first response was, they don’t need more surrogates in Iowa, they’ve got plenty,” Bill de Blasio told the Times. “I said, fine, you know, I’ll go wherever you want.” Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, told his supporters this weekend to come out in force and “make the pundits look dumb,” which they’ll certainly manage to do on their own, with or without a Bernie revolution.

2018-06-28 16:57:13

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Fact Check of the Day In a wide-ranging campaign speech, the president spread inaccuracies on health care, the steel industry, military spending and Representative Maxine Waters. President Trump mounted a case for electing more Republicans to Congress in November with misleading attacks on Democrats and exaggerated boasts of his achievements at a campaign rally in Fargo, N.D., on Wednesday night. He was in Fargo to stump for Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican, who is trying to unseat the state’s Democratic senator, Heidi Heitkamp. During the speech, Mr. Trump warned that Ms. Heitkamp would vote against his nomination to replace Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who had announced his retirement from the Supreme Court on Wednesday. (Ms. Heitkamp voted for his previous Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch.) Mr. Trump also updated his familiar stump speech — and its repeated inaccuracies — with a few new claims. Here’s a fact check. what was said “We just came out with the association plan, which is phenomenal. Millions and millions of people are signing up.” the facts This month, the Trump administration announced a new rule that would allow small businesses to join together and set up association health plans. But Mr. Trump is counting his enrollees before the plans hatch. Under the rule, association plans will not be offered until at least Sept. 1, so it is impossible that “millions and millions” have already enrolled under the rule. The association plans may not have to provide “essential health benefits” that the Affordable Care Act requires for individual and small group market plans. These benefits include coverage for maternity care, mental health care and prescription drugs. As a result, the new plans could be cheaper and lure younger, healthier people away from Affordable Care Act marketplaces, driving up costs for those plans. The Congressional Budget Office projected that about 4 million people would enroll in these association health plans by 2023. Avalere, a health consulting firm, estimated that 3.2 million would enroll by 2022, up from an initial enrollment of 130,000 by 2019. what was said “Maxine. She’s a beauty. I mean, she practically was telling people the other day to assault. Can you imagine if I said the things she said?” the facts Mr. Trump is embellishing remarks made by Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, and falsely suggesting he has not urged physical violence himself. At a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, Ms. Waters urged those who are opposed policies that result in the separation of immigrant children from their families to confront top Trump administration officials. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” she said. “And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Mr. Trump’s supporters have interpreted her use of the term “push back” as violence, but Ms. Waters has denied calling for harm and argues she only sought peaceful protest. (For what it’s worth, the White House itself has used “push back” numerous times in reference to, among other things, California’s immigration laws, criticism of the C.I.A. director, and reporting from The New York Times). Mr. Trump is wrong that he, himself, has never encouraged violence. During the 2016 campaign, he urged his supporters to “rough up” protesters, lamented the “old days” when protesters would be “carried out on a stretcher” and explicitly told supporters to “knock the crap out of them.” what was said “United States Steel is opening up six plants through expansion, and new.” the facts Mr. Trump announced that he would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in March. But since then, the United States Steel Corp. has not announced the opening of a single new plant, let alone six. The company has announced that it would restart two blast furnaces at a plant in Granite City, Ill., one in March and the second in June. Mr. Trump may have been referring to each individual component of the steel-making process at Granite City as its own plant, an analyst explained to the Washington Post Fact Checker, but those parts are not new either. what was said “The Democrats are always fighting against funding for the military, and funding for law enforcement.” the facts Mr. Trump signed into law a $700 billion military spending bill into law in December — and most Democrats voted for it. Those who voted against the bill in the Senate included three Republicans, four Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. In the House, 63 Democrats voted against the bill, but 127 Democrats supported it. OTHER claims Mr. Trump also repeated numerous claims that The New York Times has previously debunked: He falsely said Democrats “want open borders and crime” (most Democrats have voted for border security measures). He wrongly asserted that Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, “wants to protect” the gang MS-13 (she has not said that). He exaggerated the number of MS-13 members who have been deported as in the “thousands” (this is not possible). He misleadingly claimed to have “already started” to build a border wall (construction has not begun). He exaggerated the United States’ trade deficit with the European Union as $151 billion (it’s $101 billion). He falsely claimed that the European Union does not import American cars (it does). He falsely boasted that wages are rising “for the first time in 22 years” (they’ve been rising for several years). And he claimed to have “saved our family farms and our small businesses by eliminating the estate tax” (the tax affected only about 80 small businesses or farms last year). Source: Timothy Jost, Department of Labor, Federal Register, Congressional Budget Office, Avalere, The New York Times, YouTube, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post Fact Checker, congress.gov, United States Steel Corporation website

2017-10-05

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Rep. Diane BlackDiane Lynn BlackBottom line Overnight Health Care: Anti-abortion Democrats take heat from party | More states sue Purdue over opioid epidemic | 1 in 4 in poll say high costs led them to skip medical care Lamar Alexander's exit marks end of an era in evolving Tennessee MORE (R-Tenn.) is not ready to give up her gavel just yet. The chairwoman of the House Budget Committee, who is running for the Tennessee governor’s mansion, had been expected to step down from the committee after the budget’s passage on the House floor, planned for Thursday. “I’m focused on getting this budget as far as we can get it, and obviously off the floor is the next step in the process, and then it will have to go to the conference committee,” Black told The Hill in an interview at her Capitol Hill office.  That process could take weeks, as the Senate is scheduled to mark up its budget in committee Thursday and expected to bring it to the floor two weeks later. If budget chairs are included in negotiations over a final spending deal for the year, which has a Dec. 8 deadline, Black could choose to stick around longer. She also said she remains undecided as to whether she will vacate her seat ahead of the August GOP primary for governor, where she faces a crowded field. Black is one of the top candidates in the deep-red state, where she’s running against candidates like state House Speaker Beth Harwell and businessman Randy Boyd. But a recent poll found no candidate above 10 percent in the primary. For all the work Black has put into moving the budget forward, it may be bittersweet to see it progress to its next phase, where much of its policy will be diluted or eliminated. Democrats will insist on having their say on final spending legislation, which will require at least eight Democratic votes in the Senate. That will render the House budget’s spending plan as little more than a starting position in negotiations. Its other major provision, $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts to bring down the deficit over a decade, has little chance of passing in the Senate, though Black said she intends to push for it. “I, of course, would like to see the form of our mandatory spending in that resolution, I think that’s an important thing for us to do as we look at the growth, we also ought to be looking at our spending,” she said. Without those elements, the budget’s main purpose is to pave the way for tax reform, something House Speaker Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanEmbattled Juul seeks allies in Washington Ex-Parkland students criticize Kellyanne Conway Latina leaders: 'It's a women's world more than anything' MORE (R-Wis.) made explicit this week. “The reason we’re bringing the budget up this week is because we want to pass tax reform,” he said. The budget unlocks a process called reconciliation, which Republicans plan on using to pass tax reform to bypass threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. Rather than cut the deficit by $203 billion, the Senate version calls for carving out $1.5 trillion in increased deficits to fund the tax cuts. It appears likely to be adopted in the conferenced budget. On the tax plan, Black, who also sits on the Ways and Means Committee, pushed back on analyses that say some middle-class taxes would go up. “I don’t plan on having a plan that does that, our committee does not plan on having a plan that does that. I think you have to look at what the dials are. You don’t even have the income brackets on yet,” she said. But she also resisted the notion that the plan would offer most of its benefits to the wealthy by dropping the top income rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent and scrapping the estate tax. The latter now only applies to families with estates larger than $5 million. “No decision has been definitively made on [the top rate], whether that will be what is done or not,” she said, though she was adamant that the top rate should not increase beyond its current point to finance the tax plan. Looking toward Nashville, Black is working to shore up her conservative base. She declines to suggest who might replace her Senate colleague, Bob CorkerRobert (Bob) Phillips CorkerTrump announces, endorses ambassador to Japan's Tennessee Senate bid Meet the key Senate player in GOP fight over Saudi Arabia Trump says he's 'very happy' some GOP senators have 'gone on to greener pastures' MORE (R-Tenn.), who said he will retire after his term ends in 2018. Likewise, she has no suggestions for who might take her congressional seat or take the budget gavel. Following the Sunday night mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest in modern American history, she toes the Republican line on gun control. “It’s mental illness that is the root cause of these atrocities,” she said. When pressed on why the U.S. has such disproportionate levels of gun death — guns are 10 times more likely to kill Americans than people in other developed nations, according to a study by the American Journal of Medicine — she did not waver. “I think if you look at other countries … they have deaths from other things that we don’t necessarily have high deaths in. So let’s just take a look at what’s happening in Europe, where there have been tragic instances over there, it wasn’t with weapons, it was with cars. So are we going to take all the cars away?” she said, referencing terror attacks in Europe, where terrorists have killed dozens of people driving vehicles into busy crowds. “If you look back at the tragedies that we have had where there have been mass murders, it has been people that had mental illness, and after the analysis is done — we see in almost all of those cases, whether it was the one up in Connecticut, or whether it was the one in Virginia — that people would say that person had mental illness. The person who shot Steve ScaliseStephen (Steve) Joseph ScaliseManchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms Sunday shows - Trump's Epstein conspiracy theory retweet grabs spotlight Sanders: Trump doesn't 'want to see somebody get shot' but 'creates the climate for it' MORE had a mental illness,” she continued, referring to her House colleague who was shot in June and recently returned after months of rehab. The position will resonate in Tennessee, where a majority of voters oppose gun control measures. Black is hoping that her ability to usher through a budget, one she calls “the most conservative budget in over 20 years,” will resonate as well. 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.

2017-08-25

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U.S. authorities on Thursday accused a Chinese national visiting the United States of providing malware that has been linked to the theft of security clearance records of millions of American government employees. Yu Pingan of Shanghai was arrested on Monday at Los Angeles International Airport after a federal criminal complaint accused him of conspiring with others wielding malicious software known as Sakula, a Justice Department spokesman said on Thursday. The complaint said the group attacked a seried of unnamed U.S. companies using Sakula, the same rare program involved in U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hacks detected in 2014 and 2015. The filing did not mention the OPM hacks. The arrest could provide information on the OPM hacks which U.S. officials have blamed on the Chinese government. In an FBI affidavit linked to the complaint, an FBI agent said he believed Yu provided versions of Sakula to two unnamed men that he knew would be used to carry out attacks on the firms. Yu's court-appointed attorney, Michael Berg, said Yu was a teacher with no affiliation with China's government. "He says he has no involvement in this whatsoever," Berg said, adding that Yu came to Los Angeles for a conference. The Justice Department and San Diego FBI declined to comment further. The court filings said Sakula had rarely been seen before the attacks on U.S. companies and Yu knew the software he was providing would be used in the hacks carried out between 2010 and 2015. Though the victims are not named, some companies appeared to be in the aerospace and energy industries. Adam Meyers, vice president at U.S. security firm CrowdStrike, said software flaws and one of the internet protocol addresses cited in the complaint matched up with attacks on a U.S. turbine manufacturer, Capstone Turbine, and a French aircraft supplier. Meyers said Sakula could be used by multiple groups, but that all of the known targets would be of interest to the Chinese government. The OPM breach was a subject of U.S.-China talks, and the Chinese government previously told American diplomats it had arrested some criminals in the case. Yu remains in jail pending a court hearing on his detention next week.

2016-02-22 00:00:00

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London (CNN)He is one of the the country's most popular and eccentric politicians and excels when it comes to hosting satirical television shows -- but Boris Johnson has ducked out of the race for prime minister of the United Kingdom. Never one to shy away from the camera or shoot from the lip, the former mayor of London was a serious contender to replace David Cameron as leader of the UK. All eyes were on Johnson after Cameron announced he would be resigning after the UK voted to leave the European Union. But a week after Britons voted for Brexit, Johnson announced he would not be entering the race for leader of the Conservative Party. A leading voice in the Leave campaign, Johnson said in a press conference on Thursday that the Brexit vote was "our moment to stand tall in the world". But added: "Having consulted colleagues and in view of the circumstances in Parliament, I have concluded that person cannot be me." Known almost exclusively by his first name, or his nickname, "BoJo," the idiosyncratic Conservative is routinely labeled a reckless loose cannon by his critics. Biographers have likened Johnson's appearance, tousled blond mop and all, to a "human laundry basket" or a "haystack on a bicycle." Public gaffes He is well known for making gaffes in public and was forced to apologize for racist comments after referring to black people as "piccaninnies" in 2008. But while popular during his eight years as mayor, presiding over the London 2012 Olympics and introducing his successful cycling program, he was met with a chorus of boos and jeers when he left his home in London on Friday. The Leave campaign triumphed with 51.9% of the vote to win by 1,269.501 votes, with turnout at 72%. "I think he has earned his place on the shortlist," Johnson's father, Stanley, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview where he defended his son's campaign, despite backing the Remain vote. Top job Johnson was mayor of London from 2008 until May this year where he re-entered Westminster as a member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. By disposition, the Oxford-educated former journalist is a "maverick -- a man who can't see an apple cart without wanting to overturn it," said Andrew Gimson, author of a biography on the 52-year-old. "He's not an old-style 'Euroskeptic' who takes his own tea bag with him when he gets on the channel ferry to go to some place full of ghastly foreigners. "He's very good at putting the moderate case and speaking of having a relationship with Europe -- he just doesn't want Europe to be telling us what to do." 'Intellectually more capable' Johnson, said Gimson, "undoubtedly considers himself to be a great deal more gifted" than Cameron. "I think he feels the clock ticking -- he's two years older than Cameron. If he doesn't have a crack ... now, he's unlikely to ever get a better opportunity." To Gimson, Johnson's sense of his greater abilities stems back to their school days, where the mayor developed a dazzling intellectual reputation. "I think he feels intellectually more capable. Here is a man with a knowledge of Latin and Greek who actually reads books for pleasure," he said. Johnson outshone Cameron for years -- first at Eton, then Oxford, and then as The Daily Telegraph's Brussels correspondent. Johnson quickly became an influential voice for his Euroskeptic writings, "lobbing bricks over the wall and hearing the crash of glass on the other side." He went on to become editor of British magazine The Spectator. By contrast, Cameron made his professional name working as a political insider "totally unknown to the general public." Signature style It was also during his schooldays that Johnson began to develop his signature performance style -- one that has become a hallmark of his public appearances. "He realized it was more amusing to give a performance which wasn't immaculate and where you sometimes appear to forget your lines than to do something smooth and immaculate." Johnson is said to muss his mop of blond hair before public speeches, giving him his trademark unkempt appearance, and is not afraid of being laughed at -- or even of appearing buffoonish. In 2012, in a promotional appearance for the London Olympics, he rode a zip-line only to become stuck, dangling comically in his suit with a British flag in each hand. Pictures of the malfunction went global. In Gimson's estimation though, Johnson succeeded in upstaging Cameron during the Games, London's big moment on the international stage. "Boris is not really a team player," he said. "He's a leader, and either his party and the country will accept him as leader, or he'll be in the wilderness."

2017-08-04

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A small number of U.S. forces on the ground are assisting an operation to clear an area in central Yemen of al Qaeda fighters. Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis told some reporters Friday that the United States is providing surveillance, aerial refueling, close air support and a small number of ground troops for a joint U.S.-United Arab Emirates operation to clear al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) from its remaining pockets in central Yemen, according to multiple reports. Asked for confirmation of Davis’s comments, another Pentagon spokeswoman said in an email to The Hill that she “can confirm we are supporting regional partners in ongoing operations in Yemen against AQAP to degrade the group’s ability to coordinate external terrorist operations and use Yemeni territory as a safe space for terror plotting.” The Pentagon’s acknowledgement comes after the United Arab Emirates' embassy in Washington announced the operation, including U.S. involvement. The operation is being led by Yemeni forces, but “is being closely supported by a combined UAE and US enabling force,” according to a statement from the embassy attributed to Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba. “The UAE is participating in this operation as part of a broader Arab coalition,” the statement said. “Today’s action continues the coalition’s sustained counterterrorism mission in Yemen against AQAP, in order to disrupt the terrorist organization’s network and degrade its ability to conduct future attacks.” AQAP has long been described as the most dangerous of al Qaeda’s branches. The U.S. military ramped up airstrikes against the group after President Trump gave the military expanded authority to conduct such strikes without high-level approval from the White House. Since February, U.S. forces have carried out more than 80 airstrikes against AQAP. U.S. forces have also conducted at least two ground raids there during the Trump administration, including the controversial Jan. 29 raid that resulted in the death of Navy SEAL Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens and a number of Yemeni civilians. 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.

2017-05-27

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CANNES, France (Reuters) - Roman Polanski, whose 1960s films “Repulsion” and “Rosemary’s Baby” focused on women in mental torment, returns to the same theme in a film that screened at Cannes on Saturday to mixed reviews. “Based on a True Story” stars Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner as Delphine, a successful author who makes friends with an overly-keen fan Elle, played by Eva Green, in a relationship that quickly takes on elements of “Single White Female”. The French-Polish Polanski is still unable to make films in the United States since fleeing the country in 1978 due to fears that a plea bargain with prosecutors over his sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl would be overruled. But he has continued to have a successful career and remains active at 83, securing a premiere for “Based on a True Story” in an out-of-competition slot at Cannes. “I have never made a film where there are two principal female characters – it’s always a man and a woman, or two men,” Polanski told a news conference of his French-language movie. “Here two women oppose each other. It’s fascinating. There are elements that I dealt with in my first films and I was interested to come back to that type of cinema.” Polanski cast Eva Green - who is French but made her career in English-speaking movies, including in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royal” - as a character who switches from best friend to violent stalker and back and could ultimately be a figment of Delphine’s imagination. “You are always asking, does she exist? Doesn’t she exist? And that is a real challenge for an actor - to try to put some flesh on that character,” Green said. “Is she a ghost? That’s the question.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Deborah Young praised “Based on a True Story” as “a masterfully made psychological thriller in the traditional mode”, but Nathalie Simon in Le Figaro called it “grotesque, predictable and funny - not a good sign for a thriller”. Editing by Gareth Jones

2017-07-10 19:45:00

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Even as plus-size clothes become more widely available, plus-size jewelry has been virtually unheard of — but that's changing. Plus-size clothing brand Universal Standard is launching a jewelry collection on Tuesday, July 11, Mic reports. The silver necklace, choker, bracelet, earrings, and rings are designed to fit around and lay elegantly on larger bodies. "The most basic problem [with mainstream jewelry] is just that it doesn’t fit," Universal Standard co-founder and creative director Alexandra Waldman told Mic. "Regular jewelry isn’t made to scale. This is a line of jewelry that is meant to look native on a bigger body. The longer necklace falls exactly as it should on a longer body. The rings fit. The jointed choker always lays flat on the chest, and can be worn on a larger neck really beautifully." This isn't the first jewelry of its kind. Ashley Nell Tipton's "wide-fit jewelry" collection, ASOS's plus-size jewelry, and Torrid's jewelry for plus-size women are geared toward wider circumferences. Still, there's a long way to go before plus-size people can accessorize the same way straight-size people can. Man Repeller's visual manager Emily Zirimis explained that while there's some great minimalist plus-size jewelry out there, she'd like to see bigger, more fun pieces. Waldman explained to Mic that the reason we're finally starting to see this jewelry is that plus-size people are demanding that the fashion industry take them into account. "I think that unless you are a person experiencing it, you don’t know it’s a problem," she said. "It’s been going on for so long, but I think plus-size women are waking up to the power of speaking about it. For a very long time, we were taught that you get what you deserve for being bigger. Your lack is a state of being in response to a bigger body. But I think with everything happening right now, it’s turning on its ear. We want to be able to make things for this woman that straight-size women have had for years." Related Video:

2018-06-14 15:16:56

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RIGA, Latvia — A trade war with the United States looms. Populists have taken power in Italy, posing a new threat to the euro. Growth is sluggish, and there is even talk of another banking crisis. It would not seem the ideal time to put the brakes on Europe’s economy. But that is what the European Central Bank is preparing to do. For more than a decade, the central bank unleashed a wave of cash to stimulate growth, effectively saving Europe from the wrenching consequences of its debt crisis. The bank said Thursday that the era of easy money was over, and outlined plans to completely remove its support by December. In essence, the bank is declaring the region cured, or at least strong enough to stand on its own. It is signaling that it doesn’t want to be in the business of saving politicians from themselves or responding to every dip in growth with a new dose of stimulus. And it is under pressure to remain in sync with a crucial trading partner after the United States Federal Reserve raised its main interest rate on Wednesday. What will happen next is uncertain, because the European Central Bank has pumped unprecedented amounts of money into the economy. There may be unpleasant surprises: think real estate bubbles, more wobbling banks or a surge in bankruptcies. “It’s not the right time,” said Zsolt Darvas, a monetary policy expert at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. “If you look at what happened in the last few quarters, everything became more disappointing.” That may be an understatement. In addition to a slowdown in growth, Italy is gripped by political turmoil after populists took power on an anti-euro platform. Trade relations with the United States are at their poorest in decades, and most likely will get worse as Europe plans punitive duties on an array of American products as retaliation for President Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum. And Deutsche Bank, one of the region’s most important lenders, is in crisis. In countries like Italy, there lurk an unknown number of so-called zombie companies — businesses that have avoided bankruptcy only because of low interest rates and tolerant banks. A rise in interest rates could prompt a mass collapse of those weak companies. Some economists are even resurrecting the word “stagflation” — a dreaded condition in which inflation rises at the same time that growth stagnates. The region’s residents would face the prospect of paying more for everyday goods even as their wages stayed the same. The European Central Bank’s Governing Council, which met in the Latvian capital of Riga on Thursday, largely dismissed those concerns. The council set out a timetable for ending the most important element of its stimulus efforts by the end of the year. The central bank will cut stimulus in half after September, and end it altogether after December. In a concession to those who think it is being too hasty, the council said it would not raise its benchmark interest rates until after the summer of 2019. By historical standards, money will remain cheap. Still, those decisions mark a clear change of direction. Since 2015, the European Central Bank has been handing money around in a way possible only for an organization that has a license to print it. It bought almost 2.5 trillion euros, or $3 trillion, in debt that had been issued by not just governments, but all manner of public utilities, breweries, grocery chains, consumer goods conglomerates and automakers. In effect, the bank became the world’s biggest bond fund. The point was to flood financial markets with so much cash that companies and governments would have to pay little or no interest to raise money. And the strategy worked. Interest rates fell so low that, for a time, blue-chip companies could borrow money essentially for free. Real estate prices recovered. In countries like Germany and the Netherlands, shops and restaurants are desperately trying to find workers because the labor market has bounced back so strongly. Growth in the eurozone in 2017 was the best since 2007, before the financial crisis. But early this year, warning signs started to appear. Factories reported fewer orders, and Mr. Trump issued a threat — since carried out — to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from Europe. On Thursday, the European Union’s member states unanimously backed a plan to impose import duties on €2.8 billion worth of American products. The new disruptions to trade have unsettled businesses. Companies like ABB, a supplier of power equipment based in Zurich, or Voestalpine, an Austrian maker of steel components for the auto industry, have had to pay more to deliver special steel alloys to their American subsidiaries. The specialized steel is not available from United States suppliers, they say. Now, the 19 countries that share the euro must face these challenges with substantially less central bank support. Economists at the Swiss bank UBS estimated that the bond-buying program has added 0.75 percentage points per year to economic growth since 2015. Put another way, that means the central bank was responsible for about a third of the growth rate last year. The central bank’s own estimates are more modest, but not by much. That means vulnerable countries could be in for a shock when the bank takes the money away. One of the biggest risks is Italy. Its national debt is among the highest in the world. Italy’s new government includes leaders who have talked of leaving the euro. Growth is meager, and unemployment is 11.2 percent, more than three times the rate in Germany. Central bank support has provided reassurance to investors that Italian government bonds are a safe bet. But that confidence is fickle. The market interest rates on Italian debt spiked during chaotic attempts in recent months to form a government of two populist parties. They fell only after leaders tempered their rhetoric about resurrecting the lira. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, is no stranger to Italy’s issues — earlier in his career, he was the highest-ranking civil servant in the Italian Finance Ministry. He indicated on Thursday that the bank would take action only if there were signs that problems in Italy were spreading to other countries. “We certainly monitor financial markets carefully, but so far we haven’t seen contagion,” Mr. Draghi said during a news conference in Riga. Mr. Draghi also acknowledged that trade tensions with the United States had worsened considerably. Disruption of the world trade order could “create very serious damage,” he said. As insurance against such risks, the central bank kept its options open. The end of quantitative easing depends on “incoming data,” the central bank said in a statement. Mr. Draghi suggested that bond purchases could be ramped up again if needed. But his clear message was that the European Central Bank will not be thrown off course by the machinations of populist politicians, a few months of unsettling economic data or threats by Mr. Trump to impose duties on German cars. “We have taken these decisions knowing that the economy is in a better situation,” Mr. Draghi said. In the same breath, though, he betrayed a trace of doubt. There is also, he added, “increasing uncertainty.”

2018-06-16

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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 has just slapped a 25 percent tariff on about $50 billion worth of Chinese products. His complaint is that China imposes significantly higher tariffs on the U.S. than the U.S. imposes on China. According to the World Trade Organization, the president is correct.  Trump has been relentless in his assertion that China and other nations, including the G-7 countries, are taking advantage of the U.S. For example, in a recent tweet he wrote: “If we charge a country ZERO to sell their goods, and they charge us 25, 50 or even 100 percent to sell ours, it is UNFAIR and can no longer be tolerated. That is not Free or Fair Trade, it is Stupid Trade!”  It’s worth noting that we don’t actually “charge a country” to sell their products in the U.S. A tariff is a tax the U.S. government imposes on U.S. residents if they buy a foreign product or service.   When other countries impose higher tariffs and barriers on U.S. products and services, that action makes our products and services less attractive or less available to foreign consumers. That’s why Trump thinks the U.S. trade deficit is so large. One doesn’t have to be a protectionist to realize the president has a point. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. imposes, on average, lower tariffs than our closest trading partners. The WTO’s interactive map highlights the “simple average applied MFN tariff” (Most Favored Nation) of various countries.  One reason for developing a WTO-type averaging is tariffs are so varied and complicated. A country may have high tariffs on some products — as Canada imposes on dairy imports — and either very low or no tariffs on many others. For example, President Trump complains that the E.U. imposes a 10 percent tariff on U.S.-made cars, while the U.S. imposes a 2.5 percent tariff on foreign-made cars. But Trump never mentions the 25 percent tariff the U.S. puts on foreign-made light trucks. And yet Americans buy twice as many trucks as cars, magnifying the impact of the 25 percent foreign-made truck tariff. So Trump’s point that our trading partners impose higher tariffs and more restrictions than we do appears to be correct, according to the WTO. And those higher tariffs could discourage foreign consumers from buying U.S. products, exacerbating the trade deficit. Trump’s trade representatives have been trying to persuade other countries to lower their barriers to level the trading field, which is the right solution. But the president insists that effort has been unsuccessful and so is responding by raising U.S. tariffs. Many economists correctly argue that a trade deficit is not a good indication of how the U.S. economy is doing — especially given that the U.S. trade deficit tends to rise when the economy is strong.  Some also argue that eliminating our barriers to trade is good for U.S. consumers whether other countries lower theirs or not. For example, both Singapore and Chinese Hong Kong impose virtually no tariffs or trade restrictions on other countries, according to the WTO.  Interestingly, Trump proposed eliminating all tariffs and trade barriers among the G-7 nations. It’s not clear that any of the G-7 leaders took him seriously, but they should. Nor is it clear that removing all trade barriers would eliminate the U.S. trade deficit. At best, it would likely only reduce it. The problem for Trump, and it’s a problem endemic among Republicans, is that they are the worst marketers in the world. If Trump is serious about getting other countries to lower their trade barriers against the U.S., he should be highlighting the WTO assessments. That puts facts in front of the public, not just accusations. Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews. 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.

2018-05-08

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The potential for a war between the United States and North Korea will deepen if the upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un fails, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned Tuesday. Retired Adm. Mike Mullen told Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies he is “encouraged by the fact that the two leaders are going to talk" and gives Trump “a lot of credit for moving the needle on this.” But Mullen, who served as the top military officer under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said he worries that Trump’s public tone on North Korea in recent months — including "casually threatening a nuclear holocaust over Twitter” — spells trouble if the summit does not succeed. "If the talks do fall apart, the failure is likely to stir the president’s most bellicose and aggressive instincts," Mullen predicted. “Rhetorically, President Trump has already walked all the way out to the edge of the cliff. There’s not much further he can go. ... I don’t know if I can fully convey to you how shocking it is to hear the commander in chief talk about nuclear weapons with such nonchalance.” He also expressed deep doubts that the North Koreans can be trusted to live up to any deal. “Most of us who have spent a lifetime working on national security remain a bit skeptical," Mullen said. "We need to plan for the likelihood that even if the talks seem to be productive, the North Koreans have no intention of honoring their word.” Mullen also insisted there is no military solution to the standoff, even a limited attack on some of the North's military facilities — or the so-called bloody-nose attack that the White House has reportedly considered. “It’s a strategy we’ve considered in the past as well. The problem is, in my judgment, the risk is through the roof,” Mullen said. “We have no reason to believe Kim Jong Un will respond to a bloody nose by backing down," he said. "It is just as likely, if not more so, that we will respond by drawing blood on our side, too" — with missile strikes on South Korea “at a minimum.” Mullen added of Kim: “Even as he seeks recognition from the United states, he is fully convinced we are on a mission to take him out.”

2018-07-16 00:00:00

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BRUSSELS, July 16 (Reuters) - Short-term rental website Airbnb has breached EU consumer rules by depriving consumers of their basic legal rights, the European Commission said on Monday, as it gave the company an August deadline to propose changes or face enforcement action. Some of Airbnb’s terms and conditions and the way it presents its prices violates the bloc’s unfair commercial practices directive, the unfair contract terms directive and the regulation on jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters, the EU executive said. “Airbnb has now until the end of August to propose detailed solutions on how to bring its conduct in compliance with EU consumer legislation,” the Commission said. It said Airbnb should make it clear whether accommodation is offered by a private individual or a professional, provide details of the price with in a clear way and modify its terms of service so that they will be fairer to consumers. Airbnb and similar rental platforms, which help homeowners to rent out their homes or even rooms for short periods of time, have grown in popularity in recent years because of their competitive prices versus hotels. Critics however say the practice is driving up property prices and contributing to a housing shortage in Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and other big cities. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee)

2018-11-04 00:00:00

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MILAN (Reuters) - Two families were killed in the same house in Sicily when the torrential rains and high winds lashing Italy caused a river to burst its banks, drowning the nine people inside. Rushing water filled the villa in Casteldaccia in the province of Palermo in moments, wiping out the families who were spending Saturday night there. A father and his daughter escaped harm because they had left the house to do some shopping while a third person climbed a tree to survive. The tragedy brings the number of people killed in Sicily this weekend to at least 12 after three other people died in their cars when hit by torrents of water. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte spoke of “an immense tragedy” during a visit on Sunday to affected areas in Sicily. He said a cabinet meeting would be convened this week to declare a state of emergency and come up with the first package of aid for areas affected. Heavy rains and gale-force winds have battered Italy for several days, uprooting millions of trees and cutting off villages and roads. Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said deaths caused by the wave of bad weather stood at 17, excluding the fatalities in Sicily. Some of the worst damage has been recorded in the northern regions of Trentino and Veneto. On Saturday the governor of Veneto, Luca Zaia, said storm damage in the region amounted to at least a billion euros. During a visit on Sunday to badly-hit areas in the north, Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said 250 million euros ($285 million) had already been earmarked for relief. He said the government would be asking to use special EU funds. Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister, said a rough estimate of how much it would cost to safeguard Italy against such events was 40 billion euros. Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Catherine Evans and Adrian Croft

2017-02-09 00:00:00

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Feb 9 (Reuters) - Fastighets AB Balder: * Sells all properties in Tranås, Falköping, Arboga and Köping * Balder’s sales exceed book values by about 130 million Swedish crowns ($14.7 million) Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: ($1 = 8.8752 Swedish crowns) (Gdynia Newsroom)

2019-04-02

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Beer Sheva, Israel (CNN)Israel is voting in an election on Tuesday that's gearing up to be as defining for the country as it is challenging for its prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu -- who was the country's youngest prime minister when he was elected in 1996, and now hopes to become its longest serving -- faces his toughest electoral challenge in 10 years. It comes in the shape of Benny Gantz, a former Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who has gathered together a "blue and white" alliance, named after the colors of the Israeli flag. By its very nature -- a collection of centrist and center-right political parties that includes no fewer than three former IDF chiefs of staff -- the alliance presents a substantial challenge to the man who has dominated and reshaped Israeli politics for the past decade. Having three military heavyweights lined up against him makes it harder for Netanyahu to play the security card that has served him so well for so long. And that means the Blue and White Party could prove acceptable to some of Netanyahu's current right-wing coalition partners. For now, Gantz's alliance is leading in the polls, and given that Netanyahu is fighting this time not only for his political life but potentially for his own legal protection, the battle looks set to be a bitter and personal one. But don't count him out just yet -- this is a man who has connected deeply with a large chunk of Israeli society. In the southern Israeli town of Beer Sheva, where nearly 40% of people voted for Netanyahu's Likud party at the last election, the streets are full of posters that read: "Davka Netanyahu." "Davka" translates roughly as "because of" -- meaning these posters are urging people to vote for the Prime Minister not in spite of the corruption charges, but, rather, because of them. It is a reflection of the Prime Minister's strategy of portraying himself as the victim of a left-wing, media-led conspiracy aimed at evicting Likud from power. In Beer Sheva, the message seems to resonate. On our tour of the local market, both sellers and shoppers alike stopped us to tell us "Bibi forever" and "only Bibi." As Naftali Cohen, a local retiree, put it, "I have voted Likud all my life. Netanyahu takes care of our security and economy." "People need to understand that if they want to compete against him they have to find a rival of his stature. But there is no one in his league. No one that can replace him," Cohen said. True to form, Netanyahu used his rallying speech in the town last month to lay into the opposition and the media. "The left may have the media," he told the small but passionate crowd, "but we have the people." He accused his opponent, Gantz, of being a leftist disguised as a centrist -- a harsh insult in the current Israeli political climate, and one designed to scare off any right-wing parties toying with the idea of forming a government with Gantz's party after the election. In turn, his supporters shouted back a clear and enthusiastic message: "Bibi -- the King of Israel!" Clutching a Likud campaign poster, Marlene Malachi told us at the rally, "after seeing all the Israeli leaders I can proclaim that Netanyahu is a legend." The 73-year-old went on to tell us everything the Prime Minister had done for her town. "You should look at pictures of Beer Sheva 10 years ago and today -- it's unbelievable what he has achieved," she said. Others at the rally felt Netanyahu's strength went deeper, to the core issue of Israeli identity. Liav Cohen told us he had always voted Likud, and always would. "It's like family. We don't always agree, but we stick together," he said. It is that strong emotional connection that is likely to raise the stakes as election day approaches. Some even couch things in biblical terms. Ahead of the rally, Beer Sheva's deputy mayor likened Netanyahu to Moses. Shimon Boker said the Prime Minister's legal challenges -- he faces indictment on bribery and breach of trust, pending a final hearing -- served only to fire up the base. Netanyahu -- who has denied any wrongdoing -- will only come out of it stronger, Boker said, quoting the Old Testament: "The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread." Even so, the question is whether Netanyahu can get first the votes he needs at the ballot box, and then the support he needs from his likely coalition partners. If he fails on either front, Israel could be heading for a generational political shift, and one that could have consequences far beyond the country's borders.

2018-11-06 00:00:00

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On an election night where the results are mixed for Democrats so far, there’s one bright spot to celebrate: Ayanna Pressley just won an uncontested race in Massachusetts’ 7th congressional district, becoming the first Black woman to represent the state in its history. During the primary, Pressley handily beat 10-term Democratic incumbent Mike Capuano, where she won 58.6 percent of the vote. Prior to her campaign, Pressley had served as a member of the Boston City Council since 2010, where she was the first Black woman ever elected to a seat. With her “Change Can’t Wait” slogan, Pressley sought to energize voters by challenging the status quo, which is no small task in a place with such deeply entrenched politics as Boston. In fact, the seat Pressley will inhabit was once held by President John F. Kennedy. “This is not just about resisting and affronting Trump,” she told supporters earlier this fall. “Because the systemic inequalities and disparities that I’m talking about existed long before that man occupied the White House.” Despite drawing early comparisons to New York congressional upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley has worked in politics for years. She interned for Representative Joe Kennedy II in college and later in her career and then worked for former Secretary of State and presidential candidate John Kerry in various capacities over the years. Much of her work on the Boston City Council revolved around helping women and families in the city by decreasing violence and poverty and increasing economic opportunities and safety. By the looks of it, her progressive priorities will stay the same when she goes to Congress. “Today, we are powerful,” she tweeted a few hours before her race was called. “There are only a few hours left to get out the vote. Go #vote for progressive candidates who will fight for equity & justice. Vote for activist leaders who will work in and with community. Vote, because this is your democracy & your voice matters.”

2017-01-05

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Senate Democrats are demanding that House ethics officials investigate HHS nominee Rep. Tom Price’s health care stock trades as a member of Congress. Price traded more than $300,000 in shares in about 40 health care companies while working on health care legislation over the last four years, the Wall Street Journal reported last month. The trades could raise conflict- of-interest concerns. Price, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run HHS, is expected to play a key role in dismantling the Affordable Care Act if confirmed. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats at a press conference Thursday morning demanded that the House Office of Congressional Ethics — which Republicans tried to gut earlier this week — investigate Price. “President-elect Trump’s pick for HHS traded hundreds of thousands of dollars in health-related stocks while a senior member of Congress [writing legislation that could] impact those very companies’ stock prices," Schumer said, adding that Price is “likely to have made tens of thousands of dollars on one of those trades alone." Schumer, joined by Patty Murray and Ron Wyden, said they had no evidence Price had insider information when making the trades, but said there is enough fodder to demand a thorough investigation before holding a hearing on the nomination. According to his House financial disclosures, Price purchased several stocks — including pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Biogen, Gilead Science, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Libby and Amgen — on March 17 of last year, just nine days after the Obama administration announced plans for a major demonstration project that the industry opposed. The following month, Price sponsored a bill to repeal the demonstration. Murray met with Price on Wednesday but declined to say how he addressed the issue. Their discussion, she said, "is part of why I believe so strongly today that this needs a serious investigation by the OCE. We all have a right to hear him, not just [in] a private meeting." Trump’s transition team, which accused Democrats of trying to divert attention from Obamacare, argued that other Senate Democrats have also traded health care stocks. “Hypocrisy is apparently alive and well this morning in Washington,” said Trump transition spokesman Phil Blando in a statement. "The same questions being raised today by Sen. Schumer about Dr. Price should be directed to Sens. Carper, Warner and Whitehouse, who own and have traded hundreds of thousands of dollars in pharmaceutical and health insurance company stocks." Tom Carper and Mark Warner sit on the Senate Finance Committee, which would have to approve Price's nomination. Sheldon Whitehouse is on the HELP Committee, which is also slated to hold a hearing on Price. Warner's stock holdings have been managed by an independent trustee since before he became governor in 2002, according to a spokeswoman. Whitehouse spokesman Rich Davidson said the senator does not direct his trading and blasted the Trump team for "looking for any excuse to distract the American people from its nominees’ records, including hinting at debunked claims and baseless accusations.” Carper's wife owns the health care stocks, according to the disclosure documents. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), a Finance Committee member from Price's state, called the Democrats' request for an ethics inquiry a "petty partisan attack." "I met yesterday with Tom, who personally assured me that he has gone above and beyond to fully comply with federal laws and ethics rules," he said. Several Democrats previously voiced concerns over Price’s nomination because of his support of repealing Obamacare and significantly changing Medicare.

2017-11-07

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A former foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump's campaign has acknowledged in testimony to Congress that he had contact with a high-level Russian official while on a trip to Russia last year, according to a transcript released Monday. Carter Page, an unpaid advisor who left the campaign before Trump was elected, told the House intelligence committee last week that he "briefly said hello to" Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich when he traveled to Russia for a speech. Under repeated questions about the contact — which he had at times denied in the past — Page said that he had spoken to Dvorkovich after his July 2016 speech at Moscow's New Economic School. "It was a very brief interaction. It was some nice pleasantries. I cannot recall the precise words I said, but it was sort of best wishes, and, you know, that's about it," Page said in response to several questions about the contact. The testimony was part of the committee's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether it is linked to Trump's campaign. Page's trip raised questions just as the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation into the Russian meddling in the summer of 2016, and he has offered contradictory accounts about whom he met there — at one point telling The Associated Press that he hadn't met with Dvorkovich. But his testimony on Thursday was under oath. Page was interviewed in March for several hours as part of the FBI probe, before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to take it over. Page wouldn't answer questions about his contact with Mueller. The House panel released the transcript as part of its agreement with Page, who was subpoenaed by the committee in early October. Parts of the transcript are redacted, even though lawmakers started the discussion by saying it would be unclassified. Page told the panel he had informed some members of the Trump campaign about the Russia trip, including then Senator Jeff Sessions. He said he mentioned in passing to Sessions, who is now attorney general, that he was preparing to visit Russia and Sessions "had no reaction whatsoever." The testimony could raise more questions about the extent of Sessions' knowledge about interactions between Trump campaign aides and Russians. Sessions recused himself from overseeing an investigation into the Trump campaign in March after acknowledging two previously undisclosed conversations with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign. Since then, Sessions has downplayed his own knowledge about communications between campaign aides and Russian officials and intermediaries. Page has insisted — and continued to insist in the interview — that the trip was personal and not campaign related. However, the committee produced an email during the interview in which Page wrote to campaign officials and asked them to let him know "if you have any reservations or thoughts on how you'd prefer me to focus these remarks," apparently referring to the speech he was giving in Moscow. He also suggested that Trump take his place at the speech — a suggestion that appeared to go nowhere. In a statement prepared for the committee, Page insisted that he had no personal information that the Russian government or anyone affiliated with it played any role in the 2016 presidential campaign. He said he was not approached by anyone during the trip who led him to believe they were planning to interfere in the election. Under questioning at the hearing, Page depicted himself as an unpaid member of a campaign foreign policy team that met infrequently and provided him with no direct access to Trump. "I have never met him in my life," Page said of Trump. "I've been in a lot of meetings with him, and I've learned a lot from him, but never actually met him face to face." Page said he had no direct relationship with the Russian government, though he conceded that he may have spoken with different Russian government officials over the years. At another point in the interview, Page was asked about his relationship with George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor whose guilty pleas to lying to the FBI about his foreign contacts was unsealed last week. Page said he had "very limited" interaction with Papadopoulos and suggested that the last time he had seen him was in June 2016 at a dinner he said was organized by Sessions, who at the time was a prominent Trump campaign aide and supporter. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the committee's top Democrat, pressured Page on what he suggested were inconsistencies in his testimony and past statements. He noted how Page told the committee that he had met only one Russian government official during his July 2016 trip to Russia, and yet had told campaign officials in email that he had received valuable insights from legislators and senior members of the Russian presidential administration. "Are you being honest in your testimony?" Schiff asked. "Because it doesn't seem possible for both to be true." Page said the insights he was referring to were based on materials he had read in the press, "similar to my listening to President Trump in the various speeches that I heard of his."

2018-03-02 00:00:00

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President Donald Trump is threatening a “trade war,” and labor unions — traditionally allied with the Democratic Party — seem ready to enlist. Trump announced Thursday that he would soon impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. “Our steel industry is in bad shape. IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!” the president tweeted Friday. There are still many details left to work out in Trump’s proposals, which he said he intends to sign next week. The uncertainty contributed to a dip in the stock market and threats from foreign countries of retaliatory tariffs. But even the general proposals almost immediately scrambled the traditional partisan battle lines with the administration taking criticism from Republicans and conservative business allies while drawing praise from labor unions and some Democrats. “I’m very supportive of what the president has done,” Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who has a lifetime 98 percent rating from the AFL-CIO and may run for president in 2020, told VICE News. “What China has been doing is bullshit. They’re cheating, they’re subsidizing their product.” Read: Trump just called out Republicans for being "petrified" of the NRA President Donald Trump is threatening a “trade war,” and labor unions — traditionally allied with the Democratic Party — seem ready to enlist. Trump announced Thursday that he would soon impose a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. “Our steel industry is in bad shape. IF YOU DON’T HAVE STEEL, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY!” the president tweeted Friday. There are still many details left to work out in Trump’s proposals, which he said he intends to sign next week. The uncertainty contributed to a dip in the stock market and threats from foreign countries of retaliatory tariffs. But even the general proposals almost immediately scrambled the traditional partisan battle lines with the administration taking criticism from Republicans and conservative business allies while drawing praise from labor unions and some Democrats. “I’m very supportive of what the president has done,” Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, who has a lifetime 98 percent rating from the AFL-CIO and may run for president in 2020, told VICE News. “What China has been doing is bullshit. They’re cheating, they’re subsidizing their product.” Read: Trump just called out Republicans for being "petrified" of the NRA The AFL-CIO’s President Richard Trumka and the United Steelworkers’ (USW) President Leo Gerard also applauded Trump’s proposals. “For too long, our political leaders have talked about the problem but have largely left enforcement of our trade laws up to the private sector,” Gerard said in a statement. “Now, we need to work to finalize the design of relief and implement it.” As unions have dwindled over the last several decades to now representing just 6.5 percent of private sector workers, they have increasingly felt that Washington-- including the Democrats -- isn't doing enough to halt the decline of their industries, especially manufacturing. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA—something Trump brought up a lot to attack Hillary Clinton during election season — and allowed China into the World Trade Organization, union leaders across the country point out. And Barack Obama negotiated and tried to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership which stoked a backlash on the left led by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Rep. Ryan criticized Trump for not rolling out the proposals in an organized fashion, but said the moves were long overdue and he thought Barack Obama should have been more aggressive on trade and preserving America’s steel industry. “I wish [Obama] would have. You can’t just be getting advice from the global bankers and expect to make the best decision on behalf of the country,” Ryan said. Trump has been a consistent critic of American trade policies going back to the 1990s, when he claimed Americans were being ripped off and jobs were leaving. It was a theme he returned to repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2016, which is likely one reason that 43 percent of union households voted for him despite the national organizations endorsing Clinton, according to exit polls. It was the best performance with union households by a Republican presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. Read: Bernie Sanders' son is running in one of the most contested congressional districts in the U.S. Trump was expected to continue peeling off union support from the Democratic Party during his presidency with a focus on trade and infrastructure spending. But he has largely focused his first year on more traditional Republican proposals such as tax reform and repealing Obamacare. As such, conservatives have largely supported Trump’s legislative agenda and unions have been increasingly critical. Until now. Republicans in Congress and conservative allies described Trump’s proposed tariffs as a tax on consumers that could quickly spiral into a harmful trade war. CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, an occasional Trump adviser, said that the tariffs could cause a “major calamity” and Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said that “[y]ou'd expect a policy this bad from a leftist administration, not a supposedly Republican one." Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan criticized the proposed tariffs as an artificial subsidy of one industry at the expense of all Americans. One detail left to be sorted is whether allies like Canada, Germany, and Mexico will be exempt from the tariffs. While China is the go-to talking point for supporters of steel tariffs, the United States actually imports more steel from Mexico, Canada, and Brazil. Gerard and Ryan both said they believed Canada ought to be exempt since the country has high labor standards. “Our workers can compete on a level playing field, but they can’t compete when China is intentionally undermining our industrial base,” Ryan said. There is also worry among some of the Trump’s trade supporters on the left that the president will go too far and be too aggressive even with allies. That apprehension increased with Trump’s Friday-morning tweetstorm that claimed “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Ryan disagreed. “Trade wars aren’t good,” said Ryan. Follow Alex on Twitter @AlxThomp

2019-04-25 05:40:00

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Shopify is expanding its efforts in brick-and-mortar retail with the launch of its new retail hardware collection. The company is best-known as a platform for building online stores, but it also offers point-of-sale software for physical stores, and it launched a credit card reader a couple of years ago. With the new collection — which includes a redesigned Tap & Chip Reader, as well as the Dock and Retail Stand — Shopify has created a more comprehensive solution for offline retail. Chief Product Officer Craig Miller told me that Shopify is taking advantage of an “industry-wide trend,” where online retailers hit a “tipping point” and realize that “the next step to scale your business is opening an offline store.” He pointed to bedding and home decor company Parachute as an example — after all, Miller and his team were demonstrating the hardware in Parachute’s New York City store. He suggested that Shopify’s biggest advantage is the ability to bridge a retailer’s online and offline businesses — among other things, allowing them to track all their inventory in one place, or to offer customers the ability to order a product online and pick it up in-store. “Consumer expectations are just going through the roof,” Miller said. And while these kinds of capabilities “might be available at some of the larger stores, when you think about smaller retail, they don’t have access to that enterprise stuff. We’ve been able to create one package that does it all.” A bit more about the hardware itself: The Stand allows retailers to mount and charge a tablet, which can also swivel across a counter to allow the customer to check out. The Tap & Chip Reader, meanwhile, has been redesigned to fit in with the rest of the new hardware lineup, and it can be mounted and charged on the Dock. The whole setup can be placed on a traditional checkout counter, or simply carried and used around the store. As a shopper, the experience might feel similar to paying at one of those familiar Square stands and card readers. While Miller didn’t mention Square specifically, he acknowledged that Shopify isn’t the first company to create this kind of product. “We’ve always been a believer that first-to-market is not always the winner,” he said. “Just as a company, we’re philosophically inclined to taking our time just to understand what the market is looking for, to challenge some assumptions — like whether there even needs to be a checkout counter.” The new hardware can be purchased individually or in a combined retail kit that costs $229. Shopify is bringing Apple’s latest AR tech to their platform

2018-11-05 00:00:00

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Nov 5 (Reuters) - Britain's Lloyds Banking Group Plc will cut around 6,000 jobs, Sky News reported here on Monday. The jobs cuts would come from a broad range of areas across the bank, including its group transformation division, corporate banking, retail and community banking activities, Sky News said, citing sources. However, the bank will announce on Tuesday that it will also create about 8,000 new jobs, meaning a net creation figure of 2,000 jobs, the report said. (Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Adrian Croft)

2020-02-28 00:00:00

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SEOUL (Reuters) - Hyundai Motor (005380.KS) shut down a factory in South Korea on Friday after a worker tested positive for the new coronavirus, disrupting production of popular models such as Palisade sport utility vehicle. Shares of the automaker ended down more than 5% after the news, while the wider market .KS11 was down 3.3%. The closing dealt a fresh setback to Hyundai Motor, which has gradually resumed production at local plants hit by a Chinese parts shortage in the wake of the virus outbreak. South Korea has the most infected people outside China, affecting companies like Samsung and Hyundai. South Korea on Friday reported 256 new cases, bringing the total number of infected to 2,022, as the world prepared for a global recession. “The company has also placed colleagues who came in close contact with the infected employee in self-quarantine and taken steps to have them tested for possible infection,” Hyundai Motor said in a news release. The company added that it was disinfecting the factory. It did not say when production would resume. Ulsan is less than an hour from Daegu, the epicenter of outbreak in Korea. Hyundai operates five car factories in Ulsan, which has an annual production capacity of 1.4 million vehicles, or nearly 30% of Hyundai’s global production. Hyundai employs 34,000 workers there in the world’s biggest car complex. The factory that was shut down produces sport utility vehicles such as the Palisade, Tucson, Santa Fe and Genesis GV80. A factory run by Hyundai supplier Seojin Industrial had been closed after the death of a virus-infected worker there. It reopened Wednesday. South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) shut down a phone factory in the southeastern city of Gumi over the past weekend after one of its workers tested positive. It resumed production on Monday. Meanwhile, South Korea’s top carrier, Korean Air Lines Co Ltd (003490.KS), said on Friday it would cut the number of flights to the United States in March, as part of a plan to cut its global capacity by 11% that month. It plans to check temperatures of passengers traveling to the United States before boarding and said it would not allow anyone with a temperature higher than 37.5 Celsius to fly. One of its flight attendants who served the Incheon to LA route has tested positive for virus. Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Gerry Doyle

2016-01-12

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Forever 21 debuted its newest collection of activewear last week — just in time for all those "lose weight" New Year resolutions. But this fitness line is anything but ordinary. Not only is it the fast-fashion retailer's first plus-size activewear collection, but it also carries with it an awesome message about body love and plus-size fitness. In true Forever 21 fashion, the collection is incredibly affordable, with prices ranging from $14.90 to $29.90. Options are available for those who want to engage in low-, medium- or high-performance activity, so newcomers to the fitness arena can start at their own pace. The defining feature of the collection? Several pieces feature marble paneling with the slogan, "No Days Off". The phrase serves the dual purpose of motivating the wearer and debunking the myth that plus-size girls can't be fit too. This is Forever 21's first foray into plus-size activewear — putting it in the ranks with major brands like Target, Macy's and Old Navy, all of which regularly offer plus-size fitness options. Forever 21's competitors, H&M rarely offers activewear options, and ASOS has yet to release its limited selection of sports bras in plus sizes. "We’ve ... witnessed a major shift in the way consumers wear activewear," Forever 21 told Mashable. "And we saw an opportunity to provide our customers with on-trend designs at a great value." The just-released 28-piece collection is available in sizes XL-3X in Forever 21 stores and online. Aside from the "No Days Off" slogan, defining features of the line include mesh paneling, heathered stretch material, ladder cutouts and key pockets. Plus, the collection is complete with a few jackets that walk the line between activewear and athleisure — catering to one of fashion's biggest trends.

2018-09-13

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OSLO, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The sale of new Norwegian homes fell by 9 percent year-on-year in August while housing starts fell by 14 percent, the Norwegian Home Builders’ Association (NHBA) said on Thursday. Year-to-date, new home sales are down 8 percent. In July sales rose 13 percent, while housing starts rose by 8 percent. (Reporting by Camilla Knudsen, editing by Terje Solsvik)

2018-02-08 00:00:00

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ACCRA, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Ghana sold 1.99 billion cedis ($448 million) worth of a fresh five-year domestic bond on Thursday and the major commodity exporter will pay a yield of 16.5 percent, joint transaction arrangers said. Initial guidance for the bond, open to non-resident Ghanaians, was in the range of 15 percent and 16.5 percent. Total bids tendered for the paper were 2.01 billion cedis. ($1=4.445 cedis) (Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Editing by Joe Bavier)

2019-06-19

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(Adds details of stake transfer and deadline for Baring Vostok to appeal) MOSCOW, June 19 (Reuters) - Russian private equity fund Baring Vostok said on Wednesday it has ceded a 9.99% stake in Vostochny Bank to the lender's other big shareholder following a legal battle, meaning it is no longer the majority shareholder. Baring Vostok, whose U.S. founder is under house arrest in Russia on embezzlement charges, has been locked in a legal battle with businessman Artem Avetisyan's Finvision over control of the bank. The case is being closely watched by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A court in Russia's Far East ruled last week that Baring Vostok must relinquish a 9.99% stake to Finvision after Avetisyan went to court, claiming Finvision had an agreement with Baring Vostok that it could exercise an option to increase its stake by 10%. According to Baring Vostok, the fund received $11.7 million from Finvision for the stake. The fund's share in Vostochny Bank has now fallen to 41.6%, while Finvision's share has risen to 42%, according to Reuters calculations. A spokesman for Baring Vostok said on Wednesday that the fund has until June 24 to appeal the ruling by the court in the city of Blagoveshchensk, but has already handed over the stake. He said the fund would be prepared to increase its stake in Vostochny Bank if the latter seeks to raise capital, potentially allowing Baring Vostok to regain control. Baring Vostok was founded by prominent U.S. businessman Michael Calvey, who with other fund executives, has been detained in Russia since February pending a trial on embezzlement charges. They all deny the charges and say the case is a way of pressuring them in a dispute over control of a Russian bank. The case against Calvey rattled Russia's business community and in April he was freed from jail and placed under house arrest. Putin said earlier this month that he was closely following the embezzlement case against Calvey and that Russian law enforcement agencies should work to establish whether he was guilty or not. (Reporting by Tatiana Voronova; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Susan Fenton)

2018-01-31

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Democrats were infuriated by President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech, claiming the president put an immigration deal even further out of reach with what they called bigoted remarks during the 80-minute address. After Trump and his White House team teased a bipartisan theme, the minority party was waiting to hear something conciliatory about how to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants facing deportation. Instead, Democrats booed Trump’s reference to “chain migration” and fumed afterward that his remarks conflated immigrants with gang members and did little to give so-called Dreamers any reassurance at all. “The tone was of a divider-in-chief,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “It was a red-meat appeal to the anti-immigrant base of his party, not the unifying, coming-together appeal that we all know is necessary.” Trump reiterated his proposal to offer 1.8 million undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, dramatically scale back legal immigration and spend billions on a border wall. His only explicit reference to Dreamers, however, was his line that, “Americans are dreamers, too.” Democrats called it a nativist appeal that belittled a cause — extending protections provided by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — that is supported by both parties. “He’s laying out pillars that are not going to get him a deal from Democrats. A lot of empty rhetoric,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “Those words were not helpful.” “Nothing about the Dreamers,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “He had opportunities to heal. I’ve never seen a president that cares nothing about reaching out to people that didn’t vote for him.” But Trump’s Republican allies pushed back on Democrats’ complaints. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said it was a “good speech” that was “consistent with everything I’ve heard from him.” “If Democrats don’t figure out a way to negotiate, then the DACA program will end and that’s not an outcome I think anybody would like,” Cornyn said. “But they will be responsible for it. I think they need a little reality check.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had urged her members to resist jeering Trump during his speech. But a smattering of boos was heard in the House chamber after Trump said that “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), who has a bipartisan DACA-border security bill in the House, tilted his head back and laughed when Trump called his immigration proposal a "down-the-middle compromise.” But it was Trump's "Americans are dreamers, too" remark that rankled Democrats most. “Really stoking the fires, from my perspective, of bigotry," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) said after hearing Trump’s speech “you would think coming out of this that every undocumented alien is actually a member of MS-13.” That was a reference to Trump's repeated mentions of the violent gang in the context of his desire to reform immigration policy. “That is not reflective of the overall immigrant community and I think that was disgusting that he continued to make reference to them as if every immigrant was a member of the gang,” Crowley said. Trump’s chilly reception seemed like a foregone conclusion. As he walked into the House chamber, the line of members waiting to shake the president's hand consisted almost solely of Republicans. One exception was Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat who’s been working behind the scenes to try to reach a deal to shield 700,000 Dreamers from deportation. The Illinois Democrat appeared to strategically position himself near the aisle and grab Trump’s hand as he walked by, perhaps angling for a future deal on DACA. But that prospect seemed far off after Trump’s speech. Durbin called Trump’s references to MS-13 "inflammatory." “No one in the world defends them,” Durbin said of MS-13. “We’re talking about DACA and Dreamers, for goodness’ sakes. It’s two different worlds, and he just seems to conflate both.” Republicans close to Trump smarted over the Democratic reaction to his remarks on immigration. Many Democrats sat expressionless and still during Trump’s remarks, which also heavily focused on the president’s new tax law and on the swelling economy. “If he drove them further apart, that may mean they don’t want to solve the problem. They want to keep the issue for the campaign," said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). And the boos were too much for some in the GOP to take. “They’re trying to make chain migration into a racist issue.” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) of the Democrats. “And it’s just not.” One exception to the poor Democratic reviews was West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. The conservative Democrat was often alone in applauding Trump’s remarks and said afterward that the president had offered Democrats an “olive branch.” “It’s not the way I was raised,” Manchin said of his angry colleagues. “I show respect. Civility and respect.” Some Republicans were uneasy, too. Conservatives such as Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who asked Trump after the speech to autograph his “Make America Great Again” hat, remained in his seat when Trump talked about citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he saw evidence of the lingering internal divide over immigration in the changing pattern of Republicans rising and sitting as Trump talked about the issue. “You could tell by the number of sit-ups and sit-downs that went with different portions of the immigration portion of the speech that there’s still strong division,” Sanford said in an interview, adding that the deal Trump wants is “going to take some time and some old-fashioned politicking.” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who is working with a large bipartisan group of senators to try and get an immigration deal to the president’s desk, praised Trump for restating his goal to create a pathway to citizenship for nearly 2 million young immigrants. But the tone of Trump’s immigration remarks, particularly his emphasis on crime and gang activity, was “kind of back to [an] American carnage" theme, Flake said in an interview. When Trump referred to Dreamers as “illegal,” Flake said, “You could feel the groan from a lot of people, including me.” John Bresnahan, Rachael Bade and Heather Caygle contributed to this report.

2020-01-15 00:00:00

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Sen. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisHarris calls for judicial nominee freeze during impeachment trial Warren-Sanders dispute thrusts gender into 2020 spotlight Deval Patrick knocks lack of diversity in Democratic debate MORE (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called for a moratorium on judicial nominees during President TrumpDonald John TrumpDem lawmaker says Nunes threatened to sue him over criticism Parnas: U.S. ambassador to Ukraine removed to clear path for investigations into Bidens Five takeaways from Parnas's Maddow interview MORE’s impeachment trial in the Senate, citing a similar pause during former President Clinton’s trial in 1999. “The president is charged with high crimes and misdemeanors, and the Senate must take seriously its constitutional role in this process,” Harris said in a statement. “During the time when articles of impeachment are before the Senate, it would be wholly inappropriate to advance the president’s nominees to the federal judiciary.” Harris’s statement notes that between the delivery of the Clinton articles of impeachment to the Senate and the Senate’s verdict on Feb. 12, 1999, the Senate Judiciary Committee did not convene any nomination hearings or advance any nominations to confirmation votes. While Senate committees cannot hold votes during impeachment trials, they are free to hold hearings. Harris echoed her call for a moratorium in a tweet Wednesday afternoon. The Senate is receiving the articles of impeachment against President Trump today. We should not advance any more judicial nominees while we take on this solemn responsibility of the president’s trial for high crimes and misdemeanors. The Hill has reached out to Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey GrahamLindsey Olin GrahamGraham on impeachment trial: 'End this crap as quickly as possible' Harris calls for judicial nominee freeze during impeachment trial Trump wants To 'deescalate,' but will his supporters let him? MORE’s (R-S.C.) office for comment.  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 ©2020 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-08-14 00:00:00

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Diebold Nixdorf, a North Canton, Ohio-based maker and servicer of automated teller machines, has hired Credit Suisse and Evercore to explore a possible sale, according to CNBC's Alex Sherman. Why it's a big deal: Diebold is the world's largest ATM maker, with a reported 32% share. Those expressing interest include rival NCR and private equity firm Bain Capital. Diebold no longer makes voting machines. It sold off that business in 2009. More from CNBC's Sherman:

2019-03-28 15:03:59

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DoorDash launched a new initiative today called Kitchens Without Borders, which it says is designed to promote business owners who are immigrants and refugees. It’s starting out with 10 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area: Besharam, Z Zoul Cafe, Onigilly, Los Cilantros, Sabores Del Sur, West Park Farm & Sea, Little Green Cyclo, Afghan Village, D’Maize and Sweet Lime Thai Cuisine. The entrepreneurs behind each of these businesses is profiled on the Kitchens Without Borders site. Their restaurants will also get promoted within the DoorDash app, and they’ll receive $0 delivery fees for up to six weeks. A DoorDash spokesperson told me the initial 10 participants were selected from 60 applicants, and that the program will be expanding to include other restaurants across the country in the coming months. This announcement comes a month after DoorDash announced that it had raised another $400 million in funding. The company also drew criticism earlier this year for its driver compensation practices. In a blog post, CEO Tony Xu said he has a personal connection to the program: For one, I’m an immigrant. I moved to this country from China when I was five, and my mom ran a Chinese restaurant with the purpose of creating a better life and fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor. I worked alongside her as a dishwasher and saw firsthand what it takes to make it in this country. Over the course of 12 years, she eventually saved up enough money to become the doctor that she wanted to be and opened up a medical clinic, which she has now been running for the past 20 years.

2018-01-28 00:00:00

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Sen. Marco Rubio has fired his chief of staff after determining he violated office policies regarding proper relations between a supervisor and subordinates. Rubio said in a statement that an investigation concluded his chief of staff Clint Reed engaged in behavior that "in my judgement amounted to threats to withhold employment benefits." Rubio announced the decision to fire Reed just before midnight on Saturday. The Florida Republican said he became aware “for the first time” on Friday “of allegations of improper conduct by my Chief of Staff while under the employment of my office.” Rubio said the allegations were reported directly to him and that he then immediately began an investigation with his general counsel. “By early this afternoon, I had sufficient evidence to conclude that while employed by this office, my Chief of Staff had violated office policies regarding proper relations between a supervisor and their subordinates,” Rubio said. Rubio said he traveled from Florida to Washington on Saturday night to terminate Reed’s employment effective immediately. His office has also “taken steps to ensure that those impacted by this conduct have access to any services they may require now or in the future,” he said. He said that his office was not disclosing any more details “pursuant to the wishes of those victimized by this conduct” and that his office will formally notify Congressional and Senate administrative offices on Monday. Reed began working for Rubio on his presidential campaign, including his efforts ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Reed then ran Rubio’s 2016 Senate campaign when he left the presidential race and reversed a decision to run for re-election in 2016. He replaced Albert Martinez, a longtime Rubio adviser. Jessica Fernandez, his longtime scheduler and current deputy chief of staff, will act as Rubio’s interim chief of staff. Reed could not be reached and Rubio’s office, noting the need for confidentiality, said it would provide no further information about the case. Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

2019-04-21 00:00:00

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It seems remarkably fitting that a now-disproven Russian collusion scandal started with a blatantly political memo known as the Steele dossier and ended with another called the Mueller report. I’ve covered the Department of Justice (DOJ) for three decades, a period that involved some of Washington’s biggest scandals (Iran-Contra, Whitewater, impeachment), prosecutors’ biggest triumphs (the Unabomber case) and the FBI’s biggest missteps (the lab scandal and pre-Sept.11 intelligence failures). I’ve seen and read prosecutorial declination memos before, and few resemble the one that special counsel Robert MuellerRobert (Bob) Swan MuellerMueller report fades from political conversation Trump calls for probe of Obama book deal Democrats express private disappointment with Mueller testimony MORE’s team presented to the DOJ and released by Attorney General William BarrWilliam Pelham BarrThe Hill's Morning Report - Trump searches for backstops amid recession worries Mueller report fades from political conversation Barr removes prisons chief after Epstein death MORE.   Most are written simply to explain why prosecutors choose not to charge a high-profile suspect whose name was besmirched publicly. Almost all are written in the spirit of the central tenet of American jurisprudence: One is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. Mueller’s report is not written from that presumption. In fact, it is written more from the perspective that 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 may be guilty until proven otherwise. Here’s why. Both volumes of the report — Russia collusion and obstruction — start as a narrative that goes like this: If we were going to indict Trump, here’s our best evidence. Volume I then ends like a “straw man.” After listing every titillating piece of evidence, Mueller concludes his evidence did not establish a conspiracy between Trump and Russia to hijack the 2016 election. In fact, it unequivocally stated no American conspired with Russia. Volume II takes the same path on obstruction issues — but Mueller then punts with this remarkable have-it-both-ways conclusion: “This report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” In short, Mueller’s report lay out all the dirty laundry and then passes on criminal charges. His 397 pages of prose and 50-plus pages of attachments stand in stark contrast to DOJ rules mandating that a prosecutor not use grand jury and other evidence to besmirch a suspect who was never charged. “The prosecutor must recognize that the grand jury is an independent body, whose functions include not only the investigation of crime and the initiation of criminal prosecution but also the protection of the citizenry from unfounded criminal charges,” the DOJ rules state. Mueller’s report irrefutably exceeds these requirements. As such, it is no longer a legal document. Rather, it is a political document, filled with gratuitous, tawdry details designed to besmirch the president and his aides in the court of public opinion instead of the court of law. Two exhibits: The most blatant of all political pitches comes after Mueller passed on his responsibility to make a final decision on an obstruction charge. He then overtly invited Congress to take a crack. “Congress can validly regulate the President’s exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice,” he wrote. Nothing in the special prosecutor regulations under which Mueller was appointed invites him to suggest what Congress could do. I’m pretty sure lawmakers already know their powers under the Constitution. The above are overtly political passages, gratuitous in nature and unnecessary to the declination requirements of the report he was asked to give to Barr. Mueller isn’t the first prosecutor to pursue a president and lay out evidence for a political narrative, without criminal charges. Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh used the tale of a secret diary kept by President George H.W. Bush to impugn the 41st president without charges. And Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr made a public case against Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonThe exhaustion of Democrats' anti-Trump delusions Poll: Trump trails three Democrats by 10 points in Colorado Soft levels of support mark this year's Democratic primary MORE on obstruction over her missing Rose Law Firm records, without ever charging her. Walsh and Starr, however, were appointed under the now defunct independent counsel statute that required an accounting of the evidence to the public and Congress. Mueller was not appointed under that law. As a special counsel, he essentially must follow the same rules as all U.S. attorneys, which include the mandate that you can’t use evidence to smear those you don’t indict. In the end, everyday Americans likely won’t hold this against Mueller. We hold our presidents to a higher standard and expect transparency even when criminality may not be involved. But make no mistake: Mueller’s report was written for political effect, and not just for legal requirements. So the end of the Russia collusion case begins where it started — with a blatant political document. The first one, the dossier written by the Brit Christopher Steele and underwritten by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through a firm called Fusion GPS, was aided by a former Russian intelligence officer residing in the United States, according to DOJ’s notes. And it gave the FBI the primary justification it needed to spy on the Trump campaign. Rest assured, there are no such things as former intelligence officers when it comes to Russia. And when they’re on U.S. soil, American intelligence knows who they are. Likewise, Mueller’s most salacious anecdote tying Russia to Trump’s family — the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 — was set up by a Russian lawyer who got into the U.S. on a special “parole visa” issued by the Justice Department. She was known to the U.S. government for her ties to Russia. And, remarkably, she had a business relationship with the same Fusion GPS that hired Steele and was paid by Clinton and the DNC. If Russian intelligence was secretly trying to influence the election, a “former” Russian spy and a “declared” Russian lawyer would be the last two people used. Their profiles were hot and their ties too overt. Instead, the Russians would have used the cloak-and-dagger tactics that hid disgraced FBI agent Robert Hanssen’s spying for two decades. In fact, some intelligence pros I’ve talked with previously wonder aloud whether the Russian activity with Steele and the Trump Tower meeting were what is known in spy tradecraft as “discoverable influence operations.” In layman’s terms, they were setups — with some accurate elements and lots of false information — designed to be discovered by U.S. intelligence, with the goal of sowing doubts or “kompromat” in the American democracy.  “To me, the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 pointed to a discoverable influence operation rather than some effort to establish a clandestine channel for collusion,” says Daniel Hoffman, the CIA’s former Moscow station chief and one of America’s top experts on Russia spying. “Putin deliberately left a trail of breadcrumbs from Trump Tower to the Kremlin. Putin’s objective was simple, to soil the U.S. political process.” If Hoffman is correct, the real winner of the Steele dossier and the Mueller report is none other than that cagey old KGB spy, Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinThe Hill's Morning Report - Trump on defense over economic jitters Can we do business with Kim Jong Un? Leadership analysis might give clues Russian defense minister: 'We won't do anything' in Europe unless US places missiles there MORE. He found a way, through hacking Clinton’s emails and seeding information for Steele and the Trump Tower meeting, to cast doubt on both candidates in 2016. And now, in the prose of the Mueller report, he has a fresh vehicle to continue sowing discord and distrust in America and its duly elected president for months to come. I can almost hear the boisterous laughter emanating from the Kremlin. John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. 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.

2018-04-30

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April 30 (Reuters) - Karo Pharma AB: * THE TERMS FOR KARO PHARMA’S RIGHTS ISSUE HAVE BEEN DETERMINED * FOR EACH EXISTING SHARE HELD AT RECORD DATE, SHAREHOLDERS WILL RECEIVE ONE (1) SUBSCRIPTION RIGHT * RIGHTS ISSUE WILL AT MOST RAISE SEK 1,314.7 MILLION BEFORE ISSUE COSTS * TWO (2) SUBSCRIPTION RIGHTS ENTITLING HOLDER TO SUBSCRIBE FOR ONE (1) ORDINARY NEW SHARE (I.E. A SUBSCRIPTION RATIO OF 1:2) * SUBSCRIPTION PERIOD WILL RUN BETWEEN 14 MAY 2018 UNTIL 29 MAY 2018 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2018-09-12 04:28:17

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Best of Late Night Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you’re interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Jimmy Fallon said he was excited about the release of Bob Woodward’s new White House tell-all — but he doesn’t expect the feeling to last long. Fallon reminded viewers that the book arrived hot on the heels of similar accounts written by the journalist Michael Wolff and the former Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, and he said that more such books are likely to follow. [Make sense of the people, issues and ideas shaping the 2018 elections with our new politics newsletter.] “Bob Woodward’s book ‘Fear: Trump in the White House’ hit stores today. It’s expected to be a No. 1 best-seller, until another tell-all book about Trump comes out tomorrow.” — JIMMY FALLON “The book is already at the top of the best-seller list for Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Yeah, it’s been purchased almost a million times on Amazon — and twice at Barnes & Noble.” — JIMMY FALLON “At one store in Washington, people were lined up to buy the book at midnight. It was awkward when Trump drove by, looked out the window, and was like, ‘Melania?’” — JIMMY FALLON The White House continues to reel from an Op-Ed article published in The New York Times last week by an anonymous member of the Trump administration. Seth Meyers caught his viewers up on the latest. “Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday that the White House is not considering conducting lie-detector tests to uncover the author of the anonymous Op-Ed published in The New York Times. Because putting a lie detector in the White House would be like putting a smoke detector in Willie Nelson’s dressing room.” — SETH MEYERS “According to a new CNN poll, most Americans want the anonymous writer of the New York Times Op-Ed criticizing President Trump to identify themselves. Said the anonymous source, ‘I can’t! I’m his wife.’” — SETH MEYERS On his return last week from a two-week vacation, Stephen Colbert revealed that he’d grown a beard over Labor Day. Then, this past weekend, the “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek unveiled a new beard of his own. That got under Colbert’s skin. “He’s just sporting a cheap Canadian knockoff of the Colbeard!” — STEPHEN COLBERT “Alex Trebek: Who is — trying to steal my new look?” — STEPHEN COLBERT, turning Trebek into a “Jeopardy!” clue “I have not been this angry at a game-show host since Bob Barker tried to have me spayed or neutered.” — STEPHEN COLBERT “There cannot be two Colbeards — there can barely be one! I’m still hoping this side fills in before Christmas.” — STEPHEN COLBERT So Colbert challenged Trebek to a trivia competition on “The Late Show” to determine who got beard bragging rights. “There’s only one way to settle this, Alex Trebek: You and me, on my show, trivia face-off — loser shaves.” — STEPHEN COLBERT Trebek revealed the beard to his fans in a video, saying: “I decided to regrow my mustache, but things got a little out of hand — these hairs kept attracting friends.” Colbert turned that around on him. “Very cute — although it’s a little mean to brag about attracting friends in front of ‘Jeopardy!’ contestants.” — STEPHEN COLBERT Norm Macdonald, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, was scheduled to appear on “The Tonight Show” Tuesday to discuss his new Netflix special. But hours before the show ran, NBC canceled Macdonald’s appearance after he made comments defending Louis C.K. and Roseanne Barr. Louis C.K., who wrote the foreword for Macdonald’s 2016 book, was accused of sexual misconduct by five women; Barr was fired in May by ABC after sending a racist tweet. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Tuesday, Macdonald said he thought entertainers accused of wrongdoing deserved more “forgiveness” and lamented seeing “all their work in their entire life being wiped out in a single day, a moment.” “In meat-related news, a man bought a Slim Jim for his dog and a lottery ticket, and won $10 million. Now that he’s rich, he can use that money to pay doctors to resuscitate the dog.” — STEPHEN COLBERT “Donald Trump always knows how to say the right thing on 9/11. In 2013, he tweeted — I don’t know if you remember this — ‘I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, September 11th.’ Weirdly, that’s one of the nicest things he ever tweeted.” — JIMMY KIMMEL, reacting to Trump’s rather enthusiastic tweet on Tuesday commemorating the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks Seth Meyers is so not down with the youth. At a speech in Chicago on behalf of Democratic candidates, former President Barack Obama deployed a signature move of public speaking — the long pause. The former president paused for a combined total of five minutes. Don’t believe it? Let “The Late Show” prove it to you. Seth Meyers will welcome back a couple of his former “Saturday Night Live” colleagues to 30 Rock on Wednesday, the actors Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, who are starring in “Forever,” an Amazon series that debuts this week. Viola Davis answered questions from our readers, opening up about her process, her goals and her regrets about “The Help.” Plus, Ideas for What to Watch Tonight: The Best Movies on Netflix Right Now The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century The Best Movies on Amazon Prime Video Right Now

2016-03-30

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Donald Trump yanked the Republican Party toward a contested convention over the past 24 hours as he let rip an extraordinary series of statements on abortion, the Geneva Conventions, violence against women and his own commitment to supporting the GOP presidential nominee that seemed to obliterate the notion that the party will unite behind him anytime soon. The fallout for Trump has been swift, as Republican rivals denounced the real estate mogul’s escalating attacks on a reporter who accused Trump’s campaign manager of battery and his suggestion that women should be punished for seeking abortions if the procedure is outlawed — a statement Trump quickly tried to walk back. He also freshly rankled leading Republicans around the country for tearing up his previous pledge to support the eventual nominee, saying Tuesday night that “we’ll see who it is.” The series of events gave mainstream Republicans new hope that they could prevent him from winning the nomination outright through pledged delegates. But they're also more worried than ever about a fractured party heading into the fall. “Trump is an embarrassment for the party. He’s not a conservative, he’s not a Republican, he’s someone who’s simply for himself,” said Ryan Williams, a GOP consultant and veteran of Mitt Romney’s campaigns. “He’s set a new standard and is going to give a number of Republicans pause about supporting him if he’s the nominee. That’s Donald Trump’s fault and Donald Trump’s fault alone.” Trump created yet another firestorm on Wednesday afternoon, when he lamented the existence of the Geneva Conventions. “The problem is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight,” Trump said at an afternoon town hall. But it was his comments regarding women — both his suggestion about criminalizing abortion and his escalating attacks on Breitbart journalist Michelle Fields — that set off the loudest alarm bells. In a sign of how damaging his comments on abortion were, Trump swiftly reversed himself. The controversy started when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pressed Trump on his statement that abortion “is a very serious problem, and it’s a problem we have to decide on. Are you going to send them to jail?” After Matthews tried to draw him out on what should happen if abortions are outlawed, Trump responded, “There has to be some form of punishment.” Bipartisan criticism was immediate, with Hillary Clinton calling the comment “horrific and telling” and Republican rival John Kasich strongly disputing Trump's assertion: “Absolutely not.” The Trump campaign went into damage control mode, emailing out a clarifying statement. “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.” The statement on abortion compounded his inflammatory comments about Fields, the former reporter who accused Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, of roughly yanking her arm as she tried to ask Trump a question earlier this month. Lewandowski was charged with misdemeanor battery on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Trump stoked the controversy by accusing Fields of provoking Lewandowski in the incident and brandishing a pen as she tried to talk to him. “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade challenged Trump on his account of the incident Wednesday morning, saying that campaign managers like Lewandowski "should not be putting their hands on reporters." He added, "Karl Rove didn’t do it. David Plouffe didn’t do it, David Axelrod didn’t do it. That’s why you have Secret Service, and that’s why you have your own security.” Trump shot back, speculating that perhaps the three campaign managers had. “OK, and you don’t know that they didn’t do it, because I guarantee you they did, probably did stuff that was more physical than this," he said. "More physical, because this is not even physical. And frankly, she shouldn’t have her hands on me. Nobody says that. But she shouldn’t have her hands on me.” While Trump has become a master at firing off controversial comments and earning kudos from his core supporters for his disregard for political correctness, the real estate mogul is making little headway in his recently stated goal of convincing the Republican Party to unify behind him as the front-runner. Trump has a large lead over rival Ted Cruz in the delegate race, 736 to the Texas senator’s 463, but it’s not clear whether he’ll be able to secure the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the July convention. Poll numbers out Wednesday for Wisconsin’s primary next week were not encouraging for the real estate mogul. The survey from Marquette Law School, the state’s most reliable pollster, showed Cruz with a 10-point lead over Trump. And the front-runner is winning few converts among centrist Republicans. At one point earlier this year, some on Capitol Hill and among the lobbyist crowd on K Street entertained the idea that Trump would be preferable to Cruz. They had considered Trump someone with whom they could cut deals, and questioned whether he really believed the fiery rhetoric he employed on the stump. But his repudiation on Tuesday night of his promise to support the eventual GOP nominee — on top of a string of other controversial statements he's made over the past few weeks — made many Republicans deeply uncomfortable, making unity an even more unlikely prospect. “As head of the party, it is disturbing for anybody — not necessarily Trump — saying that they may or may not support our nominee,” said Diana Waterman, chairwoman of the Maryland GOP. “At the end of it, we’re supposed to all come together. That includes the people who were not successful in getting there.” Another party chairman from a state with an upcoming primary, who requested anonymity to share reservations about Trump, said his theatrics take the party’s focus off members' shared rejection of Clinton and Bernie Sanders. “Unfortunately it seems that whenever Mr. Trump is worried he may not become the Republican nominee, he makes these sorts of comments,” the chairman said. “My concern about his latest comments is that it will only make it harder for him to convince longtime loyal grass-roots Republicans of his sincerity and to persuade them to rally behind his candidacy. All of the Republican candidates must always first consider the best interest of this country and not hurt feelings.” But there is also risk to Republican leaders in being openly hostile to Trump. In a contested convention scenario, there is no guarantee that Trump supporters would get in line behind another candidate should the real estate mogul fall short, particularly if they feel that he has been treated unfairly by the party — and Trump has already claimed mistreatment. “How things are conducted going forward matters, and I’m really personally counting on our party leadership to set an example and come together,” said Steve Munisteri, former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. Munisteri said that if Trump ultimately wins the nomination, he would expect supporters of Cruz and Kasich to put aside their differences and back him, regardless of what the candidates themselves do. But, he acknowledged, Trump backers are less predictable and could set the stage for a deeply damaging moment for the Republican Party. There is also always the threat of a third-party bid, either from Trump himself if he doesn’t clinch the GOP nomination, or from another candidate brought in as an alternative to Trump, though Republicans well-versed in party rules note that there is limited time, and ballot access constraints could keep that headache in check. But as the convention nears with Trump still leading the pack, despite his fiery statements, the Republican Party’s soul-searching will become even more dire. “I don’t envy my friends at the [Republican National Committee] right now,” said Williams, the Romney veteran. “It’s going to be a difficult task for the RNC to try to bring the party together.” Nolan D. McCaskill, Ben Schreckinger and Eliza Collins contributed to this report.

2020-02-10 00:00:00

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(Reuters) - Three-time medallist LeBron James headlines an all-star pool of players available for selection for the U.S. squad for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, USA Basketball announced on Monday. The list of 44 finalists includes nine members of the gold medal winning team from 2016 Rio Games and seven from the squad that put the U.S. top the podium at the 2012 London Olympics. James, who already owns two Olympic golds and a bronze, would join Carmelo Anthony as the only U.S. male basketball player to appear in four Olympics if he opts to try for a spot in Tokyo. The Los Angeles Lakers forward did not compete at the 2016 Rio Games. The men who may well have the toughest job on the U.S. team are managing director Jerry Colangelo, coach Gregg Popovich and a selection panel, who will have the job of picking 12 players from a pool of NBA All-Stars and future Hall of Famers. James’ Lakers team mate Anthony Davis, Houston Rockets’ James Harden, Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry are also among the group for possible selection. USA Basketball did not specify when the official roster would be announced. “This is the first step in USA Basketball identifying the 12 players who will represent the United States as members of the 2020 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team in Tokyo,” said Colangelo, who has served as the managing director of the USA basketball men’s national team since 2005, in a statement. “Over the course of the remainder of the NBA season we’ll continue to monitor all of the athletes. “Selecting the 12-man USA roster will obviously be an extremely challenging and difficult process.” The U.S. men have been the dominant force in Olympic men’s basketball collecting a medal in all 18 Olympics in which they have competed, including 15 gold medals, one silver and two bronze medals. Since NBA players began representing the United States in 1992, the U.S. is 53-3 in seven Olympics, capturing six gold medals and one bronze medal. Reporting by Steve Keating in Toronto, editing by Pritha Sarkar

2016-04-07 00:00:00

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Thai authorities are looking for the source of a new set of messaging stickers apparently making fun of the Thai royal family that appeared in the sticker store of popular app Line. Thailand has very strict lèse-majesté laws that can convict anyone who insults or makes fun of the Thai royal family.  "We are investigating where the stickers came from and who did this," Colonel Somporn Daengdee, deputy chief of the police's Technology Crime Suppression Division, told Reuters. Journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall managed to capture the stickers, which have since been pulled from the messaging app's store. Some interesting new Thai royal-themed LINE stickers that I found online. You can download them here:... Posted by Andrew MacGregor Marshall on Wednesday, April 6, 2016 Line allows people to submit sticker sets to its store, which are screened by staff at the head office in Japan for offensive content. However, people unfamiliar with stories about the Thai royals might not immediately recognise their depiction in the sticker set. As such, it's likely that they slipped past Japanese staff vetting submissions to the store. But if you know the stories, you might spot the likeness of the crown prince who loved his poodle, Air Chief Marshal Foo Foo, or his sister Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who's known for contributing arts and craft work to the community. A source sent Mashable a statement from people who say they created the stickers. Their location or identity couldn't be confirmed. "In Thailand, reverence for the royal family has sometimes been exploited to silence political debate. We wanted to create some light-hearted stickers that show the Thai royals as just like any other family. The furious reaction of Thai police shows Thailand is still far from democracy and freedom of speech," they said. Line quickly issued an apology after removing the sticker set. LINE Corporation is aware of the culturally sensitive sticker set that may have caused discomfort among our users in... Posted by LINE Global on Wednesday, April 6, 2016 Line has a reported 33 million users in the kingdom, making up the majority of Thailand's mobile population. It is one of Line's largest markets in Southeast Asia. This isn't the first time Line has had to pull stickers that rubbed authorities the wrong way in the region. In February, it removed stickers with LGBT content from Indonesia's sticker store, at the apparent behest of the government there. The punishment for the sticker maker of the Thai set is likely to be harsh, if the person or group resides in Thailand. Last year, a man was arrested for allegedly insulting the king and the monarch's beloved dog. He was charged with two counts of violating the lèse-majesté law — one for the king, and the other for the dog — which could land him 32 years in jail. UPDATE: April 7, 2016, 11:55 a.m. BST   Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

2016-09-29 18:04:40

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How might it feel to be a shy 14-year-old wallflower going to a new school in an Australian suburb in the late 1970s? Rosemary Myers’s charming offbeat fantasia, “Girl Asleep,” offers a giddy approximation. Much of this uncategorizable hybrid of a movie and children’s theater piece is played out on an elaborate stage set. Its protagonist, Greta Driscoll (Bethany Whitmore), is first seen glumly sitting alone on a schoolyard bench while behind her students wearing hideous school uniforms — maroon shorts and yellow shirts — are playing basketball. A cheerful frizzy-haired boy with braces on his teeth introduces himself as Elliott (Harrison Feldman), and these two outsiders become instant pals. Minutes later, Greta is approached by three snooty girls who condescendingly offer their friendship; when she doesn’t know how to respond, they sashay off. Initially, “Girl Asleep” threatens to be a cute comedy about social misfits who rescue each other, but it quickly takes a sharp left turn and morphs into a surreal exploration of that in-between age when childish fears and fantasies collide with the realities of teenage society. The story begins in earnest when Greta’s eccentric parents, Conrad (Matthew Whittet) and Janet (Amber McMahon), over her strenuous objections, decide to bring her out of her shell by giving her a 15th birthday party to which they invite the entire school. The day arrives, and the house suddenly fills with teenagers dancing to Sylvester’s 1978 disco hit, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” Greta also has a moody older sister, Genevieve (Imogen Archer), whose handsome boyfriend affects the air of a Gallic lounge lizard. The movie is punctuated with zany visual jokes. A boy whose face blends in with her bedroom wallpaper pops out of the design, and enigmatic signs are posted in unlikely places. At such moments, “Girl Asleep” conveys a sense that anything might happen. As it seesaws between Greta’s conscious and unconscious minds, the movie begins to feel like a waking dream. At the party, Elliott appears and confesses to Greta that he wants them to be more than friends and is shattered when he tries to kiss her and is rudely rebuffed. Increasingly anxious, she flees the party, plunges into the woods behind her house and embarks on a through-the-looking-glass adventure that is the movie’s centerpiece. In the forest she flees the sounds of barking wolves and encounters mythological creatures as well as family members in storybook disguises. The movie is so aggressively art directed that its strongest creative force appears to be its scenic designer, Jonathon Oxlade, whose imaginative whimsy evokes Tim Burton at his most lighthearted. The movie was inspired by the writings of the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, whose most famous work, “The Uses of Enchantment,” analyzed fairy tales from a Freudian perspective. Shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio, the film originated as the third part of a theatrical trilogy mounted at the Windmill Theater in Adelaide. For all its flirtation with nightmarish imagery, it is too sweet-natured to be scary. “Girl Asleep” is not rated. Running time: 1 hour 17 minutes.

2018-03-06

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* North Korea willing to hold talks with U.S. on denuclearization * Trump tweets: we’ll see what happens * Target shares slip after holiday quarter profit misses estimates * Futures up: Dow 136 pts, S&P 11.25 pts, Nasdaq 40 pts (Changes comments, updates price) By Ankur Banerjee and Sruthi Shankar March 6 (Reuters) - Wall Street was set to open higher on Tuesday as the prospect of talks between North Korea and the United States and increasing resistance to President Donald Trump’s proposed metals tariffs encouraged risk appetite among investors. North Korea is willing to hold talks with the United States on denuclearization and will suspend nuclear tests while those talks are under way, the South said on Tuesday after a delegation returned from the North after meeting leader Kim Jong Un. Trump, in the first U.S. response, said on Tuesday: “We will see what happens.” The news added to early gains for U.S. markets, which have been recovering from a bout of concern over the possibility of a global trade war following remarks by Trump last week. “When geopolitical environment is improving, there’s very much a risk-on sentiment,” said Fiona Cincotta, senior market analyst at City Index in London. “I would not say that trade war fears are completely erased ... there are doubts that Trump will actually manage to push the trade tariffs through.” Investor fears were eased after Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on aluminum and steel was seen as a negotiating tool following his tweet on Monday that Canada and Mexico could avoid the tariffs if they ceded ground in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks. Top U.S. Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, urged Trump on Monday not to go ahead with the tariffs. “There’s also a lot of pressure regarding the tariff - not only GOP, trading partners but also many business leaders in the United States,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at First Standard Financial in New York. By 8:37 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 136 points, or 0.55 percent, S&P 500 e-minis were up 11.25 points, or 0.41 percent, Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 40 points, or 0.58 percent. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan told CNBC the base case on interest rate hikes has not changed and remains at three for the year, adding that the United States is either at or beyond full employment now. Last month’s U.S. payrolls report showed wages growing at their fastest pace in more than eight years, fueling concerns that both inflation and interest rates would rise faster than expected that led to a steep selloff. Investors are keenly waiting for the upcoming February jobs data due on Friday to gauge the strength of the labor market. Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley is scheduled to speak later on Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Commerce is scheduled to release factory orders data for January at 10 a.m. ET. Target shares slipped 2 percent after the big-box retailer reported lower-than-expected profit for the holiday quarter. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

2019-12-20 00:00:00

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(CNN)A Winston-Salem, North Carolina, city employee was killed Friday when one of his co-workers opened fire at a municipal building, officials said. The shooter, identified as 61-year-old Steven Dewayne Haizlip, was killed in a gunfight with police, police Chief Catrina Thompson told reporters. Two people were injured -- one of the officers who confronted the shooter and a third city employee, Thompson said. Investigators believe Haizlip specifically targeted the deceased victim, 48-year-old Terry Lee Cobb Jr., another longtime employee, Thompson said. The two apparently had a "longstanding dislike for each other," police Capt. Steven Tollie said, stressing that it was still early in the investigation. "The source of that dislike I don't have at this time," he said, but investigators have learned that Haizlip and Cobb had an altercation off-site on Thursday that was not reported to their employer. "I believe that altercation, at least at this stage of the investigation, appears to be the catalyst for today's incident," Tollie said. Police are categorizing the incident as workplace violence, the police chief told reporters, but she urged Winston-Salem's citizens to be prepared for other types of violence, such as active-shooter situations. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the officer-involved shooting aspect of the incident, according to protocol. 'Fight or flight' Police were dispatched to the Jocelyn V. Johnson Municipal Services Center at 6:37 a.m. following reports of a shooting, Thompson said. Officers confronted Haizlip, and one of them, Sgt. Cameron Stewart Sloan, was wounded twice in the ensuing gunfight. He had surgery at Wake Forrest University Baptist Medical Center. Police found Cobb dead inside the complex, Thompson told reporters. Another city employee, who was not identified, was found with a serious but non-life-threatening gunshot wound, she said. That victim -- who police believe was not targeted -- was also hospitalized. Sanitation worker Dwight Black told CNN affiliate WXII he was running five minutes late when he parked. He was about to enter the building when people ran out past him and said, "They're shooting. Run!" "Fight or flight," Black, 66, told the station. "I just followed suit." He went back to his car and waited until police arrived, Black said. Others got in their cars and drove away.

2017-06-06 16:38:00

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Two stylists working with a new startup called Fitz recently paid a visit to Ryan Glick's messy closet. Fitz is a new closet-cleaning and styling service started by Gilt cofounder Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Fandango founder J. Michael Cline. But 27-year-old Glick, who has worked with various fashion brands for his media platform Coffee 'N Clothes for the past three years, didn't quite need the fashion advice. He's received a lot of free gear from co-sponsored events with brands like Nike and Adidas, and he has simply accumulated too many shoes, T-shirts, and hoodies. Glick would like to buy more stuff, but finding enough space — especially in a Manhattan apartment — can be tricky. So he recently booked a complimentary appointment with Fitz, whose services include curating the items in your closet, or, for clients like Glick who already know their personal style, simply fold and organize the mess for $300. It's currently available only in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. Ahead, take a look at how they helped Glick's closet go from catastrophe to well-groomed masterpiece. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Before his three-hour Fitz Foundation appointment, which normally costs a flat $300, Glick showed us around his more troubled closet areas. The main problem was the bedroom closet and the above half-closet. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Glick confessed that his overstocked, messy closet often stresses him out. "If I see things all over the place, things not folded well, it creates more stress and [the clothes] seem dirtier," he said. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. His drawers weren't looking much better. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Enter Ellie (left), the lead stylist, and Maggie (right), who assisted in transforming Glick's space. Fitz's team is comprised of stylists with various backgrounds, including people who formally studied fashion merchandising and design or who have past retail experience. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. "Our goal was to make as big a dent as possible in the thee-hour Fitz Foundation so that Ryan could feel the immediate impact of having an organized closet and being able to see everything in it," said Ellie, who asked that we not use her last name because of her contract with Fitz. In addition to Glick's bedroom closet, the two stylists also tackled his living room closet, which was packed with coats. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Glick says he owns over 80 t-shirts, and Ellie and Maggie carefully folded each one. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Glick was confident in what he wanted to get rid of and what he wanted to keep. Maggie helped sort unwanted items into a bag that was sent to Goodwill via its Give Back Box service. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. "Since Ryan does not have a doorman, all he had to do was drop off the bag at a Fed-Ex Drop-off. When our clients have a doorman, we will leave it with them for pick-up," Ellie said. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. For those clients less sure of what to purge, Ellie suggests asking yourself: "Do I still wear this? When was the last time I wore it? Do I feel good when I wear it? Does it still fit? Editing with a friend is also very helpful." Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. For clients who want more assistance with styling, Fitz offers two-hour, $200 follow-up appointments. During these sessions, stylists can help clients with more specific needs like styling outfits with the clothing they already own, shopping online for needed items with the client at home, packing for trips, and styling for events. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Ellie and Maggie folded and stacked the t-shirts vertically, rather than on top of one another, to help save space. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Long-sleeve shirts were folded and placed in the back of his closet for the summer, and thin felt hangers replaced clunky wooden ones to save hanging space in the closet. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. "We also recommend switching out your accessories seasonally so that the items you wear most often are front and center," Ellie said. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. By the end of the appointment, Glick's closet was in better working order. Now that he has more space, he'll be able to accommodate brand-new additions to his closet.

2019-04-25

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As Donald 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 began his meteoric rise to the presidency, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to coordinate ongoing anti-corruption efforts inside Russia’s most critical neighbor. The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ). The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump. U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, then a political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington tasked with organizing the meeting.  Telizhenko, who no longer works for the Ukrainian Embassy, said U.S. officials volunteered during the meetings — one of which was held in the White House’s Old Executive Office Building — that they had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to U.S. figures from Ukraine’s Russia-backed Party of Regions. That 2014 investigation was led by the FBI and focused heavily on GOP lobbyist Paul ManafortPaul John ManafortTrial of ex-Obama White House counsel suddenly postponed Top Mueller probe prosecutor to join Georgetown Law as lecturer DOJ releases notes from official Bruce Ohr's Russia probe interviews MORE, whose firm long had been tied to Trump through his partner and Trump pal, Roger StoneRoger Jason Stone3 real problems Republicans need to address to win in 2020 Judge rejects Stone's request to dismiss charges Judge dismisses DNC lawsuit against Trump campaign, Russia over election interference MORE. Agents interviewed Manafort in 2014 about whether he received undeclared payments from the party of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russia’s Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinThe Hill's Morning Report - Trump on defense over economic jitters Can we do business with Kim Jong Un? Leadership analysis might give clues Russian defense minister: 'We won't do anything' in Europe unless US places missiles there MORE, and whether he engaged in improper foreign lobbying. The FBI shut down the case without charging Manafort. Telizhenko said he couldn’t remember whether Manafort was mentioned during the January 2016 meeting. But he and other attendees recalled DOJ officials asking investigators from Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) if they could help locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments and its dealings with Americans. “It was definitely the case that led to the charges against Manafort and the leak to U.S. media during the 2016 election,” he said. That makes the January 2016 meeting one of the earliest documented efforts to build the now-debunked Trump-Russia collusion narrative and one of the first to involve the Obama administration’s intervention. Spokespeople for the NSC, DOJ and FBI declined to comment. A representative for former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice did not return emails seeking comment. Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me he attended some but not all of the January 2016 Washington meetings and couldn’t remember the specific cases, if any, that were discussed. But he said he soon saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. Kholodnytskyy said the key evidence against Manafort — a ledger showing payments from the Party of Regions — was known to Ukrainian authorities since 2014 but was suddenly released in May 2016 by the U.S.-friendly NABU, after Manafort was named Trump’s campaign chairman: “Somebody kept this black ledger secret for two years and then showed it to the public and the U.S. media. It was extremely suspicious.” Kholodnytskyy said he explicitly instructed NABU investigators who were working with American authorities not to share the ledger with the media. “Look, Manafort’s case is one of the cases that hurt me a lot,” he said. “I ordered the detectives to give nothing to the mass media considering this case. Instead, they had broken my order and published themselves these one or two pages of this black ledger regarding Paul Manafort." “For me it was the first call that something was going wrong and that there is some external influence in this case. And there is some other interests in this case not in the interest of the investigation and a fair trial,” he added. Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Ukraine prosecutor general’s international affairs office, said that, shortly after Ukrainian authorities returned from the Washington meeting, there was a clear message about helping the Americans with the Party of the Regions case. “Yes, there was a lot of talking about needing help and then the ledger just appeared in public,” he recalled. Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures, such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych’s party. But the Americans weren’t interested: “They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else.” Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016.   NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016. Later that summer, it told U.S. media the ledgers showed payments to Manafort, a revelation that forced him to resign from the campaign in August 2016. A Ukrainian court in December concluded NABU’s release of the ledger was an illegal attempt to influence the U.S. election. And a member of Ukraine’s parliament has released a recording of a NABU official saying the agency released the ledger to help Democratic nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonThe exhaustion of Democrats' anti-Trump delusions Poll: Trump trails three Democrats by 10 points in Colorado Soft levels of support mark this year's Democratic primary MORE’s campaign. The other case raised at the January 2016 meeting, Telizhenko said, involved Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company under investigation in Ukraine for improper foreign transfers of money. At the time, Burisma allegedly was paying then-Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden Panel: Jill Biden's campaign message MORE’s son Hunter as both a board member and a consultant. More than $3 million flowed from Ukraine to an American firm tied to Hunter Biden in 2014-15, bank records show. According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions. "Unfortunately, the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington, D.C., was not invited to join the DOJ and other law enforcement-sector meetings," it said. It said it had no record that the Party of Regions or Burisma cases came up in the meetings it did attend. Ukraine is riddled with corruption, Russian meddling and intense political conflicts, so one must carefully consider any Ukrainian accounts. But Telizhenko’s claim that the DOJ reopened its Manafort probe as the 2016 election ramped up is supported by the DOJ’s own documents, including communications involving Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife, Nellie, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele. Nellie Ohr and Steele worked in 2016 for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that was hired by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find Russia dirt on Trump. Steele wrote the famous dossier for Fusion that the FBI used to gain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Nellie Ohr admitted to Congress that she routed Russia dirt on Trump from Fusion to the DOJ through her husband during the election. DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the “black ledger” documents that led to Manafort’s prosecution. “Reported Trove of documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ Black Cashbox,” Nellie Ohr wrote to her husband and federal prosecutors Lisa Holtyn and Joseph Wheatley, attaching a news article on the announcement of NABU’s release of the documents. Bruce Ohr and Steele worked on their own effort to get dirt on Manafort from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, who had a soured business relationship with him. Deripaska was “almost ready to talk” to U.S. government officials regarding the money that “Manafort stole,” Bruce Ohr wrote in notes from his conversations with Steele. The efforts eventually led to a September 2016 meeting in which the FBI asked Deripaska if he could help prove Manafort was helping Trump collude with Russia. Deripaska laughed off the notion as preposterous. Previously, Politico reported that the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington assisted Clinton’s campaign through a DNC contractor. The Ukrainian Embassy acknowledges it got requests for assistance from the DNC staffer to find dirt on Manafort but denies it provided any improper assistance. Now we have more concrete evidence that the larger Ukrainian government also was being pressed by the Obama administration to help build the Russia collusion narrative. And that onion is only beginning to be peeled. But what is already confirmed by Ukrainians looks a lot more like assertive collusion with a foreign power than anything detailed in the Mueller report. John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports 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.

2018-04-17

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DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania briefly detained two musicians, including one of the country’s most popular singers, after they posted video clips deemed obscene by the authorities, in the latest crackdown on social media users. Tanzania has become more socially conservative since the election of President John Magufuli in late 2015. Last month, the government tightened regulations on online content, imposing licence fees for bloggers and threatening internet users with criminal charges for posting hate speech or indecent content. Award-winning 28-year old singer Nassib Abdul, whose stage name is Diamond Platnumz, was detained on Monday after sharing a video clip with his 4.5 million followers on Instagram that showed him kissing a girl. Another local musician, 26-year old Faustina Charles, popularly known as Nandy, was also detained on Monday for posting a video clip of herself and another musician via WhatsApp that the authorities considered “indecent”. Police said both singers had been released on bail on Monday without charge after questioning. Two mobile phones were confiscated as part of an ongoing investigation, they added. Diamond deleted his video clip after posting it but it has continued to circulate on social media. The video clip with Nandy also went viral on WhatsApp but it was unclear who had originally posted it. Harrison Mwakyembe, the minister for information, sports and culture, earlier told parliament that the authorities planned to file criminal charges against the two musicians. If convicted, the singers could face a fine of at least 5 million shillings ($2,200) or a prison sentence of a minimum of 12 months or both. “I would like to urge the youth to stop using the internet to post obscene content. The government will continue to safeguard the country’s culture for present and future generations,” Mwakyembe said. Under Magufuli, a Christian in a country that also has a sizeable Muslim population, Tanzanian authorities have vowed to crack down on homosexuality, which is illegal, and indecent exposure. Though laws governing moral and sexual issues have mostly long been in place, their enforcement was fairly relaxed under the more liberal government of Magufuli’s predecessor, Jakaya Kikwete, who retired as president in 2015 after a 10-year rule.  Magufuli said last year it was immoral for young girls to be sexually active and rejected activists’ calls for the government to allow pregnant students to attend state schools. Activists have accused his government of infringing free speech and democracy in its crackdown on internet users. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said last week the new online content rules “will kill off Tanzania’s blogosphere”. The number of internet users in Tanzania rose 16 percent in 2017 to 23 million, with the majority of those using their mobile phone handsets to go online in the nation of around 52 million people. Last week, neighbouring Uganda, another East African nation moving to regulate internet use, announced plans to slap a new tax on social media users to boost state revenues. ($1 = 2,266.0000 Tanzanian shillings) Editing by Duncan Miriri and Gareth Jones

2017-03-15

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March 15 (Reuters) - Uniqure Nv: * Uniqure NV files for mixed shelf of $250 million - SEC filing Source text: (bit.ly/2mNxrZc) Further company coverage:

2017-05-16 00:00:00

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IN 1904 the Herero people of modern-day Namibia rose up against German colonists, who had seized and settled much of their land. The response of the German army, imbued with racist ideology, was to annihilate them. “Within the German borders every Herero, with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot,” ordered General Lothar von Trotha, its commander. Some Herero died at the hands of Trotha’s soldiers; many more perished after being pushed into the desert or herded into concentration camps. Historians estimate that 80% of the Herero lost their lives; about half of the Nama died after launching their own revolt. It was the 20th century’s first genocide. Some of the Herero and Nama leaders have now filed a lawsuit against Germany in a New York court. The lawsuit talks of 100,000 deaths. What are their demands? Such wrongs cannot be undone. But victims of injustice, or their descendants, sometimes seek financial reparations for historic crimes. In 2001 the Herero and Nama tried unsuccessfully to sue the German government and three German companies, under an American law called the Alien Tort Statute which allows foreign cases to be pursued in American courts. They had little support from their own government, which favoured diplomacy instead (it didn’t help that some Herero leaders were prominent in opposition politics). Namibia is now in talks with Germany to draft a common statement on the genocide. But some of the Herero and the Nama complain that they are excluded. In January they brought a fresh case, demanding a seat at the table. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. They face an uphill struggle. The Supreme Court has made it harder for American courts to hear foreign cases. And the Germans are loth to pay compensation decided by an international court, preferring to offer greater development aid; they say they already give more per head to Namibia than to any other country. Although the Namibian government is hoping for a hefty sum of money (or its equivalent) as a result of negotiations going on between the two countries, some Herero and Nama leaders worry that little of that would reach their communities. There are precedents for reparations, say the Namibians: Germany has paid billions of dollars to survivors of the Jewish Holocaust. America has compensated Japanese-Americans who were interned in the second world war; Britain has belatedly done the same for Kenyan Mau Mau rebels tortured under its rule. Some of the land taken during the Namibian genocide is good farmland; most of it is grazing country. Reparations might help the Herero and the Nama to buy some of it back.

2017-06-28

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June 28 (Reuters) - Zephyr Minerals Ltd: * Zephyr Minerals Ltd. extends private placement * Extending its non-brokered private placement of units of company, announced on May 17, 2017, for an additional 30 days Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2019-11-13 06:00:05

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Most diet trials in the best journals fail even the most basic of quality control measures. Drs. Ludwig and Heymsfield are physicians and health scholars. Most diet trials in the best journals fail even the most basic of quality control measures. That’s the finding of a study by us published today on JAMA Network Open. Investigators receiving funding for any clinical trial from the National Institutes of Health must register in advance what they plan to test, among other design features, to ensure that the data are fairly analyzed. Comparing the original registries with the final published studies, we found that diet trials in the past decade were about four times as likely as drug trials to have a discrepancy in the main outcome or measurement — raising concern for bias. This quality-control problem of diet trials in comparison to ones on pharmaceuticals leads to a bigger issue: underinvestment in nutrition research and in how we tackle the mysteries of a healthy diet. Although the problems with observational studies have received much attention (“Association doesn’t prove causation,” as scientists say), clinical trials can suffer from equally important limitations. In a clinical trial, investigators assign volunteers to receive different treatments — such as a low-carbohydrate versus low-fat diet — ideally in random order. Beyond registry issues, trials may provide misleading results for many reasons, including small size, short duration and weak interventions (they lack power to actually make the intended change in behavior). These failures are disturbing because epidemics of diet-related disease will shorten life expectancy and impose huge economic costs on the United States in coming years. We continue to lack effective dietary prevention, in part because clinical trials have been too poorly designed and conducted to reach definitive conclusions. We’re still debating questions that have raged for decades: Should we focus on reducing carbs or fat? Is red meat harmful? Is sugar toxic? What about artificially sweetened beverages or moderate amounts of alcohol? High-quality trials are hard to do because diets, and the behavior of humans who consume them, are so complicated. A single meal might have dozens of nutrients and hundreds of other bioactive substances that interact in unknown ways. Furthermore, if the diet being studied increases intake from one food category, people may eat less from other food categories, making it difficult to attribute results to any specific dietary component. Diet trials also require subjects to change their eating habits, a far greater challenge than taking a pill. Consider a trial for a promising cancer treatment in which participants assigned to receive the drug didn’t take it as intended. If the drug group showed no benefit over the placebo group, we wouldn’t automatically assume the drug lacked promise. We would conclude that the study failed and that stronger methods (medication organizer trays and daily text message reminders, say) are needed to make sure the drug is properly used so that we can see if it works. Yet the illogical assumption that a diet didn’t work is commonly made when volunteers in weak trials do not follow the assigned diets. Short diet trials, the great majority of those done, raise special concerns. Many people can lose weight by restricting calories at first, but few can maintain substantial weight loss that way. After a few days or weeks, the body begins to resist calorie deprivation, with rising hunger and slowing metabolism. Making matters more complicated, it takes several weeks to adapt to major changes in nutrients. For these reasons, short-term trials may have little relevance to understanding how diet affects health over the long term. It would be like studying an intensive exercise program — including long runs, calisthenics and strenuous sports — among sedentary volunteers for just six days. The investigators might find that the program made the volunteers sore, tired and weak. However, a six-month trial, allowing adequate time to adapt to the new regimen, would reach the opposite conclusion, revealing the real benefits of physical activity. Despite their greater difficulties, diet trials receive far less funding than drug trials, especially considering that poor diet is the leading risk factor for premature death. Few big companies stand to profit directly from dietary treatments for chronic diseases. Consequently, typical diet trials must get by on shoestring budgets, rarely exceeding a few hundred thousand dollars, compared with drug trials that may cost several hundred million dollars. Without adequate support, quality inevitably suffers. Diet trials of adequate size, duration and intervention strength rarely get done. This problem has special relevance now, as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee reviews the science in preparation for new Department of Agriculture recommendations to the public in 2020. Among thousands of scientific articles initially screened, only a small proportion so far have passed strict quality criteria for inclusion in committee deliberations. And ultimately, recommendations to the public can be no stronger than the science on which they rely. Which doesn’t mean that all nutrition research is unreliable. High-quality observational studies and clinical trials provide strong evidence for the benefits of whole carbohydrates (nonstarchy vegetables, fruits, legumes, minimally processed intact grains) over highly processed, fast-digesting carbohydrates (refined grains, potato products and added sugar). We also know that nuts, olive oil and avocado protect against chronic disease, contrary to dietary recommendations during the low-fat diet era, as embodied by the 1992 Food Guide Pyramid. We need a sort of Manhattan Project to find definitive answers to the epidemics of diet-related disease. Nutrition research to prevent disease must have the same quality and rigor as pharmaceutical research to treat disease. Building the necessary scientific infrastructure will require sustained investment by government and philanthropic organizations, but the amounts involved would total a fraction of a cent for every dollar spent treating diet-related conditions like obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Study authors and the media can help by avoiding the tendency to overstate the results of weak research, contributing to public confusion. And the public has a critical role to play, not only demanding government action but also volunteering for diet studies. No other factor approaches the importance of diet for public health. To reduce the human toll of chronic disease, we must upgrade the quality of nutrition research. The financial investment required will yield huge returns in medical cost savings. David S. Ludwig is a co-director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital and a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Steven B. Heymsfield is a professor and director of the Metabolism and Body Composition Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University, and a member of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected]. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

2017-04-12

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Geopolitical risk virtually disappeared from the radar of investment professionals in the early 1990s as the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed it the “end of history.” As it turns out, the relative calm of the 1990s and 2000s was, historically speaking, an anomaly rather than the norm. The election of anti-establishment candidate Donald Trump as U.S. president, the United Kingdom’s unexpected vote to leave the European Union, and the uncertainty surrounding this year’s French and German elections have reminded everyone that politics matter. As populism grows across the developed world, other geopolitical phenomena can be observed too: the growing assertiveness of China, India, and Russia, the destabilization of the Middle East; the multiplicity of terror events, and a growing migrant crisis.   After decades plying their trade on the playing fields of corporate fundamentals and efficient market theory, investment professionals find the game is changing. Investors’ growing expectations of their investment outcomes and their lack of overall trust in the industry, have made it imperative for investment managers to successfully address geopolitical risk. In a tough business climate, they simply cannot afford to disappoint investors. Investment industry faces strong headwinds CFA Institute data show that investment professionals are exercised about the potential impact of geopolitical uncertainty. Some 70 percent of respondents to our survey, The Impact of Political Uncertainty on the Asset Management Industry, published in February, thought that investment returns over the next three to five years would be impaired. And the political risk identified as having potentially the biggest impact on investments is 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. Investors are worried about Brexit, too. A full one-fifth of respondents expect Brexit-related uncertainty to persist for a further two years, and more than one-third believe wholesale EU disintegration is likely. Geopolitics is just one of many headwinds facing investment managers. They are operating in an industry that is ripe for disruption, as investor and regulatory demands for reduced costs and fees are growing. Meanwhile, passive investment strategies are putting pressure on traditional models, as exemplified by BlackRock’s shift in its active equity strategies in the U.S. away from human stock picking to a focus on data analysis and other quantitative methods. The repositioning of funds will affect $30 billion of the firm’s assets under management. Together with a move by some institutions to insource investment management, investment firms’ models are under severe pressure. And that’s before the thorny question of technology is considered. Investment firms have been late to recognize the desire of the Amazon-generation to be tech-empowered in their engagement with investment firms. Although the investment industry is catching up, incumbents are struggling to compete with technology challenger firms and the compression of margins that these new entrants are forcing. Investment professionals are starting to recognize the potential for disruption to their industry. In another CFA Institute survey, Future State of the Investment Profession, published this month, more than half of the participants said they expect substantial or moderate contraction of profit margins in the industry. Most expect widespread consolidation of investment firms as a result. We think the message is clear: asset management is at an inflection point and our profession needs to radically rethink its value proposition. Actions, not words New thinking is required to reconnect the industry with its purpose to serve society and allow capital to flow to the most productive uses. In a nutshell, it needs to move away from being an industry and towards being a profession. That is, move away from an inward-looking, self-serving entity to one that is geared towards meeting customer needs first and its profit motive second. Moving from an industry to a profession will help rekindle investor trust. This in turn will drive greater participation in capital markets, and help create new value for asset managers and their clients. CFA Institute proposes four concrete aims which asset management firms could take on board in the quest to create trust and offset some of the risks posed in today’s geopolitical climate. First, revise business models. We must create more value, for more clients, and perhaps on thinner margins. Second, fix our problem with young people. They don’t trust financial services. We must build business models geared to long-term investor outcomes, not our own financial targets. Third, recruit more of the right kind of people. We want investment firms to make themselves attractive to people who are motivated by more than money. Finally, adopt new technologies before they disrupt us. Embrace technology as an opportunity, not a threat. Better outcomes are possible A more transparent, more tech savvy, and more connected industry can respond better to all challenges, including geopolitical risk. Investors will not sit quietly while their investments rack up losses because of geopolitical events. Whether the U.S. Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule finally makes it onto the statute book or not — the current timeframe is June 9 — investors will expect their advisors to behave like fiduciaries; that is, to put client interests above their own. Morgan Stanley, like Bank of America Merrill Lynch before it, has signaled it will implement the standards of the Fiduciary Rule regardless of whether it is officially sanctioned, while JPMorgan announced late last year that it will stop charging its clients commissions on individual retirement accounts (IRAs). These are heartening signs that big industry players have decided to act on their own without waiting for further regulatory action. Bjorn Forfang is managing director of relationship management at the CFA Institute. He has more than 20 years of experience, including 14 years as managing director with UBS Investment Bank. The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill. View the discussion thread. Contributor's Signup 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.

2019-05-07

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Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after a top U.S. trade official indicated that higher tariffs on Chinese goods are coming later this week, disappointing traders who hoped President Donald Trump's weekend tweet threat was just a negotiation tactic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 473.39 points, or 1.79%, to 25,965.09 after plunging as much as 648.77 points at its low of the day, while the dropped 1.65% to 2,884.05. It was the Dow's biggest drop since January 3. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.96% to 7,963.76. All 30 of Dow components fell and all 11 S&P sectors traded lower in the broad sell-off. Shares of trade bellwethers Caterpillar and Boeing fell 2.26% and 3.87%, respectively. Boeing also broke below its 200-day moving average for the first time since January. Chipmakers, especially vulnerable if China retaliates, led the tech sector lower as Nvidia dropped 3.75%. Apple also fell 2.7%. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told reporters that the U.S. will increase levies on Chinese imports on Friday. Lighthizer's comments "further increased the likelihood of a tariff step up," Keith Parker, a strategist at UBS, said in a note. A full-blown trade war would shave off 45 basis points from global economic growth, while China's GDP would take a hit of between 1.2% and 1.5%. "We still see a trade war as low probability given the next tranche of tariffs would hit US consumer goods, but nevertheless it would have a big negative impact," he said. Lighthizer made his remarks after President Donald Trump tweeted he would raise current tariffs 10% on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25% on Friday. He also threatened to impose an extra 25% levy on another $325 billion of Chinese goods "shortly." Trump's tweets initially sent the market reeling on Monday. The Dow fell as much as 471 points while the Nasdaq dropped 2% at one point. However, equities rebounded to close well off their lows on news that a Chinese delegation would come to Washington for talks and as traders bet that Trump's tweet was just bluffing. But Lighthizer's comments dashed those hopes. The selling on Tuesday accelerated after the Dow broke through Monday's lows. The Cboe Volatility Index, a measure of the 30-day implied volatility of the S&P 500 known as the "VIX" or the "fear gauge," hit a fresh high of 21.09 on Tuesday, its highest level since January 22. "I think this is a big masquerade by the administration. I think they're preparing the market for the worst-case scenario but a trade deal is probably going to happen," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities. "I still think we'll get some sort of positive announcement on Friday." Chinese Vice Premier Liu He is expected to join a delegation in the United States this week. However, he will only attend the negotiations on Thursday and Friday. He was originally scheduled to attend negotiations Wednesday through Saturday. "The Trump administration seems to have concluded that it is time to get it done. In other words, it's either deal or no deal," said Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, in a note. But "I expect that the US and China will settle their differences on trade issues sooner rather than later." Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO of Doubleline, is not so sure. He told CNBC's "Halftime Report " there is a better than 50% chance that Trump follows through on his treat to hike tariffs on Chinese imports. "Both the premier of China and the president of the United States want to come across that they prevailed and didn't give in," he said. In recent months, both China and the U.S. have indicated that trade talks were heading toward a resolution that would end the ongoing trade war between the world's largest economies. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told The New York Times last month that negotiations were in the "final laps. " The positive news helped push the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record highs this year. The indexes are up still up 15% and 20%, respectively. The Dow, meanwhile, is up 11%. "The market was just very complacent thinking a deal would happen," said Sandy Villere, portfolio manager at Villere & Co. "If they look forward, I think investors will see more volatility and lower overall returns with low interest rates." Villere sees the higher volatility as a buying opportunity, "but we've got to get through this trade war." —CNBC's Silvia Amaro contributed to this report.

2020-02-06 00:00:00

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This week, Starbucks UK released an ad showing a young trans man getting to use his chosen name while getting a coffee. The ad, made in support of a UK trans youth organization, shows the heartbreak of being deadnamed over and over before finally being properly addressed at a Starbucks. While many have praised the spot for what it represents, it's also drawn complaints from trans Starbucks employees who say the company's publicly declared values don't always align with how they're treated. Former and current employees told BuzzFeed News they've experienced being outed or misgendered by other employees, been confronted by their deadnames in company software, and having trouble accessing gender-affirming medical treatment under Starbucks's employee insurance plans. The whole reason Tucker Jace Webb wanted to work as a Starbucks partner (which is what the company calls its employees) was its insurance plan has covered gender-affirming procedures since 2013. He started at a location in Denton, Texas, in January 2018 but said he quickly encountered problems. Tucker Jace Webb First, despite employee software allowing him to enter a name, the new-hire login system greeted him with his deadname. He alerted corporate but said he was told nothing could be done unless he had a legal name change. Later, four months into the job, he found out from a supervisor that he'd been outed to staff by a high-ranking employee. The employee "thought that it was appropriate to tell of my shift supervisors about my trans identity," he told BuzzFeed News. "In my interview, I said that is information I don't want anyone else knowing." He said he escalated the incident to the district manager, who got him a location transfer. Then, at the new location, it happened again. An employee was bantering with a coworker and used Webb's trans identity as an argument about respecting other people's identities, "completely outing me and then also using me as a political example." Webb said he reported both instances to the corporate level, but never got a response. It wasn't until this week, when a tweet about his issues went viral, that corporate got in touch. He said the Starbucks spokesperson apologized for the company dropping the ball and pledged to investigate where things went wrong. Webb appreciated the effort, but, he said, "at the same time, this has been going on for so many months and no one said anything until I tweeted about it." He said it seems like Starbucks has solid trans-friendly policies at the corporate level, but actually implementing them at a store level seems to be an issue. "I feel like some type of training needs to be mandated," he said. A Starbucks spokesperson declined to comment on the individual allegations in this story but said the company is reaching out to everyone tweeting complaints like Webb's in response to the UK commercial. "We take great pride in providing a warm and welcoming environment for everyone, and intentional misgendering is not acceptable conduct at Starbucks," the spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. "It is not align [sic] with our mission and values, nor with our employment policies regarding harassment and discrimination." The spokesperson also noted that Starbucks has had Workplace Gender Transition Guidelines for more than a decade and that the company covers gender reassignment surgeries. For Webb, that coverage never worked out. He ended up going back on his parents' health insurance and got the procedure done in December. He plans to return to Starbucks after his recovery. Jamison Schwartz started working at Starbucks in July 2018, not long after the company announced it was expanding what gender-affirming procedures would be covered. "That was really cool. I was really excited," Schwartz told BuzzFeed News. He'd been hoping to get top surgery, so the new job was perfect. Jamison Schwartz He said his employees were all respectful, but problems arose when he tried to get his top surgery covered. Despite working with a Starbucks advocate — a title given to employees assigned with helping workers handle their insurance — and following guidelines, Schwartz was denied coverage three times. The advocate really seemed to care and wanted to help, Schwartz said, but didn't know what to do after the final denial. "It was a really frustrating time and I started to not enjoy going to work as much," he told BuzzFeed News. "It is a very new policy they’d just come out with in the past year or two, so I don't think they realized the high demand of their employees." He said he thought the company is really trying to support trans employees, but it's still falling short. He ended up leaving Starbucks in July 2019. For Elaine Cao, it took the threat of legal action to get her bottom surgery covered by her Starbucks insurance. She started at a Starbucks in St. Louis in September 2017 after hearing about the company's policies for trans employees. Like Webb, she said she was also outed by a manager. "I don’t think it was malicious. It was a matter of they didn’t have enough training to be like, don’t do this," she told BuzzFeed News. She said that if policies exist, it's not apparent if managers or fellow baristas ever read them. Elaine Cao In another incident, a supervisor intentionally misgendered her, she said. She took a complaint up the chain to corporate and said the supervisor got a talking to. "Then he gave me a very angry phone call [and said], 'I can’t believe you went to corporate about this,'" she said. "I would have wanted to never see that guy again. I feel like it was something they had a responsibility to follow up on more seriously." The supervisor ended up quitting without other action being taken, according to Cao. When it came time for surgery, Cao said, she was fortunate enough to be able to get a bank loan to pay for the procedure up front. When she tried to get reimbursed through her Starbucks insurance, she kept being denied on technicalities she said made no sense. For example, she said, they'd say she was missing documents she was never asked for. "The insurance company just made it up and they were like, 'We can’t pay for it,'" she said. "I had to threaten the insurance company with lawsuits to get that through." Again, she said she believes Starbucks thinks it's helping trans employees, but there's a lot to be desired. "I legitimately think that the people who work in the corporate office in Seattle, they think that — but they aren’t doing enough to make sure that that is the case," she said. "If they’re going to say they are providing these things, they need to provide them in a way that reasonably accessible."

2017-09-27

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Sept 27 (Reuters) - ADVENIS SA: * SAYS EUROVALYS UNIT HAS ACQUIRED NEW BUILDING FOR EUR 6 MILLION IN MÖRFELDEN-WALLDORF, GERMANY Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2019-07-20

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(CNN)"Veronica Mars," the noir-style drama that starred Kristen Bell as a teen gumshoe known for her pithy one-liners and fearless investigation techniques, found a fan-base in the underappreciated or outsiders when it aired on UPN and then The CW in the mid-aughts -- and has the potential to do the same now that those first seasons are available on Hulu, along with a new season that debuted Friday. But what has set "Veronica Mars" apart from other programs geared at young adults is how it helped a certain segment of the population feel seen: sexual assault survivors. "You want to know how I lost my virginity? So do I," Veronica narrates in an unflinching, emotionless voiceover in the pilot. The incident, the audience learns, happened when she was drugged and raped after she put on a pretty white dress and attended a house party in an attempt to realign with a friend group who had alienated her. "It was jarring in a lot of ways. But at the same in time, it felt like it was something that I didn't feel alone about," assault survivor Celeste Smith says of this episode, particularly of a notorious flashback scene where Bell's character wakes up confused and deregulated in a strange place with her underwear on the ground. Smith, a product marketer and photographer from Plano, Texas is one of a few "Mars" fans (who call themselves Marshmallows) and assault survivors who responded to a request by CNN to be interviewed on this topic. She began re-watching the show in college about six months after she was sexually assaulted and she says seeing this moment "was kind of a sobering reminder of what I had been through." Aside from freely Tweeting about the show and/or her ordeal, she's spent the past decade introducing others to what she calls her favorite series -- with the caveat that "it's a show that approaches a common reality for women... but I present it as a way of healing if it's something that you can handle because it talks about it from her perspective in a way that I think a lot of other TV shows don't." We, and Veronica, won't know who her attacker is for some time and the themes of violence against those who are perceived to be weak, particularly women and girls, and the notion of "asking for it" are prevalent through all three years of the show's initial run. But what's also important here is that the incident at the party, while defining, isn't treated as a cautionary tale that makes Bell's heroine cower. Instead, it gives her a rock-hard emotional coat of armor that protects her as she becomes a real-life superhero for the downtrodden in her fictional seaside home of Neptune, California. Although the show ended its original incarnation in 2007, this depiction seems eerily prescient to today's headlines. Just ask Shannon Chamberlain. The post-doctorate scholar taught the series for two semesters as a graduate student instructor while working on her PhD at University of California-Berkeley -- which coincidentally happened to be at a time when that school, and so many other colleges, was embroiled in stories of sex crimes. Chamberlain, who wrote an essay about her experiences for Vox in 2016, says now that, as she progressed in discussions with her students, conversations evolved into debates about "how Veronica pursues individual justice at the expense of a broad, socially construed idea of justice." She says she also saw an influx of students who came to her privately to discuss how the show made them rethink events that had happened to them "that they had not even classified as problematic." It's hard to quantify exactly how therapeutic shows like "Veronica Mars" have been for assault survivors, considering the understandably historically low probability of this subset of the population to self-identify. It also may require a change in mindset from the people who study various media's effect on our culture. Rebecca Ortiz, an assistant professor of advertising at Syracuse University, says most of the research and discussions on this topic are both anecdotal and "primarily focused on how depictions of rape or depictions of survivors' experiences... might trigger sexual abuse survivors." As far as she's been able to find, Ortiz says no one is really looking at "how this might be a healing process and help survivors deal with the trauma." She says part of this is due to ethical limitations; that it's hard to recruit participants for a study like this and you certainly don't want to generalize the results. But she says it also comes from a force of habit because "we talk more about how to avoid something negative than to try to bring about positive." But is this starting to change? Hulu does not include a warning label ahead of the old episodes of "Veronica Mars" available on its platform and a request by CNN to find out whether it would was not returned. "Veronica, on the show, tends to channel her pain and experience into helping other people around her," says survivor Smith, adding that "I think a lot of that is because of what she went through for help. And she wants to help other women who are going through the same thing." "Veronica Mars" is produced by Warner Bros. Television which, like CNN, is part of parent company WarnerMedia.

2016-06-01 00:00:00

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(CNN)The New York City Department of Buildings confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the use of the Trump Tower atrium for campaign events, which may violate an agreement Donald Trump made to keep parts the building open to the public when he built the landmark. Department spokesman Joe Soldevere told CNN that the "Department of Building's enforcement unit is investigating whether the atrium was improperly closed to the public." Soldevere said the probe was sparked by Tuesday's press conference at Trump Tower. Reuters first reported the investigation by the Department of Buildings. A message left with the Trump campaign was not immediately returned on Wednesday. Trump struck a deal with New York City in 1979 that allowed for extended zoning of the now-famous building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. But the special permit stipulated that the atrium of the building "be accessible and kept open to the public from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily." While the deal said the atrium could be closed to the public up to four times a year with permission, Soldevere told CNN that they had "received no such requests" from the Trump campaign. An official with the city planning department added that no requests had been received in the past two years. And Trump has frequently used the space for campaign events, including interviews, press conferences and even the announcement of his campaign. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Austin Finan, a spokesman for de Blasio, said, "Despite what he may think, the rules and laws of this city apply to everybody, including Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump should honor his agreement with the city to keep the space open to the public." CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed the news agency that first reported the investigation. Reuters broke the story. CNN's David Shortell contributed to this report.

2016-08-27 00:00:00

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Justin Bieber and Sofia Richie are celebrating her 18th birthday with a lot of swapping spit, cuddling and even a little nudity. The two are down in Cabo ... and it's clear to see, there's an awful lot of chemistry between the new couple. Richie turned 18 Thursday and the two got on a private jet Friday to head south of the border. Justin doesn't seem too shy to show some skin either, dropping trou right next to a butler. Who needs Instagram, anyway?

2017-05-03

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May 3 (Reuters) - Valero Energy Corp * Valero Energy Corporation declares regular cash dividend on common stock * Sets regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.70per share Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2016-10-12 07:27:00

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Sylvester Stallone‘s family is rallying behind his half-brother Dante, who is recovering after being brutally attacked in Tallahassee, Florida, on Saturday night. “The family is all behind him and we hope for a speedy recovery,” Frank Stallone, Sylvester’s younger brother, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive statement. The 19-year-old college student was attacked near campus at Florida State University and sustained several serious injuries. “He got jumped by a group of several grown men. It happened just right off campus,” a friend of Dante’s tells PEOPLE. Police have yet to release details about the incident. “It’s a tragedy that this kind of violent behavior is happening in this country and around the world where people are just sucker-punched on the street for no apparent reason and it’s something that really has to be dealt with,” Frank adds. “I don’t know if it’s more policing, I don’t know what the answer is right now, but it seems like it’s coming in epidemic proportions and something really has to be done about it.” The musician is seemingly making reference to the “knockout game,” in which participants are given points for assaulting strangers. Cell phone videos of the attacks are often posted online. Police have attributed the “knockout game” to multiple assaults all over the country, although there is no evidence Dante’s attackers were participating in it. “Hopefully my brother will recover and continue to go back to school and see if he can put this behind him,” says Frank. Dante, the son of Frank Stallone, Sr. and his 4th wife, Kathy Stallone, is a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at FSU and is a biology major. He suffered a shattered jaw, split palate and several of his teeth were broken and knocked out, reports TMZ. Sylvester Stallone issued a statement, calling the vicious attack “tragic and terribly sad.” “This is a wonderful young man, a straight-A student who would not cause any trouble,” said the actor. “It’s just so tragic and terribly sad.”

2017-01-22

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The Women's Marches brought together millions of people in the United States — and not all of them were women. Dads, too, came out to show their support for the march and the women in their lives. The subways and streets of Washington, D.C., were full of grown men wearing knitted pink vagina hats on their heads. At the march, they were seen handing out sandwiches, pushing strollers and raising their children and their fists. Though there's no official estimate on the number of men participating, the visual and anecdotal accounts of their participation were strong. Here's why a few of them chose to participate: Adrian (34) and his two daughters Natyia (3) and Angia (14) Adrian: "I came here to support my wife and daughters. You've got to support the people. All these people, they're so different, but they've all got the same goal." Roy F. (68) of Gettysburg, PA Roy: "I'm here because I care about women's rights. I was a big Hillary supporter. Someone on stage said they won the election, but we'll win the future." Matthew H. (42) and his family: Drew (4), Maddie (7), and Anna (9) Matthew: "I'm here because of my wife, the environment, justice reform and Black Lives Matter. We need dads. If there's anytime to stand up the time is now." Scott Gilbert (63) Scott: "Both of my parents were Holocaust survivors. I've carried around this picture of Anne Frank for 50 years. I have children. We can't let this happen again." Jeff and Brenda P. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Jeff: "Men shouldn't be grabbing women. Presidents shouldn't be grabbing women. Fathers should be role models." Pat Craig (82) of Redwoods, California Pat: "I have daughters. All men come from women. I care about women's rights. Without women it's over." Nathan Boring Nathan: "Men play an important role in advocating for women's rights in the same way that people of all ethnicities can stand against racism. Our sons and daughters need to know that there are things we can do in our neighborhoods, cities, states and country to support equal rights and representation for all." Ken Ambrose (40), Jennifer Ambrose (38) and their two chlidren "Everyone's rights are in jeopardy right now. The Constitution is in jeopardy. This is my family, I came to march with them."

2016-08-05

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Aug 5 (Reuters) - Owens Corning : * Owens Corning files for senior notes offering of up to $400 million - SEC filing Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2018-10-23

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PARIS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - French construction and engineering group Vinci posted a 9.5 percent rise in third-quarter sales, helped by robust activity in its airports and motorway concessions units and at its construction business. Vinci, Europe’s biggest construction and concessions company, said it was entering the last quarter of 2018 with confidence and kept forecasts that revenue and earnings would rise this year. Total revenue reached 11.682 billion euros ($13.41 billion)in the quarter, above median estimates of 11.461 billion euros in an Inquiry Financial poll for Reuters. Excluding currency fluctuations and acquisitions or disposals, revenue rose 4.3 percent year-on-year, Vinci said. $1 = 0.8712 euros Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta

2016-03-03 12:30:00

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Amazon's Echo home speaker (a favorite of staffers) has slowly been taking over living rooms. Powered by a virtual assistant named Alexa, you can talk to the glorified speaker to do all sorts of things, from play a Spotify playlist, to order an Uber, to ordering pizza. Now, it's got two companions so you can Alexa-fy your whole house, and then some. The first is the Amazon tap, a portable version of the Amazon Echo. The second is the Echo Dot, a smaller companion speaker aimed at existing Echo owners. Where Apple, Google, Samsung, and others have popular smartphones you can grab for voice dictated queries and commands, Amazon has had little to no luck in that space. (Remember the Amazon Fire Phone? Yeah, that's what we thought.) So instead, it's been targeting the home (the living room, in particular) with these gadgets that make your space smarter, and connect to Amazon's ecosystem of products and digital media. Today's new products build on that vision. The Amazon Tap looks a lot like the original cylindrical Amazon Echo, except it's more travel-friendly. With 360-degree speakers, it can stream music directly from your phone or tablet over Bluetooth, or play tunes from Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and a few other sources (whether or not your phone is connected). When Tap is connected to WiFi, you can use it for all the tasks you'd normally be able to use an Echo for, such as asking her to read you the day's news or the weather, or ordering pizza from Domino's. It's got up to nine hours of audio playback, so it'll last all day at the park, and has an optional case (a "Sling") that makes it easy to tote around, or attach to a backpack. The Sling comes in six fun colors: tangerine, magenta, green, blue, black, and white. The second product is the Echo Dot, and interestingly, not just anyone can buy it quite yet. It's like a little buddy existing Echo owners can buy so they can talk to Alexa no matter what room of the house they're in. It looks like a thick, oversize, plasticky coaster with a ring of blue light around its edge. It functions the same as the Echo or the Tap, using your voice for it to pull up information or order things from Amazon. And in this case, it can only be purchased through that voice control — Echo owners can actually say, "Alexa, order an Echo Dot" to buy one. The Dot costs $90 and the Tap is $130. The idea of a speaker constantly listening in on your conversations in your home is a little creepy, but we see the benefits. In a home outfitted with Alexa everything, you might never have to get off the couch again.

2019-12-01 00:00:00

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Bernie Williams will NOT be the next Carlos Beltran ... so says the Yankees legend himself, who tells TMZ Sports he's solely focused on being a musician -- not an MLB manager!! Hiring ex-stars has been the trendy move for clubs looking for a new leader these days ... and with Bernie's background, he seems to be a great candidate for a job down the road. But, Williams tells us he has no interest in having that gig at the moment ... saying his guitar has his heart!! "This music thing has got me, man!" Williams says. "It's got me really hard. And, I'm trying to be the best musician that I can be right now." If you're unfamiliar, Bernie's been shredding his guitar for years since his retirement in 2006 ... and even got nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2009. But, he's clearly gunning for more in the music world ... telling us that's his passion right now. Don't get it twisted, Bernie's still staying around baseball and says he's always down to help Yankees hitters during spring training workouts in Florida. So, maybe, never say never??

2018-11-30 00:00:00

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* KOSPI index closes down, foreigners sell * Korean won falls vs dollar * South Korean bond yields edge higher * For the midday report, please click SEOUL, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Round-up of South Korean financial markets: ** South Korea’s KOSPI stock index closed lower on Friday, weighed down by chipmakers, as global investors awaited the high-stakes trade talks between President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump this weekend. The Korean won edged down, while bond yields rose. ** South Korea’s central bank raised its policy interest rate on Friday for the first time in a year in a widely expected move aimed mainly at containing a boom in parts of the country’s property market. Analysts said heightened global markets turmoil over the past few months has made it difficult for the Bank of Korea (BOK) to find the perfect timing to adjust policy. ** Growth in China’s vast manufacturing sector stalled for the first time in over two years in November as new orders shrank. The official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), released on Friday, fell to 50 in November, missing market expectations and down from 50.2 in October. ** At 06:32 GMT, the KOSPI closed down 17.24 points or 0.82 percent at 2,096.86. The benchmark index rose 1.9 percent on a weekly basis, while it rose 3.3 percent on a monthly basis, posting the biggest monthly gain since January. ** KOSPI fell as semiconductor shares dipped towards the end of the session, said Kim Ji-hyung, an analyst at Hanyang Securities. BOK’s rate hike had limited effect as it was widely expected, Kim added. ** South Korea's chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix closed down 3.0 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively. World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) said in its report bit.ly/2QpP1SU that it forecasts the memory segment to "show a slightly negative growth after the extraordinary growth in 2018." ** Hyundai Motor Co closed up 7.0 percent, posting its biggest gain since March 21, 2017, after the company said it would buy back 255 billion won ($228.3 million) worth of common and preferred stocks to stabilise its stock prices and boost investor returns. ** Samsung Electronics’ supplier Toptec Co Ltd plunged down 19.6 percent after South Korean prosecutors on Thursday charged the chief executive and eight employees of the company for selling information earlier this year about Samsung’s organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels. ** South Korea’s construction machinery manufacturer Doosan Bobcat Inc hit a near four-month low as parent company Doosan Infracore Co Ltd said it sold shares worth 149.1 billion won ($133.08 mln) in Doosan Bobcat. Doosan Bobcat ended 7.3 percent lower. ** The won was quoted at 1,121.2 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.18 percent weaker than its previous close at 1,119.2. For the week, the currency rose 0.8 percent, while it jumped 1.6 percent on a monthly basis, hitting its biggest monthly gain since March 31. ** In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,120.67 per U.S. dollar, down 0.37 percent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being asked at 1,100.35 per dollar. ** MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.22 percent, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session with mild losses. Japanese stocks rose 0.4 percent. ** The KOSPI is down around 14.3 percent so far this year, and up by 1.59 percent in the previous 30 days. ** The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28 percent and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won. ** The trading volume during the session on the KOSPI index was 410,584,000 shares and, of the total traded issues of 894, the number of advancing shares was 365. ** Foreigners were net sellers of 140,695 million won worth of shares. ** The U.S. dollar has risen 5.09 percent against the won this year. The won’s high for the year is 1,053.55 per dollar on April 2 2018 and low is 1,146.26 on October 11 2018. ** In money and debt markets, December futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.01 points to 108.98. ** The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.88 percent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 1.893 percent, higher than the previous day’s 1.89 percent. (Reporting by Joori Roh, Yuna Park; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri)

2018-12-14 00:00:00

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SHANGHAI/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc, facing a court ban in China on some of its iPhone models over alleged infringement of Qualcomm Inc patents, said on Friday it will push software updates to users in a bid to resolve potential issues. Apple will carry out the software updates at the start of next week “to address any possible concern about our compliance with the order”, the firm said in a statement sent to Reuters. Earlier this week, Qualcomm said a Chinese court had ordered a ban on sales of some older iPhone models for violating two of its patents, though intellectual property lawyers said the ban would likely take time to enforce. “Based on the iPhone models we offer today in China, we believe we are in compliance,” Apple said. “Early next week we will deliver a software update for iPhone users in China addressing the minor functionality of the two patents at issue in the case.” In a statement, Qualcomm’s general counsel Don Rosenberg said “Apple continues to disregard and violate the Fuzhou court’s orders” despite the planned software changes. “They are legally obligated to immediately cease sales, offers for sale and importation of the devices identified in the orders and to prove compliance in court,” he said in the statement. The case, brought by Qualcomm, is part of a global patent dispute between the two U.S. companies that includes dozens of lawsuits. It creates uncertainty over Apple’s business in one of its biggest markets at a time when concerns over waning demand for new iPhones are battering its shares. Qualcomm has said the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in China found Apple infringed two patents held by the chipmaker and ordered an immediate ban on sales of older iPhone models, from the 6S through the X. Apple has filed a request for reconsideration with the court, a copy of which Qualcomm shared with Reuters. Qualcomm and Apple disagree about whether the court order means iPhone sales must be halted. The court’s preliminary injunction, which the chipmaker also shared with Reuters, orders an immediate block, though lawyers say Apple could take steps to stall the process. All iPhone models were available for purchase on Apple’s China website on Friday. Qualcomm, the biggest supplier of chips for mobile phones, filed its case against Apple in China in late 2017, saying the iPhone maker infringed patents on features related to resizing photographs and managing apps on a touch screen. Apple argues the injunction should be lifted as continuing to sell iPhones does not constitute “irreparable harm” to Qualcomm, a key consideration for a preliminary injunction, the copy of its reconsideration request dated Dec. 10 shows. “That’s one of the reasons why in a very complicated patent litigation case the judge would be reluctant to grant a preliminary injunction,” said Yiqiang Li, a patent lawyer at Faegre Baker Daniels. Apple’s reconsideration request also says any ban on iPhone sales would impact its Chinese suppliers and consumers as well as the tax revenue it pays to authorities. The request adds the injunction could force Apple to settle with Qualcomm. But it was not clear whether this referred to the latest case or their broader legal dispute. Qualcomm has paid a 300 million yuan ($43.54 million) bond to cover potential damages to Apple from a sales ban and Apple is willing to pay a “counter security” of double that to get the ban lifted, the copy of the reconsideration request shows. Apple did not immediately respond to questions about the reconsideration request and Reuters was not independently able to confirm its authenticity. Yiqiang Li said the case would undoubtedly ramp up pressure on Apple, especially if a ban was enforced. “I think that Qualcomm and Apple, they always have those IP litigations to try to force the other side to make concessions. They try to get their inch somewhere. That’s always the game.” Reporting by Adam Jourdan in Shanghai and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Phil Berlowitz

2017-11-17

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Rep. Greg GianforteGregory Richard GianforteHouse Democrats targeting six more Trump districts for 2020 House GOP fears retirement wave will lead to tsunami Trump declares Gorka 'wins big' after clash with reporters in Rose Garden MORE (R-Mont.) told police after he assaulted a reporter in May that the journalist had made physical contact with him first, The Guardian reported Friday. The account given to police by the now-congressman contradicts eye witness accounts and an audio recording of the altercation between Gianforte and Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. According to witnesses, Gianforte knocked the journalist to the ground and punched him after Jacobs asked the then-candidate a question about a GOP health-care bill. The altercation broke out a day before Montana's special House election to fill the seat vacated by Interior Secretary Ryan ZinkeRyan Keith ZinkeNew policy at Interior's in-house watchdog clamps down on interactions with press Overnight Energy: EPA proposes scrapping limits on coal plant waste | Appointee overseeing federal lands once advocated selling them | EPA lifts Obama-era block on controversial mine Latest appointee overseeing federal public lands once advocated to sell them MORE. Despite the incident, Gianforte won the race.  He eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, and received a sentence of community service, anger management classes and a $385 fine. Gianforte's account of the incident was made public in a police report released Friday. After the incident in May, Shane Scanlon, a spokesman for Gianforte, said the reporter “grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground.” That account was soon disputed by a team of Fox News journalists who witnessed the incident, as well as an audio recording taken by Jacobs. In an apology letter sent to Jacobs in June as part of an agreement to settle any potential civil suits, Gianforte acknowledged that the reporter did not initiate contact with him. “Notwithstanding anyone’s statements to the contrary, you did not initiate any physical contact with me, and I had no right to assault you,” he wrote. 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.

2016-08-12 13:45:00

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Amid the body shaming controversy surrounding some of their fellow Olympic competitors, a few female Team U.S.A. members are sharing how they learned to embrace their athletic shapes. Olympic hammer thrower Amber Campbell is in peak physical condition, she told the Indy Star, but by her measurements – 5’7″ and 200 lbs. – she could be considered obese. “I’ll never be 135 lbs. at 5-foot-7,” said Campbell. “If I were 135 lbs., I couldn’t throw a hammer. It’s not about being wispy and thin. To be a good athlete, you have to be strong.” And strong she is. Now in her third Olympics, 35-year-old Johnson recently set a record at the U.S. trials, throwing 242 feet, 10 inches. But Campbell didn’t always embrace her figure, she told the Star. It took time for the athlete to realize it was “not about how I looked, but how I felt.” Similarly, shot putter Felisha Johnson, 27, has pride in her “muscular and bigger” shape. Said the Olympian, who is 6’1″ and 280 lbs., “If you want to be an athlete, your body is going to be totally different.” For more of PEOPLE’s Olympic coverage, pick up our collector’s edition, The Best of the Games, on sale now. That self-confidence doesn’t spare her from rude remarks, though. She said people “in the outside world” make comments like, “‘You’re huge. How much do you bench?’ ” According to a 2015 study by the NCAA Sport Science Institute, The Female Athlete Body Project – which was cited by the Star – more than 25 percent of female athletes restrict their eating. These dietary decisions lead many competitors to fall behind in the number of calories needed to support their lifestyles. “I used to spend time wishing my limbs were skinnier or I had a firmer behind,” said Kara Winger, who will compete for Team U.S.A. in the javelin throw. “But in the past few years, I’ve really honed in on how good my body feels when I’m in great competition shape.”

2018-08-22

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EditorsNote: fixes to “one out” in last graf Dansby Swanson hit two two-run homers, and right-hander Kevin Gausman allowed only four hits over eight scoreless innings Tuesday as the visiting Atlanta Braves downed the Pittsburgh Pirates 6-1. Chad Sobotka gave up a homer to the Pirates’ Gregory Polanco — his 20th, a shot to right — in the ninth to spoil the shutout. Kurt Suzuki added an RBI double for Atlanta, which reached 70 wins and has taken the first two games of the series after getting swept in four games by the Colorado Rockies. The Pirates had given up one run in each of their previous five games. Gausman (8-9) struck out five and walked two. He has won three consecutive starts after dropping his first since being acquired by Atlanta. Pirates starter Ivan Nova (7-8) gave up two runs and four hits in six innings, with four strikeouts and no walks. He had won all three of his previous career starts against Atlanta. In the fifth, Suzuki singled with one out and scored ahead of Swanson, who lined a homer to left for a 2-0 Braves lead. With reliever Michael Feliz coming in for Pittsburgh, Ozzie Albies singled with one out in the seventh and scored on Suzuki’s double to the corner in left. Swanson then struck again, driving his 12th homer of the season to left for a 5-0 lead. It was Swanson’s first career multiple-homer game. Leading off the ninth, Suzuki was hit in the left elbow and side by a Clay Holmes pitch and left the game. The Braves eventually loaded the bases with two outs and took a 6-0 lead on a Holmes wild pitch. The Pirates had chances. They got runners to first and third with one out in the second before Adeiny Hechavarria grounded into a double play. In the sixth, they loaded the bases but stranded all three runners when Josh Bell hit into a fielder’s choice. And in the seventh, Francisco Cervelli was at third with one out but was left stranded. —Field Level Media

2017-11-20 00:00:00

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Nov 20 (Reuters) - NavInfo Co Ltd * Says to issue 50 million yuan ($7.54 million) 3-year bonds Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/2zSpXLn Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.6279 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)

2017-10-03 00:00:00

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Democrats left a dinner last month with President Donald Trump enthusiastically touting a deal for “Dreamers.” Republicans who dined at the White House on Monday say Democrats may want to check the fine print. Influential GOP lawmakers say Trump laid out a much more expansive and rigid set of demands Trump wants from Congress in any agreement to turn the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into law. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he made the case to Trump that funding for a border wall should be part of any legislative package on DACA. Asked if Trump agreed, McCarthy said yes — which would go counter to an agreement that Democratic leaders thought they had struck last month. One other new requirement, according to one Republican senator who attended: Congress needs to pass a bill that addresses solely the current population of DACA recipients, rather than a broader circle of young undocumented immigrants. “The president was very clear. Any effort to codify DACA needs to, one, be limited to DACA so the first criteria under the law should be you have a DACA permit today,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in an interview Tuesday. “Second, any deal has to end chain migration. And then third, it ought to include some kind of enhanced measures, whether it’s on the border or interior enforcement or what have you.” Trump’s latest wish list is a far cry from the basic border-security-for-Dream-Act exchange that he laid out to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) during their own dinner last month. And it could spell trouble for the prospects of reaching an immigration deal with Democrats, whose votes will be needed to pass any Dreamer bills but will be reluctant to swallow any dramatic enforcement measures or other restrictive provisions. “If the president is changing his view, he should tell us. I’ve talked to the president, I’ve talked to Gen. [John] Kelly, about continuing on the path that we all agreed to indisputably," Schumer said Tuesday. "If they want to continue on that path, great. If they want to back off, let them tell us." But if Trump insists on addressing just the current DACA recipients in any legislation, that would rule out bills such as the Dream Act from Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the Succeed Act from Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.). Both bills would cover a much broader population than the estimated 690,000 who currently hold DACA permits. “They didn’t have a deal,” stressed Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), who also attended Monday night’s dinner at the White House, about Pelosi and Schumer. Cornyn said Trump would “like to find a solution for these young adults” and laid out some suggestions. Cotton and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) also lobbied Trump on including their plan to overhaul the current green card system and slash legal immigration limits in a DACA deal. The Texas Republican said he expects the White House to send Congress a proposal outlining what it would like to see in DACA legislation as early as this week. “So I think there is a way to come up with a resolution, a legislative solution on the DACA situation,” Cornyn said Tuesday. “We’re consulting with the White House, but we are an independent branch and we’re trying to come up with ideas that we think would be acceptable that Democrats and Republicans would fix it.” Perdue said the lawmakers also discussed including E-Verify provisions — a workplace system that checks whether an employee is here legally — during the dinner, which was also attended by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). Democrats would likely oppose that since it would not be paired with a broader legalization program and could ensnare undocumented immigrants who would otherwise not be identified. Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats were "explicit" during their meeting that interior enforcement provisions such as E-Verify would not be a part of the immigration agreement. Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who will play a critical role in any immigration deal, laid out his own parameters for a DACA deal on Tuesday — chief among them border security, but “by that I don’t mean a wall.” The Iowa Republican also will insist on robust interior enforcement measures like making E-Verify mandatory for all employers. Grassley said lawmakers need to “take a hard look” at backlogs in the immigration courts and asylum system so that federal officials can speed up deportations “while preserving lawful claims for those truly in need.” “It would be a dereliction of our duty if we fail to take steps to end at least some of the illegal immigration as we know it, and kick the can down the road so that a future Congress has to address this very same problem again in another 15 years,” Grassley said. “I’m confident that if everyone is reasonable, we can find a solution.” Rachael Bade contributed to this report.

2018-06-09 00:00:00

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VIENNA (Reuters) - Brazil will unleash their full attacking might against Austria on Sunday as the feared quartet of Neymar, Willian, Philippe Coutinho and Gabriel Jesus start together for the first time. The foursome were all included as coach Tite confirmed his team for Sunday’s match at the Ernst Happel stadium, Brazil’s last before they open their World Cup campaign against Switzerland on June 17. Many feel the four would form the ideal attacking line-up at the World Cup but, for one reason or another, they have only played around 60 minutes together, split between three matches. Tite did not promise that Sunday’s team would be the one that starts the tournament in Russia. “I don’t know if I can say that this will be the team at the start of the World Cup,” he told reporters. “The match (against Austria) and the performance will decide that.” Neymar, the world’s most expensive player, will start a game for the first time since he fractured a metatarsal and sprained his ankle playing for Paris St Germain in a French league match against Olympique de Marseille on Feb. 25. The 26-year-old made his comeback last Sunday when he scored in the 2-0 friendly win over Croatia after coming on in the second half. “We are following his progress in training, in matches and keeping an eye on his level of confidence,” said Tite. “I’ve told him not to pull out of tackles, and not to stop competing, because the best way to recover his rhythm is with tough and high-quality training.” Brazil have lost only one game out of 20 since Tite was appointed in June 2016 and have regained their confidence which was shattered by the 7-1 semi-final defeat to Germany at the last World Cup. Tite said Sunday’s match against Austria, who failed to qualify for the World Cup but are unbeaten in eight games, would be a “real challenge.” “Emotionally, it’s probably the most difficult one to play,” he said. “It’s one week before the start of the World Cup, there’s the matter of performing well, a risk of injury, a loss on confidence.” Writing by Brian Homewood; Editing by Christian Radnedge

2017-04-18

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Goldman Sachs stock fell to its lowest level in nearly five months Tuesday after the premiere Wall Street firm reported first-quarter earnings that missed on the top and bottom lines. Here are some highlights of the earnings: Heading into Tuesday's report, Goldman had topped Wall Street's earnings estimates 90 percent of the time when reporting quarterly results over its history as a public company, according to Bespoke Investment Group. The last time Goldman reported a miss on earnings per share was the fourth quarter of 2015. Shares skidded 4.5 percent in the first hour of trading, falling to $216.02 at one point before regaining some lost ground. It was the lowest intraday price since it traded at 214.97 on Nov. 30. In anticipation of the earnings announcement Tuesday, the share price had gained more than 1 percent. "The operating environment was mixed, with client activity challenged in certain market-making businesses and a more attractive backdrop for underwriting in our investment banking franchise," Chairman and CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein said in a release. Goldman said "significantly" lower net revenues from commodities and currencies offset "significantly" higher net revenues in mortgage products. Stock trading revenue was hit by declines in commissions and fees, reflecting lower volumes in the U.S. "What we have is a contrast between Goldman being a broker-dealer that's kind of moved into being categorized as a bank, and Bank of America which is a traditional commercial bank which gets a lot more benefit from higher interest rates, especially on the short end of the curve," Marty Mosby, director of bank and equity strategies at Vining Sparks, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box. " Earlier this year, the U.S. 2-year Treasury yield hit fresh highs going back to the financial crisis, just ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike in March, the second in three months. Treasury yields have since fallen to lows not seen in at least a month as concerns about economic growth and supportive fiscal policy have increased. Goldman said its net interest income fell 42 percent year on year. Bank of America said its net interest income rose 5 percent from the same quarter last year. Goldman Sachs also announced the repurchase of an addition 50 million shares of common stock and raised its quarterly dividend to 75 cents from 65 cents per common share. The dividend will be paid on June 29 to common shareholders as of June 1. Source: FactSet Goldman said the Standardized Common Equity Tier 1 ratio — a measure of financial strength watched by regulators— fell to 14.2 percent in the first quarter, down from 14.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016. For the first quarter of 2016, the financial giant reported diluted earnings per share of $2.68 on revenue of $6.34 billion. The financial stocks have led the U.S. stock market rally since the presidential election, but have struggled more recently. Goldman shares hit an all-time high in the first quarter and are up more than 30 percent since the election but were lower by a little more than 5 percent for the year, as of Monday's close. — CNBC's Juan Aruego contributed to this report.