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COPENHAGEN — Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg has presented her new centre-right, three-party government with no major changes but without a European affairs minister. |
Solberg presented her team Wednesday after talks during which that portfolio was sacrificed. |
Solberg — the prime minister of non-European Union member Norway since 2013 — said Sunday talks lasting two weeks had yielded a new government that now included the small centrist Liberal Party on top of Solberg’s Conservatives and the anti-migrant Progress Party. |
Yet even with the Liberals’ eight additional seats, the Cabinet only controls 80 of the Storting’s 169 seats. |
Under Solberg’s lead, the Conservatives scored a narrow victory in September’s parliamentary election. |
Upstate nuclear plants, including the Nine Mile Point and FitzPatrick reactors, support $3 billion in economic activity and 25,000 jobs, according to an industry-sponsored report. |
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - The four nuclear power reactors in Upstate New York, including three in Oswego County, are responsible for $3 billion in economic activity and nearly 25,000 jobs, according to a consultant's report paid for by nuclear operator Exelon Corp. and three unions fighting to keep the Upstate plants alive. |
The report is unlikely to prevent Entergy Corp.'s shutdown of the FitzPatrick nuclear plant in Oswego County roughly a year from now. But it might bolster support for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to support the other three Upstate reactors with new payments tied to the carbon-free benefits of nuclear power. Exelon is a str... |
The four Upstate reactors - two at the Nine Mile Point generating station, and one each at FitzPatrick and the Ginna power plant near Rochester - provide significant economic and environmental benefits that should be considered in setting future state energy policy, according to the report released today by The Brattle... |
If all four reactors were replaced with power plants that burn fossil fuels - mainly natural gas - the result would be 16 million tons of added carbon dioxide emissions annually, in addition to extra emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and other air pollutants, Brattle concluded. |
The report's analysis of the economic role played by nuclear plants will strike a chord in Oswego County, where residents and elected officials are bracing for the shutdown of FitzPatrick and the resulting loss of 615 high-paying jobs and millions of dollars in property taxes. According to previous studies at similar n... |
The Brattle Group suggests the impact could be even larger, although the report did not analyze the specific effects of closing FitzPatrick. Instead, the consultants looked at the impact of closing all the Upstate nukes. As a group, the nuclear plants support 24,800 jobs and $3.16 billion in gross domestic product, aft... |
There are 2,305 employees at the Upstate nuclear plants, Brattle reported. In addition, the outside workers who come for refueling outages every two years account for the equivalent of 352 full-time jobs, the study said. |
But most of the economic activity attributed to the nuclear plants is indirect, the result of services acquired by the plants, spending by their employees and - most of all - power prices that are lower than they would be without the nuclear plants. New York state electricity prices would be $1.7 billion a year higher ... |
That might sound counter-intuitive to anyone who has followed the Upstate nuclear industry, where plant operators complain that they can't compete with low-priced electricity from power plants fueled with natural gas. But removing Upstate nuclear power would cut the state's power supply by 15 percent, Brattle reported,... |
Here's the basic argument: Even though nuclear plants are struggling to meet their fixed costs, they always run so they accept whatever hourly price the market pays, Murphy said. Removing the Upstate nuclear plants from service would raise power prices because it would force grid operators to call more frequently on ga... |
The Brattle Group study does not address the potential impact on electric prices if the state were to adopt new price supports for carbon-free power to boost nuclear revenues and help the plants survive financially. |
FitzPatrick is scheduled to close by early 2017. The Ginna plant near Rochester is being supported by subsidy payments that expire in March 2017. The two nuclear reactors at Nine Mile Point nuclear station also face challenges but are in better financial health because of higher efficiency, industry experts say. |
The Brattle Group report was commissioned by Exelon, which owns Ginna and Nine Mile Point; the New York State IBEW Utility Labor Council; the Rochester Building & Construction Trades Council; and the Central and Northern New York Building & Construction Trades Council. |
"The Brattle report confirms what we already know -- nuclear energy is an economic engine and jobs provider for Upstate New York," said Ted Skerpon, chairman of the New York State IBEW Utility Labor Council. Skerpon is also president of IBEW Local 97, which represents workers at FitzPatrick and Nine Mile Point. |
Brattle produced a similar study in July looking at the U.S. nuclear industry as a whole. |
India's main opposition Congress party has promised to launch the world's largest minimum income guarantee scheme if voted to power. |
The scheme, known as NYAY, is the flagship proposal in the Congress manifesto released by party president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday. The manifesto, which comes less than two weeks before the first phase of polling for the general elections, is titled Hum Nibhayegnge (or "We will deliver"). |
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was quick to denounce the scheme as a bluff. |
Senior leaders of the Hindu nationalist BJP were particularly scathing in their reactions to aspects of the Congress manifesto, which promised to repeal controversial sedition laws and relax provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that grants immunity to security forces. |
Al Jazeera spoke to experts in order to better understand the top five poll promises. |
The acronym NYAY also means justice in many Indian languages. Under the scheme, the poorest 20 percent of the country - an estimated 250 million people - will receive a monthly income of Rs 6,000 ($87). It will cost the exchequer Rs 3.6 lakh crore ($52bn), making it the world’s largest minimum-income guarantee programm... |
Professor R Ramkumar said that NYAY had been proposed by Congress to counter direct cash transfer schemes floated by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. |
"The big question is how will this be implemented in a country where there is no reliable data on household or individual income?" asked Ramkumar, who teaches at the Centre for Study of Developing Economies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. |
"There needs to be a proper income survey, which itself can take up to three years. How will the beneficiaries be identified year after year?" |
Professor Ramkumar also said that the two main parties, Congress and the ruling BJP, are trying to outdo the other by announcing large-outlay welfare schemes that do nothing to address the root causes of systemic poverty such as poor quality education and unemployment. |
"The same $52bn can be spent on ensuring universal free education and healthcare. Job guarantee schemes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) are more effective tools against poverty than income guarantee schemes," he said. |
The Congress party's boldest announcement in the manifesto was that it would scrap colonial-era sedition laws and dilute AFSPA, as well as pass a law against custodial torture. |
It has drawn a sharp reaction from a top BJP leader, who accused the Congress of trying to "demoralise" the armed forces and please "traitors and separatists". |
Welcoming the proposal, student leader and activist Umar Khalid said: "We must not forget that the Congress has been primarily responsible for using these draconian laws [in the past]." |
He pointed out that the human rights activist and Binayak Sen was charged with sedition by Congress in 2007 when it was in power. |
Khalid, who was himself charged with sedition in 2016 along with a group of left-wing student activists from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that countless similar cases have been filed against tribal activists with the sole purpose of harassment. |
"The cases eventually fall apart in courts but the idea has been to frustrate activists with long jail terms as under-trials," he said. |
More than two-thirds of prisoners in India are under-trials. |
Khalid also said that he was disappointed but not surprised by the absence of specific programmes for minorities in the manifesto. |
One of the most significant points in the manifesto is the promise to break monopolies, cross-holding of shares and cartelisation in the media. |
Vinod K Jose, editor of the Caravan magazine, which has reported extensively on media corruption, welcomed the announcement and said it has was important, "more than ever in the past". |
"In the last 10 years, with the rise of Modi and the BJP, the trend of monopolies in the media has increased. The hidden plumbing of most media outlets are just not known to the public," he said. |
"Some feeble attempts to contain monopolies in the media were made earlier too. But this time, if the BJP is defeated, we may actually see some action against media monopolies. For the parties in the opposition now, it has become a matter of survival." |
Jose added that the massive corporate takeover of the media that coincided with the BJP’s ascendancy has made it more biased in favour of the ruling establishment. |
"Today, some of the largest newspapers and [news] channels simply block out the opposition parties from their coverage. Their press conferences and political rallies are ignored, and they are shouted out of prime-time debates by news anchors who are soft on the BJP." |
The manifesto promises to push for a permanent seat for India at the UN Security Council as well as membership in the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries. |
It also proposes that the post of National Security Advisor, which is an ad hoc appointment right now, will be made permanent and answerable to parliament. |
Ajai Shukla, a defence and foreign policy expert, told Al Jazeera that there are no surprising departures in the party’s foreign policy proposals. A permanent seat for India in the Security Council and membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, he said, are "boilerplate" issues that every political party would mention. |
Shukla said that the promise to review the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the old Sedition Act was the "significant departures. |
"I also welcome the proposal to create an institutional framework to regulate the National Security Council and the office of the NSA," he said. |
The 55-page document says the party will work to increase diversity in the higher judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court which doesn't have a single judge from the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities, which form nearly 30 percent of the population. |
Professor Sumeet Mhaskar from the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy said that the judiciary has always operated like an "exclusive club" and lacked diversity. |
"Therefore, the assurance made by the Congress party to bring diversity in the higher and lower level of judiciary with respect to caste, gender, religion and region is an extremely important promise. However, to execute this change, Congress will require a strong political will," he said. |
Akkai Padmashali, a prominent LGBT activist, welcomed the Congress' promise to scrap the transgender bill that failed to grant transgender individuals the right to self-identify as male or female. "It will be a huge victory for us if the promise is actually fulfilled. It will acknowledge our presence in society and gra... |
Facebook and Instagram logos are seen on mobile phones. |
Facebook wasn't working for some users Tuesday morning, the second big outage in about a week, and Instagram users were reporting issues as well. |
The outage appeared to hit around 8 a.m. ET. For some users, the Facebook page wouldn't load and other functionality wasn't working. |
The website outage-tracking site Downdetector reported a spike in reports of problems with Facebook starting before 8 a.m. ET, and reports of outages continued through 10:30 a.m. Instagram users began reporting issues to the site around the same time. Facebook owns Instagram. |
NBC has reached out to Facebook for comment. It tweeted, "We know some people are having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible." |
Facebook's platform was healthy since Oct. 23 but has experienced "degraded performance" for several hours Tuesday, according to the site, which had been inaccessible for some users Tuesday morning. |
Facebook also gave users problems on Monday, Nov. 12. around 1 p.m. ET. Users started to report that it was back online about 30 mintues later. A Facebook page that tracks the platform's status said it was healthy after having been inaccessible. |
Facebook's ad manager platform was also down for several hours Tuesday and returned multiple errors for brands trying to place critical Black Friday and Cyber Monday ads. Media buyers told CNBC that the outage could affect Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for their clients. |
Feb. 8 (UPI) -- The Dow Jones industrial average continued to decline Thursday, falling by more than 1,000 points for the second time this week. |
Following relatively little change on Wednesday, the index once again experienced a drop Thursday, closing at 23,860, a decrease of 1,032 or about 4 percent. |
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes also experienced continuing decline, each dropping 3 percent. |
"This is not the end of the world, but it is uncomfortable," PNC Investments CEO Rich Guerrini told CNN Money. |
Thursday's decline followed the largest drop in the Dow's history on Monday when it fell 1,175 points or 4.6 percent. The historic drop also erased the index's gains for the year. |
"A big down day like Monday doesn't just go away. We're going to continue to see volatile days," TD Ameritrade chief market strategist JJ Kinahan said. "It can take two to three weeks to work through the system." |
The 10-year Treasury bond also reached a four-year high of 2.88 percent on Thursday, bringing about concerns of rising inflation. |
Experts believe the volatility in the stock market has been brought about by investors turning their attention to bonds in the midst of the inflation scare. |
"If I have to choose bonds or equities, with interest rates going up, bonds just got more attractive," Alexandra Coupe, associate director investment manager PAAMCO, told The Washington Post. |
Some believe the market declines are a positive as constant economic gains could push the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates currently resting at 1.7 percent. |
The White House, which touted a strong stock market after the Dow climbed above 26,000 for the first time in January, has maintained the "fundamentals" of the economy remain strong despite the volatility. |
Digitalisation is disrupting African societies at an unprecedented rate. This change has toppled leaders, sped up democratisation and in some cases helped nations to leapfrog development. |
At the heart of African digital disruption is the phenomenal rise of cellphones, which are increasingly used for internet browsing and social media. Both data and devices are becoming cheaper, and transmission speeds are increasing. |
For most of the post-independence period, African media has consisted of traditional outlets such as broadcasters and print newspapers, which have been tightly controlled by governments. |
But the creation of new media technologies has changed the way information is shared, communicated and accessed by ordinary citizens. |
This has boosted democracy by giving a voice to ordinary citizens, increasing public participation in politics, and providing a platform for holding governments and leaders accountable. |
Armed with cellphones, every African citizen can now be a journalist or a democracy activist. |
New media platforms have connected the youth population to the wider world, where they can now see how their peers are thriving in democratic societies elsewhere. |
African political regimes have been toppled by popular mobilisation built upon such new media platforms. During the 2011-2012 North African Arab Spring, young people used social media, the internet and blogs to gather and organise protests or support movements to make their voices heard in ways that were not possible b... |
In 2011, journalist Fadel Barro and two rappers launched a campaign in Senegal, called the Y’en a marre (I’m fed up) movement, to get the youth to vote and oppose the third term for then-president Abdoulaye Wade. |
In November 2014, Burkina Faso civil movements launched the revolution 2.0 campaign against Blaise Compaoré’s attempt to extend his presidency, using the #Lwili hashtag, named after the traditional Burkinabè Lwili Peendé cloth worn by many protesters. Protesters used Twitter and Facebook to mobilise public support, for... |
Similar youth groups, such as Filimbi, successfully mobilised to prevent Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila from standing for a third term in the upcoming elections. Filimbi encourages Congolese youth to perform civic duties, push for democratic reform and oppose human rights abuses and corruption. |
Digitalisation has also provided African governments with efficient new ways to deliver services. It also gives citizens new opportunities to participate in government decision-making and new methods of holding governments accountable by allowing them to monitor the delivery of public services and the implementation of... |
Cape Verde has a portal that amasses information electronically from different departments about public services. Citizens can now apply for birth certificates, start a company and pay for services online. |
Some government bodies in Cape Verde, such as the department of health, hold online public consultations with citizens about policy. The department of justice has an online forum in which citizens can respond to draft laws. |
Digitalisation has also cut the costs of doing business in both the public and private sectors. Previously, the high cost of doing business was notorious for undermining the continent’s growth. |
In Kenya, technology company iCow provides mobile services to small-scale farmers. They can input information about their livestock and receive text and voice messages about different feed types, breeding patterns and market prices for the stock. |
In Nigeria, the government has collaborated with the African mobile technology company Cellulant to develop a mobile wallet that connects the ministry of agriculture and rural development with farmers, suppliers, traders and banks. The programme delivers subsidies to farmers with this e-wallet, in the form of electroni... |
South Africa’s health department has launched MomConnect, a free SMS service that provides pregnant mothers with fetal development information during pregnancy. It has also developed an application that reminds patients of their upcoming hospital or clinic visits. |
Technology has helped many African countries to combat public sector corruption. When Nigeria introduced e-IDs, the government uncovered more than 20 000 ghost workers in the public service, saving the economy $1-billion annually. |
Technology has also made education increasingly accessible to the African population. Previously, access to this has been restricted because of poorly developed infrastructure, overcrowding and poor standards of teaching and curriculum quality. Technology has the potential to transform this by delivering quality teachi... |
Leaders across the continent must take full advantage of the opportunities technology offers to streamline policy. At the same time, citizens must seize the chance to hold them accountable, using the development of digital media. |
Overcast. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. |
Overcast. Low 44F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. |
New adoptables in Beatrice. Pick your new dog or cat! |
First account of South Sudan's renewed path to civil war based on first-hand interviews and previously unseen material. |
Publisher: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. |
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