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This afternoon, expect isolated showers and possible thunderstorms across sections of eastern and central parishes. Tonight will be partly cloudy and cool. |
Friday: Partly cloudy morning. Isolated late afternoon showers across hilly inland areas. |
Saturday: Partly cloudy morning with isolated showers over northeastern parishes. |
Isolated afternoon showers across sections of central and western parishes. |
Sunday: Mainly fair morning.Partly cloudy afternoon across central parishes. |
A Cold Front is across Western Caribbean. While there is a High Pressure Ridge across the Gulf of Mexico. |
Labor will move to end a political stalemate over asylum seeker children by putting a compromise plan to the Morrison government that could see refugee families transferred swiftly from Nauru to New Zealand. |
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten gained approval for the new position at a Labor caucus committee meeting on Tuesday morning after shadow cabinet embraced the proposal on Monday night in a bid to end two years of dispute. |
But the new proposal requires Prime Minister Scott Morrison to give ground on new laws to close “back door” entry from New Zealand to Australia, with Labor setting out three conditions that must be met to secure a compromise. |
The decision came as government officials revealed that 11 children had been flown from Nauru to Australia on Monday night for urgent medical treatment, leaving 52 asylum seeker children on the island. |
Mr Morrison is facing calls from some of his Liberal colleagues to fix the problem, leading him to suggest the asylum seekers could be settled in New Zealand if Parliament passed the law to prevent them travelling on to Australia. |
In a dramatic move to make this possible, Mr Shorten gained an agreement in shadow cabinet to help pass the law and give the government no reason to delay the transfers, even though Labor does not believe the law is necessary. |
Labor MPs approved the new position in a caucus international affairs committee meeting on Tuesday and no MPs spoke against the change, according to a caucus spokesman. This meant the issue was not raised when MPs gathered for their full weekly caucus meeting later in the morning. |
Labor immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann wrote to Immigration Minister David Coleman late on Monday to set out the terms of a compromise, describing the bill as a “ridiculous over-reach” in its current form. |
“There is no doubt that the situation involving children on Nauru cannot continue to be ignored. Action must be taken to resolve this issue,” Mr Neumann wrote. |
In a call that has influenced debate on the law, former Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs called last week for all sides to compromise and pass the law if needed as a practical way to help the children. |
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reiterated an offer first made in 2013 to accept 150 asylum seekers every year. |
Labor has previously attacked the idea of imposing a lifetime ban on entry to Australia for the asylum seekers who are settled in New Zealand, but it is now willing to accept it and is seeking other changes. It set out a new process last week to ensure faster medical help for the children, but has now gone beyond that ... |
Greens leader Richard Di Natale called on Monday for all the children and families on Nauru to be brought to Australia immediately for medical attention, while Greens MP Adam Bandt put forward a bill in the lower house to make that happen. |
A Greens spokesman said the Greens did not support a lifetime ban for those left behind on Nauru but could support one just for those refugees who are sent to New Zealand. |
Defence Industry Minister Steve Ciobo said Labor had shown "zero credibility" on border control and had an "appalling" track record on the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers by boat. |
South Australian Liberal MP Tony Pasin told Sky News that "nobody put more people in detention than the Labor Party and nobody took more out than the Liberal Party". |
There were 2,726 asylum seeker arrivals by boat under the Labor government in 2009 and this increased to 6,555, then 4,565, then 17,204 and 20,587 in the subsequent four years before the Coalition took power in 2013. The arrivals fell to 160 in 2014 and zero the following year. |
The latest move from Labor is a significant backdown from its stance in October 2016 when Mr Shorten said the lifetime ban law “does seem ridiculous” and many of his caucus colleagues slammed the idea. |
At the time, Sydney Labor MP Linda Burney said voters had told her policy was inhumane, western Sydney MP Mike Freelander said the bill was “crude and sad” while Labor senator Helen Polley told the ABC's Lateline program she could not see herself supporting the lifetime ban. |
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull proposed the lifetime ban in October 2016, but could not get the numbers to get it through Parliament, with the Labor caucus objecting to it and refugee advocates calling it unnecessary. |
Labor senator Lisa Singh attacked the “cruel law” in the debate two years ago. |
The new decision by shadow cabinet will need the approval of the Labor caucus at a meeting on Tueday. |
“Labor has made clear that we will consider supporting the government if you seek to consult and negotiate with New Zealand appropriate conditions,” Mr Neumann wrote in his letter to Mr Coleman. |
The community concern about the children on Nauru has intensified the debate in Parliament, with crossbenchers including Cathy McGowan and Rebekha Sharkie demanding a solution. |
The leading candidate in the Wentworth byelection, Kerryn Phelps said she would “absolutely” work in concert with other crossbench MPs to gain the release of children and families if she secured victory and entered Parliament. |
“The report of the medical and mental state of children on Nauru makes it a humanitarian crisis,” Dr Phelps told Fairfax Media. |
“This is a medical emergency and it’s not just about waiting until children are in extreme, life-threatening conditions before they are evacuated to Australia. |
Liberal MPs Russell Broadbent and Craig Laundy held a meeting with Mr Morrison where they sought more help for the children, a stance backed by fellow Liberal MP Julia Banks. |
MADISON, Ala. -- Some Alabama homeowners are outraged after the Ku Klux Klan left fliers around their town. |
The hate group is trying to encourage people to go vote in the election. It's also asking people to join the Klan. |
Several people who live in St. Charles Place neighborhood of Madison tell WHNT they found baggies full of rocks and paper in their driveway Sunday morning. |
What's inside the bag is an uncomfortable topic for many. The message said in part, "Black Lives Matter Black Panthers are telling followers to kill white people and police officers". |
Many in the neighborhood said they were disgusted, but didn't want to go on camera for fear of retaliation. |
"This is pretty standard tactics for that particular Klan group. They've been fliering all over the sate. They were in Wichita last weekend. This is a pretty common practice for Loyal White Knights," said Heidi Beirich with the Southern Poverty Law Center. |
Beirich tracks hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. |
"It breaks my hearts that people receive this kind of material, but unfortunately, this is the Klan using its First Amendment rights. So, they have every ability to do this." |
Beirich tells WHNT her agency doesn't know of any violent situation involving the Klan. |
There are eight Ku Klux Klan organizations in Alabama. the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are up to 6,000 Klan members nationwide. |
You can find the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Hate Map" at www.splcenter.org/hate-map. |
Worker safety at issue for the corporate recruit. |
WELCOMING: Gov. Mike and Ginger Beebe, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola and Welspun officials at the company's dedication ceremony in 2009. |
In April of 2009, at a ceremony celebrating Welspun's expansion of its nearly new facility in Little Rock, Gov. Mike Beebe talked about how special the steel pipe manufacturing company was, comparing it to a "first date" that you "have a special feeling, a special place for." The ceremony was a lively one and featured ... |
But according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration records, the company - which has benefited from numerous state and local tax breaks since coming to Arkansas - has a safety record that isn't so special when it comes to worker safety – dozens of federal findings of safety violations. |
Between March of 2009 and February of 2010, Welspun was cited by OSHA, as a result of three inspections, for two "serious" violations and two "other" violations, including the failure to provide "a place of employment which was free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical ... |
In one of those incidents, in July of 2009, Welspun was cited for failure to ensure proper crane operation procedures that put employees at risk of being "struck by hazards." In March of 2010, the company was again cited for improper crane operation procedures that "exposed employees to a fall of approximately 20 feet.... |
Last December, one worker, Frederick Bogar of Jacksonville, was killed and another man was injured when both were trapped between pipes weighing approximately 20,000 pounds each. Gloria Bogar filed a complaint in Pulaski County Circuit Court, suing Welspun for the wrongful death of her father – "a direct result of the ... |
In June last year, just months before the accident that killed Bogar, OSHA fined Welspun $5,000 for an incident in which an employee sustained "severe leg injuries." The citation says Welspun employees were exposed "to the hazard of entrapment between [transfer] lifts and pipe." In late January, Welspun was issued anot... |
Richard Janicki, senior vice president for Welspun, says the facility is a safe place to work and the accident rate at the plant is lower than other companies in the industry. |
"It's absolutely a safe place and as a matter of fact," Janicki says. "All steel mills and pipe mills are graded on a total incident recordable rate. It's the number of OSHA-recordable injuries per 2,000 man-hours worked. The average for the industry is between seven and eight [per year]. Our average last year was 1.9.... |
An OSHA spokesperson could not confirm Janicki's claim, saying it's difficult to compare companies' safety records because "all are very different as to size, location, violations, etc." |
Welspun was welcomed with open arms, and open wallets, by state and local officials. When the company broke ground in 2007, promising $100 million in investment and 300 new jobs, it received $3.25 million from the state's Economic Infrastructure Fund, a $5 million bond guaranty from the Arkansas Economic Development Co... |
When the company expanded in 2010, more incentives came, including $2 million from Gov. Beebe's Quick Action Closing Fund. The company also receives tax breaks from the city of Little Rock. Mayor Mark Stodola says other companies receive similar breaks, but that doesn't give the city any sway over how a company operate... |
Those health and safety rules have been handled for years through the regulatory areas of the federal government," Stodola says. "You never want anyone to get hurt or injured or on the job so I would imagine the safety issues that are under review by the management there to do whatever they can to prevent those things ... |
Matt DeCample, spokesman for Gov. Beebe, also says a company's safety record has no bearing on the types of incentives they receive. "I'm pretty certain that nothing with the incentives is tied into that," DeCample says. "As far as state government goes, the Department of Labor are the ones who would have any type of o... |
As for what happens next, Janicki says he plans to meet with OSHA officials to discuss the recent citation and fine within the next couple of weeks. He says the company will take issue with some of the violations cited by the regulatory agency and work to correct the rest. |
"They've been working with us," Janicki says. "We've abated everything that they've pointed out. We got the citation, however we get to have a hearing on that. That is not final. What was issued was strictly preliminary and now we get to meet with them and discuss that point-by-point. That's a normal procedure that you... |
OSHA officials say the investigation over the death at the plant will be concluded within six months. |
Welspun's negative press don't end with safety violations. Questions have also been raised about the quality of the company's product. In 2009, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration released a bulletin detailing an investigation of seven pipelines in the United States. Their investigation showed fi... |
Janicki, who wasn't asked about the pipe quality issue in the interview about worker safety, wasn't immediately available for comment on this report. |
CHANDIGARH/AMRITSAR: Pakistan's information minister Fawad Chaudhry on Friday said that the Imran Khan government was planning to give Sikh pilgrims "visa-free direct access" to the historic Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara. |
In an interview with BBC Urdu, Chaudhry said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf-led government was developing "a system" for Sikh pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib and some forward movement is expected soon. |
"Pakistan will soon open the border at Kartarpur for Sikh pilgrims who will be able to visit Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur without visas," Chaudhry said, adding that "a road will be constructed for the pilgrims to come. They will then have to buy a ticket to go back." |
There's, however, no clarity yet on the system - whether the access will be permanent or be specifically for the 550th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev next year. |
There has been a longstanding demand in India for opening a corridor for the Sikh pilgrims between Kartarpur Sahib in Narowal district of Pakistan's Punjab province and Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur- the two sites, barely 6km apart. |
However, there has been no official announcement by the Pakistan government and no confirmation from New Delhi. But Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu convened a press conference on Friday to announce that Islamabad had decided to allow access to Kartarpur corridor. |
Fresh off opening on tour for the Veronica's, LA's Carney comes to Sticky Fingerz with a swaggering brand of blues-tinged pop-rock. Front man Reeve Carney (looking like James Franco's sister above) used to play in Johnny Lang's backing band. Local prog-rockers An Orangutan opens, 9:30 p.m., $5. |
At White Water, Whale Fire's a late add to a bill featuring Memphis' the Angel Sluts, who do fiery, old-school punk, 10 p.m., donations. |
AND: As usual, Carl Mouton hosts a jam session at the Afterthought, 8 p.m,. $5. And Ben Byer is at Ya Ya's, 7 p.m. |
Last year, more than half of all the nation's venture capital funneled to entrepreneurs in California, leaving startups in the other 49 states to fight over the remaining pot of cash. |
Steve Case, who co-founded AOL in 1985, says that must change so cities in middle America like Des Moines can share in the technological revolution. |
"Some call it the flyover country," Case told the Des Moines Register on Wednesday. "It's not really taken as seriously as I think it should be as a center of innovation." |
Case was visiting Des Moines as part of a tour promoting the paperback release of his 2016 book, "The Third Wave." His trip here followed earlier stops on his Rise of the Rest tour, which promoted entrepreneurship in overlooked cities across the country. |
In his book, Case argues that recent technological advancements can be sliced up into three distinct segments: In the first wave, dating back to 1985, companies like AOL, Apple and Microsoft built infrastructure around the Internet, bringing it from an idea to reality. From 2000 to the present, we've lived in the secon... |
That's more important now than ever, he said, as President Donald Trump's surprise electoral win in November laid bare just how many middle Americans felt left out by globalization and technological advancements. |
"If we don't level the playing field and even out the opportunity we're going to have a country of two Americas," he said, "of have and have nots." |
To bolster the heartland, Case says cities and entrepreneurs need to do a better job of telling their startup success stories. But fundraising remains a major hurdle for emerging businesses outside of major tech hubs. Cities who don't mentor and invest in startups do so at their own peril, he said. He cited research fr... |
"Fortune 500 companies started startups," Case said. "If you're using the farm analogy, they're the seed corn. If you're not planting that seed corn — some of which will end up dying off, but some of which will grow — you're not going to have a strong, vibrant community 25 years from now. You just aren't." |
Regional tech booms are already reversing so-called "brain drain," encouraging natives to "boomerang" back home after fleeing their home cities for career opportunities elsewhere, Case said. |
To encourage local tech growth, he said cities must play to their regional expertise. In the case of Des Moines, that means doubling down on ag tech or financial services startups. As technology becomes more pervasive in every part of life, successful tech ventures will need more expertise on specific subjects — not ju... |
"If you really want to change agriculture, you do, I think, need to understand how farmers think and the culture of farming," Case said. "And its true also in health care. If you really want to revolutionize health care, you need to understand how doctors work." |
Central Iowa is already playing to its regional strengths, housing both the newly formed Ag Tech Accelerator and the established Global Insurance Accelerator, each funded by businesses in their respective industries. |
"We’re known globally for that," said Mike Colwell, executive director of Square DSM, a business accelerator under the umbrella of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. "You can go to London and people know about the insurance accelerator." |
Colwell agrees that lack of funding remains a critical challenge for would-be entrepreneurs here. But investment firms have popped up across the Midwest with the explicit goal of boosting local startups. |
"Is it easy to raise capital? No, and it should never be easy to raise capital when you're spending other people's money," he said. "Is it getting easier? Yes." |
Rapper Gucci Mane got engaged on the Kiss Cam during the Atlanta Hawks game Tuesday night. |
Naturally, when WGN Morning News Sports anchor Pat Tomasulo read the story, he proceeded to lip sync a little of Mane's song "I Think I Love Her." As Tomasulo noted, Mane has now confirmed very publicly that he does indeed "love her." |
Watch the clip in its entirety in the player above. |
Also during Tuesday's game, Mane gave a contest-winning fan a Rolex and he performed at halftime. |
World, December 20, 2010 (Pal Telegraph-edie) – As more snow this weekend immobilised parts of Britain the UN called for better preparation for severe weather in Europe. |
The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) says the experience of Europe’s big cities this winter shows that the world may be under-prepared to deal with less predictable climate patterns. |
Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, said: “National meteorological services in Europe did well to issue warnings, but being prepared goes beyond prediction. |
In parts of France and the UK, heavy snow left commuters stranded in their cars for hours. Between 10 and 20 cm of snowfall brought airports to a standstill in many cities, including Geneva, Paris, London and Berlin. Throughout Europe, thousands of households suffered power outages after the first snowfall. |
Ms. Wahlström said warnings issued by local Met offices only complement a local disaster preparedness strategy and a better understanding of the risks is needed. |
She said: “We are encouraging local authorities to recognize the risks unique to their community. |
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