Datasets:
Recag
/
C4_39

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
Community
text
stringlengths
10
37.6k
Sinn Féin were by far the strongest party on social media and garnered a huge level of interest in its claims that RTÉ was ignoring it during the campaign. The party was excellent at tapping into voter anger over austerity and articulated a radical vision for Ireland in the coming years. It will not be the largest party in the next Dáil, but Sinn Féin will gain seats all over the country and the long-term project continues.
But Gerry Adams’s involvement in that project will come under scrutiny after his poor performance in TV and radio appearances throughout the campaign. Several times, Adams seemed at a loss on the details of Sinn Féin’s manifesto and struggled in the TV debates when he came under pressure over his past.
By contrast the likes of Mary Lou McDonald and Pearse Doherty were consistently strong in media performances and had an excellent grasp of the detail of Sinn Féin policies and how they would impact voters.
The Social Democrats appear to have the edge on Renua when it comes to the battle of the new parties. Stephen Donnelly was the strongest performer in the TV debates and the party’s strategy of running a small number of candidates in key constituencies could yet pay off. The SocDems will probably return three TDs at a minimum but on a good day you can’t rule out five or six.
That’s less likely for Renua which doesn’t appear to have caught on in the same way. The flat tax is an interesting idea but has been discredited elsewhere and hasn’t captured voters’ imaginations. The same can be said of its tough ‘three strikes’ policy on crime. Lucinda Creighton remains front-and-centre of everything the party does. In many ways that’s part of its problem, it’s hard to really understand what Renua stands for beyond furthering her own political ambitions.
Similarly, the Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit grouping hasn’t capitalised on the supposed surge in support for a left-wing alternative and its message has been somewhat confused by some of its candidates urging transfers to Sinn Féin, and others not.
But credit to the Green Party. They had some original campaign events, took RTÉ to the High Court and will probably return at least one TD. The comeback is slow but steady.
8. Are we headed for independents’ day?
We were told that once the election was called all that support that independents and others have had for much of the last five years would slip away and yet the latest polls show it still in the high 20s.
How that translates into seats at a local level is hard to call. But it is likely that the majority of the independents who graced the 31st Dáil will return to it after this weekend and there will be some newcomers.
That said, the Independent Alliance hasn’t really taken off as the “radical but responsible” entity it was being touted as, and it’s unlikely it will play the role of kingmaker after the election.
Email “9 things we learned from the general election campaign”.
Feedback on “9 things we learned from the general election campaign”.
Was Meng travelling on a diplomatic passport? No?
Was Kovrig travelling on a diplomatic passport or with a personal one?
I doubt Meng has a diplomatic passport given she's an executive at Huawei.
The idea that a former diplomat now working at a private company would still be covered by diplomatic immunity just because he originally entered the country on a diplomatic passport is a bit far fetched. It goes beyond anything that the drafters or original signatories to the Vienna convention would consider reasonable.
It's hard to see how Kovrig should be entitled to assert any immunity for activities which have nothing to do with the performance of Canadian diplomatic missions in China.
Stocks opened down but rebounded strongly. Lennar reported strong home sales and Cloudera tumbled on a weak outlook for sales growth.
Stocks began Wednesday sharply lower on trade war concerns, but bounced back, rising steadily through the session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES:^DJI) opened down over 500 points and recovered, while the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX:^GSPC) gained over a percentage point.
Consumer stocks led the market, with the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (NYSEMKT:XRT) rising 2.8% and the iShares US Home Construction ETF (NYSEMKT:ITB) soaring 4.7%.
As for individual stocks, Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) provided a boost to the housing sector with a strong report and outlook, while Cloudera (NYSE:CLDR) predicted that its growth rate will be cut in half this year.
Homebuilder Lennar reported first-quarter results that crushed estimates and sent the stock up 10%. Revenue increased 28% to $2.98 billion, compared with the consensus analyst estimate of $2.65 billion. GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.53, up from $0.16 in the period last year. Adding back one-time charges for the CalAtlantic acquisition and a writedown of tax assets, adjusted EPS was $1.11 when Wall Street was expecting $0.77.
Deliveries were up strongly, growing 24% to 6,765 homes, but orders were even better, increasing 30% to 8,456 homes, or 38% when including orders of 1,069 homes that came along with the CalAtlantic purchase. The end result is that the backlog soared 95% to 17,566 homes worth $7.7 billion. The average sales price of homes delivered grew 7.7% to $393,000 and adjusted gross margin increased from 21.1% to 21.6%.
Company officials sounded a positive note for the housing industry going forward. "We continue to remain positive on the outlook of the housing industry in general," said CEO Stuart Miller in the press release. "Although interest rates have ticked up, unemployment remains low, the labor participation rate has been increasing, and wages have been moving modestly higher, though we think, even higher than the data the government captures. Feedback from our new home consultants indicates that our customer base feels confident in both job security and compensation levels in spite of the political noise that abounds."
Shares of Cloudera, maker of cloud-based data analytics and machine-learning software, plummeted 40.2% the day after the company announced fourth-quarter results that beat expectations, but delivered a disappointing outlook. Total Q4 revenue grew 42% to $103.5 million and subscription revenue was up 50% from a year ago. Non-GAAP loss per share narrowed to $0.10, compared with a $0.30-per-share loss in the period a year earlier. Analysts were expecting a non-GAAP loss of $0.23 on sales of $98.7 million.
What troubled investors was Cloudera's guidance for 2018. For Q1, the company expects total revenue growth to slow to 28% and subscription revenue growth to fall to 32%. For the full year, growth rates look even worse, with revenue growth of 20% and subscription revenue growth of 24%. Analysts had been expecting full-year revenue to increase 25.5%.
Analysts on the conference call tried to understand why the growth rate of subscription revenue would be cut in half from the previous year. CEO Tom Reilly explained that the company is reorganizing its sales organization to increase the focus on the target market of large enterprise customers. Cloudera has a model of growing primarily by expanding sales to existing customers, but admitted that lately, it has been expending too much effort selling to smaller customers that have less potential for sales expansion.
The sales organization realignment will cost Cloudera in the short term in hopes of longer-term gains, but investors today seemed skeptical that slowing growth, less than a year after the company's IPO, was only a temporary phenomenon.
iShares Dow Jones US Home Const.
Following the lead of the Rev. Al Sharpton, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to protest grand jury decisions regarding the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and physical restraint death of Eric Garner in New York, by white police officers.
With chants of “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace,” demonstrators are expressing their frustration with what they regard as a system gamed against black Americans. Underlying the social unrest is a weak economic recovery that has left blacks behind. Blacks have the highest unemployment rate, the lowest average income and the lowest rate of homeownership.
Objective analysis would conclude that President Obama’s progressive policies have failed blacks, leaving them frustrated and vulnerable to the social agitation by Mr. Sharpton.
The sad truth is Mr. Obama’s agenda includes policies that preferentially harm blacks. In particular, Mr. Obama’s climate change policy, in effect, serves as a 21st-century version of Jim Crow laws owing to its economic impact on black households. A study from the Pacific Research Institute on the impact of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations on existing power plants demonstrates the harm Mr. Obama’s climate change regulations could cause black families in Ohio.
The EPA’s Clean Power Plan establishes state-specific targets for carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to be 30 percent lower than 2005 levels by 2030. Because Ohio uses coal to generate the vast majority of its electricity, the state will experience a significant rise in power costs from the EPA’s proposed rule that targets coal-fired power plants that emit carbon dioxide.
The impact of rising electricity costs are not divided equally among Ohio households. As the study shows, wealthy households would be minimally affected, but low-income households would pay a significantly higher proportion for electricity.
The lower the income, the greater the economic burden.
Under the EPA’s proposed regulations, the average yearly cost for electricity would rise from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent of the average Ohio household’s income. For the average black household, however, the yearly spending on electricity would rise from 4.5 percent to 5.8 percent.
For lower-income blacks, the yearly cost for electricity would be as much as 26 percent of household income, or possibly higher.
Conversely, high-income households are minimally affected. Some Clermont County households would spend only 1.1 percent of their income on electricity under the EPA’s rule, from today’s baseline of 0.8 percent.
The social impact of Mr. Obama’s climate change plan is devastating to the black community, the group that suffers the most because of lower average incomes.
These households will have less money to spend on food, housing, health care and other basic needs.
Higher energy costs will drive more black families to government dependency, including assistance to help pay for soaring utility bills.
Mr. Obama is fully aware of the electricity price increases resulting from his climate change agenda.
Yet black politicians and black advocacy groups back the president’s climate change plans that preferentially harm the community they claim to support.
Rep. Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio Democrat, has supported climate change legislation that would increase electricity prices for her constituents in Cleveland and surrounding areas.
The NAACP also supports Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda, with carbon dioxide regulations, under its climate justice initiative. The organization recently participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Lima, Peru.
As chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Ms. Fudge, along with the NAACP, has played a visible role in contributing to the mob atmosphere surrounding the nationwide protests on police tactics.
By contributing to the notion that racial bias played a key role in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, these black leaders are distracting the black community from the devastating impact of Mr. Obama’s climate change policy.
If black Americans were not blinded by political loyalty and race allegiance and understood the consequences of the EPA’s clean power plan, black outrage would be directed at Mr. Obama and his allies for supporting a new era of Jim Crow-type laws.
• Deneen Borelli is outreach director for FreedomWorks, president of Conservative Review, a Fox News Channel contributor and the author of “Blacklash: How Obama and the Left Are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation” (Threshold, 2013).
McALLEN, Texas— Two days after President Trump ordered an end to the separation of families at the border, federal authorities Friday were still working on a plan to reunite an estimated 1,800 children with their parents and keep immigrant households together.
Some parents struggled to get in touch with youngsters being held in many cases hundreds of miles away, in places like New York and the Chicago area. Some said they didn't even know where their children were.
Trump himself took a hard line on the crisis, accusing the Democrats of telling "phony stories of sadness and grief."
"We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants," he tweeted.
Trump's decision to stop separating families, announced Wednesday after a fierce international outcry, has led to confusion and uncertainty along the border.
Federal agencies are working to set up a centralized reunification process for all remaining children at a detention center in Texas, said the senior administration official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
"It's a big question. There have not been a lot of answers," Henry Lucero, a director of field operations, confessed at a forum in Weslaco, Texas.
In the meantime, federal authorities appear to be easing up on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting all adults caught illegally entering the U.S. — though the Justice Department flatly denied there has been any change.
The federal public defender's office for the region that covers El Paso to San Antonio said in an email that prosecutors will no longer charge parents with illegally entering the U.S. if they have children with them.
Outside the federal courthouse in McAllen, immigration attorney Efren Olivares said 67 people were charged Friday morning with illegal entry, but none were parents with children. He said it was the first time since May 24 that that happened in McAllen.
"It appears that this is a consequence of a change in policy by the government," he said.
ICE has only three facilities nationwide — two in Texas, one in Pennsylvania — that can be used to detain immigrant families, and they have a combined 3,300 beds.
"It could take a couple of months, a couple of days ... but we don't have timelines," Jaimes Perez said. "What we need to hear is what the administration says this process is going to look like, because we don't know."
The group has been interviewing migrants each morning at the McAllen courthouse and entering information into a database to help keep track of parents and children held in different facilities, sometimes scattered around the country.
Olivares said it is difficult for government agencies to reunite immigrant families once they are separated because the systems that process adults and those that handle youngsters often don't communicate with each other.
Adults accused of immigration offenses are under the authority of the Homeland Security Department, while youngsters taken from their parents are overseen by Health and Human Services.
Fewer people bought residential properties as investments last year, according to a National Association of Realtors report released Friday.
The number of homes bought purely for investment dropped 18.1% last year compared with 2006. They also fell in 2006, when investment-home sales dropped 28.9% compared with 2005.
"Investment-home sales declined sharply in 2006 as speculators disappeared, leaving the market to serious buyers, with the pattern continuing in 2007," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, in a news release. Speculators have often been blamed for helping fuel a run-up in prices in certain parts of the country during the boom years.
The number of vacation-home sales also dropped, falling 30.6% last year, according to the report. It's a reversal of what was seen in 2006, when sales rose 4.7% -- pushing vacation-home sales volume to a record high.
But the housing slump may have further to go than many people think, according to MarketWatch Realty Q&A columnist Lew Sichelman. In his column this week, he suggests that the inventory of unsold homes is greater than estimated, due partly to the investors who are hanging onto houses and not selling them because of current market conditions.
Read more about second-home purchases and when we might see an end to the housing slump in this week's Real Estate pages. Plus, read about the up tick in refinance applications last week and about how pets are becoming victims of foreclosure when their owners lose their homes.
With fewer speculators looking to buy, there's less competition for people interested in buying a home to live in. And less competition helps lower home prices, to the benefit of those who have been priced out of homeownership.
After hitting a record in 2006, sales of vacation homes declined last year as would-be buyers held off purchasing retreats, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.
I've spoken to a few home builders in the San Francisco Bay Area and they expect things to pick up in the second half of the year. But this is a different market than the rest of U.S.?
In the swank Country Club area of Anthem, Ariz., Barbara Ward-Windgassen's rescue group has saved a bichon frise, Lhasa apso and shih tzu -- some with their leashes still on -- after their owners had abandoned them in their foreclosed high-priced homes.
Reflecting a surge in refinancing activity, the volume of mortgage applications rose a seasonally adjusted 48.1% in the week ended March 21 from the prior week, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday.
In a gloomy market, where the headlines have been dominated by crisis and interest-rate cuts, a lot of consumers have figured that they would at least get some payback when the rate cuts hit home. For that to happen, however, consumers are going to have to work for it and make some moves that they might not have been expecting.
Refinancing surged 82% last week as many homeowners got another chance to tweak their mortgages, says Jay Brinkmann, vice president at the Mortgage Bankers Association. "Now all of a sudden," he says, "the door opens again and they're jumping on this opportunity really fast, saying I don't want to miss it a second time." But Brinkmann tells John Wordock the refinancing window may soon close. He sees a "general increase" in mortgage rates this year due to inflationary pressures on long-term rates.
Listen to Real Estate Roundup.
The average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped slightly this week, while rates on other mortgages rose, Freddie Mac reported on Thursday. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.85% for the week ending March 27, down from last week's 5.87% average, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey. The mortgage averaged 6.16% a year ago.
Maybe you haven't heard of Lincoln, Calif., but the story of this once-sleepy little agricultural outpost underscores what's going on in America's neighborhoods and provides lessons for all of us, real estate investor or not.
Boosted by a record decline in prices, the U.S. housing market showed signs of stability in February, with sales of existing home rising modestly for the first time in seven months, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday. Resales of U.S. homes and condos rose 2.9% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 5.03 million, ahead of the 4.85 million pace expected by economists surveyed by MarketWatch.
Home prices in 20 major U.S. metro areas have plunged a record 10.7% in the past year as prices continued to decelerate, Standard & Poor's said Tuesday. The 20-city Case-Shiller home price index fell a record 2.4% in January, the 18th consecutive decline in prices. For 10 major cities, prices fell 2.3% in January and 11.4% for the past 12 months.
The record drop in home prices as seen in the S&P/Case-Shiller index for January show "the problems are being reflected in the prices, and that's the market working" says Commerce Bank chief economist Joel Naroff. While the drop is painful, Naroff says, "We're getting towards that bottom. Maybe not in prices, but prices have come down enough that we're probably going to see stability if not a slow rise in sales as we go through the summer into the fall."
Sales of new homes in the United States fell to a 13-year low in February, dropping 1.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 590,000, the Commerce Department estimated Wednesday. Sales have fallen four months in a row and are off about 30% in the past year.
Bruce Harting, housing analyst at Lehman Brothers, speaks to MarketWatch's Kelsey Hubbard about the deepening housing crisis.
A number of the environmental and social activists who helped sink the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle last month are now heading to the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland, to protest a meeting that starts tomorrow of the World Economic Forum, an elite group that includes representatives from 1,000 of the world’s largest corporations. Some demonstrators will take to the streets, decrying the meeting as another case of insiders retreating from public view to make economic decisions on everything from labor standards to genetically modified foods. A few activists, like Friends of the Earth Pres. Brent Blackwelder, have been invited inside to present views that depart from the standard corporate orthodoxy.
Wantagh - Genessa, the front-woman of Decadia, chatted with Digital Journal about their upcoming 40th anniversary "Grease" concert at Mulcahy's in Wantagh on July 6.
"Our Grease concert is a live musical event covering the entire soundtrack of the movie," Genessa said. "You can expect to hear all of the familiar songs from the movie as well as some video imagery portrayed on surrounding screens."
For Genessa, the classic film has a nostalgic and sentimental value. "I don't remember a time in my life where I didn't know Grease or watch the movie. It is something I grew up with and has become a part of me. I still watch it whenever it is on TV, and now my four and six year old children know the movie by heart."
She shared that her favorite song to sing from the soundtrack is "Hopelessly Devoted To You." "Growing up, I idolized Sandy (played by Olivia Newton-John) and always thought her voice sounded beautiful on that ballad," she said.
Genessa added, "Rehearsing and performing the Grease songs with Decadia is eye-opening because we all come from different backgrounds and we are different ages, but the soundtrack brings a sense of happiness and nostalgia for our youth."
For Decadia fans, she concluded, "The future for Decadia looks brighter than ever. Our Grease concert is the first of our movie soundtrack projects that we will be debuting a few times a year in select venues. It is called 'Decadia Presents Blockbusters," which covers the soundtracks of the biggest movies in pop culture. Our drummer, Mike Sorrentino, and saxophone player, Bryan Steele, came up with the idea a few years ago and Decadia is now bringing it to life. We are very excited about it. Our fans and followers can expect the music of Purple Rain, Top Gun, Dirty Dancing, Rocky, and Flashdance," among others."
To learn more about the upcoming Decadia show at Mulcahy's, check out the venue's official homepage.
For more information on Decadia, check out their website.
Phillips' background as the 2013 Nebraska Gatorade Player of the Year and a junior wrestling champion is exactly what NFL scouts are looking for. Add in the play he's put on tape over the past couple of seasons and it was no surprise when he decided to leave school early for the NFL. Phillips played in six games as a reserve in his first year on the Farm (nine tackles, two sacks). He missed all but one game of the 2015 season, unfortunately, because of a knee injury suffered in the season opener. The following year, Phillips garnered honorable mention All-Pac-12 honors after starting 12 games, making 46 stops, 9.5 for loss, and 6.5 sacks. Amazingly, he led Stanford in tackles (103, 17 for loss, 7.5 sacks, as well as two forced fumbles) from the interior as a junior in 2017, which led the Associated Press to vote him third-team All-American. Phillips was also first-team all-conference and named a member of the America Football Coaches Association Good Works Team.
Phillips plays a little upright and looks more like a guard than nose, but he definitely has the leverage and power to play to anchor and muddy the run game waters. Phillips has a feel for blocking schemes and is able to handle down blocks and double teams while allow linebackers to flow to the ball. As a former wrestler, he's a natural scrambler with non-traditional ways of finding the football and finding the quarterback. He has early starter potential and could find snaps on passing downs as well.
An audit was released Thursday detailing problems at the Iowa School Board Association during 2008-2009. The organization now has new leadership, new financial practices and says it's working on regaining credibility.