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21,000 | California lawmakers approve hiking minimum wage to $15 | SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - A plan to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022 passed both houses of the state legislature on Thursday, putting the state on track to become the first in the nation to commit to such a large pay hike for the working poor. The measure, incorporating a deal Governor Jerry Brown reached with labor leaders and progressive Democrats in the Legislature, was approved in the state Senate Thursday afternoon after winning approval earlier in the day in the Assembly, and now goes to Brown for his signature. “If you work full time, your family shouldn’t live in poverty,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Southern California Democrat, said in support of the bill to raise the state’s minimum wage from its current level of $10 per hour. Lawmakers from the state’s poorer regions said the measure could harm small businesses that are barely hanging on amid double-digit unemployment, ultimately leading to job losses. If enacted, the bill would put California, home to one of the world’s biggest economies, among a growing number of U.S. states and cities that have moved in recent years to surpass the federal minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009. A proposal to raise the minimum wage in parts of New York state to $15 was announced Thursday by Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders. The California measure would gradually raise the state’s hourly minimum wage to $15 by 2022 for large businesses and by 2023 for smaller firms. The measure would also head off two competing ballot initiatives lacking a provision to allow the governor to suspend increases in hard economic times, a deal breaker for Brown. The proposal sped through the legislative process after the governor’s office reached a deal last week with labor unions pushing a similar minimum wage hike in the form of two ballot initiatives. With polls showing strong support for those measures at the ballot box, Brown emphasized that a version passed through the legislature would allow lawmakers to amend it if needed over time instead of going back to voters to request amendments in expensive and uncertain campaigns. Moreover, the deal allows the state to opt out of minimum wage increases if the economy is doing poorly, a provision not in either of the union-backed ballot initiatives. Even so, several moderate Democrats and most Republicans complained that it was being rushed through, and would disproportionately harm businesses in poorer parts of the state, where the cost of living is not high enough to warrant such a dramatic wage hike. The deal reached in New York would raise wages in costly New York City to $15 in three years, but would stagger increases in other parts of the state, some to just $12.50 per hour unless further approval is granted. It still must pass the legislature, where negotiations on the details are ongoing. | 1 |
21,001 | U.S. election agency breached by hackers after November vote | (Reuters) - The U.S. agency charged with ensuring that voting machines meet security standards was itself penetrated by a hacker after the November elections, according to a security firm working with law enforcement on the matter. The security firm, Recorded Future, was monitoring underground electronic markets where hackers buy and sell wares and discovered someone offering log-on credentials for access to computers at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, company executives said. Posing as a potential buyer, the researchers engaged in a conversation with the hacker, said Levi Gundert, vice president of intelligence at the company, and Andrei Barysevich, director of advanced collection. Eventually they discovered that the Russian-speaking hacker had obtained the credentials of more than 100 people at the election commission after exploiting a common database vulnerability, the researchers said. The hacker was trying to sell information about the vulnerability to a Middle Eastern government for several thousand dollars, but the researchers alerted law enforcement and said Thursday that the hole had been patched. The Election Assistance Commission said in a statement late Thursday that it had become aware of a “potential intrusion” and was “working with federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the potential breach and its effects.” “The FBI is currently conducting an ongoing criminal investigation,” the statement added. The election commission certifies voting systems and develops standards for technical guidelines and best practices for election officials across the country. The researchers said the hacker had an unusual business model, scanning for ways to break into all manner of businesses and other entities and then moving rapidly to sell that access, rather than stealing the data himself. “We don’t think he actually works for any government or is super sophisticated,” Barysevich said. In the case of the election commission, the hacker used methods including an SQL injection, a well known and preventable flaw, obtaining a list of user names and obfuscated passwords, which he was then able to crack. Though much of the commission’s work is public, the hacker gained access to non-public reports on flaws in voting machines. In theory, someone could have used knowledge of such flaws to attack specific machines, said Matt Blaze, an electronic voting expert and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers were confident that the hacker moved to sell his access soon after getting it, meaning that he was not inside the system before election day. The U.S. voting process is decentralized and there were no reports of widespread fraud in November. The Election Assistance Commission was created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and is led by presidential appointees. | 1 |
21,002 | Michigan Republicans Strip Flint Of Their Power To Sue The State Over Poisoned Water | The city of Flint, Michigan is suffering through a horrible man-made disaster that could have been easily prevented if state Republicans hadn t been so careless.After placing Flint under state control, officials chose to save money by switching the city s drinking water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, which has not been the drinking water source for decades because it was poisoned and considered unsafe for human consumption.As a result, the city has been devastated by lead poisoning, which will have terrible consequences for years to come for the children who ingested the tainted water.Understandably, Flint is mad as hell so they decided to take the state to court. But because Michigan Republicans and Governor Rick Snyder are rats who hate democracy and justice, they shut down any potential lawsuit by stripping Flint of the power to sue.According to the Detroit Free Press:Though Flint has not been under a state-appointed emergency manager since April 2015, the state still exerts partial control over the city through a five-member Receivership Transition Advisory Board, whose members are appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder.The board moved quickly to change the rules under which Flint is governed so that the city cannot file a lawsuit without first getting approval from that state-appointed board.This is absolutely outrageous. It s like a woman having to get permission to file a lawsuit from the company whose CEO raped her.Michigan Republicans should not have the power to take away anyone s right to seek redress through the court system. It sounds like they are just scared that they will lose the case. And frankly, they should be.After all, it was their decisions that led to Flint being poisoned with tainted water and the cover-up that followed. The city of Flint absolutely should be able to sue the state in open court. But Republicans took that power away from Flint, and you can be damn sure that they would love to do that in every city across all fifty states if they have their way.Featured image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images | 0 |
21,003 | “Dear Mr. Trump”…NBC Uses Kids To Make STUNNING Anti-Trump Propaganda VIDEO…PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED! | NBC News handpicked anti-Trump tykes for two propaganda videos to make it appear that every child in American thinks Pres. Trump is an ignorant racist and threat to the country.The video starts out with a blurry picture of President Trump (the kind of picture used in political ads by the opponent to make the candidate look bad) and goes downhill from there:Not one child in either Dear Mr. President: kids Talk Trump or Dear Mr. President: Letters from the American Children says he actually supports Trump s efforts to keep America safe from terrorism or stop the influx of illegal aliens.Both videos open with smarmy, false compliments to give the illusion that these kids haven t been indoctrinated by leftist teachers and liberal media but, then, both launch into unrelenting snide rebukes couched in innocent-kid-speak.The kids accuse Trump of racism and violence against blacks: Most of my family is black. I m afraid that you re gonna hurt some of us blacks. You are here, attempting to white-wash America. I don t like your definition of American, because I don t seem to fit within it. These adolescent activists really, really don t want a border wall or travel ban on state-sponsors of terror, because it s not nice and fair : Not letting immigrants into America is really not nice, so please let them in. It s not fair for refugees. Just because I m Mexican, doesn t mean you can build a wall around the country. Please don t build a wall, and don t let people have guns. P.S. Please don t build a wall around Mexico. P.P.S. Please, please don t stop the refugees from coming. You re going to separate me away from the rest of my family, and I really don t what that because I love them too much. Some of my friends are really scared about you building a wall, and the travel ban, because a lot of their families live in different places. WATCH: And, then, there s this rebuke from a young lady who appears in both videos: When you speak on things that make me feel uncomfortable or I disagree with, you make me feel small, because I know I can t change it. Apparently, the president should never disagree with her or say things she doesn t like because it ll hurt Susie Snowflake s feelings. CNS news HERE S THE SECOND VIDEO: | 0 |
21,004 | Trump's trade adviser says hopes to reach trade deal with South Korea | WASHINGTON/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s top trade adviser expressed optimism on Tuesday about reaching agreement on a revised free trade pact with South Korea, days after Trump suggested scrapping the deal with a key American ally. Senior U.S. lawmakers and America’s biggest business lobby urged Trump not to pull out of the five-year-old U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), especially at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea’s nuclear missile tests. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, speaking in Mexico City after a second round of NAFTA talks with Canada and Mexico, said negotiations with Seoul were continuing. “We have a negotiation we’re in,” Lighthizer told reporters when asked whether KORUS would be terminated. “My hope is that we’ll have a successful discussion with the Koreans as things proceed and that the problems with that agreement from our perspective will be worked out.” Trump said on Saturday he would discuss KORUS’s fate with advisers this week, prompting widespread concern among lawmakers and the business community. The chairmen and senior Democrats on the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee said in a statement on Tuesday that North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear bomb test on Sunday “underscores the vital importance of the strong alliance between the United States and South Korea.” The statement by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, senior Democrat Richard Neal and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and senior Democrat Ron Wyden said talks to improve South Korea’s implementation and compliance with the trade agreement were welcome. But it said the agreement itself was central to the U.S.-South Korean alliance. In a separate letter to Trump, Senator Joni Ernest, a Republican from Iowa in the U.S. corn belt, said the South Korean market was especially important for U.S. beef, corn and pork producers. “Terminating KORUS would leave our farmers at a competitive disadvantage to those in other countries that enjoy preferential trade access to Korea,” Ernst wrote. In a strongly worded statement the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million businesses, also opposed any “rash and irresponsible” withdrawal. “We do not believe this move would create a single American job — but it would cost many,” said Tom Donohue, who warned that it would damage relations between the White House and business community. “Ironically, states across mid-America that voted for the president would take the hit from withdrawal as their agricultural and manufactured goods exports fell in the wake of such a move,” Donohue said. | 1 |
21,005 | U.S. lawmakers to press AOL for Powell's State Department emails | NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers said Thursday they will seek to recover the missing emails of Colin Powell from his time as U.S. secretary of state by going directly to AOL Inc, whose email service he used for his work. The decision came a few minutes after U.S. State Department officials testified in a hearing that the department never contacted AOL to recover the missing records, despite repeated requests by the National Archives and Records Administration over the last year. The hearing, by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was the latest in the fallout from Hillary Clinton’s decision to use an unauthorized private email system for official email while secretary of state. Clinton, the Democratic Party presidential candidate, has said her decision was wrong, but it has continued to dog her effort to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election. Her defenders have pointed to some similarities in Powell’s earlier use of private email, which drew fresh scrutiny at Thursday’s hearing. “I don’t get this, it’s ridiculous,” said Democrat Stephen Lynch, a committee member. “This is the National Archives asking you to contact AOL, but you didn’t do that.” Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s most senior management official, said that Powell, a Republican, never replied to the department’s request to ask AOL to attempt to recover his work emails, which were not properly archived at the agency. He said the department’s lawyers decided to decline the National Archives’ requests that the department go to AOL directly. “We cannot make a request for someone else’s records from their provider,” Kennedy said in his testimony. “That request has to be made by them.” Jason Chaffetz, the Republican who chairs the committee, then agreed to a request by the committee’s most senior Democrat, Elijah Cummings, to try to recover the emails from AOL, using a subpoena if necessary. AOL is owned by telecommunications provider Verizon Communications Inc. A spokeswoman for Powell did not respond to a request for comment. AOL did not immediately respond to questions, and has previously said the its privacy policy precludes it from discussing a customer’s emails. The State Department did not have a fully functioning email system when Powell joined it in 2001, according to agency officials. Powell has said he told technology officials to set up a computer with his AOL account in order to become the first secretary of state to use email. In contrast, Clinton eschewed the official state.gov email system when she took office in 2009. Department officials have said she would not have received permission for this had she asked. | 1 |
21,006 | After Orlando shooting, Donald Trump reiterates Muslim ban | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, saying that he had predicted attacks on American soil by terrorists, reiterated his call for a ban on foreign-born Muslims entering the country, in a comment posted on Twitter. “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough,” Trump wrote on Twitter. | 1 |
21,007 | Trump delays announcement on whether U.S. embassy to be moved to Jerusalem | ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will not announce a decision on Monday on whether he will again delay moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a White House spokesman said, despite Monday s deadline for doing so. An announcement on the decision will be made in coming days, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters aboard Air Force One as Trump was returning from a trip to Utah. Trump had been due to decide whether to sign a waiver that would hold off relocating the embassy from Tel Aviv for another six months, as every U.S. president has done since Congress passed a law on the issue in 1995. Senior U.S. officials have said that Trump is expected to issue a temporary order, the second since he took office, to delay moving the embassy despite his campaign pledge to go ahead with the controversial action. But the officials have said Trump is likely to give a speech on Wednesday unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel s capital, a step that would break with decades of U.S. policy and could fuel violence in the Middle East. They have said, however, that no final decisions have been made. The president has been clear on this issue from the get-go; that it s not a matter of if, but a matter of when, Gidley said. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, and the international community does not recognize Israel s claim on all of the city, home to sites holy to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions. | 1 |
21,008 | CNN Host SLAMS Cruz Campaign For Making Up Absolute Bullsh*t And Bashing Network (VIDEO) | If there s one thing Senator Ted Cruz will go down in history for, it s being a smarmy liar. He says whatever he can to make himself look good, and gives all politicians a bad name. What he seems to hate more than anything is being call out on his bullshit, and Wednesday when asked a question about how he mislead Carson voters in to thinking the candidate was suspending his campaign, thus trying to make voters believe they should vote for Cruz, he went directly after CNN, saying: Is it a dirty trick to pass on your news stories? You re in the business! Would you think it was a dirty trick if I was forwarding an ABC story? Or is it just a dirty trick to pass on a CNN story? Basically, he was pissed CNN was reporting facts. So CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, while speaking with Cruz surrogate Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), said: Just so we re all crystal clear here, when Sen. Cruz, with all due respect, tries to throw my network under the bus, let me stand up for my colleagues and my journalists here in terms of this CNN report Cruz keeps quoting. We reported it accurately and here are the facts. She then went on to say: Dr. Carson s staff told us that he would return home to Florida to, quote, unquote, take a breath from the campaign before resuming his activities on the campaign trail. That accurate report was disseminated on television and CNN digital and that was that. That was that. Then finished off with: Forgive me. When someone tries to take down the media and misreport something it gets me fired up. Then when Meadows tried to twist the conversation away from the subject, Baldwin brings him back to reality by saying: Congressman, forgive me, but I m going to call out B.S. if I hear B.S. And that was B.S. Cruz was purposefully trying to blame the media for his actions taken against the Carson campaign. It s lame, it s wrong, and Baldwin was perfectly spot-on calling him out on it. Well done. Video/Featured image: YouTube | 0 |
21,009 | Trump rebuts criticism by Army father at Democratic convention | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump rejected criticism from the father of a soldier killed in Iraq who said the Republican presidential nominee had “sacrificed nothing and no one” and questioned whether the mother was allowed to speak during the couple’s appearance at the Democratic convention. “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Trump told ABC News in excerpts of an interview posted on Saturday. “I work very, very hard.” Khizr Khan, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani origin and a Muslim, won widespread praise when he spoke Thursday at the Democratic National Convention, telling the story of his son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a bomb in Iraq in 2004. He also attacked Trump for proposing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and asked if the candidate had read the U.S. Constitution. He pulled out a pocket-copy from the inside of his suit coat, in one of the most commented moments on the night that Hillary Clinton accepted her party’s nomination for president. “Did Hillary’s script writers write it?” Trump asked ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in the interview, saying he has indeed sacrificed by employing thousands of people, and raising “millions of dollars” for veterans. Trump said Khan appeared “very emotional and probably looked like a nice guy to me.” But the businessman also cast doubt on why Khan’s wife did not speak. “She was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me,” Trump said. Clinton at a campaign rally Saturday night in Youngstown, Ohio, said the Khans specifically and Muslims generally are the most recent recipients of Trump’s insults, and referenced his past statements about immigrants and the disabled. “It’s a long list my friends. I don’t know, maybe he doesn’t have anything positive to say,” Clinton said. Earlier in the day, Clinton said in a statement that she was “very moved to see Ghazala Khan stand bravely and with dignity in support of her son on Thursday night. And I was very moved to hear her speak last night, bravely and with dignity, about her son’s life and the ultimate sacrifice he made for his country.” Ghazala Khan told MSNBC on Friday that she chose not to speak because she still cannot bear to see her son’s photographs. Khizr Khan told the New York Times that the Clinton campaign asked if he need speechwriting help or coaching. “I said: ‘I really don’t, I have my thoughts in my head,’” Khan told the Times, adding, “‘Just let me say what I want to say. It will be heart-to-heart’.” | 1 |
21,010 | OBAMA THREATENS TO SURFACE FROM LEFTIST BUNKER To Speak Out Against Trump’s Plan To End DACA | Contrary to what the media would like us to believe, Obama has not remained silent when it comes to policy that President Trump put in place by executive order. Neither he nor his Democratic henchmen remained silent when President Trump desperately tried to convince Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, or when he had the opportunity to attack him over his handling of the Charlottesville controversy. The media celebrated Obama s post-Charlotseville tweet designed to make our former President look like he was in favor of uniting the nation (which we all know is a bald-faced lie), while falsely giving the impression that President Trump was choosing sides.Before the media gets into a full-blown tizzy about Obama using social media to bash our current president over DACA, they might consider that most of America aren t stupid enough to believe that Valerie Jarrett didn t move into Barack Obama s DC home because he needed a friend to play checkers with. He may not be making public statements to voice his opposition against our current president, but one thing we do know is that he and Valerie Jarrett aren t sitting on their hands, while President Trump unwinds everything they worked so hard to make happen, including DACA.Hotair You know it s killing this guy not to be on camera every day scolding Trump in his usual that s not who we are terms but that would be a strategic disaster so obvious that silence is really the only option. A Trump vs. Obama fight over almost any issue would unify most of the right behind the president and O knows it; the most brutal thing he can do to Trump is to deny him that our-guy-versus-their-guy dynamic. I don t think it s crazy to believe that Trump s job approval would be five to 10 points higher if Obama had spent the last seven months sniping at him regularly. By withholding his criticism, he s made it possible for soft Republicans and right-leaning independents to criticize POTUS without fear of being accused that they re carrying O s water.Two days before President Trump s inauguration, Obama warned him that he would come out against him if Trump rescinded his unconstitutional DACA.Why attack Trump now? I think there s more to it than DACA just being near and dear to Obama s heart. He knows that congressional Republicans are going to be jammed up here to an unusual degree. Immigration is a fraught issue for the GOP under the best of circumstances but DREAMers are an especially hard case due to their having come here as children. They re the one class of illegals about whom even Trump speaks warmly. In fact, the president s going to end DACA not because he wants to but because Republican AGs are squeezing him to do so, replete with the threat of a court battle; even then, Trump is still so reluctant to pull the plug that he s willing to hold off for another six months. The entire GOP (apart from Steve King) will spend those six months telling every voter who listens that they re open to legalizing DREAMers. All they ask in return is some face-saving security measures so that they can semi-plausibly argue to their base that they didn t roll over completely on amnesty.Having Obama wade in publicly on the side of DREAMers will complicate all of that. With O banging the drum for amnesty, Republican voters who are lukewarm on the idea in the first place will start to turn frosty. Populists will have a field day attacking Ryan and McConnell (and Trump?) for essentially doing Obama s bidding by negotiating for a DREAM bill. Some congressional Republicans might start to get cold feet. The more hostile Trump and the congressional GOP become towards a DREAM deal as part of a backlash towards Obama, the more ammo Schumer will have to say that Republicans are being cruel to poor illegal children whose only mistake was trusting the federal government. The whole GOP we like DREAMers too! messaging effort will be scrambled. Either negotiations will end up collapsing in Congress, with Dems using the DREAM failure against Republicans next fall, or Trump, Ryan, and McConnell will have to swallow hard and approve an amnesty cheered on by Barack farking Obama, which is about the RINO-iest move a modern Republican is capable of making. Either the GOP base ends up angry at the White House or everyone else does. Obama speaking out is tinder for the match Trump is about to strike.Let s hope President Trump will be able to locate and tweet this pesky little video of candidate Obama telling his constituents how he disagrees with law breaking illegal aliens living and working in America: | 0 |
21,011 | U.S. military must accept transgender recruits by Jan. 1, judge rules | (Reuters) - Transgender recruits will be able to join the U.S. military as of Jan. 1 after a federal judge on Monday denied a request by President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce his ban on transgender troops while the government appeals an order blocking it. In a ruling, with which the Pentagon said it would comply, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington refused to lift part of her Oct. 30 order stopping the ban from taking effect until the case is resolved, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law. The White House said the Justice Department was reviewing its options. The Pentagon said in a statement that it would follow court orders and begin processing transgender applicants on Jan. 1. It added, however, that it and the U.S. Department of Justice “are actively pursuing relief from those court orders in order to allow an ongoing policy review scheduled to be completed before the end of March.” The administration had argued that the Jan. 1 deadline was problematic because tens of thousands of personnel would have to be trained on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants, and the military was not ready for that. Kollar-Kotelly rejected the concerns, saying preparations for accepting transgender troops were under way during the administration of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. “The directive from the Secretary of Defense requiring the military to prepare to begin allowing accession of transgender individuals was issued on June 30, 2016 - nearly one and a half years ago,” the judge said. Several transgender service members filed a lawsuit after Trump said in July he would ban transgender people from the military, citing concern over military focus and medical costs. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender individuals from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty personnel. Defense Secretary James Mattis had previously delayed a deadline that had been set during the Obama administration to begin enlisting transgender recruits to Jan. 1, which Trump’s ban then put off indefinitely. The Pentagon said on Monday there were a number of guidelines that would have to be met by the applicants. It said that sex reassignment or genital reconstruction would be disqualifying factors unless a medical provider certified that a period of 18 months had passed since the most recent surgery, no complications persisted and additional surgeries are not required. The service members who sued Trump, Mattis and military leaders in August had been serving openly as transgender people in the U.S. Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. They said Trump’s ban discriminated against them based on their sex and transgender status. In her October ruling, Kollar-Kotelly said the Trump administration’s reasons for the ban “do not appear to be supported by any facts” and cited a military-commissioned study that debunked concerns about military cohesion or healthcare costs. A federal judge in Maryland also halted the ban in Nov. 21 ruling. | 1 |
21,012 | ONE BEER COMPANY Praised For Shutting Down Business To Help Texas Flood Victims, While Popular Pastor Joel Osteen Gets SLAMMED For Keeping Megachurch Doors Shut To Flood Victims | The Anheuser-Busch Brewery put beer production on hold this week, instead of canning safe drinking water to distribute to flooding victims affected by Hurricane Harvey.More than 50,000 cans of emergency drinking water will be sent from the brewing company s factory in Cartersville, Ga., a spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch said to FOX5.The water will be distributed at Red Cross shelters in Baton Rouge, La., where Flash Flood Watch is in effect through Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. Throughout the year, we periodically pause beer production at our Cartersville, Ga., brewery to produce emergency canned drinking water so we are ready to help out communities across the country in times of crisis, said Sarah Schilling, brewmaster at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in a statement. Putting our production and logistics strengths to work by providing safe, clean drinking water is the best way we can help in these situations, she said. FOX NewsMeanwhile, Joel Osteen, the pastor of the Lakewood megachurch in Houston, TX, is being hammered on social for keeping the doors to his church closed to victims of the worst recorded flood in Houston s history. Osteen s net worth is valued at over $40 million. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, Joel Osteen tweeted to his followers:Victoria & I are praying for everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey. Please join us as we pray for the safety of our Texas friends & family. Joel Osteen (@JoelOsteen) August 26, 2017Apparently, many folks on Twitter didn t feel as though the pastor, who also happens to be mega-rich, is doing enough to help the people who have supported his luxury lifestyle for years.One Twitter user published photos that were allegedly taken in the parking lot of the Lakewood megachurch following the massive flooding. If these pictures are indeed accurate, the Lakewood church appears to be unaffected by the flooding.UPDATE: Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston IS accessible. Their statement it's inaccessible is a LIE. Pic from 1-hr ago! pic.twitter.com/S8v57Bh68R TRUMP 24/7 (@MichaelDelauzon) August 28, 2017This Twitter user reminded Olsteen that the church belongs to God and not to him. Collin Rugg tells Osteen to Open up His doors & let the people of Houston in! Joel Osteen,"Your" mega church doesn't belong to you, it belongs to GodOpen up His doors & let the people of Houston in!#HoustonStrong Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 29, 2017This Twitter user offered a similar sentiment:Joel Osteen has made millions in Jesus' name, but when it comes time to actually act like a Christian he fails spectacularly. #Houston Lori O. (@lori_oh) August 28, 2017This Twiter user posted a picture of his Catholic priest actually working in the Houston floods to help victims.This is Father David Bergeron, the Father at my Catholic Church. He was out in a kayak yesterday blessing+helping ppl, Joel Osteen who???? pic.twitter.com/oVsNWniUsx Triiodide Ion (@alfredomorenx) August 28, 2017Outspoken conservative Pastor Greg Locke reminded Osteen of his obligation to show the love of Christ at this very moment , telling him to OPEN THE DOORS. Joel Osteen, as a Pastor you have a huge obligation to show the love of Christ at this very moment. OPEN THE DOORS. #HoustonStrong Pastor Greg Locke (@pastorlocke) August 28, 2017If the New Orleans Saints could open their stadium to the public during Katrina, Joel Osteen can open up his church for the Houston flooding Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 28, 2017Please understand that Joel Osteen does NOT represent Christianity. Never has, never will. @JoelOsteen #HoustonStrong #MAGA pic.twitter.com/5sSaUrzFvY M A N them (@mikandynothem) August 28, 2017Joel Osteen's megachurch is designed for the rising tithe, not tide. Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) August 28, 2017 | 0 |
21,013 | Nancy Pelosi BRILLIANTLY Points Out the Brutal FAIL In Trump’s Address To Congress (VIDEO) | Donald Trump s join address to Congress last night left much to be desired, and many Democratic leaders are absolutely disgusted by what they heard and witnessed from the undeserving POTUS.In response to Trump s pathetic speech, Minority Leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has received the following statement, which blatantly calls Trump out for being untrustworthy and fake. Pelosi wrote: The President s speech was utterly disconnected from the cruel reality of his conduct. And she s absolutely right. Trump s speech was completely disconnected from what he has done so far, and Pelosi accurately assessed Trump s address as a bait-and-switch assault on America. She also brilliantly pointed out that Trump has yet to actually back up any of his campaign promises and proposals.Pelosi also called Trump out for selling working people down the river to Wall Street and for jeopardizing the security of our country and weakening our fight against terror with his Administration s dangerous, incompetent and unconstitutional actions. Those are harsh words, but they re absolutely true and reflect how the majority of Americans feel about Trump s first few weeks in the White House. At the end of her statement, Pelosi warned Trump that Democrats will continue to lead the fight against his disgusting rhetoric and harmful policies.Echoing Pelosi s statement, colleague Chuck Schumer also held a similar opinion of Trump s address to Congress:Unlike Trump, who is infamous for walking back and flip-flopping on his stances to please the masses, Pelosi only doubled down on her comments earlier this morning in an appearance on MSNBC s Morning Joe . Commenting on Trump s lack of concrete policies, she said, We re legislators. Show us your proposal. Featured image via Win McNamee / Getty Images | 0 |
21,014 | AWESOME RANT By African-American Woman Who’s FED UP: “Sanctuary cities are racist!” | You will love, love, love this passionate lady! She gets it!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zs6IMuee98 | 0 |
21,015 | Clinton to press Trump to spell out policy plans in presidential debate | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton will press Republican Donald Trump to provide more specifics on his policies in their presidential debate on Monday, two top Clinton campaign aides said ahead of a face-off that could set U.S. television audience records. On the eve of the debate at Hofstra University in suburban New York, aides to Clinton have sought to cast Trump, a New York businessman and former reality TV host, as lacking the temperament and experience to serve as president. Trump’s aides for their part have sought to reinforce voter doubts about Clinton’s trustworthiness. The debate, the first of three face-to-face matchups between the two candidates, will begin at 9 p.m. on Monday (0100 GMT on Tuesday). It comes as opinion polls show a tight race between Clinton, a former secretary of state, and Trump, six weeks before the Nov. 8 election. “We’re going to have a lot of people really tuning into this election for the first time. They’re going to see these two candidates onstage,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on Sunday in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.” “I think they’re going to see that Donald Trump is unfit, unprepared, and over his head. I doubt he will have a command of the issues.” Mook said Clinton would challenge Trump at the debate “to reveal what his plans are. You know, for example, he has not revealed any plan whatsoever to defeat ISIS (Islamic State) militants.” Trump has said he would work closely with NATO allies to defeat Islamic State and vowed to wage a “military, cyber and financial” war against the militant group. “Donald Trump’s been all about himself. But she’s got to tell people what she wants to do for them,” John Podesta, chairman of Clinton’s campaign, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, in a separate “This Week” interview on Sunday, attacked Clinton’s trustworthiness. “You know, if you’re running against a Clinton, veracity is certainly always on the table,” she said. “Hillary Clinton’s casual relationship with the truth is well known to Americans. I’m sure we’ll see it on full display tomorrow night.” The Trump campaign put to rest on Sunday the prospect that he might invite Gennifer Flowers, who had an affair with Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, to attend the debate. After Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, a Clinton supporter and vociferous critic of Trump, tweeted that he had a “front-row” seat to watch the Hofstra debate, Trump raised the possibility in a tweet of inviting Flowers to the debate. But Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, told “Fox News Sunday” that Flowers would not attend the debate. “Donald Trump was using the tweet yesterday really to mock an effort by Hillary Clinton and her campaign to really distract attention from what the American people are going to be focused on tomorrow night, which is on the issues, on the choice that we face,” Pence said. Supporters of both candidates sought to manage expectations before the debate. Mook said the moderator of Monday’s debate, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, should fact-check candidates’ statements, although Trump’s campaign said it should be up to American voters to gauge who they thought was telling the truth. To prepare for the debate, Clinton has been holding mock debate sessions where longtime aide Philippe Reines plays the role of Trump. Trump aides said their candidate, who like Clinton participated in numerous TV debates during their respective parties’ nominating races, was preparing for Monday’s event but not doing mock debates where someone plays the role of Clinton. Trump’s advisers said the Republican presidential nominee was going up against a highly seasoned politician. “He’s the outsider, he’s a person who has never run before, let alone be in a presidential debate, but he’s going to be ready,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. “And I think one of the things Donald Trump has going for him is he’s got very good instincts.” | 1 |
21,016 | Spain to take control of Catalonia if gets ambiguous reply on independence | MADRID (Reuters) - The Spanish government will take control of Catalonia if regional leader Carles Puigdemont replies ambiguously to Madrid s question about whether he has declared independence from Spain, the interior minister said on Saturday. Puigdemont made a symbolic declaration of independence on Tuesday night, only to suspend it seconds later and call for negotiations with Madrid on the region s future. Spain s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has given him until Monday to clarify his position - and then until Thursday to change his mind if he insists on a split - threatening to suspend Catalonia s autonomy if he chooses independence. The answer must be without any ambiguity. He must say yes or no , Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido told Cope radio. If he answers ambiguously, it means he doesn t want dialogue and thus the Spanish government will have to take action, he also said. Puigdemont, who is holding consultations with local parties to prepare his answer, faces a tough dilemma. If he says he did proclaim independence, the central government will step in. If he says he did not declare it, then the far-left Catalan party CUP would probably withdraw its support for his minority government. CUP on Friday called on Puigdemont to make an unequivocal declaration of independence in defiance of the Madrid government s deadlines. Such a hardline position has also been backed by influential pro-independence civic group Asamblea Nacional Catalana (Catalan National Assembly). They were joined on Saturday by another key member of Puigdemont s coalition, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, whose leader Oriol Junqueras said they should press ahead with splitting from Spain following an independence vote. The Catalan government said 90 percent of Catalans had voted for a breakaway in an Oct. 1 referendum that central authorities in Madrid had declared illegal and most opponents of independence boycotted, reducing turnout to around 43 percent. We have an unequivocal and absolute commitment to fulfill the democratic mandate from Oct. 1, Junqueras said. Under Article 155 of the Spanish constitution, the central government in Madrid can suspend the political autonomy of a region if it breaks the law. This article, which enables Rajoy to sack the Catalan government and call a regional election, has never been activated since the constitution was adopted in 1978 after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. | 1 |
21,017 | Iraqi forces seize air base from Islamic state near Hawija | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces and Shi ite paramilitaries captured an air base from Islamic State on Monday, the army said, gaining a strategic foothold in the north of the country as they push toward the town of Hawija. Iraq launched an offensive on September 21 to dislodge Islamic State from Hawija, which lies west of the oil city of Kirkuk and is one of two areas of the country still under the control of the militant group. Iraqi army commanders said the Rashad air base, which is around 30 km (20 miles) south of Hawija, was used by the militants as a training camp and logistic base. Militants took control of the air base after the Iraqi army collapsed in 2014 in the face of the Islamic State offensive. After quick rehabilitation works, the air base will play a key role for Iraqi forces by allowing helicopters to transport soldiers and arms in any future operation to maintain security in the north, said army Lieutenant Colonel Salih Yaseen. The air base will help to put an end to the terrorists pockets hiding in mountainous areas near Kirkuk and remove any possible threat to the energy facilities and oilfields. Hawija, north of Baghdad, and a stretch of land along the Syrian border, west of the Iraqi capital, are the last stretches of territory in Iraq still in the hands of Islamic State. Islamic State s self-declared caliphate effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling nine-month battle. | 1 |
21,018 | Trump says not considering firing U.S. special counsel Mueller | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, when asked on Sunday if he was considering firing U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller, told reporters, “No. I’m not.” Democratic lawmakers in recent days have expressed concern that Trump might fire Mueller, who is investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and whether Trump or anyone on his team colluded with Moscow. Russia denies meddling in the election and Trump has denied any collusion. | 1 |
21,019 | yemeni forces fire ballistic missile deep inside saudi arabia at jeddah airport | shares
iraqi media outlets reported on thursday that the isis group executed civilians by electrocution in central mosul
isis militants electrocuted civilians in almagmoa althaqafiya area in central mosul for collaborating with security forces and kurdish peshmerga fighters al sumaria news stated
al sumaria news added the isis militants were keeping these civilians inside a prison in mosul for nearly four months
yesterday parliamentary human rights committee revealed that the isis executed civilians in hamam alalil area and in alarij village south of the city of mosul while called prime minister haider alabadi and the international coalition to continue liberating the isisheld areas in the city
on tuesday the un human rights office said it had preliminary reports about scores of mass killings by isis around mosul in the past week
un human rights spokesman rupert colville told a regular un briefing in geneva that the bodies of civilians with bullet wounds had been discovered by iraqi security forces in tuloul naser village on october and police officers being held outside the city had also reportedly been killed press tv reported
recommended for you isis executes iraqi civilians in hammam alalil in arij village official
isis terrorists continued to commit atrocities in the province of nineveh they executed people in the area of hammam alalil after t
by aht staff muslim iraqi soldiers erect cross on top of the church in newly liberated karamless village near mosul iraqi army troops on saturday stormed into a christian region that has been under isis control since as part of operations to clear t
by aht staff nouri almaliki the former prime minister of iraq and the head of the alqanoon parliamentary coalition stated in his speech during the
by aht staff us commander john nicholson isis attempting to establish khorasan caliphate in afghanistan | 0 |
21,020 | FAKE NEWS WEEK: Electronic Voting – The Big Lie That Just Won’t Die | In response to the establishment media s contrived fake news crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE is running its own #FakeNewsWeek awareness campaign, where each day our editorial team at 21st Century Wire will feature media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of fake news throughout modern history . Mark Anderson 21st Century WireThe U.S. government, the intelligence community and their malicious mainstream-media partners in deception just won t let it go.The underhanded U.S. unitary state, which seeks a unipolar world with the U.S. in charge, still says in its never ending story that omniscient, omnipresent Russian leader Vladimir Putin masterminded hacking the computerized systems of U.S. elections as well as Democratic National Committee computers.Then, as the stale tale goes, Russia handed all the resulting electronic juicy tidbits over to Wikileaks, which turned around and dropped a veritable information bomb on America s delicate democracy.But while that bomb allegedly influenced enough people to vote for the winner Donald Trump and not for loser Hillary Clinton, to this day, according to big media, we re supposed to forget all about the creepy, damning, criminally inclined things contained in the Podesta-Clinton emails themselves.So, let s try and grasp this media-massaged, intel-infused message: Even though the emails apparently had enough sizzle and scandal to boost one presidential candidate over another, we re still prodded to think that the information in the emails somehow isn t the issue even though the content of the emails will always be what matters the most.Also notice what no one, and certainly no media outlet, dares to mention regarding the other half of this issue: If Putin also was crafty enough to hack into the actual state-level U.S. election systems, then this implies that U.S. elections systems can be hacked in the first place.This is huge. Think about it the next time you use an electronic ES&S Ivotronic touchscreen voting machine or Hart InterCivic s model at the polls.All along, we ve been reassured that the electronic voting systems used in about 95% of American voting precincts are The Greatest Thing Ever Invented and Monumentally Secure Are they really? THE ELECTORAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: Securing America s automated voting systems has become a complicated affair. And, all along, writers like Yours Truly, highly credible Texas vote-reform activists like Laura Pressley, Vickie Karp, Bev Harris and others have uncovered tons of evidence that electronic elections are an immensely deceptive and vulnerable apparatus vulnerable to external hacking and also to being fixed from the inside without any need for outside hacking, through the proprietary software inside the these voting contraptions that can be pre-set to steal elections if the need arises.You re going to want to see my interview with Laura Pressley, on behalf of American Free Press, through this link right here.THE RUSSIAN DISTRACTION As Pressley shows in detail, the integrity and lawfulness of Texas elections are in serious peril not because of any outside autocrats like Putin and his supposed cyberspace minions, but because of state and local election officials, right here in the U.S., who absolutely will not follow state election law. And the average TV or newspaper reporter is utterly tone-deaf to these problems, which keeps the people in perpetual fog, unaware that U.S. elections have been effectively privatized by those who make the machines that count the votes.To hear more about this Putin the Hacker debacle, please listen to my Dec. 29, 2016 interview with UK-based radio host Andrew Carrington Hitchcock on his regularly scheduled American Free Press (AFP) show.Furthermore, check out this Election Night Gatekeepers overview on my blog by election-theft expert Jim Condit Jr., who worked with the late Collier brothers in their game-changing book, Votescam. The media is part of a secretive consortium that counts the vote in secret, meaning the mainstream press fake news carries with it evidence of criminal collusion.The unavoidable conclusion is that the powers-that-be in going after Putin and calling him The Supreme Hacker of the Known Universe have shot themselves in the foot because they re clearly and finally admitting in the process that U.S. voting systems CAN be hacked, after more than a decade of denial.This means that all their denials about electronic election fraud are invalidated. The critics of electronic election systems are right. The establishment is wrong. End of discussion.Meanwhile, recalling some recent history, Wayne Madsen Reports provided some important perspective: Although the Central Intelligence Agency has had a long history of undermining presidents-elect and prime ministers-elect in other countries, the United States has never witnessed the intelligence agency so blatantly attempting to politically weaken a U.S. president-elect [Trump] just a few weeks prior to the inauguration. What the CIA is doing in forcing Donald Trump into shifting from his campaign promise of restoring good relations with Russia to one of outright hostility to Moscow favored by the CIA, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the neo-conservatives within the Republican and Democratic Party establishments is nothing less than an overt threat to American democracy. WHERE ARE THE CYBER-COPS?And, as American Free Press reported in its first 2017 edition, the young owner of a Russian-based web-server company may have a handle on who stole sensitive electronic communications between Hillary Clinton and some of her advisors.But 26-year-old Vladimir Fomenko knows one thing for sure: U.S. intelligence, which professes to be hot on the trail of exposing Russian hacking, doesn t seem to care about his story.This means that our leaders in Washington have long ignored a solid lead that could prove once and for all whether or not the Russian government hacked the computers systems of top Democrats and U.S. elections systems.Fomenko recently spoke to AFP to try and demystify the controversy surrounding his King Servers company and the cyberattacks purportedly carried out at the behest of Russia.AFP writer John Friend, quoting Fomenko, noted that even though his servers were exploited in this cyber-crime: No U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency is interested in speaking with him to gather real evidence on the perpetrators. The U.S. was not the only country hit by computer hackers. Hackers evidently targeted Germany, Turkey, and Ukraine, apparently attempting to upset democratic processes.It was when WikiLeaks began releasing hacked data from the DNC late this past summer that media reports and the Clinton campaign began blaming Russia with no solid evidence to support that assertion.After learning about this shadowy criminal activity, Fomenko immediately shut down the servers and looked into the situation. He says he s willing to cooperate with law enforcement. We pursued an investigation without delay and found some tracks leading to Europe, Fomenko told AFP. Web hosting is a legal enterprise . . . regulated by law, Fomenko added. King Servers works in Russia, the U.S., and the Netherlands and complies with the laws of these countries. Fomenko stressed: No U.S. law enforcement agency has contacted us at this time. Neither the FBI nor any other U.S., Russian, or Dutch intelligence agency has contacted us. The plot thickens WSB-TV Channel 2 reporters in Atlanta, Georgia actually did their job and noted: The Georgia Secretary of State s office now confirms 10 different cyberattacks on its network all trace back to U.S. Department of Homeland Security IP addresses. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, dissatisfied with the federal government s dodgy explanation about these DHS cyberattacks, fired off a letter to then-President-elect Donald Trump to put him in the loop.So, it ll be interesting to see if Trump ever helps Georgia, and other states whose election systems were supposedly hacked, figure out what happened and who s really responsible.After all this time, the accusation that Russia did it still looks less and less credible, as this additional AFP piece outlines, yet the American establishment, thinking it could blame Russia to explain Hillary s loss and come to grips with Trump s win, just won t drop the blame-Putin narrative.We can only hope that Trump s claim that he ll start putting some limits on our out-of-control spy agencies will come true. If ever there was a good reason to pursue those limits, this high-level U.S. intelligence gambit to blame Putin, no matter what, is it. The orthodox press has been a solid ally all along of these intel-intrigues.And this gives Trump a chance to prove he s the real deal, and not another asset of the establishment, despite his seemingly honest intentions to name names and seek real solutions to the real problems that are troubling Americans and citizens across the world.For, if elections are not really a means to find and assign better leaders who will use their victory as a mandate to do the right thing for the voters, then what s the point of having elections at all, hacked or not hacked, honest or not?Author Mark Anderson is an investigative journalist and features writer for American Free Press, and is editor of The Truth Hound. Contact Mr. Anderson at truthhound2@yahoo.com. READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT: FAKE NEWS WEEKSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE NOW & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 0 |
21,021 | French President Macron to make EU reforms proposals on Tuesday | PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron will announce his proposals for European Union reforms in a speech at the Paris-Sorbonne University on Tuesday, his office said on Friday. Macron has said he would make proposals on about 10 issues including strengthening the economic and monetary union, deepening European defense, reinforcing migration policy and strengthening social and fiscal convergence in the bloc. The speech will come two days after German elections in which Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also backs deeper European integration, is seeking a fourth term. | 1 |
21,022 | After Democrats Filibuster For 15 Hours, Republicans Cave, Allowing A Vote On Gun Control | For 15 hours (now the 8th longest filibuster in Senate history), Senate Democrats stood their ground and demanded the Senate take up gun control measures in the wake of the terrorist attack in Orlando. For 15 hours, 37 senators including two Republicans and two Independents stood before the American people and relentlessly pleaded their case as to why urgent action was needed.Well, it worked. After pledging to hold the floor until something, anything, was done, Republicans caved.At roughly 2 AM (Washington time), Senator Chris Murphy, who launched the historic filibuster, announced that the Senate will take up closing the terror gap and universal background checks: It is our understanding that we have been given a commitment on a path forward to get votes on the floor of the Senate on a measure to assure that those on the terrorist watch list do not get guns and an amendment to expand background checks to gun shows and to internet sales. Thanking the millions of people who tuned in, called and emailed their congressional representatives, and stood strong against gun violence, Murphy vowed to push on defiantly no matter what the Senate chooses to do when the votes come in.While Murphy and other Senate Democrats spoke on the floor, Republican John Cornyn, the Senate s no. 2, and Democrat Dianne Feinstein began crafting legislation to ban suspected terrorists on a watchlist from buying guns. However, Chuck Schumer, who is poised to become Majority Leader should the Democrats take back the Senate, warned fellow Democrats to be cautious of Cornyn s compromises, saying it was filled with hoops and ladders. The Senators that spoke on the floor were:If your senator made the list, congratulations. If not (except Feinstein), shame. This historic filibuster will be one generations will look back on and ask why it had to happen. It took 15 hours of nonstop talking to get Mitch McConnell to agree to no-brainier legislation.Featured image via Pete Marovich/Getty Images | 0 |
21,023 | Tillerson to visit Africa in first quarter of 2018: adviser | RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is planning a trip to Africa in the first three months of next year, a senior aide said on Wednesday, amid speculation how long Tillerson might stay in the job. Earlier on Wednesday, Tillerson said there was no truth to reports that President Donald Trump intended to fire him and replace him with CIA chief Mike Pompeo. Directly addressing the issue at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Tillerson dismissed the reports that overshadowed his week-long trip to Europe which highlighted the yearning of allies for stability in U.S. foreign policy. Secretary Tillerson is planning a trip to Africa in the first quarter of 2018, senior adviser R.C. Hammond told reporters at Germany s Ramstein Air Base. Hammond spoke during a stopover en route to Vienna where Tillerson is due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday to discuss issues such as North Korea. Tillerson has said there can be no normal U.S. relations with Russia until Moscow ends its support for separatists in Ukraine and returned the Crimea region it annexed in 2014 - comments likely to reassure Western allies. | 1 |
21,024 | Canada's Liberals look to economy to guide them past ethics scandal | OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau s government has been badly shaken by a conflict-of-interest controversy about his finance minister, but the Liberal government s upcoming fiscal update offers an opportunity to reset the public focus on Canada s strong economy, political observers say. The government has been plagued all week about questions about the finance minister, Bill Morneau, the multimillionaire former chief executive officer of human resources management firm Morneau Shepell. Some have questioned whether Morneau would be forced to resign. The focus has been a rare stumble for Trudeau s government, which marked two years in office this month and has mostly maneuvered its way out of political trouble partly because of Trudeau s personal popularity and the youthful momentum of the Liberals after 10 years of Conservative rule. They re politically very astute in a whole bunch of areas but in issues management and parliamentary management they seem to be ham-fisted, said Andrew Graham, professor at the school of policy studies at Queen s University. With Trudeau s strong defense of Morneau, and the finance minister likely to unveil a smaller budget deficit in Tuesday s fall fiscal update, Liberals have a temporary chance to refocus on good news. Economic conditions are a bedrock of whether people feel good or bad about how politicians are performing, and the economy is doing very well for most people, said Abacus Data pollster Bruce Anderson. Morneau said on Thursday he will put his assets in a blind trust and divest stock in a publicly traded family business. That comes after weeks of backlash over tax reform that has become a major obstacle for Trudeau s government. Opposition parties from both the political left and right have seized on the ethics scandal, trying to tie Trudeau s team to what they say is an entitled Liberal Party that has previously faced corruption charges. The opposition has changed the focus from substance to ethics, and they won t let that go that easily, said Genevieve Tellier, a political professor at the University of Ottawa. But Tellier said Trudeau s decision to fill his cabinet with political rookies - including Morneau - rather than turning to the old Liberal guard, could limit the ability of the opposition to land many ethical punches. Moreover, Morneau is respected by markets. I think the prime minister would be very cautious about changing his finance minister. ... (Morneau) presents a reassuring image, he doesn t scare the markets, Tellier said. Ipsos Public Affairs pollster Darrell Bricker put it more bluntly: They really don t have a choice but to tough it out and hope some event will transpire to distract the hyenas. The expected budget improvement in Tuesday s fall fiscal update could also give Morneau the leeway to woo voters with more spending or debt reduction. The way the numbers are playing out, they are in a fairly favorable fiscal position, said Paul Ferley, assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada. Morneau spokesman Dan Lauzon said the finance minister has no plans to change his strategy, and would keep focus on fiscal stimulus matters: He is in this for the long run, and he won t let distractions get in the way. | 1 |
21,025 | voters in arkansas north dakota legalize medical marijuana despite federal prohibition | on october am
conservatives claim that voter id is necessary to catch illegal voters but it turns out theyre the only ones creating fake ids to use on election day
trump supporters are taking trumps call to monitor polling places so seriously that they are creating fake id badges in order to infiltrate polling locations across the country and intimidate voters by interrogating them confusing them and filming them all of which are illegal
but trumps deplorables are doing this in droves with the help of a rightwing group known as vote protectors
the group which is affiliated with top trump ally roger stone is giving people the ability to intimidate voters on election day they are literally teaching them to create their own fake badge which is designed to give them access to voters both inside and outside the polling places where citizens cast their votes
according to the huffington post
stones group created an officiallooking id badge for its volunteers to wear and its volunteers planned to videotape voters and conduct fake exit polls efforts that election experts say risks intimidating and confusing voters or at least thats what the group was planning to do before the huffington post asked stone about it on tuesday the controversial trump ally long known for his bareknuckled political tactics said that key proposals on his groups websites were there without his knowledge and assured huffpost that he would operate within the confines of election law
in fact after huffpo confronted stone with evidence that these kinds of tactics were being pursued by the website he acknowledged that vote protectors had a bad idea and ordered them taken down
campaign legal center deputy director danielle lang called the tactics a clear voter intimidation scheme
its inherently intimidating and an invasion of privacy she told huffpo in reference to the videotaping when thats being live streamed to the internet it amplifies the potentially intimidating aspect of it and violates a sense of security and privacy people have a right to enjoy at the polls objectively intimidating voters is unlawful no matter where you do it
indeed but thats exactly what donald trump has been calling upon his supporters to do because he has repeatedly claimed that the election is rigged against him
as it turns out hes right about the election being rigged only its conservatives who are trying to rig it in favor of trump
earlier this week a wisconsin city clerk in green bay got caught trying to intentionally prevent college students from voting by arguing in an email to the wisconsin ethics commission that an extra polling place should not be opened near the university of wisconsingreen bay because she has merely heard that students lean democrat
i was reading the statutes and read no site may be designated that affords an advantage to any political party republican appointed clerk kris teske wrote
uwgb is a polling location for students and residents on election day but i feel by asking for this to be the site for early voting is encouraging the students to vote more than benefiting the city as a whole i have heard it said that students lean more toward the democrats and he is a democrat i have spoken with our chief of staff and others at city hall and they agree that budget wise this isnt going to happen i would like to know your thoughts on this do i have an argument about it being more of a benefit to the democrats
so not only are trump supporters trying to rig the election with voter intimidation tactics using hypocritical methods they are using voter suppression tactics as well
and that is likely going to cause a lot of election day chaos voters should be prepared to stand up for their right to vote no matter what trumps deplorables try to do to keep them from exercising it
featured image drew angerergetty images share this article | 0 |
21,026 | Fed Up With Congress, Trump Just Put A Big Nail In Obamacare’s Coffin | Donald Trump and the Republican Congress may be failing miserably at their attempts to repeal and not replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but that doesn t mean Trump isn t going to chip away at it, eventually dwindling it down to something that can be drowned in a bathtub.Trump took a big swing at Obamacare on Thursday by trying to keep the program secret from people who might be eligible to sign up. The White House is slashing the Affordable Care Act s advertising budget by a whopping 90 percent. They re also cutting the budget for in-person enrollment by 41 percent, so even if people do somehow get the message that they are eligible, good luck signing up. Altogether, that s a 72 percent cut in programs designed to boost enrollment, which is the only way the exchanges will survive.Administration officials cited diminishing returns from outreach activities. In a phone call with reporters, they said that most Americans already know about the Affordable Care Act. They plan to make the deepest cuts to the enrollment workers who have signed up few health law enrollees.Source: VoxIf Americans do know about the Affordable Care Act, they have a funny way of showing it. A recent survey found that a third of Americans didn t know that the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare were one and the same. Most concerning, given Thursday s cuts, is that those between the ages of 18 and 29 were among those least likely to know the difference. That s bad. The Affordable Care Act needs younger and healthy participants, or it will smother under its own weight. The surest way to kill the exchanges is to keep them a secret, says Timothy Jost, a consumer advocate at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Sick people will find them, but getting younger and healthier people enrolled is the problem. That is exactly Trump s point. He might not be able to kill the act through direct measures, but he can make it go broke. He already told us he would.3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 28, 2017This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump doesn t give a crap about any of the American people, but that s no surprise. He is probably not even thinking about the millions of people he might be sentencing to death; only that he has another opportunity to stick it to the black guy (President Obama).Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 0 |
21,027 | How To WATCH The Highly Anticipated ‘CLINTON CASH’ Movie FREE!…Thanks To Breitbart! | SHARE this link with everyone you know. EVERY American should see this movie before they vote! The weekend Clinton Cash global release, just days before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, PA, will set the tone for Hillary Clinton s nomination. MSNBC calls the movie devastating for presumptive Democratic nominee and says it powerfully connects the dots. CLICK HERE To get signed up to watch CLINTON CASH online for FREE this weekend!Via: Breitbart News | 0 |
21,028 | U.S. top court to weigh Jordan-based bank's liability for militant attacks | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider reviving litigation seeking to hold Arab Bank Plc financially liable for militant attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories that accused the Jordan-based bank of being the “paymaster” to militant groups. The justices agreed to hear an appeal by roughly 6,000 plaintiffs, who included relatives of non-U.S. citizens killed in such attacks and survivors of the incidents, of a lower court ruling throwing out the litigation. The plaintiffs accused Arab Bank under a U.S. law called the Alien Tort Statute of deliberately financing terrorism, including suicide bombings and other attacks. They are hoping to overturn a 2015 New York federal appeals court ruling that the bank could not be sued under the statute because it is a corporation. The Alien Tort Statute, a law dating back to 1789, lets non-U.S. citizens seek damages in U.S. courts for human rights violations abroad. The lead plaintiff in the case is Joseph Jesner, whose British citizen son was killed at age 19 in a 2002 suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv. The plaintiffs filed several lawsuits under the law in Brooklyn federal court, claiming Arab Bank used its New York branch to transfer money and “serve as a ‘paymaster’ for international terrorists.” The transfers helped Hamas and other groups fund attacks and reward families of the perpetrators between 1995 and 2005, the suits alleged. The bank said in court papers that the U.S. government has called it a constructive partner in the fight against terrorism financing. The bank said only four transactions out of 500,000 involved “designated terrorists” by the U.S. government, and they were the result of machine or human error. The bank also cited a separate 2010 case, Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, in which the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute. After reviewing that case, the Supreme Court in 2013 narrowed the law’s reach, saying claims must sufficiently “touch and concern” the United States to overcome the presumption that the Alien Tort Statute does not cover foreign conduct. But the high court declined to explicitly decide whether the 2nd Circuit ruling on corporate liability was correct. Based on the Kiobel ruling, the 2nd Circuit threw out the litigation against Arab Bank. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, urging it to decide once and for all whether or not corporations are shielded over foreign conduct. | 1 |
21,029 | U.S. top court poised to overturn Virginia ex-governor's bribery conviction | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared poised to throw out the corruption convictions of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, a move federal prosecutors fear could undermine their ability to bring crooked politicians to justice. During the one-hour argument, several of the eight justices signaled that McDonnell’s acceptance of $177,000 in luxury gifts and sweetheart loans from a businessman seeking to promote a dietary supplement did not constitute a criminal act. They voiced concern that the broad interpretation of U.S. anti-corruption law used by federal prosecutors could criminalize numerous commonplace actions by politicians. U.S. Justice Department lawyer Michael Dreeben told the justices overturning McDonnell’s conviction and giving politicians more leeway to accept gifts in return for certain actions would be a “recipe for corruption.” McDonnell’s lawyer Noel Francisco argued the former governor’s conduct was no different than what politicians across the United States do on a daily basis when responding to requests from donors and constituents. McDonnell, 61, is a former Republican Party rising star who served as governor from 2010 to 2014 and once was considered as a possible vice presidential candidate. His wife, Maureen, was convicted in a separate trial. Prosecutors during his trial described the luxurious lifestyle the McDonnells lived thanks to Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams including vacations, designer clothing and shoes, a $6,500 Rolex watch, $15,000 for their daughter’s wedding, golf outings and more. Liberal and conservative justices alike raised concerns about the Justice Department’s interpretation of U.S. bribery law. Stephen Breyer described as “dangerous” the “enormous power over elected officials” that federal prosecutors would hold if the court endorsed the Justice Department’s position. A ruling is due by the end of June. A decision in McDonnell’s favor could limit the type of cases federal prosecutors could bring against politicians in the future by requiring that any action taken in return for a bribe must be more than, for example, simply arranging a meeting between a benefactor and a government official. The impact of the decision would depend on how far the justices are willing to go in narrowing the scope of the corruption laws. The justices potentially could overturn the conviction but issue a narrow ruling focusing on the specifics of McDonnell’s case, including the judge’s instructions to the jury on how to weigh the evidence, rather than finding that the corruption law used in the case was flawed. Even if his conviction is overturned, McDonnell could face a retrial. Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to favor a broad ruling saying the statutes under which McDonnell was convicted could be unconstitutionally vague because they can cover many different activities. Roberts cited the example of a businessman seeking state tax breaks in return for opening a new plant. Roberts wondered if it would be considered a corrupt act if the state’s governor accepted an invitation from the businessman to go on a fishing trip to discuss the proposal. Breyer and Justice Anthony Kennedy said politicians need guidance so they know what conduct potentially could be prosecuted. If the law is interpreted broadly, “political figures will not know what they are supposed to do and what they are not supposed to do,” Breyer said. After a trial that laid bare rifts in his marriage, McDonnell was convicted of 11 corruption counts including conspiracy, bribery and extortion for taking the gifts and loans in exchange for promoting a dietary supplement called Anatabloc made by Williams’ company Star Scientific. Williams wanted McDonnell to press researchers at Virginia state universities to conduct studies that could help win U.S. regulatory approval for Anatabloc. A judge sentenced McDonnell to two years behind bars, but the Supreme Court last year said he would not have to report to prison while appeals were ongoing. McDonnell’s wife was found guilty of nine criminal counts and received a one-year sentence. She remains out of prison while pursuing her own separate appeal. Sonia Sotomayor, one of the only justices to indicate support for the prosecution, suggested it was reasonable to infer that McDonnell’s intent was to help Williams when he accepted money and gifts. Some justices appeared troubled by the signal a ruling in his favor would send. Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared alarmed by the idea of officials being able to accept payments to arrange meetings without facing potential prosecution. Officials could simply say “I’ll do it for you if you pay me a thousand dollars,” she said. McDonnell, one of few high-level politicians to have his appeal of a criminal conviction heard by the Supreme Court, sat with his wife in the courtroom for the last oral arguments of the justices’ current term. McDonnell’s lawyers contend the former governor’s conduct did not constitute “official action” in exchange for a thing of value, as required for conviction under federal bribery law. | 1 |
21,030 | Togo forces fire tear gas to disperse Gnassingbe opponents | LOME (Reuters) - Togo security forces fired tear gas at hundreds of anti-government protesters carrying out a late night sit-in at an intersection in central Lome as part of a bid to end the 50-year-old Gnassingbe family dynasty, witnesses said on Thursday. The move to disperse the crowds comes after two days of mass country-wide protests involving tens of thousands of people that have amounted to the biggest challenge to Faure Gnassingbe s rule since he succeeded his late father 12 years ago. In the past, security forces have violently suppressed protests, killing at least two people during an opposition march in August and hundreds after the contested election in which Gnassingbe took power in 2005. But up until late on Thursday, police officers armed with batons had watched passively at protesters wearing the red, pink and orange T-shirts of the opposition, who danced and blew whistles as they wound through the streets of the capital Lome. It was not immediately clear how the opposition would respond to the security forces intervention with tear gas late on Thursday. The head of the main ANC opposition party, Jean-Pierre Fabre, had earlier pledged to remain seated on the tarmac of the Dekon crossroads until Gnassingbe left power. We want the end of this 50-year-old Gnassingbe regime. Enough is enough, Kodjo Amana, a 42-year-old baker, shouted over a chanting crowd earlier in the day. The protests in the West African country of 8 million people have proceeded despite widespread reports of network outages confirmed by non-governmental organization Internet Without Borders. Other African incumbents in Gabon and Cameroon have used network cuts to control criticism and suppress protests at sensitive times. Residents said that text messages had also been blocked on Thursday. The communications minister could not be reached for comment, although another minister said earlier this week that the cuts had been carried out for security reasons. The president s father Gnassingbe Eyadema seized power in a coup in 1967, a few years after the territory known as French Togoland that was once in German hands became independent from colonial power France. The current president this week sought to appease opponents by tabling a draft bill to reform the constitution and reintroduce a two-term limit that his father scrapped in 2002. But opposition leaders are skeptical about the implementation of the reforms that the government has stalled on for more than a decade and Prime Minister Komi Selom Klassou confirmed on Thursday that the term limits would not apply retroactively. That could mean that Gnassingbe, 51 and currently in his third term, could remains in power for two more mandates from the next election, until 2030. Gnassingbe sent a Tweet from his official account on Thursday, saying that he had met with the U.N. Special Representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, on the subject of reforms. A spokesman for the latter confirmed the meeting without elaborating on its content. State TV said Thursday evening that parliament, which still needs to approve the bill, will meet for an emergency session on September 12. However, if the protests resume, analysts say Gnassingbe may find himself isolated amid growing criticism of autocratic rule in West Africa. The president s position is very fragile and we do not think his peers in ECOWAS or his friends in Europe will help him if things get ugly, said the head of research at NKC African Economics, Francois Conradie. Togo, a regional financial hub that aspires to be an African Singapore, is at odds with West African neighbors which mostly have laws restricting presidential mandates. The government, along with Gambia s, voted in 2015 against introducing them across the 15 members of the ECOWAS regional body which Gnassingbe currently chairs. Since then, Gambia s longtime leader Yahya Jammeh has been voted out of power. African rulers, notably in Rwanda, Burundi and Burkina Faso, have moved to drop term limits in recent years in order to remain in power. In some cases this has sparked strong opposition that has led to violent unrest; in others, leaders have been driven from power, as happened in Burkina Faso. | 1 |
21,031 | Alaska Airlines discontinues Los Angeles-Havana daily flight | (Reuters) - U.S. airline Alaska Airlines on Tuesday said it would discontinue a daily flight between Los Angeles and Havana, Cuba, after Jan. 22, due to the recent changes in Cuba travel policies by the U.S. government. The U.S. government made it tougher last week for Americans to visit Cuba and do business in the country, making good on a pledge by President Donald Trump to roll back his Democratic predecessor s move toward warmer ties with Havana. The regulations include a ban on Americans doing business with some 180 Cuban government entities, holding companies, and tourism companies. The airline which started the Los Angeles-Havana flight in January this year, said it will redeploy the aircraft to other markets with stronger demand. Passengers who have tickets booked to Havana after January 22 will be rebooked on another airline at no additional cost or a full refund, the company said. | 1 |
21,032 | Trump to visit Slovenia, country of wife Melania's birth | LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Slovenian President Borut Pahor, attending a meeting of EU leaders with Donald Trump in Warsaw, has invited the U.S. president to visit Slovenia and Trump has accepted the invitation, Pahor’s cabinet said in a statement on Thursday. It did not say when the visit could take place. Trump’s wife Melania grew up in the town of Sevnica in Eastern Slovenia and started her modeling career in the capital Ljubljana, before moving to the United States to pursue her career. | 1 |
21,033 | Another Russian Turns Up Dead – He Actually Saved The World (VIDEO) | It has just come to light that Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet Lieutenant Colonel, passed away on May 19 this year in his apartment in the small town of Fryazino, northeast of Moscow. You have probably never heard of him, but if it weren t for Petrov s actions (or lack thereof), there is a good chance you wouldn t be here to read this today.If you have seen the 2014 film The Man Who Saved The World, staring Kevin Costner, then you might have some sort of an idea of who Petrov is, as that movie was based how he prevented a nuclear crisis between the US and the USSR, as well as averting the potential for World War III, back in the 1980s by essentially doing nothing at all. That could be a part of the reason Petrov never considered himself a hero. At first when people started telling me that these TV reports had started calling me a hero, I was surprised. I never thought of myself as one after all, I was literally just doing my job, he once said in an interview later in life.The date was September 26, 1983 and Petrov was on duty in a bunker near Moscow, in charge of an early warning radar system. It wasn t long after midnight when Petrov noticed a single missile on the screen, launched from the US and heading toward the Soviet Union. When I first saw the alert message, I got up from my chair. All my subordinates were confused, so I started shouting orders at them to avoid panic. I knew my decision would have a lot of consequences, Petrov recalled in a 2010 interview. The siren went off for a second time. Giant blood-red letters appeared on our main screen, saying START. It said that four more missiles had been launched. This left the Kremlin only 30 minutes from when the warheads were initially fired to decide whether retaliation with nuclear weapons of their own was necessary and Petrov just 15 minutes to determine if the threat was indeed real. My cozy armchair felt like a red-hot frying pan and my legs went limp. I felt like I couldn t even stand up. That s how nervous I was when I was taking this decision. Fortunately for all of mankind, Petrov recalled from his training that, if the US were to attack, they would do so on an all-out offensive, as opposed to simply firing a couple of missiles here and there. Petrov took this into account and declined to tell his superior officers, figuring that a system malfunction must be responsible for the alarm and it turned out he was right; the Soviet satellites had actually picked up sunlight reflected from clouds and mistaken it for nuclear warheads, although Petrov s decision to keep the information from his superiors was a severe infraction of Soviet military rules.The incident was kept as a highly classified secret for years. Even at the time of her death in 1997, Petrov s own wife, Raisa, wasn t aware of what he had done and it was only made public when Colonel General Yury Votintsev, Petrov s superintendent, decided in 1998 that his deed should be commended and told the story to Bild, a German tabloid. German political activist Karl Schumacher was so affected by the article that he traveled to Russia to find Petrov and invited him back to Germany in order to give his version of how he had saved the world from nuclear war, something that had been a very real threat for decades.In 2006, the Association of World Citizens presented Petrov with an award in the UN headquarters in New York, which reads: To the man who averted nuclear war. In 2012, Petrov was also honored with the German Media Prize, which has previously been awarded to Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Kofi Annan.Stanislav Petrov was 77 years old. Watch the story of Stanislav Petrov s actions unfold here: | 0 |
21,034 | ECB's Rimsevics says Trump will be 'very good' president | RIGA (Reuters) - European Central Bank ratesetter Ilmars Rimsevics welcomed Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election win on Wednesday, saying the Republican would be a “very good” president. “I think that he will be a very good president because he has to prove that he will bring about some change and... structural reforms,” Rimsevics said during a TV interview. | 1 |
21,035 | This Tennessee GOP Rep’s Answer To Orlando Is Exactly What’s Wrong With The U.S. | GOP Tennessee State Rep. Andy Holt is done with terrorism. His solution, like with most in ammosexual Republicans, is more guns, because that will suddenly make Muslim men less angry with us, or something. To prove it, Holt is putting his money where his mouth is and he s raffling two AR-15 s, because terrorism.To be fair, Holt had planned this giveaway before the massacre last Sunday morning, but at the same time, Sunday s massacre is only propelling him to go on with it because, a crazed Muslim terrorist shouldn t change the plans or activities that we have as Americans. I think there is nothing more that this particular individual would love, this terrorist, than to think that he has changed a significant number of plans for Americans, and also that maybe gun control measures will be instituted regarding the use of firearms here in the United States because of his actions, Holt said.He added, I don t concede to the idea we should change our plans because this individual inappropriately used a firearm. Source: CNNBecause that s what Americans are thinking about this Father s Day weekend obtaining maximum killing machines. Okay, maybe that is what Americans are thinking about this Father s Day weekend.Here s the video:Holt did concede, though, that maybe, just maybe, it s a bad idea to let people on the terrorist watch list have guns. I think there is a reason for terror suspects not to get firearms. A man that has devoted himself to ISIS and radical Islam, that s a precursor that should disallow an individual to have a firearm. We don t want to go too far, though. He says we have to be strategic, which likely means doing nothing at all about the fact that yes, people on the terrorist watch list, including Omar Mateen, who brutally gunned down 49 people and was once on the list, bought his gun legally. We ll also likely do nothing about guns and mental illness or guns and domestic abusers, or about guns and anything, because in the good old U.S. of A., guns are more important than people.Featured image via video screen capture. | 0 |
21,036 | Trudeau looks forward to welcoming Trump to Canada | LIMA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday that he looks forward to welcoming U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to Canada, hopefully soon after his inauguration in January. Following a meeting with outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama at the APEC trade summit in Peru, Trudeau added that the two heads of state discussed the softwood lumber trade issue that stems from an expired 2006 export agreement. | 1 |
21,037 | Senate may keep some Obamacare taxes in U.S. healthcare overhaul | Washington (Reuters) - Republican senators trying to repeal Obamacare are forming consensus to keep some of the U.S. healthcare law’s taxes they long criticized, in hopes of delaying more drastic funding cuts, particularly to the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled. First proposed by moderate Republicans, the idea is gaining traction among party members, according to five sources involved in or briefed on internal discussions. While no final decisions have been made, a sense of urgency has increased as Republicans draft a replacement bill to former President Barack Obama’s healthcare law before Congress goes on recess on June 30. But keeping some of the taxes in the Senate bill risks alienating conservatives. On Tuesday, 45 conservative groups and activists sent a letter to Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, urging the Senate to repeal all Obamacare taxes. One cornerstone tax that could remain is the net investment income tax, which imposes a 3.8 percent surtax on capital gains, dividends and interest, the sources said. The taxes most likely to be abolished directly impact consumers and the health industry, including a tax on health insurance premiums, the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost employer-provided insurance and the medical device tax. Another proposal being floated is to keep all the taxes from the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, but to scale them back. A group of 13 Republican senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not completed a full draft of the bill, but is sending pieces to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to assess the impact of various provisions. The CBO’s assessment will help determine which taxes the Senate needs in order to pay for its replacement bill. It is not clear whether McConnell, or more conservative party members such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Mike Lee of Utah, are receptive to keeping some of the taxes. “I think most of the taxes are going to go away,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate’s No. 3-ranking Republican, said on Tuesday. “Our members are still having a conversation about if we want to make changes that are in the end going to require some additional revenue.” Spokesmen for McConnell and Cruz declined to comment. A spokesman for Lee said he wants Republicans to abolish every tax that was included in a 2015 Obamacare repeal bill that Obama vetoed. Since Obamacare became law in 2010, Republicans have campaigned on repealing the program that extended insurance coverage to 20 million additional Americans through both subsidized private insurance and an expansion of Medicaid. They have argued that the law is too costly and represents undue government interference in Americans’ healthcare. President Donald Trump promised to eliminate the law on his first day in office, but Republicans, who control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, have struggled to coalesce around a single plan. Under Senate rules, their bill must replicate the $133 billion in savings projected by preliminary legislation that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last month. That bill would end Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid in 2020, slash its federal funding by more than $800 billion over 10 years and eliminate most of the law’s taxes. Moderate Republican senators from states that expanded Medicaid, including Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Dean Heller of Nevada, have proposed phasing out the expansion over a seven-year period, from 2020 to 2027, to give state governors more time to cut program costs. That timeframe also prevents senators, who serve six-year terms, from having to run for re-election when Medicaid cuts have been implemented, two former Republican Senate aides said. Some of Obamacare’s taxes could also be repealed later when Congress tackles new legislation overhauling the U.S. tax code, two current Senate aides said. “There’s no question that the current debate is not centered on eliminating all the taxes in Obamacare right now,” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said last week. Under a process called reconciliation, the bill needs at least 50 votes to pass, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote if needed. In an interview with Reuters last month, McConnell said he did not yet know how he would get enough votes for an Obamacare repeal. “Think of me with a Rubik’s cube, sitting there trying to think about what combination will get you to 50,” McConnell said. | 1 |
21,038 | OOPS! WATCH THE BRILLIANT TV AD Trump Made For Cruz | Brilliant | 0 |
21,039 | Whoopi Goldberg Gets PISSED, Gives Trump The Reality Check We’ve All Been Waiting For (VIDEO) | The appointment of several white supremacists and controversial political figures to Donald Trump s administration has terrified Americans across the country. Two of Trump s latest appointments are Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn for national security adviser, and Whoopi Goldberg wasn t afraid to voice her opinion on why this pisses her off on The View.In response to the xenophobic, racist tone Trump s cabinet has taken with its new appointments, Goldberg disagreed with Paula Faris suggestion that the upcoming meeting between Mitt Romney and Donald Trump symbolized some sort of peaceful agreement between the former rivals. Goldberg told Faris: Goldberg: I m sorry baby, when you see these I m an optimist too. This does not make me optimistic, this pisses me off. Addressing the hate speech that Trump and his team have spewed for over a year now, Goldberg gave a brutal reality check to anyone who said they were trying to put stuff behind them and accept the fact that we now have a racist dictator coming into the White House who wants to Make America White Again. Goldberg dropped the perfect truthbomb when she said: Black people are not going anywhere, they are not going to be slaves anymore so get that out of your head. Muslims, who were born here as Americans, are not going anywhere. We re not going anywhere, I don t know why you don t get this part. It was perfect, and exactly what Trump and his minions needed to hear. Joy Behar backed Goldberg up and recalled that people are still being harassed in different areas of the country. She said: What kind of country is this now. People better not sit back and just take it because they have all the power in the White House, in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, the FBI is in their pocket. We have to be the loyal opposition in this county. That s what we re here for. You can watch this brilliant segment below:Featured image via Mark Wilson and Monica Schipper / Getty Images | 0 |
21,040 | North Korea official says North may consider hydrogen bomb on Pacific Ocean: Yonhap | SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said on Friday he believes the North could consider a hydrogen bomb test on the Pacific Ocean of an unprecedented scale, South Korea s Yonhap news agency reported. Ri was speaking to reporters in New York when he was asked what North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had meant when he threatened in an earlier statement the highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history against the United States. North Korea could consider a hydrogen bomb test, Ri said, although he did not know Kim s exact thoughts, Yonhap reported. | 1 |
21,041 | House Speaker Ryan: Khan family sacrifice should be honored | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, responding to remarks by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, said on Sunday said Muslim fallen Army Captain Humayun Khan made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. “His sacrifice - and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan - should always be honored. Period.” Ryan said in a statement. | 1 |
21,042 | U.N. investigator says he does not have permission to go to Myanmar | GENEVA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. fact-finding mission probing violence in Myanmar s Rakhine state said on Tuesday he is still waiting for permission to enter the country. We have not been able to proceed further in planning the presence of a fact-finding team on the ground until there is a clear signal from the government of Myanmar that the fact-finding mission is in fact enabled to access into the country, Marzuki Darusman told the U.N. Human Rights Council. We continue to hold hopes, high hopes in fact, that this may be resolved. | 1 |
21,043 | Trump vows another healthcare vote next year, eyes executive order | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, faced with the latest Republican failure to undo Obamacare, pledged on Wednesday to tackle it again next year, suggesting without evidence that he had the votes to pass reform and promising to work with Democrats in the meantime. Trump told reporters at the White House that he also was working on an executive order, possibly to be signed next week, that would allow individuals to buy health insurance across state lines. Senate Republicans abandoned their latest effort to repeal former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act on Tuesday after failing to secure sufficient support from fellow Republicans. Trump said there would be another vote on healthcare in the first few months of 2018 and he would work with Democrats to make the effort more bipartisan. Democrats strongly oppose repealing and replacing Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement. “I am ... going to meet with Democrats and I will see if I can get a healthcare plan that’s even better,” Trump said. “So I will negotiate with Democrats, but from the Republican standpoint, we have the votes. We’ll vote in January, February or March.” Trump did not explain the discrepancy between his conviction that the votes were there and the fact that not enough Republican senators supported the latest bill, forcing Republican leaders to scrap plans to hold a vote. Republicans control the Senate by a 52-48 margin. The bill’s sponsors vowed to try again but face steeper odds after Saturday, when special rules expire that allow them to pass healthcare legislation without Democratic support. Trump told reporters that one of the votes they needed was of a senator who was in the hospital, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi. Cochran’s office said the senator was not in the hospital but was recovering after being treated for a “urological issue.” Republican Senators John McCain, Susan Collins and Rand Paul opposed the bill. Paul has encouraged Trump to legalize nationwide health associations, which he says would allow people to get group health insurance across state lines. Trump said he was working on a measure to do that. “I am considering an executive order on associations and that will take care of a tremendous number of people with regard to healthcare and I’ll probably be signing a very major executive order where people can go out, cross state lines, do lots of things and buy their own healthcare,” Trump said. He said the order was in the process of being finished. The effort appeared to be a move to woo Paul. Trump said later he thought the senator from Kentucky would come around on the broader push for legislation. “I think Rand will be there for us,” Trump told reporters. UCLA Professor Mark Peterson expressed doubt that insurance prices would be reduced by selling across state lines because insurers would still be subject to ACA regulations requiring coverage of hospital care, prescription drugs, pregnancy and childbirth needs and mental health services. “What drives cost of care is the cost of medical care. If I’m in California, which is an expensive medical care state and I buy my insurance from Delaware, which is not, I’m still going to doctors and hospitals that are very expensive and the insurance plan is either going to cover that or not,” he said. Congressional leaders said on Tuesday they were moving on to tax reform legislation. But the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn, said on Wednesday that lawmakers would continue to work on healthcare. He said the authors of the most recent Obamacare repeal bill, Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, hoped to increase support for their proposal. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray resumed their bipartisan talks on Wednesday seeking a deal to help stabilize health insurance markets, a Murray spokeswoman said. She had no details. Alexander chairs the Senate health committee and Murray is the panel’s top Democrat. | 1 |
21,044 | MICHIGAN CONTROVERSY OVER GUN DEPICTED IN VETERANS’ MEMORIAL: “We didn’t win the war by throwing sticks and stones.” | This is political correctness out of control! What do these goofballs think we won the war with? Hopefully, they come to their senses and go ahead with the memorial including the rifle.A Milford, Michigan, veterans group is up in arms after a proposal to place a memorial containing a battlefield cross a military helmet and dog tags atop a semiautomatic rifle mounted on boots was deemed too pro-violence by the local council.The battlefield cross dates back to Civil War days as a stark reminder of the sacrifices of fallen soldiers.Fox News reported Bear Hall, the chairman of the Friends of American Veterans in Milford, wanted to place a sculpture of the iconic image at the end of a walkway to an existing veterans memorial. But some on the local council deemed it inappropriate. There was some concern from a couple of members regarding the specific memorial that s proposed. Specifically, the gun, said Milford Village Manager Christian Wuerth, to the Detroit Free Press. They understood the history and meaning of it. They just didn t feel it was appropriate for that specific location. Councilman Tom Nader was one who opposed the memorial. Being a veteran, I want to see a monument there, yes, he said. I just don t think this is the proper one. But as another council member, Jennifer Frankford, said: If it wasn t for the boots and the gun and helmet, we wouldn t have all the freedoms we have. The council is supposed to debate the matter again at an upcoming hearing.Hall, meanwhile, said his group would support the final decision with caveats. If [the council] doesn t want it as a focal point, that s fine, but we don t want some foofoo fountain either, he said. Everyone s thinking the same thing we re thinking we didn t win the war by throwing sticks and stones. Read more: wnd | 0 |
21,045 | France gets serious over sexual harassment after Weinstein scandal: minister | PARIS (Reuters) - The Harvey Weinstein scandal is forcing a rethink of attitudes toward sexual harassment in France, a country that cherishes its self-image as the land of seduction and romance, said the minister tasked with cracking down on violence against women. Movie producer Weinstein has been accused by numerous women of having sexually harassed or assaulted them in incidents dating back to the 1980s, including three who said they were raped. Weinstein denies having non-consensual sex with anyone. More than 300,000 accounts of sexual harassment or abuse have been published under the French #balancetonporc or #squealonyourpig hashtag on Twitter in the past week, though some conservatives say the new trend amounts to an attack on the French way of life in the name of U.S.-style puritanism. We are really at a turning point, with the Weinstein affair as a trigger, Gender Equality Minister Marlene Schiappa told Reuters on Friday in an interview. France has often debated sexual harassment over the past decade following scandals involving French politicians. Six years ago, a sex scandal forced former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn to resign as head of the International Monetary Fund, provoking a round of soul-searching in France about sexual abuse that goes undeclared or undetected in the upper echelons of power. A deputy of Macron s year-old Republic on the Move party (LREM), Christophe Arend, was accused by his ex-assistant and campaign manager of sexual harassment, the Franceinfo media outlet reported on Friday. The party said in a statement that Arend benefitted from a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise and that he had filed a complaint of slanderous denunciation against his accuser. Any form of violence and harassment is intolerable. It is up to the justice (process) and it alone to shed light, LREM said. Gender Equality Minister Schiappa said the Weinstein scandal could have a more durable impact in France because it had prompted women from all walks of life to denounce harassment and assault at work and in public places, not only in the corridors of power. When it s about politicians, most people just slam politicians rather than seeing it as a wider issue, said Schiappa, a 34-year-old blogger-turned-minister in President Emmanuel Macron s new government. But when it s to do with cinema it has a wider impact, because ... people identify with actors and actresses, she added, describing the wave of testimonies on social media as a liberation . This week Schiappa kicked off nationwide consultations over a law due to be completed early next year that will include steps to fight sexual harassment on the streets as well as extend the statute of limitation for rape of minors. Not all French people approve of her plans or of the #squealonyourpig trend on Twitter. France is a country of men who love women wrote pundits Berenice Levet and Guillaume Bigot in Le Figaro daily on Thursday. It is not a country of Platonic love, they said, warning against the import of what French conservatives have long denigrated as a killjoy Anglo-Saxon view of relationships between men and women. Responding to such criticism, Schioppa said: There is some reluctance, some say we will kill the culture of the French lover ... if we punish street harassment. But it s the opposite. We want to preserve seduction, chivalry and l amour la francaise by saying what is key is consent. Between consenting adults everything is allowed, we can seduce, talk, but if someone says no , it s no and it s final, she said. Much of the French debate focuses on plans to slap fines on harassment in the street and whether that is really feasible. Schiappa acknowledged it was hard to define, adding details would be decided through wide consultations in coming months. For instance it s following a woman through several blocks or asking for her phone number 15 straight times, said Schiappa, adding that she personally did not believe wolf-whistles should be characterized as sexual harassment. | 1 |
21,046 | Former Senator Webb rules out independent presidential bid | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who dropped his bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination last October, told a Texas foreign affairs group on Thursday that he had studied an independent bid for the White House and decided against it. “We looked at the possibility of an independent candidacy. Theoretically it could be done, but it is enormously costly and time sensitive, and I don’t see the fundraising trajectory where we could make a realistic run,” Webb told the World Affairs Council of Dallas, according to a statement from his spokesman. In his speech to the council, Webb called for a vigorous foreign policy debate in the presidential campaign and said neither political party appeared to be addressing the needs of most voters. “We have not had a clear statement of national security policy since the end of the Cold War,” he said. “And I see no one running for president today who has a firm understanding of the elements necessary to build a national strategy.” Webb is a decorated war veteran who served in the Vietnam War and was Navy secretary during the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of 10 books and an Emmy award-making journalist and filmmaker. Webb ended his bid for the Democratic nomination in October after only four months, acknowledging his more conservative political views were out of sync with many of the party’s leaders and primary voters. He indicated at the time that he planned to review his options and talk to people and groups who have urged him to run for president as an independent candidate. “I’ve worked with both parties, including as an official in the Reagan administration and as a Democrat in the Senate. Both parties, in my view, have moved away from the major concerns of the average American,” he told the World Affairs Council of Dallas. For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, “Tales from the Trail” (here). (Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Grant McCool and Bernard Orr) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage. | 1 |
21,047 | Under U.S. Republican bill, 23 million would lose health coverage: watchdog | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would cause 23 million people to lose healthcare coverage by 2026 while de-stabilizing health insurance markets in some states and making it hard for sick people to buy insurance, a budget watchdog agency said on Wednesday. The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan group of experts who analyze U.S. legislation, said the bill would reduce federal deficits by $119 billion between 2017 and 2026. The report could give added ammunition to Democrats who have accused President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans of putting sick and low-income people at risk with their effort to roll back former President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare law, formally known as the Affordable Care Act but often called Obamacare. The report also complicates the job of Senate Republicans - some of whom already have doubts about the House bill - as they craft their own healthcare legislation. Republicans have sought to unravel Obamacare since its passage and Trump promised on the campaign trail to repeal it, saying it is too costly and an overreach by government in the healthcare market. As Trump and Republican leaders sought to bring wavering lawmakers on board with the House bill, they added a controversial last-minute amendment that would give states leeway to drop an Obamacare requirement that forces insurers to charge sick and healthy people the same insurance rates. Another change would allow states to decide whether to require insurers to cover health benefits such as maternity care and prescription drugs that are mandatory under current law. But the CBO report said the amendment would make it difficult or impossible for people in poor health to purchase comprehensive coverage in some states. “People who are less healthy (including those with preexisting or newly acquired medical conditions) would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive non-group health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all,” the CBO report said. The CBO said markets for people to buy individual insurance plans could then become “unstable” in states that choose to waive the Obamacare requirements for coverage of pre-existing medical conditions and essential health benefits. Even before the report, many Republican senators were wary of the House version of the healthcare bill, saying it unraveled Obamacare too much and too quickly. About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare. The House bill would eliminate most Obamacare taxes that help subsidize private health coverage for individuals, roll back the government’s Medicaid health plan for the poor and disabled and replace the law’s income-based tax credits for buying medical coverage with credits based on age. A group of 13 Republican senators led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to draft its own version of the healthcare bill in the coming months. McConnell, however, told Reuters on Wednesday he does not yet know how Republicans will get the necessary votes. “This is a very challenging undertaking,” McConnell said. After the release of the CBO report, several Republican senators said they could not support the House bill. “While I am in favor of repealing Obamacare, I am opposed to the American Health Care Act in its current form,” Republican Senator Dean Heller said in a statement. Republican Senator Susan Collins said too many people would lose insurance and that older and low-income Americans would be hurt. House Republicans, who argue their healthcare bill would allow insurance markets to function more efficiently, focused on the projected budget savings from it and a finding in the CBO report that said insurance premiums for some people would decline. Groups representing hospitals, insurers and doctors who opposed the House bill said the CBO report showed the Senate should start fresh with an eye to maintaining coverage and benefits. Democrats also blasted the bill and said the CBO report proved it would be catastrophic for millions of people who would lose health insurance. “The report makes clear Trumpcare would be a cancer on the American healthcare system,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference. The new CBO score predicts the AHCA would cover 1 million more Americans than Republicans’ previous version of the bill, which the agency estimated would have left 24 million more people uninsured than Obamacare in 2026. To allay concerns about coverage of people with pre-existing illnesses, House Republicans allocated an additional $8 billion over five years in their bill to help sick people pay for insurance premiums but the CBO said the money would not be enough to help them afford coverage. The CBO said premiums would fall for younger people and rise for older people in states that did not waive Obamacare requirements for an overall decline of about 4 percent. In states that made moderate changes to their markets, representing about one-third of the U.S. population, premiums would fall 20 percent on average. Reaction on Wall Street was muted, with shares of hospitals affected by the cuts to Medicaid, like Community Health Systems, and health insurers specializing in Medicaid, such as Molina Healthcare (MOH.N) and Centene Corp (CNC.N) unchanged in light after-hours trading. The Republicans’ first attempt at undoing Obamacare this year resulted in a setback for the Trump agenda in March. Conservative and moderate Republican factions in the House were opposed to the initial legislation and the leadership decided not to put it up for a vote. | 1 |
21,048 | youtube bans clintons black son | hillary emails whitelisted for obamas blackberry president could only receive messages from preapproved accounts published min ago
fox news president obamas highsecurity blackberry used a special process known as whitelisting that only allowed it to take calls and messages from preapproved contacts two former senior intelligence officials with knowledge of the setup told fox news pointing to the detail as further proof the white house knew hillary clintons private account was used for government business
as the administration now acknowledges obama and clinton emailed each other while she was helming the state department if received on his blackberry the whitelisting safeguard means clinton and other contacts would have had to be approved as secure for data transmission covering everything from emails to texts to phone calls the obama blackberry would have also been configured to accept the communications
think of whitelisting like a bouncer in the vip line at the party if you are on the list you get in if you are not you get bounced to the pavement said bob gourley former chief technology officer cto for the dia and now a partner with strategic consulting and engineering firm cognitio | 1 |
21,049 | THEY LAID THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE FOR US….We Give Them Hospitals With Rats Dropping From The Ceiling And Cockroaches In Their Food | Unimaginable unforgivable It s not the sort of email the infection control director of a veterans hospital wants to find in their inbox a message with photos of dead rats found in a hospital kitchen.Workers at the James A. Haley VA Medical Center reported 3 large dead rats that fell through the kitchen ceiling at the hospital during renovation work Wednesday night, according to emails obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.They then sent color photos of the rats to the facility s infection prevention coordinator, Miriam Ruisz, and also told her about a cockroach infestation, emails show. I have . . . been made aware that there is a major roach problem in the kitchen and that some roaches have been found on patients trays, Ruisz wrote in an email Thursday to the Haley enviro team, which handles pest control.Ruisz said she was told workers replacing a canteen ceiling two months ago filled multiple buckets with roaches, dead rats and feces. . . . Please let me know if there is an ongoing problem with this infestation and what is being done about it. . . . We could possibly end up on the news, not to mention risk patient safety. After patient safety, Ruisz ended the sentence with an emoticon showing a frowning face.The infection control chief may not have know about the rat infestation until this week. But other Haley employees did. In fact, emails show that workers have been putting rat traps above ceiling tiles in a kitchen where food is prepared for veterans who are hospital patients.Haley spokeswoman Karen Collins said in a statement emailed to the Times that the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, one of the nation s busiest, works hard to provide the safest and best experience possible for veterans. Being in a tropical, urban environment, we are keenly aware of the potential of, and continually monitor for, any pest control issues, Collins said. Recently, we observed an uptick in reported pest-related activities. . . . We have developed an aggressive and proactive plan to address it. That included recently awarding a new five-year contract to a pest control firm, she said. If an issue is identified, the pest control team responds to eliminate it, Collins said.The Times reported in 2013 that rat droppings had been found in a Haley storage area containing nursing supplies. But hospital officials said at that time the droppings were from old rodent activity and that no ongoing pest problem existed.Internal emails and other documents indicate Haley officials now face a pest problem in at least two areas of the hospital.The first is in the facility kitchen on the first floor of the main hospital building that prepares food served to veterans. This is where the rats were found. The second area involves a smaller kitchen on the second floor at the hospital canteen, where veterans, employees and visitors can buy food.In an email to Ruisz and other hospital officials Thursday, Ellen Tolson, who works in Haley nutrition services, said the hospital had hired new pest control contractors who treated for roaches on June 10. Tolson said they were going to be back at the facility Thursday night after the latest reports of problems.A pest control contractor insisted to Tolson that he did not see evidence in the main kitchen of an active roach infestation due to a lack of roach droppings, according to Tolson s email. The email did not appear to address the canteen kitchen. Initially, he did not feel there was feces at all, Tolson said. But I continued to ask him about every speck I could find until we possibly found one that was feces-like. Despite finding this possible feces-like dirt, he still did not think there is an active issue because there was no shine to the questionable dirt we found. As for the bigger pests, Tolson wrote in the email, the three dead rats and a dead mouse were all found in the ceiling above our ingredient control room in the main hospital kitchen.Tolson said she asked employees who work on Haley s ceiling fire sprinklers about rodent issues in the main kitchen. They reported seeing, she said, live rats inside the traps. They told me, while working in the kitchen since June 4, they have found multiple rodent traps in our ceiling, and they also told me that they have seen eyes looking back at them when up in the ceiling in the corner of the kitchen looking back toward the vending area, Tolson said.The basement crawl space under the kitchen appears to be filthy and strewn with bugs and debris, according to photos of the area obtained by the Times that were taken in December by VA contractors.Haley safety and infection control officials warned VA employees in late 2014 via email that anyone entering this basement area should wear gloves, a full-face respirator and a full-body protective suit.Via: Tampabay.com | 0 |
21,050 | Obama to return to Indiana city after seven years to highlight progress | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans a return visit to Elkhart, Indiana, next week, some seven years after going to the city on his first trip as president, to highlight economic progress there and across the United States, the White House said on Tuesday. The repeat visit to Concord High School on June 1 will feature a town hall hosted by broadcaster PBS, as Obama looks to burnish his legacy in the final year of his administration. Unemployment in Elkhart, a manufacturing center for recreational vehicles and band instruments, has fallen to 4.1 percent from 19.6 percent in 2009, according to a White House statement that also noted improvements in high school graduation and mortgage foreclosure rates. The White House also touted improved healthcare coverage in Indiana and nationally under Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. Obama said that in addition to economic progress already made, he planned to talk about the future. “We still face some tough economic challenges, there’s no doubt about it. And all of us have to make some very important decisions about where we go from here,” he said in the statement. | 1 |
21,051 | Joe Biden Is BACK: SAVAGES The GOP’s Deadly ‘Healthcare’ Bill In BRUTAL Tweetstorm | Usually, once the peaceful transfer of power is complete, the outgoing administration lays low so as not to disrupt what the new administration is doing. However, since the GOP has control of the entire federal government and most of the state level governments with the corrupt, incompetent Donald Trump at the helm, it is literally impossible for former officials of the Obama White House to keep from weighing in. This is especially true since the GOP Senators have rolled out a healthcare bill that is literally nothing more than a massive tax cut for rich people. The most vulnerable among us will literally die if this monstrosity of a bill becomes law. Therefore it should come as no surprise that former Vice President Joe Biden is weighing in.Taking to Twitter, Uncle Joe minced no words about what the GOP is about to unleash upon the nation:The Senate health bill isn't about health care at all it's a wealth transfer: slashes care to fund tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 23, 2017Slashing Medicaid hurts kids, the elderly, people with disabilities and those struggling with addiction. All for tax breaks for the wealthy. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 23, 2017Especially now, when so many communities are struggling with opioid addiction, the bill's drastic cuts to Medicaid are cruel. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 23, 2017Let's see a bill that actually tries to improve folks' health care, and then we can have a reasonable debate about how to best do that. Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 23, 2017It would be great if Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and all the rest of the GOP wanted to actually help people. Make no mistake though they don t. They don t care about people, they care about themselves, keeping power, and making sure they and their rich friends get richer even if it means that every day Americans literally die.In fact, it is perfectly plausible that Paul Ryan thinks that the most vulnerable among us deserve to die. After all, this is the man who openly admitted to dreaming about bringing about the end of the life-saving care provided for the most vulnerable among us since he was a college kid, despite the fact that what he now calls entitlements are what got him through college after his father s death, as he paid for his education with the survivor s benefits. Funny how people forget where they come from, isn t it?Oh, if only Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton were president. We might actually have some compassion at the top, instead of the sociopathic monstrosities who somehow pass for human beings that we have now.Featured image via Leigh Vogel/Getty Images | 0 |
21,052 | Scottish isle a world away from fireworks of native son Trump | ISLE OF LEWIS, Scotland (Reuters) - Donald Trump has played up his family roots from Lewis, an island off the northwestern tip of Scotland, but his success in the U.S. Republican presidential battle has not drawn the kind of rapture the billionaire might like from his home crowd. Trump’s mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, emigrated to the United States from the Lewis village of Tong in the early 1930s, and a visit from her property mogul son would certainly interest the friendly inhabitants of this weather-beaten isle. But the kind of fiery oratory that has catapulted him to unexpected victories in the U.S. primaries might be taken with a pinch of salt, according to Tim Durbin, manager of the post office in the capital Stornoway. “People here like proof and anything less than that is suspect,” said Durbin, a 43-year-old American originally from Kentucky who has lived here for a decade. “There would certainly be lots of talk about him after he left, but the talk would be subdued and the laughter would be gentle.” The islanders’ wariness is apparent when the New Yorker’s name is mentioned; many smile politely and refuse to talk about him at all, making it difficult to gauge sentiment among the 20,000-strong population. But even such silence is significant in a place of strong community ties, according to critically-acclaimed Lewis novelist Kevin MacNeil. “If people from Lewis were genuinely supportive of Trump they would be more vocal in their views,” he said. “The lack of support for a grandson of the island speaks volumes.” An exception is a Facebook page called “Isle of Lewis supports Trump for President” which has 84 “likes”. The businessman has become the presumptive Republican nominee with a headline-grabbing campaign in which he has traded insults with rivals. A suggestion Muslims should be banned from entering the United States drew criticism from Europe and led to the withdrawal of Scottish business and academic accolades. Trump argued last month, in a column in Aberdeen’s Press and Journal newspaper, that he had won over the skeptical people of Scotland through tenaciousness after he built his golf course despite environmental hurdles, local opposition and lawsuits. “Scotland has already been won – and so will the United States,” he wrote. Trump called his Scottish business project a “labor of love” and his Trump International Golf Links website has a section dedicated to his Scots’ family genealogy. “It would be funny if Trump won. It might boost tourism,” said Donald, a Lewis pensioner living near the MacLeod family seat. “But only for a while,” interjected his wife Anne, with the caution habitual of the island. The couple recalled that Trump’s mother would visit from the United States in the summer, and Trump’s millionaire father Fred would ship over a Cadillac to carry her around the marshy island during her stay. “You’d end up in the ditch if you were trying to drive past them, I remember that,” said Donald with a laugh. Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides island chain, is a picturesque place, dotted with lakes, hills and open tracts of moor and almost devoid of trees. A freezing gust can whip your breath away or a warm breeze can surprise you with its gentleness. Trump stopped for a brief visit in 2008, jetting in on his private plane when he was trying to launch a golf business near Aberdeen in mainland Scotland and holding a news conference. He has not returned since, although he has visited Scotland several times and runs two golf courses on the mainland, one in Ayrshire and another in Aberdeenshire. He was then offered the possibility of an investment in Lews (sic) Castle, a run-down Victorian country house in Stornoway built by another millionaire, Sir James Matheson, when he bought the island in the mid-19th century. “He just didn’t think he was going to make any money out of it. He knows his roots are here but he’s more interested in his golf investments elsewhere,” said council official Nigel Scott. People are not easily swayed in Lewis, where strong bonds between neighbors and family are necessary to withstand the harshness of rural life, said Calum Iain Macleod a Presbyterian minister from the parish where Mary Anne MacLeod was born. “When the Atlantic is throwing a force 10 and you can barely stand and your windows are caked with salt, it is extreme and it is tough,” he said. “Being on this island where The Minch separates you from the center of gravity, you feel more vulnerable,” he said, referring to a strait that separates the Outer Hebrides from the mainland. The influence of the Church itself, which is well-attended, also makes for a tranquil place. Sundays are still almost entirely commerce-free and pubs and hotels which serve alcohol are very few, in contrast to the rest of Britain. Trump’s desire to recall his historic Scottish roots may have another purpose, suggests novelist MacNeil. “Perhaps he simply wants a Scotland-shaped mirror to reflect back his own perceived glory.” | 1 |
21,053 | ‘Responsible Gun Owner’ Who Had Never Fired One Gets Concealed Permit In A Single Day | Today s lesson in the horrors of how easily a person can obtain and legally carry a firearm come from big surprise Texas. For two weeks now the Lone Star State has been imposing its ammosexuality on not just the residents who feel the need to keep an arsenal at home but on the college campus communities as well.That s right Like it or not and most colleges say not, campus carry has become a reality. Now any student over 21 with a legal concealed carry permit can carry a loaded weapon onto any college campus across the state. Texan lawmakers, proving they are dumb as stumps, have decided that would be the best way to curb the onslaught of campus shootings.Some people may say, well, at least they have to be properly trained. Concealed carry permits come with a safety training course. While that may sound nice it s true on paper in reality it s far more frightening.University of Texas at Austin student Zachary Stone, in preparation for a debate on the issue of campus carry, decided to go out with zero experience, having never fired a gun before and see what it took to get the concealed carry permit necessary to carry at school. He chronicled his experience for The New York Times and it is absolutely horrifying.The class required is a 6-hour course where you learn such important rules as you can only shoot in self-defense. No vigilante justice, not to intervene in a crime, and certainly not to stop someone from running away. That would be murder, his instructor told him. Stone says everything he needed to learn to pass the written part of the test, which was basically a list of where you can carry a concealed weapon, he learned in the last 10 minutes. He got a 100 on the written test.When it came time for the live-fire portion of the test, Stone was a wreck: Fire! I shot. The gun flew back. My neighbors each hit the center, but I missed a foot too high. Fire! I didn t realize I d have to shoot again so soon. I hadn t taught myself how to aim yet, and I wanted a few seconds to learn from the first shot. I also hadn t learned how to deal with the recoil. Anxiously, I pointed and shot a few seconds after my neighbors. I still missed.That s when the instructor yelled at me. You need to line up your sights! I had no idea what that meant. He explained that for me to aim properly the dot at the front of the gun needed to be inside the post at the back of the gun.That was remarkably useful information. Fire! My next shot hit the center X. Stone found himself being screamed at every step of the way, because he had no idea what he was doing. Lining up his sights paled in comparison to the reloading process, which required him to eject the magazine something he had no clue how to do:I tugged on the magazine. It didn t move, so I pulled harder. I pulled as hard as I could, nervous to put so much force on a gun empty or not.I called out to the instructor. My magazine s stuck! Show me. Try to pull it out. That really shouldn t happen. I pulled on the magazine for the instructor. You need to push the release, he said. What s that? I asked. The button. I pushed something. No. The button, he said.That did the trick.Keep in mind that this young man had already passed the written portion of the test and was now on his way to being a responsible gun owner legally licensed to carry a concealed weapon to school. After repeating the live-shooting portion until 50 rounds had been fired each, it was time to tally the score and see if Zachary had the marksmanship necessary to be considered safe enough for public places.To pass, you need 175 out of 250 points. If you fail, you get two more chances. I did pretty well in the end I got 216 points.The targets are huge; the distances close. In 2014, 99.7 percent of those who applied were given licences to carry concealed in Texas. As Stone proved, it s nearly impossible to fail. After less than one day s time, with a rented gun and absolutely zero real training, Zachary Stone had a permit to bring a gun to class.At his debate, after telling the story, he asked one question that the pro-gun crowd would struggle with: Given that the system allows me lacking firearm experience to get a license, would you be comfortable if we sat with each other in class, upon learning I m secretly carrying a gun? The system sucks.Featured image via Wikipedia | 0 |
21,054 | BLOGGER Comes Clean About Hannity Sexual Harassment Claim…Hannity’s Former Producer Publicly Calls Her Out On LIE About Why She Quit | During a discussion about sexual harassment charges against FOX News host Bill O Reilly, blogger Debbie Schlussel was asked by radio host Pat Cambell of 1170 Talk Radio if anyone at FOX News made her feel uncomfortable ? or if sexual advances were made on her? Campbell asked: What do you make of this whole thing? Schlussel responded, Well, only by Sean Hannity, not by Bill O Reilly. Campbell stopped her Whoa Wait, wait, wait! Say that again. Schussed responded: Only by Sean Hannity, not Bill O Reilly. Although listeners get the sense the whole interview was a set-up, Campbell appears shocked by this new sexual harassment allegation being made against Sean Hannity and asks again, Sean Hannity what? He hit on you, or he made you feel uncomfortable? to which Schlussel responded, Yeah. She then went on to explain her so-called experience with Hannity.After she finished her story where she claims Hannity asked her to come back to his hotel, and that she received horrible treatment from him and his executive producer after she declined his offer, She went on to claim that he never booked her on his show again and that she got a very weird feeling about it . This kind of stuff very uh all over the place at Fox News and with anything that has to do with Sean Hannity. She then went on to make an infer that Hannity s executive producer Jill Vitale quit the show because Sean Hannity wanted something from her and she wouldn t give it. Schlussel claimed that everyone should start looking into it because, it s not an above-board story. Here is Jill Vitale s response to the LIE Schlussel told radio host Pat Campbell, when she inferred the reason Vitale left Hannity s radio show had to do with Hannity s inappropriate sexual behavior:I left because I had kids! https://t.co/Ek81EVGkrH Jill Vitale (@Flirtyflipper) April 23, 2017Sean Hannity used to tease Vitale about being a liberal on his show, which makes her tweet defending Bill O Reilly very interesting:Bill O'Reilly's out. Who's next? Jill Vitale (@Flirtyflipper) April 19, 2017Vitale also advocates for O Reilly here where she tweets that NYC s top radio talk show should hire O Reilly. She doesn t exactly sound like a woman who left Sean Hannity s show because she was victim of sexual harassment:It'd be a smart decision for @77WABCradio to hire him! https://t.co/kOiG93QC7K Jill Vitale (@Flirtyflipper) April 20, 2017Schussed continued to make more accusations during her interview: And it s funny because I have a friend that s a radio host in a different city and, um that used to work for Rush Limbaugh. And whenever Sean Hannity would take about Jon Edwards and his love child, he would always call me and we would laugh about it because he could ve had a love child too, given that with some of the stuff we ve heard about him and some of the stuff I know about him. Schlussel went on to make another wild claim about Hannity, calling him a pimp for Roger Ailes and a Fixer for Bill O Reilly. Debbie Schlussel, a former Fox News guest, appeared on a local radio show on Friday and recounted an incident where Sean Hannity purportedly asked her to a hotel, and when she rebuffed his advances, she claims, she was ostracized by the network star. The story has since gone viral garnering headlines like Sean Hannity Accused of Sexually Harassing Fox News Guest in publications like The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post. Now, in an interview with LawNewz.com on Monday morning, Schlussel is denying that she was ever sexually harassed by Sean Hannity. While Schlussel stands by her description of the incident, Schlussel told us that she doesn t believe what happened between the two amounted to sexual harassment by any legal definition. I would never accuse him of that. Sexual harassment has a special meaning under the law, and I would never accuse him of that, Schlussel, an attorney herself, said. Schlussel said the interaction happened in the early 2000 s when Hannity was in Detroit taping a show. He tried to get me to go back to the hotel after the show after he and his executive producer Bill Shine treated me horribly, she said on the radio program. Schlussel later clarified that it wasn t his hotel room, but rather his hotel. She told LawNewz.com that she did go on the show following the incident, but after that was banned from Fox News. I never thought I was sexually harassed by Sean Hannity, I thought he was weird and creepy not someone I liked, Schlussel said.Following the radio interview on Friday, Hannity issued a strongly worded statement denying Schlussel s claims saying he plans to take legal action against Schlussel for possible libel. LET ME BE CLEAR THE COMMENTS ABOUT ME ON A RADIO SHOW THIS WEEK by this individual ARE 100% false and a complete fabrication, Hannity said in a statement obtained by LawNewz.com. This individual is a serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade. The individual has a history of making provably false statements against me in an effort to slander, smear and besmirch my reputation. The individual has not just slandered me over the years but many people who this individual disagrees with. Schlussel responded to Hannity s legal threats, telling LawNewz.com she believed they were laughable, and that she is also contemplating countersuing him based on his statements on Sunday in which he called her a serial harasser. It s defamatory, Schussel said, Everything I said was true, and truth is an absolute bar to defamation. He on the other hand has a murky record on truth. The accuser has a history of making allegations against Hannity. Back in 2010, Schlussel, who Gawker claimed at the time was a crazy birther blogger, wrote a blog post claiming that the Freedom Alliance, a war veteran charity, which is supported by Hannity, was skimming donations, and was all a huge scam. According to a 2010 letter obtained by LawNewz.com, Thomas Kilgannon, the charity s founder and president, fired back in a note to donors: the blog posting accuses our friend Sean Hannity of personally benefiting from Freedom Alliance. This is FALSE. Freedom Alliance has never provided planes, hotels, cars, limos, or anything else to Sean. Sean gets nothing from Freedom Alliance except our gratitude for his personal generosity and for all he has done to help the troops and our organization. Hannity has reportedly donated more than a million dollars to the charity over the last several years. LawzNewz | 0 |
21,055 | Macron may see 'slackers' become protest rallying cry in France | PARIS (Reuters) - President Emmanuel Macron s remark that he will not bow to slackers who resist labor reforms looked set to dog the image-conscious French leader, with opponents casting him as a champion of the wealthy and big business. The Elysee Palace and government ministers have scrambled to contain the fallout, saying the 39-year-old was referring to past leaders who lacked the courage to push through unpopular changes and accusing his opponents of twisting his comments. Macron, who on Tuesday visited islands in the Caribbean damaged by Hurricane Irma, has himself shown little contrition. I am fully determined and I won t cede any ground, not to slackers, nor cynics, nor hardliners, he said on Friday during a trip to Greece. His opponents were quick to pounce, branding him an out-of-touch president who has put himself above the person in the street. Fools, cynics, slackers, everyone take to the streets on Sept. 12 and 23, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed party, said on Twitter, referring to two days of street protests. Philippe Martinez, head of the far-left CGT trade union, called Macron s comment scandalous . Who is the president referring to when he says he won t give an inch to slackers? To the millions without a job or in a vulnerable position? Macron s centrist government announced measures in August to hand more power to companies to set working conditions and adapt pay to market conditions, as well as making it easier to hire and fire employees. The president says the measures are needed to spur job creation, boost growth and attract investment. Unions say workers rights are being eroded and benefits undermined. Macron faced his first challenge on the streets on Tuesday when thousands of CGT trade unionists protested in cities across France. In Bordeaux, protesters chanted: Macron you re screwed, the slackers are in the streets while in Paris others carried placards reading: Slacker on strike . Asked on Monday if he regretted his comment, he replied: We cannot move forward if we don t tell it like it is. It s Macron s style, said Jerome Fourquet of pollster IFOP. He s not going to back down, make apologies. That carries a risk. Macron is not the first French leader to offend people with a casual comment. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy caused uproar while interior minister when in 2005 he branded youths behind the worst urban violence in France in decades as racaille ( scum or rabble ). That remark entrenched Sarkozy s reputation as a bully in the suburbs blighted by crime and unemployment outside Paris. Sarkozy s successor, Francois Hollande, suffered with the publication of a tell-all book in which his former partner accused the Socialist leader of describing the poor as toothless , undermining his efforts to portray himself as in touch with the needy. Before joining a protest in Marseille, Melenchon, who bills himself as a champion of French workers and rails against globalisation, said: Mr Macron knows he has a battle on his hands. He picked it. | 1 |
21,056 | Trump to say in security speech that China is competitor: officials | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump will lay out a new U.S. national security strategy on Monday based on his “America First” policy and will, among other items, make clear that China is a competitor, two senior U.S. officials said on Saturday. Trump has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping while also demanding that Beijing increase pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program and to change trade practices to make them more favorable to the United States. The national security strategy, to be rolled out in a speech by Trump, should not be seen as an attempt to contain China but rather to offer a clear-eyed look at the challenges China poses, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The strategy, which was still being drafted, may also reverse Democratic President Barack Obama’s declaration in September 2016 that climate change is a threat to security, one official said. Trump, a Republican, is to lay out his foreign policy priorities, and will emphasize his commitment to “America First” policies such as building up the U.S. military, confronting Islamist militants and realigning trade relationships to make the United States more competitive, the officials said. | 1 |
21,057 | Clinton urges renewed 'fight for values' | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for a renewed fight for a more-inclusive United States despite disappointment over an election loss that laid bare national divisions. In her first public remarks since conceding to Republican Donald Trump last week, Clinton said that many Americans were asking whether his victory meant the United States was still the country they thought it was. “The divisions laid bare by this election run deep, but please listen to me when I say this. America is worth it, our children are worth it,” she said at a Children Defense Fund event honoring scholarship winners. “Believe in our country, fight for our values and never, ever give up.” Although Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman called the nonprofit advocacy group’s event “a love-in for Hillary Rodham Clinton,” the former first lady said it had not been easy for her to attend. “There have been times this past week when all I wanted to do was just to curl up with a good book or our dogs, and never leave the house again,” said Clinton, whose ties to the Children Defense Fund date back to her work there as a young law student. Clinton, a former secretary of state, won the popular vote but lost the crucial electoral college tally to Trump, a New York real estate magnate who has taken a hard line on immigration and has opposed accepting Syrian refugees. “I know many of you are deeply disappointed by the results of the election. I am too, more than I can ever express,” Clinton said. “But as I said last week, our campaign was never about one person or even one election. It was about the country we love, and building an America that is hopeful, inclusive and big hearted.” She said that help for children backed by Republicans and Democrats was a hopeful sign of both parties working together. The federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, for example, now covers 8 million children and its creation had relied on bipartisan support, Clinton said. “For the sake of our children, and our families and our country, I ask you to stay engaged, stay engaged on every level,” Clinton said. She added, “I am as sure of this as anything I have ever known. America is still the greatest country in the world, it is still the place where anyone can beat the odds.” | 1 |
21,058 | Trump travel restrictions hit demand for visits to U.S.: study | BERLIN (Reuters) - The travel restrictions put in place by U.S. President Donald Trump on seven countries are deterring travelers from other countries too, according to a travel analysis company. ForwardKeys, which analyses 16 million flight reservations a day from major global reservation systems, said bookings for international arrivals to the United States over the next three months were 2.3 percent higher than last year. But on Jan. 27, the day Trump issued the executive order, bookings had been 3.4 percent ahead of the previous year, Forwardkeys data showed. When the travel ban was in place from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, bookings to the United States dropped 6.5 percent, including an 80 percent slump in reservations from the seven countries listed on Trump’s order and a 13.6 percent drop from Western Europe. On the day the curbs were lifted by a U.S. judge, bookings from Iran surged, ForwardKeys said, leaving reservations for travel to the United States five times higher on Feb. 3 and Feb. 4 than the same two days a year earlier. Most of those bookings were for arrival in the United States on Feb. 5 and Feb. 6. ForwardKeys CEO Olivier Jager cautioned that the data was just a snapshot of an eight-day period and it would continue to monitor the situation. Other groups, such as the U.N. World Tourism Organization, have also warned travel demand could be hurt by U.S. restrictions, which are still suspended pending a U.S. appeals court hearing due to start at 2300 GMT on Tuesday. “The ambiguity of these very latest developments introduced by President Trump is casting a shadow over the future travel demand to and from the U.S.,” said Nadejda Popova, travel project manager at Euromonitor. “The new executive order could also impact how the U.S. is perceived as a tourism destination and how open to foreign travelers it will be in the future.” | 1 |
21,059 | PRICELESS! WATCH EMBARRASSING Moment RINO Governor Is Reminded By President Trump That He Didn’t Endorse Him In General Election: “I never forget” | President Trump visited Michigan to promote the auto industry and jobs. While he was at Willow Run, he had a chance for a photo with the governor of Michigan. A priceless exchange happened between Trump and Snyder. Trump looked over and asked the governor to come over even though you didn t endorse me . The best part is when Trump says, I never forget Hahaha! People from Michigan will appreciate this because Snyder is a Republican governor who in reality is a Democrat. He refused to endorse Trump during the election! When Trump held his very last rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Snyder was a no-show. What a putz! This is why we love Trump he calls em as he sees em! | 0 |
21,060 | Philippines to sanction firms involved in deadly fire if safety skirted | MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines said on Tuesday it would investigate whether safety regulations were ignored at an office where a fire killed 37 call center employees, and vowed to impose sanctions if firms had not met standards. The remains of 37 employees of the U.S.-based Research Now SSI killed by Saturday s fire in Davao City have been recovered and a criminal investigation will be launched by the Justice Department. Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello said he had instructed the government s workplace health and safety agency and the Labour Ministry s regional office in Davao, President Rodrigo Duterte s hometown, to investigate if there were lapses in safety standards. The fire broke out at a furniture store on the third level of the 14-year-old New City Commercial Center and quickly engulfed an outsourcing business on the upper floor, based on an initial report from the city government. We will immediately look into possible violations of some safety and health standards, Bello told Reuters. We may not issue any clearance to operate, he said when asked to clarify sanctions that could be imposed on the mall or call center management if culpable. Research Now SSI has confirmed 37 of its 500 employees in its Davao call center were lost in the fire. We cannot comment on what is an ongoing investigation, said Barbara Palmer, company senior vice president for global marketing, in an email in response to a Reuters query on Tuesday about safety protocols at the company s Davao office. On Sunday the firm said in a statement it was helping to support funeral arrangements and would create a fund for contributions for victims families. The fire is a setback for the Philippines $23 billion business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which is an economic lifeline in the country of more than 100 million. The sector employs about 1.15 million people, with jobs forecast to grow to 1.8 million by 2025. Along with remittances from overseas workers, BPO revenues are a major earner of foreign exchange for the country, driving what is one of Asia s fastest-growing economies. The BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) has expressed concern about postings on social media that said the building was made of sub-standard materials, had locked its fire exits, and had not held fire drills. It was not possible to immediately check the accuracy of the postings. BIEN said the government should look into every BPO firm s compliance with occupational health and safety standards. Justice must be served to the victims and those accountable must be penalized so as to avoid future workplace deaths, BIEN said in a statement. On Monday night, Duterte told relatives of victims that the National Bureau of Investigation, police and fire protection bureau would get to the bottom of the disaster. The truth will come out, he said. Research Now SSI has offices in Texas, California, New York and Toronto and more than 3,500 market research, consulting, media, healthcare and corporate clients. The Call Centre Association of the Philippines (CCAP) said it was waiting for a full report from Research Now SSI, but saw no problem with its members meeting workplace safety standards. We always comply with government safety regulations because our priority is the welfare of all our employees, CCAP President Jojo Uligan told Reuters. But the Associated Labour Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP) said safety standards were not being adhered to and the labor department and companies were not living up to their responsibilities to enforce and comply. This deaths-causing fire could have been minimized to the barest damage to property, ALU-TUCP spokesman Alan Tanjusay said. | 1 |
21,061 | Twitter employee briefly shuts Trump account, putting controls in question | (Reuters) - Twitter Inc faced questions on Friday about its approach to internal security after a company employee briefly deactivated U.S. President Donald Trump’s account. The 11-minute blackout of the @realDonaldTrump account late on Thursday drew widespread attention to the microblogging site. Trump frequently uses Twitter to announce policy, assail his adversaries and to tangle with countries, including North Korea, over world affairs. Some users voiced fears that future employee interference or technology glitches involving Trump’s account could threaten national security. The incident also came as Twitter grapples with overall criticism of its handling of account suspensions, user abuse and ever-changing terms of service. Twitter said in a tweet on Friday: “We have implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again. We won’t be able to share all details about our internal investigation or updates to our security measures, but we take this seriously and our teams are on it.” A company representative declined to answer questions including how many employees can suspend an account or what special protections there are for high-profile users like Trump. Trump was back on Twitter soon after the account was restored, and the employee did not send or alter any tweets. Cyber security experts had previously speculated Twitter could have installed special protections on Trump’s account, such as the ability to only access it from certain devices. “We have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer-support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review,” Twitter said in a tweet late on Thursday. “We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again,” the company said in an earlier tweet. Reuters could not determine how many Twitter employees had the authority to delete accounts or if any had the ability to tamper with them in other ways, such as by sending bogus tweets. “In all seriousness: We need accountability for social media sites,” Ken Meyer, who served as digital director for former Vice President Joe Biden, tweeted. “Lone employees shouldn’t be able to change statements from the President.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former Twitter employee said it was unlikely a worker with suspension privileges would also be able to hijack an account to send out messages. “Different types of access,” the former employee said. “I’m not sure anyone at Twitter can tweet from someone else’s account.” Another person familiar with Twitter operations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said employees currently cannot post from a user’s account, change or even view a user’s password, which is encrypted. Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, said the suspension reflected a need for Twitter to be more transparent about its ability to control accounts but also demonstrated the perils of a head of state relying on digital technology as a primary mode of communication. “It would be nice to rely on older forms of policy communication with solid foundations,” he said, adding that Twitter should require two-person controls for certain high-profile accounts. The New York Times on Friday reported the rogue employee was in fact a contractor, citing two anonymous sources familiar with the incident. Twitter and other tech companies have ramped up their reliance on contractors due to pressure to respond more quickly and thoroughly to content violations. While the companies “are desperately reliant upon human nuance and sophistication for decision making, human will is quite a risk,” Sarah Roberts, a UCLA professor who studies such contractors, said in a tweet. “Ain’t that a bind?” The company on Friday separately announced minor updates to its rules, including more clarity on what actions could result in an account suspension. It was the latest in a string of iterative changes amid criticism the platform too slowly and inconsistently responds to abuse. Twitter shares were up 1.9 percent in afternoon trading. Trump, who has nearly 42 million Twitter followers, responded to the temporary loss of his account by boasting about his wide reach on the service. “My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee,” Trump said on Twitter early on Friday. “I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.” He has used Twitter to attack opponents and promote his policies, both during the 2016 presidential campaign and since taking office in January. Thursday’s incident also raised questions about how Twitter secures the official @potus presidential account and other accounts that could potentially influence world events. Technology companies including Twitter are, meanwhile, under attack from U.S. lawmakers for failing to stem the spread of Russian propaganda and misinformation on their platforms. Twitter in particular has long been criticized for not doing enough to police its platform and respond to complaints of harassment. Though the temporary deletion of the Trump account sparked a flood of criticism from Twitter users, many of the president’s critics also said they were happy to see the account disabled. In 2013, hackers took control of the main account for the Associated Press and tweeted that explosions at the White House had injured then-President Barack Obama, causing stocks to briefly plunge. | 1 |
21,062 | China says it will defend interests if U.S. harms trade ties | BEIJING (Reuters) - China will take action to defend its interests if the United States damages trade ties, the Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday, after U.S. President Donald Trump authorized an inquiry into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property. Trump’s move, the first direct trade measure by his administration against China, comes at a time of heightened tension over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, though it is unlikely to prompt near-term change in commercial ties. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will have a year to look into whether to launch a formal investigation of China’s policies on intellectual property, which the White House and U.S. industry groups say are harming U.S. businesses and jobs. The United States should respect objective facts, act prudently, abide by its World Trade Organization pledges, and not destroy principles of multilateralism, an unidentified spokesman of China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement. “If the U.S. side ignores the facts, and disrespects multilateral trade principles in taking actions that harms both sides trade interests, China will absolutely not sit by and watch, will inevitably adopt all appropriate measures, and resolutely safeguard China’s lawful rights.” The ministry said the United States should “treasure” the cooperation and favorable state of China-U.S. trade relations, and warned that any U.S. action to damage ties would “harm both sides trade relations and companies”. China was continuously strengthening its administrative and judicial protections for intellectual property, the ministry added. China’s policy of forcing foreign companies to turn over technology to Chinese joint venture partners and failure to crack down on intellectual property theft have been longstanding problems for several U.S. administrations. Trump administration officials have estimated that theft of intellectual property by China could be worth as much as $600 billion. Experts on China trade policy said the long lead time could allow Beijing to discuss some of the issues raised by Washington without being seen to cave to pressure under the threat of reprisals. China repeatedly rebuffed attempts by previous U.S. administrations to take action on its IP practices, and has insisted it rigorously protects intellectual property. State news agency Xinhua said the U.S. investigation is a unilateralist “baring of fangs” that will hurt both sides. Jacob Parker, vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council said Trump’s memo is only the beginning of the process, but that he expected a decision on how to move forward from the administration in 60-90 days. “I think it will be much faster than a year,” Parker said. Coming to terms on a bilateral investment treaty would be a better way to get China to address the IP issues, he added. “This isn’t a surprise. Our companies have been honing their crisis communications and internal planning processes since the election. The rhetoric that came up during the campaign led them to take proactive action then. They are prepared, aware and ready for these types of actions going forward.” The investigation is likely to cast a shadow over U.S. relations with China, its largest trading partner, just as Trump is asking it to put more pressure on North Korea to give up its nuclear programm. Trump has suggested he would be more amenable to going easy on China over trade if it were more aggressive in reining in North Korea. China has said the issues of trade with the United States should not be linked to the North Korea problem. Ken Jarrett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, said in a statement on Tuesday that trade and North Korea should not be linked, but that the investigation was a “measured and necessary step”. “The president’s executive order reflects building frustration with Chinese trade and market entry policies, particularly those that pressure American companies to part with technologies and intellectual property in exchange for market access,” he said. “Chinese companies operating in the United States do not face this pressure.” | 1 |
21,063 | Rep. Ted Lieu Issues Blistering Takedown Of Trump’s Illegal Missile Strike (VIDEO) | Anyone who knows anything about the separation of powers understands that a president cannot just unilaterally take military action. He needs approval from Congress to execute an act of war. However, since Donald Trump is president and he seems to think he is somehow above the law, he doesn t bother with silly little details like that. As a result, we got his launching of 59 Tomahawk missiles into a Syrian airfield. It turns out that quite a few people in Congress believe what Trump did to be potentially illegal. One such person is Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).Rep. Lieu is one of Trump s harshest critics and perhaps his most prolific Twitter troll. When it came to Trump s military action in Syria, Lieu did not mince words. Speaking with MSNBC s Katy Tur, Lieu said: Clearly, the president can take limited actions that the Congress has authorized such as going against terrorists who were involved with 9/11 or in terms of Iraq when Congress authorized the use of force in 2002, but there s been no congressional authorization to launch fifty-nine cruise missiles at a country that has not attacked us. Donald Trump s action last night was unconstitutional. He should not do it again. Rep. Lieu then went on to explain his problems with the launch and the dangers of taking such drastic action with no authorization and no clear strategy, after being asked if he would have authorized this action if he had been given the opportunity to do so: I might have if he would have articulated a strategy, and that is one of my fundamental problems with what he did. There has been no coherent strategy from the Trump administration. Last week, they signaled they were okay with Assad even though he had previously killed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and used chemical weapons. Last night, they attacked the Assad regime. We need to know what is the Trump administration thinking and what is their long-term strategy in Syria? Rep. Lieu is right. Trump s actions went against the Constitution. He cannot unilaterally make war. Further, he is clearly an erratic, impulsive man. Said erratic, impulsive man now has the power to destroy the world with one temper tantrum. Therefore, more than ever, it is absolutely imperative that Congress use its Article I powers to check and balance this dangerously unstable president.Watch Rep. Lieu s remarks below:Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
21,064 | New York, other states challenge Trump over climate change regulation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A coalition of 17 U.S. states filed a legal challenge on Wednesday against efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to roll back climate change regulations, deepening a political rift over his emerging energy policies. Led by New York state, the coalition said the administration has a legal duty to regulate emissions of the gases scientists believe cause global climate change. “The law is clear: the EPA must limit carbon pollution from power plants,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement announcing the challenge. Trump signed an executive order last week targeting climate change regulations ushered in by former President Barack Obama, saying they hinder U.S. energy production and jobs without providing meaningful environmental benefits. The order’s main target was Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a law that would require states to slash carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, but which was never implemented because it was challenged in court by 26 Republican-led states. Trump’s order directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review the regulation to decide whether to “suspend, rescind, or revise it.” Shortly after, EPA filed a legal motion asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to delay ongoing court proceedings on the regulation to allow for the review. The New York-led coalition’s motion on Wednesday asked the court to throw out the EPA’s request to delay court proceedings, saying the delay “would waste the substantial resources already expended in this litigation.” “This case is ripe for decision now, and nothing that EPA has proposed to do obviates the need for this court’s review,” according to the statement. The coalition includes attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington - along with the District of Columbia and a number of smaller localities. | 1 |
21,065 | LIBERAL MEDIA IGNORES MELANIA’S Visit To Home For Abused Girls…Proving They Really Don’t Care Much About Actual Women’s Issues After All | First Lady Melania Trump visits HomeSafe, photo via HomeSafe.GP The First Lady s visit to HomeSafe was unannounced, however a press release was issued by HomeSafe and several photos were posted online including at the @FLOTUS Twitter account.Yet, with the exception of the local Palm Beach Post and FootwearNews which focused on the shoes she wore to HomeSafe, no media reported on the First Lady s visit.Melania Trump mentioned her visit on Twitter with this photo of her at the home for the abuses girls, along with offering the girls some words of encouragement and praise:I had a wonderful time visiting @HomeSafeFla today! The young ladies I spoke with hold so much promise for the future. pic.twitter.com/3W5i2Xpo5m Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) April 14, 2017Palm Beach Post reporter George Bennett also tweeted about her visit:Pic from HomeSafe of @FLOTUS @MELANIATRUMP visiting the girls' residence today. Story: https://t.co/zBkPUlSSAe pic.twitter.com/dx0pUtbH1J George Bennett (@gbennettpost) April 14, 2017Home Safe also tweeted pictures of Melania s visit. They thanked her for the visit and said they were excited to have @FLOTUS visit our girls group home in Lake Worth. Today we were excited to have @FLOTUS visit our girls group home in Lake Worth.Thank you for taking the time to listen & talk with the girls pic.twitter.com/v0OqECxqDa HomeSafe (@HomeSafeFla) April 14, 2017Here is an excerpt from the HomeSafeFL press release:Home Safe s description of their agency on Twitter: HomeSafe is preparing children and families for safer, more productive lives through child abuse and domestic violence prevention and intervention programs.The media s decision to ignore this story only proves they really don t care much about the plight of women or of young girls, what they care about is destroying the enemy. The media s transparent hate for anything Trump has forced them to show their cards, and as a result the mainstream media will likely never be trusted again by Americans who once bought everything they were being told hook, line and sinker. | 0 |
21,066 | Democrats in U.S. Senate try to slow Republican deregulation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats are striking back at the U.S. Congress and White House over their push to cut regulations, as Republicans ratchet up attacks on rules they say hurt business and give bureaucrats too much power. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat, on Tuesday introduced legislation to kill the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a law Republicans used over the span of three months this year to repeal 14 regulations enacted by former President Barack Obama, also a Democrat. Booker, one of his party’s liberal stars, says that rate shows the CRA is prone to abuse, and the law helps special interests sabotage thoroughly vetted rules they do not like. Booker’s bill, co-sponsored by fellow Democrat Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, would give future administrations the ability to resurrect the 14 annulled regulations on broadband, contraception, guns, the environment, education and other areas. The CRA bans agencies from issuing new versions of repealed rules in the future. Booker’s bill would also lift that ban. Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline and Michigan Representative John Conyers, both Democrats, introduced a companion bill in the House on Tuesday. Senator Patty Murray, the senior Democrat of the committee overseeing labor and pensions, also is attempting to work around the prohibition through bills to make two of the eliminated regulations, on retirement savings and workplace safety, the law of the land. She has introduced a bill to help states and cities provide retirement accounts to private-sector workers and has co-sponsored another on employers’ records of injuries and deaths. If any of the Democrats’ bills survive the Senate, they would likely die in the House, where Republicans hold an ample majority. After sweeping Congress and the White House in November’s elections, Republicans established a beachhead in their battle against regulation through the CRA. They are now in the next phase: limiting new rule-makings. Later this week a Senate committee will put finishing touches on the Regulatory Accountability Act and send it to the full chamber. Supporters say the bill, already passed in the House, makes regulators more answerable to lawmakers and more responsible for analyzing rules’ costs. Critics say it establishes so many requirements that it will paralyze regulation in important areas such as education. Republicans are also considering keeping the CRA in play. Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania has asked congressional auditors to determine if the law can be applied to agencies’ guidance that effectively resembles regulation. Others are weighing killing two forthcoming rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, headed by Democrat Richard Cordray, an Obama holdover. | 1 |
21,067 | Alabama’s Chief Justice Just Spit On The Constitution: Reinstates Ban On Gay Marriage | One would think that to hold a position like Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court you would have to know a thing or two about the law. Justice Roy Moore, the same guy who lost a battle and his job over the statue of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama State House, is looking to once again defy the Supreme Court of the United States and the Constitution he is sworn to uphold and protect.Moore sent word on Wednesday that the SCOTUS ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide doesn t apply to Alabama. Citing the fact that the case was ruled on for other states not Alabama and how right Kim Davis was to refuse to do her job, Moore laid down the gantlet to his next impeachment.Apparently Moore doesn t quite understand how the judicial branch of the federal government works, nor does he understand the 14th Amendment. The gay marriage ruling was specifically intended to extend the rights of couples in one state to all states in the union.Pesky little things like facts, procedure and protocol don t matter to Moore, whose Administrative Order reads: Until further decision by the Alabama Supreme Court, the existing orders of the Alabama Supreme Court that Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act remain in full force and effect, Moore and other opponents of equality have said there is confusion about the actual meaning of the Supreme Court s historic Obergefell v Hodges ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in every state in the union. Confusion and uncertainty exist among the probate judges of this state as to the effect of Obergefell on the existing orders,' he wrote.Those existing orders, essentially an archaic ban on a now-legal practice, were more than clarified when a federal judge ordered in July that the SCOTUS ruling was binding on all probate judges in Alabama. Judges from two counties have discontinued licensing for the time being, but could ultimately face the same fate as Kim Davis if they continue to violate a federal order.Roy Moore told CNN that the vendetta he has against same-sex marriage isn t a religious issue; it s about the law. Roy Moore is full of crap. He is and always has been nothing but a southern crusader for Christianity.Featured image via screen capture | 0 |
21,068 | Donald Trump Once Took Away A Sick Baby’s Medical Because Of A Family Feud | It s undeniable that Donald Trump is a giant asshat. His entire campaign built upon the exploitation of American conservatives racism, and faux populist rhetoric that is completely at odds with his economic policies that he has put forward. But Trump s asshattery isn t just reserved for people he can exploit for political gain.The New York Times recently ran an article that detailed the relationship between Trump and his brother Freddy. Trump s younger brother was an alcoholic who died at the age of 43. Freddy s alcoholism caused a major rift to form in the two brothers relationship. One of the most scandalous revelations in the piece is that Trump once revoked medical benefits to his nephew s sick infant son. Trump had promised that he would pay for Fred III (Trump s nephew) child s medical care. But a feud over an inheritance dispute devolved, that changed all of that.The New York Times reports: Then came the unveiling of Fred Sr. s will, which Donald had helped draft. It divided the bulk of the inheritance, at least $20 million, among his children and their descendants, other than my son Fred C. Trump Jr. Freddy s children sued, claiming that an earlier version of the will had entitled them to their father s share of the estate, but that Donald and his siblings had used undue influence over their grandfather, who had dementia, to cut them out.A week later, Mr. Trump retaliated by withdrawing the medical benefits critical to his nephew s infant child. Trump s family did not want to talk to the media about the matter. Trump offered the New York Times an explanation for his actions during an interview, saying, I was angry because they sued. Trump claims the whole thing was eventually settled very amicably. Trump s villainy has officially reached daytime soap opera levels. For sure, much of Trump s hateful antics are a campaign tactic that he is using to get free media coverage. However, when a story like this come out, it shows that Trump actually is a terrible, vindictive person.Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons | 0 |
21,069 | Venezuela freeing some jailed activists, may expel diplomats | CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s leftist government prepared to release some 80 jailed anti-government activists on Saturday, and threatened to expel envoys from Canada and Brazil after criticism over rights. Delcy Rodriguez, head of the pro-government Constituent Assembly, told reporters the legislative superbody was recommending the detainees be given alternative punishments such as community service and compensation for victims. Thirteen activists were later paraded in front of state TV cameras during a meeting with Rodriguez, a hardline ally of President Nicolas Maduro. They looked stony-faced as they sat listening to her admonishments in the formal surroundings of Venezuela s colonial-era foreign ministry. Rights groups and foes of Maduro say authorities are unfairly holding 268 political prisoners for protesting against dictatorship. Maduro, the 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez, says all jailed activists are there on legitimate charges of violence and subversion. Let it be understood that the events promoted by the extremist Venezuelan opposition, which caused Venezuelans deaths, must not be repeated, Rodriguez said. Some 170 people died in violence around two bouts of anti-Maduro street protests in 2014 and earlier this year. The assembly president told the detainees at the meeting they would return to their detention centers for medical tests then be freed to spend Christmas with loved ones. The releases, albeit with alternative sentences, could inject life into stuttering political talks between the government and opposition due to resume in the Dominican Republic in early January. Western nations and Latin American neighbors have been increasingly critical of Maduro this year, accusing him of stamping on democracy and human rights. The government says foreign nations are trying to encourage a right-wing coup. Rodriguez said the Constituent Assembly - which various foreign countries refuse to accept - was also recommending Brazil s ambassador Ruy Pereira and Canada s charge d affaires Craig Kowalik both be declared persona non grata. The Canadian government, which has imposed sanctions on Maduro s administration, said it would not be cowed into easing pressure on the anti-democratic Maduro regime in Venezuela. Canadians will not stand by silently as the Government of Venezuela robs its people of their fundamental democratic and human rights, and denies them access to basic humanitarian needs, said Global Affairs Canada, the government department that manages its foreign and trade relations. Brazil s foreign ministry also responded sternly. If confirmed, the Venezuelan government s decision to declare Brazil s ambassador persona non grata shows once more the authoritarian stance of Nicolas Maduro s administration and its lack of willingness to engage in any dialogue, it said, promising reciprocal measures. U.S. President Donald Trump s administration has been especially critical of Maduro, also imposing sanctions on him and other senior Venezuelan officials this year. Under new stewardship with the arrival of charge d affaires Todd Robinson last week, Washington s embassy in Caracas called on Saturday for the freedom of all jailed activists. We urge Maduro s regime to respect human rights, it tweeted. Free them during this holiday time. | 1 |
21,070 | Trump’s Department Of Justice Just Made A Move That’s Enraging Democrats AND Republicans | Republicans and Democrats are upset over Attorney General Jeff Sessions controversial plans to increase civil asset forfeiture. The Department of Justice is stepping up efforts to seize property and money suspected of being used in a crime or obtained through illegal activity. That whole innocent until guilty thing was just thrown out the window.Local officials would be able to pull the feds into an investigation in order to ease the process of seizing assets from criminal suspects, even if they are not charged with a crime. This would allow law enforcement to take property without proving a crime occurred.JUST IN: DOJ new asset forfeiture policy police can seize property from people not charged w/crime even in states where it's been banned. pic.twitter.com/P8K0g80m4E Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) July 19, 2017Sessions issued an order that authorized, federal adoption of all types of assets seized lawfully by state or local law enforcement under their respective state laws . . . whenever the conduct giving rise to the seizures violates federal law. This move is so bad that even Darrell Issa is against it. This is a troubling decision for the due process protections afforded to us under the Fourth Amendment as well as the growing consensus we ve seen nationwide on this issue, Issa said, according to Politico. Ramping up adoptive forfeitures would circumvent much of the progress state legislatures have made to curb forfeiture abuse and expand a loophole that s become a central point of contention nationwide. Criminals shouldn t be able to keep the proceeds of their crime, but innocent Americans shouldn t lose their right to due process, or their private property rights, in order to make that happen. Rep. Justin Amash weighed in calling it a move backward. This policy takes us backward. Congress must step up to protect the property of Americans from a government that keeps stealing from them. https://t.co/62t4tKLZHz Justin Amash (@justinamash) July 17, 2017Mike Less isn t happy about this either.JUST IN: DOJ new asset forfeiture policy police can seize property from people not charged w/crime even in states where it's been banned. pic.twitter.com/P8K0g80m4E Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) July 19, 2017Conservatives are upset.This is awful. https://t.co/YpYJ8BTWW7 Instapundit.com (@instapundit) July 19, 2017How conservative. https://t.co/JeGb1j9gla Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) July 19, 2017Small government and libertarian minded conservatives should be outraged by this. It's bad policy and bad principles. https://t.co/gyW8749ODJ Rory Cooper (@rorycooper) July 19, 2017Civil asset forfeiture for people not charged with a crime is a Constitutional outrage. This is raw statism. https://t.co/7m312luBLc Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) July 19, 2017Indefensible. Totally incompatible with a free society. License to turn law enforcement into Moscow traffic cops. https://t.co/WWlxXIKGDY Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) July 19, 201784 percent of Americans oppose civil asset forfeiture. Among those is Justice Clarence Thomas who delivered harsh criticism in March of the civil forfeiture system, expressing doubt over the constitutionality of the process in which police seize cash, cars and other property that they suspect have ties to crime without going through a criminal procedure, Forbes reported.This isn t a Democrats vs. conservatives partisan issue. In fact, it s one thing both sides oppose. But it s good for local law enforcement officials, who see it as a lifeline for cash-strapped agencies who can profit from the seizures.But congrats, Mr. Sessions, for getting both sides to agree on an important issue against you.Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images. | 0 |
21,071 | OBAMA REGIME AGREES TO CUT DEAL WITH IRAN THAT FURTHER THREATENS OUR NATIONAL SECURITY | Wouldn t it be great to have a president who made our national security a top priority? The Obama administration will agree to let Iran bypass questions about its past nuclear military work under any final deal signed in the coming weeks, according to reports.Western officials were quoted as telling the Associated Press on Friday that the United States has given up a major concession to Iran on the military front.While senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have long insisted that Iran will immediately have to submit to wide-ranging inspections and disclosures regarding its past nuclear work, the new reports indicate that this demand has been cast aside as world powers work to strike a final deal with the Islamic Republic by the end of June.According to the AP report:After a November 2013 interim accord, the Obama administration said a comprehensive solution would include resolution of questions concerning the possible military dimension of Iran s nuclear program. But those questions won t be answered by the June 30 deadline for a final deal, officials said, echoing an assessment by the U.N. nuclear agency s top official earlier this week. Nevertheless, the officials said an accord remains possible. One senior Western official on Thursday described diplomats as more likely to get a deal than not over the next three weeks.Via: WFB | 0 |
21,072 | British official urges social media companies to block militant content | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Britain s top internal security official is pressing social media companies to devise automatic systems to spot and block violent militant messaging before it is posted on their networks. Amber Rudd, home secretary in the conservative British government led by Prime Minister Theresa May, told an audience at New America, a Washington think tank, on Thursday night that there was an online arms race between militants and the forces of law and order. Rudd said government authorities and companies were already working to ensure that militant messaging promoting violence should be removed from the internet within one or two hours of initial posting. But she said companies should press ahead with development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems that could spot such content before it is posted on the internet and block it from being disseminated. Since the beginning of 2017, violent militant operatives have created 40,000 new internet destinations, Rudd said. She noted that she visited Silicon Valley companies, including Alphabet Inc s Google and YouTube, Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc, earlier this year and called on them to do more to take down or block militant content. As of 12 months ago, social media companies were taking down about half of the violent militant material from their sites within two hours of its discovery, and lately that proportion has increased to two thirds, she said. YouTube is now taking down 83 percent of violent militant videos it discovers, Rudd said, adding that UK authorities have evidence that the Islamic State militant group was now struggling to get some of its materials online. But she said there was much more companies can do to use cutting edge technology to spot dangerous content more quickly. She added that in the wake of an increasing number of vehicle attacks by militants, such as the one at London s Borough Market earlier this year, British security authorities were reviewing rental car regulations and considering ways for authorities to collect more relevant data from car hire companies. | 1 |
21,073 | Ryan Lochte Is About To Be Rewarded For His Douchebaggery, And It’s Gonna Piss You Off | You d think we would no longer be surprised when an athlete or someone famous gets away with being in trouble, especially a white, male athlete. However, nope, this is still pretty damn awful.After Ryan Lochte s drunken douchebaggery vandalizing a gas station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then subsequently lying about it, and then getting away with it, he s now likely about to join the ABC hit show Dancing with the Stars.According to US Weekly: Multiple sources tell Us Weekly that Ryan Lochte signed on for season 23 of Dancing With the Stars following his Rio robbery scandal, in which he said he overexaggerated his story about being robbed at gunpoint. Apparently, an insider has said: Doing DWTS will be great for Ryan s image! He will be able to show America that he s a good guy who made a mistake. He s still an Olympic champion! He will be great on the show. A good guy who made a mistake. Ha!It must be nice to be able to get away with that sort of behavior and then given the opportunity to make money with a reality television celebrity dance competition show.The cast for the upcoming season hasn t been announced but according to US, reps for the show never comment on casting rumors, but this season will likely include a few Olympic athletes. And unfortunately, a scandal always intrigues the masses and people would likely tune in to see a douchebag act like a fool on the dance floor. Who cares about principles, really?Lochte did apologize, saying: I want to apologize for my behavior last weekend for not being more careful and candid in how I described the events of that early morning and for my role in taking the focus away from the many athletes fulfilling their dreams of participating in the Olympics. So, basically, he s sorry he got caught. He also did a sorry, not sorry, because he added: It s traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country with a language barrier and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave You still lied about it, Lochte, and you re a 32-year-old man grow up.We, as a society, really need to stop rewarding those who do bad things. It perpetuates the dialogue, the very true dialogue, that some are above the law and not worth of condemnation, and in some cases, punishment.Hopefully, it s just a rumor that Lochte with appear on the ABC hit show, but if not, maybe they ll come to their senses and choose someone else who children can look up to.Featured Photo by Matt Hazlett/Getty Images | 0 |
21,074 | Pressured by Trump, Mexico ready to discuss NAFTA rules in U.S. talks | MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Mexico is preparing to discuss changes to trade rules about a product’s country of origin to try to avoid a disruptive fight with the United States over commerce. As the two countries begin a difficult new relationship, Mexico sees possible common ground with Trump on the “rules of origin” of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that binds the two countries and Canada, several sources said. Rules of origin are regulations setting out where trade products are sourced from. Although formal negotiations about NAFTA have not begun, the rules could eventually be altered to favor U.S. industry over competitors from outside North America, particularly in Asia. Changes to those rules could help align Mexico with Trump’s industrial strategy of boosting U.S. manufacturing jobs and dovetail with the Mexican government’s calls to strengthen North American competitiveness. It could also help pave the way for a broader deal with Trump over border security and immigration, Mexican officials believe. Talks about NAFTA rules of origin will be a “very important” point of discussion between the two countries now that Trump is in office, a Mexican official said. A White House official said: “As a general rule, it is in the best interests of the U.S. to insist on strong rules of origin provisions in pursuing bilateral negotiations. Lax rules of origin in proposed treaties like the now defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership shrink and weaken our supply chain and contribute to the offshoring of American jobs.” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray and Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo will hold talks with top Trump officials in Washington on Wednesday and Thursday, where security, migration and trade will be discussed. Fears of economic disaster have haunted Mexico since Trump won the presidency in November threatening to tear up NAFTA, impose protectionist tariffs and build a wall on the United States’ southern border to halt illegal immigration. While Mexico is reluctant to alter the 1994 trade accord, officials concede that some changes may be necessary to help keep trade open with the United States, which absorbs 80 percent of its exports. “What we want is to maintain free access for Mexican products, without restrictions, without tariffs and quotas,” Videgaray, the spearhead of the government’s outreach to Trump, said on Monday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, two Mexican government officials and four other people familiar with ongoing discussions said Mexico saw rules of origin as an important avenue to brokering a deal with Trump, provided a fair compromise can be reached. In trade agreements, content rules or rules of origin are often used to determine import duties. Under NAFTA, 62.5 percent of the material in a car or light truck made in Mexico must be from North America to be able to enter the United States tariff free. If the countries agree in negotiations, that percentage could be increased, potentially giving an advantage to U.S. industry at the expense of Asian competitors. For Mexico, changing the rules of origin could be a lesser evil than Trump’s threat to impose a 35 percent tax on certain goods made by foreign companies in Mexico for sale in the United States. Trump’s pressure on U.S. automakers such as Ford to build more cars at home worries Mexico, where the industry has been one of the main drivers of growth and accounted for 18.5 percent of manufacturing GDP in 2015. Trump on Tuesday told the chief executives of the Big Three U.S. automakers - General Motors, Ford and Fiat Chrysler - that he wants to see more auto plants in the United States. Mexico warned it could pull out of NAFTA if a renegotiation of the pact does not benefit it. Trump’s team is behind the push for changes in the origin rules, seeing it as a means of reducing imports from China, two of the Mexican sources familiar with the matter said. Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, spoke of the importance of content rules in protecting the automotive industry during Senate hearings last week, and Canadian media reported that Ross had told Canada rules of origin would be central to NAFTA talks. NAFTA rules of origin apply to goods made in any of the three countries. Two Mexican sources said the Trump administration could push for national content requirements that would ensure that the United States benefits from changes in rules of origin, and not just the NAFTA region as a whole. However, that would be more complex to manage, they added. So as not to hurt companies, any changes would need to be phased in gradually, and the more items that were targeted, the trickier negotiations would be, one of the sources said. Any deal would need to ensure rules changes applied to all countries, not just to Mexico, one Mexican official said. Of the foreign carmakers in Mexico, Toyota might be able to handle a higher NAFTA content ratio better than others. Its Camry car, for example, has very high North American and U.S. content. Other Japanese automakers such as Mazda have a larger proportional reliance on Asia-based suppliers. Kristin Dziczek, a labor analyst at the Center of Automotive Research, said deepening rules of origin could have some impact on U.S. jobs and would hit some foreign automakers harder - especially those that produce more parts and vehicles outside North America. The NAFTA rules are in place to prevent China or other lower wage countries from being able to produce the majority of content in a vehicle and export it to another country to assemble it without paying tariffs. U.S. automakers have not backed tougher rules of origin previously because they wanted flexibility on sourcing parts. | 1 |
21,075 | Bahrain accuses Qatar of seizing three boats: agency | DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain accused Qatar on Monday of illegally seizing three boats with 16 sailors on board, state news agency BNA reported, worsening an already deeply troubled diplomatic situation in the region. Coast Guard Commander Commodore Alaa Siyadi told BNA the boats were seized over the past three days. The report gave no details on the boats or where they were seized. Qatar confirmed it detained fishing boats after they entered its territorial waters illegally, and said the sailors will be released soon. Siyadi said the seizure raised to 15 the number of boats seized, and the number of sailors in Qatari custody to 20, adding that some of the boat seizures date back to 2009, BNA reported. All unauthorized fishing boats receive a warning to leave Qatari waters, and if they are non-compliant, they are referred to the competent authorities, a source at Qatar s Interior Ministry said. The crew will be released within three days, while the ships will be detained until the court makes a decision. Bahrain, together with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, imposed diplomatic, trade and travel sanctions on Qatar in June, accusing it of supporting terrorism, which Doha denies. | 1 |
21,076 | A barb at Germany puts Trump administration on collision course with EU | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For seven years, the United States has fought to keep the euro zone intact, urging European officials toward action and supporting international bailout programs to keep the 17-nation currency union from cracking apart. That appears to have changed less than two weeks into Donald Trump’s new administration. A sharp shift in tone toward Germany, casting the euro as fuel for that country’s massive trade surplus, has raised concerns that the U.S. president’s trade-centric world view may see the euro not as a geopolitical plus, but as another needless bit of multilateralism. While Trump has refrained from commenting directly on the euro, he praised Britain’s decision to exit the European Union as a “great thing” and predicted that others would leave the bloc as the result of an influx of refugees. In comments published in the European press on Tuesday, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said the “grossly undervalued” euro served as a currency for Germany alone, allowing the country to “exploit” the United States and others. On Capitol Hill, Treasury Secretary-designate Steven Mnuchin softened the traditional U.S. “strong dollar” mantra, suggesting that the dollar’s current strength may be working against what has become perhaps the administration’s central economic priority: reviving U.S. manufacturing and exports. Framed narrowly, that could put the United States on a clear a collision course with Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy and home to companies that rival top U.S. industrial giants, as it is with Mexico or China. “There seems to be this desire to go back to a divide and conquer style strategy where the U.S. negotiates against individual countries,” said Douglas Rediker, executive chair of International Capital Strategies and a former U.S. executive board member at the International Monetary Fund. “To single (Germany) out when they don’t have authority to manipulate their currency, requires you to make a leap - which is to say that ‘We don’t care that there actually is a common currency. We are going to take you to account.’” Monetary policy in the euro zone is set by the European Central Bank, and it is the ECB’s money creation policies that have contributed to the euro’s recent decline in value. Like the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, those efforts have been regarded internationally as a reasonable response to the region’s dangerous economic weakness - not as an effort to cheapen the currency to gain a trade advantage. “The question is how far will the new administration go with this?” said Jeromin Zettelmeyer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former German economic official. Trump could, for example, try to tax German goods to offset any perceived advantage gained from a cheap euro, Zettelmeyer said. An import duty has already been suggested as a way to redress alleged currency manipulation by China. “Trump seems to think that having a trade deficit with another country means that the other country is somehow stealing or at least getting the better deal,” said Zettelmeyer. The first days of Trump’s administration have touched off a wave of anxiety in Europe. European Council President Donald Tusk went so far as to list the new government in Washington among the chief “external” threats faced by Europe. Criticism of Germany’s trade surplus, however, is not unique to Trump. The Treasury Department under President Obama added Germany to a “watch list” because of its large trade imbalances. The U.S. trade deficit with Germany stood at $77 billion as of 2015, three times that of other European Union countries combined, and $20 billion more than the deficit with Mexico, one of Trump’s other economic nemeses. But for Obama officials, the aim was to get Germany to spend more and boost its imports of goods from the rest of Europe and the rest of the world. It was not to target the euro’s value and, by extension, the steps taken by the ECB to revive European growth more broadly. Partly under American influence, the Group of 20 nations, including China, has in recent years agreed to consensus language that countries would “refrain from competitive devaluations.” They have also generally avoided criticizing each other’s central banks. That diplomacy is credited at least in part for China’s recent shift toward a more flexible currency regime that organizations like the International Monetary Fund feel have brought the renminbi currency close to fair market value. In their last report on the euro zone, IMF staff said they did think the euro was undervalued. But they said the range could be anywhere from 0 to 10 percent, though likely larger for Germany. “The consequences (of a protectionist United States) affect us Germans as a leading export and import nation particularly hard,” Federation of German Industries chief Dieter Kempf said in a speech in Berlin after the Navarro comments. | 1 |
21,077 | NOT KIDDING: [VIDEO] JEB BUSH SAYS WE NEED TO PASS IMMIGRATION REFORM Because Illegals Are “More Fertile” | jeb! continues his free fall in the polls in spite of the all out push by the GOP to make him the Republican nominee for President in 2016 | 0 |
21,078 | GOP Congressman DEMANDS The Federal Government Be Purged Of Anybody Who Disagrees With Trump | One of the House of Representatives more crazy members, Steve King, is fully on board Trump s train no matter how outlandish or insane he gets. In fact, Steve King thinks the government needs to be purged of all dissenters by which he means anybody who deviates from Trump s (often-changing) beliefs. An article appeared on the Conservative Review about this, and it s obvious that King believes the only way we can move forward is to purge everyone from the White House who doesn t likewise march in lockstep with the Trump train.The first paragraph of that ridiculous story says: At this point in the Obama administration, the newly-minted messiah had full control over every nook and cranny of the executive branch. There was not one morsel of dissent, much less sabotage percolating through the ranks of former GOP presidential appointees within the deep state of the various departments. Fast forward eight years and President Trump is at the cusp of losing control over his presidency if he doesn t immediately fire all of the Obama appointees. This is evidently something on which Steve King, an actual U.S. Representative, believes too. Otherwise why would he tweet the following:@RealDonaldTrump needs to purge Leftists from executive branch before disloyal, illegal & treasonist acts sink us. https://t.co/o1DYtgA7aL Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 6, 2017Leftists are disloyal why, Congressman King? Because they don t march in lockstep with Trump like you do? With Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that Russia is our enemy? And here we thought Republicans actually believed in freedom, including the freedom to, you know, have different ideas about stuff. First off, the Obama administration had plenty of dissent within its ranks. For instance, Congressional Democrats held Obama s former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, responsible for certain parts of the ACA that didn t pass Congress.Others strongly disagreed with how Obama was handling Syria. So, Not one morsel of dissent? OH PLEASE! Obama was not the dictator conservatives tried to brainwash into thinking he was.As evidence of that, we have Steve King, who s one of the worst right-wingers we ever elected to Congress. Republicans are supposed to support freedom, including freedom of anyone and everyone to disagree with the president. In this case, it s Trump, who lost the popular vote. King s ideas are the opposite of freedom in fact, the support fascism, dictatorships, and even monarchies based on the antithesis of American freedom.Trump should welcome dissent it would prevent tunnel vision and help him determine a course of action that s truly beneficial to the entire country. Instead, he s a dictator who only cares about how many agree with him and are willing to puff him up. King is one of those who would rather puff Trump up than do what s right for freedom and the country. If nothing else, calling for a purge of dissenters from the White House should disqualify him from every government job he ll ever hold.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images | 0 |
21,079 | BREAKING: ONLY MLB Player To Kneel During National Anthem ARRESTED For Pulling Gun On Delivery Woman | When Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell took a knee during the national anthem before their game against the Texas Rangers, the Oakland Athletics immediately tweeeted out their support for him. To date, Maxwell is the only MLB player who has chosen to disrespect our flag as a way to help BLM push an anti-cop movement.Here is the Oakland A s response to Bruce Maxwell kneeling during our nation s national anthem:pic.twitter.com/EHXwg8Zpax A's, But Spooky (@Athletics) September 24, 2017Last week, Maxwell was caught lying about being denied service at a local restaurant after kneeling for the anthem.FOX News Oakland A s catcher Bruce Maxwell, 26, claimed this week that a waiter in his Alabama hometown of Huntsville refused him service after identifying him as the MLB player who took the knee during The Star Spangled Banner last month only the waiter has a very different version of events and he told Fox News that was far from what went down. He is outright lying. This is really upsetting as he was given full service, I didn t even know who Bruce Maxwell was, Matt Henry, a 42-year-old waiter at Keegan s Public House, told Fox News. This all started because I carded his friend who wanted to order a beer. According to Henry, an Alabama native, Maxwell was dining with local Democratic councilman Devyn Keith and another friend who produced an expired ID, and the server refused to serve him a drink which upset the friend, who followed him into the kitchen. He asked me, Don t you know who Bruce Maxwell is? , and told me I was making everyone feel uncomfortable. Nobody was even paying attention to them, Henry claimed. I didn t know anything about him or the kneeling. All I know is a friend of mine 15 years ago lost his job for serving someone a drink who happened to be underage, so if anyone looks under 30, I m going to card them. The waiter said that the councilman then complained to the restaurant s manager about Maxwell being uncomfortable, and the manager simply swapped me to another table, and that it was no big deal. The restaurant manager on duty that day, Anne Whalen who requested the restaurant name not be used without permission from the owner also told Fox News that Maxwell s story being portrayed in the media could not be further from the truth. Matt came to me and told me that a guy wanted a beer but his ID was not valid and I told him he absolutely could not give it to him, we can go to jail for that in the state of Alabama, the manager said. It was his friend causing all the fuss, none of us even knew who this baseball player was. I told him I had no idea who he was going on about, she said. Eventually Matt just asked if we could put another server on the table so I did. I can t believe the story. Today, it was announced that Maxwell was arrested in Arizona after a food delivery person told authorities that he pointed a gun at her.TMZ Scottsdale PD tells us Maxwell, 26, was arrested Saturday at 6:08 PM at his Scottsdale, AZ home. Cops say the alleged victim was a female food delivery driver who told them Maxwell pointed a gun at her.It s unclear what led up to the incident.SPD says Maxwell was booked on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and disorderly conduct.Cops say he is in custody and awaiting his initial appearance in front of a judge. | 0 |
21,080 | KASICH WANTS AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS BUT A GRIEVING MOTHER RESPONDS: “Visit the grave of my murdered child” | The many, many murders and rapes of American citizens at the hands of people who re here illegally is sickening. Illegal alien criminals are released or deported just to come back and commit another crime. Our elected leaders have done a poor job of protecting the legal citizens of this country BUT they re welcoming in and expecting us to pay for illegals with our tax dollars. We have a perfect example of that in Gov. John Kasich who s stated that he would give amnesty to the millions of illegals within 100 days of the beginning of his presidency. Unreal! A mother of a son who was killed by an illegal gives her take on this proposal by Kasich: It s all so senseless, Maureen Maloney said of the death of countless Americans at the hands of illegal aliens.Maloney s 23 year-old son Matthew was hit by a repeat-offending illegal alien drunk driver. Although Matthew survived the initial crash, he died as he was subsequently dragged a quarter of a mile caught in the wheel well of the illegal alien s pick up truck as the alien sought to flee the crime scene. Witnesses who saw [Matthew] pinned screaming under the truck ran out and pounded on the vehicle, crying out to the driver who kept going '[Matthew] was alive for a good portion of it, wrote one report from the time. NATIONAL DAY OF REMEMBRANCE FOR STOLEN LIVES He wanted to be a police officer, Maloney said of her young son, who was voted most dependable by his high school senior class. He had taken the civil service exam He liked to help people and do good. He was just a law-abiding person, she said quietly. The person who killed him should not have been in this country, Maloney explained, noting that Matthew s killer had assaulted police officers, he had assaulted paramedics, multiple drunk drivings, domestic violence and each time he had a run in with the police, he d go to court, pay his fine and be let go, Maloney said. Somebody needs to start putting American lives first. Somebody has to take care of the people that are in this country legally, Maloney declared. Read more: BreitbartHERE S THE ACCOUNT OF WHAT HAPPENED IN MILFORD:An illegal immigrant charged with drunken driving and hitting a motorcyclist and dragging him a quarter of a mile to his death was ordered held on $100,000 bail during his arraignment in Milford District Court yesterday. Nicholas Guaman, 34, of Milford, pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide, driving under the influence of alcohol, leaving the scene of an accident involving personal injury and death, possession of an open container, failing to stop for police, unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, failure to yield at a stop sign, wanton or reckless conduct creating risk to a child, and resisting arrest. Mr. Guaman, a native of Ecuador, is being investigated by federal immigration officials. He was held on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer and bail was set at $100,000, according to court officials. Police say Mr. Guaman was drunk when he ran a stop sign about 7:45 p.m. Saturday night and struck the motorcycle driven by Matthew Denice, 23, of Milford. Witnesses told police Mr. Denice was stuck in the wheel well of Mr. Guaman s pickup truck and was dragged about a quarter of a mile, despite people chasing the truck and banging on the sides screaming at the driver to stop. Mr. Denice was declared dead at Milford Regional Medical Center. Mr. Guaman s 6-year-old son, who was in the truck, was not injured. Authorities said Mr. Guaman is in the country illegally and could face deportation. During Mr. Guaman s arraignment, a prosecutor said that after Mr. Guaman s truck dragged Mr. Denice for more than a quarter of a mile, Mr. Guaman made a turn and drove onto a sidewalk. At that point, Mr. Denice was dislodged from the truck. Mr. Guaman then backed up over Mr. Denice and drove off, prosecutors said. He was stopped by Milford police a short time later. Mr. Guaman s lawyer, Craig Tavares, did not immediately return a call seeking comment. We have two major issues here, Mr. Denice s mother, Maureen Maloney, told reporters. The drinking and driving, and illegals driving without a license. I m not against people coming to this country, it s a wonderful country, but do it the right way and abide by the laws once you re here. Pablo Guaman, who owns the truck Nicholas Guaman was driving, was charged with allowing an unlicensed driver to drive a motor vehicle. Authorities were unsure whether the two are related.Via: Telegram | 0 |
21,081 | Kurdish forces pullout from Khanaqin area on Iraq-Iran border, security sources say | BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Kurdish Peshmerga forces pulled out from the area of Khanaqin, on the border with Iran as Iraqi forces prepared to take over their positions, security sources said. The region is home to a large Kurdish community and the site of a small oil field, Khana. Responding to a Kurdish referendum on independence held last month, Iraqi government forces on Monday captured the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk, transforming the country s balance of power. | 1 |
21,082 | Timeline: FBI Director Comey's year of controversy ends in firing | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey followed a turbulent year for Comey in which he became embroiled in controversy over his handling of investigations involving both Trump and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Here is a timeline of the events that preceded Comey’s firing and Trump’s reaction to them. Comey announced he had recommended no criminal charges filed against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information while she was secretary of state but called her “extremely careless” for using a private email server. Trump responded to the news by tweeting that Comey’s decision was an example of a “rigged system” in the United States. “Very very unfair! As usual, bad judgment,” he tweeted. Less than two weeks before the Nov. 8 presidential election, Comey announced in a letter to Congress that the FBI had learned of the existence of emails that appeared to pertain to the Clinton investigation and they would be reviewed whether they contained classified information. The abrupt decision to renew the investigation upset Democrats who believed the announcement would have an impact on voting trends on Election Day and harm Clinton’s chances of victory. Campaigning in Michigan, Trump exulted at the news of a reopened probe into actions surrounding an opponent he had dubbed “Crooked Hillary.” “That was so bad what happened originally, and it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution,” Trump said. Two days after his inauguration, Trump was at an event in the White House and saw Comey in the audience. He called out to him and Comey strode up and they warmly shook hands and briefly embraced. “He’s become more famous than me,” Trump said with a chuckle. Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, after only 24 days in office after it was disclosed that Flynn had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the contacts he had with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak. Comey, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, said the FBI had been investigating possible coordination between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia. Clinton told a Women for Women event in New York that the Comey announcement threw the election for Trump. “If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president,” she said. Trump responded with a late-night series of tweets. “FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” Trump tweeted. White House spokesman Sean Spicer was asked about Trump’s tweet about Comey. “The president has confidence in the director,” Spicer told reporters. May 4, 2017 Comey, in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it made him “mildly nauseous” to think his announcement of the reopening of an investigation into Clinton’s emails affected the 2016 presidential election, but he had no regrets and would make the same decision again. In four hours of testimony Comey gave an impassioned defense of his decision to reopen the Clinton probe. May 8, 2017 ProPublica reported possible inaccuracies about Comey’s statements about Clinton aide Huma Abedin. It said the FBI was said to be preparing to correct the record but that the plan appeared to be on hold with the bureau undecided about what to do. MIDAFTERNOON, May 9, 2017 At his afternoon daily briefing White House spokesman Sean Spicer was asked whether Trump still had confidence in Comey. Unlike his statement from a week earlier when he said Trump had confidence in Comey, Spicer equivocated. “I don’t want to start speaking on behalf of the president without speaking to him first,” Spicer said. ABOUT 5:30 PM, May 9, 2017 In a brief appearance in the White House press room, Spicer announced Trump had accepted the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Comey. A letter provided to the news media from Rosenstein cited Comey’s handling of the Clinton probe. The New York Times reported Comey got the news while in Los Angeles where he had been addressing FBI employees there. When a TV in the background flashed the news, Comey at first thought it was a prank, but then got word he had been fired. At the FBI headquarters in Washington, Trump personal aide Keith Schiller was seen leaving the building. A White House official said he had delivered Trump’s letter announcing Comey’s dismissal. | 1 |
21,083 | Turkey to allow muftis to conduct weddings, sparking uproar on left | ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey s parliament approved a law to allow some state-employed religious officials to administer civil marriages, a move opposition parties view as another blow to secularism and women s rights under President Tayyip Erdogan. The law, passed late on Thursday, will allow muftis - officials employed by the state s Religious Affairs Directorate - to perform civil marriages that were previously administered only by municipal officials. The secularist main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) has vowed to take the law to the Constitutional Court as soon as possible , while the leftist pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) has also opposed it. Critics fear the new law could lead to an increase in underage marriages, citing the religious ceremonies practiced in rural areas where brides are sometimes under 18. This paves the way for child brides because according to Islam, there is no age limit, a girl who has reached puberty can get married, CHP Deputy Chairman Ozgur Ozel told Reuters. Ozel said the law included constitutional breaches and disregarded the founding values of the constitutionally secular Turkish republic. Civil marriage under the age of 18 is illegal in Turkey, although in rural parts of the Sunni Muslim nation of 80 million religious ceremonies are common. HDP lawmaker Huda Kaya said the law was a slightly formalized version of a previous controversial proposal that critics said could allow men accused of sexually abusing girls to avoid punishment if they marry their victims. The proposal was retracted from parliament last year after a public uproar. They say this is against secularism. The church does this in the West, Erdogan said last week. Erdogan, whose roots are in political Islam, and his ruling AK Party say the law is designed to speed up the officiating of weddings, normally carried out by mayors at municipal offices. But one CHP lawmaker, Ali Seker, said each state official had on average fewer than one wedding to conduct per day last year, citing official statistics during a debate in parliament. The law states that the offices of muftis will be given the right to carry out weddings, meaning the religious officials could also appoint Muslim clerics or imams to officiate civil weddings - an authority that has never been granted to non-state employees in modern Turkey. This is the act of legalising a social event that is part of Turkey s traditions. The spirit of the laws must be in harmony with the spirit of social life, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said. Erdogan has spent his political career fighting to bring religion back into public life in Turkey and has cast himself as the liberator of millions of pious Turks whose rights and welfare were neglected under the secular elite. Liberal Turks see Erdogan as attempting to roll back the work of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Western-facing founder of modern Turkey. This is a clear alternative to secularism. Even bringing this bill on the agenda is igniting a spark against secularism, said Canan Gullu, chairwoman of the Turkish Women s Associations Federation, told Reuters. No matter what they do, women s fight will continue, and democracy and secularism will survive. | 1 |
21,084 | Trump Just Threatened Nuclear War And The Internet Exploded With Outrage | Former reality show star Donald Trump has always wanted to get his hands on the nuke button, so naturally, conservatives voted him into power. In December, Trump tweeted, The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes then today he threatened nuclear war with North Korea. Trump is itching to get us into another war but he s threatening devastation like the world has never seen. From his luxury golf course in Bedminster, N.J., Trump told reporters that North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening and I said they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before. Watch:President Trump: If North Korea makes any more threats to the U.S., "they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen" pic.twitter.com/8dQed79L1W NBC News (@NBCNews) August 8, 2017The Internet is freaking out, probably because people don t want to die.The world has seen fire and fury. pic.twitter.com/VVsoRkKuFG Schooley (@Rschooley) August 8, 2017Whelp, planet earth had a good run I guess David Alston (@Daversa2) August 8, 2017@qjurecic OMG! Please Congress, it is past time to take real action to remove this nut from power! Terri Ferguson (@TerriFe40448858) August 8, 2017We're all gonna die. https://t.co/5FxLqSdTt6 Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) August 8, 2017Basically. pic.twitter.com/37eBkxArek ((Andrew Challand)) (@AndrewChalland) August 8, 2017Trump is the larger worry. North Korea is a threat but Trump is quicker to act, especially to divert the Russia investigation. Sad times. Patricia Kelly (@eiretrish) August 8, 2017Just to remind everybody on the day nuclear war has been threatened by the US President, that we are only 8 months in Howard Rogers (@Pr1nceOfDarknes) August 8, 2017@POTUS You are clueless. Nuclear war is unacceptable & your threats to initiate hellfire jumpstart 25th Amendment lsilbers (@lsilbers) August 8, 2017 pic.twitter.com/Qnv3GN1xJx Annalise Brown (@SWFLib) August 8, 2017.@POTUS has completely unchecked authority to start a nuclear war. One call would lead to tweet-length launch codes firing missiles in 2 min https://t.co/8wVY3YHisr Stephen Young (@StephenUCS) August 8, 2017#KoreanProblem @NicolleDWallace Are we calmly discussing nuclear war? What the F**k is wrong with us? This bozo is over his head! Robert Spiess (@chefbob50) August 8, 2017Can you get to DC and stop that madman from starting a nuclear war, someone needs to or he will be the end of us all!Concerned Citizen Vicky Howard Harris (@Victoria101080) August 8, 2017With two maniacal leaders barking at each other, if either of their threats came to fruition, either the U.S. or North Korea or North Korea and South Korea could just attack each other without warning at any given point. Just like that.Trump has his finger on the big red nuke button and he s been dying to try it out. In the past, he has hinted that he would launch a nuclear strike against ISIS but now he s dealing with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un who is equally crazy.If a North Korean missile manages to make it into the air without being struck down, we d better hope that U.S. and South Korean defenses are ready. At any rate, people will die if a strike is successful.Conservatives wanted to stick it to us because of Barack Obama, a man they detested without cause, so they gave us Donald Trump. Well, they sure showed us a thing or two! If Trump really thought this threat was necessary, he wouldn t remain on his 17-day vacation.Image: screen capture via a gif. | 0 |
21,085 | U.S. House panel cancels plan to introduce Puerto Rico bill | WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republicans on a U.S. House of Representatives panel said they were making progress on a Puerto Rico debt relief bill that will take the same basic approach as an earlier failed version, despite cancelling plans to unveil new legislation on Wednesday. The House Natural Resources Committee said more time was needed to refine the bill’s language. House Democratic leadership now expects legislation from the committee before the end of the week. Competing forces have fought over the bill and raised concerns that creditor rights and long-established municipal bond market hierarchy would be set aside in a broader plan to fix Puerto Rico’s festering debt problems that have resulted in a breakdown in the island’s social services. “The new bill itself already protects existing lawful creditor priorities and liens. The integrity of creditor hierarchy will be preserved,” said Parish Braden, spokesman for the Natural Resources Committee said on Wednesday. HNRC Chairman Rob Bishop told Reuters on Monday the bill is still expected to include the installation of an independent oversight board to lead the restructuring of the U.S. commonwealth’s credit and work with the local government to develop an economic reform plan. “The introduction (of the bill) is not being delayed due to the underlying foundation of the board,” Braden said, adding: “There aren’t hang ups. There are a number of refinements to the bill being made to ensure internal consistency among the titles (of the bill).” One source familiar with the delay said it was due to a need to refine language related to the minimum wage and land-use issues over the island of Vieques. U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday her party could not support the latest legislative effort but still hopes for an agreement within a few days. “We were disappointed that the bill we saw yesterday wasn’t something we could support, and so another few days of back and forth I think will produce something that we can take to the floor,” Pelosi told reporters. “I’m hoping maybe by Friday, so that we can have something for next week,” she added. Puerto Rico has already defaulted on some of its debt and faces an overall bill of $70 billion it cannot pay. A staggering 45 percent poverty rate and increased migration among its 3.5 million citizens to the U.S. mainland drains economic activity. The ranking Democrat on the HNRC issued a statement that said the families on the island needed relief from cuts to public services but remained hopeful a deal is close at hand. “We are making progress, but we are not there yet. The situation in Puerto Rico is dire, but a bill that doesn’t solve the problem, or doesn’t pass, won’t help anyone,” Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona said. Puerto Rico defaulted on May 1 for a third time on some of its debt, missing a roughly $400 million payment owed by the Government Development Bank, the island’s main fiscal agent. The May 1 default and the nearly $2 billion July 1 debt payments have spurred congressional activity. “(Senator Chuck) Schumer from the Senate is pushing to get something done. But the problem here is that Democrats are going to push for protections for unions and for pensioners and we feel like they should be at the bottom of the heap because that’s the way the law states,” Republican Representative John Fleming of Louisiana, a Tea Party favorite and member of the HNRC, told Reuters on Wednesday. “I think there’s just big divisions on how this goes. But I think the way it was previously set up, it’s not going to fly,” Fleming said. | 1 |
21,086 | MADNESS IN BERKELEY: Anarchists Clash With Trump Supporters At Pro-Trump Rally: “That guy got hit in the head really hard” [Video] | THE ANTIFA ANARCHISTS ARE IN ALL BLACK:WOMAN INTERVIEWED WHO HAS NOT CLUE WHY SHE S PROTESTING I M A FRIENDLY ANARCHIST I HATE CAPITALISM AMBULANCE TRYING TO GET TO TRUMP SUPPORTER HIT IN THE HEAD:ANTIFA ANARCHISTS CHASE AND ATTACK TRUMP SUPPORTERS:Fighting is spreading to the streets in Berkeley. This isn t a Trump rally anymore. It s the anarchists. pic.twitter.com/cFIu7akCSX Lizzie Johnson (@lizziejohnsonnn) March 4, 2017TRUMP SUPPORTER PEPPER SPRAYED BY ANTIFA ANARCHIST:BAMN Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means NecessarySat. March 4 at 12 pm in Berkeley at MLK Civic Center Park: Confront and Defeat the Trump Movement! Counter-protest the pro-Trump rally in Berkeley (scheduled for 2 pm). Very proud that the anti-Trump and civil rights movement organizing has already accomplished so much. The pro-Trump groups are dropping like flies. First neo-fascist group Proud Boys dropped out, now the racist Berkeley College Republicans have promised not to come. But the organizer of the event is still trying to get people to come from other parts of California. Let s make clear that hate speech has no place in Berkeley or anywhere.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysy7oV_07PQ&feature=youtu.beLATINA SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ANTIFA ANARCHISTS: | 0 |
21,087 | Hillary Clinton CRUSHES Donald Trump In This ‘Solid’ Red State | As polls show Clinton beating Donald Trump in Kansas and catching up in Georgia, another solid red state is showing the presumptive Democratic nominee beating the Republican nominee.A recent poll conducted by OH Predictive Insight shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump in Arizona by 5 points, 47-42 (with approximately 6 percent backing a third party candidate and less than approximately 6 percent unsure).The poll surveyed a whopping 1,060 likely Democratic, Republican, Independent and Non-Declared voters across the Grand Canyon state, and found that Trump s trailing comes from his serious deficit with women and urban voters. The last time a Democrat carried Arizona was in 1996, when Bill Clinton was elected to his second term.The pollsters responded with shock at Arizona s competitiveness. Mike Noble, managing partner of the polling company, said of the findings: It s very surprising to think that Hillary Clinton may carry Arizona, a state that holds the narratives of SB1070, two nationally known anti-illegal immigration sheriffs, liberal gun laws and consistently conservative constituents. Wes Gullet, another partner in the company and a former Phoenix mayoral candidate, echoed Noble s shock at the results: It s shocking to think that a Democratic presidential candidate would carry Arizona if the election were held today, considering that every statewide office in Arizona is held by a Republican as well as significant majorities in the Arizona House and Senate. Arizona should be a reliable red state. The poll also showed 10 percent of Democrats backing Trump while 13 percent of Republicans are backing Clinton. Clinton also led Trump among Independents 45-38, a seven point advantage.In 2012, Mitt Romney won Arizona by 9 percent. The fact that Clinton nabs Independent voters and more Republicans than Trump does with Democrats could turn Arizona blue.The state that has given us SB 1070, Jan Brewer, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a cranky John McCain may be turning blue after all. Maybe putting a racist, sexist xenophobe as the Republican Party s nominee wasn t such a good idea.Featured image via Sara D. Davis/Getty Images | 0 |
21,088 | Vote recount effort races forward despite Trump team rejection | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump’s transition team on Monday pushed back against an effort to recount Nov. 8’s presidential election votes, calling the effort “nonsense,” but offering no evidence to back a weekend Trump tweet alleging millions of illegal votes. With the clock winding down for voters and candidates to seek recounts in states across the country, Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein requested a recount in Pennsylvania on Monday just hours before the state’s deadline. Filing in Pennsylvania three days after she filed a similar request in Wisconsin, Stein’s campaign said she would file a similar request in Michigan by its deadline on Wednesday. Following Trump’s stunning victory in the presidential contest, talk of recounts has swirled, with the Republican president-elect adding a surprise twist to the discussion. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that “serious voter fraud” occurred in California, New Hampshire, and Virginia, states won by his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. All three states rejected Trump’s claim. The White House said on Monday there has been no evidence of widespread election fraud in the presidential contest. Still, Wisconsin officials on Monday prepared to launch a recount of the state’s more than 25 million votes, following Stein’s request last week, a move that was joined by Clinton’s lawyers. “If nothing else, this will give us a very good audit,” Mark Thomsen, the chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said on Monday. “It’s going to reassure Wisconsin voters that we have a fair system, that we’re not counting illegal votes.” A statement on the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s website said the recount was scheduled to begin on Thursday and had to be completed by Dec. 13. Stein’s campaign has raised the money needed to pay filing fees for recount requests in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But she still aims to raise $800,000 more to cover fees for attorneys and other personnel needed to oversee the recount, said an official with her campaign. The official said any funds left over would be disbursed according to Federal Elections Commission guidelines. California voters still could request recounts there. But the deadline for requesting a recount in New Hampshire has already passed and the margin of victory in Virginia was larger than what is necessary for a recount to occur, according to election officials in those states. New Hampshire’s deputy secretary of state, David Scanlan, said there was no evidence supporting Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. “Voter fraud does occur, but it occurs in isolated instances,” he said. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla called Trump’s allegations unsubstantiated and Virginia Commissioner of Elections Edgardo Cortes said they were unfounded. | 1 |
21,089 | Republicans Christie, Fiorina drop White House bids | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former business executive Carly Fiorina ended their presidential campaigns on Wednesday, narrowing the field challenging front-runner Donald Trump in the race for the 2016 Republican nomination. Christie, 53, said in a Facebook post he was leaving the race “without an ounce of regret,” a day after the combative Republican’s sixth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary raised doubts about his viability as a candidate. Fiorina, 61, a former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, said in a Facebook post she would suspend her campaign. The only woman in the Republican field placed seventh in New Hampshire, one of a series of state-by-state nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. Trump’s remaining opponents, most of them mainstream Republicans, will likely benefit from their departures, which leave seven Republicans from a field that once had 17 candidates. Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary by almost 20 points. The fifth-place finish of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who had hoped to emerge as Trump’s main rival after a surprise third-place showing in Iowa last week, leaves Trump without a clear challenger among the so-called establishment candidates. On the Democratic side, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist, easily defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. The victories in both parties by candidates considered outsiders, testified to the sizable share of American voters upset over the slow economic recovery, immigration and America’s place in the world and who are willing to shake up Washington. Trump, 69, a billionaire businessman, has a double-digit lead over conservative Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in opinion polls for the next Republican contest, the South Carolina primary on Feb. 20, according to a Real Clear Politics average of opinion polls. Christie poured much of his campaign’s resources into New Hampshire and had considered a good showing there critical. He won only about 7 percent of votes on Tuesday, despite a pugnacious performance at a Republican debate last weekend. “Christie needed to drop out. In short, he does not have the money or organization to be viable in South Carolina and beyond,” said Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray. “Christie was certainly hurt by Trump stealing his ‘telling it like it is thunder,’ but Christie was also out-organized in the ultimate retail politics state,” Murray said. SANDERS COURTS AFRICAN-AMERICANS Trump’s victory in New Hampshire showed pundits were wrong to think he would quickly self-destruct based on his penchant for insults and imprecise plans for the presidency. He had lost last week to Cruz in the first nominating contest, the Iowa caucuses. Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, finished second in New Hampshire, followed by Cruz, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Rubio. The odds of Trump winning the White House, once seen as an extremely long shot, improved significantly after his victory in New Hampshire, online betting site Ladbrokes PLC said. Trump is now at 9/2, compared with 7/1 last week, meaning his chances of victory in November are now 18 percent. Clinton still had the best odds of becoming president at 50/50, Ladbrokes said. On the Democratic side, Sanders, 74, courted the African-American vote on Wednesday, having breakfast with civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton at a restaurant in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Clinton, 68, currently has strong support from black voters, who will be crucial in the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Feb. 27. Sharpton and Obama met at the same restaurant during Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign - a piece of symbolism for Sanders as he tries to expand his appeal beyond liberals in the U.S. Northeast. “My concern is that in January of next year for the first time in American history, a black family will be moving out of the White House,” Sharpton, a Baptist minister and television talk-show host, told reporters afterward. “I do not want black concerns to be moved out with them. We must be front and center and not marginalized. And Senator Sanders coming here this morning further makes it clear that we will not be ignored,” he said. Sharpton discussed a spate of police shootings of black males and other issues with the senator. Sharpton said he would not endorse a candidate until he met with Clinton. The Congressional Black Caucus will endorse Clinton on Thursday and its members will be active in supporting her campaign, the Washington Post reported, citing U.S. Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, chairman of CBC’s political action committee. Clinton has a long history of support for civil rights. She also has benefited from husband Bill Clinton’s popularity in the black community during his presidency, although that became strained during her fierce 2008 primary battle with Obama. Clinton’s campaign, highlighting her popularity among black and Latino voters, said in a statement on Tuesday: “It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for a Democrat to win the nomination without strong levels of support among African-American and Hispanic voters.” | 1 |
21,090 | Groups see climate science review as chance to undercut regulation | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration will soon begin a review that will question the veracity of the climate change science used by President Barack Obama’s administration as the basis for environmental regulations. The move by the Environmental Protection Agency to launch public debates between scientists on climate research, known as red-team, blue-team exercises, would be the first major effort by the Republican administration to challenge the long-standing scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Advocates who have petitioned the EPA to reverse the scientific finding underlying U.S. regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions see the proposal to scrutinize mainstream climate science as a first step in that direction. “It’s a way to survey the landscape before reopening the endangerment finding,” said Myron Ebell, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the groups that filed a petition with the agency to undo the 2009 scientific determination that formed the basis for the Democratic Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had authority under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases from cars if the agency determined they endangered human health. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spoken several times about the merits of opening the climate change debate up to the public. The website Climatewire on Friday cited a senior administration official, who said Pruitt plans to launch the back-and-forth scientific critiques formally. Francis Menton, a lawyer who filed an endangerment finding petition in January on behalf of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, said Pruitt told an event at the Manhattan Institute think tank in New York on Friday that he would launch the debates in the next few months. Menton said he asked Pruitt whether he had made a decision on reopening the endangerment finding. Pruitt said the agency is weighing its options. The review “can create a body of scientific work that can be trustworthy and dependable to make regulatory choices and decisions,” said Rob Henneke, of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a third group that filed an endangerment finding petition. Unlike the other two, it has challenged the legality of the endangerment finding, not the science. Environmental groups are confident that Pruitt will not be successful if he tries to undo the endangerment finding because they expect the courts will side with the scientific consensus that human beings cause climate change. Pruitt and the EPA would need to build up a new case that shows carbon dioxide is innocuous and counter the volumes of scientific research that support the finding. “If he has any grasp of scientific and legal reality, he would realize that it’s a fool’s errand to reverse the endangerment determination,” said David Doniger, climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. “This could be a way for him to keep the right-wing fringe groups occupied and also accomplish the goal of further confusing the public debate,” he said. Ebell, who was also the transition leader of the Trump EPA, had previously been critical of Pruitt’s hesitation to take on the endangerment finding because of the time and staffing it would require. The Trump administration has not yet appointed second-tier assistant administrators to run different policy divisions of the agency. “I think (the red-team, blue-team process) is a logical first step, but I don’t think it commits the administrator to anything yet,” Ebell said. | 1 |
21,091 | Democrats Give Trump A Big F**ck You After He Attacks Them In Insane Twitter Rant | Donald Trump s Twitter feed is always a goldmine of crazy. Unfortunately, since the orange overlord is now squatting in the Oval Office, those nutty tweets tend to have the ability to derail important policy initiatives, and can therefore have disastrous effects for the nation and sometimes the world. Case in point the fact that he insisted upon attacking Democratic leaders that he had a meeting with regarding the debt ceiling, the Children s Health Insurance Program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and other important domestic policy initiatives. Apparently, Trump saw fit to take to Twitter to accuse his old pals Chuck and Nancy of not being strong enough on crime and immigration, and therefore doesn t see a way to make deals with them:Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017Given this out-of-the-blue attack, Democratic Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a joint statement promptly pulling out of the meeting, which reads: Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Leader Pelosi then took to Twitter herself to take Trump on:Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won t result in an agreement, we ve asked @SenateMajLdr & @SpeakerRyan to meet this afternoon. Read my full statement w/ @SenSchumer here: https://t.co/v17WhoEJFU Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017It s likely best that the Democrats don t go meet with Trump anyway. He is clearly becoming more and more unhinged by the day. There was absolutely no reason for him to attack these leaders who had set up a time to meet with him in good faith. Then again, we re led by a crazy man, and there s not much sense in anything at all anymore.Look for that government shutdown, folks. It s coming.Watch a video on the situation, below:Featured image via Zach Gibson Pool/Getty Images. | 0 |
21,092 | New Zealand's ruling Nationals win most votes, New Zealand First Party kingmaker | WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand s ruling National Party won the largest number of votes in the country s general election on Saturday, securing a comfortable margin over the Labour Party after what had promised to be the most hotly contested race in recent history. National and Labour had been almost neck and neck in opinion polls, with charismatic 37-year old Jacinda Ardern almost single-handedly dragging Labour back into the race after taking over the party s leadership in August. National took 46 percent of the vote, the Electoral Commission said, while support for Labour was 35.8 percent. A final tally including overseas votes will be released on Oct. 7. The results set up the nationalist New Zealand First Party to hold the balance of power and form the next government with 7.5 percent of the ballot. Veteran New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has been minister under both major parties and has not said which party he would favor as a coalition partner. Previously he has backed the party with the largest number of votes. All party leaders said they would have conversations over the next few days, with some of them already trying to woo Peters on election night. I want to acknowledge the strong performance of Winston Peters and New Zealand First, Bill English said in a speech to his supporters. The voters of New Zealand have given New Zealand First a role in forming the next government, he said. For English, who campaigned heavily on National s economic credentials after taking the party leadership last year, the strong showing was a vindication after National crashed to its worst ever election result in 2002 under his first stint as leader. Opinion polls leading up to the vote had been volatile with two recent ones giving National a near 10 point lead over Labour. National has been in power for nearly a decade. Bill English and National have taken the largest number of votes. I ve called Bill and acknowledged that, Ardern told her supporters, adding she was planning conversations with both the Green and New Zealand First parties. It s not over yet. Peters sounded buoyant but kept his cards close to his chest. We have been strong enough and honest enough with our supporters to make it home, he said. New Zealand First had not all the cards but we do have the main cards, he added, saying he would not be rushed into giving any answers immediately. Ardern and English were expected to maintain fiscal prudence, but to differ on monetary policy, trade and immigration. That would likely have implications for the New Zealand dollar, the world s 11th most-traded currency in 2016. The New Zealand dollar has tended to rise when National rose in the polls. The thin trading conditions typical of early morning in Asia mean a sharp but short-lived move on the NZD is possible on Monday, said Joseph Carpuso, senior currency strategist at CBA. New Zealand uses a German-style proportional representation system in which a party, or combination of parties, needs 61 of Parliament s 120 members - usually about 48 percent of the vote - to form a government. The results secured 58 seats for National in parliament, and 45 for Labour. New Zealand First has nine seats and Greens, which won 5.8 percent of the votes, have seven. National s 58 seats were higher than Labour and Greens put together at 52, but neither combination had enough to govern on their own. It s all over, bar the special votes - but even they won t change the basic maths. They won t change any crucial seats and National is extremely unlikely to go up. So Winston Peters rules, said Bryce Edwards, analyst at Wellington-based Critical Politics. A record 1.2 million ballots were cast before the day of the election, accounting for about a third of the 3.3 million New Zealanders enrolled to vote. Special votes , which include ballots from New Zealanders overseas and those who vote outside their home constituencies, will be released on Oct. 7. These are estimated to represent 15 percent of total votes and could have a considerable impact. I would expect us to get a bit of a lift out of those special votes, said Ardern. | 1 |
21,093 | Africa eyes senior Trump envoy visit for U.S. policy hints | ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley arrived in Ethiopia on Monday, one of the first senior members of President Donald Trump s administration to visit Africa, on a trip diplomats hope will shed light on his plans to engage with the continent. Africa is traditionally overshadowed by more urgent issues, and the Trump administration has so far been hands-off. After meetings on Monday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and a senior African Union official, Haley told reporters she hoped this was the beginning of a stronger relationship with the AU and our African partners. The United States very much sees Africa as a very important part of the world. We see great opportunities in Africa, we see challenges in Africa, but we want to support and help in those situations, Haley said. But most importantly we want to see how we can partner together, whether that is through economic development, whether it is through strategic practices, whether it s through political solutions, she said. Trump has been vocal about North Korea, Iran and tackling Islamic State militants during his first nine months in office, but said little about Africa until he held a lunch last month with nine leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. It was there he announced he would send Haley to South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo to help with efforts to broker peace in both countries. Millions of people have been displaced by ongoing violence, with U.N. peacekeeping missions deployed in both, each costing more than $1 billion annually. Haley plans to take a critical look at the U.N. operations during her visits. Haley said she also plans to meet with South Sudan President Salva Kiir and Congolese President Joseph Kabila to deliver a strong message that their governments need to stop making the work of aid workers and peace-keepers more difficult. Some African diplomats hope Haley s trip will spark a conversation in Washington on the administration s broader engagement with Africa. We hope that after this trip the administration will sit down and maybe before the end of the year we can hear their Africa strategy, said a senior African diplomat at the United Nations, speaking on condition of anonymity. We would have wished it was earlier, but it s never too late. Haley s visit to Africa comes after four U.S. soldiers were killed during an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger. The Niger crisis has shown that they can t take a hands-off approach to (Africa). They have to remain engaged because they have boots on the ground, said a second senior African diplomat at the United Nations, also speaking on condition of anonymity. At his lunch with African leaders, Trump said there was tremendous business potential and he has friends trying to get rich in Africa. But he also noted the threat from militants such as Islamic State, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram and al Qaeda. The United States is proud to work with you to eradicate terrorist safe havens, he said. And a number of you have told me ... that we ve been doing a very good job over the last six or seven months in particular. However, in June the United States said it did not want the United Nations to fund a proposed African force to fight Islamist militants in West Africa, U.N. diplomats said. France on Friday pushed Washington to step up support for the force so it does not fail, leaving French troops to carry the burden. Haley has been campaigning to cut U.N. peacekeeping costs, since the United States is the largest contributor. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad Al Hussein bluntly summed up U.S. global engagement on Thursday as caught somewhere between isolationism and militarism, with no clear direction in foreign policy apart from a few notable, exceptional, files. As with most of the key regional bureaus at the U.S. State Department, there is currently no permanent chief diplomat for Africa. Rather, the Bureau of African Affairs is led by career diplomat Don Yamamoto as an acting assistant secretary of state. While Yamamoto is an experienced Africa hand, diplomats say that leading any of the agency s regional bureaus in an acting capacity means that an official is not perceived abroad as having the full backing of the White House and has more limited influence at home within the U.S. bureaucracy. They seem to be relying very heavily on their ambassadors on the ground and not having a Washington-centric approach to their relationship with Africa, said the second diplomat. Haley s colleague in Trump s cabinet, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, traveled to the West African nation of Togo in August to review a free trade pact with sub-Saharan Africa, but talks ended with no decision. In April Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited an important U.S. military base in Djibouti. | 1 |
21,094 | Anti-Assad nations say no to Syria reconstruction until political process on track | NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States, Britain and other countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not support the reconstruction of the country until there is a political transition away from Assad, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Monday. The Friends of Syria group, an alliance of mainly Western and Gulf Arab countries, met in New York on Monday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly at a time when the conflict in Syria, now in its seventh year, appears to be less urgent with attention focused on the North Korean nuclear threat and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal. We believe that the only way forward is to get a political process going and to make it clear to the Iranians, Russians and Assad regime that we, the like-minded group, will not support the reconstruction of Syria until there is such a political process and that means, as Resolution 2254 says, to a transition away from Assad, Johnson said. He was speaking after a meeting of about 14 countries that back the Syrian opposition including France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States. The U.N. Security Council has adopted a Syria transition road map through a Geneva-led process. Russia joined the war on Assad s behalf in 2015, turning the momentum in his favor. Assad also enjoys robust support from Iran and Lebanon s Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the moderate Syrian opposition is moribund and the United States has largely stepped back from a leading role in Syrian diplomacy. Earlier this year the Trump administration also halted the CIA s covert program to equip and train certain rebel groups fighting Assad. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Satterfield, said all those at the meeting agreed that there has got to be a political process if there is to be any international participation in the reconstruction of Syria. The regime and the regime supporters cannot declare a victory solely based on a map and colors of positions on the ground, Satterfield said. The reconstruction of Syria depends very much on that credible political process. That political process is focused on Geneva and the role of the United Nations. The meeting on Monday was in stark contrast to last year s which took place after a ceasefire deal between the United States and Russia effectively collapsed when an aid convoy was bombed in Aleppo, Syria s largest city. Aleppo is now in the hands of Assad s forces and Assad himself is in a much stronger position, thanks to Russian and Iranian support. The last major international attempt to resolve the crisis ended in failure when the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), which included Iran, was cast aside after Syrian government forces retook the rebel stronghold of Aleppo in 2016. Russia, Turkey and Iran have been negotiating separately for months in Astana to try to reduce the violence on the ground by creating de-escalation zones across the country, although those talks do not cover a long-term political solution We discussed here how to bring it back to the U.N.-led process and Geneva, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstr m told Reuters. Asked if there was consensus on that, she said I would say so. It s good if the Astana process leads to de-escalation and a reduction of the violence but it has to lead into the political process. Earlier on Monday, France warned that the status quo in Syria risked leading to the country s permanent fragmentation and opening the door to new radical Islamist groups. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters in New York he would hold a meeting with the four other permanent members of the Security Council - Britain, China, Russia and the United States - on Thursday to persuade them to create a contact group to give new impetus to end the seven-year conflict. Le Drian said realism dictated that Assad could not stay in power after millions of Syrians had fled the country due to the war, but that it was vital major powers worked together to help revive U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva. Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said the French contact group proposal was not discussed at the Friends of Syria meeting. But Riyad Hijab, a prominent Syrian opposition leader, said he told French President Emmanuel Macron that the initiative was important in part because of American withdrawal and Russia is dominating the entire process. So Mr. Macron s initiative is the right way to fix this because it s vital all five (permanent Security Council members) are involved in the process. | 1 |
21,095 | BREAKING: CLOSE FRIEND Of Bill And Hillary Clinton, Huge Democrat Donor ARRESTED For Threatening To Kill President-Elect Trump At Inauguration | The man arrested by Miami Beach police Tuesday for allegedly threatening President-elect Donald Trump online is a member of a prominent northeast family close to Bill and Hillary Clinton. According to the Daily Mail, he once gave $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee.Suspect Dominic Puopolo Jr., 51, sat near Hillary Clinton when she delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Puopolo s mother, Sonia, who died in one of the jets that flew into the World Trade Center on 9-11.During that eulogy on Oct. 6, 2001 in Boston, the former presidential candidate referred to Dom Jr. s latest computer wizardry. The wizard is now being held in a Miami-Dade County jail after using Twitter to threaten Trump s life.Trump is scheduled to be sworn in Friday in Washington, D.C. as Puopolo remains incarcerated on a charge of threatening to harm a public servant.Puopolo reportedly admitted to posting a video to Twitter, saying: This is the 16th of January 2017, I will be at the review/ inauguration and I will kill President Trump, President elect Trump today. He was nabbed after leaving a Washington Avenue Subway sandwich shop about 4 p.m. Tuesday.Puopolo, however, may not be the average Trump hater. On various social media platforms, where he posts as JesusChrist1701, the computer consultant claims to have testified in terror cases as an expert witness in a German federal court in Hamburg from 2003 to 2008.He also says he served in the Navy.He once posted a photo of himself holding an image of his mother in front of a wall that sports a picture of him with Colin Powell and a famous shot of Ronald Reagan.Puopolo has published a number of pictures of outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry, whom he calls a friend. Daily Mail | 0 |
21,096 | This University Will Punish You For Being Raped, Effectively Silencing Victims | Imagine being a woman going to a university where instead of only investigating the person who sexually assaulted you, they also choose to discipline you as well. That s exactly what s happening to young women who attend Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.BYU prides itself on Mormon values, yet apparently standing up for women who have been sexually assaulted is not one of those values. Instead, with their actions, they are in turn giving permission to rape, because it s likely not going to get reported, because the women being assaulted are also being punished.One woman named Brooke told CNN after she brought her story to BYU s Title IX office, an office that is supposed to handle sexual violence: I thought there would be some mercy, you know. I told them everything, and because of the fact that I was on drugs, they used that reason to kick me out of school after reporting it. You see, BYU has an Honor Code, and within that code one must not commit sexual misconduct or participate in illegal substances. When Brooke came forward she explained that the sexual assault came after she had taken LSD, the school decided to send her a letter that read: You are being suspended from Brigham Young University because of your violation of the Honor Code including continued illegal drug used and consensual sex, effective immediately. And as it turns out, Brooke is not alone. Several women have come forward with similar stories of being shamed by BYU s archaic Honor Code. So many, in fact, that there is now a petition asking the school to stop punishing victims of sexual assault. The woman who put together the petition shares her story, and says: I don t deserve punishment for choosing to report my rape to the police. But now I have to deal with a criminal trial and an honor code investigation. I don t want anyone to have to go through what I m experiencing now. That s why I m insisting BYU creates a way for victims to come forward without being reported to the Honor Code Office. Also stating: I spoke up at a sexual assault awareness event at BYU last week. In response, Title IX official Sarah Westerberg defended her choice to deny me services and to initiate an Honor Code investigation against me. She recognized that the honor code has a chilling effect on reporting of rape and that Title IX does not apologize for that. I felt like I was being treated not as the victim, but as a perpetrator. BYU has made it clear that victims will be punished if they report sexual violence. That s a huge reason why so many survivors are afraid to come forward and contributes to why BYU s rape and sexual assault numbers are inaccurately low. Without an immunity clause, BYU will continue to be a hostile environment for rape victims, and that emboldens offenders and shames victims.I can only imagine how many rape survivors have not gotten justice or help to heal because it might hurt their academic standing. It s just absolutely outrageous that women have to fear being suspended or expelled because they were victimized by a sexual perpetrator. They did not ask for what happened to them. They are NOT the guilty party. BYU better take a good long look at their practices and how they handle reports of sexual assault, because this is utterly unacceptable. Women should feel safe in their learning environment, and know that their school will be there for them if anything were to ever happen. Instead, they are victim-shamed and robbed of their education. Appalling.Featured image via Wikimedia Commons | 0 |
21,097 | Late-night TV show host Kimmel blasts senator over healthcare bill | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Television talk show host Jimmy Kimmel called out a Republican U.S. senator pushing the party’s latest healthcare overhaul plan, saying the lawmaker had “lied right to my face” about efforts to scrap Obamacare by backing a measure that would strip coverage from many Americans. Kimmel, who became part of the debate on U.S. healthcare legislation in May after emotionally discussing his newborn son’s emergency heart surgery, took aim at Senator Bill Cassidy on his show on Tuesday night. Along with fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Cassidy authored a bill that now has White House support to dismantle the 2010 Affordable Care Act passed under former Democratic President Barack Obama. Kimmel has called for healthcare that will ensure treatment for children who do not come from wealthy families, like his. Cassidy appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in May and said he supported access to preventative care regardless of income. Cassidy had said any healthcare bill must pass what he called “the Jimmy Kimmel test” of providing affordable care for such children and include preventative care for every American. “This guy Bill Cassidy just lied right to my face,” Kimmel said on Tuesday. “This new bill actually does pass the Jimmy Kimmel test but a different Jimmy Kimmel test. With this one, your child with a pre-existing condition will get the care he needs - if, and only if, his father is Jimmy Kimmel. Otherwise, you might be screwed.” Cassidy responded to Kimmel’s comments with a statement defending his bill as “must-pass” legislation to help cover people and noting Republicans faced a Sept. 30 deadline. The Graham-Cassidy plan would allow states to opt out of some consumer protections and waive regulations requiring insurers to include certain benefits, as well as end the expansion of the Medicaid insurance program for the poor and disabled. It remains unclear whether Republicans have enough support to pass the bill, which also would replace Obamacare with a system giving states block grants to fund their own healthcare programs. Democrats have been united in opposing Republican efforts to make good on their years-long pledge to dismantle current law, a promise that also was central to U.S. Republican President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. A bipartisan group of governors, major health industry groups and consumer advocates also opposed the latest bill. Kimmel and others urged Congress to instead stabilize current insurance markets with a package spearheaded by the Senate health committee’s Republican chairman and ranking Democrat. “Right now, there’s a bipartisan group of senators working to improve the healthcare system we have,” Kimmel said on his show. “Go pitch in and be a part of that ... And if not? Stop using my name.” | 1 |
21,098 | Three suicide bombers kill 12 in Nigeria, emergency agency says | MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Suspected suicide bombers killed at least 12 people and injured 26 others on Monday in northeast Nigeria s state of Borno, epicenter of the Islamist militant Boko Haram insurgency, the chairman of the local emergency agency said. The attacks are the latest in a series of bombings in the restive northeast that have killed at least 200 people since June 1, according to a Reuters tally. Three suicide bomber infiltrated a settlement called Mashimari, in Konduga Local Government, said Ahmed Satomi, chairman of Borno s State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA). The area is around 35 kilometers southeast of the state capital, Maiduguri. Another SEMA official said the suicide bombers joined a gathering of farmers in Mashimari before detonating their devices around 11:45 a.m. (1045 GMT) as they mingled with the group. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the use of suicide bombers is a hallmark of Boko Haram. Boko Haram, which is trying to create an Islamic state in the Lake Chad region that includes northeast Nigeria, has killed more than 20,000 people and caused over two million to flee their homes since 2009. | 1 |
21,099 | Medicare program spending within target rate: trustees | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. federal program that pays elderly Americans’ hospital bills will exhaust its reserves in 2028, two years sooner than last year’s estimate, trustees of the program said on Wednesday, but spending growth remained within forecasts. The Medicare program, which provides health coverage for more than 55 million older as well as disabled people, said that the projected growth rate for per capita spending has not exceeded its target. That put aside the need for the program’s regulator, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, to establish a savings target and to initiate mandatory spending cuts, their annual financial report said. As such, the government would not need to immediately set up an Independent Payment Advisory Board to make proposals on the cuts, it said. Drug stocks gained after the release of the report on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index up 2.5 percent. It had lost ground ahead of the report’s release. Wall Street analysts had worried that if the mandatory savings clause was triggered, the new board might have tried to implement cuts in prescription drug prices. “Not hitting the trigger is good news for healthcare investors,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Timothy Anderson wrote in a research note. In the annual financial review, the trustees also said that the combined Social Security and disability trust fund reserves are estimated to run out in 2034, the same projection as last year. Medicare spending in 2015 totaled $647.6 billion. The Medicare program’s trust fund for hospital care is still scheduled to have sufficient funding 11 years longer than the estimate given before the Affordable Care Act was passed, the trustees said. The trustees put the shorter timeline down to changes in estimates of income and cost, particularly in the near term. A depletion in funds available for Medicare and Social Security does not mean the programs would suddenly stop. At the current rate of payroll tax collections, Medicare would be able to cover 87 percent of costs in 2028. This would fall to 79 percent by 2043 and then gradually increase. Social Security would be able to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits from 2034 to 2090, the trustees said. | 1 |
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