Not all banks are built to last, but these three superior franchises have the potential to be long-term stock holdings.
Banking ought to be a straightforward, profitable business: Take in deposits and lend money out at a rate that exceeds your cost of funding. However, bankers appear to be predisposed to complicating that formula and abdicating their common sense during boom periods. That behavior isn't limited to bankers, but as the financial crisis demonstrated, it's a recipe for disaster when you combine it with gobs of leverage.
Alex Dumortier (Wells Fargo): There are two things a bank must do in order to stand the test of time: Make loans that are, in aggregate, profitable and avoid what I call "iceberg" loan losses that can tear a gaping hole in the hull of its balance sheet as the bank attempts to navigate its way through a deep recession or a banking crisis (which seem to be a periodic feature of capitalist economies that is unlikely to disappear).
The ability to do both is related to a single quality: Lending discipline. A bank's lending discipline, in turn, is largely a function of its lending culture. The tone for a bank's lending culture is set at the top of the organization and needs to be nurtured over time.
Among the Big Four (B of A, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) is the bank that best exemplifies these attributes.
There's a reason for that, starting with Warren Buffett's initial purchase of shares in 1989, Wells Fargo has become Berkshire Hathaway's (NYSE:BRK-B) largest public market shareholding (on a cost basis, it's No. 2, behind IBM). Conversely, Berkshire is Wells' largest shareholder, with a 9.1% stake.
In their lending, many bankers played follow-the-leader with lemming-like zeal; now they are experiencing a lemming-like fate. Because leverage of 20:1 magnifies the effects of managerial strengths and weaknesses, we have no interest in purchasing shares of a poorly managed bank at a "cheap" price. Instead, our only interest is in buying into well-managed banks at fair prices. With Wells Fargo, we think we have obtained the best managers in the business, Carl Reichardt and Paul Hazen.
I like Wells better than anything by far. We bought Wells this year. We've bought Wells month after month -- well, not every month -- for a lot of years. I like loading up on the one I like best.
That process is ongoing: In the first quarter of this year, Buffett increased Berkshire's position by 1.5% to 470.3 million shares.
Sean Williams (U.S. Bancorp): As my Foolish colleague Alex notes above, it's pretty hard to find a more stable banking institution than Wells Fargo. However, I'd opine that U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) is an extremely close second, and that it could very well stand the test of time regardless of what curveballs the economy throws its way.
Perhaps the biggest defining factor for U.S. Bancorp is that it stays away from risky investments. When derivatives were the hot trade on Wall Street in the late 2000s (and subsequently tanked a number of big banks), U.S. Bancorp was nowhere to be found because it stuck to the bread and butter of banking: deposits and loans. In the second quarter alone, U.S. Bancorp reported $54.2 billion in new lending activity during the quarter, as well as nearly 9% year-on-year deposit growth. Best of all, the majority of the deposits it receives are typically low-cost non-interest-bearing, or bear a very low interest rate.
U.S. Bancorp also isn't intricately tied to the housing market. Its nearly quarter-trillion-dollar lending portfolio in Q2 consisted of $66 billion in residential mortgages, second mortgages, and home equity lines of credit. With housing perpetuating the 2007-2009 meltdown, it's comforting to know that U.S. Bancorp has a diversified loan portfolio that isn't overly reliant on home loans.
Lastly, the performance is there to back up U.S. Bancorp's valuation. Among big banks, U.S. Bancorp has the highest return on equity over the trailing-12-month period, and it returned a whopping 76% of profits in Q2 2015 to investors through its dividend and share buybacks. Mind you, its payout ratio is only 32%, meaning there's plenty of room for dividend expansion down the road.
If you want a set-it-and-forget-it bank stock, consider U.S. Bancorp.
Dan Caplinger (Goldman Sachs): It's easy to criticize Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) for its behavior in the years leading up to the financial crisis, with the investment bank earning the lion's share of attacks from ordinary Americans for what many consider to have been questionable tactics in dealing with clients and taking its own investment positions. Yet despite the fallout from the financial crisis -- and the billions in legal settlements and related liabilities the investment bank ended up paying -- Goldman Sachs has held onto its reputation among current and potential clients as a force to be reckoned with in the investment banking world, and many customers would rather have the bank on its side than try to go up against it.
Even with its long history, Goldman hasn't been afraid to move into new businesses. The most recent venture the investment bank has talked about moving into is online lending, with direct-to-consumer loans that could help cut out intermediary expenses and reap potential rewards from higher interest rate margins. At the same time, focusing on high-net-worth individuals and high-end business clients continues to be Goldman's bread and butter, and the panache Goldman Sachs has displayed appeals to those seeking to make their riches on Wall Street.
As long as people want to make money, Goldman Sachs will have a place atop the investment banking realm.


Yet Democrats yielded no new information about the status of the Mueller probe as Whitaker repeatedly refused to discuss conversations with the president or answer questions that he thought might reveal details. Though clearly exasperated — he drew gasps when he told the committee chairman that his five-minute time limit for questions was up — Whitaker nonetheless sought to assuage Democratic concerns by insisting he had never discussed the Mueller probe with Trump or other White House officials, and that there'd been no change in its "overall management."
Whitaker toggled between defending his role in the special counsel's investigation and echoing the president's talking points, conceding for instance that while foreign interference in U.S. elections was a problem, so too was voter fraud — a key issue for Republicans, but one that Democrats say is overstated. He said he had no reason to doubt Mueller's honesty and or to believe that he was conflicted in his leadership of the department.


They brought back the Szechuan sauce, but it wasn’t enough.
Rick and Morty, created by Community’s Dan Harmon, is currently the Number 1 television comedy among millennials. It’s risen in popularity since it premiered on Adult Swim in 2013, and this weekend inspired McDonald’s to launch a one-day fan event that became way bigger than the burger chain had ever anticipated.
In Season 3’s premiere, “The Rickshank Rickdemption,” which aired April 1, 2017, mad scientist and terrible grandfather Rick Sanchez (voiced by co-creator Justin Roiland) is being interrogated by an alien Galactic Federation to find out the secret of his portal gun, which allows him and his grandson Morty (also voiced by Roiland) to traverse through parallel universes. But what’s important here is that Rick figures out that the aliens have broken into his own mind and memories to interrogate him, and drives them to McDonald’s where, in 1998, the chain released limited-edition “Szechuan” McNugget sauce to advertise Disney’s Mulan, and afterwards discontinued it.
The Szechuan sauce joke blew up so much that McDonald’s actually sent some bottles of it to Roiland, which he shared with the rest of the Rick and Morty staff. And then McDonald’s flew too close to the sun.
Last week, the golden arches announced that for one day only they would have Szechuan sauce in all of their locations for Rick and Morty fans who’d been craving the taste ever since the season premiere reminded them of what had been lost to time. But, as it turns out, McDonald’s severely underestimated how many fans would line up in droves for just one taste of Sriracha- and ginger-infused nostalgia, only sending 20 packets of the sauce to every store, causing the majority of hopefuls to go home merely ketchup-handed.
McDonald’s issued an apology Saturday afternoon after it was clear the event had gone horribly awry.
The #szechuansauce tag was inundated with disappointed fans calling for a boycott, suggesting everyone go to Wendy’s instead, posting links to eBay pages where the sauce was already selling for thousands of dollars, or suggesting that maybe Rick’s hapless son-in-law Jerry engineered the whole thing.


2008 was the year that collatorised debt obligations wiped out the capital bases of the west's biggest banks, which played itself out during September 2008 following the china syndrome chain reaction that followed the Lehman's bust that led to the unprecedented actions of capital injections and nationalisation of too big to fail banks that looks set to continue for the whole of 2009 and beyond. The crisis had been festering and growing since the August 2007 interbank market freeze due to flawed and some could say fraudulent mark to market valuation of worthless over leveraged mortgage backed CDO's.
The time bomb continued to tick under the bankrupt banks as to how long could the banks hide the truth from the market that they were insolvent. The article of September 9th (BANKRUPT Banks Wiped Out by Tulip Backed Securities, Is China Cheap?) in response to email queries of "should I buy banks now?" , clearly pointed out that banks should be avoided as the banking crisis had yet to hit the financial markets let alone the economies which were also soon expected to fall off the edge of the cliff as the second phase of the credit crisis kicked into gear. Meanwhile the more asset prices fell the more loss making illiquid positions forced more asset sales and therefore more deleveraging, which culminated in the crash of 2008. Deleveraging is not over and therefore suggests much lower asset prices during 2009.
The key lesson from 2008 is that no matter how bad you thought things could get, they in fact got a lot worse in every respect, from the stock market panic of September / October 2008 to the financial system that came to the very edge of armageddon. This leads me to believe that being an optimist during 2009 could prove to be a fatal mistake, whilst the world is not going to end, well hopefully not, what it does mean is that the financial and economic crisis will get a lot worse and therefore which means much lower stock prices during the course of the year.
So no matter how bad 2008 was, 2009 could still be worse!
I may be wrong in my thinking here but there appears to be a huge paradox at the heart of the stimulus packages and banking system bailouts aimed at generating economic activity and this is that the record amounts of new government debt issued has the effect of soaking up liquidity from the financial system i.e. the US is expected to issue $2 trillion of treasury bonds during 2009, how much of that $2 trillion would have gone into main street ? Therefore this implies that whilst the public expects huge and highly inefficient stimulus packages to impact on the economy. However at the same time the deficit spending is quietly draining the financial system of liquidly, therefore main street by the end of 2009 will be wondering why the $trillion dollar deficits have had no impact on the economy. This also implies bond prices will fall, despite deflation.
The worlds economies are fast falling off the edge of a cliff with many expected to experience the worst recession since the Great Depression. Still economic contraction of between 2 and 3% per annum does not compare against that which occurred during the Great Depression which saw U.S. GDP contract by more than 30%. So YES, a severe recession that looks set to continue into 2010, but NO, not a Great Depression. Therefore I continue to stick with the conclusions of my analysis of October 2008, that discounted another Great Depression and therefore the current stocks bear market that has seen the general stock indices off by as much as 50% from their 2007 peaks and despite further falls during 2009 present long-term opportunities in several key sectors.
The problem with each New Year is that there is a rush to get a string of forecasts out on various markets, however accurate forecasts are born out of indepth analysis which is not subject to an arbitrary date in a calendar. Therefore the following market forecasts for 2009 also include how confident I am at this point in time about the potential probability of the forecast outcome, i.e. some forecasts carry a greater probability of accuracy than others as preceding analysis has been born out of confirming price action rather than an arbitrary calendar date. The confidence levels range from a minimum of 50% to a maximum of 100%.
Then there are the Black Swan events of which there were many during 2008, events that cannot be allowed for by their nature that tend to rip forecasts apart. In 2008 one of the key events was the Russian invasion of Georgia that set the ball rolling for a collapse in the Russian stock market that had previously held up remarkably well. Therefore there will be many black swan events during 2009 that will severely impact on financial market trends, which makes forecasting of markets that are more susceptible to black swan events such as crude oil for example being impacted by an attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure (highly improbable but not impossible). However should it occur, then that would immediately negate the existing forecast.
Prevailing bearishness continues against the U.S. Dollar amidst a near infinite reasons of why the Dollar is doomed. But as an active experienced trader, one thing you soon painfully learn is that the fundamentals don't count when it comes to trend reversals, as by the time the reasons have become apparent the market has already moved by as much as 50% and even then there exists the continuing dilemma of the trend versus the fundamental views based on hard data. However as I have discussed several times with would be traders in that your trading the price not the indicator or data. The bottom line is that what the price says is that which only 'should' count.
It's not all fundamental gloom for the U.S. Dollar, there do exist a number of reasons that support a bullish dollar from a fundamental basis, as I elaborated upon during 2008, namely that of deleveraging, deflation and the US Dollar as the worlds reserve currency which allows the U.S. to print money without experiencing an Iceland style currency collapse, and therefore has an advantage over other distressed currencies such as the British Pound. Still a trader needs to be always aware of the technical state of the market and be prepared for corrections and the possibility of trend reversals, and in that regard this update seeks to a. Determine if the US Dollar Bull market remains intact in response to price action of the past 3 months, and b. Attempt to forecast a probable trend for at least the next few months.
TREND ANALYSIS - The correction following the November peak was more severe than expected this implies weakness, however the US Dollar did hold above the previous low of 75 before resuming the up trend. Immediate resistance lies at 88, given the violence of the correction this implies choppy volatile trading in the region of between 80 and 90, this is inline with the conclusion of October 2008 with regards trend expectations for 2009.
PRICE TARGETS - The upside price target for USD remains at 90 and then 92. The USD has significant resistance above USD 92 and therefore suggests the USD will find it tough to sustain a breakout above USD 93. This suggests a trading range with an upward bias. The key here is for the USD to continue making higher lows, with the last low being 77.7.
MACD - The MACD was extremely oversold and has helped contribute to the U.S. Dollar turnaround, how-ever the MACD has some way to go before it reaches what could be termed as an overbought state and therefore implies more immediate term U.S. Dollar strength.
SEASONAL TREND - The USD Rally into January is inline with the seasonal tendency, which suggests a corrective February.
ELLIOTT WAVE THEORY - Octobers elliott wave analysis proved accurate, given the power of the corrective wave, this suggests a more complex sideways elliott wave pattern during 2009 rather than a breakout higher.
The conclusion is for the US Dollar to trade sideways with an upward bias for at least the first half of 2009, as the above graph illustrates. I cannot at this time see a breakout, out of this trading range given the heavy resistance at USD 93. Meanwhile a downside breakdown appears even less probable.
Looking forward a week is hard enough let alone 12 months, Still, the in-depth analysis of October 2008 - Stocks Bear Market Long-term Investing Strategy that accurately forecast a 20% corrective rally (that appears to have terminated) and a subsequent stocks bear market low in Mid 2009, with a strategy of scaling into the market at the rate of 10% of funds allocated to stock holdings per each month that the market is within 10% of its lows. The bear market rally following the November lows has been weak, which does not bode well for stocks, as the hope associated with the Obama rally appears to have evaporated.
The October analysis still stands and has been reinforced by subsequent events that point towards a break of the November low, how low will stocks go? Its a tough call as there is too much subsequent trend to overcome, but Dow 6000 would be the worse case scenario. In fact Dow 6,000 is indelibly printed on my mind, for it was at that price more than a decade ago that Greenspan uttered his famous Irrational Exuberance speech, given that at the time he was seen as the Maestro that spooked many speculators and investors into taking a step back from bullish positions and pondering whether or not a bearish trend was imminent, well the rest is history!. I guess the lesson here is that when the Fed chairman is bearish and warning of doom, be bullish, if the Fed chairman is making optimistic announcements be bearish!
In Conclusion , I do not know at precisely what price level the Dow will make a low during 2009, my best estimate at this time is 6,600, but I am expecting that it will mark the start of a multi-year bull market that will eventually make 2008-2009's price action appear as a mere minor blip, much as the 1987 crash appears on today's price charts.
I am expecting the FTSE stock market index to follow a similar trend to the Dow Jones, however the ongoing currency crash means that the FTSE 'should' perform relatively more strongly than the Dow as a consequence of the exchange rate movement. The bear market rally following the October low has been very weak, which suggests much lower trading than the October low.
On balance the October analysis still stands and has been reinforced by subsequent events that point towards a break of the October low of 3665, how low will stocks go? A break of 3665 would trigger a trend towards the previous 2000-2003 bear market low of 3277, with strong support at 3,000. However that would be a worse case scenario.
In Conclusion - The FTSE looks set to break below the previous low, however I expect the FTSE to outperform other indices with a minimum 35% move from the years low and finish Up on the year, my best estimate at this time is for the FTSE to trade at 4,600 or higher during December 2009. Also I am expecting that 2009 will mark the start of a multi-year bull market that will eventually make 2008-2009's price action appear as a mere minor blip, much as the 1987 crash appears on today's price charts.
Two Point Stock Market Investing Strategy for 2009.
a. 2009 will be great time to scale into long-term investments at bargain basement prices. Even if stocks fell by another 20%, that should be more than made up for in subsequent years as great bull markets are born out of the most pessimistic market conditions! My october strategy called for a 10% per month investment of funds allocated towards stock market investing in each month where the index trades to below 10% from its bear market low to date. The October article also listed the key mega-trends to focus on such as Global Warming, Peak Oil, Rise of Asian Middle class and Population growth as the sectors to focus on that are expected to outperform the general indices over the long-run.
b. 2009 Will be an even greater year for trading the markets as was 2008, and in that respect my new site walayatstreet.com will be aimed at position trading including hedge fund style trading tactics which will be going live shortly that aims to freely share my whole trading methodology honed over the past 20 years AND to publicise trade points and ongoing analysis. In the meantime the site lists my existing longer range analysis and commentary.
Remember - STOCK MARKETS MOVE AHEAD OF THE ECONOMIC DATA AND NEWS, Therefore Focus on the Trend rather than the Bad News of which there will be plenty during 2009 as global economies contract.
My existing forecast for Gold price trend during 2009 as of October 2008 has been for a volatile sideways trading range of between $930 and $700, subsequent price action has so far been in line with this. Therefore this analysis seeks to update the Gold Price expectations for 2009 in the light of "Quantative Easing" aka "Money Printing" as many gold investors are taking their cue from the recovery in gold stocks for much brighter prospects for gold to target a breakout to new highs during 2009.
The explosive long T-bond rally of November and December 2008 following deep U.S. interest rate cuts towards ZERO appears to have come to an end as treasury bonds broke below the previous most recent low. Therefore this analysis seeks to determine if the bond bubble is about to burst and how bonds could trend during the next 5 months of 2009.
TREND ANALYSIS - Treasury bonds spiked higher on breakout of a well established trading range between 122 and 112. The break below the previous low of 132 threatens a retracement of the whole move back into the 122-112 zone. The Initial target for the decline is the upper end of the range i.e. 120 to 122.
MACD - MACD has reversed strongly from extremely overbought condition and suggests that bonds could decline towards extremely oversold conditions, which supports the view of a decline towards 120.
SEASONAL TREND - The November / December rally is inline with the seasonal tendency for T-bonds, which is usually followed by a bearish trend from February to April. This suggests there may be a delay in the bond market rally after the initial sell off.
ELLIOTT WAVE THEORY - Elliott wave suggests that a significant correction is underway that is correcting the whole move from 105 to 142. The initial target for which is 38.2% at 128. With the more probably 61.8% correction targeting a move to 119, and therefore confirms trend analysis expectations.
Conclusion - The U.S. Bond bubble is bursting (temporarily?) at this time there is a high probability of bonds declining back into the 119-120 range. Beyond that there are expectations of a corrective rally, which suggests a 61.8% retracement of the decline eventually back into the 130 region as the above graph illustrates.
After crude oil hit its 2008 target of $150 ($147 actual), My analysis during July 2007 concluded that that crude oil was going to experience a deflationary crash over the next 6 months towards an initial target of USD $80. Subsequent indepth analysis of 8th December forecast crude oil to formulate a bottom that I expect will form a very volatile double or even triple bottom pattern i.e. protracted bottom formation punctuated with very sharp short-covering rallies that could see crude oil spike as high as $80 and declines back to to the lows over the next 12 months. What this anticipated scenario means is that there is TIME for investors to buy into crude oil positions as the base building confirmation takes place, as any strong rallies will likely be followed by tests and probable breaks of the previous low so as to enable the creation of the overall saucer shaped double or triple bottom pattern.
However the long-term trend for crude oil remains higher, when I mean long-term I am looking at well beyond the next 12months towards 5 to 10 years, when I would not be surprised given the peak oil fundamentals that we will actually be visiting the $200 crude targets that were loudly pronounced during mid 2008 as being imminent when crude oil was trading at $147. This scenario should not be surprising given that the US Dollar bull market remains in tact that will continue to bear down on commodities during 2009.
In Summary, Oil prices will remain weak and develop a saucer shaped pattern despite spikes higher, don't expect any sustainable up trend whilst the major economies continue to contract- Confidence 80%; Year End Price ? $44 - Confidence 65%.
UK house prices continued to crash lower, with the latest data from the Halifax showing average house prices falling by £4,400 in December. The house price data is inline (-0.5% deviation) with the recently updated house price forecast that covers the trend into 2012 that projects for a total drop from peak to trough of 38%, with a 16% drop in house prices targeted for 2009 to be followed by a sustained depression for several years thereafter as the below graph illustrates.
January's interest rate cut of 0.5% for January is inline with my forecast for interest rates to target a fall to 1% by mid 2009 as the below graph illustrates. However given the deteriorating state of the UK economy there is a risk that rates could overshoot to the downside during mid 2009 by falling below 1%. As the credit markets have frozen the real economic rate has become far less responsive to base rate cuts, therefore the latest cut is expected to make very little difference to the severity of the recession, thus the buzz word for 2009 is "Quantative Easing" which basically means printing money, the consequences of which will be higher inflation as we come out of economic contraction.
My earlier analysis of the UK inflation concluded that the UK is heading for real deflation during 2009, with the RPI inflation measure expected to go negative by mid 2009 by targeting -1.2%. The expectations are for similar deflation across the world, as deficit spending stimulus packages cannot hope to compete against the loss of asset values which are in the order of ten times the amount of planned stimulus. The analysis also concluded in that the risks to the forecast are to the downside i.e. inflation spiking lower than expected. This therefore implies for further stimulus packages far beyond that which have been committed to date, with all of the associated consequences of collapsing currencies under the weight of growing deficits and liabilities which sets the scene for future inflation and even risks the bankruptcy of some countries such as Britain.
In conclusion 2009 will witness a severe recession, but NOT a Depression, with asset prices expected to deflate further during the year, this presents opportunities to accumulate commodities and stocks at rock bottom prices for the long-run. The key sectors to focus on are those that will recover first and are showing relative strength during the bear market, therefore oil and gas companies, dividend paying utilities and other commodities stocks. Beyond that looking towards long term positions in crashed emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC's), and then to a lesser degree the developed economies of Canada and Australia. Also battered and bruised tech stocks such as Microsoft are starting to look appealing on current valuations or lower in response to further selloff's.


ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) STORY: Several hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters took to the streets of downtown Manhattan again on Friday in a weekly march which sees the group make its way from its designated gathering point of Zuccotti Park, dubbed by the group "Liberty Square", to the New York Stock Exchange. The march was relatively peaceful, but that didn't stop a handful of protesters from being arrested for ignoring police orders to keep clear of certain public areas. The march comes just four days ahead of May Day when the Occupy Wall Street group plans to launch a "Day of Action". The group is hoping to mobilize tens of thousands of people across Manhattan under the slogan, "General Strike. No Work. No Shopping. Occupy Everywhere".


Years after a series of high-profile abuse cases, the Los Angeles school district still has problems resolving allegations of wrongdoing by teachers and holding down costs related to them, according to a state audit.
Last year, the district paid $12.6 million in ongoing salaries to teachers who had been pulled from classrooms and were awaiting resolution of their cases and at least another $3.3 million for the substitute teachers who filled in, says the audit, which was released late last month.
District officials say they will use the audit to make improvements, but insisted that they already had made progress.
The audit also found that the length of time needed to resolve cases has nearly doubled, from 236 to 420 calendar days, over the past five years.


The Vibesmen perform on the Baltimore Soundstage "Iceberg" Stage on Friday night in the Frozen Harbor Music Festival.
People listen as The Vibesmen perform Friday night on the Baltimore Soundstage Iceberg Stage in the Frozen Harbor Music Festival.
Frozen Harbor Music Festival: A slate of the hottest music around anywhere, just the thing for a (potentially) cold wintry weekend. Performers (more than 140 in all!) include Onyx, the Pietasters, Joe Pug and a group of guys who go by the name of Dru Hill. (Hey, any chance to hear them play live has got to be worth checking out, right?) Venues include Rams Head Live, 20 Market Place (where Dru Hill is playing at 10:30 p.m. Saturday), and Baltimore Soundstage, 124 Market Place, plus other Power Plant Live locations. The festival-going started Friday and continues at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Information at frozenharbor.com.


A Kutztown University student who claimed she was the subject of retaliation for spurning her professor's unwanted sexual advances has settled a sexual harassment lawsuit for $70,000.
Rhonda Miller of Bethlehem transferred to Kutztown and began to study Pennsylvania German family history in June 2011.
Professor Robert Reynolds, the director of the university's Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, was assigned as Miller's academic adviser, according to the suit filed last year in federal court in Allentown.
In December, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Stengel rejected Reynolds' request to dismiss the suit, finding that Reynolds and Kutztown would have to present evidence to refute Miller's claims.
The settlement, signed in March and obtained through a request under Pennsylvania's Right to Know Law, is not an admission of fault or liability by Kutztown or Reynolds. Reynolds, who has worked at Kutztown for 10 years, remains a professor at Kutztown.
Kutztown spokesman Matthew Santos said the university does not discuss personnel matters.
"Given the potential costs involved in lengthy litigation, regardless of the eventual outcome, settling the case now was in the best interest of the university," he said.
Miller's attorney did not return a call Friday.
As part of her course of study, Miller was required to work closely with Reynolds and the heritage center. Reynolds was Miller's instructor for many of her courses, the suit said.
About a month after Miller and Reynolds began working together, Reynolds allegedly began making sexually offensive remarks and advances toward Miller, which she rejected. Nonetheless, Reynold's sexual comments toward Miller continued, sometimes in the presence of male colleagues, the suit said.
During a meeting at Reynolds' home, the professor allegedly groped and kissed Miller against her will, according to the suit. Reynolds allegedly threatened to commit suicide if she reported the incident and warned that he would sabotage her academic career if she refused to give into his advances, the suit claims.
In January 2012, Miller asked to be assigned to a different academic adviser because of Reynolds' continued harassment and the emotional distress it was causing her, court papers say. Despite complaints by Miller and her husband, Kutztown University officials failed to investigate, according to the suit.
After her formal complaint, Reynolds and other university officials "commenced a campaign of retaliation," by excluding her from lectures, keeping her from meeting with visiting scholars, revoking her privileges at the heritage center library, and refusing to cooperate with Miller on research projects, according to court documents.
Miller was forced to withdraw from her academic program as a result of the alleged retaliation, court papers say.
Her lawsuit alleged violations of the federal law against sexual discrimination in education, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.


The Finance Minister says increased protectionism due to failed WTO talks too pose a threat to economic growth.
India on Monday warned the international community that growing threats of terrorism, which have potential to disrupt oil supply, and increased protectionism due to collapsed WTO talks posed a threat to the high global economic growth witnessed during the last few years.
"There is no scope for complacency on the growth front because the current growth phase is fraught with several downside risks. These include inflationary pressures, high oil prices, a disorderly unwinding of global imbalances and a sudden slowdown of the US economy," Finance Minister P Chidambaram told the policy making development committee meeting of the World Bank.
"Increased threats of terrorism, including that to oil installations which can cause supply disruptions, and increased protectionism due to the collapse of the WTO Doha Round, are added causes for concern," he emphasised.
He said the twin challenges facing the international financial community at this juncture were how to mitigate the specific downside risks that could act as dampeners to the otherwise bright medium-term growth prospects and how to leverage this benign growth scenario to advance the broader development agenda in general and remove capability deprivation in particular.


Did feds go too far in coaching witness in the Sen. Stevens case? Does Stevens have a shot of overturning conviction on appeal or getting a pardon from Pres. Bush? Inquiring minds want to know.
WASHINGTON — A witness in the corruption trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has told a federal judge that he received extensive help from prosecutors prior to taking the stand and would have testified differently had he not been given the assistance.
He also said he had an agreement with the government that gave him immunity from prosecution in the case. During the trial, he told the jury that no formal deal existed.
“I would not have given the same testimony” without the help or the agreement, wrote the witness, David Anderson.
Posted: 11/22/08 at 2:15 AM under News Story.


ISLAMABAD: The 14th death anniversary of Pakistani playback singer Akhlaq Ahmed was observed on Sunday throughout the country.
He was born in May 8, 1940.
He was the member of a famous singing group with two other artists' singer Masood Rana and actor Nadeem Baig.
ruling the film music. Even then he remained a successful singer in late 1970s and 1980s.
Akhlaq Ahmad was the third generation of top male playback singers in Pakistan film industry.
He struggled for many years but finally claimed the fame he deserved as playback singer in the 1970s.
"Sona na Chandi na koi Mehal" in film Bandish 1980 and "Sawan Aye Sawan jaye" in Chahat 1974 are his most super hit songs.
Famous Indian singer Sonu Nigam sang many of his songs as Nigam’s voice closely resembled Akhlaq's. Nigam released these songs in late 1990s.
He suffered with a deadly disease of blood cancer and died on August 4‚ 1999 at London. His last film as a singer was Nikah 1998.
According to the figures‚ Akhlaq Ahmad sang nearly 117 songs in 86 films from 1973 to 1998.


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Karachi- Two accused gang leaders were killed in two separate alleged encounters with police and Rangers in Lyari.
SP City Sheraz Nazir told Private News that the gang war accused was killed in Kalri and Kalakot areas. Police also recovered arms from the custody of the accused.
The accused killed in Kalri and Kalakot have been identified as Rasheed alias Mulla and Mushtaq respectively. Police claimed that the accused were involved in killing, kidnapping for ransom and extortion.


The Economic Cycle Research Institute has had a knack for calling tops in the business cycle, and accurately forecasting recessions. It saw the slump coming in the early 2000s, and the methodology it uses anticipated similar activity in the 80s and 90s recessions. At this point, the economy is at a proverbial fork, or crossroads, and the institute says there's a 50-50 chance of a recession in the next year. Meanwhile, with the economy at a fork, the Fed finds itself fractured. The minutes to its last meeting reveal broad dissent over the direction of the economy. It's too bad there has to be just one answer. Perhaps the optimists could just go their way, and the pessimists the other, and both deal with the consequences.
The tech press is in a hot lather over news that Google chief Eric Schmidt has joined the board of Apple Computers. Some are speculating on what the move means. Will the two companies form some sort of grand alliance to take on Microsoft? Will Google buy out Apple? Will everyone please shut up? Thank you. Nobody has any idea what it means. CEOs are always on the board of other companies, and it rarely signals any sort of meaningful alliance. In fact, were the two companies going to link up in some way, it's unlikely that they'd telegraph it like this. Hey, did you know that Al Gore is on Apple's board, too? Maybe he'll make the MacBookPro the official computer of the federal government after he's elected President. Of course, if you watched the West Wing, you'd know that a Democratic administration means Macs in the White House.
This is the type of article that we'd typically make fun of, but we're in a charitable mood this morning, so a different tack is to be taken. Various groups, which for some reason Fortune dubs 'Small-Marts" are increasingly girding up to do battle against the Bentonville behemoth. The small-marts include local farming groups, which raise the typical hay about supporting the local economy, and eating in a sustainable manner. Now, buying local is a sham idea, along with buying USA. And sustainability is a total red herring. Those opposing Wal-Mart point out that with energy costs so high, it doesn't make sense to ship food from across the globe. We've heard this argument before, and it's flawed. If shipping around the globe were so inefficient it wouldn't be cheaper. If eating locally were more efficient, it would be cheaper. That being said, if local, small farmers and retailers want to compete with Wal-Mart, they should do so on the basis of offering some superior combination of price and quality. Depending on rhetoric and politics to sell a potato is a sure loser when it comes to buying and selling.
Paging Anya Kamenetz! Here's something you can write up for your Generation Debt column, or whatever it is you're doing for the Times these days. Or you can just include it in the next edition of your book. Either way, the average wages of recent college grads is slumping again. Turns out that having just a B.A. isn't so lucrative, and maybe it's because of some grand conspiracy to suppress the earnings of young people. Maybe it's because young people don't vote, so politicians pass policies that hurt their ability to earn. Or maybe it's because more and more people are going into stuff like studying art or social work. Perhaps it's because as the economy evolves, having the same degree isn't as valuable as it was, and now people are expected to get more training. And then of course, there's the fact that there' a lot of people going to college these days, which probably means a dilution of the quality of the average college graduate. Not to mention the fact that it's just not that special to have a B.A. Just throwing some ideas out there for you.
The board of nickel miner Inco formally rejected CVRD's bid for it, and urged shareholders to accept an earlier proposal from Phelps Dodge. Does this mean the game is over and Phelps will emerge victorious? Not likely. For one thing, Inco shareholders aren't compelled to listen to the board, and with CVRD offering much more cash, many shareholders will want to take the money and run. For another, there's no guarantee that Phelps Dodge shareholders will approve the plan, should Inco agree to a deal. A hedge fund that owns 10% of shares has already expressed its disapproval. And, of course, CVRD won't roll over and play dead. They're still confident of victory, probably with good reason.
The metal wars would be so much more boring if it all took place in Russia. In the developed world, we have hostile bids, three-way mergers, boards with interests opposite of shareholders, and mergers that take place over multiple continents. In Russia, it's all much more simple. Putin wakes up one morning, takes a shower, washes his armpits, and then in a moment of epiphany (uninformed by market forces) decides that the aluminum sector needs consolidation. So that's what he does. He makes a few phone calls, and by the time dinner is on the table, it's done. We pity those who are writing Dealbreaker Russia.
It's funny; there are actually people out there who think that China is eating our proverbial economic lunch. That being China, the country where employees stand in line in front of creditors during bankruptcy proceedings. Right, Communist China, AKA Red China. And, of late, the company has been increasing its restrictions on foreign activity in the country, making it harder for banks and retail operations to expand aggressively in the country. What's funny is that the story is supposed to be written in the opposite direction. Isn't it China with the hundreds of billions of greenbacks lying around that will soon swoop in and buy up half the Dow Jones? Isn't it supposed to be Chuck Schumer putting forth laws like they are in China?
HP CEO Mark Hurd showed up at a San Jose Best Buy to do a surprise meet and greet with potential customers, in a move that will certainly earn him praise for getting out there and getting in touch with the people. If he actually learned something about customers, that's great. But who wants to be paying the CEO $1,000/hour to be out there glandhanding Best Buy shoppers. Get back in there and make some deals! We have it on good authority that from to time, John Mackey the CEO of Whole Foods goes out into the parking lot of the Austin, TX flagship store to push shopping carts. What a man of the people! Get back in there, and figure out where to source more organic figs.
It's been awhile since there were new stories about new stock exchange mergers almost everyday. As it is, some of those mergers announced a few months ago, continue to plug along. EuroNext announced expects its merger with the NYSE to finalized in q1 2007, with a December shareholder meeting to vote on the deal. The group's profits rose 63%, though analysts had expected more.


"Shazam!" won the weekend domestic box office with an estimated $53.4 million.
The latest DC Comics release from Warner Bros. helped the box office rebound after Disney's "Dumbo" underperformed last weekend.
"Shazam!" also performed well overseas, where it was the No. 1 US release in 60 markets, including China, where it took in $30.9 million. The movie has a global cume of over $158 million.
After Disney's underperformance last week with the release of "Dumbo," the box office rebounded this weekend thanks to the help of a child superhero.
"Shazam!", the latest DC Comics release from Warner Bros. that follows a boy who turns into a Superman-like hero whenever he says the word "Shazam", won the box office with an estimated $53.4 million domestically.
Opening on over 4,200 screens, the lighthearted movie that's a mix between "Big" and "The Goonies" was a must-see for fans of the comic as well as the general superhero moviegoer, which felt confident of a good time with the movie's 91% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Things went well for "Shazam!" even before this weekend. Fandango's preview screenings of the movie two weeks ago brought in $3.3 million on 1,200 screens. That bested similar preview screenings for movies like "How to Train Your Dragon 3" ($2.6 million) and "Aquaman" ($2.9 million).
And things only got better for the movie in the last few days. On Friday, "Shazam!" earned $20.5 million, including $5.9 million from Thursday preview screenings.
Adding the Fandango screenings, "Shazam!" has a domestic cume of $56.7 million.
Overseas, the $100 million-budgeted superhero movie is also showing its might. It was the No. 1 US movie in 60 markets, including the all-important China territory, where the movie took in $30.9 million. The international total for the weekend is $102 million.
The global cume for "Shazam!" is over $158 million.
Though Warner Bros.' DC Comic releases can't be compared to the global phenomenon that Marvel Studios' titles are for Disney, the "Shazam!" success is the latest indication that WB is figuring out how it can coexist with Marvel in the marketplace.
Pulling back on making all its movies coexist in a universe, the studio is finding success in individual franchises like "Wonder Woman" and "Aquaman." And there's more to come, as WB showed in its presentation at CinemaCon this past week with its "Birds of Prey," "Joker," and "Wonder Woman 1984" releases coming soon.
Meanwhile, horror fans came out for the latest adaptation of Stephen King's classic, "Pet Sematary." Paramount's $21 million-budgeted release brought in an estimated $25 million to come in second place.


The Steamboat Springs High School boys lacrosse team, with new coach Jay Lattimore, is the Yampa Valley boys team of the year.
There were questions about this year’s Steamboat Springs High School boys lacrosse team, real questions about whether or not it would be able to replicate the success of the 2013 season, when the team made the state semifinals.
The Sailors graduated 14 seniors, and even more importantly, returned for the first time ever without Hall of Fame coach Bob Hiester.
Sure, there was still talent, but that kind of talent? Sure, there was another coach, Jay Lattimore, but could he lead a team that far?
The answer, it turned out, was yes, a resounding yes.
Time will tell if Lattimore can keep the program on the same track Heister had it on, but in year one, the Sailors again proved to have the talent, the skill and the swagger to thrive in Class 4A lacrosse, and they proved good enough again to rank as the Yampa Valley boys team of the year.
Steamboat ran through the early portion of its schedule, defeating regional teams and the occasional Front Range opponent. It survived a major threat to its undefeated ambitions with a fourth-quarter rally against Cheyenne Mountain. It climbed as high as 12-0 before a pair of losses against the state’s top teams, 11-10 at Valor Christian and 16-13 at home versus Aspen.
Steamboat would get its revenge, though. It thumped Conifer at home, 14-4, in the first round of the playoffs, then upset Valor, 14-8, to earn a trip, again, to the state semifinals. The season ended again there, but even that highlighted the character of the team. The Sailors went down desperately trying to score, even in the final seconds when all realistic hope of a comeback had dissipated.


Certain GP surgeries in Northampton will take turns to open into the evening to create more same-day appointments.
The plans by NHS Nene are likely to be greeted warmly by people who work traditional office hours and either don’t want to take time off work, or find it impossible to see their GP at short notice.
The service will be based in central Northampton and run from 3pm to 7pm.
Meanwhile, the latest board papers of NHS Nene also reveal that bosses had additionally considered making all GP practices open on certain a days until 7pm.
But the Governing Body decided the proposal “would not be met favourably” at the moment, and would consider implementing it next year instead.


President Barack Obama addressing the UN General Assembly on Sept. 20, 2016. Photo: UN.
America’s presidential transitions are critical to smoothly transferring power, but are simultaneously fraught with danger. Decisions by the departing president almost invariably affect the new president. While we must not impair the basic constitutional principle that there is only one president at a time, sensible leaders recognize that the world does not begin anew on Inauguration Day.
Both the president and the president-elect can fulfill their respective electoral mandates without undue friction if they handle the task well. If they handle it poorly, America and its friends worldwide unnecessarily suffer uncertainty and confusion that tarnishes the outgoing president’s reputation and unfairly hampers his successor.
Unfortunately, we are now experiencing the second kind of transition. On both domestic and international matters, Barack Obama has taken sweeping executive actions after Donald Trump’s Nov. 8 election but before his Jan. 20 inauguration. These include broad executive orders precluding oil and gas production on hundreds of millions of acres of offshore federal areas; designating broad swathes of Utah and Nevada as national monuments to prevent even carefully monitored economic development; rushing through voluminous new economic regulations; and allowing countless political appointees to “burrow in” to federal career jobs, thereby preventing the incoming administration from removing them.
Internationally, Obama allowed the adoption last month of an unprecedented, harshly anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution, sanctioned Russia, and expelled Russian personnel from America because of alleged cyberattacks in the 2016 elections and harassment of US diplomats in Moscow. He also made further concessions to Iran’s ayatollahs to save the collapsing 2015 nuclear deal. And we still have nearly two weeks until Inauguration Day — ample time for more mischief.
Why has Obama gone to such lengths, which he knows are completely contrary to the policies of the new administration and Republican congressional majorities? While every outgoing administration engages in such activities to some degree, that being human nature, none recently has matched Obama’s frenetic pace. Certainly, building his legacy, boxing in the Trump White House and exacting a bit of political revenge are likely factors.
But the surest explanation is that Obama, like most political leaders, Republican and Democrat, simply did not expect Trump to beat Hillary Clinton. Much of what Obama is now doing he would not have done before Nov. 8 for fear of providing ammunition to his political opposition. Since our presidential campaign season is basically now two years long, Obama had little leeway after losing control of the Senate in 2014 (having already lost the House of Representatives in 2010).
His administration likely did not foresee any problems in a surge of post-Nov. 8 activity because, assuming Clinton won, they did not fear his initiatives would be reversed. He could take controversial steps, receive both the credit and the criticism, and leave Clinton a clean slate. Almost surely she would not have rolled back any significant measures. Trump’s victory changed everything, confronting Obama with the unpleasant reality that both his plans for the transition period and his entire legacy were suddenly in jeopardy.
Other outgoing presidents have not been so churlish. Perhaps the best example is how President George H.W. Bush handled his November 1992 decision to intervene militarily in Somalia after losing just a few weeks before to Bill Clinton. Bush was deeply concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Somalia, which had effectively descended into anarchy. Already a lame duck, Bush nonetheless boldly decided on the day before Thanksgiving to dispatch US military forces (and others willing to assist) to open channels for humanitarian relief supplies to reach endangered Somali civilians.
Although, in the initial stage, Bush insisted on US command to ensure the intervention succeeded, he was prepared to turn over responsibility to a UN peacekeeping force once the mission was accomplished. Success in fact came quickly. Thus, as Clinton’s inauguration approached, President Bush confronted the decision of what to do with the deployed American troops. He informed the incoming Clinton team that he was prepared either to withdraw all US troops by Jan. 20, or leave them in place, depending on what the Clinton administration policy would be. President-elect Clinton responded that he would like the troops to remain, and so they did. Clinton went on to pursue a failed policy of nation-building in Somalia, including the deaths of 43 US troops, but these were all entirely his decisions, unrelated to what he inherited on January 20.
Bush was fully president until Jan. 20, 1993, and he did what he thought needed to be done in Somalia. But he had both the grace and the wisdom to know that his successor might have a different view, and he acted accordingly. President George W. Bush understood his father’s insight, and in his turn acted to provide President-elect Obama with a smooth transition.
It’s too bad Obama hasn’t followed their examples.
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the US permanent representative to the United Nations and, previously, the undersecretary of State for arms control and international security.


As part of an overhaul of its online store, Apple introduced a new feature called ‘Apple Notifications‘, a new text-message based service that is designed to keep customers up-to-date on their orders or notify them if an order is ready to be picked up in store.
The change was noticed by Cult of Mac, which noticed that Apple was now displaying a small line of text notifying customers of the new option. At the time of writing it only appears to be operational in the US and Canada, but may come to other regions soon.
Apple says that it will send the SMS updates alongside its standard email notifications, allowing customers to select text message updates when they are navigating the Checkout.
It appears that if a customer already owns an iDevice, the text update will be displayed as an iMessage (given that the notification bubble in the above screenshot is blue).
Apple says that when an order ships, or is available for pickup, a text update will be sent. This will include an order number and a link to Apple’s online Order Status.
The company also notes that the supported US carriers include: Alltel, AT&T, Boost Mobile, Cricket, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon Wireless, and Virgin Mobile USA. The company doesn’t provide information on carriers in Canada.
If it all gets too much, the customer can reply STOP to the text message or request additional information by texting HELP to 83372.


News of the hack has taken a toll on the credit bureau's brand in the eyes of consumers.
The Equifax brand is under assault.
Equifax's reputation with consumers has fallen at a quicker pace than other companies hit by similar data breaches in recent years, according to data from YouGov BrandIndex released Monday.
The credit bureau has suffered a major public relations hit since Sept. 7, when it said its computer systems were breached by hackers and that personal data of 143 million Americans was at risk of being stolen as a result.
The negative headlines have taken a toll on its "Buzz score," tallied by YouGov, which tracks the perception of more than 1,500 brands daily.
The credit bureau's 33-point 10-day drop is larger than other high-profile breach.
The second-worst was a drop of 10 points suffered by eBay in the 10 days after its May 2014 hack. Other high-profile breaches, such as one at Anthem Blue Cross in February 2015 and Home Depot in September 2014, did not cause as big a hit to those brands.
Equifax's sinking perception score puts it in the same league as other notable recent crises and scandals. Only Volkswagen's 49-point Buzz score decline 10 days after news of its emissions-cheating scandal broke in September 2015 was bigger. Equifax's initial hit to its reputation is bigger than the 23-point decline in Chipotle Mexican Grill's Buzz score decline in October 2015 after its E. coli crisis began.
The hit to Equifax's brand is due to the size of the breach and how many people it puts at risk.
"When Volkwagen's crisis blew up, as bad as it seemed, not everybody owned a Volkswagen and necessarily felt impacted," says a YouGov BrandIndex spokesperson. "Equifax is on a different scale — much wider and personal. With its questionable tactics with consumers out of the gate, combined with its hostile relationship with inquiring reporters, it would seem Equifax was as unprepared for handling this crisis as they were for the breach itself.
"Until Equifax's actions take a more positive and productive step with consumers, this will most likely impact their perception for a long time," the YouGov spokesperson said.
Fellow credit bureau Experian has also seen its brand tarnished by the Equifax data theft. Experian has seen its Buzz score drop by 8 points, most likely "because of its similar name," YouGov said.


There are some experiences that are so ordinary that they could make excellent material for a Seinfeld episode. In other words, it’s about the little things that can make or break your day. Take dry cleaning.
Last week after I picked up my clothes from the local store, I noticed that my blouse was wrapped in the same style they use for men’s shirts. I need to make an aside here – have you noticed that even here women are treated differently? Compare dry cleaning costs between quite similar garments like shirts and you will see that we shell out twice the money to cover the expense.
There it was, a name written in ink on the inside of the back collar instead of the stapled number I usually find on my garments. Yet the price told me they knew it was a woman’s garment. Having a name written on the collar reminded me of summer camp and made me look harder at the laundering job. The collar could have definitely used better cleaning. I took the blouse back to the store.
After a very short demonstration of my problem with the job and a request to also take care to delete the black ink while at it, the owner agreed to redo the work so none of it would show and in fact volunteered that it was a bad mistake. On my way I passed another dry cleaner, a big discount store that opened a couple of years ago and is widely used because of its rock bottom prices. Would they have been so accommodating, I wondered?
The garment was ready for my pick up one day later and it was perfect – not a trace on the collar and freshly cleaned at no additional cost. Accidents and mistakes do happen in business – the way you handle what happens afterwards can make the difference between retaining your customers, even when they spend a little more, and seeing them go to the competitor.
Today, there are enough people doing what you do and offering you kind of service. Customers can choose to walk across the street (literally) and take their business elsewhere. Have you been available to a conversation with them? Do you stick to their meaning of service?


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In the last five decades, veteran singer Rahimah Rahim has built up her name as one of the home-grown music scene's most distinctive names, appearing anywhere from Malay radio and Chinese television programmes to National Day Parades and charity shows.
So when it came time to stage her Esplanade Concert Hall concert this Saturday, which surprisingly is her first solo headlining show after all these years, the 61-year-old mother of two decided that it was going to be no ordinary show.
"I'm going to take the audience through a journey of my life and there will be insights into my life as a singer, a daughter and a mother," says the bubbly multilingual singer who was inducted into the Singapore Women's Hall Of Fame in March and appeared last month in Channel 8 Hokkien drama Eat Already?.
Nothing will be spared, she says of the performance, which will be programmed like a musical with a storyline based on the ups and downs of her life in show business.
The show will also touch on her early years, such as the time she made her debut as an entertainer at the age of six with an acting role in Malay film Korban Kasih (1961).
One of her three grandchildren, aged 12, will make a cameo and play the young Rahimah, who moved from acting to singing with the launch of her 1972 debut album Mana Ibumu (Where Is Your Mother?).
Some hit songs from her 12 albums that she will sing, like Masihkah Ada Cinta? (Is There Still Love?), echo pivotal moments in her life.
The creative minds behind the show, as well as the guest stars, are all people who are close to her, so the experience will be authentic.
Rahimah, who was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year at Pesta Perdana, Mediacorp's award show for the local Malay television industry, says: "These are the people who know the real me."
Entertainment industry veteran Najip Ali, with whom she has worked since his national service days, is the creative director, while Malay entertainment personality Hafeez Glamour has written the script and will narrate the show.
Besides her granddaughter, the concert will also feature other entertainment figures in her family such as sister Rozie Rahim and cousins Mahani Mohamed, a singer, and Malaysian actress and director Fauziah Ahmad Daud.
Indeed, music has always been a family affair.
She credits her late parents, singer Rahim Hamid, known in the 1950s and 1960s as Singapore's Nat King Cole, and actress Mariam Baharom, for shaping her show-business talents.
"My father was my inspiration, while my mother was my number one critic," says the singer who is also affectionately known by her nickname "Kak Gerl".
And while most of her hits sung at the Esplanade show are in Malay, she will also sing in several other languages.
There will be Japanese tunes from the time she won the Kimi Koso Talentime, a singing competition in Tokyo in 1974, as well her rendition of tunes by late Chinese singing doyenne Teresa Teng.
She will also sing her recently released single, Gelas Gelas Cinta (Glass Of Love), her first new song in more than 10 years.
Recorded in Malaysia, she will sell CD copies of the single, priced at $10 at her show, with all the proceeds going to the late Kelantan singer Megat Nordin, whom she worked with just before he died of liver cancer last month.
Rahimah, who gets regular singing engagements both here and across the Causeway, says that she does not see herself retiring from the show business anytime soon.
"Singing is still my passion," she says. "This is how I practise active ageing."


Rachel Dolezal is an anti-racism and human rights activist who is most well-known for the controversy surrounding her decision to live as a "black" woman even though she was born "white." She is also the author of the new book "In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World."
On this episode of "The Chauncey DeVega Show," Rachel and I discuss the concept of "transracial" identity, Rachel's childhood, how she discovered her affinity for black people, what it is like to be a target for public scorn, and her thinking about how individuals should be free to perform whatever racial or other social identity they feel most comfortable with.
For more on Dolezal, watch this episode of "Salon Talks," where Salon's Alli Joseph interviews her about how her life and her career changed after she became a notorious public figure.
My second guest on this week's episode is counterintelligence expert Naveed Jamali. He is the author of the new book "How to Catch a Russian Spy." He shares his thoughts about Donald Trump and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's relationship to the Russian government, and what it all means for the firing of FBI Director James Comey.


February 16, 2017 around the web.
He spoke with the director of horticulture at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Andrea DeLong-Amaya who said that because of the “warm, crazy-warm” weather a lot of plants, including bluebonnets, have made an early appearance.
“I don’t want to freak anyone out, but this seems like a clear sign of global warming to me,” Lomax says. According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s website “bloom time” for bluebonnets is March through May. Not February, and definitely not early February. Amaya says it is “a clear sign of the unseasonably, record-breaking heat that we’ve had,” and that the small amount of cold weather we did experience in January served to slow the arrival of spring flora only slightly.
On the upside you can always get your annual bluebonnet photo shoot out of the way a little ahead of schedule.


But Francis doesn’t have a monopoly on faith-based environmental rhetoric. Scott Pruitt, the scandal-ridden chief administrator of the EPA, thinks humanity’s epochal challenge presents some epic opportunities.
“Is true environmentalism ‘do not touch’? It’s like having a beautiful apple orchard that could feed the world, but the environmentalists put up a fence around the apple orchard and say, ‘Do not touch the apple orchard because it may spoil the apple orchard,’” Pruitt said on a conservative talk show last August.
This perspective relies on the idea that Earth’s natural resources are there for us to take advantage of. In fact, God mandates it. Conservative Evangelicals use a biblical passage to justify this approach: “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Pruitt uses this worldview to justify opening up land for drilling.
Obviously, the pope does not agree with this approach. He’s said as much in the past. Christians who look at that famous passage in Bible about God giving man dominion over Earth’s creatures and read “dominion” as “exploitation” do not have the “correct interpretation of the Bible as intended by the Church,” he wrote in his encyclical.
How could these two men, both ostensibly working from the same primary source, have come to such wildly different conclusions? The only explanation I can think of is that God has good and bad days, like the rest of us. On good days, He sends Pope Francis bolts of renewable energy-powered inspiration, and on bad days, He sends the head of the EPA on frantic searches for fancy lotions. Who can blame Him?


Even with iPhone sales dropping, the company is still earning about $100 million in profit every single day.
Apple's iPhone sales fell again in the company's most recent quarter, marking the third consecutive period of quarterly decline for the company's most important product. The company's sales of iPads and Macs also both fell.
Those sales have fallen before, but there was also a first in Tuesday's earnings statement: Apple's annual revenue fell for the first time since 2001.
Apple sold 45.5 million iPhones in the three months from July to September, down 5% from a year earlier. The current period included about two weeks of sales of the iPhone 7, which may have been boosted by the disaster surrounding the recall of Samsung's explosion-prone Galaxy Note 7.
Apple shares are up about 12% this year, while the broader Nasdaq Composite Index, which includes many technology companies, is up just over 5%. In after-hours trading, the company's stock fell slightly following the release of the results.
With iPhone sales falling, Apple steered investors toward the growing money it makes from services like iCloud, which users subscribe to and pay monthly fees for. Wall Street tends to value these kind of recurring revenue streams, and Apple said its services unit pulled in $6.3 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 24% from a year ago.
Hardware sales fell across the board: iPads were down 6%, Mac computers were down 14% and the company's "other products" — a group that includes the Apple Watch and Beats headphones — fell 22%.
Regardless of falling iPhone sales, Apple remains insanely profitable — it made $9 billion in the last three months — about $100 million in profits every day — which was slightly more Wall Street analysts expected. But even this was still short of the $11 billion it earned in the same period last year.
The company said revenue would start picking up again in the final three months of 2016 — the holiday shopping season is always an Apple sales bonanza. It forecast revenue of $76 to $78 billion, which even at the low end would be above the $75.9 billion in pulled in last year.
“We’re thrilled with the customer response to iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and Apple Watch Series 2, as well as the incredible momentum of our Services business, where revenue grew 24 percent to set another all-time record," Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in a statement.


The just-released 68-page publication includes 25 itineraries, including Central Holidays’ hosted vacations. Check out more.
According to the Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 325,600 tourist entries were recorded in December 2018, 12.2 percent more than December 2017 and 31 percent more than December 2017. Here's a look at the latest stats.
Small ship cruise company Variety Cruises has announced it is offering fam trip deals on a few select departures of its Israel, Egypt and Jordan trip. Find out all the details here.


I have the greatest respect for the Rye lifeguard who had the courage to jump into action and take full responsibility for the jellyfish threat at Wallis Sands State Beach last Wednesday. He risked his own life to protect the people at the beach that day, and for that he has received nothing but media derision and contempt. Your above the fold article and lead headline of July 23, "Lifeguard error led to ... blah, blah, blah" blasts this individual's conscientious attempt to deal with a unique emergency.
It has become quite apparent from reading various accounts from the "experts" that there are numerous ideas about what the most appropriate solution should have been that day. All of these, suggested by people who were not there, who did not have to take on the responsibility of making a decision in the public interest, and who are bedecked with Ph.Ds in marine biology. I'm absolutely sure that none of their learned procedures for handling a huge jellyfish are contained in the "Lifeguard Training Manual," so why the ridicule?
The one thing that we can all be clear about is that the job of a lifeguard is a very complex and serious position. Those people who take on the weighty responsibility of this work allow the rest of us to enjoy our seashore, and they don't deserve the disrespect of being bludgeoned on the front page of their local paper. Perhaps the article would have been rendered more sensitively if the Portsmouth Herald had done its own research and had written its own story instead of lifting the article in total from The Union Leader.


The Islamic State is being crushed, its fighters are in retreat and the caliphate it sought to build in the image of a bygone glory is crumbling.
The biggest losers, however, are not the militants, who will fulfill their dreams of death or slink into the desert to regroup, but the millions of ordinary Sunnis whose lives have been ravaged by their murderous rampage.
No religious or ethnic group was left unscathed by the Islamic State’s sweep through Iraq and Syria. Shiites, Kurds, Christians and the tiny Yazidi minority have all been victims of a campaign of atrocities, and they now are fighting and dying in the battles to defeat the militants.
But the vast majority of the territory overrun by the Islamic State was historically populated by Sunni Arabs, adherents of the branch of Islam that the group claims to champion and whose interests the militants profess to represent. The vast majority of the 4.2 million Iraqis who have been displaced from their homes by the Islamic State’s war are Sunnis. And as the offensives get underway to capture Mosul, Iraq’s biggest Sunni city, and Raqqa, the group’s self-proclaimed capital in Syria, more Sunni towns and villages are being demolished, and more Sunni livelihoods are being destroyed.
Most Sunnis played no part in the militants’ rise. All are paying a heavy price for the sake of those who did, accelerating and deepening a reversal in the fortunes of the majority sect of Islam that had ruled the region for most of the past 1,400 years.
Across the border in Syria, where the war against the Islamic State is entangled with the complicated conflict between rebels and the government of President Bashar al-Assad, Sunnis are also bearing the brunt of the violence and dislocation. Sunni towns and neighborhoods are being leveled by Syrian and Russian airstrikes. The effort to crush the mostly Sunni rebellion relies heavily on Shiite fighters from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq. Sunnis comprise the vast majority of the 5 million refugees scattered around the region and in Europe, according to the United Nations and the governments of the countries that are hosting them.
The dangers are clear, analysts and Iraqis say. Sunnis are at risk of becoming a dispossessed and resentful underclass in lands they once ruled, creating fertile conditions for a repeat of the cycle of marginalization and radicalization that gave rise to the Islamic State in the first place.
Extent of Islamic State control or influence since 2014.
Kurdish authorities have ruled this Sunni town since recapturing it from the Islamic State in October 2014 and have placed restrictions on Sunni travel in the area.
Shiite militias that pushed out the Islamic State are suspicious of the town’s original Sunni residents and have denied them access to their homes.
Most residents have returned to this Sunni town in the 18 months since the Islamic State was ejected. But much of the city is in ruins and services have not been fully restored.
Old Sunni-Shiite tensions have flared since Shiite militias reclaimed control of this predominantly Sunni province. Among the issues: revenge killings and displacement.
Aid workers and diplomats say that is a worst-case scenario that need not come to pass if the war ends with reconstruction, rehabilitation and reconciliation. In Iraq, where the biggest gains against the militants have been made, the prospect that they soon may be defeated holds the promise of a moment of hope and opportunity, for Sunnis as much as for the Shiites and Kurds leading the fight — a chance to reset relations and find a new accommodation with neighbors.
The nature of the accommodation is in question, however. The obstacles are immense, resources are scarce, and the prospects for real reconciliation still seem remote.
A journey through many of the towns and villages in Iraq that have been liberated from Islamic State control, most of them well over a year ago, reveals the enormous scale of the challenge. From the Syrian border in the west to the Iranian border in the east, there are wrecked villages, half-empty towns and people whose lives have been torn apart, perhaps irrevocably.
Many predominantly Sunni towns and villages reclaimed from the Islamic State are now governed by the groups that liberated them. In Rabia, a member of the Shammar tribe stands guard near the Syrian border as smoke billows in the background.
Many predominantly Sunni towns and villages reclaimed from the Islamic State are now governed by the groups that liberated them. In Rabia, near the Syrian border, a member of the Shammar tribe occupies a lookout post, top, as smoke billows in the background. Kurdish peshmerga soldiers control a checkpoint in Rabia. In the nearby town of Bashir, a member of a Shiite militia climbs into a pickup truck weeks after the town was recaptured from the militants.
Although the territory seized by the Islamic State is mostly Sunni, the fighters wresting it back are overwhelmingly Shiite or Kurd. In some places, liberators with no previous ties to the communities they have freed remain behind after the battles have been won, filling the security vacuum, guarding against a return of the militants and also redrawing the map in ways that could unleash future disputes over land, power and politics.
One such place is Rabia, a Sunni town on the Syrian border that was seized by the Islamic State in August 2014 and was recaptured two months later by Kurdish peshmerga units. A town once governed by the central government in Baghdad is now administered by the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan.
Two years on, the Sunni residents are mostly just relieved that they are safe and that they were spared the prolonged battles that occurred in places such as Fallujah and Ramadi, where whole neighborhoods were flattened. Young men from the biggest local tribe, the Shammar, have formed a militia that helps the Kurdish forces control the town and flies the yellow-sun Kurdish flag at its checkpoints.
Suspicions between Sunni residents, new Kurdish rulers.
“When we were occupied by ISIS, the Kurds helped us, so now we have to stand with them to repay them for their sacrifice,” said Mohammed Khudeir, a leader of the Shammar Battalion.
The relationship between the residents and their new rulers is nonetheless fraught with suspicion and doubt. The Kurdish authorities require every resident to secure permission before traveling in or out of the town, an onerous burden for people who thrived on trade with nearby Syria before the war, many locals complain.
Tens of thousands of people who lived in surrounding villages are being prevented from returning to their homes, most of which in any case no longer exist. The ruins of wrecked buildings are strung out along the roads north and south of Rabia, watched over by peshmerga checkpoints. War may have caused some of the destruction, but the uniformity of the damage suggests sabotage, too.
The Sunni Arab village of Kazukha has been completely destroyed.
In one village, Kazukha, on the road leading south toward the Yazidi district of Sinjar, three peshmerga fighters escorted Washington Post journalists around the derelict homes. They described using TNT and bulldozers to ensure none could ever be inhabited again, by employing just enough explosives to collapse the roof of each building.
The residents belonged to a tribe that supported the Islamic State and will never be allowed to return, said Capt. Aziz Haji Khalaf, a Yazidi who heads the Asayish in the nearby town of Snuny, once home to Arabs and members of the Yazidi minority.
Many Sunnis in the area did indeed support the Islamic State, at least at first, as a welcome alternative to the repression and discrimination of the central government in Baghdad, acknowledged Hamoud, the tribal leader in Rabia.
Louay Rashed, his wife Amal Saleh, and their eight children live in a trailer outside Tuz Khurmatu after being forced to flee their home in the Sunni village of Salman Beg.
The belt of destroyed towns and villages continues for hundreds of miles along the jagged perimeter of the Islamic State’s shrinking domain. Where all the people who once lived in these emptied places have gone can only be guessed.
Some will have escaped alongside retreating Islamic State fighters and are among the 2 million to 3 million people thought by the United Nations and the Iraqi government still to be living under Islamic State control, including in the city of Mosul. Some may have died, in the fighting and in airstrikes, but U.N. and government casualty figures for Iraq do not include those killed in Islamic State areas.
Men from villages recently recaptured by Iraqi security forces are detained at the Dibaga refugee camp, some allegedly for months, while Kurdish authorities investigate any links they may have to the Islamic State.
Many more — at least 4.2 million — fled in the opposite direction, away from the militants and sometimes straight into the arms of the oncoming forces. An Amnesty International report in October accused Iraqi militias and government forces of detaining thousands of people, mostly men, who were trying to flee the fighting.
The figures mean that not only do Sunnis comprise a majority of the victims of the war with the Islamic State, but also that a majority of the Sunni community has been afflicted. Sunnis represent about 20 percent of Iraq’s population of 32.5 million, according to CIA figures for 2014 — or about 7 million people — and U.N. figures suggest that as many as 6 million of them either have been displaced or their villages and towns occupied by the Islamic State.
Where towns once were wholly Sunni, there is a good chance that families that had no ties to the militants will be able to return after those communities have been liberated, aid agencies say. Some 900,000 displaced people have gone home in the past two years, mostly to Sunni cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit, according to figures compiled for the United Nations and the United States by the International Organization for Migration.
But in places where Sunnis once lived in proximity to Shiites or Kurds, hundreds of thousands are unable to return to their homes, even though the Islamic State has gone. They are living in limbo, in camps or in makeshift accommodations, unsure of their future in an Iraq where Sunnis are regarded with suspicion as potential Islamic State sympathizers.
Hundreds of thousands are unable to return home.
“They say all Sunnis are Daesh, but it isn’t true,” said former truck driver Jassem Nouri, 50. Nouri has spent the past two years living on a building site in the northeast of Salahuddin province; his home, in the Sunni village of Salman Beg, is just six miles away, but the Shiite militias that ejected the Islamic State from the area over two years ago have refused to allow any of the residents to return. Last year, his two sons, former university students, were detained by masked men in unmarked uniforms and accused of working with the Islamic State. Nouri insists that they are innocent, but he has not been able to secure their release.
Members of the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces, pray in a frontline position in the Sunni village of Sufaya, south of Mosul, after it was recaptured from the Islamic State.
In the province of Diyala, bordering Iran to the east, a new cycle of violence is already underway. With its mixed Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish population, Diyala is considered a microcosm of Iraq. If it also is a bellwether for the country’s post-Islamic State future, its signals are gloomy.
In the 18 months since Islamic State fighters were driven out by Shiite militias, the old tensions between Shiites and Sunnis that helped fuel the Islamic State’s rise have resurfaced. Islamic State cells have re-infiltrated areas from which they were supposedly ejected, carrying out suicide bombings against mosques and cafes that have killed scores of Shiites. Revenge killings by shadowy militias have targeted Sunnis. At least 172,000 Sunnis who fled the initial Islamic State surge have returned, but there are still 82,000 who have been refused permission to go home. Some who did go back are fleeing again.
Among them is Abu Mohammed, a 46-year-old electrician who gathered up his nine young daughters and left three months ago after a spate of sinister killings in his village outside the Sunni town of Mahmudiyah.
Manal Ismail Issa, wife of Abu Mohammed, sits with her daughters in the tent that is now the family's home in the Qura Tu camp.
Back in the same tented refugee camp of Qura Tu in the north of the province, where he had taken refuge from the Islamic State a year earlier, he checked off the killings that had prompted his second flight from the town. A man who sold canisters of cooking gas was shot by unknown assailants on a motorbike. A neighbor’s mutilated body was found dumped in a nearby village. Then another neighbor went into town and never came back. Finally came the brazen killing of three men, one of them a cousin of Abu Mohammed’s, by armed men who showed up in the village and shot the men as they went out one evening to buy food.
The gunmen “wear black and they wear masks. Nobody knows who they are, where they came from or where they went,” Abu Mohammed said.
A new cycle of violence is already underway.
It isn’t only killings that drive people away, said Adnan Salem Dawood, 46, who lived in an area that was never seized by the Islamic State. He was driven away by Shiite militia members after they had defeated the militants elsewhere, and he has spent the past year living in a tent in the Qura Tu camp.
Kareem Nouri, spokesman for the Badr Organization, the largest Shiite military group in Diyala, which also controls the provincial government, acknowledged the problems. But he denied that there is any deliberate attempt to displace Sunnis from the province or from any other part of Iraq.
If Sunnis are being refused permission to return home, it is because their villages or towns are near battle zones and aren’t safe, or because they or their families are suspected of affiliation with the Islamic State, he said.
Many areas liberated from Islamic State control still lie in ruins, such as the graves and shrines at the Tikrit cemetery.
Many areas liberated from Islamic State control still lie in ruins, such as the graves and shrines at the Tikrit cemetery. Outside of the city, recently displaced Sunni Arabs wait in line to be screened and registered. Evidence of new Shiite influence in Tikrit can been seen on a billboard displaying the three most powerful Shiite militia leaders.
If Tikrit is a success, it is a relative one. Almost all of the residents have returned since the Islamic State was defeated 18 months ago. The home town of the former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein has come to terms, at least for now, with the Shiite militias that drove ISIS out and now maintain a visible presence.
Shiite flags fly at the checkpoints controlling access to the city and over the compound of palaces built by Hussein. Where once a statue of the dictator greeted visitors as they arrived on the road from Baghdad, there now is a billboard featuring the three most powerful Shiite militia leaders, Hadi al-Ameri, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qais al-Khazali.
A city in ruins, and no money to rebuild.
When that might happen is in question. The ISIS conquests coincided almost exactly with a collapse in the price of oil, Iraq’s chief source of revenue. Overnight, the government lost nearly half its income, just as it had to gear up for a major military campaign. There is no money to rebuild what is being destroyed, in Tikrit or anywhere else in Iraq, said government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi.
“Because of the scale of the destruction, the priority of fighting terrorism and the financial situation, it is impossible to cover these expenses right now,” he said.
On the streets of Tikrit, people say they are glad to be home, but they wonder where their country is heading and whether their lives will ever be as they were.
“Even those who didn’t lose their loved ones lost their life savings and investments. All the work we put in all our lives is gone,” said Hassan Adnan, a merchant in the bazaar who fled the Islamic State, then returned to find that his home and shop had been burned, his merchandise looted and there was no hope of compensation.
“The problem is that the government is spending not even one dinar to help us rebuild. If they can’t solve this simple thing, how can they solve the big problems of the country?” he said.
That is a question many, not just Sunnis, are asking. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has proved to be more conciliatory than his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki, whose starkly sectarian worldview has been widely blamed for the conditions that enabled the Islamic State to thrive. But Abadi is weaker than Maliki was and is beholden to a large extent to the growing power of the Shiite militias that have played a major role in the anti-ISIS fight.
Ahmed al-Kareem, the head of the provincial council in Tikrit, sees hope. There is a realization among most Sunnis that extremist groups will not solve their problems, he said, as well as a recognition by most Shiites that they need to accommodate Sunnis if they are to avoid yet another incarnation of the insurgency that gave rise to the Islamic State.
The question of how and when basic services will be restored and the city of Tikrit rebuilt remains unanswered.
Mustafa Salim and Zakaria Zakaria contributed to this report.
Iraq’s problems have been set aside, but not resolved, to defeat the militants.


“I feel he is too young to retire,” Waufle said yesterday.
This is Waufle’s fourth year with the Giants and he doesn’t want it to transpire without Strahan, who continues to stay away from camp. Thus far, Strahan has been fined $100,016. The Giants, though, actually haven’t taken any money from Strahan, as the fines will not kick in until the start of the regular season, when his paycheck would be reduced to $229,411 per game after a weekly fine deduction of $5,883. That’s if he reports today, which won’t happen. Today makes a full week without Strahan, who is said to be contemplating retirement.
Waufle said Strahan hasn’t lost any passion for the game.
It does not appear as if Waufle is going to work with Simeon Rice any time soon, or ever. Rice, who passed the Giants physical, came and left without an offer. This was a case of the Giants doing their due diligence on a player they wanted to meet and examine. If Strahan continues his holdout and Rice remains available in the next 2-3 weeks, the Giants could revisit the Rice scenario.
Without Strahan at left defensive end, the Giants’ options are Justin Tuck and William Joseph. Can Waufle get by with that duo?
“I am going to have to,” he said, though he praised both players.
TE Jeremy Shockey sat out both practice sessions with upper leg soreness. . . . New starting SS James Butler had an interception off an overthrown by QB Eli Manning. That was the only blemish for Manning, who was especially sharp in the morning. . . . Mathias Kiwanuka is the new strong side LB, but that doesn’t mean he’s through putting his hand on the ground and rushing the passer. He’s being used as the left DE in the nickel package. . . . Former Giants LB Jessie Armstead was on the scene and will work as a coaching intern for part of camp.


Aberdeen Football Club have pulled their multi-million pound stadium and training facility plans from a crunch council meeting next week.
Councilors had been due to make a decision on the £50million Kingsford scheme next Wednesday.
But a spokeswoman for the club said that it was “deferred to allow further discussions with the planning service”.


Bridge City High School graduate Nathan McAnelly signed with the University of St. Thomas in Houston to play basketball next fall.
The team is in the NAIA Division 1 team (equivalent to NCAA Division 2).
From left, front row: Athletic Director/Head Basketball Coach at St. Thomas Todd Smith; mother Susan McAnelly, Nathan McAnelly and father Gregg McAnelly.
Back row: Sister Hannah McAnelly, BCHS Head Basketball Coach Tony Knight and BCHS principal Richard Briggs.