▪ Minced garlic can be found in the produce section of the market. One teaspoon is equivalent to 2 cloves crushed garlic.
▪ Frozen chopped onion is used in both recipes. Measure at one time and divide accordingly.
▪ Preheat oven to 350 degrees to warm bread.
Wine suggestions: Savory meatballs go nicely with a nice, rich, soft, nontannic cabernet sauvignon from Chile or maybe Australia.
To buy: 1 can no-salt-added lentils, 2 ounces mushrooms, 1 small bottle no-sugar-added, low sodium pasta sauce, 1/2 pound ground white meat turkey breast, 1 small jar fennel seeds, 1 package frozen chopped onion, 1 small jar crushed red pepper flakes, 1 small bunch parsley and 1 small loaf whole grain bread.
Staples: Minced garlic; fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth, plain breadcrumbs, balsamic vinegar, salt and black peppercorns.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees to warm bread. Place onion, garlic, mushrooms and pasta sauce in a medium nonstick skillet and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook gently for 5 minutes while you prepare the meatballs. Mix turkey, fennel seeds, breadcrumbs and balsamic vinegar together. Add a little salt and pepper. Roll into small meatballs, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. There should be about 8 meatballs. Add to skillet and simmer, covered, 5 minutes. Warm the bread in oven. Turn meatballs over and cook, covered, another 3 minutes. A meat thermometer should read 165 degrees. Taste sauce and add salt and pepper, if needed. Remove bread from oven and serve with meatballs and lentils. Makes 2 servings.
Per serving: 360 calories (18 percent from fat), 7.3 g fat (1.1 g saturated, 1.5 g monounsaturated), 64 mg cholesterol, 34.9 g protein, 39.4 g carbohydrates, 7.2 g fiber, 302 mg sodium.
Place lentils and broth in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and crushed red pepper. Simmer 10 minutes or until most of the liquid is evaporated. Add salt and pepper to taste, sprinkle with parsley and serve with the meatballs. Makes 2 servings.
Per serving: 143 calories (3 percent from fat), 0.5 g fat (0.1 g saturated, 0.1 g monounsaturated), no cholesterol, 12.0 g protein, 24.5 g carbohydrates, 8.6 g fiber, 81 mg sodium.


Oregon is looking for its first bowl win since the 2015 Rose Bowl. Ducks will face Michigan State Spartans in the 2018 Redbox Bowl.
Eugene, Ore. -- Come New Year’s Eve, it’s on between the Ducks and the Spartans. Oregon (8-4, 5-4 Pac-12) will face Michigan State (7-5, 5-4 Big Ten) in the Redbox Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
The Ducks enter the postseason after going 8-4 in the regular season, and riding a two-game win streak after victories over Arizona State and Oregon State.
The Ducks are looking for their first bowl win since the 2015 Rose Bowl when Marcus Mariota led Oregon to a 59-20 victory over the Florida State Seminoles.
Oregon head coach spoke to the media Sunday and expects quarterback Justin Herbert and defensive lineman Jalen Jelks to play in the bowl game after injuries limited them during the Civil War.


Seminole County commissioners agreed Monday to charge the American Red Cross $1 a year to lease a former motor vehicle inspection station for a food distribution center and chairman Robert Sturm tossed in a contribution for the first year's rent.
Commissioners are expected to vote today on the lease. No formal action could be taken during Monday's work session.
The American Red Cross in Seminole County, which distributes surplus food to needy families once a month, had asked to use the former inspection station on 25th Street to solve problems volunteers have faced at other locations they have used as distribution centers.
The May distribution still is scheduled for Crooms High School on West 13th Street but Red Cross representatives said they hope to be in the county-owned inspection station by June.
Jenny Penny, director of the American Red Cross Seminole Services Center, had said that the school was unsuitable for distribution because the doorways were narrow, making food deliveries difficult, and the doors leading in and out of the rooms used were too close together.
Crooms High School was used as the distribution center this month, but before that the Red Cross doled out surplus food at the county's agricultural center at Five Points. With Flea World across the street, weekend distributions caused traffic and crowd problems, Penny said.
Neither of the previous sites allowed storage of the food, so supplies had to be transported several times a day in refrigerated trucks from Atlantic Ice in south Orlando, she said.
With a more permanent location, the Red Cross can install refrigerated storage rooms, she said.
The lease will be up for renewal annually.
Penny had said the Red Cross had no money in its budget for renting space and she had hoped that the county would allow the use of the MVI station rent- free.
The county advertised the sale or lease of the station in late March and early April but no one submitted an offer, said county administrator Ken Hooper.
Commissioner Barbara Christensen said the county is losing money by allowing the Red Cross to use the Sanford center for $1 a year when higher- paying tenants could be found.
Commissioner Fred Streetman chided Sturm about his $1 contribution, saying the chairman could have donated the rent money last week when he met with Red Cross representatives but instead waited until "a public meeting" to toss in his dollar.
Casselberry is renting for $500 a month the county's other MVI station near city hall for a maintenance shop and storage area for utility equipment. The stations were closed in September 1981 when the state quit requiring inspections.


GALION — The GriefShare grief recovery support group will meet at St. Paul United Methodist Church, 746 Cherry St. Galion on Monday evening Oct. 1 from 6:30-8 p.m. Whether your loss is recent or not so recent, this 13 week, Christ-centered, Bible-based program is designed to offer encouragement, comfort and help in grieving the loss your spouse, child, parent, sibling, another family member or friend.
IBERIA — The Rev. John Watson, M.Th. of Columbus, will teach the fall seminar at Ohio Central Bible College. The event will be held Saturday, Oct. 6 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Iberia Presbyterian Church, 8607 County Road 30 in Iberia through the courtesy of the congregation.
His topic will be “The Life and Work of Christian Author C.S. Lewis.” All are welcome to attend.
Cost for the seminar is $20 per person, with lunch included, and registration will begin at 9:30 a.m. Students will receive a certificate of completion. For information, call Mark Phillips at 419-946-5576 or visit Ohio Central Bible College on Facebook, Twitter or at www.ohiocentralbiblecollege.org.
WILLARD — St. Francis Xavier Church will have its annual Church and School Festival on Sunday, Sept. 30, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Ham and barbecue chicken dinners will be available for drive-through carry outs or enjoy the chicken dinner in our cafeteria. Also offered will be authentic Latino food. Enjoy live entertainment, craft show, kids’ games, bingo/instant bingo, and reverse raffle with a $1,500 grand prize.


On Sunday afternoon the Minister of Social Development and Sports Michael Weeks attended the closing ceremony for the Mirrors SuperCamp Junior Forum at Willowbank Resort & Conference Centre.
Last week, 58 young people, aged 11 to 13, attended the six-day camp, where they focused on communication, critical thinking and character development as well as innovation learning strategies and academic skills.
This fully subsidized camp gave middle school students an incredible opportunity to develop their socio-emotional skills, to build and maintain relationships with others more effectively, and gain neuroscience-based learning techniques to enhance their school performance.
Prior to the closing ceremony, students had the opportunity to run their own ‘trade show’ to teach others in the community what they had learned in terms of the core principles of the program.
Additionally, 44 parents completed a two-day workshop created especially for parents of the students.
“SuperCamp is not a typical classroom or camp experience; it uses a structured curriculum to provide students with intensive personal development and learning strategies to be more effective learners,” said Minister Weeks.
In speaking to those gathered on Sunday, Minister Weeks said, “I would like to send a heartfelt thank you to the volunteers that have graciously given their time over the last eight days.
“Their passion to support the youth of Bermuda is one of the driving forces that makes this camp transformational for the young people.
“Thank you also to the parents who completed the parent workshop…by doing so you will be better equipped to engage with your child and help them to put into practice what they have learned over the past few days,” the Minister added.
To find out more about Mirrors Programme and what it has to offer, please visit www.mirrors.bm.
Communication is the key. We need to teach our young people in the schools how to resolve conflicts without violence, starting at a very young age. . Poor communication skills and a lack of respect is the root of the problem. They unfortunately take that problem into adulthood.
The Super Camp is fantastic. Thank you to all the organizers.


The Bahamas-registered "Prestige" is seen some 70 nautical miles (132 kilometers) off Spain's coast in the Atlantic ocean, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2002. Spain battled to contain an oil spill from the striken oil tanker as slicks washed up on the beaches of the country's northwestern coast.
A view of the coastline in Camelle, northwestern Spain, Saturday, Nov. 16, after oil from the Bahamas-flagged tanker washed ashore.
The stricken Bahamas-flagged "Prestige," carrying some 77,000 metric tons (85,000 US tons) of fuel oil, leaves a trail of oil behind it. The "Prestige" sprung a leak Wednesday, Nov. 13, after it cracked its hull in a storm some 50 kilometers, 31 miles, offshore. The tanker, in danger of splitting in two, was being towed out to sea.
On Tuesday, Nov. 19 the Prestige oil tanker finally broke in two. The stricken tanker was towed some 244 kilometers, 152 miles, off the coast before it sank.
The last of the Prestige, and its 77,000 tons (20 million gallons) of fuel oil, sinks into the Atlantic Ocean. Officials had hoped the oil would solidify with the Prestige in the frigid cold and high pressure 2.2 miles below, avoiding an environmental catastrophe.
A bird covered with oil squawks on the seafront in Malpica, northwestern Spain, Saturday, Nov. 16.
Two people walk across the oil-covered Barranan beach in Arteixo, northwestern Spain, Sunday, Nov. 17, after oil washed ashore from the tanker "Prestige."
An unidentified woman looks at an oil-stained beach near Camelle, Sunday, Nov 17.
A bird floats in oil-contaminated water in Camelle, northwestern Spain, Sunday, Nov. 17.
Spanish navy personnel fill buckets with sand soaked with oil from the Prestige tanker in Barranan, northern Spain, Wednesday, Nov. 20.
An oil-soaked bird sits on the beach of Mar de Fora near Finisterre, northern Spain, Thursday, Nov 21, as fresh oil slicks washed ashore from the stricken Bahamas-flagged Prestige.
An unidentified veterinarian cleans a bird in Oleiros, northwestern Spain, Monday, Nov. 18. The bird is one of the thousands of wildlife believed to be affected by the Prestige spill.
A man uses binoculars to observe new oil slicks arriving at Cabo Finisterre (Cape Land's End) in northwestern Spain Saturday, Nov. 30. A second huge slick is expected to hit shore anytime.
A dead, oil-covered bird lies on the Rostro beach in Finisterre, northwestern Spain, Sunday, Dec. 1. An enormous oil slick advanced toward one of Europe's busiest fishing regions Saturday as mariners and fishermen raced to intercept it with floating barriers and oil-skimming boats.
In Portosin, northwestern Spain, fishermen prepare a floating barrier on Saturday, Nov. 30, in hopes of containing the oil coming their way.
National park workers fill sandbags while erecting a barrier along the sea shore of the Corrubedo national park, a nature reserve known for its sand dunes. The barrier is an attempt to minimize the damage should oil reach the shore along the park. Oil from the spill has been lurking in the ocean a few miles from Corrubedo.
During a visit to an oil-stained beach in Muxia, northwestern Spain, Spain's King Juan Carlos, right, and Galician Regional President Manuel Fraga, second right, speak to clean-up volunteers, Monday, Dec. 2.
Spanish fishermen scoop up oil from the sea in the Ria de Arousa inlet near Aguino in Galicia, northwestern Spain Tuesday, Dec. 3. Hundreds of beaches have been contaminated by the fuel oil and the government has banned fishing and shellfish harvesting as a result.
Spanish fishermen look at oil filled containers aboard fishing boats after it was scooped from the sea in the Ria de Arousa inlet, Tuesday Dec. 3.


Jason Lindsay vividly remembers the day he jumped off the sidelines in America’s decades-long and seemingly endless debate over gun reform.
Motivated by Leinonen’s plea, and frustrated by the recalcitrance displayed by politicians in the days following the Orlando nightclub massacre, Lindsay formed a political action committee, the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence. Lindsay had one simple goal: help elect candidates willing to pass measures that could prevent future gun-related tragedies, and keen to support legislation promoting LGBTQ equality.
A moderate Democrat raised in a rural community in North Carolina, Lindsay is not ashamed of the Pride Fund’s partisan leanings.
The biggest challenge for the fledgling organization is that it’s attempting to serve as a counterweight to the much more prominent, well-financed, and politically established National Rifle Association, which is quick to dismiss any sort of restrictions on guns — from waiting periods to background checks to limits on the number of magazines — as a conspiracy to take away the right to bear arms. The NRA uses its wealth and influence to oppose candidates who support gun reform, even cowing some lawmakers into silence just by the mere threat of a well-financed campaign against them.
But Lindsay says much of the NRA’s rhetoric is fantasy, derived from a caricature of what its most fervent members believe liberals or gun reform advocates wish to do. Based on his own experiences with guns, from growing up on a hog farm to serving as an Army Reservist, Lindsay says much of the policies supported by Pride Fund are perfectly rational — and have widespread support, even among former military members.
Despite being maligned, slandered, and financially outgunned by the political right, Pride Fund has managed a modicum of success, its most significant victories being the ouster of two longtime Republican congressmen, each with more than two decades of experience, staunchly anti-LGBTQ records, and NRA allies.
This year, the organization is focused on repeating that success in gubernatorial and legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia. Lindsay hopes that sustaining their success will boost Pride Fund’s reputation, and, through contributions, its resources ahead of 2018, when they will focus on key congressional, senatorial and gubernatorial contests.
Some posit that Americans have become numb to the frequency of mass shootings, or the high number of gun-related fatalities each year, but Lindsay believes there’s still enough outrage and disgust to motivate people to take action. And that motivation strengthens as the number of shootings and subsequent death toll increases.
This is particularly true after the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, when a gunman fired into a crowd at a country music festival, killing 58 and injuring nearly 500. To make matters worse, the shooter, Stephen Paddock, used bump stocks — attachments to make his semi-automatic weapons fire at a faster pace — in order to kill more people as rapidly as possible.
Despite the media attention often lavished on conservative or pro-gun groups like the Log Cabin Republicans or the Pink Pistols, Lindsay believes his group is gaining more recognition, as members of the LGBTQ community search for solutions to gun-related tragedies.
METRO WEEKLY: You were exposed to guns from a young age. What was your childhood like?
JASON LINDSAY: I grew up in rural North Carolina, literally in the middle of nowhere, on a hog farm. Incredibly rural, with a small high school, with like 350 people in the entire school. Clinton is the closest city, and even it didn’t have a Walmart until I was in high school. It had a lot of Piggly Wigglys.
I was an only child. My dad worked a lot on the farm. Being an only child and being in a really rural area, I had to entertain myself a lot, so I liked to read, write, and play video games. I would love playing outside, being in the woods. I had a lot of animals. We had horses and goats and rabbits and dogs and cats.
MW: What happened after you went to high school?
LINDSAY: In high school, I knew I wanted to serve others, and I was wanting to do one of two things. I either wanted to be a teacher, or I wanted to go into medicine. Where I grew up was so rural, there were volunteer rescue squads, so as soon as I turned 16, I started volunteering on the rescue squad at nights and on weekends to serve the community and help give back.
I wanted to become a teacher. I was really active in different programs at school to try and advance myself and really put myself in a position where I could go to college and get out of the rural area, and be with my people. I knew I was gay early on, so it was a difficult experience, being in such a rural area and not knowing any other gay people.
MW: When did you come out to your parents?
LINDSAY: To my mother, 16, 17. I didn’t tell my dad until I was 21. My mom was okay with it, after a while. I think she knew, but it was also a shock. She just didn’t know how to deal with it, but she very quickly got to the point where she was wanting to know my dating life and meet people and cook for them. A typical Southern woman.
MW: Did you ever encounter homophobia?
LINDSAY: Absolutely, being in a redneck high school, even though I wasn’t out. Because there was the perception that I was gay, I was picked on a lot. I was one of the few guys that did not play sports in this little small school. I stood out just because of that, and then also because I was focused on my studies and doing the rescue squad. That set me apart from a lot of my schoolmates.
MW: Where did you go to college?
LINDSAY: I started at UNC Greensboro. I wanted to go into education. I was a middle-grades education major. When I was a freshman in college, during the 2000 election, I saw one of the debates between Bush and Gore, and it really got me interested in politics. Prior to that, I had no interest. But after seeing the debate, I got more interested, changed my major, and later joined the Army Reserves. Then, 9/11 happened just a few months after that.
After my deployment to Iraq, when I came home, I wanted to be closer to my family, so I transferred to NC State in Raleigh, and that’s where I finished undergrad.
MW: For how long were you in Iraq?
LINDSAY: I was on active duty for a year. I was in-country for three and a half months.
MW: What was it like having to abide by “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”?
LINDSAY: It was challenging because I felt like I couldn’t open up or be myself, that I had to be regimented. I think the short of it is, because of the system and the rules in place, it made us feel like our service was not good enough, and that we were not as honorable as our straight counterparts.
It’s a shame. Even today, with the reversal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” you have the transgender ban and transgender soldiers and veterans being told that exact same thing, that, even though it’s 2017, our political leaders are basically saying a certain category of people’s service is not good enough.
MW: What brought you from North Carolina to D.C.?
LINDSAY: I moved up here and started working for Senator Kay Hagan, who was representing North Carolina, doing health policy. Then, I went to the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was a Senior Congressional Relations Officer, working as a liaison with the Hill. I’ve been in DC a little over seven years.
MW: As a former Army Reservist, what is military culture like, and how does your relationship with guns differ from the general public?
LINDSAY: I think you kind of have a couple different viewpoints. There’s the viewpoint like myself and [Virginia gubernatorial candidate] Dr. Ralph Northam, who is also an army vet, and Seth Moulton, who’s a marine vet and Congressman from Massachusetts, where we understand the devastation that assault weapons can cause. We know the level of training and continual retraining that members of the military and police have with weapons, and that there needs to be a respect for the lethality of them, especially with stuff like bump stocks, which have come to the forefront of the news this week.
Then, you have other folks that are very much in line with the NRA and Republican line of thinking, that any effort whatsoever to change our laws or have smart regulations is a violation of the Second Amendment, which is absolutely false, but that’s the other viewpoint.
MW: Pride Fund considers attitudes towards gun reform and LGBTQ equality when choosing candidates to endorse, but what other criteria must they meet?
LINDSAY: There’s not a rubber stamp that you have to check every single box on a twenty-step process. We’re not absolutists, but we do carefully evaluate the entire picture of the critical issues.
We have an endorsement questionnaire where we ask questions about key gun reform positions as well as LGBTQ equality. We review voting records and statements and vet the candidates if they’ve been in office at a previous level, or if they’re running for re-election. If they’re not a current office holder, then we are a little more strict with the interview process, because there’s not as much of a record to go on. But it’s a lengthy, in-depth process.
We do focus our attention, primarily, on competitive races, because our scope is to protect vulnerable Democrats that are strong on our issues. But most importantly, to flip seats from red to blue, even simple gun reform is not going to move. LGBT protections are not advancing, they’re being rolled back. So, what’s the solution to that? We’ve got to have more Democratic members of Congress and in legislatures, as governors, at all levels.
MW: Your opponents have attacked you as gun-grabbers infringing on their Second Amendment rights. How do you fight that?
MW: Then why do people believe that?
LINDSAY: Because the NRA has been very good at pushing that narrative, that any effort, whatsoever, to amend our gun safety regulations and laws is an effort to take away your guns. Chris Cox and Wayne LaPierre were on Fox News on Thursday, basically pushing that narrative, that they’re defending freedom and protecting the Second Amendment. Well, when the Second Amendment was written, you had muskets. You didn’t have semi-automatic and automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines, and the lethality of these things has changed drastically.
When there were incredibly high rates of vehicle deaths, the government wanted to save lives, so they started implementing things like seat belt rules, crash test standards, and airbag regulations. Just because the government was doing those things to save lives didn’t mean the government was “coming to take away your car.” It meant that it was implementing common sense things that have saved lives. Now, has implementing those various proposals in car safety saved every single life from car accidents? No, but it saved a hell of a lot of lives. And that’s the false narrative that so much of the gun lobby and Republicans want to push.
On Fox News, Tucker Carlson was saying that expanding background checks wouldn’t have stopped Las Vegas, or prohibiting assault weapons wouldn’t have stopped Las Vegas. But every one of these common sense measures makes a difference and saves lives. It’s not going to save every life, but it’s the same way with treating cancer. To treat cancer or HIV, there’s a lot of multivariable treatment approaches to it. Not one approach is the cure-all or fix, but does that mean we don’t try?
There are 33,000 people who die every single year, 93 people every single day, over 100,000 who are injured due to firearms. Why would we not at least try to fix the problem?
MW: Conservative hero Antonin Scalia argued that there could be restrictions placed on firearms without violating the Second Amendment. Why aren’t Democrats using that as an argument to Republicans?
LINDSAY: I think messaging is always a challenge. I will tell you one thing, the NRA has been amazing at their messaging, and they know how to use fear tactics to rally the base and completely get off topic of the facts. These “alternative facts” and alternative realities, “We say this is true so it is.” If they keep saying something over and over again, their members start to believe it.
With the Dallas police shooting last year, people said the same thing. Concealed-carry holders were scared to even try and act because the police were rushing in, and they didn’t want to be shot, thinking they were the bad guy.
At Pulse, the first person the gunman encountered was an off-duty police officer with a gun. This narrative that having everybody strapping a gun is going to save lives is not true.
MW: Why aren’t any of these anecdotes, which cast doubt on the NRA’s message, breaking into the mainstream?
LINDSAY: I think they are public, but I think that there’s not enough cohesion. I think it’s hard to get through the noise, because you’re going against people that are so often just flat out telling untruths as part of their narrative.
The NRA also put over $30 million into getting Trump elected and spreading false lies about Hillary Clinton wanting to take your guns when she clearly said, over and over and over again, throughout the campaign, “I do not want to take your guns.” Expanding background checks to cover online gun sales and gun shows, that’s not taking away your guns. But the NRA pumped out millions of dollars worth of ads, basically saying how she wanted to take your guns away. So, when you have a behemoth organization that spent $52 million just on federal elections last year, it’s kind of hard to fight back against that machine in the same way that everyone would like to.
MW: As you’re endorsing candidates for office, what type of support are you providing?
LINDSAY: There’s a couple of aspects to that. At the very, very lowest tier, you have just an endorsement. If it’s a local race, having that stamp of approval that they can show that they’ve been vetted at a national level and that people support them.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, and there’s all kinds of levels in between, there could be direct campaign contributions to the candidate, then independent expenditures outside of the campaign, spending money on behalf of them. There’s holding events and rallies, press conferences to bring attention to the candidate and their issues. There’s field work, with door-to-door canvassing, or remote-phone banking, or going to their office and helping with activities.
With us, we’re very digital-focused, where we utilize social media and our national grassroots network to help bring attention to certain races. We are a small grassroots organization. For the first year, we were volunteer, and solely relied on our grassroots power to grow and to create change.
We have laser-like focus. We’ll endorse and we’ll help a decent amount of candidates, but in the 2016 and 2017 elections, because of our size, we picked a handful of races that we focused really, really intently on.
MW: What elections are you focused on this year?
LINDSAY: Ralph Northam. We endorsed him in the primary, the only group that did that at that point. We endorsed Virginia delegate candidate Chris Hurst, also early on in May. We were the first gun reform organization that had endorsed him, and one of his first endorsements, period. Then, Attorney General Mark Herring, running for reelection, is a critical race. For delegate, Carrie Delaney, right in Northern Virginia, David Reed, Danica Roem.
MW: There’s this interesting phenomenon among delegates from Northern Virginia, where they vote against stand-alone bills on LGBTQ equality, but then when it comes to the annual budget, they vote for an amendment providing nondiscrimination protections that they know is going to be defeated. Then they go back to their constituents and say, “Well, I voted for the budget amendment.” How do you focus people’s attention on their role in killing pro-LGBTQ legislation?
LINDSAY: That’s a really, really good point. Especially in Northern Virginia, and with Joseph Yost, who’s running against Christ Hurst. They’re two-faced. They talk out one side of their mouth and tell their constituents, “I’m a moderate, blah, blah, blah,” but then you look at their voting record. They’re not moderate, but they’ve convinced their constituents they are. The number one mission of the campaign and outside groups like us is to let constituents know the true voting record and stances of that member.
MW: But how do you make sure that message reaches the swing voter?
LINDSAY: There’s a few ways. One that we really focus on, depending on the race, especially because of the extremely high return on investment, and the advances in campaign technology, is micro-targeting, and making sure your message is getting to persuadable audiences. You can use voter file targeting and Facebook and you can really partner with campaigns where you’re doing a multifaceted approach. People could get direct mail in their regular mailbox, then you can do voter file targeting and send them the same kind of messaging through Facebook ads or banner ads. You can do robocalls. There’s so many tools in the toolbox that you can use to reach voters.
MW: Are Democrats still reticent to embrace gun reform measures, or are supporters of such measures now in the majority?
LINDSAY: The majority, and not only in Congress. The American people overwhelmingly support common sense gun reform. Depending on the measure, a lot of public opinion polling has shown that even gun owners say the NRA has lost its way and is no longer protecting and serving the needs of sportsmen and its original base, that it is serving the profits and the interests of gun manufacturers.
One of the NRA’s top two legislative agenda items for this year is advancing legislation in Congress to deregulate the sale of silencers. For most gun owners, that’s not their top legislative priority, but for the gun manufacturers, it is, because it’s a whole new revenue stream that is currently heavily regulated, and purchasing and registering a silencer is expensive.
Brandon Wolf, a Pulse survivor who is on our board, has said, “When I was at Pulse. I didn’t see the gun, I didn’t smell the gun. I heard the shots, and that’s what saved my life.” So, why on earth is one of the NRA’s top legislative priorities to deregulate silencers? Can you imagine how much more lethal Las Vegas would have been if all of his guns were equipped with silencers, where people were already confused thinking it was fireworks or part of the show? The same thing happened at Pulse: people originally thought it was part of the music. But if these weapons had silencers on them where there was very little noise, how many more people would have died in the confusion?
MW: In the wake of Vegas, what’s your biggest fear about the next mass shooting?
LINDSAY: My biggest fear is that as these attacks continue to happen with increasing frequency, and the lethality gets worse. You continue to see that more and more people are angry, they’re upset, they want to fight back, but I think we’re in period right now where we can create change. But if we don’t move the needle, at some point, there’s going to be a saturation point where the American public just says, “This is how it is.” Once you get to that point, you lose the passion and the level of anger and work and dedication to fixing the issue.
MW: Have we reached that point already?
LINDSAY: I don’t think so. I definitely don’t think so, because I think there’s more and more people that have never been [politically] involved before. Even within the gay community, Pulse was a watershed moment, but after a period of time, they started to be focused on the latest Trump disaster and protesting and fighting that. But now that Las Vegas has happened, it has rekindled that passion and enthusiasm of people, like, “Enough is enough.” We can’t let the gun lobby continue to dictate the rules and let people continue to die and be injured in these types of attacks.
Mass shootings are always talked about because they’re news, but there’s so many more components to gun violence. One of our policy items that is important for us as an LGBTQ organization is suicide. The number one way people kill themselves is with a gun. Within the gay community, that’s a huge challenge for us, more so than in the straight community. The level of gun violence against victims who are transgender is incredibly high. We’ve got to tackle that. There’s the level of hate crimes against members of the gay community. The FBI has clearly said that the LGBTQ community is the number one target of hate crimes, based on current reporting.
There’s important work to be done. We’re making a difference, and I think one of the most important things is that we are an organization where gun violence is our sole focus. We don’t have a list of 30 policy things in a bunch of different arenas, trying to be all things to all people. We are the only national political organization, LGBT, that is solely focused on gun policy reforms.
MW: Where do you hope to see the Pride Fund in 10 years?
LINDSAY: I want it to really be a powerhouse as a political action committee, and expand into the nonprofit advocacy world. There’s a lot of work that we do as a PAC that is very different from what any other PAC does. We don’t just raise money and give money to candidates or spend it. This is a movement. People want to volunteer. They want to help. They want to create change, and there are so many ways to do that that don’t directly fit into the political box. I think that’s an obvious place we want to go, but I really want to continue our momentum of helping change the balance of power at the state and federal level, where we can advance common sense gun reform and advance LGBTQ equality and protections.
What we need in order to do that is resources. Because we are a small, grassroots organization, we’re not corporate, our overhead is incredibly small. We are the only organization solely focused on this mission, and we’re incredibly smart about how we spend our money. We don’t just throw spaghetti at the wall. We’re really targeted about how we spend our money, and the more that people can see not only the critical work that we’re doing, but how successful we’re being at it, and how the return on investment is so high, we can get to that point.
Every time I talk to the owner of Pulse, who’s on our board, or Brandon, or one of the other survivors or family members who lost someone — every time I see the fire in their eyes and the passion in their hearts of how much they want to honor the victims of Pulse, or victims of gun violence all over the country — I am reminded that it is a significant movement. We are giving them a voice, and they are giving a voice to the people who lost theirs.
For more information on the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence, visit pridefund.org or call 202-930-0981.


Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn has formally asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to give Illinois more time to put federally restricted funds back in their proper place.
The state faces the loss of $16 million in federal funds for fish and wildlife projects if it does not formally restore $9.25 million “swept” from six funds that receive money from hunting and fishing licenses and related fees.
In a letter dated Jan. 22, Quinn asked Thomas O’Melius, regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to give the state 90 days more “to finalize a remedy” to the diversion of wildlife funds.
“Given the unfortunate and unprecedented situation regarding the impeachment of our current governor and the timing of the impeachment proceedings, it is unlikely that the appropriations bill will be signed before the February 2 deadline,” Quinn wrote.
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s acting director, Rowan Gould, could declare Illinois ineligible for the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program. Future federal funding beyond the $16 million for this fiscal year also could be at risk.
States have to agree not to spend license money on purposes other than fish and wildlife restoration or risk losing a share of a federal excise tax on sporting goods, like ammunition and fishing equipment.
The $9.25 million originally was part of $211 million lawmakers voted to take from a long list of special state funds.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich vetoed $55 million from the sweeps bill, including the $9.25 million in question. However, the legislature had to vote to put the funds back, and the Fish and Wildlife Service gave the state 45 days to do so. That period ends Feb. 2.
A supplemental appropriations bill has been passed by both houses, but has not been sent to the governor yet. Leaders of conservation groups have expressed concern that the distraction of Blagojevich’s Senate impeachment trial could mean the bill won’t become law in time to stop the Fish and Wildlife Service from penalizing Illinois.
Jason Holm, spokesman with the Fish and Wildlife Service, says significant amounts accumulate in funds that are repositories for hunting and fishing license dollars, creating “tempting targets” for government officials looking for cash to pay the state’s bills.
John Christian, assistant regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Fort Snelling, Minn., said both the Governor's and Lt. Governor's offices have "worked diligently" to find a solution, but "right now there's no fix."
Christian said the Fish and Wildlife Service is focused on whether or not the state will be able to come up with a remedy by Feb. 2.
"I've seen the will to do this, but it hasn't reached the finish line so to speak," he said. "And we feel a responsibility to the sportsmen and women of Illinois to proceed with our action with the strong hope and desire that they will make corrective action.
"We believe these sanctions are appropriate and necessary to protect those funds, and we are going to carry out our responsibility."
The Feb. 2 deadline does not mean that Illinois automatically will lose its federal wildlife funds, but the date is "one step closer to a diversion finding, and one step closer to losing its money."
The Washington office will look at the circumstances once the deadline arrives.
Christian warned that the swept money - with interest -- needs to be returned quickly.
"The longer it isn't resolved, the more money is owned back to the fish and wildlife account," he said.
Marc Miller, policy adviser to Quinn, said a letter would have been sent whether the Governor was facing impeachment or not. Quinn will become governor if Blagojevich is removed from office.
“The lieutenant governor’s work on conservation is a longstanding commitment and we felt it necessary to request an extension given the unique circumstance,” Miller said.
Quinn chairs the Illinois River Coordinating Council.
Miller said the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would consider the request.


Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, in cooperation with officials from the Fed and executives from four of the five largest U.S. banks, has outlined his latest plan to save the banking system and housing markets: creating a covered bond market.
What is a "covered bond"?
Now it's true that covered bonds are, technically, mortgage-backed. But all the mortgages could default and go into foreclosure tomorrow, and so long as the bank remains in operation, the covered bond will pay out as normal. Similarly, if the bank blows up for some non-mortgage-related reason, investors in the bond will still get paid back in full.
Their main risk is that the bank blows up because the mortgages blow up, and they'll be left holding a bag of damaged loans - but because two things have to happen rather than just one, that risk is relatively low.
So covered bonds may provide a less risky means by which to prop up the secondary mortgage market--by doing the same thing that morgage-backed securities used to do before they collapsed. By issuing covered bonds, banks can raise capital from lenders that would have shied away from riskier CDOs, allowing them to leverage their mortgage assets to raise capital. This, theoretically, will inject more liquidity into the system and thereby bolster the secondary mortgage market, making inter-bank lending cheaper and easier and bringing down mortgage rates for home-owners.
Again, sounds great in theory, but covered bonds will likely end up being part of a broader solution, rather than a one-stop panacea that will dissolve all mortgage worries.
How "covered bonds" are different than plain-vanilla mortgage bonds--and how they're supposed to help save the country.


WASHINGTON — The apparent downing of an Iranian unmanned system is providing a good look at Tehran's indigenous high-end drone.
On Aug. 13, social media began buzzing with pictures of what appears to be a crashed Shahed 129. Defense News cannot independently confirm whether these photos are legit, but it has not observed there has been no pushback from the knowledgeable aerospace communicate community on Twitter that would indicate these are fakes.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which unveiled the system in 2012, has claimed the Shahed has a range of 1,700 kilometers and can stay aloft for 24 hours; it can also be armed with up to eight missiles. It is Iran's first medium-altitude-, long-endurance (MALE), or "MALE," system, roughly analogous to the US Air Force fleet of MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers.
Of note: These pictures are reportedly taken from inside Iranian territory, but very close to the Pakistan border. It is possible Iran is using these systems to keep an eye on its territory; it is also possible, though pure speculation, that they are using the Shahed to sneak a peak over the border into Pakistan.
It's not the first time the Shahed 129 has been spotted out in the wild. In 2014, video appeared on YouTube showing what looks like the Shahed flying over Damascus, Syria. Iran, of course, has been supporting the Assad government in the Syrian civil war.
"As for the Shahed 129, details released by Tehran claim the unmanned aerial combat vehicle (UCAV) can carry up to eight weapons and remain airborne for 24 hours with an effective operational radius of 1,700 kilometers. Although the system was first unveiled a year ago, photos released last week show the UCAV in its armed configuration, with a pair of apparently laser-guided anti-tank missiles carried under each wing."
"Shahed 129 can easily track and identify … anyone targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran's sustainable security and can fire missiles at them upon orders from commanders," Iran's Press TV quoted Brig. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC's Aerospace Division, as saying.
Tal Inbar, a UAV expert with Israel's Fisher Institute for Strategic Air and Space Studies, noted that Iran did not release weight, wingspan or payload capacity of the Shahed 129. Nevertheless, from photos and video footage, Inbar estimated a size and design similar to the Hermes 900 by Israel's Elbit Systems. He also noted what appeared to be a laser designator for advanced laser-guided anti-tank missiles.
"Based on the visuals, this could be a real UCAV system; not just a mock-up for exhibitions," Inbar said.
In an Oct. 1, 2013, interview, Inbar said the Shahed 129 would have less endurance and range than the Israeli Hermes 450 or 900 systems. But due to its similar design, Inbar said it could be problematic for Israel if transferred to Iran's Lebanese-based ally Hezbollah.
"Because its profile and radar signature resemble our own UAVs, the introduction of this system to our region has significance," he said.


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Announcement to contest elections expected in May comes as IMF says it will provide loans worth up to $18bn to country.
Ukrainian former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, released from jail last month after President Viktor Yanukovich was forced by protesters to leave power, has announced she will run again for president in an election slated for May 25.
"I plan to run for election as president" and stand "a candidate for Ukrainian unity," Tymoshenko told reporters on Thursday.
Tymoshenko, 53, served twice as prime minister and ran for president in 2010, only to be narrowly beaten in a run-off vote by Yanukovich.
Yanukovich subsequently launched a campaign against Tymoshenko and her allies, and she was jailed in 2011 for abuse of office linked to a gas deal she brokered with Russia in 2009.
The announcement came as the International Monetary Fund pledged up to $18bn in loans on Thursday to prop up Ukraine's sinking economy.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's interim prime minister, has forecast more pain ahead without reforms that will affect nearly everyone in the country.
In a lengthy and passionate address to parliament, Yatsenyuk warned that Ukraine was "on the brink of the economic and financial bankruptcy" and laid out details for fixes needed to put the country back on track, including raising taxes, a freeze on minimum wage and radically higher energy prices.
The reforms will hit households hard, which is likely to severely dent the interim government's tenuous hold on power.
"We have no choice but to tell Ukraine the truth," Yatsenyuk said.
Ukraine is still battling to restore some semblance of normalcy since Yanukovich was ousted after months of protests ignited by a decision to back away from closer relations to the EU and move towars Russia.
In fast-moving events since Yanulovish's ousting, Moscow has annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, which last week voted to become part of the Russian Federation.
The IMF said on Thursday that recent economic policies had drastically slowed growth and brought foreign currency reserves to a "critically low level."
In a statement issued after two weeks of talks with officials in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the IMF said loans could range between $14bn and $18bn.
It said a more exact sum would only be determined, however, when authorities give a more precise assessment of their needs.
Other donors, including the European Union and Japan, have already pledged further assistance to Ukraine, conditional on the conclusion of an IMF bailout and reform package.
The total amount of assistance available for Ukraine will be about $27 billion over the next two years.


Back in 1777, when the ink was scarcely dry on the Declaration of Independence, Morocco became the first nation to recognize the United States, and a treaty of peace and friendship between the two countries was signed by Sultan Sidi Mohammed III in 1786 and approved by Congress in 1787. The State Department says this is the longest unbroken treaty relationship in the nation's history.
With the bicentennial of that treaty fast approaching, King Hassan II of Morocco has made known his desire to give an appropriate monument to the American people, to be dedicated, if all goes well, in 1987. Before that can happen, however, Congress must approve the project and its location on Federal property, and the first move in that direction will be taken this morning when the House Task Force on Libraries and Memorials conducts a hearing on the enabling legislation.
Several favorable witnesses will testify, and no opposition to the bill has been detected as yet. President Reagan has notified King Hassan that he will sign the measure when it reaches the White House, as is expected.
No one knows yet where the monument will be situated or what it will look like, but the King reportedly has his personal architect, Andre Paccard, running up some sketches.


This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com. Click here to listen to the author discuss the water politics of the American West.
Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).
The fires were a function of drought. As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat. It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.
And here’s the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization. No kidding.
If that gets you down, here’s a little cheer-up note: the end is not yet nigh.
In fact, this year the weather elsewhere rode to the rescue, and the news for the Southwest was good where it really mattered. Since January, the biggest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead, backed up by the Hoover Dam and just thirty miles southwest of Las Vegas, has risen almost forty feet. That lake is crucial when it comes to watering lawns or taking showers from Arizona to California. And the near forty-foot surge of extra water offered a significant upward nudge to the Southwest’s water reserves.
The Colorado River, which the reservoir impounds, supplies all or part of the water on which nearly 30 million people depend, most of them living downstream of Lake Mead in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Tijuana and scores of smaller communities in the United States and Mexico.
In 2000, the lake began to fall—like a boulder off a cliff, bouncing a couple of times on the way down. Its water level dropped a staggering 130 feet, stopping less than seven feet above the stage that would have triggered reductions in downstream deliveries. Then—and here’s the good news, just in case you were wondering—last winter, it snowed prodigiously up north in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
The spring and summer run-off from those snowpacks brought enormous relief. It renewed what we in the Southwest like to call the Hydro-Illogic cycle: when drought comes, everybody wrings their hands and promises to institute needed reform, if only it would rain a little. Then the drought breaks or eases and we all return to business as usual, until the cycle comes around to drought again.
So don’t be fooled. One day, perhaps soon, Lake Mead will renew its downward plunge. That’s a certainty, the experts tell us. And here’s the thing: the next time, a sudden rescue by heavy snows in the northern Rockies might not come. If the snowpacks of the future are merely ordinary, let alone puny, then you’ll know that we really are entering a new age.
And climate change will be a major reason, but we’ll have done a good job of aiding and abetting it. The states of the so-called Lower Basin of the Colorado River—California, Arizona and Nevada—have been living beyond their water means for years. Any departure from recent decades of hydrological abundance, even a return to long-term average flows in the Colorado River, would produce a painful reckoning for the Lower Basin states. And even worse is surely on the way.
Just think of the coming Age of Thirst in the American Southwest and West as a three-act tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions.
The curtain in this play would surely rise on the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which divided the river’s water equally between the Upper and Lower Basins, allocating to each annually 7.5 million acre-feet, also known by its acronym “maf.” (An acre-foot suffices to support three or four families for a year.) Unfortunately, the architects of the compact, drawing on data from an anomalously wet historical period, assumed the river’s average annual flow to be about 17 maf per year. Based on reconstructions that now stretch back more than 1,000 years, the river’s long-term average is closer to 14.7 maf. Factor in evaporation from reservoirs (1.5 maf per year) and our treaty obligation to Mexico (another 1.5 maf), and the math doesn’t favor a water-guzzling society.
Nonetheless, the states of the Lower Basin have been taking their allotment as if nothing were wrong and consequently overdrafting their account by up to 1.3 maf annually. At this rate, even under unrealistically favorable scenarios, the Lower Basin will eventually drain Lake Mead and cutbacks will begin, possibly as soon as in the next few years. And then things will get dicier because California, the water behemoth of the West, won’t have to absorb any of those cutbacks.
Here’s one of the screwiest quirks in western water law: to win Congressional approval for the building of a monumental aqueduct, the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which would bring Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, agreed to subordinate its Colorado River water rights to California’s. In that way, the $4 billion, 336-mile-long CAP was born, and for it Arizona paid a heavy price. The state obliged itself to absorb not just its own losses in a cutback situation, but California’s as well.
Worst case scenario: the CAP aqueduct, now a lifeline for millions, could become as dry as the desert it runs through, while California continues to bathe. Imagine Phoenix curling and cracking around the edges, while lawn sprinklers hiss in Malibu. The contrast will upset a lot of Arizonans.
Worse yet, the prospective schedule of cutbacks now in place for the coming bad times is too puny to save Lake Mead.
While that Arizona-California relationship guarantees full employment for battalions of water lawyers, a far bigger problem looms: climate change. Models for the Southwest have been predicting a 4º C (7.2º F) increase in mean temperature by century’s end, and events seem to be outpacing the predictions.
We have already experienced close to 1º C of that increase, which accounts, at least in part, for last summer’s colossal fires and record-setting temperatures—and it’s now clear that we’re just getting started.
The simple rule of thumb for climate change is that wet places will get wetter and dry places drier. One reason the dry places will dry is that higher temperatures mean more evaporation. In other words, there will be ever less water in the rivers that keep the region’s cities (and much else) alive. Modeling already suggests that by mid-century surface stream-flow will decline by 10 percent to 30 percent.
If—perhaps “when” is the more appropriate word—that happens, California’s Colorado River Aqueduct, which supplies water to Los Angeles, San Diego and the All-American Canal, which sustains the Imperial and Coachella Valleys, will go just as dry as the Central Arizona Project aqueduct. Meanwhile, if climate change is affecting the Colorado River’s watershed that harshly, it will undoubtedly also be hitting the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
The aptly named Lester Snow, a recent director of California’s Department of Water Resources, understood this. His future water planning assumed a 40 percent decline in runoff from the Sierras, which feeds the California Aqueduct. None of his contemplated scenarios were happy ones. The Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct make the urban conglomerations of Southern California possible. If both fail at once, the result will be, as promised, the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.
Only Patricia Mulroy has an endgame strategy for the demise of Lake Mead. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is, even now, tunneling under the lake to install the equivalent of a bathtub drain at close to its lowest point. At a cost of more than $800 million, it will drain the dregs of Lake Mead for Las Vegas.
Admittedly, water quality will be a problem, as the dead pool will concentrate pollutants. The good news, according to the standard joke among those who chronicle Sin City’s improbable history, is that the hard-partying residents and over-stimulated tourists who sip from Lake Mead’s last waters will no longer need to purchase anti-depressants. They’ll get all the Zoloft and Xanax they need from their tap water.
And only now do we arrive at the third act of this expanding tragedy.
Those who believe in American exceptionalism hold that the historical patterns shaping the fate of other empires and nations don’t apply to the United States. Be that as it may, we are certainly on track to test whether the US is similarly inoculated against the patterns of environmental history.
Because tree rings record growing conditions year by year, the people who study them have been able to reconstruct climate over very long spans of time. One of their biggest discoveries is that droughts more severe and far longer than anything known in recent centuries have occurred repeatedly in the American Southwest. The droughts of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, of the 1950s and of the period from 1998 to 2004 are remembered in the region, yet none lasted a full decade.
Drought affects people differently from other disasters. After something terrible happens—tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes—people regularly come together in memorable ways, rising above the things that divide them. In a drought, however, what is terrible is that nothing happens. By the time you know you’re in one, you’ve already had an extended opportunity to meditate on the shortcomings of your neighbors. You wait for what does not arrive. You thirst. You never experience the rush of compassion that helps you behave well. Drought brings out the worst in us.
After the Chacoan drought, corn-farming ancestral Puebloans still remained in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. They hung on, even if at lower population densities. After the Mesa Verdean drought, everybody left.
By the number of smashed crania and other broken bones in the ruins of the region’s beautiful stone villages, archaeologists judge that the aridifying world of the Mesa Verdeans was fatally afflicted by violence. Warfare and societal breakdown, evidently driven by the changing climate, helped end that culture.
So it matters what we do. Within the limits imposed by the environment, the history we make is contingent, not fated. But we are not exactly off to a good start in dealing with the challenges ahead. The problem of water consumption in the Southwest is remarkably similar to the problem of greenhouse gas pollution. First, people haggle to exhaustion over the need to take action; then, they haggle over inadequate and largely symbolic reductions. For a host of well-considered, eminently understandable and ultimately erroneous reasons, inaction becomes the main achievement. For this drama, think Hamlet. Or if the lobbyists who argue for business as usual out west and in Congress spring to mind first, think Iago.
We know at least one big thing about how this particular tragedy will turn out: the so-called civilization of the Southwest will not survive the present century, not at its present scale anyway. The question yet to be answered is how much it will have to shrink, and at what cost. Stay tuned. It will be one of the greatest, if grimmest, shows on Earth.


Disney heir apparent Thomas Staggs is leaving the company.
Thomas Staggs, the heir apparent to Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger, has abruptly decided to leave the company, throwing Disney's succession plan into disarray.
Staggs, who was promoted to No. 2 executive last year, was widely seen as first-in-line to replace Iger when he steps down in 2018. He was also an instrumental figure in Disney's ambitious Shanghai Disneyland project.
In a statement, Disney (DIS) said it would "broaden the scope of its succession planning process to identify and evaluate a robust slate of candidates for consideration."
Disney stock fell 2% in after-hours trading on Monday.
Finding a replacement for Iger was always seen as an enormous challenge for Disney, given how much he has shaped the company during his 11 year tenure as its top executive.
The stock is up 314% during Iger's tenure as CEO, crushing the S&P 500's gain of 68% over that same period. Last year, Disney posted an $8.4 billion in profit. Much of that is due to major acquisitions overseen by Iger, including of Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm and Pixar Animation.
Staggs, 55, was initially seen as the best-qualified to continue Iger's vision, and was promoted to second in command last year.
On Monday, Staggs called it "a privilege" to work with Disney and "a great experience to work with Bob during this dynamic era of unprecedented growth and transformation. I remain grateful for that opportunity, and I'm confident that Disney's future will be just as exciting as its legendary past."
Staggs will remain as a "special adviser" to Iger through the end of this fiscal year, Disney said.
Iger called Staggs "a great friend and trusted colleague."
"He's made important contributions to this company, earning wide respect across the organization for his achievements and personal integrity," Iger said. "I'm proud of what we've accomplished together, immensely grateful for the privilege of working with him, and confident that he will be enormously successful in whatever opportunity he chooses."
The news of Stagg's departure was first reported by The New York Times, just moments before Disney released its statement.


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Pete Buttigieg, a little-known Indiana mayor who has risen to prominence in the early stages of the 2020 Democratic US presidential race, has made his official campaign entrance.
“I recognise the audacity of doing this as a Midwestern millennial mayor,” he said to cheers of “Pete, Pete, Pete” from an audience assembled in a former Studebaker car plant.
In the hours after his announcement, more than one million dollars (£763,000) in donations poured in, said Lis Smith, speaking for the campaign.
“The forces of change in our country today are tectonic,” he said.
Mr Buttigieg will return this week to Iowa and New Hampshire, which hold the nation’s first nominating contests, to campaign as a fully fledged candidate now being taken more seriously.
Over the past few months, Mr Buttigieg has appeared frequently on national TV news and talk shows and developed a strong social media following with his message that the country needs “a new generation of leadership”.
Mr Buttigieg’s poll numbers have climbed.
Some polls put him behind only Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who sought the party’s nomination in 2016, and former vice president Joe Biden, who has not yet said he is running.
Mr Buttigieg’s campaign has raised more than seven million dollars (£5.3 million) in the first three months of this year, a total eclipsed by Mr Sanders’s leading 18 million dollars (£13.7 million) but more than senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker.
“Right now, it’s pretty fun,” Mr Buttigieg said last month while visiting South Carolina , where he was met by larger-than-expected crowds.
His challenge is finding a way to sustain the momentum over the long term and avoiding becoming a “flavour of the month” candidate.
Scrutiny of his leadership in South Bend has increased, as has his criticism of vice president Mike Pence, who was Indiana’s governor when Mr Buttigieg was in his first term as mayor.
Mr Buttigieg would be the first openly gay nominee of a major presidential party; he married his husband Chasten last year.
He would be the first mayor to go directly to the White House.
And he would be the youngest person to become president, turning 39 the day before the next inauguration, on January 20 2021.
Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he took office, while John F Kennedy was 43 and Bill Clinton 46.
The campaign kickoff speech echoed themes that have resonated with voters during Mr Buttigieg’s exploratory phase.
He talks often about how political decisions shape people’s lives, including his own – from serving as a lieutenant in the navy reserve in 2014, to being able to marry his husband and to not having to worry about how to pay for his father’s hospital bills after his father’s death this year.
Mr Buttigieg also says the best way for Democrats to defeat Mr Trump may be to nominate a mayor experienced in helping to revive a Midwestern city once described as “dying”, rather than a politician who has spent years “marinating” in Washington.
He has criticised Mr Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, saying the way to move the country forward is not to look backward or cling to an old way of life.
“There’s a myth being sold to industrial and rural communities: the myth that we can stop the clock and turn it back,” he said.
South Bend, which neighbours the University of Notre Dame, was hit hard by the decline of manufacturing, dating to the 1963 closing of the Studebaker car plant that cost thousands of residents their jobs.
The hulking, dilapidated factory loomed over the city for much of the past 60 years as what Mr Buttigieg called a daily reminder of South Bend’s past.
Partially remodelled, it is now a mixed-use technology centre – and the setting for Mr Buttigieg’s announcement.
The South Bend fire marshal’s office said the rally drew more than 4,500 inside and 1,500 outside.
A steady stream of raindrops fell on speakers on the stage through the leaky roof.
“I like that he’s young,” said Tom Lacy, a 62-year-old retiree who came from Peoria, Illinois, for the event with his wife Candy on their 35th wedding anniversary.
“He’s so relatable. He doesn’t seem like a politician to me.
Nausher Ahmad Sial, a 68-year-old developer from South Bend, said “we need to try new blood”.
Mr Sial, who came to the US from Pakistan 35 years ago, said he has worked with Mr Buttigieg on development projects in the city and described the mayor as a “very honest, very fair guy”.


MONMOUTH — Rather than focus on ancient events in Greece or Rome, the next Archaeology Lecture at Monmouth College will discuss a more recent time — Ottoman Palestine in the late 19th century.
Brita Lorentzen, a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University, will speak about harvesting wood in pre-industrial times in the region we know today as Israel.
Titled "Anatolian Forests on the Sea: Trees, Timber and Environment in the Ottoman Empire," Lorentzen's talk will be given at 7:30 p.m. March 26 in the Pattee Auditorium of the College's Center for Science and Business.
"Wood was a fundamental fuel resource and building material in pre-industrial societies including the Mediterranean, which made forests a valuable and politically strategic natural resource," said Lorentzen, whose lecture will discuss the environmental history of the East Mediterranean forests, focusing on Ottoman Palestine. "During this time, technological, economic and sociopolitical change in the Eastern Mediterranean led to increased building activity and demand for wood building materials, while facilitating increased access to timber-rich areas, including forested areas in southern Anatolia, the Black Sea coast and Europe."
Lorentzen has conducted research using tree-ring dating to date and source wood from Ottoman-era historical buildings and archaeological sites, as well as modern forest trees, which provide further documentation of local environmental history and enduring environmental impacts of human activity in the region.
Free and open to the public, Lorentzen's talk is sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America Western Illinois Society.


connecting downtown Jersey City to Liberty State Park seven months after it was swept away by Hurricane Sandy but according to the latest estimates the park's rebuilding is far from over.
Park Superintendent Robert Rodriguez estimates that it may take two years before the park fully recovers from the $20 million in damages caused by Sandy, according to an email by the Friends of Liberty State Park, an all volunteer nonprofit dedicated to the protection and advocacy of the park.
Officials expect the park's light posts and the Hudson River Walkway to be repaired by the end of the year. Picnic and playground areas are also expect to be open to the public sometime this summer, the email says.
Repairs at the park's historic railroad terminal building at the east end of Audrey Zapp Drive may be finalized in two years as the facility undergoes renovations to its damaged interior.
The park's nature center, which sustained damaged to its floors, walls, and roof, may also be ready to open in two years. The public boat launch is now open, the email says, adding that replacement needs to be made to the floating dock and ticket machine.
The Department of Environment Protection has also hired a disaster management consulting company to assist park officials with FEMA paperwork and bureaucracy.
The park is open 7 days a week from 6 a.m. to dusk.


Lancashire’s up and coming young golfers have clinched a record-breaking victory in the first big competition of the new season.
With the transfer window just around the corner, and teams keen to strengthen their numbers, we take a look at which LeagueTwo players will be attracting the attentions of other clubs in January.
And former Preston North End loanee Chuks Aneke could be among them.
Here Jordan Cronin reveals the five transfers that could happen when the window reopens.
Chorley ran out 2-0 winners at home to Bradford Park Avenue on Easter Monday in the National League North.


"We rate TAYLOR DEVICES INC (TAYD) a BUY. This is driven by multiple strengths, which we believe should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks we cover. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, good cash flow from operations, increase in net income and solid stock price performance. We feel these strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had somewhat disappointing return on equity."
The revenue growth came in higher than the industry average of 2.8%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues rose by 23.7%. This growth in revenue appears to have trickled down to the company's bottom line, improving the earnings per share.
TAYD has no debt to speak of therefore resulting in a debt-to-equity ratio of zero, which we consider to be a relatively favorable sign. Along with the favorable debt-to-equity ratio, the company maintains an adequate quick ratio of 1.30, which illustrates the ability to avoid short-term cash problems.
The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has significantly exceeded that of the S&P 500 and the Machinery industry. The net income increased by 95.0% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from $0.20 million to $0.39 million.
Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 157.66% to $0.82 million when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, TAYLOR DEVICES INC has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of -16.91%.
Compared to where it was a year ago today, the stock is now trading at a higher level, reflecting both the market's overall trend during that period and the fact that the company's earnings growth has been robust. The stock's price rise over the last year has driven it to a level which is somewhat expensive compared to the rest of its industry. We feel, however, that other strengths this company displays justify these higher price levels.


In 1965, a piece of legislation known as the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act declared that "the arts and the humanities belong to all the people of the United States" and that support for these pursuits is an "appropriate matter of concern to the Federal Government."
President Johnson signed the bill into law, establishing the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts as two separate independent federal agencies.
Occasionally, these two agencies - and the projects they support - encounter political and popular criticism. But, for the most part, the NEH and NEA quietly fund the work of scholars, artists, authors, and researchers in their efforts to disseminate arts, culture, and history to the greater public. In fact, both agencies provide support to some of the most popular programs (including On Stage) on PBS.
NEA. NEH. The acronyms sound almost the same - so, what's the difference between the two entities? Think of it this way: if you want to create (ie, write a novel, choreograph a ballet, compose a symphony, or direct a play) you should go the the NEA for funding. However, if you want to do a critical, historical, or theoretical study of the aforementioned novel, ballet, symphony or play, the NEH is the agency for you.
The NEA is the single largest funder of the nonprofit arts sector in the United States and has awarded more than 111,000 grants to artists and arts organizations in its 36 year history.
supporting the careers of three-quarters of the recipients of the major literary awards for fiction and poetry (National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Pulitzer Prize) since 1990.
The President of the United States appoints, and the Senate confirms, the Chairperson of the Endowment (who serves a four-year term) and the National Council on the Arts. The National Council is composed of 14 private citizens and six non-voting members of Congress who advise the chairperson on agency policy and programs, and make final recommendations on grant applications. All appointees work to fulfill the mission of the NEA: "to serve the public good by nurturing human creativity."
While the organization of the National Endowment for the Humanities is very similar to the NEA's, the projects the NEH funds are quite different. Like the NEA, the NEH is directed by a presidentially-appointed chairperson who, once confirmed by the Senate, serves a four-year term. The chairperson is advised by the National Council on the Humanities which is composed of 26 private citizens appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
But what are "the humanities"? Basically, any discipline you would find at a liberal arts college: history, philosophy, literature, language (both modern and classical), comparative religion, ethics, jurisprudence, archaeology, the history, criticism and theory of the arts, and certain aspects of the social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods.
NEH grants typically go to individual scholars and institutions like museums, archives, libraries, colleges and universities, and, yes, public television and radio stations.
facilitate research and original scholarship in the humanities.
Colleges, universities, and nonprofit, tax-exempt U.S. organizations are eligible to apply for NEA and NEH grants. Individual applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States of U.S. territories.


NSW Electoral Commission satisfied iVote unaffected.
A second vulnerability in the cryptographic protocol employed by the Swiss government’s e-voting system has been found, this time relating to how votes are decrypted.
It comes just weeks after the in-development system was found to contain a cryptographic trapdoor that could allow vote manipulation to take place unbeknown to the authorities.
That flaw centred around the way the country’s sVote system, which uses software from the Spanish vendor Scytl, verified votes using a sequence of shuffle proofs.
It was later confirmed to be present in NSW's iVote system, which also uses Scytl's e-voting software, though it was declared unaffected and safe to use for last week's election.
But new research, published on Monday by the same group of researchers, reveals a similar weakness with the implementation of the cryptographic technique used to create the decryption proof, known as Fiat-Shamir heuristic.
Cryptography and privacy researchers Sarah Jamie Lewis, Oliver Pereira and Australia’s-own Venessa Teague said the error “allows a cheating authority to produce a proof of proper decryption, which passes verification, but declares something other than the true plaintext”.
“This voids the soundness of the decryption proof and, in effect, the arguments that sVote audit offers complete verifiability: since the verification procedure is based on an assumption that we show to be false, no conclusion can be made from its successful completion,” the paper states.
The paper also reveals other problems stemming from the Fiat-Shamir Heuristic that affect proof soundness, but that not all of them had been properly investigated yet.
In demonstrating the impact of the error, the researchers said they “exhibit[ed] an exploit in which a malicious authority … modifies selected votes during the (partial) decryption procedure [employed by sVote] and forges decryption proofs that are indistinguishable from valid ones, and would therefore pass verification”.
While they said this would likely “leave evidence that something went wrong”, it would be “indistinguishable from malicious vote encoding by a corrupt (buggy) client”.
They said the presence of the flaw yet again contradicted the claim the e-voting system offers a form of proof called “complete verifiability”.
“A cheating mixer can forge decryption proofs and claim that ciphertexts decrypt to something other than the truth, in a way that passes verification," the researchers said.
The NSW Electoral Commission has indicated the new flaw, unlike the earlier cryptographic trapdoor defect, is not present in the state's iVote system.
“Based on its assessment of the information supplied by these academics, the NSW Electoral Commission is confident that the new issue they described in the Swiss Post system is not relevant to the iVote system,” it said in a statement issued on Friday.
The Commission also indicated that a patch had been installed to address the previous issues.
More than 200,000 voters had used iVote to cast their vote in the 2019 state ballot as at 23 March.


The Panamera gives enthusiast drivers who need a car that's larger than the typical Porsche coupe a chance to savor the best of all worlds. The roomy Panamera provides a deluxe cabin, and its hatchback design gives it a measure of versatility that isn't found in traditional sedans. When you team all this with its flawless handling, it's easy to see why the Panamera is a top pick its class. A hybrid variant is available.
The Panamera delivers a compelling brew of luxury and performance. Thanks to its new sheet metal, it's also now a leader when it comes to style.


An exciting new Italian bazaar makes Whole Foods look like the A&P—and it’s coming to America.
At Eataly, a sprawling food market in Turin that opened at the end of January, you can choose fresh fish from beautiful arrays on curvy banks of ice, or beef from rare breeds prized for their meat, raised on nearby farms. If the sight of all this makes you hungry, you can sit at a high counter—at two of the nine areas serving food within the market—and order a piece of grilled fish or meat, or have it as tartare.
You can eat pizza at a counter near the bakery, where bread is made in a huge, custom-built wood-fired oven sheathed in fieldstone. A young French baker named Rémy Coste devised the starters (no commercial yeast), and the bakery uses stone-ground flour milled 30 miles away by the wonderful Marino family at Mulino Marino, which grinds organically raised wheat, corn, rye, and more-exotic grains. The tomatoes for the topping are Miracle of San Gennaro, a particularly sweet variety of San Marzano, the best Neapolitan tomato. The cheese is not the posh yet inapt buffalo mozzarella (watery when it melts) but cow’s-milk fior di latte from Agerola, the echt pizza cheese, made by a cheesemaker south of Naples whose production is so limited and costly that only one other pizzeria is said to use it: Da Michele, the best in Naples.
You can sit in a comfortable armchair at the front of the market and peruse the stock of books published by Slow Food, or read on any of eight Apple computers about the foods carried in the market. You can stroll past several educational displays on shelves, panels, and video screens; the most prominent of them shows the fruits and vegetables that are in season when you visit, and it leads to a row of marvelously fresh, locally grown vegetables in market-style bins. Many of the growers and food producers are likely to be at Eataly to deliver their goods, greet customers, and guide the tastings or classes frequently taking place in the market’s two teaching kitchens or in the big wine-tasting room in the wine cellar.
Or, like many of the ecstatic, somewhat dazed customers of Eataly, you can start with ice cream and coffee and then get on to the real work of shopping.
Though many of the goods at Eataly are organic, the greater emphasis is on shortening the distance from farm to market. Solving transport logistics took up a good deal of the three years of planning before Eataly opened. The extensive development was underwritten by Eataly’s founder and owner, Oscar Farinetti, a local entrepreneur made very good and a longtime fan of Slow Food. Signs throughout the market point out products that are in season, that come from close by, and that are protected by Slow Food. You can fill your completely biodegradable plastic shopping bag (it even has a use-by date, showing when it starts biodegrading) with artisanal food at prices comparable to those you would pay if you visited the food producer—and much lower than those at gourmet boutiques, previously the only other places you could count on finding it. This is fancy food—the rustic, carefully raised, simple stuff that costs a fortune these days (think of Whole Foods)—at prices nonfancy folk can afford.
Eataly is an irresistible realization of every food-lover’s gluttonous fantasy, paired with guilt-cleansing social conscience—a new combination of grand food hall, farm stand, continuing- education university, and throbbing urban market. Much like Boqueria, in Barcelona, and Vucciria, in Palermo, two of the few thriving center-city markets left in Europe, Eataly draws all classes and ages at all times of day. The emphasis on local and artisanal producers, education, affordable prices, a lightened environmental footprint, and sheer fun makes Eataly a persuasive model for the supermarket of the future—one that is sure to be widely copied around the world. The question is whether Eataly will bite the hands of the people feeding it, the people it says it wants to help: Slow Food, which is the arbiter and moral center of today’s food culture, and the artisans themselves.
For a decade, the promise of rare and wonderful artisanal foods, wines, beers, and coffees from around the world has brought paying throngs to Slow Food’s Salone del Gusto, an international food fair held every other year since 1996 in the same development where Eataly just opened. At each Salone, Carlo Petrini, Slow Food’s founder, has announced the movement’s grand new initiatives—the preservation of endangered local foods; environmentalism; social justice for the people who grow and produce food—and each one has drawn hundreds of new members. Now Eataly is offering much of the Salone’s greedy excitement every day, leaving Slow Food to hope that international artisans and chefs will still attract crowds to its food fair—and that the take will still help subsidize Terra Madre, its hugely expensive new conference concurrent with the Salone, which brings together thousands of farmers and food producers from around the world, many of whom have never before left their villages. The idea of Terra Madre (which is not open to the public and does not sell food) is to create, through seminars, workshops, shared meals, and casual encounters, a new kind of network whose strength, Slow Food hopes, will eventually challenge the international food industry.
Purists long upset by the corporate banners at the Salone see Slow Food’s role in launching Eataly—it provided a team of veteran tasters and opened its address book of artisans—as the definitive sellout. Slow Food itself is taking a somewhat cautious approach to the collaboration. It’s strictly a consulting arrangement, Roberto Burdese, Petrini’s longtime right hand and now the head of Slow Food Italy, told me. Slow Food continues to forbid the use of its snail logo on any product label. If the great care Eataly has taken in choosing its products were to be compromised, Burdese told me, or its commitment to local and small producers eroded, Slow Food would not renew its current agreement with Eataly.
Nothing much is likely to stop Farinetti, an informal man with a halo of curly gray hair, a wide, open face, and a friendly but shrewd expression. I got the sense that the fun he’s having with the market would be worth the 20 million euros he has already put into it. And Eataly, he told me, with a daily average of 8,000 visitors, is already headed into the black in its first year. He plans to open markets in nine other Italian cities, beginning in Genoa and going across and then down the country. In each place he will look for city-center, not suburban-mall, buildings, like the vermouth factory he restored in Turin, and offer host cities free restoration in exchange for concessionary rents. He also plans to open a small Eataly (8,000 square feet as compared with 118,000 in Turin) in Rockefeller Center, with two restaurants, next year—a showcase for the Italian chain, with Italian packaged goods. He mentioned even grander dreams of opening full-scale Eatalys in the New York City metropolitan area, but more in the five-year than one-year range.
Farinetti says he made his fortune selling optimism. Actually it was appliances, in a chain of a hundred markets that grew out of an electronics section in the supermarket started by his father, a third-generation pasta maker. The chain’s witty, peppy commercials juxtaposed washing machines with flocks of birds symbolizing hope. But however great his success (he sold the chain in 2002 for around 500 million euros), Farinetti wanted to get back into the original family business. Even while in the appliance business, he had started buying restaurants (he now owns 10), and once he got out of it he bought interests in several producers he particularly liked—and a pasta maker south of Naples outright. Farinetti grew up in Piedmont, a friend and contemporary of Petrini’s, and like Petrini had a socialist family background; his father was an officer in the partisan resistance during World War II. Farinetti took a strong interest in Petrini’s Slow Food from the start, and has given money to the organization’s new University of Gastronomic Sciences, some of whose graduates he already employs.
The counterarguments Farinetti offered me reflect his take-a-chance optimism. He encourages producers not to promise Eataly all of what they can make, he said, so that they will retain a healthy diversity of customers. If small producers don’t seize on this chance to grow, when can they? Who else will help them dream the big dream? According to Farinetti, the cooperative that raises the rare-breed meat Eataly sells (a co-op in which he has a financial interest) was already telling other Piedmont livestock farmers that if they changed their feed to include more grass and less commercial feed, they could now have a guaranteed market; the co-op is achieving its first expansion after years of trying to attract new farmers. The point is to get young people to see artisanal food as a viable career option and to lift artisanal foods out of their elitist ghetto. Niche is the most vulgar word I know,” he said.
Farinetti, then, is making his own rules and having a very good time doing it. Yes, Eataly prominently features the wares of companies he already owns or has invested in (including the meat cooperative). Nearly every shopper buys a package of pasta—often his Pasta di Gragnano—and in the market’s separate mineral-water room, the most visible brand is Lurisia, in which he has a controlling interest. But his philosophy and whimsy are visible too. Most of the water, his and the competition’s, is sold in glass, which Farinetti (rightly) thinks makes it taste better. And he sought out and sells a fizzy, not-too-sweet lemon soda in a trim bottle with a finger-friendly crease near the top and a little glass ball at the neck—a drink and a bottle that had been out of circulation for 40 years, and a cause of nostalgic tears for many of the pensioners who populate the market in the morning. His goal was to create a bazaar, a casbah, and he succeeded. Eataly is drawing attention to individual producers with a specificity, completeness, and lack of dilution by house and industrial brands that no supermarket in the United States can match.
In the packaged-foods area a whole set of shelves is devoted to different sizes of empty canning jars that Eataly commissioned from the French glassmaker Saint-Gobain. (A line of nicely designed and cheap china, glass, and tools is sold in a separate department.) Why? Because the best food is the kind you grow and put up yourself. So far, at least, the messages Eataly sends are the ones everyone who buys food should get.


World leaders have been urged by an influential United Nations agency to sign up to a universal labour guarantee to bolster fundamental workers’ rights, including adequate living wages and collective bargaining through trade unions.
Designed to address rapid changes in the workplace triggered by the rise of the robot economy and technological automation, the International Labour Organization said a package of measures was required to put the world economy on a sustainable footing for the future.
Calling on world leaders to support the policies at the start of the annual gathering of heads of government and business tycoons in Davos this week, the UN agency, which marks its 100th anniversary this year, said failure would increase the risk of “sleepwalking into a world that widens existing inequalities”.
It comes as concerns grow over the impact of technology on workers’ jobs, pay and rights around the world, with automation rendering more traditionally human roles obsolete.
The Bank of England estimates that rapid technological change could put as many as 15m jobs in the UK at risk, while academics believe almost half of all workers in the US could be displaced by automation. Traditionally working-class jobs are among the worst affected, potentially raising inequality levels.
Some studies have suggested advances in technology will create more jobs than will be destroyed, although they warn that governments must invest in the protection of displaced workers and retraining.
Co-chaired by the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the Swedish prime minister, Stefan Löfven, the ILO report is the culmination of a 15-month review by a 27-member commission of senior figures from the world of business, academia, trade unions and charities.
It calls for a universal labour guarantee that would enshrine the right to an adequate living wage, maximum limits on working hours, and health and safety protections. It would also enforce freedom of association in trade unions and the right to collective bargaining, freedom from forced labour, child labour and discrimination.
Repeated attempts have been made to suppress trade union organisation in the UK under Conservative governments since the late 1970s, while economists believe the declining presence of unions in the workforce may have contributed to a reduction in wage growth.
Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s chief economist, has said falling levels of unionisation have lowered wage growth by about 0.75 percentage points a year over the past 30 years, in a sign of the weaker bargaining power of workers.
Figures from the ILO show Britain has had the weakest real wage growth among the most advanced nations in the G20 over the past decade.
Another recommended measure from the ILO is to strengthen social protection systems around the world. Many nations already run welfare-state models, but more than half of the global population are unprotected, with others requiring further strengthening.
The ILO also called for improved policies to support reductions in gender inequality, from parental leave to greater investment in public care services. Women are paid about a fifth less than men around the world.
Other steps include the creation of a universal entitlement to lifelong learning, to enable workers to gain vital skills and retrain later in life; and an international governance system that would require gig economy platforms, such as Uber and Deliveroo, to respect certain minimum rights and protections for workers.