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2018-10-07 06:30:17

If investors at some of the biggest technology companies are right, the next big restaurant chain could have no kitchens of its own. These venture capitalists think the same forces that have transformed transportation, media, retail and logistics will also work their way through prepared food businesses. The Battle Is For The Customer Interface Investors are pouring millions into the creation of a network of shared kitchens, storage facilities, and pickup counters that established chains and new food entrepreneurs can access to cut down on overhead and quickly spin up new concepts in fast food and casual dining. Powering all of this is a food delivery market that could grow from $35 billion to a $365 billion industry by 2030, according to a report from UBS’s research group, the “Evidence Lab”. “We’ve had conversations with the biggest and fastest growing restaurant brands in the country and even some of the casual brands,” said Jim Collins, a serial entrepreneur, restauranteur, and the chief executive of the food-service startup, Kitchen United. “In every board room for every major restaurant brand in the country… the number one conversation surrounds the topic of how are we going to address [off-premise diners].” Collins’ company just raised $10 million in a funding round led by GV, the investment arm of Google parent company, Alphabet. But Alphabet’s investment team is far from the only group investing in the restaurant infrastructure as a service business. Perhaps the best capitalized company focusing on distributed kitchens is CloudKitchens, one of two subsidiaries owned by the holding company City Storage Solutions. Cloud Kitchens and its sister company Cloud Retail are the two arms of the new venture from Uber co-founder and former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, which was formed with a $150 million investment. Travis Kalanick is already back running a company with a $150M investment As we reported at the time, Travis announced that he would be starting a new fund with the riches he made from Uber shares sold in its most recent major secondary round. Kalanick said his 10100, or “ten one hundred”, fund would be geared toward “large-scale job creation,” with investments in real estate, e-commerce, and “emerging innovation in India and China.” If anyone is aware of the massive market potential for leveraging on-demand services, it’s Kalanick. Especially since he was one of the architects of the infrastructure that has made it possible. Other deep pocketed companies have also stepped into the fray. Late last year Acre Venture Partners, the investment arm formed by The Campbell Soup Co., participated in a $13 million investment for Pilotworks, another distributed kitchen operator based in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Kitchen United has been busy putting together a deep bench of executive talent culled from some of the largest and most successful American fast food restaurant chains. Former Taco Bell Chief Development Officer, Meredith Sandland, joined the company earlier this year as its chief operating officer, while former McDonald’s executive Atul Sood, who oversaw the burger giant’s relationship with online delivery services, has come aboard as Kitchen United’s Chief Business Officer. The millions of dollars spicing up this new business model investors are serving up could be considered the second iteration of a food startup wave. Food startup Maple shuts down operations in New York to join Deliveroo An earlier generation of prepared food startups crashed and burned while trying to spin up just this type of vision with investments in their own infrastructure. New York celebrity chef David Chang, the owner and creator of the city’s famous Momofuku restaurants (and Milk Bar, and Ma Peche), was an investor in Maple, a new delivery-only food startup that raised $25 million before it was shut down and its technology was absorbed into the European, delivery service, Deliveroo. Ando, which Chang founded, was another attempt at creating a business with a single storefront for takeout and a massive reliance on delivery services to do the heavy lifting of entering new neighborhoods and markets. That company wound up getting acquired by UberEats after raising $7 million in venture funding. Uber Eats acquires Ando, the food delivery startup from David Chang that makes its own food Those losses are slight compared to the woes of investors in companies like Munchery, ($125.4 million) Sprig, ($56.7 million) and SpoonRocket ($13 million). Sprig and Spoonrocket are now defunct, and Munchery had to pull back from markets in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle as it fights for survival. The company also reportedly was looking at recapitalizing earlier in the year at a greatly reduced valuation. On-demand food startup Sprig is shutting down today What gives companies like Kitchen United, Pilotworks and Cloud Kitchens hope is that they’re not required to actually create the next big successful concept in fast food or casual dining. They just have to enable it. Kitchen United just opened a 12,000 square foot facility in Pasadena for just that purpose — and has plans to open more locations in West Los Angeles; Jersey City, N.J.; Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix; Seattle and Denver. Its competitor, Pilotworks, already has operations in Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, and Providence, R.I. While the two companies have similar visions, they’re currently pursuing different initial customers. Pilotworks has pitched itself as a recipe for success for new food entrepreneurs. Kitchen United, by comparison is giving successful local, regional, and national brands a way to expand their footprint without investing in real estate. “One of the directions that the company was thinking of going was toward the restaurant industry and the second was in the food service entrepreneurial sector,” said Collins. “Would it be a company that served restaurants with their expansions? Now, we’re in deep discussions with all kinds of restaurants.” Smaller national fast food chains like Shake Shack, or fast casual chains like Dennys and Shoney’s could be customers, said Collins. So could local companies that are trying to expand their regional footprint. Los Angeles’ famous Canter’s Deli is a Kitchen United customer (and an early adopter of a number of new restaurant innovations) and so is The Lost Cuban Kitchen, an Iowa-based Cuban restaurant that’s expanding to Los Angeles. Canters restaurant royalty raises $9.5 million for Ordermark, a takeout order management service Kitchen United is looking to create kitchen centers that can house between 10-20 restaurants in converted warehouses, big box retail and light industrial locations. Using demographic data and “demand mapping” for specific cuisines, Kitchen United said that it can provide optimal locations and site the right restaurant to meet consumer demand. The company is also pitching labor management, menu management and delivery tools to help streamline the process of getting a new location up and running. “In all of the facilities, all of the restaurants have their own four-walled space,” says Collins. “There’s shared infrastructure outside of that.” Some of that infrastructure is taking food deliveries and an ability to serve as a central hub for local supplier, according to Collins. “One of the things that we’re going to be launching relatively soon here in Pasadena, is actually in-service days where local supplier and purveyors can come in and meet with seven restaurants at once.” It’s also possible that restaurants in the Kitchen United spaces could take advantage of restaurant technologies being developed by one of the startup’s sister companies through Cali Group, a holding company for a number of different e-sports, retail, and food technology startups. The Pasadena-based kitchen company was founded by Harry Tsao, an investor in food technology (and a part owner of the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Football Club) through his fund Avista Investments; and John Miller, a serial entrepreneur who founded the Cali Group. In fact, Kitchen United operates as a Cali Group portfolio company alongside Miso Robotics, the developer of the burger flipping robot, Flippy; Caliburger, an In-n-Out clone first developed by Miller in Shanghai and brought back to the U.S.; and FunWall, a display technology for online gaming in retail settings. Flippy, the robot hamburger chef, goes to work “Kitchen United’s data-driven approach to flexible kitchen spaces unlocks critical value for national, regional, and local restaurant chains looking to expand into new markets,” said Adam Ghobarah, general partner at GV, and a new director on the Kitchen United board. “The founding team’s experience in scaling — in addition to diverse exposure to national chains, regional brands, regional franchises, and small upstart eateries — puts Kitchen United in a strong position to accelerate food innovation.” GV’s Ghobarah actually sees the investment of a piece with other bets that Alphabet’s venture capital arm has made around the food industry. The firm is a backer of the fully automated hamburger preparation company, Creator, which has raised roughly $28 million to develop its hamburger making robot (if Securities and Exchange Commission filings can be believed). And it has backed the containerized farming startup, Bowery Farming, with a $20 million investment. Taste test: Burger robot startup Creator opens first restaurant Ghobarah sees an entirely new food distribution ecosystem built up around facilities where Bowery’s farms are colocated with Kitchen United’s restaurants to reduce logistical hurdles and create new hubs. “As urban farming like Bowery scales up… that becomes more and more realistic,” Ghobarah said. “The other thing that really stands out when you have flexible locations … all of the thousands of people who want to own a restaurant now have access. It’s not really all regional chains and national chains… With a satellite location like this… [a restaurant]… can break even at one third of the order volume.”

2018-01-23 00:00:00

IN NOVEMBER 2015, 23 of biology’s bigwigs met up at the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC, to plot a grandiose scheme. It had been 12 years since the publication of the complete genetic sequence of Homo sapiens. Other organisms’ genomes had been deciphered in the intervening period but the projects doing so had a piecemeal feel to them. Some were predictable one-offs, such as chickens, honey bees and rice. Some were more ambitious, such as attempts to sample vertebrate, insect and arachnid biodiversity by looking at representatives of several thousand genera within these groups, but were advancing only slowly. What was needed, the committee concluded, was a project with the scale and sweep of the original Human Genome Project. Its goal, they decided, should be to gather DNA sequences from specimens of all complex life on Earth. They decided to call it the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP). At around the same time as this meeting, a Peruvian entrepreneur living in São Paulo, Brazil, was formulating an audacious plan of his own. Juan Carlos Castilla Rubio wanted to shift the economy of the Amazon basin away from industries such as mining, logging and ranching, and towards one based on exploiting the region’s living organisms and the biological information they embody. At least twice in the past—with the businesses of rubber-tree plantations, and of blood-pressure drugs called ACE inhibitors, which are derived from snake venom—Amazonian organisms have helped create industries worth billions of dollars. Today’s explosion of biological knowledge, Mr Castilla felt, portended many more such opportunities. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. For the shift he had in mind to happen, though, he reasoned that both those who live in the Amazon basin and those who govern it would have to share in the profits of this putative new economy. And one part of ensuring this happened would be to devise a way to stop a repetition of what occurred with rubber and ACE inhibitors—namely, their appropriation by foreign firms, without royalties or tax revenues accruing to the locals. Such thinking is not unique to Mr Castilla. An international agreement called the Nagoya protocol already gives legal rights to the country of origin of exploited biological material. What is unique, or at least unusual, about Mr Castilla’s approach, though, is that he also understands how regulations intended to enforce such rights can get in the way of the research needed to turn knowledge into profit. To that end he has been putting his mind to the question of how to create an open library of the Amazon’s biological data (particularly DNA sequences) in a way that can also track who does what with those data, and automatically distribute part of any commercial value that results from such activities to the country of origin. He calls his idea the Amazon Bank of Codes. Now, under the auspices of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, a Swiss ski resort, these two ideas have come together. On January 23rd it was announced that the EBP will help collect the data to be stored in the code bank. The forum, for its part, will drum up support for the venture among the world’s panjandrums—and with luck some dosh as well. The EBP’s stated goal is to sequence, within a decade, the genomes of all 1.5m known species of eukaryotes. These are organisms that have proper nuclei in their cells—namely plants, animals, fungi and a range of single-celled organisms called protists. (It will leave it to others to sequence bacteria and archaea, the groups of organisms without proper nuclei.) The plan is to use the first three years to decipher, in detail, the DNA of a member of each eukaryotic family. Families are the taxonomic group above the genus level (foxes, for example, belong to the genus Vulpes in the family Canidae) and the eukaryotes comprise roughly 9,300 of them. The subsequent three years would be devoted to creating rougher sequences of one species from each of the 150,000 or so eukaryotic genera. The remaining species would be sequenced, in less detail still, over the final four years of the project. That is an ambitious timetable. The first part would require deciphering more than eight genomes a day; the second almost 140; the third, about 1,000. For comparison, the number of eukaryotic genomes sequenced so far is about 2,500. It is not, though, the amount of sequencing involved that is the daunting part of the task. That is simply a question of buying enough sequencing machines and hiring enough technicians to run them. Rather, what is likely to slow things down is the gathering of the samples to be sequenced. For the sequencing, Harris Lewin, a genomicist at the University of California, Davis, who was one of the EBP’s founding spirits, estimates that extracting decent-quality genetic data from a previously unexamined species will require between $40,000 and $60,000 for labour, reagents and amortised machine costs. The high-grade family-level part of the project will thus clock in at about $500m. Big sequencing centres like BGI in China, the Rockefeller University’s Genomic Resource Centre in America, and the Sanger Institute in Britain, as well as a host of smaller operations, are all eager for their share of this pot. For the later, cruder, stages of the project Complete Genomics, a Californian startup bought by BGI, thinks it can bring the cost of a rough-and-ready sequence down to $100. A hand-held sequencer made by Oxford Nanopore, a British company, may be able to match that and also make the technology portable. The truly daunting part of the project is the task of assembling the necessary specimens. Some of them, perhaps 500,000 species, may come from botanical gardens, zoos or places like the Smithsonian (the herbarium of which boasts 5m items, representing around 300,000 species). The rest must be collected from the field. Dr Lewin hopes the project will spur innovation in collection and processing. This could involve technology both high (autonomous drones) and low (enlisting legions of sample-hunting citizen scientists). It does, though, sound like a multi-decade effort. It is also an effort in danger of running into the Nagoya protocol. Permission will have to be sought from every government whose territory is sampled. That will be a bureaucratic nightmare. Indeed, John Kress of the Smithsonian, another of the EBP’s founders, says many previous sequencing ventures have foundered on the rock of such permission. And that is why those running the EBP are so keen to recruit Mr Castilla and his code bank. The idea of the code bank is to build a database of biological information using a blockchain. Though blockchains are best known as the technology that underpins bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, they have other uses. In particular, they can be employed to create “smart contracts” that monitor and execute themselves. To obtain access to Mr Castilla’s code bank would mean entering into such a contract, which would track how the knowledge thus tapped was subsequently used. If such use was commercial, a payment would be transferred automatically to the designated owners of the downloaded data. Mr Castilla hopes for a proof-of-principle demonstration of his platform to be ready within a few months. In theory, smart contracts of this sort would give governments wary of biopiracy peace of mind, while also encouraging people to experiment with the data. And genomic data are, in Mr Castilla’s vision, just the start. He sees the Amazon Bank of Codes eventually encompassing all manner of biological compounds—snake venoms of the sort used to create ACE inhibitors, for example—or even behavioural characteristics like the congestion-free movement of army-ant colonies, which has inspired algorithms for co-ordinating fleets of self-driving cars. His eventual goal is to venture beyond the Amazon itself, and combine his planned repository with similar ones in other parts of the world, creating an Earth Bank of Codes. Plenty needs to go right for this endeavour to succeed, concedes Dominic Waughray, who oversees public-private partnerships at the World Economic Forum. Those working on different species must agree common genome-quality standards. People need to be enticed to study hitherto neglected organisms. Countries which share biological resources (the Amazon basin, for example, is split between nine states) should ideally co-operate on common repositories. And governments must resist lobbying from vested interests in the extractive industries, keen to preserve access to land, minerals or timber, which Mr Castilla’s scheme aims ultimately to curtail. As to the money, that is the reason for the announcement at Davos. By splashing the tie-up between the EBP and the code bank in front of many of the world’s richest people, those behind the two enterprises are not so discreetly waving their collecting tins. The EBP has already been promised $100m of the $500m required for its first phase. The code bank, meanwhile, has piqued the interest of the Brazilian and Peruvian governments. For the participants, the rewards of success would differ. Dr Lewin, Dr Kress and their compadres would, if the EBP succeeds, be able to use the evolutionary connections between genomes to devise a definitive version of the tree of eukaryotic life. That would offer biologists what the periodic table offers chemists, namely a clear framework within which to operate. Mr Castilla, for his part, would have rewritten the rules of international trade by bringing the raw material of biotechnology into an orderly pattern of ownership. If, as many suspect, biology proves to be to future industries what physics and chemistry have been to industries past, that would be a feat of lasting value.

2017-08-21

SINGAPORE, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The USS John S. McCain, a U.S. warship that collided with an oil tanker east of Singapore on Monday, arrived at Changi Naval Base in Singapore after suffering damage to its hull that caused flooding in compartments, the U.S. Navy said. “Significant damage to the hull resulted in flooding to nearby compartments, including crew berthing, machinery, and communications rooms. Damage control efforts by the crew halted further flooding,” the U.S. 7th Fleet said in a statement. (Reporting by Singapore bureau)

2017-09-20

Sept 20 (Reuters) - SAGA FURS OYJ: * VALUE OF BROKERAGE SALES ROSE TO EUR 92 MILLION (EUR 69 MILLION IN SEPTEMBER 2016)​ * ‍AFTER THE SEPTEMBER AUCTION, THE VALUE FOR THE ACCOUNTING PERIOD BROKERAGE SALES AT EUR 437 MILLION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2019-01-31 00:00:00

SAO PAULO, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) said on Thursday that its board had approved the nominations of Eduardo Bacellar Leal Ferreira to be its chairman and João Cox as a board member. It also signed off on the nominations of Carlos Alberto Pereira de Oliveira as executive director of head of exploration and production, and Rudimar Andreis Lorenzatto as executive director of development of production and technology, Petrobras said. (Reporting by Luciano Costa; editing by Jason Neely)

2019-03-14

CNN will feature former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, one of the most recent Democrats to declare a 2020 presidential bid, in a town hall next week in Atlanta, the network announced Wednesday. The March 20 event from CNN Center at its headquarters in Atlanta will be moderated by the network's chief political correspondent Dana Bash. The Hickenlooper event marks the ninth town hall CNN has offered this year. Hickenlooper, 67, officially launched his candidacy on March 4. In the announcement, he referred to President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE as a "bully" while adding, "As a skinny kid with coke-bottle glasses and a funny last name, I've stood up to my fair share of bullies." After Trump said Hickenlooper refused "to acknowledge capitalism," the Democratic presidential hopeful accused the president of preferring to have a "divisive fight" than a discussion around solving issues. "Americans are dealing with serious challenges around the affordability of healthcare, education and housing and an economy that hasn’t produced jobs that pay," Hickenlooper said in a statement to The Hill earlier this week. "President Trump would rather have a divisive fight argument about labels than have a real discussion about how to solve these problems.""Fomenting division is his way of distracting us from the fact that he is actually making things worse for Americans, by giving tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and big corporations while proposing devastating cuts to Medicare, imposing tariffs that hurt farmers and consumers and hollowing out the Affordable Care Act," he added.The comments came after Trump told Breitbart News in an interview published Monday that Hickenlooper was "ashamed" of the word "capitalism." Last week, Hickenlooper would not definitively answer a question regarding whether he considers himself a proud capitalist.  "The labels, I'm not sure any of them fit," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."Hickenlooper would later clarify his comments in an interview with CBS News. "I'm happy to say I'm a capitalist, but I think at a certain point the labels do nothing but divide us." Other 2020 hopefuls to appear in town halls hosted by CNN the past couple months include Sens. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden Sanders leads Democratic field in Colorado poll MORE (D-Calif.), Amy KlobucharAmy Jean KlobucharCastro qualifies for next Democratic primary debates Eight Democratic presidential hopefuls to appear in CNN climate town hall Biden, Buttigieg bypassing Democratic delegate meeting: report MORE (D-Minn.) and Bernie SandersBernie SandersHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' The exhaustion of Democrats' anti-Trump delusions Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden MORE (I-Vt.); Rep. Tulsi GabbardTulsi GabbardCastro qualifies for next Democratic primary debates Native American advocates question 2020 Democrats' commitment The US can't seem to live without Afghanistan MORE (D-Hawaii); former Rep. John DelaneyJohn Kevin DelaneyDelaney shakes up top campaign staff Poll: Nearly 4 in 5 say they will consider candidates' stances on cybersecurity Native American advocates question 2020 Democrats' commitment MORE (D-Md.); South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. CNN will also feature Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenHarry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Warren offers plan to repeal 1994 crime law authored by Biden Panel: Jill Biden's campaign message MORE (D-Mass.) in a town hall on Monday. Each candidate has received a full hour in prime time. All have declared their presidential candidacies except for Schultz, who is still weighing an independent bid. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-11-07

Democrat Cindy Axne will win the House race in Iowa's 3rd congressional district, unseating incumbent Republican Rep. David Young, NBC News projects. Democrats were eager for midterm wins in Iowa, a swing state President Donald Trump won by 10 percentage points in the 2016 election. Young's district, however, only went to Trump by about 3 points, and has seen a late surge of cash backing Axne. By the final week of the campaign, Axne had outraised Young by nearly $2 million, and held more cash on hand, according to data from opensecrets.org. The race was competitive throughout, polls and analyst forecasts show. Data news site FiveThirtyEight gave Axne a three-in-five chance of victory in the days leading up to the election, while RealClearPolitics called the race a toss up. Axne, a 53-year-old first-time congressional candidate, runs a digital design firm alongside her husband, her website says. Young has held the seat since 2014.

2018-01-25

In 2014, I made a prediction. Virtual reality, I believed, would be the future of filmmaking. I was mostly correct; I was also terribly wrong. I was right in that dozens of filmmakers were going to embrace the 360-degree, immersive world of VR—this was obvious even from the half-dozen or so experiences tucked away in a small room at the Sundance Film Festival, where I had my epiphany. I was wrong in making it sound as though VR was going to up and replace film. It didn’t. It likely won’t. Ready Player One-style virtual worlds may never take the place of multiplexes, but immersive entertainment can change the landscape—if its creators can get people to pony up for it. A map that features in Oculus' Wolves in the Walls. VR experiences are meant to fill the same free time that any form of entertainment does—but that’s an increasingly crowded room, and VR doesn't fit neatly into pre-existing distribution channels.

2019-06-09 00:00:00

New York (CNN Business)Beyond Meat, the plant-based protein company, is on fire. But that wasn't always the case. The company had a wildly successful initial public offering last month. Since then, its stock price has increased dramatically: Shares traded last week for more than five times the $25 IPO price. For the first quarter of 2019, the company reported sales of $40.2 million — up 215% from the same period a year before. "It feels like this breakthrough moment," Beyond's executive chair Seth Goldman told CNN Business. "It's not like all of a sudden we came out nowhere," he said. The company was founded a decade ago. But "in the consumer's mind, it's definitely been a step-change in terms of awareness and acceptance." One thing that likely helped more people learn about Beyond (BYND) was its placement in the meat aisle. For Beyond Meat, being sold alongside animal meat is "absolutely critical," Goldman said. Many supermarkets didn't immediately agree to sell Beyond's products — which include alternatives to beef patties and sausage made from pea protein — next to real meat and sausage. But over the years, the company has worked to make its product look and taste more like meat. And, he said, grocery stores started to come on board. If they didn't sell the product in the meat aisle, Beyond refused to help promote the product's availability at that location. "It's really important to us that we enforce that," Goldman said. Though Beyond Meat is a vegan product, it's designed to appeal to meat eaters who want to diversify their diets or reduce their environmental footprints. And it has: At Kroger, 93% of Beyond Burger shoppers also bought meat in the first half of 2018, Beyond reported in financial documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of its IPO. Placement in the meat aisle helps ensure the product will be seen by those types of shoppers. Mainstream fast food and fast casual chains are also noticing the trend. Burger King is selling a meatless Impossible Whopper, which features a meatless patty made by Beyond's competitor Impossible Foods. Little Caesars is testing out an Impossible Supreme pizza, topped with a meatless sausage that is also made by Impossible. These chains and others are seeing demand for the product among their core, carnivorous customers. Meanwhile, massive food sellers like Nestlé and Tyson are bringing their own meat alternatives to market — a development that will put pressure on upstarts like Beyond Meat. Goldman maintained that Beyond isn't too concerned about competitors with deep pockets joining the sector. The entrance of those big players "helps legitimize the space," Goldman said. "This is such a growing, expanding category, I believe there's going to be room" for competitors. He said that Beyond will be able to compete because "we are exclusively, laser-focused on making meat from plants. And these other big companies aren't."

2018-06-06

Apple describes its mobile devices as designed in California and assembled in China. You could also say they were made by the App Store, launched a decade ago next month, a year after the first iPhone. Inviting outsiders to craft useful, entertaining, or even puerile extensions to the iPhone’s capabilities transformed the device into the era-defining franchise that enabled Uber and Snapchat. Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software, is tasked with keeping that wellspring of new ideas flowing. One of his main strategies is to get more app developers to use artificial intelligence tools such as recognizing objects in front of an iPhone’s camera. The hope is that will spawn a new generation of ideas from Apple’s ecosystem of outsourced innovation.

2017-08-10

Aug 10 (Reuters) - SOLAR COMPANY SA * JULY REVENUE ‍9.6​ MILLION ZLOTYS Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

2016-03-11 00:00:00

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar’s military nominated a former junta stalwart who remains on a U.S. sanctions list as its choice for vice president on Friday, pointing to battles ahead for National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her hand-picked president. Myanmar’s first democratically elected government for more than 50 years faces a formidable challenge delivering the reform and economic growth demanded by the electorate while working alongside a military that retains much political power. The lower house of parliament voted on Friday to confirm Htin Kyaw, a close friend and confidant of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, as its presidential candidate. That brought the top office a step closer for the man expected to rule as her proxy. Across town in the capital of Naypyitaw, military MPs met behind closed doors and nominated retired general Myint Swe as their candidate. He was head of the feared military intelligence under former junta leader Than Shwe. When Than Shwe ordered a crackdown on anti-junta protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007, known as the Saffron Revolution, Myint Swe was the head of special operations in Yangon. “We held a meeting to decide the vice presidential candidate. There was no one who disagreed on the proposal,” one of the 166 military lawmakers, who under the constitution hold a quarter of seats in parliament, told Reuters. In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the nomination of candidates was an important step in the democratic transition in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. But he noted “structural and systemic flaws in Burma’s constitution, which includes the reservation of 25 percent of parliamentary seats for the military, which in part allows for the Burmese military to ensure that one of its nominees will either be president or vice president.” Suu Kyi has said she planned to form a government of reconciliation to help bridge the deep divisions in Myanmar after nearly 50 years of military rule. “We will hold on the national reconciliation policy no matter what the military decides,” said Zaw Myint Maung of the NLD. “We will try to work with the military for national reconciliation.” But a rift between Suu Kyi and the military widened in the run-up to the presidential nominations. Sources in her camp say she became frustrated with military intransigence on issues ranging from amending the constitution that bars her from the presidency to minor formalities such as the location of the handover of power. The military has declined to comment on negotiations with the NLD. Some in Suu Kyi’s party said the choice of Myint Swe went against the spirit of reconciliation. “Aung San Suu Kyi tried really hard to negotiate with them for national reconciliation,” said one senior NLD official. “They don’t trust us. It’s their final shot to protect themselves and their interests.” While Than Shwe disappeared from public life after handing over power to a semi-civilian government in 2011, Myint Swe’s nomination will fuel the suspicions of many in Myanmar that the former junta leader still holds considerable sway. “Myint Swe is very close to former senior military officials, especially former supremo Than Shwe,” said political analyst Yan Myo Thein. “His nomination may mean Than Shwe is still influencing behind the scenes.” Myint Swe is listed on the U.S. Treasury Department list of sanctioned individuals due to his role in the former military government. He was considered as a vice presidential candidate in 2012 but was barred from the job because his son-in-law was an Australian citizen - the same provision that prevents Suu Kyi from becoming president. The junta-drafted 2008 constitution bars officials whose parents, spouse, children or their spouses are citizens of other countries from becoming president, a clause widely seen as aimed specifically at the NLD leader. Myint Swe’s son-in-law has since given up his Australian citizenship, official sources told Reuters on Friday. The vote in the lower house on Friday for Suu Kyi’s presidential nominee was never in doubt, given the NLD’s outright majority in the upper and lower houses of parliament. Suu Kyi, wearing a blue dress and white sash, was the first NLD lawmaker to cast her ballot. NLD dominance makes Htin Kyaw a near-certainty to become the first head of state who is not a serving or former senior general since the army seized power in 1962. The two houses will come together to vote on the presidency next week. Flouting the ban on her presidency, Suu Kyi has said she would run the country through a proxy. Under Myanmar’s indirect system for electing a president, three candidates are nominated - one by the lower house, one by the upper house, and one by the military bloc in parliament. The two losing nominees becoming vice presidents. The other vice president is expected to be the NLD’s nomination from the upper house. He is Henry Van Thio, a member of the Chin ethnic group from the country’s northwest. The president picks the cabinet that will take over from President Thein Sein’s outgoing government on April 1, with the exception of the heads of the home, defense and border security ministries who will be appointed by the armed forces chief. Additional reporting by Aung Hla Tun in Yangon, and Washington Newsroom; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Alex Richardson, Grant McCool

2016-09-16 07:00:37

Jennifer Fonstad Contributor Jennifer Fonstad is a co-founder and managing partner of Aspect Ventures. The word “diversity” — derived from the Old French diversité, meaning “unique” — has been part of the English language for almost 1,000 years. But over the last decade it has become a cause célèbre, grabbing global headlines more than 30 million times as we examine diversity — or the lack of it — in every aspect our lives. We enjoy “diversion” in our pastimes, prefer “biodiversity” in our ecosystems and strive for “diversified” holdings in our portfolios, yet we unconsciously resist diversity in our social and professional communities. As it turns out, this natural tendency toward sameness has become a liability in today’s marketplace, costing companies talent, consumer goodwill and real money. As early as 1985, Michael Porter, economist and professor at the Harvard Business School, popularized the importance of the relative competitive advantages of businesses, extending the concept to nations and other organizations. Looking out at the business landscape today, it’s clear that diversity increasingly is being used by companies to drive productivity and profits — and outperform the competition. In service industries that are heavily dependent on their people — including tech and venture — and those that sell products to a broad population, having diversity in the organization and effectively taking advantage of it are not only critical to success, but may ultimately be critical to survival. Looking at the low number of women, as well as low ethnic and racial diversity, in many of these businesses, I expect we will see a classic Porter-style competitive dynamic play out — firms that understand how to use diversity to their advantage will win, while those that do not will lose. Why are these industries ripe for disruption? In the venture industry, where women represent only 4 percent of the partners in VC firms yet control 60 percent of assets (and increasing), there is a growing number of both female and male entrepreneurs looking to bring diverse perspectives onto the board. How you harness diversity in an organization matters. And venture is not alone; only 5 percent of the S&P 500 index has a female CEO; 3 percent of U.S. senior leadership teams are racially diverse; 8 percent of law firm equity partners are individuals of color; and 18 percent of the largest nonprofits ($50 million+ budgets) are run by women, despite an overwhelmingly (75 percent) female employee base. This seems like a great opportunity for organizations to leverage the unique qualities a diverse workforce brings to the table — new networks and different management styles and leadership perspectives — to better compete and win in their marketplace. Why does this work? We are only just beginning to understand all of the unique ways in which diversity drives this advantage. Here is what we know so far: Early research reveals how significant this advantage can be. A 2015 McKinsey study found ethnically diverse companies were more than 35 percent more likely to outperform their industry counterparts. Even more significantly, each 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior executive team yielded on average a rise of 0.8 percent in earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). Extensive research on the subject of homogeneity by teams from Columbia University, MIT and others (PNAS, Dec, 2014) found that any team or market dominated by one ethnicity tended to lead to worse decisions. Researchers found that diversity led to more scrutiny and challenging of decisions and ideas, less overconfidence and better outcomes. Similarly for gender, a Credit Suisse study found that companies with higher female representation at the board level or in top management exhibit higher returns on equity, higher valuations and also higher payout ratios. Dow Jones studied more than 20,000 venture-backed companies over a five-year period and found that those companies with at least one woman executive were more likely to succeed than those with only men in leadership positions. Investors are beginning to pay attention. Organizations managing more than $600 billion in assets look for diversity in the boardroom before considering an investment. What do they know that so many organizations are managing to ignore, or, worse, think they’ve got covered, but don’t? As it turns out, how you harness diversity in an organization matters. Some organizations get this and are fully driving to build and empower a diverse employee base. Marc Benioff has pushed aggressively to hire more women and minorities at every level of the Salesforce organization, and recently raised the salaries of his underpaid female employees. Twitter, which has come under fire for its lack of women and minorities, now has three female board members and acknowledges that adding more diversity to the organization is “a must.” So what does all this mean for you? For both leaders of organizations as well as the rank and file, it’s okay to be a skeptic and sit on the sidelines on this issue. It is most likely, however, that the world will pass you by — your organization will be less successful and your team will have a narrower perspective on your customer and the potential of your business. We all have an opportunity right now to embrace diversity as a competitive advantage, examine our own unconscious biases and proactively look for ways to bring different voices to our team and into our decisions. I remember Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook and founder of Lean In, talking about how so many men were attending Lean In Circles and how smart they were for taking that step. Inviting diversity doesn’t mean you’ll always win. But stifling or dismissing the importance of those different perspectives could very easily lead a company, a team or you to lose.

2016-06-09 13:25:00

brightcove.createExperiences(); The mother of Jeremy Jordan’s cousin Sarah is refuting the Supergirl star’s claims that the teenager is being held against her will at a pray-away-the-gay conversion school. In an interview with the Austin American-Statesman, the woman – whose name was not published – said that Sarah’s enrollment at Texas’ Heartlight Ministries “has nothing to do with her sexuality.” “My daughter would be heartbroken that she is being misrepresented this way,” she said, slamming Jordan’s statements that the 17-year-old’s May 13th enrollment was the result of her taking her girlfriend to prom. In court documents, Sarah’s family says that she’s at the school to “help her with issues of depression, self-harm, drug use, and behavioral issues,” the American-Statesman reported. Jordan charges that Sarah, his “sweet gay cousin,” is “trapped” at Heartlight, which is cited in a GoFundMe page created by his brother Joey only as a boarding facility for troubled teens to “pray away the gay.” The GoFundMe alleges that Sarah cannot communicate with anyone outside of the facilities, and even once tried to run away – but was caught by staff. Jordan’s family is collecting funds to pay the fees of family law attorney Christine Andresen, of CHA Law Group, PC, who was hired by Sarah’s aunt to help get her released from the boarding facility. “I can’t comment on pending litigation, other than to authenticate that to the best of my knowledge, the background information on the GoFundMe shared by Sarah’s cousin is truthful,” Andresen said in a statement to PEOPLE. The legal filing in a Texas court charges that Sarah’s father and the family’s pastor admitted the goal of sending her to Heartlight is to change her sexual orientation, according to the American-Statesman. Heartlight Ministries is a co-ed, Longview, Texas, Christian boarding school that provides residence for 56 “struggling teens” and leads them through an “intense” program with a “90 percent” success rate, according to its website. The 9-12 month program follows “a biblical model of counseling,” and uses chores and privileges to discipline “errant resident[s].” The school’s founder, Mark Gregston, regularly blogs about Heartlight’s mission. In a February post, he advised parents of teen girls who are dating other girls, “don’t blow up and label your child a ‘homosexual,’ or that label could stick!” He wrote that some teenagers are in same-sex relationships because they “just want to be different,” or, because they’re “currently a fad.” “A parent can help a daughter, if she is willing and wanting to make a clean break, by allowing her to live away from her current scene, with relatives or at a place like Heartlight,” Gregston advised. Heartlight did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

2019-09-18 00:00:00

Welcome to Hillicon Valley, The Hill's newsletter detailing all you need to know about the tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. If you don't already, be sure to sign up for our newsletter with this LINK. Welcome! Follow the cyber team, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and the tech team, Harper Neidig (@hneidig) and Emily Birnbaum (@birnbaum_e).   ZUCKERBERG RETURNS: Facebook CEO Mark ZuckerbergMark Elliot ZuckerbergHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet On The Money: Fed delivers second rate cut to fend off global risks | Trump says Fed has 'no guts' | House gets deal on continuing resolution | GM faces bipartisan backlash amid strike Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers to discuss 'future internet regulation' MORE is visiting Washington this week to meet with lawmakers, including at least one of his company's biggest critics. "Mark will be in Washington, D.C., to meet with policymakers and talk about future internet regulation," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told The Hill. "There are no public events planned." One of those meetings will be with Sen. Josh HawleyJoshua (Josh) David HawleyGOP signals unease with Barr's gun plan Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers to discuss 'future internet regulation' MORE (R-Mo.) on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the plans. Hawley is one of the most outspoken Facebook critics in the GOP, and has criticized the Federal Trade Commission's $5 billion fine against the company in a privacy settlement for not being harsh enough. Axios first reported Zuckerberg's visit. It's unclear who else Zuckerberg will be meeting with or what exactly he plans to discuss. A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiPelosi: Lewandowski should have been held in contempt 'right then and there' Democrats bicker over strategy on impeachment Overnight Health Care — Presented by Partnership for America's Health Care Future — Pelosi set to unveil drug price plan | Abortion rate in US hits lowest level since Roe v. Wade | Dems threaten to subpoena Juul MORE (D-Calif.) said that she would not be meeting with him and that Facebook did not seek out a meeting. Context: Congress is exploring the possibility of a bipartisan consumer privacy bill, which would put into place the nation's first federal privacy law regulating social media companies' data practices. Zuckerberg has encouraged policymakers to get involved with regulating Silicon Valley. In March he published an op-ed in the Washington Post, arguing that there needs to be more legal clarity in four areas: "harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability." Read more on his visit here.    WE'RE DOING BETTER, WE PROMISE: Facebook, Google and Twitter tried to assure skeptical senators on Wednesday that they are improving their efforts to find and remove violent and hateful content on their platforms. The social media companies have been sharply criticized over the issue after a spate of mass shootings this year that appeared to be inspired by online extremism and in some cases were even broadcast on the internet. The three companies sent executives to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday for a hearing on "mass violence, extremism and digital responsibility." "In today's internet-connected society, misinformation, fake news, deep fakes and viral online conspiracy theories have become the norm," said Sen. Roger WickerRoger Frederick WickerHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Tech giants defend efforts against extremist content The 13 Republicans needed to pass gun-control legislation MORE (R-Miss.), the committee's chairman. "This hearing is an opportunity for witnesses to discuss how their platforms go about identifying content and material that threatens violence and poses a real and potentially immediate danger to the public." What tech is doing: The executives told lawmakers that they were collaborating with each other and other tech companies on the issue and that they had made strides using artificial intelligence (AI) to detect hateful and violent content. Facebook has "updated our proactive detection systems and reduced the average time it takes for our AI to find a violation on Facebook Live to 12 seconds -- a 90 percent reduction in our average detection time from a few months ago," said Monica Bickert, Facebook's vice president of global policy management. "Being able to detect violations sooner means that in emergencies where every minute counts, we can assist faster." "Over 87 percent of the 9 million videos we removed [from YouTube] in the second quarter of 2019 were first flagged by our automated systems," added Derek Slater, Google's director of information policy. "More than 80 percent of those auto-flagged videos were removed before they received a single view. And overall, videos that violate our policies generate a fraction of a percent of the views on YouTube." And Twitter's director of public policy strategy, Nick Pickles, told the committee that its "proactive measures" account for 90 percent of the suspensions it has carried out under its terrorism policies. But lawmakers want more: Lawmakers made it clear they expected tech companies to follow through. "I welcome that you’re doing more and trying to do it better," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during the hearing. "But I would suggest that even more needs to be done and it needs to be better." Read more here.   Pressure on Trump as well...: Rep. Max RoseMax RoseDemocrats bicker over strategy on impeachment Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet House Democrat urges Trump to address online extremism at UN MORE (D-N.Y.) is urging President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump conversation with foreign leader part of complaint that led to standoff between intel chief, Congress: report Pelosi: Lewandowski should have been held in contempt 'right then and there' Trump to withdraw FEMA chief nominee: report MORE to address the issue of online extremism at the United Nations General Assembly this month, according to a letter provided exclusively to The Hill. The New York Democrat, who heads the House Homeland Security Committee's counterterrorism panel, said the president and the United Nations should push the social media companies to invest in their efforts to stop extremist content from spreading. "I know you share my concerns that terrorists are using social media to spread their ideologies across the world, to recruit future terrorists, to find funding, and to plan and disseminate terrorist attacks," Rose wrote in the letter to Trump. In the wake of the El Paso, Texas, shooting last month, which left 22 dead and dozens injured, the White House has been honing in on the issue of online radicalization while Democrats have pushed for new gun control legislation. In the letter, Rose said the top social media companies could stave off the spread of extremist content by building out the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a 2017 initiative by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube aimed at curbing the spread of Islamic terrorist content online. Right now, the GIFCT is mainly an effort by the companies to share digital footprints for specific pieces of terrorist content. But Rose is pushing to build it into its own organization with a dedicated staff. Read more here.    TRUMP'S SILICON VALLEY FUNDRAISER: President Trump on Tuesday attended a closely guarded fundraiser in Silicon Valley, his first visit to the liberal enclave since he took office. The fundraiser took place at a private residence in Portola Valley, Calif., in a swanky home atop a hill where attendees were out of sight from the press and members of the public. "The President participated in a roundtable [with] approximately 25 supporters, then moved to a larger area and spoke to a couple of hundred supporters about the many accomplishments of his Administration," press secretary Stephanie GrishamStephanie GrishamHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser marred by protests Trump names finalists for national security adviser MORE said in a statement after the event. Limited information was made public about the host location in advance, but dozens of protesters who caught wind of the event lined the road leading to the residence to greet the president's motorcade. They set up large "Trump Chicken" and "Trump Baby" balloons and carried signs that read "resist" and that decried Trump as corrupt. The Wall Street Journal reported that the host of the event, which was expected to bring in $3 million for the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee, was Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy. The news outlet reported that the exact location of the event was not disclosed in advance in an effort to avoid mass protests. Read more here.    LATEST DEM PUSH ON ELECTION SECURITY: Congressional Democrats renewed their call for election security legislation during a national day of action on Tuesday, as a Senate Appropriations subcommittee left funding for it out of its annual spending bill. Democrats including Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Ron WydenRonald (Ron) Lee WydenDefense bill talks set to start amid wall fight Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Lobbying groups ask Congress for help on Trump tariffs MORE (Ore.) argued on Tuesday that time is running out to implement election security upgrades such as replacing outdated voting machines with just over a year left prior to the 2020 elections.  "Congress has essentially until the end of October to pass legislation that can still make an impact in time for the general election in 2020, so we have to move, and the fact is that the window may have already closed to secure some of the 2020 primaries," Wyden, who has sponsored multiple election security bills, told reporters during a press conference. Blumenthal added that he is "deeply alarmed" about the small amount of time remaining before the 2020 elections. "The simple mechanics of purchasing new machines, training personnel, assuring that systems are implemented absolutely takes time, and the urgency of the effort now, and the reason we are having this call and speaking out -- we are, in effect, every day trying to advance this agenda and sound the alarm to the American people that elections are just like any other critical infrastructure," Blumenthal said. Wyden and Blumenthal's comments were made on the same day that election security advocates around the country held around 40 gatherings outside of the offices of members of Congress to promote taking action on election security. Activists gathered outside the district offices of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including Sens. John CornynJohn CornynGOP signals unease with Barr's gun plan Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Trump administration floats background check proposal to Senate GOP MORE (R-Texas), Amy KlobucharAmy Jean KlobucharBiden lead shrinks, Sanders and Warren close gap: poll Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Media and candidates should be ashamed that they don't talk about obesity MORE (D-Minn.), and John ThuneJohn Randolph ThuneHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet NRA says Trump administration memo a 'non-starter' Trump administration floats background check proposal to Senate GOP MORE (R-S.D.).  Klobuchar, Blumenthal, and Wyden have championed legislation related to election security, with all three involved in a sustained push to pressure Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellLawmakers run into major speed bumps on spending bills Budowsky: Donald, Boris, Bibi — The right in retreat Hillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet MORE (R-Ky.) to bring bills on the topic to the Senate floor for a vote.  Read more here.   A NEW ELECTION SECURITY BILL: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jack ReedJohn (Jack) Francis ReedHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Senate Democrats introduce legislation to limit foreign interference in elections House rejects GOP motion on replacing Pentagon funding used on border wall MORE (D-R.I.) introduced legislation on Wednesday meant to combat foreign influence in U.S. elections through the establishment of a response center that coordinates intelligence sharing.  The Combating Foreign Influence Act would require the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to establish a Malign Foreign Influence Response Center. This center would be the primary group responsible for compiling and analyzing intelligence on foreign influence operations and campaigns directed against U.S. elections. The center would also help coordinate intelligence sharing between agencies including the FBI, and the departments of Homeland Security, Defense and State. The center would be required to submit an annual report to Congress detailing how its work is addressing privacy and civil liberties issues.  "We currently have numerous agencies and departments independently working to combat foreign influence, and it's past time that our intelligence community comes together to fight these threats," Klobuchar said in a statement. "The creation of this Response Center at the ODNI will help our intelligence community coordinate to better secure our democracy," she added. Reed noted in a statement that "Russian information warfare and malign foreign influence operations are ongoing and pose a serious threat to both our national security and democracy. The U.S. must step up efforts to counter this increasingly sophisticated and evolving threat." Read more here.    ONE CYBERSECURITY COORDINATOR PLEASE: Rep. Bennie ThompsonBennie Gordon ThompsonHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Homeland Security chairman calls on new Trump aide to reestablish cyber coordinator House Democrat urges Trump to address online extremism at UN MORE (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is urging President Trump's new national security adviser Robert O'Brien to prioritize reestablishing the White House cybersecurity coordinator position. The post was eliminated in 2018 following the departure of former Cybersecurity Coordinator Rob Joyce.  Former National Security Advisor John BoltonJohn BoltonHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Overnight Defense: Trump says he has 'many options' on Iran | Hostage negotiator chosen for national security adviser | Senate Dems block funding bill | Documents show Pentagon spent at least 4K at Trump's Scotland resort Bolton blasts Trump's foreign policy in closed-door meeting: report MORE then formally eliminated the position, which was originally created by President Obama in 2009 to help coordinate cyber efforts across federal agencies.  With President Trump's designation of O'Brien, who previously served as the chief hostage negotiator for the State Department, as the new national security adviser on Wednesday, Thompson called on O'Brien to immediately bring back the cybersecurity coordinator position. "[T]hreats facing the nation have evolved and our adversaries are exploiting cyberspace in new ways to advance their economic ambitions, assert influence, and undermine U.S. power," Thompson said in a statement. Read more here.    FACEBOOK TECH AND THE ISLAMIC STATE: New details from an updated complaint expected to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suggest that Facebook's auto-generation technology is continuing to be used to boost extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al Qaeda. The nonprofit National Whistleblower Center's updated complaint accuses Facebook of having provided a tool allowing dozens of pages to be produced that promote or represent the two extremist groups. The update was first reported by the Associated Press. The filing states that nearly 200 auto-generated pages reference the Islamic State while dozens more point to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The AP reported that the nonprofit plans to file the update to its complaint this week. The report comes as members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee were slated to question representatives from a number of social media platforms on Wednesday including Monika Bickert, who is in charge of Facebook's attempts to curtail extremist messaging. "Our priority is detecting and removing content posted by people that violates our policy against dangerous individuals and organizations to stay ahead of bad actors," a Facebook spokesperson told the AP. "Auto-generated pages are not like normal Facebook pages as people can't comment or post on them and we remove any that violate our policies. While we cannot catch every one, we remain vigilant in this effort." Read more here.   ALEXA, DONATE: Amazon announced Wednesday that Alexa, the company's popular virtual assistant, will now be able to donate money to campaigns of candidates running for president. The new feature, dubbed Alexa Political Contributions, activates when an Alexa user says, "Alexa, donate to [candidate name]." Candidates must sign up for the program, but if they do, they'll be able to receive donations of up to $200 starting in October, according to Amazon's website.  Alexa can already answer basic questions about the presidential campaigns such as who endorses a particular candidate, how a candidate is polling, when the Iowa caucuses are and more. Read more here.   OMAR PUSHES TWITTER OVER TRUMP TWEET: Rep. Ilhan OmarIlhan OmarHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Omar asks Twitter what it's doing in response to Trump spreading 'lies that put my life at risk' Trump seeks to expand electoral map with New Mexico rally MORE (D-Minn.) on Wednesday asked what Twitter would do about "lies that put my life at risk" after President Trump promoted a false claim that a video of her and Rep. Ayanna PressleyAyanna PressleyHillicon Valley: Zuckerberg to meet with lawmakers | Big tech defends efforts against online extremism | Trump attends secretive Silicon Valley fundraiser | Omar urges Twitter to take action against Trump tweet Omar asks Twitter what it's doing in response to Trump spreading 'lies that put my life at risk' The Hill's Morning Report - Trump eyes narrowly focused response to Iran attacks MORE (D-Mass.) dancing was filmed on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. "This is from a CBC event we hosted this weekend to celebrate black women in Congress. The President of the United States is continuing to spread lies that put my life at risk. What is Twitter doing to combat this misinformation?" Omar tweeted after Trump quote-tweeted a tweet from user Terrence K. Williams falsely claiming the Sept. 13 video was taken on Sept. 11. The clip of the two dancing to Lizzo's "Truth Hurts" initially went viral on Saturday after it was first tweeted, with the rapper and singer, who, like Omar, is from Minneapolis, retweeting it. After the quote-tweet from the president, which Williams also retweeted, Williams apparently deleted the original. The Hill has reached out to Williams for comment. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that the tweet was not deleted as a result of any action by the company. Trump previously retweeted Williams when he suggested the Clintons had ordered the killing of financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Read more here.    A LIGHTER CLICK: A reporter on a busy news day   AN OP-ED TO CHEW ON: America faces fresh challenges to technology innovation leadership   NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:  U.S. cyber offensive against ISIS continues and eyes are now on Afghanistan (CyberScoop) Huawei suspended from global forum meant to prevent cyber breaches (The Wall Street Journal) Poll finds two-thirds of Americans support breaking up big tech companies (Vox) Facebook introduces Portal TV, a video chat camera accessory for your television. (The Verge) View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2016-02-17 00:00:00

SAN JUAN (Reuters) - Puerto Rico’s government said it had “substantial doubt” about its ability to operate long-term, and cited a threat to public services if its Government Development Bank misses debt payments, in a draft of long-delayed fiscal year 2014 financial data released Tuesday. The 366-page draft, which has not yet been audited, follows criticism from some U.S. lawmakers and financial creditors that Puerto Rico has not been transparent with its finances. The U.S. territory is mired in economic crisis, facing a 45 percent poverty rate and a dwindling tax base as locals flock to the mainland United States. It is hoping for help from Congress in resolving its $70 billion debt load. “The commonwealth’s management believes that there is substantial doubt as to the ability of the primary government” and other governmental entities “to continue as a going concern,” the report said. Under federal accounting standards, a government is evaluated on whether it is likely to be a “going concern” 12 months after the accounting is done. Governments are not going concerns if there are doubts about abilities to meet financial obligations. Puerto Rico said it expects to miss at least some of its July 1 general obligation (GO) debt payment — about $800 million, according to a debt schedule obtained by Reuters — even with the benefit of so-called “clawbacks” wherein revenues earmarked for other debt are redirected to pay GO debt. The report said Puerto Rico faced a $49.2 billion deficit as of June 30, 2014, $2.5 billion higher than in 2013. The Government Development Bank (GDB), the island’s fiscal agent, is at risk of missing debt payments and falling below legal reserve requirements in fiscal year 2016, which could threaten government services because GDB is the main depositary for public agencies, the report said. Puerto Rico’s fate remains one of the key questions in the U.S. municipal debt market. It has sought help both from creditors, by proposing voluntary cuts to repayments, and Congress, by lobbying for legislation letting it cut debt. Both efforts have faced resistance, in part thanks to a perceived lack of transparency, as 2014 financial disclosures have been months behind schedule. Tuesday’s release may have been aimed at quelling some of those complaints, but the draft does not include audited financial information from the GDB, or from the island’s biggest pension, which, with a funding shortfall of more than $30 billion, is a key part of its crisis. Reporting by Nick Brown; Additional reporting by Megan Davies in NEW YORK; Editing by Bernard Orr, Leslie Adler and Kim Coghill

2018-10-19 10:55:00

Ready-to-eat salads sold at Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Whole Foods and 7-Eleven are being recalled due to possible salmonella and listeria contamination. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced more than 2,800 pounds of the salads may have been compromised from food suppliers GHSE, Prime Deli Corporation, Mary’s Harvest Fresh Foods, Inc., and GH Foods CA. The following products have been recalled: Walmart’s Marketside brand Fiesta Salad with Steak, 7-Eleven Bistro Southwest Style Salad with Bacon, Trader Joe’s Mexicali Inspired Salad with Chili Seasoned Chicken, Mary’s Harvest Southwest Chicken Wrap with Rib Meat, 365 by Whole Foods Market BBQ Style Chopped Salad with Chicken, 365 by Whole Foods Market Chicken Fajita Salad, GH Foods CA’s Santa Fe Style Salad with Chicken and BBQ Style Salad Kit with White Chicken. Each of these salads contains corn that has potentially been contaminated and the products were all produced earlier this month. There is also a current salmonella outbreak linked to chicken products, but the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has not been able to name a specific brand associated with it. The CDC reported on Wednesday that 92 people have been infected with a strain of the bacteria, which is resistant to multiple types of antibiotics. Of the infected people, 21 were hospitalized but no deaths have been reported. Symptoms of salmonella include diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps. Though most people recover without treatment, young children and older adults are at a greater risk.

2016-11-03 00:00:00

(CNN)Democrats enter the final days of the campaign season with a clear shot to take the Senate majority, with seven GOP seats at serious risk of flipping and only one of theirs that could slip away. But a new wildcard has entered the mix: Wisconsin -- a seat long thought to be a Democratic lock that has now become a lot more uncertain. To win the Senate, Democrats need to pick up four seats if Hillary Clinton takes the White House; five if Donald Trump becomes the next president, since the vice president breaks a 50-50 tie. And no matter which party controls the chamber, the party in power will almost certainly have a very small majority -- a handful of seats, at most -- a recipe for gridlock in the new Congress. Here's CNN's latest breakdown of the race for the Senate: Republican-held seat in Illinois. Verdict: Likely to flip GOP Sen. Mark Kirk was always a long shot, running in a blue state in a presidential year. And all year long, he's been running behind his Democratic foe, Rep. Tammy Duckworth. But when he took a dig at Duckworth's ethnic background at a debate last week, the wheels seemed to have fallen off his campaign. Kirk winning now would be seen as the biggest upset of the cycle. Republican-held seat in Wisconsin. Verdict: Leans Democrat Speaking of upsets, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is trying to pull one off himself, taking out the man who had long been a heavy favorite in the race, former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. Johnson has shifted his campaign tactics with a mix of positive ads about himself and attacks against Feingold, and seems to have caught Democrats off guard. Buoyed by an influx of outside spending, and Trump outspending Clinton on TV in the state, Johnson has suddenly found himself down by just 1 point, according to a new Marquette University poll. Still, both sides acknowledge that Feingold is the favorite heading into Election Day, especially given that no GOP candidate has won a Wisconsin Senate seat in a presidential year since 1980. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's super PAC plans to invest $2.2 million in the state as well to boost Johnson, it announced Thursday. Republican seat in Pennsylvania. Verdict: Leans Democrat Polls over the last couple weeks have consistently shown Democrat Katie McGinty holding a slim lead, including a CNN-ORC survey from Wednesday reporting that Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is now down five points. Toomey has been working the Philadelphia suburbs hard to appeal to moderate, middle-of-the-road voters -- namely women -- to help power him to a victory. But the national headwinds may end up being too tough for Toomey to overcome. Is Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a brick in Clinton's firewall? Republican-held seat in Indiana. Verdict: Toss-up Former Sen. Evan Bayh had long been viewed as the heavy favorite when he made a surprise entrance into the race to win back his old seat against Republican Rep. Todd Young. But Bayh has been badly damaged by a series of stories about his post-Senate life, his inactive voter status and damaging revelations about meetings with donors and lobbyists during his time in the Senate. And now polls show the race in a dead heat, and Bayh stumbling to the finish line. Republicans are feeling bullish about Indiana. Vigo County, Indiana, knows how to pick 'em Republican-held seat in Missouri. Verdict: Toss-up Unlike in Indiana, Democrats are making the case that Republican Sen. Roy Blunt is the true Washington insider with deep ties to lobbyists, and has lost touch with his state, banking on the fresh-faced, 35-year-old Jason Kander to present himself as the outsider. Republicans privately say that Kander is perhaps the best Democratic recruit in the country -- and that Blunt has struggled to define him, prompting GOP fears that the veteran could cost them a critical seat. But Blunt is relying heavily on the fact that Missouri is still a red state and Trump is likely to win there, hoping to ride the GOP nominee's coattails to victory. Republican-held seat in North Carolina. Verdict: Toss-up Sen. Richard Burr's candidacy has been a constant cause of stress for GOP leaders. They don't think he has worked hard enough to define his Democratic opponent, Deborah Ross, or make the case that he should be reelected. More money has started to pour into the state to define Ross as an out-of-touch liberal elite, picking apart her record working as a top attorney for the North Carolina chapter of the liberal American Civil Liberties Union. Burr is also struggling because Trump is underperforming against Clinton, who leads there. And new scrutiny over Burr's private comments at a fundraiser last weekend -- suggesting some gun owners may want to incite violence towards Clinton -- has put him on the defensive in the closing days of the campaign. Democratic-held seat in Nevada. Verdict: Toss-up Nevada's race has been remarkably tight for the duration of the campaign. Polls have either shown Republican Rep. Joe Heck with a lead within the margin of error, or shown Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto with a slight lead. But Heck has had a rough few weeks in his handling of Trump, getting negative scrutiny from the right for his disavowal of the GOP nominee -- but also saying privately and publicly he's not sure for whom he would vote. Democrats are banking on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's political machine to help turn out Democratic voters. But the GOP believes Reid's unpopularity will be a stain on Masto's chances. Republican seat in New Hampshire. Verdict: Toss-up The race between Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan has swung back-and-forth for months, and Election Day is bound to be a true nail-biter. Ayotte had a rough October, with a poor debate performance where she called Trump a role model -- only to take it back -- and then being bombarded by an influx of Democratic money across the airwaves. But Republicans have struck back, dropping major dollars across the airwaves in recent days, helping to fortify Ayotte's position, making the race the truest of toss-ups. Republican seat in Florida. Verdict: Leans Republican Sen. Marco Rubio heads into Election Day as a favorite against Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, buoyed by GOP money, name recognition and winning over Latino voters in Miami-Dade County. But Florida is the ultimate swing state -- and no statewide race there can be taken for granted. Murphy has benefited by a renewed push by the top of the ticket -- and by President Barack Obama -- hoping to ride Hillary Clinton's coattails into office, even though Democratic groups have mostly avoided spending in the expensive state. A CNN-ORC poll out Wednesday showed Rubio clinging to a one-point lead, but most operatives on both sides believe the GOP senator is in a more comfortable position. Republican seats unlikely to flip: Ohio seat held by Rob Portman. Arizona seat held by John McCain. Iowa seat held by Chuck Grassley.

2017-08-11 00:00:00

Aug 11 (Reuters) - Univanich Palm Oil Pcl: * Qtrly sales 1.44 billion baht versus 1.27 billion baht * Qtrly profit attributable to owners of the parent 145.8 million baht versus 124.5 million baht Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2016-07-03

LONDON (Reuters) - Nick Kyrgios has the weapons to beat Andy Murray in their Wimbledon fourth-round clash on Monday but must play the match on his own terms, according to former champion Lleyton Hewitt. Fiery Australian 15th seed Kyrgios has been in sparkling form so far, largely letting his racket do the talking, and his match-up against second seed Murray is the pick of the last 16. The 21-year-old has fired down 79 aces and wins the majority of points inside four shots. Keen boxing fan Murray leads the statistics on return of serve, landing 84 percent of them back in court, enjoying soaking up blows before launching devastating counter-attacks. No surprise then that Hewitt, speaking to a small group of reporters, said of his compatriot: “Nick will have to use all his weapons and firepower. Andy will try to turn it into a physical battle. “Nick plays pretty short points and it’s hard to turn points into a physical battle against him. “Andy backs himself against anyone when it gets physical, especially over five sets and I’m sure that’s what he’s going to try and do again. “It’s how many balls Andy keeps getting back. Can he keep making Nick play the extra ball? But Nick on his day can hit anyone off the court.” Hewitt, who mentors Kyrgios in his role as Australia Davis Cup captain, has now retired as a singles player having won two grand slam titles. He was involved in a bad-tempered doubles win with young compatriot Jordan Thompson against Spain’s Nicolas Almagro and David Marrero on Saturday. While he clearly still has the fire in his belly, he is acting as a calming influence on Kyrgios who has had several high-profile run-ins with authority in his short career. “When he is playing I’ve not seen him do too much wrong here,” Hewitt said. “He knows I’ve got his back and we talk at different times. It’s about focusing on what he needs to do. “It’s tough, there are a lot of eyes on him. But in a playing sense he likes being the center of attention and likes the pressure that comes with that. “Being the shot-maker that he is everyone worries that he can beat them.” Editing by Clare Fallon

2016-03-25

(Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday sentenced a Wisconsin man to three years in prison for threatening to kill U.S. President Barack Obama, court records showed. Brian Dutcher, 55, of Tomah was also sentenced to three years of supervised release on the felony charge, according to the order of U.S. District Judge William Conley. Conley also recommended that Dutcher receive a full mental health evaluation and treatment as necessary. Dutcher’s attorney could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday. Prosecutors said Dutcher told a security guard at a public library on July 1, 2015, that he intended to fatally shoot President Obama, who was set to give a speech on the economy at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse the next day. “The usurper is here and if I get the chance I’ll take him out and take the shot,” Dutcher told the guard, according to an affidavit. The day before, Dutcher made a post on his Facebook page that read: “That’s it! Thursday I will be in La Crosse. Hopefully I will get a clear shot at the pretend president. Killing him is our CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY!” Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Steve Orlofsky

2019-11-20 07:12:21

A Pentagon official provided new details about when the Ukrainians may have learned about the hold on security aid. Gordon D. Sondland also testified that multiple top officials, including Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, knew about the campaign to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations of Democrats. transcript “Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States. We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose a very important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo. Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing the investigations of the 2016 election D.N.C. server and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew these investigations were important to the president. Members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.” “One of the things that you now remember is the discussion that you had with President Trump on July 26 in that restaurant in Kyiv, right? You confirmed to President Trump that you were in Ukraine at the time and that President Zelensky quote, ‘loves your ass.’ Do you recall saying that?” “It sounds like something I would say.” “You said President Trump had directed you to talk — you and the others — to talk to Rudy Giuliani at the Oval Office on May 23.” “If we wanted to get anything done with Ukraine, it was apparent to us we needed to talk to Rudy.” “Right, you understood that Mr. Giuliani spoke for the president, correct?” “That’s correct.” “You testified that Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president, correct?” “That’s our understanding, yes.” “But how did you know that? Who told you?” “Well, when the president says talk to my personal attorney, and then Mr. Giuliani as his personal attorney makes certain requests or demands, we assume it’s coming from the president.” “You don’t have records, you don’t have your notes because you didn’t take notes. You don’t have a lot of recollections. I mean, this is like the trifecta of unreliability. Isn’t that true?” “What I’m trying to do today is to use the limited information I have to be as forthcoming as possible with you and the rest of the committee.” “Your testimony is just simply in a pre-meeting with a group of Americans before the bilateral meeting. You referenced the fact that Ukraine needed to do these investigations in order to lift the aid.” “I think I referenced — I didn’t say that Ukraine had to do the investigations. I think I said that we heard from Mr. Giuliani that that was the case.” “So it wasn’t really a presumption. You heard from Mr. Giuliani.” “No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything. I was presuming it was.” “You testified that pretty much everyone could put two and two together and make four and understood that the military assistance was also conditioned on the public announcement of these two investigations, correct?” “That was my presumption.” “Now you’re capable of putting two and two together. And so are the Ukrainians. Because you told them in Warsaw they were going to need to make that public statement — likely to get that aid released as I said.” “I said I presumed that might have to be done in order to get the aid released.” “Because we’ve had a lot of argumentation here. Well, the Ukrainians didn’t know the aid was withheld. But the Ukrainians found out. And then it was made abundantly clear, if they hadn’t put two and two together themselves, that if they wanted that aid they were going to have to make these statements, correct?” “Correct.” “When did President Zelensky announce that the investigation was going to happen? On page 14 you said this: ‘Was there a quid pro quo’ — today’s, your opening statement? ‘As I testified previously with regard to requested White House call, White House meeting the answer is yes,’ that there needed to be a public statement from President Zelensky. When the chairman asked you about the security assistance dollars, you said there needed to be a public announcement from Zelensky. So I’m asking you a simple question: When did that happen?” “Never did.” “Never did.” “Who would benefit from an investigation of the Bidens?” “I assume President Trump would benefit.” “There, we have it!” “Mr. Maloney, excuse me. I’ve been very forthright and I really resent what you’re trying to do.” “Fair enough. You’ve been very forthright. This is your third try to do so, sir. Didn’t work so well the first time, did it? We had a little declaration coming after you, remember that? And now we’re here a third time. And we’ve got a doozy of a statement from you this morning. There’s a whole bunch of stuff you don’t recall. So all due respect, sir. We appreciate your candor, but let’s be really clear on what it took to get it out of you.” “The question is not what the president meant. The question is not whether he was responsible for holding up the aid — he was. The question is not whether everybody knew it — apparently they did. The question is, what are we prepared to do about it? Is there any accountability? Or are we forced to conclude that this is just now the world that we live in?” Follow our live coverage of David Holmes and Fiona Hill testifying in the impeachment hearings. Ukraine officials may have been aware that security aid was cut off by July 25 — much earlier than previously known and the same day that President Trump talked on the phone with the president of Ukraine, a top Pentagon official said Wednesday. Laura K. Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said that she was aware of multiple communications between Ukrainian Embassy officials and members of her staff in which the embassy officials asked questions about delivery of the security aid to their country. Ms. Cooper said that a member of her staff received a question about the aid on July 25 from the Ukrainian Embassy, which asked “what was going on with Ukraine assistance.” She said that during the week of Aug. 6, other members of her staff saw officials from the embassy who raised the issue of the aid. The timing of when Ukraine knew that the aid had been frozen is a critical question as Democrats build a case that Mr. Trump tried to leverage the aid for a public announcement of investigations into his political rivals. The security aid was frozen in early July, and Republicans have insisted that Ukraine did not know about the hold until it was reported by a news outlet on Aug. 28. Mr. Trump’s allies have also said that Mr. Trump could not have coerced Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, during the July 25 call because Mr. Zelensky did not know at the time that the aid was held up. The new information from Ms. Cooper could undercut the Republican efforts to defend the president. Ms. Cooper said her staff recalled the issue of concerns about Ukraine’s security aid coming up with members of the Ukrainian Embassy in other meetings during the month of August, though they could not recall precisely when those meetings took place. “They believe the question of the hold came up at some point,” Ms. Cooper said. She also cited several emails dated July 25 between members of her staff and State Department officials in which the diplomats wrote that the Ukrainian Embassy knew about the hold on the security assistance. Ms. Cooper said she did not believe she was shown the emails at the time. Ms. Cooper said she learned of the new information about the inquiries from Ukrainian officials after members of her staff saw the transcript of her earlier, closed-door testimony when it was released to the public on Nov. 11, and brought new details of the timeline to her attention. David Hale, the State Department’s No. 3 official, also fielded questions about the hold on security aid to Ukraine and the attacks by Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, on the reputation of Marie L. Yovanovitch, the United States ambassador to Ukraine. She was eventually recalled from her post. Mr. Hale told lawmakers that what happened to Ms. Yovanovitch was “wrong” and that “I believe that she should have been able to stay at post and continue to do the outstanding work.” transcript From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Gordon Sondland is a Trump donor turned E.U. ambassador turned witness in the impeachment inquiry, whose testimony has been contradicted on multiple occasions. Today: How both Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee choose to handle their most complicated witness to date. It’s Thursday, November 21. So Nick, give us a sense of what it felt like to be in that room this morning as the committee prepared to hear from Gordon Sondland, this very complicated witness. So we knew that in the middle of this jam-packed week of impeachment testimony, Gordon Sondland’s appearance was going to be something different. Nick Fandos was in the Capitol for Sondland’s testimony. Sondland has really been described by almost everybody as having been in the middle of this pressure campaign on Ukraine this summer. Now, there was particular anticipation, because Sondland’s story, unlike some other witnesses, has evolved as time has gone on. So when he first came in and spoke in private with investigators in October, he was pretty unclear about whether or not the president was trying to leverage a White House meeting or security aid for Ukraine to get the investigations that he wanted. He told them repeatedly, I can’t remember this, I can’t remember that. Well, after that happened, Sondland submitted a supplement to his testimony in writing that updated that and said, actually, I do think there was a quid pro quo. And so there was a lot of anticipation heading into his testimony as to which Gordon Sondland would show up. What story was he going to tell? Is he going to cop to all these different things? How is he going to treat the president? How’s he going to treat his own evolving story? And it really felt like it could go either way. So what happens? How does this much-anticipated hearing begin? So a little after 9:00, Gordon Sondland walks into the same grand hearing room where all the impeachment hearings have been taking place. Chairman Schiff dropped his gavel. Meeting will come to order. [GAVEL BANG] And then, after taking an oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth — And nothing but the truth, so help you God. — Sondland sits down and begins reading from a pretty thick stack of papers, an opening statement that he’s brought with him. And he starts by saying that — I have not had access to all of my phone records, State Department emails and many, many other State Department documents. — his job is made more difficult by the fact that he has not been allowed to go back to the State Department and look at notes or records that might be able to fill in his recollections. Having access would have been very helpful to me in trying to reconstruct with whom I spoke and met and when and what was said. Seems to be a nod at the fact that his story is, in the most generous sense, evolving. And he begins to tell the story about his involvement with Ukraine policy over the last, say, five or six months. The U.S. delegation developed a very positive view of the Ukraine government. He begins talking about a meeting with President Trump in May in the Oval Office after he attended the inauguration of Ukraine’s new president. Unfortunately, President Trump was skeptical. In response to our persistent efforts in that meeting to change his views, President Trump directed us to, quote, “talk with Rudy.” We weren’t happy with the president’s directive to talk with Rudy. We did not want to involve Mr. Giuliani. What he then starts to unspool is a set of facts and meetings that we’ve now heard a lot about in the last couple of months. Simply put, we were playing the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose a very important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president’s orders. How, you know, May became June, became July and then August, and it became clear to him over time that President Trump, through his lawyer Mr. Giuliani and through actions that he took, wanted to extract from the Ukrainians certain politically beneficial investigations. And at one point, pretty early in his statement, he addresses the Latin phrase that has been confusing everyone as this has gone along. Was there a quid pro quo? Was it a quid pro quo, a this for that, or was it not? And he says — With regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes. Unequivocally, that as far as I’m concerned, there was a quid pro quo around the White House meeting. Right, and I was struck by how casually he says that, this thing that is very much at the center of the entire inquiry. And the thing that has been contested by other witnesses. He states, you know, very authoritatively, without reservation. Now, he’s a little bit more cautious about whether or not there was a quid pro quo around the suspended military assistance. In July and August of 2019, we learned that the White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but I never received a clear answer. Still haven’t to this day. So he came to conclude by August that that, too, was dependent on Ukraine announcing these investigations that the president wanted. Committing to the investigations of the 2016 elections and Burisma, as Mr. Giuliani had demanded. Now, Sondland has another clear objective as he’s laying out his story, and that is to defend himself against the testimony from other witnesses who have tried to describe him as either a rogue actor or somebody that was working through an improper diplomatic channel. I’m not sure how someone could characterize something as an irregular channel when you’re talking to the president of the United States, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, the chief of staff at the White House, the secretary of energy. I don’t know how that’s irregular, if a bunch of — He says, no. This was the real channel. I was working with the president of the United States. I was working with top American diplomats and officials. And not only was it proper, but all of those people knew what I was up to and what we were trying to accomplish as this went along. Within my State Department emails, there is a July 19 email. This email was sent, this email was sent to Secretary Pompeo, Secretary Perry, Brian McCormack, who was Secretary Perry’s chief of staff at the time — Basically, you know, if for weeks we’ve had witness after witness, and certainly the White House and the Republicans, willing to throw Gordon Sondland under the bus to try and push all of this onto him as a kind of lone wolf, I mean, he was taking everybody under the bus with him. — Chief of Staff Mulvaney and Mr. Mulvaney’s senior adviser, Rob Blair, a lot of senior officials. These emails show that the leadership of the State Department, the National Security Council and the White House were all informed about the Ukraine efforts. Right, he’s saying, everybody who now wants to distance themselves from me, they were actually all in the loop. That’s right. It’s a phrase he uses several times. It was no secret. Everyone’s in the loop. Everyone was in the loop. In the loop. Again — In the loop. — everyone was in the loop. They were in the loop. There was a September 1 meeting with President Zelensky in Warsaw. During the actual meeting, President Zelensky raised the issue of security assistance directly with Vice President Pence. And the vice president said that he would speak to President Trump about it. And, Nick, what’s the significance of what he’s saying here? I mean, in theory, this is very explosive. The vice president, the secretary of state are being, in Sondland’s testimony, directly drawn into this. Right, he’s trying to make the point that this wasn’t just me. Like, everyone understood this to be Trump’s objective out of this relationship, and we were all working toward that. And nobody found it unusual that I was doing what I was doing. I sent Secretary Pompeo an email to express my appreciation for his joining a series of meetings in Brussels following the Warsaw trip. I wrote, “Mike, thanks for schlepping to Europe. I think it was really important and the chemistry seems promising. Really appreciate it.” Secretary Pompeo replied the next day, on Wednesday, September 4, quote, “All good. You’re doing great work; keep banging away.” And with that, Sondland completes his opening statement. It remains an honor to serve the people of the United States as their United States ambassador to the European Union. I look forward to answering the committee’s questions. Thank you. And it’s the Democrat’s turn for 45 minutes to begin asking questions. We will now proceed the first round of questions, as detailed — Of course, Chairman Schiff has a few of his own. But mostly, he passes the mic over to Dan Goldman, who is his chief investigator, who’s been playing a role in these hearings, questioning witnesses directly. Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In your opening statement, Ambassador Sondland, you detailed the benefits that you have gained from obtaining some additional documents over the past few weeks. Is that right? In terms of refreshing my recollection, that’s — Right, because — He doesn’t shy away from what becomes clear over the course of the day is a pretty shoddy memory on the part of Sondland. You have remembered a lot more than you did when you were deposed. Is that right? That’s correct. And one of the things that — And in doing that, Goldman does something interesting, which is that — — conversation, Ambassador Taylor also testified, under oath, that you said that President Trump wanted Zelensky in a public box. Do you recall using that expression? Yeah, it goes back — He repeatedly leans on those witnesses with better memories, or people who took contemporaneous notes. Do you have any reason to question Ambassador Taylor’s testimony based on his meticulous and careful contemporaneous notes? I’m not going to question or not question. I’m just telling you what I believe I was referring to. To describe things that Sondland told them or describe things that Sondland did, and basically asked Sondland to confirm that these things happened — Let me fast forward a week and show you another text exchange, which may help refresh your recollection. On September 8, you sent a text to Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Volker. Can you read what you wrote there? — to basically bring Sondland up into line with testimony that they’ve gotten from other people about him. So you do acknowledge you spoke to President Trump, as you indicated in that text, right? If I said I did, I did. And that’s important as they move towards writing a report and presenting a kind of full case about what happened to the American people. It helps eliminate some of the discrepancies in the testimony they’ve gotten. Which of these exchanges stood out to you? Well, one in particular is fresh in my mind, because we just learned about it for the first time last week. And one of the things that you now remember is the discussion that you had with President Trump on July 26 in that restaurant in Kyiv, right? Now remember, that’s the day after Trump himself spoke to Zelensky and told him that I want these investigations into the Bidens in 2016. Other witnesses have described Sondland basically speaking on the phone with the president, who was speaking so loud that he had to hold the phone away from his ear. He claims to have overheard part of the conversation, and I’m not going to dispute what he did or didn’t hear. Others could overhear President Trump asking about, quote, unquote, “the investigation,” and Sondland assured him, you know, don’t worry, with some expletive laid in, President Zelensky will do whatever we want. Right, because Ukraine loves your tush. Something like that. Well, he also testified that President Zelensky, quote, “loves your ass,” unquote. Do you recall saying that? Yeah, it sounds like something I would say. [LAUGHTER] And what he basically does over the course of this back-and-forth is says — Putting it in Trump-speak, by saying he loves your ass, he’ll do whatever you want, meant that he would really work with us on a whole host of issues. — you’ve heard the president talk. That’s how President Trump and I communicate, a lot of four-letter words. In this case, three-letter. He also contests a couple of small points. I don’t think I would have said that. I would have — I would have — But in the end, he confirms the essence of the story as it’s been related by other witnesses, and for the first time, kind of established that that happened. Again, trying to reconstruct a very busy day without the benefit, but if someone said I had a meeting, and I went to the meeting, then I’m not going to dispute that. So it’s kind of that familiar mix of Sondland’s self-protection, lack of recall, but overall, damning testimony. I think that’s right. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. So the Democrats wrap up their questioning. That concludes our 45 minutes — And after weeks of investigation, literally hundreds of hours of testimony, in private and in public, they’ve finally gotten, from a lead witness who had direct access to the president, a statement, an admission, of one of the things that they’ve been looking for and trying to prove out all along, that this White House meeting, an official act, was conditioned upon Ukraine publicly announcing investigations. And that Sondland, a top official, also believed that the withheld aid money — that that would only flow, too, if the investigations were announced. And so it’s with that in front of them — Why don’t we take a 5- or 10-minute break? Thank you. That Schiff abruptly gavels the hearing into a pause, somewhat inexplicably at first. And then we quickly see why as he walks out behind the chamber — Just want to make a couple of quick observations while we’re on a break here. — to a bank of cameras, where he begins to talk about what just took place. And what we have just heard from Ambassador Sondland is that the knowledge of this scheme was a basic quid pro quo. It was the conditioning — Which all, of course, carried it live in the middle of the proceedings. And when he was done — So I think a very important moment in the history of this inquiry. — he wrapped up and walked right back into the hearing room and gaveled the thing back into session. Come to order. Now, it wasn’t lost on Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the committee, who quickly called Schiff out. Thank the gentleman. For those of you watching at home, that was not a bathroom break. That was actually a chance for the Democrats to go out and hold a press conference, Ambassador, for all the supposed bombshells that were in your opening testimony. So there’s quite a bit of bad blood, obviously, between the two sides. But I don’t think that this helped. We’ll be right back. So once we’re back, given that the Democrats have already sort of embraced the messiness and unreliability of Gordon Sondland and addressed it pretty directly, what is the Republican strategy when it’s their turn to question? Well, Republicans are looking at the same guy and the same tendencies, and they see an amazing opportunity to weaponize it in defense of the president. Hello again, Ambassador. Hi. So it’s left to Steve Castor, who’s the Republicans’ lawyer in all of this, to start trying to do that work. I just want to go through some distinctions between your opener and your deposition. There’s a phone call that Sondland has where he says that he was getting such mixed signals and couldn’t get answers about what Trump wanted from Ukraine and why he was withholding the aid money. And I was getting tired of going around in circles, frankly. So I made the call — And he asked President Trump, just kind of point blank — — what do you want from Ukraine? And that’s when I got the answer. And he was unequivocal, nothing. The president tells him, I don’t want a quid pro quo. I don’t want anything from Ukraine. They should just do what’s right. They should do what Zelensky said he was going to do. And Republicans kept going back to this call again and again and again. Tell me if there’s anything sinister or nefarious in any of this, a vanilla request about corruption, a call to say, I’m on my way to Ukraine, a five-minute call you didn’t remember as significant, a call that you made where the president said, I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo, I want Zelensky to do the right thing, I want him to do what he ran on, and him telling you to go tell Congress the truth. Anything sinister and nefarious about any of that? Not the way you present it. O.K., and that is the truth. Because in this case, as they pointed out, you know, when the president is speaking directly to Sondland, he’s saying, no quid pro quo. I don’t want anything in particular from the Ukrainians. And you told Mr. Castor that the president never told you that the announcement had to happen to get anything. In fact, he didn’t just not tell you that, he explicitly said the opposite. So the most senior figure, and the most involved figure in all this from the Trump administration, who declares that this was a quid pro quo, is simultaneously testifying that the president gets on the phone with him and says, this is no quid pro quo. That is complicated. It is. It’s very complicated. And if you’re listening at home and listening to Republican questioning, they’re able, I think, to raise some doubts about this account that he’s giving. And if you pull up CNN today, right now, their banner says, “Sondland ties Trump to withholding aid.” Is that your testimony today, Ambassador Sondland, that you have evidence that Donald Trump tied the investigation to the aide? Because I don’t think you’re saying that. And in this questioning, you know, Sondland says, I didn’t hear anything directly. I’ve said repeatedly, Congressman, I was presuming. I also said that President Trump — So no one told you, not just the president. Giuliani didn’t tell you. Mulvaney didn’t tell you. Nobody — Pompeo didn’t tell you — nobody else on this planet told you that Donald Trump was tying aid to these investigations. Is that correct? I think I already testified to that. No, answer the question, yes or no. Yes. Nick, why do you think that they are so focused on that, what the president told him versus what he has concluded from all the information and conversations around him? Republicans’ argument is basically that, if you’re going to impeach the president, you know, we need to know directly what his intentions were. What he told you, that’s evidence. That’s primary evidence. What you concluded, I mean, that’s no better than what we’ve heard from other witnesses. It’s hearsay. I mean, that’s what I don’t understand. So, you know what hearsay evidence is, Ambassador? Hearsay is when I testify what someone else told me. You know what made-up testimony is? Made-up testimony is when I just presume it. I mean, you’re just assuming all of these things, and then you’re giving them the evidence — that they’re running out and doing press conferences, and CNN’s headline is saying that you’re saying the president of the United States should be impeached because he tied aid to investigations. And you don’t know that. Correct? I never said the president of the United States should be impeached. Nope, but you did — So as this hearing starts to wind down after five or six hours of this back-and-forth, after a pretty explosive and direct opening statement and then cross-examination and examination and more cross-examination, spirits are starting to flag a little bit in the hearing room. Mr. Maloney. Mr. Ambassador, let’s pick up right there. There’s an exchange near the end with Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat of New York. Let me ask you something. Who would have benefited from an investigation of the president’s political opponents? I don’t want to characterize who would have and who would not have. I know you don’t want to, sir. That’s my question. Would you answer it for me? And Maloney, you know, seeming to kind of burst forth with Democratic frustration that’s been boiling beneath the surface all day, basically says — I guess I’m have trouble why you can’t just say — When he asked about investigations, I assumed he meant — I know what you assumed. But who would benefit from an investigation of the Bidens? I assume President Trump would benefit. There we have it. See? [APPLAUSE] Didn’t hurt a bit, did it? But let me ask you something — Mr. Maloney? Hold on, sir. Excuse me. I’ve been very forthright, and I really resent what you’re trying to do. Fair enough. You’ve been very forthright. This your third try to do so, sir. Didn’t work so well the first time, did it? And now we’re here a third time, and we got a doozy of a statement from you this morning. There’s a whole bunch of stuff you don’t recall. So all due respect, sir, we appreciate your candor. But let’s be really clear on what it took to get it out of you. And that’s kind of the tone as this hearing begins to come to an end. Democrats are frustrated about some things. Republicans are frustrated about some things. Sondland, who’s trying to catch a flight back to Brussels, is certainly frustrated by some things. And we’ve had a pretty complex and conflicting day of testimony, where some people seem to be coming away quite happy, but not perfectly so. So is this unreliable witness turning out to be the most important witness in this inquiry? Or is he just an unreliable witness? Well, the thing about Sondland is, the Democrats will tell you, prosecutors successfully bring cases all the time on highly flawed witnesses who maybe don’t even have a great history with the truth. But that doesn’t mean that what they’re saying isn’t true in a given scenario. And in this case, it’s important to remember, what he’s saying is incredibly, politically inconvenient for him. He still works for the president of the United States, who he donated a bunch of money to and whose policies he believes in. That itself lends it some power and credibility. Democrats seem to be emerging from today more comfortable and more certain that they need to bring forward this case of the president abusing his office, of committing high crimes and misdemeanors worthy of impeachment and putting it before the American people. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for having me, Michael. For the next few weeks, we’ll be covering the latest developments in the impeachment inquiry in our new podcast. It’s called “The Latest.” You can hear these episodes at the end of the day, right here on “The Daily.” Or subscribe to “The Latest” wherever you listen. We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. How did Ambassador Sondland get there? You know, this is not a man who had any qualifications except one. He wrote a check for a million dollars. In the fifth Democratic presidential debate, candidates expressed outrage over Wednesday’s testimony in the impeachment inquiry, with Senator Elizabeth Warren accusing President Trump of selling off key ambassadorships to wealthy donors like Gordon Sondland. And that tells us about what’s happening in Washington. But with Mayor Pete Buttigieg now leading the polls in Iowa, the first state to pick a Democratic nominee, several of his rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, sought to challenge his credentials and experience. Just like I have won statewide, and Mayor, I have all appreciation for your good work as a local official, and you did not when you tried, I also have actually done this work. I think experience should matter. Buttigieg fired back, suggesting that the federal experience of his opponent was its own liability. So first of all, Washington experience is not the only experience that matters. There’s more than 100 years of Washington experience on this stage. And where are we right now as a country? [CHEERING] That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. Mr. Sondland told the committee that he and other advisers to Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrats “because the president directed us to do so.” Mr. Sondland said that he, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Kurt D. Volker, the special envoy for Ukraine, were reluctant to work with Mr. Giuliani on the pressure campaign and agreed only at Mr. Trump’s insistence. “Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States,” Mr. Sondland told the committee. “We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we were playing the hand we were dealt.” With no alternative, he said, “we followed the president’s orders.” Mr. Sondland confirmed what has already been known, that there was a clear “quid pro quo” linking a coveted White House meeting for Ukraine’s president to the investigations Mr. Trump wanted. And he said he was concerned about “a potential quid pro quo” linking $391 million in security aid that Mr. Trump suspended to the investigations he desired. But under questioning, Mr. Sondland acknowledged that Mr. Trump never told him that. “I never heard from President Trump that aid was conditioned on an announcement of investigations,” he testified. And he was asked by Republicans to repeat a conversation he had with Mr. Trump that he has previously described in which he asked the president what he wanted from Ukraine. “It was a very short, abrupt conversation,” Mr. Sondland said. “He was not in a good mood. And he just said, ‘I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing.’” The conversation took place after the White House had already learned a whistle-blower had come forward with a complaint alleging that the president was abusing his power to try to enlist Ukraine to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. Mr. Giuliani challenged Mr. Sondland in a tweet, saying the ambassador was “speculating based on VERY little contact. I never met him and had very few calls with him, mostly with Volker. Volker testified I answered their questions and described them as my opinions, NOT demands. I.E. no quid pro quo.” He later deleted the tweet. Mr. Perry also took issue with Mr. Sondland, issuing a statement through his department saying that the testimony “misrepresented both Secretary Perry’s interaction with Rudy Giuliani and direction the secretary received from President Trump.” The statement said Mr. Perry spoke with Mr. Giuliani only once. “At no point before, during or after that phone call did the words ‘Biden’ or ‘Burisma’ ever come up in the presence of Secretary Perry,” the statement said. The United States ambassador to the European Union testified that he pressured Ukraine for investigations at President Trump’s “express direction.” Mr. Sondland testified that he told Vice President Mike Pence in late August that he feared the military aid withheld from Ukraine was tied to the investigations Mr. Trump sought and that he kept Secretary of State Mike Pompeo apprised of his efforts to pressure Ukraine. The revelations suggested that Mr. Sondland has decided to publicly implicate the senior-most members of Mr. Trump’s administration in the matter, including Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, and he provided a series of text messages and emails to buttress his account. “Everyone was in the loop,” he said told the committee. “It was no secret.” If other officials were concerned that he was doing something wrong, as testimony now indicates, Mr. Sondland said they did not tell him at the time. “Everyone’s hair was on fire,” he said, “but no one decided to talk to us.” The striking account — a major departure from Mr. Sondland’s initial closed-door testimony in the impeachment inquiry last month — also indicated that the ambassador who played a central role in the pressure campaign was eager to demonstrate that he did so only reluctantly with the knowledge and approval of the president and top members of his team. Mr. Sondland rejected the notion that he was part of an illicit shadow foreign policy that worked around the normal national security process. “The suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely false,” he said, pointing to messages and phone calls in which he kept the White House and State Department informed of his actions. He added: “Any claim that I somehow muscled my way into the Ukraine relationship is simply false.” The ambassador said that he “mentioned to Vice President Pence before the meetings with the Ukrainians that I had concerns that the delay in aid had become tied to the issue of investigations.” He testified that the conversation occurred shortly before Mr. Pence met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine while they were in Warsaw. At that meeting, Mr. Zelensky brought up the issue of the withheld aid and Mr. Pence said he would discuss the matter with Mr. Trump. Afterward, Mr. Sondland said he informed Andriy Yermak, a top Ukrainian official, that the money would probably not flow without Mr. Zelensky making a public commitment to the investigations. Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, issued a statement after his testimony denying Mr. Sondland’s account. “The vice president never had a conversation with Gordon Sondland about investigating the Bidens, Burisma, or the conditional release of financial aid to Ukraine based upon potential investigations,” Mr. Short said. “This alleged discussion recalled by Ambassador Sondland never happened.” Mr. Sondland also said that “even as late as September,” after the pressure campaign emerged in the news media, “Secretary Pompeo was directing Kurt Volker to speak with Mr. Giuliani.” In a statement issued from Mr. Pompeo’s plane as he returned to Washington from Brussels, his spokeswoman denied something that Mr. Sondland never testified to. “Gordon Sondland never told Secretary Pompeo that he believed the president was linking aid to investigations of political opponents,” Morgan Ortagus, the State Department spokeswoman, said in the statement. “Any suggestion to the contrary is flat out false.” President Trump distanced himself from Gordon D. Sondland, a top donor he appointed as ambassador to the European Union, after the diplomat told lawmakers that he and other advisers pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrats at the president’s “express direction.” As he headed to Marine One to depart on a trip to Texas, Mr. Trump stopped to talk with reporters briefly and pointed out that Mr. Sondland had testified that the president had told him at one point that he wanted nothing from Ukraine and there was no quid pro quo. “That means it’s all over,” Mr. Trump said, shouting over the roar of helicopter rotors and reading from handwritten notes scrawled out in large block letters. “This is the final word from the president of the United States: ‘I want nothing.’” In a tweet later Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump declared the “impeachment witch hunt” to be over, quoting Mr. Sondland’s testimony in all caps. The president’s press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, later issued a statement emphasizing those points. “Ambassador Sondland’s testimony made clear that in one of the few brief phone calls he had with President Trump, the president clearly stated that he ‘wanted nothing’ from Ukraine and repeated ‘no quid pro quo over and over again,’” she said. Despite that, Mr. Sondland told the House Intelligence Committee on the fourth day of public impeachment hearings that it was clear to him that the president was intently interested in having the Ukrainians publicly commit to investigating Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose son served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Mr. Trump often disavows knowing advisers once they become problematic for him. Just last month, Mr. Trump called Mr. Sondland, who gave the president’s inaugural fund $1 million, “a really good man and great American.” But on Wednesday he said: “I don’t know him very well. I have not spoken to him much. This is not a man I know well. He seems like a nice guy though.” Ms. Grisham’s statement amplified that by referring to “the few brief phone calls” she said the two men have had. Mr. Sondland portrayed their relationship differently, describing it as a chummy one that ranged even beyond the issues at hand. “I’ve had a lot of conversations with the president about completely unrelated matters that have nothing to do with Ukraine,” he said. Their conversations, he testified, featured, “a lot of four-letter words.” After Mr. Sondland testified that everyone from Mr. Trump on down was aware of the pressure campaign on Ukraine, House Democrats quickly declared that he had bolstered their case for impeachment. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called Mr. Sondland’s testimony “among the most significant evidence to date,” saying he described “a basic quid pro quo” that conditioned American security aid on Ukraine agreeing to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals. Mr. Schiff mocked Republican attempts to undermine Mr. Sondland’s testimony, saying that his colleagues on the Intelligence Committee “seem to be under impression that unless the president spoke the words, ‘Ambassador Sondland, I am bribing the Ukrainian president,’ that there’s no evidence of bribery. If he didn’t say, ‘Ambassador Sondland, I’m telling you I’m not going to give the aid unless they do this,’ that there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo.” “Nonetheless,” Mr. Schiff said, “you have given us a lot of evidence of precisely that conditionality.” Republicans scoffed. Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio, pressed Mr. Sondland to acknowledge that he was never explicitly told that Ukraine’s military aid was tied to the investigations that Mr. Trump wanted. “No one told you? Not just the president — Giuliani didn’t tell you, Mulvaney didn’t tell you, nobody,” Mr. Turner said. “Pompeo didn’t tell you? “No one on this planet told you that President Trump was tying aid to investigations,” Mr. Turner added. “Yes or no?” “Yes,” Mr. Sondland answered. Under questioning, Mr. Sondland put his finger on a distinction that often gets overlooked in the discussion of Mr. Trump’s interest in Ukraine: For the president, it seemed more important that Ukrainian officials announce that they were investigating Democrats than for them to actually follow through. “I never heard, Mr. Goldman, anyone say that the investigations had to start or had to be completed,” Mr. Sondland told Daniel S. Goldman, the top Democratic counsel who questioned him. “The only thing I heard from Mr. Giuliani or otherwise was that they had to be announced in some form and that form kept changing.” The distinction is important because Democrats are arguing that Mr. Trump was not trying to fight corruption, but instead trying to enlist a foreign power to discredit his rivals in a way that would benefit him in the 2020 election. In pressing Mr. Sondland on the matter, Mr. Goldman noted that, “there would be political benefits to a public announcement.” Mr. Sondland responded, “The way it was expressed to me was that the Ukrainians had a long history of committing to things privately and then never following through, so President Trump, presumably, again communicated through Mr. Giuliani, wanted the Ukrainians on record publicly that they were going to do these investigations.” “But you never heard anyone say that they really wanted them to do the investigations, just that they wanted to announce” them, Mr. Goldman said. “I didn’t hear either way,” Mr. Sondland said. “I didn’t hear either way.” Mr. Sondland in his prepared testimony confirmed a conversation with Mr. Trump at a key moment in the timeline that he did not volunteer during his original testimony. But he disputed descriptions by other witnesses of another key meeting. Mr. Sondland did not challenge the account of a lunch meeting on the outdoor patio of a Kyiv restaurant on July 26, the day after Mr. Trump’s phone call with Mr. Zelensky. David Holmes, the political counselor at the American Embassy in Ukraine, told investigators that he overheard Mr. Trump and Mr. Sondland talking on the phone. “So, he’s going to do the investigation?” Mr. Trump asked, according to Mr. Holmes. Mr. Sondland told him yes. Mr. Zelensky “loves your ass” and would do “anything you ask him to,” Mr. Sondland said, according to Mr. Holmes’s statement. But in his testimony Wednesday, Mr. Sondland also denied that a July 10 meeting at the White House with Ukrainian officials turned sharply tense, as others have testified in recent days. Fiona Hill, then the senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council, and her deputy for Ukraine policy, Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, previously told lawmakers that the meeting led to a confrontation over Mr. Sondland’s unconventional role in Ukraine policy. Mr. Sondland said he did not remember that. “Their recollections of those events simply don’t square with my own or with those of Ambassador Volker or Secretary Perry,” he said in his prepared testimony. Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

2018-09-18 17:30:02

Anita Hill has some advice for US senators investigating the sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh: Don’t rush through an investigation. “There is no way to redo 1991, but there are ways to do better,” Hill wrote in a Tuesday op-ed for the New York Times, referencing her own high-profile testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. On Monday, Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, will sit before the same committee and give sworn testimony on Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh denies the incident ever happened. This has drawn comparisons to Hill’s 1991 testimony against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, saying that Thomas sexually harassed her while he was her supervisor at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thomas denied the accusation and was confirmed. “In 1991, the Senate Judiciary Committee had an opportunity to demonstrate its appreciation for both the seriousness of sexual harassment claims and the need for public confidence in the character of a nominee to the Supreme Court,” Hill wrote in her op-ed. “It failed on both counts.” Hill’s testimony against Thomas was explosive, and gripped the country. But stories like hers are being shared much more openly in the months since the #MeToo movement started last summer. The past year has seen a rise in the number of women going public with their stories of being sexually harassed or assaulted by men, and a national conversation about sexual misconduct has followed. In this era, Hill writes, she hopes senators will make a good-faith effort to examine Ford’s claims of assault against Kavanaugh and take the time to conduct a thorough investigation. Such an investigation, she says, should be conducted by an impartial body, so as not to be clouded by partisanship. “Select a neutral investigative body with experience in sexual misconduct cases that will investigate the incident in question and present its findings to the committee,” she wrote. Right now, it appears that the Monday public hearing featuring Ford and Kavanaugh’s testimony will be the main part of the Judiciary Committee’s investigation into Kavanaugh’s conduct. So far, committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has said the two will be the only witnesses. A committee vote on Kavanaugh has not yet been scheduled. In Hill’s op-ed, she urges senators to take their time to thoroughly check the allegations. “Do not rush these hearings,” she wrote. “Doing so would not only signal that sexual assault accusations are not important — hastily appraising this situation would very likely lead to facts being overlooked that are necessary for the Senate and the public to evaluate.”

2019-09-08 15:08:41

President Donald Trump halted peace talks with the Taliban Saturday in a series of tweets in which he denounced the group’s continued attacks during the peace process. The president also claimed he’d arranged a secret meeting with Taliban leaders at Camp David — a meeting he said he decided to cancel following a Taliban attack that killed a US soldier and at least 11 other people in Kabul last week. Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to.. ....an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers, and 11 other people. I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position? They didn’t, they.... ....only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight? The tweets seemed to signal at least a temporary end to a would-be deal between the US and its main adversary in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. That deal would have seen the US withdrawing troops from the country it has occupied for nearly two decades in exchange for the Taliban cutting ties with extremist Islamist groups and playing an active role in ensuring terror groups could not operate within Afghanistan. Afghan critics took issue with the US proceeding with the peace talks with limited input from the Afghan government; the Trump administration pushed back against this complaint, claiming its talks with the Taliban were designed to set up a path for the militant group to begin its own peace negotiations with the Afghan government. And many, including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, have been openly skeptical about the proposed deal, arguing it omitted a crucial commitment: The Taliban would not have been required to stop attacks on Afghans or the Afghan government’s military. The Taliban doesn’t recognize the Afghan government, and the group’s insistence on only committing to peace with the US was major problem during negotiations, according to CNN. As Vox’s Zeeshan Aleem reported, critics closer to home had similar issues with the peace process, concerned US withdrawal would create a dangerous security vacuum: Afghanistan’s government has not been involved in negotiating the agreement, and the deal as currently drafted does not grant the Afghan people any protections from Taliban attacks. Critics, including military officials and congressional Republicans, have argued that in having failed to extract a commitment of protection from the Taliban, US negotiators are leaving innocent people to die. Ghani’s administration had similar security concerns, particularly given a recent spate to violent terrorist attacks against civilians largely blamed on the Taliban. Due to these concerns, Ghani postponed a planned summit with Trump next week, according to Afghan officials. What comes next is not entirely clear. While the Afghan government hasn’t responded directly to Trump’s tweet, a spokesperson for Ghani said, “We have always said that a real peace is possible only when the Taliban stop killing Afghans, accept a ceasefire and start direct negotiations with the Afghan government,” adding that the government “appreciates the sincere efforts of its allies” to bring peace in the country. A spokesperson for the Taliban called Trump’s decision “a political issue,” and told the Associated Press the future of the deal is still up in the air: “We are waiting for our leaders and will update you.” On Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos a troop withdrawal could still happen, but that “the president hasn’t yet made a decision on that.” Pompeo also told CNN’s Jake Tapper that if the Taliban can make a “significant commitment” towards restoring the Trump administration’s trust in the group, peace talks could resume. However, the secretary tempered that by saying, “If the conditions aren’t appropriate on the ground and proper to protect America, we’re not going to enter into any deal.” In calling off the peace deal, Trump indicated a deadly attack near the US embassy in Kabul that left an American soldier dead was the tipping point to stop negotiations. “What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?” he tweeted. But Afghanistan has borne multiple fatal attacks throughout the conversations — including some that claimed the lives of US servicepeople. Some of those attacks were claimed by the local ISIS affiliate, but many were claimed by the Taliban itself. Throughout the summer, the Taliban has carried out multiple attacks that have killed dozens of people. In early July, it killed around 40 people, including children, in the capitol city. Clashes between Taliban and Afghan government fighters have killed hundreds more. Vox’s Alex Ward found two reasons the attacks continued during the negotiations: One is that the insurgents hope to put pressure on the US by eroding its will to stay in the country. The other is that there remain factions inside the Taliban that don’t want to negotiate peace and therefore continue to exact violence in the capital and elsewhere. As of now, it’s unclear which theory best explains the timing of this attack. It’s not certain whether the talks at Camp David were actually set to happen, as many others who are usually in the know — including US officials, foreign diplomats, Afghan officials, and Taliban representatives — had given no indication that the administration had set up the secret meeting with the militant group, NBC reported. However, it’s clear the cancellation of all peace negotiations came as a surprise to those involved, and to US allies. A Taliban official told NBC Trump’s tweet “not only shocked us, it made us realize the people we were talking with were not sincere in peace talks.” Trump’s tweet came hours after some of his top officials, including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, were out promoting the agreement. And Norway, which also has troops in Afghanistan through the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, had also begun preparations for the anticipated negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. In the short term, the cancelled talks mean that little is likely to change on the ground. The fundamentalist group will continue to ravage Afghan communities and US troops will largely remain. Whether there is a path forward for negotiated peace in the country — which US forces entered 18 years ago — remains to be seen.

2019-12-13 00:00:00

(Reuters) - Santa Anita Park, where 35 horses have died as the result of injuries in the past year, said on Friday it was introducing new technology for diagnosing pre-existing conditions in racehorses. A MILE-PET Scan machine - the first of its kind - will provide imaging of the fetlock (ankle) joint, the most common area for injuries, the Southern California track said in a news release. Santa Anita Park added it is expecting to install in January a Standing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), another example of cutting-edge diagnostic technology. “The Stronach Group (owners of the track) is committed to doing what we can to provide horsemen with access to resources that will help them to better assess the health and fitness of horses in their care,” said Belinda Stronach, Chairman and President. “We continue to make progress with the installation of the MILE-PET scan machine at Santa Anita. This state-of-the-art technology reflects a new standard of care within Thoroughbred racing.” Reporting by Gene Cherry in Salvo, North Carolina; Editing by Christian Radnedge

2018-11-02

American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp said in an interview that aired Friday on "Rising" that Democratic members of unions are among voters calling for a stricter immigration process ahead of the midterms.  "Rushing the southern border is really a gross way to have immigration policy because we all know what happens because of [how] liberal judges interpret the law," Schlapp told Hill.TV's Buck Sexton on Thursday.  "If they get to the border, they get detained, they get processed. Yes, for a period of time people are put in jail cells just like they were under President Obama, and then they are released into the interior of America," he continued.  "If they don't go to their first hearing, they can be in this country. [If] they don't commit another felony or wrongdoing, they can be in this country for as long as they want to be, and I think there are a lot of people looking at that process, including, by the way, union Democrats, and people who want to make sure there are good paying jobs for Americans that look at this process and say this is insane," he said. Schlapp's comments come as Trump has made immigration a central issue ahead of the midterms in an effort to drive out the Republican base.  Trump has pointed specifically to a Central American migrant caravan moving toward the U.S. border, while also announcing that he is looking at trying to end birthright citizenship through an executive order. "The politics is all positive for President Trump because I really think he understands this issue well," Schlapp said.  Democrats have pushed back on Trump's rhetoric, calling it divisive ahead of the midterms.  — Julia Manchester Republican strategist Marissa Martinez predicted Monday that former Vice President Joe Biden will win the Democratic nomination, citing his fundraising prowess. A senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign said Monday that former Vice President Joe Biden’s greatest vulnerability is his “pro-corporate policies.” A senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign said Monday that the Vermont senator and progressive rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) aren’t necessarily competing for the same group of voters. Conservative commentator Patrice Onwuka ripped Ben Shapiro on Friday after the conservative commentator said that it is a “you problem” if someone has to work more than one job to support themselves. Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann criticized Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) after the lawmaker questioned whether there would be “any population of the world left” if not for rape and incest. Support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) among college students climbed to its highest mark since April, according to a new weekly Chegg-College Pulse poll. A former FBI intelligence officer said Thursday that combating right-wing extremism and white nationalism poses a serious challenge for security officials going into 2020. The head of a flight attendants union that represents nearly 50,000 members across the country said Thursday that there is “broad support” within the labor movement for “Medicare for All.” A former campaign staffer on President Obama's 2008 campaign is calling on John Hickenlooper to end his White House bid and instead launch a Senate run in Colorado. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told Hill.TV on Wednesday that the number of migrants coming to the U.S. southern border has dropped significantly since record-highs in May. Law professor Richard Hasen said Wednesday that expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court should be a “last resort” for lawmakers. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,  defended his controversial remarks about the poem etched on the Statue of Liberty in an exclusive interview with Hill.TV Tuesday afternoon.  Republican strategist Holly Turner said Tuesday that former Vice President Joe Biden’s recent string of gaffes won’t necessarily hurt his chances to take on President Trump in the 2020 election. Foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang predicted on Tuesday that the United States and China won’t reach a comprehensive trade deal before the 2020 U.S. elections. Security analyst Gordon Chang on Tuesday criticized President Trump's language on ongoing protests in Hong Kong, saying the U.S. has a much more vested interest in the embattled city than what the president has indicated. Conservative commentator Dennis Prager said Monday that tech giants like Google and Facebook need to decide whether they are publishers or open forums. A top Iowa Democratic Party official said Monday that 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer has an advantage in the state thanks to his name recognition and ties to various grassroots organizations. Iowa Democratic Party official Troy Price on Monday said that President Trump’s ongoing trade war with China is among the top concerns among voters in the Hawkeye State, saying the battle is starting to hurt local farmers. 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2019-04-16

(CNN)Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, is asking the country's election council for a redo of the mayoral election in Istanbul, the country's financial capital and its largest city. Claiming "organized irregularities," the party has for weeks contested the results of the March 31 election, which it appears to have lost by a razor-thin margin. "There is a clear and organized irregularity and election fraud," said AKP Deputy Chairman Ali İhsan Yavuz. "There is only one body to clear the questions. It is Supreme Election Council. Their decisions are binding for all of us." The main opposition Republican People's Party, CHP, garnered 48.79% and the AK 48.51% of the vote, according to unofficial results. A recount requested by the AKP has ended, according to Turkish news agency Anadolu and CHP members, but the results haven't been announced. "There isn't a tiny bit of problem in the process," said CHP candidate Ekrem İmamoglu. "Before the elections, they said Turkey has the world's most trustworthy election system. Today they shout 'there are irregularities.'" Before this vote, the AKP and its predecessor have consistently won in Istanbul's local elections since the 1990s, when Erdogan launched his political career there as mayor. He served as the face of AKP's local election campaigns this year, holding rallies across Turkey in support of the party. Erdogan's AKP also lost the capital city Ankara in local elections there the same day. The Supreme Election Council, or YSK, last week rejected a request by the AKP to recount votes there, Turkish newspaper Hürriyet reported. The YSK now will decide whether to give the mandate to İmamoglu in Istanbul or to hold new elections June 2. "They count too many reasons to object" to the election results, CHP spokesperson Faik Oztrak said of Erdogan's party. "If one of them does not work, they try the other." İmamoglu should be given the mandate to start the job as mayor, Oztrak said. "This should be done by law" and as a matter of conscience, he said.

2018-04-16 16:10:38

Research into machine learning and the interesting AI models created as a consequence are popular topics these days. But there’s a sort of shadow world of scientists working to undermine these systems — not to show they’re worthless but to shore up their weaknesses. A new paper demonstrates this by showing how vulnerable image recognition models are to the simplest color manipulations of the pictures they’re meant to identify. It’s not some deep indictment of computer vision — techniques to “beat” image recognition systems might just as easily be characterized as situations in which they perform particularly poorly. Sometimes this is something surprisingly simple: rotating an image, for example, or adding a crazy sticker. Unless a system has been trained specifically on a given manipulation or has orders to check common variations like that, it’s pretty much just going to fail. In this case it’s research from the University of Washington led by grad student Hossein Hosseini. Their “adversarial” imagery was similarly simple: switch up the colors. Probably many of you have tried something similar to this when fiddling around in an image manipulation program: by changing the “hue” and “saturation” values on a picture, you can make someone have green skin, a banana appear blue and so on. That’s exactly what the researchers did: twiddled the knobs so a dog looked a bit yellow, a deer looked purplish, etc. The original images are at left; color-shifted versions and the systems’ best guesses at right. The original images are at left; color-shifted versions and the systems’ best guesses at right. Critically, however, the “value” of the pixels, meaning how light or dark it is, wasn’t changed, meaning the images still look like what they are — just in weird colors. But while a cat looks like a cat no matter if it’s grey or pink to us, one can’t really say the same for a deep neural network. The accuracy of the model they tested was reduced by 90 percent on sets of color-tweaked images that it would normally identify easily. Its best guesses are pretty random, as you can see in the figure at right. Changing the colors totally changes the system’s guess. The team tested several models and they all broke down on the color-shifted set, so it wasn’t just a consequence of this specific system. It’s not too hard to fix — in this case, all you really need to do is add some labeled, color-shifted images into the training data so the system is exposed to them beforehand. This addition brought success rates back up to reasonable (if still fairly poor) levels. But the point isn’t that computer vision systems are fundamentally bad at color or something. It’s that there are lots of ways of subtly or not-so-subtly manipulating an image or video that will devastate its accuracy or subvert it. “Deep networks are very good at learning (or better memorizing) the distribution of training data,” wrote Hosseini in an email to TechCrunch. “They, however, hardly generalize beyond that. So, even if models are trained with augmented data, it’s likely that we can come up with a new type of adversarial images that can fool the model.” A model trained to catch color variations might still be vulnerable to attention-based adversarial images and vice versa. The way these systems are created and encoded right now simply isn’t robust enough to prevent such attacks. But by cataloguing them and devising improvements that protect against some but not all, we can advance the state of the art. “I think we need to find a way for the model to learn the concepts, such as being invariant to color or rotation,” Hosseini suggested. “That can save the algorithm a lot of training data and is more similar to how humans learn.” You can read the full pre-print paper on Arxiv (PDF).

2019-08-22 00:00:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage firms are getting back into joint marketing and advertising arrangements, reviving a controversial practice that was effectively banned in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Such arrangements involve mortgage originators and title insurers, hungry for sales leads, paying a real estate broker or homebuilder to promote their services and products, or to rent a desk in their offices. They were effectively banned by the Obama administration under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s then director, Richard Cordray. He brought more than two dozen enforcement actions, including against big banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co, alleging the arrangements violated federal laws that bar kickbacks or referral fees that could increase the cost of buying a home. In interviews, nearly two dozen lawyers, consultants and mortgage executives told Reuters that the CFPB’s sharp pullback under the Trump administration has emboldened the industry to get back into these arrangements. “I have seen a significant jump in the number of banks, mortgage lenders and title companies who have gotten back into co-marketing/advertising arrangements because the regulatory environment has shifted,” said Marx Sterbcow, a mortgage lawyer and managing attorney at New Orleans-based Sterbcow Law Group. Cordray aggressively enforced the 1974 Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), which bars giving or receiving anything of value in exchange for referrals for homebuying services such as mortgages, title insurance and appraisals. While co-marketing arrangements are not illegal under RESPA, Cordray found many were used to disguise an illegal referral fee as compensation for marketing or advertising services. “My view is about the same as it was when I was at the bureau. A lot of arrangements... are questionable at best, but probably illegal,” Cordray told Reuters. Republicans said Cordray overstepped the law and note that the courts did not always back his interpretation. After taking over as acting head of the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney said the agency would not take such an aggressive stance. He pulled two high-profile RESPA suits Cordray had been fighting in court against mortgage lender PHH Corp. and law firm Borders & Borders. Under Cordray, the CFPB initially lost those suits, but Mulvaney departed from the bureau’s usual practice by choosing not to fight those rulings. Mulvaney also closed Cordray’s three-year RESPA probe of online real estate giant Zillow’s (ZG.O) co-marketing program. Overall, CFPB enforcement actions have fallen by around half under the Trump administration, a Reuters analysis found. “All of those moves together sent industry the message that the agency wouldn’t be aggressively pursuing RESPA enforcement as it had been in the past,” said Richard Horn, partner at Garris Horn in Arizona and a former CFPB lawyer. Online CFPB complaints and industry chat rooms reveal frustration among industry executives who claim competitors are unfairly exploiting the more relaxed regulatory environment. “I know that the CFPB is now essentially gutted and will probably ignore my complaint, but I challenge you to do the right thing,” said one anonymous complaint claiming a RESPA violation. The CFPB declined to comment, but Kathy Kraninger, the new CFPB director, told Reuters in April the agency is reviewing RESPA enforcement and may publish new recommendations. Because the marketing arrangements are private, there is no data on their use, although Reuters identified dozens online. Mark Meyer, chief executive of mortgage services consultancy MLinc, said he had added around 75 new clients looking for help drafting co-marketing agreements since January 2018, compared with no new clients the previous year. He added that the Trump administration has been “a win” for mortgage firms. Industry executives say these arrangements help homebuyers by guaranteeing them a pre-approved rate that allows them to expedite a purchase. But consumer groups say they can result in borrowers being steered toward more expensive mortgages. “Consumers are often robbed of the experience to shop around by pledging their business to one provider on the spot, often unknowingly agreeing to pay higher fees,” said Linda Jun, counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. CFPB research from 2015 found that almost half of mortgage borrowers fail to shop around, costing them several thousand dollars over the life of a loan. A third of borrowers said they relied on their real estate agent for mortgage information. The agency’s overhaul has coincided with a period of intense competition in the U.S. mortgage market due to falling home sales. This competitive pressure has also made such arrangements more attractive. Several industry executives, however, said firms had been uncomfortable getting back into such arrangements until the regulatory risk had abated. “The risk of compliance was so great under Cordray that lenders had to wear both a belt and a pair of suspenders,” said Josh Weinberg, who oversees compliance at New Jersey-based lender First Choice Loan Services. “Now there’s a loosening up on some of the risk in (marketing services agreements). We are more willing to consider them, especially with the recent changes at the bureau.” Reporting by Michelle Price and Katanga Johnson; Editing by Dan Grebler

2018-11-06

President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE declared the results of Tuesday's midterm elections a "tremendous success," even as Democrats were projected to take control of the House. "Tremendous success tonight. Thank you to all!" Trump tweeted as race calls were still pouring in. In a subsequent pair of tweets, Trump shared a quote from conservative commentator Ben Stein, who called the president a "magic man" for helping Republicans expand their majority in the Senate.  Tremendous success tonight. Thank you to all! “There’s only been 5 times in the last 105 years that an incumbent President has won seats in the Senate in the off year election. Mr. Trump has magic about him. This guy has magic coming out of his ears. He is an astonishing vote getter & campaigner. The Republicans are......... ....unbelievably lucky to have him and I’m just awed at how well they’ve done. It’s all the Trump magic - Trump is the magic man. Incredible, he’s got the entire media against him, attacking him every day, and he pulls out these enormous wins.” Ben Stein, “The Capitalist Code” He also agreed with a Fox News commentator who said many GOP candidates "owe him their political career." The Republicans' loss of the House is a significant blow for the president, who will have to contend with a Democratic majority that is eager to place a check on his leadership. But Trump's abbreviated reaction reflects what the White House has signaled for days: if the GOP kept control of the Senate and pulled off wins in in a handful of key gubernatorial races, the president would declare victory. "I think a huge victory for the president tonight, with the announcement of the Senate looking like it's definitely going to stay with Republicans," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on NBC. The president and his team also sought to skirt blame for losses in the House, which some Republican strategists argued he worsened with his divisive rhetoric on immigration and by framing the contests a referendum on his presidency. Trump spent the last week holding raucous campaign rallies to drive home his message in states he won with competitive Senate and governors' races, an effort which Sanders said "we're seeing pay off." The GOP flipped Senate seats in Florida, Indiana and Missouri, all states where Trump made two stops in the final days of the campaign. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellTrump faces crucial decisions on economy, guns Are Democrats turning Trump-like? House Democrat calls for gun control: Cities can ban plastic straws but 'we can't ban assault weapons?' MORE (R-Ky.) called Trump on Tuesday to thank him for his campaign stops on behalf of Republicans. Keeping the Senate majority will allow Trump to continue placing conservative judges on federal courts in the next two years leading up to his reelection race, an effort that has further endeared him to GOP voters. Republicans were also projected to keep control of governor's mansions in Ohio and Florida, two key states for Trump's campaign in 2020. But until that time, Trump will likely be forced to battle Democratic-led investigations in the House on everything from his tax returns to his businesses and administration.  That could leave White House politically and legally besieged as Trump gears up for his reelection. Trump called House Minority Leader Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiWhy President Trump needs to speak out on Hong Kong Anti-Trump vets join Steyer group in pressing Democrats to impeach Trump Pelosi warns Mnuchin to stop 'illegal' .3B cut to foreign aid MORE (D-Calif.) late Tuesday night to congratulate her on the Democrats' victory in the lower chamber, according to Pelosi's office. The call came despite the fact Sanders earlier suggested Trump would not reach out. Sanders said on Fox News before the House was called that Trump is "willing to work across the aisle to get things done," but implied that the president could use Democrats as a foil if they overplay their hand on oversight investigations. "If Democrats take the House, they shouldn’t waste time investigating, they should focus on what the people put them there to do," she said. Pelosi, who is expected to become the next Speaker, promised after Tuesday's victory that she would offer a "bipartisan marketplace of ideas," saying the "American people want results" and have "had enough of division." After spending the last several weeks in the public eye at numerous campaign rallies and in media appearances, Trump remained out of view on Election Day. He spent much of the day inside the White House phoning friends and advisers and monitoring elections results on television, according to sources close to the administration. His Twitter feed was relatively tame, tweeting out a handful of candidate endorsements and voting information. Trump later hosted a reception at the White House for family members, friends, major donors and staffers to monitor election returns. The president has no public events scheduled for Wednesday, but is expected to weigh in further on the mixed results of Tuesday's midterms. -Updated Nov. 7 at 1:51 a.m. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-10-06 14:15:00

Every week, Fandango Now provides Business Insider with the top movies people are watching through the on-demand video service.This week includes major theatrical hits like "Spider-Man: Far From Home," as well as disappointments like "Stuber" and "Dark Phoenix."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.The box office has suffered some major disappointments this year. But some of those movies that dramatically flopped are finding a modicum of new life through digital.Every week, Fandango Now provides Business Insider with its top movies that people are renting or buying through the service. Fandango Now is movie-ticket service Fandango's on-demand video service, in which viewers can rent or buy from a selection of over 900,00 movies on digital, including recent theatrical releases, without a subscription. It's available on platforms including desktop, Roku, Chromecast, Movies Anywhere, and Apple and Android mobile devices.READ MORE: We compared the top movie franchises at 6 major Hollywood studios, from Disney to ParamountThis week includes blockbusters like "Toy Story 4" and "Spider-Man: Far From Home" as well as movies that failed to attract audiences while in theaters, such as the comedy "Stuber" and the "X-Men" movie "Dark Phoenix." It suggests that audiences are far more willing to watch a movie they are hesitant of on digital at a lower cost than they are to go to the theater.We've included the percentage of the total of buys/rentals the movie has on Fandango Now. A lower percentage doesn't necessarily mean it's not desirable, just that bigger or newer movies are making up a larger percentage. However, a movie can also climb if it resonates: "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum" rose from ninth place last week to sixth on this week's list. Below are the top 11 movies on Fandango Now the past week: 11. "Shaft" — 1% Number of weeks on digital: 4Placement on last week's list: 6Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 32%What critics said: "This movie is 'ruin your childhood' bad, right down to the hideous auto-tuned end credits song they chose to use instead of the original 'Theme From Shaft.'" — RogertEbert.com 10. "Anna" — 1% Number of weeks on digital: 4Placement on last week's list: 7Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 36%What critics said: "The gunplay in Anna grows repetitive before long, and the heroine's invincibility feels like a cheap substitute for the power that Besson wields over her." — Indiewire 9. "Crawl" — 1% Number of weeks on digital: 2Placement on last week's list: 1Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 82%What critics said: "Crawl is not exactly an inventive film. But it doesn't have to be. It delivers on what it promises, and not many big-studio movies this year can claim the same." — Globe and Mail  8. "Dark Phoenix" — 1% Number of weeks on digital: 5Placement on last week's list: 5Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 23%What critics said: "The movie's weaknesses make more glaring the movie's hollowness where the storyline's feminism once was." — Slate 7. "Yesterday" — 2% Number of weeks on digital: 3Placement on last week's list: 4Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 62%What critics said: "Yesterday is ultimately a romantic comedy, but a conceptually complex one, built on a peculiarly reactionary framework of private life and a culturally conservative pop classicism." — New Yorker 6. "John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum" — 2% Number of weeks on digital: 7Placement on last week's list: 9Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 90%What critics said: "The set pieces are more imaginative and daring than ever. There's a musicality and wit to the action that only the Mission: Impossible series can equal." — NPR 5. "Aladdin" — 2% Number of weeks on digital: 6Placement on last week's list: 8Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 57%What critics said: "There are efforts made, whether through good faith or just market savvy, to update Princess Jasmine into a people's champion who might prefer ruling to romance. Enough to make you wish the Disney people had gone whole hog and just called it Jasmine." — San Diego Reader 4. "Toy Story" four-movie collection — 4% Number of weeks on digital: 1Placement on last week's list: New 3. "Stuber" — 5% Number of weeks on digital: 1Placement on last week's list: NewRotten Tomatoes critic score: 42%What critics said: "Talk about running on fumes. This buddy comedy traps two talented dudes — Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista — in a car that's going nowhere so fast that Thelma and Louise would hop right on." — Rolling Stone 2. "Spider-Man: Far From Home" — 17% Number of weeks on digital: 3Placement on last week's list: 2Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 90%What critics said: "Spider-Man: Far from Home is breezy and enjoyable, focusing on all that's most appealing about Peter Parker and his web-slinging alter ego Spider-Man." — Time Magazine 1. "Toy Story 4" — 25% Number of weeks on digital: 1Placement on last week's list: NewRotten Tomatoes critic score: 97%What critics said: "The latest installment, 'Toy Story 4,' is perhaps the bleakest (and most beautiful) of them all." — Salon

2016-07-18

Turkey suspended thousands of police officers on Monday, widening a purge of the armed forces and judiciary after a failed military coup, and raising concern among European allies that it was abandoning the rule of law. A senior security official told Reuters 8,000 police officers, including in the capital Ankara and the biggest city Istanbul, had been removed from their posts on suspicion of links to Friday's coup bid by a faction in the army. Thirty regional governors and more than 50 high-ranking civil servants have also been dismissed, CNN Turk said. Thousands of members of the armed forces, from foot soldiers to commanders, were rounded up on Sunday, some shown in photographs stripped to their underpants and handcuffed on the floors of police buses and a sports hall. Several thousand prosecutors and judges have also been removed. More than 290 people were killed and around 1,400 wounded in the violence on Friday night, as soldiers commandeered tanks, attack helicopters and fighter jets in a bid to seize power, strafing parliament and the intelligence headquarters and trying to seize the main airport and bridges in Istanbul. President Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday told crowds of supporters, called to the streets by the government and by mosques across the country, that parliament must consider their demands to apply the death penalty for the plotters. "We cannot ignore this demand," he told a chanting crowd outside his house in Istanbul late on Sunday. "In democracies, whatever the people say has to happen." He called on Turks to stay on the streets until Friday, and late into Sunday night his supporters thronged squares and streets, honking horns and waving flags. The bloodshed shocked the nation of almost 80 million, where the army last used force to stage a successful coup more than 30 years ago, and shattered fragile confidence in the stability of a NATO member state already rocked by Islamic State suicide bombings and an insurgency by Kurdish militants.

2019-08-04 00:00:00

Less than 13 hours after a mass shooting during back-to-school shopping left 20 dead in El Paso, 9 people were killed overnight in Dayton, Ohio, in a second mass shooting. Driving the news: CNN's banner tells the story of a weekend that no one will want to remember, but that we can't forget: "13 hours of bloodshed: Two mass shootings leave 29 dead." The El Paso massacre ranks 8th in deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. (See the list.) El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said during a televised briefing that the shooting at a Walmart may have been a hate crime. A racist, anti-immigrant screed — complaining of a "Hispanic invasion of Texas" — was posted online shortly before the shooting. Authorities suspect that it was written by the 21-year-old man they arrested at the scene, nine hours and 650 miles from his home in Allen, Texas. The FBI has opened a domestic terrorism investigation, CNN reported. Dayton authorities say the suspected Ohio shooter was wearing body armor and had extra magazines, per the AP. The shooting was the 22nd mass killing in the United States in 2019, according to an AP/USA Today/Northeastern University mass murder database. The project tracks all U.S. homicides involving four or more people killed — not including the offender — over a short period of time. The first 20 mass killings in the U.S. in 2019 claimed 96 lives. A week ago today, a 19-year-old gunman killed three people, including two children, at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Northern California. The sad facts on the twin tragedies, via AP: In Texas, a gunman armed with a rifle opened fire in a shopping area packed with thousands of people, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured. El Paso police provided updates about the shooting in English and Spanish in the largely Latino city. The shopping area is about 5 miles from the main border checkpoint with its sister city, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. "The city has had a binational feel ... and has been in the national spotlight for months," the N.Y. Times points out. "Thousands of Central American families have flooded the city and surrounding areas seeking asylum, overwhelming the Border Patrol and nonprofit groups working with immigrants." Get the latest. ... The story in photos. In western Ohio, Dayton police tweeted that an active shooter situation began in the Oregon District, a historic neighborhood at 1 a.m., but officers nearby were able to "put an end to it quickly." Nine were killed and at least 16 others were taken to hospitals. Police said the suspect was shot to death by responding officers. The Oregon District is described by police as a safe part of downtown — home to entertainment options, including bars, restaurants and theaters. Get the latest.

2019-11-12 00:00:00

VIENNA (Reuters) - German lighting group Osram (OSRn.DE) has urged its shareholders to back a $5 billion takeover bid from Austria’s AMS (AMS.VI) after a previous offer at the same price failed last month to win enough backing to proceed. AMS has lowered the acceptance threshold to 55% and is offering to protect jobs in Germany until the end of 2022 to try to get the deal over the line. The Austrian group is best known as a supplier of facial recognition technology to Apple (AAPL.O), while Osram’s lightbulbs were once ubiquitous in European households. AMS says that with the acquisition it could create a global heavyweight in sensors and lighting products, serving the automotive, industrial and medical industries as well as consumer electronics. Below are key facts about the two companies: AMS, formerly austria microsystems AG, started in 1981 as a U.S.-Austrian joint venture backed by steelmaker Voestalpine (VOES.VI) which wanted to diversify into semiconductors. The group, based in the grounds of a castle in Austria’s Styria state, listed in Zurich in 2004. AMS develops infrared sensor technology used for facial recognition in smartphones and tablets, in autonomous driving, factory automation and devices for computer tomography. Chief Executive Alexander Everke, an electrical engineer, started his career with Osram’s former parent company Siemens(SIEGn.DE), later working for Infineon (IFXGn.DE) and NXP Semiconductors (NXPI.O) before joining AMS in 2015. The group generated revenue of 1.4 billion euros ($1.54 billion), operating profit of 128 million and net profit of 10.6 million last year with a workforce of 10,000 people. Net debt stood at 1.24 billion euros at end-June. It has a market capitalization of 3.5 billion euros. AMS’s main revenue source is optical sensors. Its main customer is Apple (AAPL.O), which analysts estimate accounts for 40% of group revenue. It has recently won Android customers, including Samsung (005930.KS), and China’s Xiaomi (1810.HK) and Huawei. AMS is investing heavily in technology for laser-based sensors used in self-driving cars. The group also offers display solutions such as OLEDs - display sensors that are thinner and more flexible than light-emitting diodes (LEDs) - and is working on sensors capable of scanning surroundings in 3D, so-called world-facing 3D sensors. It makes audio sensors that cancel noise in wireless earbuds, and has a joint venture with Wise Road Capital for environmental sensors that detect temperature or moisture. AMS has production sites in Austria, mainly for semiconductor manufacturing, in the Philippines for testing and related production steps, and in Singapore for optical manufacturing and packaging back-end. It also has a location in Texas, where it bought light sensor supplier TAOS in 2011. Osram, headquartered in Munich, was created out of a merger in 1919 and was for decades part of Siemens (SIEGn.DE) before being spun off and floated in 2013. The company has sought under Chief Executive Olaf Berlien to reinvent itself as a high-tech company, offering products such as infrared or laser lighting used in self-driving cars, mobile phones, or “smart” buildings and cities. Soon after taking the helm in 2015, Berlien announced a billion-euro investment in a new factory in Malaysia that would produce LED chips for the general lighting market. Berlien has built up the automotive division as a play on the development of electric and self-driving vehicles. The group reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of 655 million euros on revenue of 4.1 billion in 2018 with 24,200 staff. Net debt stoodat 424 million euros at the end of June. Osram has a market capitalization of 3.6 billion euros. Reporting by Kirsti Knolle in Vienna and Douglas Busvine in London; Editing by Keith Weir and Jan Harvey

2018-06-02 00:00:00

Reports that last year, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt bought 12 fountain pens for $1,560, and went to a University of Kentucky basketball game with his son with seats bought off a coal baron is just the latest in a saga of Scott Pruitt's expenditures. His landlord’s husband also lobbied the EPA while Pruitt was living in the lobbyist’s wife’s apartment, even though he previously denied that activity. The trend: These are the most recent revelations about Pruitt’s many indiscretions — including paying for a $43,000 phone booth, a pricey security detail, and spending taxpayer dollars on first-class travel. The details: The pens: EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the Post the pens were bought to give as gifts to Pruitt’s foreign counterparts, per the Hill. Basketball game: Scott Pruitt bought the basketball seats off of Joseph W. Craft III, of Alliance Resource Partners, for $130 each, reports the New York Times, and the EPA ethics office approved the purchase in advance. D.C. apartment: The lobbyist’s firm, Williams & Jensen, said that once it learned that the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, had omitted some lobbying activities, they hired an outside investigator, which found 7 instances of Hart failing to disclose lobbying efforts, per The Hill.

2016-08-02 17:32:00

When Ralo and Young Thug teamed up for the Diary of the Streets cut “I Know” at the back of last year, they were burying the hatchet in public. The two Atlantans had been open about their long-standing beef growing up and their newfound ability to work with each other. Shit, Ralo even said he tried to shoot at him: “I couldn’t wait to kill him," he said. "I couldn’t wait to shoot him. Now I can’t wait to kick it with him.” The two teamed up again, this time alongside Lil Durk, on I’m Up’s “My Boys” back in February this year, and now, in advance of Ralo’s upcoming Diary of the Streets II project, out August 30, they’ve got together once more on “Flexing on Purpose.” This time they’ve got Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage onside as well. It connects, in parts. Ralo explained to Complex that the track is heavy on the Family Values side of his "Famerica" concept. It's about "family, loyalty, making it out the struggle, and most importantly [bringing] family back to America in a positive light" which is all cool and posi and maybe evident in like an eighth of the track. Whatever the values, when Ralo opens up with lines like “I cannot ever be celibate / I cop more shots than the president,” and Uzi is on top of the hook it all rolls along. Young Thug’s verse isn’t his strongest, but he still pulls out a Willow and Jaden Smith reference for kicks. 21 Savage sounds like he’s barely paying attention, but some slick production and a swift return to Uzi’s hook reels it all back in, just about. Either way, it’s a good indication of where Ralo’s going right now and a pretty good reason to keep an eye out for Diary of the Streets II when it drops at the end of the month. Check it out below and read our interview with Lil Uzi Vert right here. Follow Noisey on Twitter.

2017-06-28

President Trump will nominate Brendan Carr, currently serving as general counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to be the third Republican commissioner at the agency, a White House spokesman told The Hill. Before being tapped as the FCC's acting general counsel earlier this year, Carr was a top adviser to Chairman Ajit Pai when he was a commissioner in the GOP minority. Carr will likely be a close ally to Pai as the chairman pushes his proposal to kill the FCC's Obama-era net neutrality rules. Trump has also nominated former Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to another five-year term, and the two are likely to be confirmed together. If the two are confirmed, the FCC will once again be operating with a full complement. The news was first reported by Recode.  View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2018-01-29 00:00:00

Jan 29 (Reuters) - * ETHEREUM CAPITAL ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF $50 MILLION PRIVATE PLACEMENT OFFERING, BACKED BY LEADING MANAGEMENT TEAM AND PROMINENT INVESTORS * ETHEREUM CAPITAL - LAUNCH OF PRIVATE PLACEMENT OFFERING OF 20 MILLION SUBSCRIPTION RECEIPTS OF CO AT PRICE OF $2.50 PER SUBSCRIPTION RECEIPT Source text for Eikon:

2018-02-14

Feb 14 (Reuters) - Alkermes Plc: * REPORTS FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED DEC. 31, 2017 AND PROVIDES FINANCIAL EXPECTATIONS FOR 2018 * Q4 NON-GAAP EARNINGS PER SHARE $0.31 * SEES FY 2018 NON-GAAP LOSS PER SHARE $0.03 TO $0.23 * COMPANY EXPECTS TOTAL REVENUES TO RANGE FROM $975 MILLION TO $1.025 BILLION IN 2018 * COMPANY EXPECTS CAPITAL EXPENDITURES TO RANGE FROM $80 MILLION TO $90 MILLION IN 2018 * Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $0.23, REVENUE VIEW $252.9 MILLION — THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S * FY2018 REVENUE VIEW $999.2 MILLION — THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2016-12-19 00:00:00

Dec 19 (Reuters) - Dazhou Xingye Holding Co Ltd * Says securities regulator to resume review of its asset acquisition proposal Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/2hQKip6 Further company coverage: (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)

2019-06-04 00:00:00

Since the internet came online late in the last century, Americans have used it to communicate with each other in new and exciting ways. Case in point: Not only do we communicate with our friends and family via the Internet, we enable our things to “talk” to each other over the medium, too. Hello, Grocery Store?  This is the Smith’s smart hub on Main Street. The Smith’s fridge indicates it’s running low on milk and eggs. It requests 1 gallon of 2%, and a dozen large eggs. Please deliver them at 9 a.m. today. Thank you. Of course, this is for those who have access to the high-speed internet, which can accommodate not only smart home features, but also the dozen or more high-bandwidth smartphones, tablets, PCs and streaming devices in use in the average urban household. For about 20 million Americans — most of whom live in rural communities — that internet hasn’t yet reached them. As a result, they remain tethered to old technology.  Which. Is. Sluggish. Shoddy. Antiquated. And, needless to say, inadequate for today’s hyperactive digital economy. We’re hearing a lot about wireless, 5G broadband as the next new Internet access technology to free us. Indeed, it represents a breakthrough in terms of speed and reliability.   But deploying it is slow and expensive.      5G’s design requires erecting at least 800,000 “small cell” antennas nationwide for adequate universal, 5G coverage to occur. That’s three times the infrastructure already in service — a monumental task for an industry to undertake quickly.    Each one of those 5G small cells must be tethered to the network with fiber optic lines. And that involves permitting, trenching, and stringing fiber to small cell antennas in every neighborhood across the U.S. It’s almost as if it was a wired technology, which offers no real shortcut to new network deployment.  The upshot of this is that for the 20 million rural Americans who currently lack adequate broadband, 5G won’t soon make it to them. Sparse populations in rural areas aren’t dense enough to justify 5G’s expense. No worries, though. Right now, the FCC is studying a proposal that would help millions of rural Americans get blazing fast Internet almost overnight through the creation of a new licensed, fixed-point-to-multipoint (PMP) wireless broadband service in the spectrum’s so-called C-Band.  PMP service has the advantage of quickly delivering broadband to customers at 15 percent of the cost of tethered fiber. The architecture is relatively simple: Wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) purchase raw Internet access from fiber providers and then beam that via spectrum to customer antennas placed on houses or businesses — and customer antennas communicate wirelessly back to the WISP, creating high-speed, two-way communications. Spectrum is this critical infrastructure which eliminates the need for individually wiring each home and business. The C-Band’s unique characteristics make it ideal for carrying fast, near-gigabit services over long distances, which is especially good for covering rural areas.  There is over 500 MHz of C-Band available, but today’s FCC rules allocate it primarily for satellite earth stations. The Commission’s regulations are designed to prevent interference so those earth stations can receive signals sent from satellites 23,000 miles in outer space.  This protection leaves the spectrum highly underutilized. Ironically, it also presents an immense opportunity.  With today’s technology, C-Band underutilization means only 300 MHz of the spectrum is truly needed for the earth stations to work. Frequency coordination (used throughout the spectrum) can make this swath even more efficient, enabling sharing with other uses — e.g., fixed PMP services — in a way that doesn’t cause interference. The FCC should seize this opportunity and repurpose the C-Band so the public can get more out of that valuable infrastructure. For rural communities. To decrease the digital divide. To boost competition. The FCC should allocate 300 MHz of the C-Band for shared use between PMP services and legacy satellite services. And with the remaining 200 MHz, it should clear it for FCC auction for other wireless services.  Earth stations would be protected from interference. New, wireless broadband services would abound. The U.S. Treasury and the American taxpayer would reap a handsome windfall. Rural communities would almost overnight get the modern internet they deserve. And the Smith Farm’s automated inventory system could “talk” 24/7/365 with the cloud, organizing each day’s business affairs. Hello, Global Market? This is the Smiths on County Road 101. We’ve got 2,000 gallons of milk and five pallets of eggs ready for hauling today. Ready to receive them? FCC – can you help Farmer Smith make that delivery? Claude Aiken is president and CEO of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), the voice of the fixed wireless broadband industry. Prior to joining WISPA, Aiken worked at the FCC, where he served as staff attorney and as advisor to Chairman Tom Wheeler and to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Follow him on Twitter @ctaiken View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2017-03-13

Chinese officials are issuing new warnings about the specter of global religious extremism seeping into the country, following reports of fighters from China's Muslim minority fighting alongside militants in Syria and Iraq. Sharhat Ahan, a top political and legal affairs party official in Xinjiang, on Sunday became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to warn about China becoming destabilized by the "international anti-terror situation" and calling for a "people's war." Over the past year, regional leaders in Xinjiang, home to the Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) ethnic minority, have ramped up surveillance measures and police patrols and staged massive rallies intended to showcase the power of the security forces. Those demonstrations are intended to "declare war against terrorists, to showcase the party and the government's resolve to fight terror, resolve to preserve public safety and (China's) mighty combat strength," Ahan told officials gathered in Beijing for this month's National People's Congress. Although some scholars question whether global jihadi networks are active in the country, top Chinese officials are increasingly echoing strands of international discourse to back up claims that Islamic extremism is growing worldwide and needs to be rolled back. In recent years, hundreds have died in violent incidents mainly in Xinjiang that officials blame on Uighur separatists inspired by the global Jihadi cause. While it has provided little evidence, the government, says Xinjiang faces a grave separatist threat from Uighur fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. IS released a video in late February purportedly showing Uighur fighters training in Iraq and vowing to strike China, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. Officials from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region — which has an ethnic Hui population that is predominantly Muslim but, unlike Xinjiang, rarely sees separatist or religious violence — warned similarly this past week about the perils of Islamic extremism. Speaking at a regional meeting open to the media, Ningxia Communist Party secretary Li Jianhua drew comparisons to the policies of President Donald Trump's administration to make his point. "What the Islamic State and extremists push is jihad, terror, violence," Li said. "This is why we see Trump targeting Muslims in a travel ban. It doesn't matter whether anti-Muslim policy is in the interests of the U.S. or it promotes stability, it's about preventing religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture." Wu Shimin, a former ethnic affairs official from Ningxia, said that ideological work must be strengthened in the region to promote a Chinese identity among its Hui population, the descendants of Muslim traders plying the Silk Road centuries ago. "The roots of the Hui are in China," Wu said. "To discuss religious consciousness, we must first discuss Chinese consciousness. To discuss the feelings of minorities, we must first discuss the feelings of the Chinese people." The officially atheistic Communist Party has long viewed religion with suspicion but has generally granted a fair degree of religious freedom to its Hui minority, especially in their heartland of Ningxia, where mosques dot the skyline. The party has kept a far tighter grip over Xinjiang's Uighurs — who have a language, culture and physical features that are more closely linked to Central Asia — partly due to the existence of a decades-old separatist movement. But the comments by party officials in Ningxia, seen as traditionally more lax on ethnic and religious policy, reflected the top Chinese leadership's growing anxieties about Islam more broadly over the past year, analysts said. "There's a strengthening trend of viewing Islam as a problem in Chinese society," a Mohammed al-Sudairi, a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. "Xi Jinping has been quite anxious about what he saw as the loss of party-state control over the religious sphere when he entered power, which necessitated this intervention. I don't think things will take a softer turn." Follow CNBC International on and Facebook.

2016-06-06 00:00:00

Former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Monday criticized presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat O'Rourke: Trump driving global, U.S. economy into recession Manchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms MORE for taking a “dangerous” and “irresponsible” approach to foreign policy. “I worry that it’s sending a signal to countries abroad that a candidate for president of the United States really doesn’t know what he really wants to do when it comes to protecting our national security,” Panetta said in an interview on CNN. “He takes one position one day and another position the next day,” Panetta added. “This is a dangerous approach for someone who wants to be commander in chief of the United States.” The comments echo scathing criticism unleashed by Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonLewandowski on potential NH Senate run: If I run, 'I'm going to win' Fighter pilot vs. astronaut match-up in Arizona could determine control of Senate Progressive Democrats' turnout plans simply don't add up MORE, who served alongside Panetta as secretary of State. In a speech last week, Clinton attempted to pivot toward a general election match-up against Trump by deriding his lack of foreign policy chops and calling him “temperamentally unfit” to serve as commander in chief.   Trump’s policy suggestions, some of which have been criticized by fellow Republicans, are “dangerously incoherent,” Clinton warned last Thursday. On CNN, Panetta zeroed in on Trump’s suggestion that Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia should be able to obtain nuclear weapons. “It’s very dangerous for a presidential candidate to shoot from the hip when it comes to dealing with issues in the world, and in particular to dealing with nuclear issues,” said Panetta, who has endorsed Clinton. “That attitude is an embarrassment. It’s also irresponsible.” Trump has tried to walk back his suggestion about Japan, in particular, claiming in recent days that he “never said” that the Asian nation should acquire nuclear weapons. While Trump never explicitly called for Japan and other nations to achieve nuclear capabilities, he has repeatedly suggested openness to the idea. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2019-05-16

An Alabama lawmaker who voted against the state’s controversial ban on nearly all abortions criticized the measure in a column for Elle on Thursday, saying it is time for women to "rise up." State Sen. Linda Coleman-Madison, one of eight Democrats who opposed the law Tuesday and one of only four women in the chamber, introduced an amendment requiring the state to provide free prenatal and medical care to any woman denied an abortion under the law, which was voted down. “I wanted to shout, 'This isn't your body that you're making decisions about!' Instead, I made sure the ramifications of the bill were understood, like a likely increase in back alley abortions. The other congressmen remained quiet as I brought up these points,” Coleman-Madison wrote. “I could tell, as I caught glimpses of several of them, that there was a kind of a shame on their faces.” Coleman-Madison also expressed dismay at Gov. Kay Ivey’s (R) decision to sign the measure, saying that while she respected Ivey, she had prioritized her party over the people of Alabama in signing the bill into law. "All 25 of the senators who ended up voting 'yes' on the bill were male. I'm angry and I'm mad about the outcome," she wrote. "I'm numb, in a sense, because I can't believe this is happening. It's devastating. How can a man, who doesn't know what it's like to carry a baby, make a decision about a woman's body?" Coleman-Madison’s state senate colleague, Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton (D), also spoke out against the legislation, telling CNN’s “New Day” that the legislation “raped women.” "I hate to think the fact that if someone would rape my daughter at 12 years old ... that is just sad to tell my daughter that she had to carry that baby for nine months here in the state of Alabama and look that rapist in the face for the rest of her life,” Singleton said Wednesday. The legislation bans abortion in all cases except when the life of the mother is threatened, with penalties of up to 99 years in prison for anyone performing an abortion. Some proponents of the law have expressed hope that it will lead to the Supreme Court’s conservative majority revisiting the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2017-12-08

Dec 8 (Reuters) - Alphax Food System Co Ltd * Says it plans to sign business alliance agreement with Glory Ltd on Dec. 8 * Says two entities will cooperate on development of restaurant-related self-register system Source text in Japanese: goo.gl/RFhPy7 Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)

2016-11-21

A “Saturday Night Live” star is blasting Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat O'Rourke: Trump driving global, U.S. economy into recession Manchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms MORE in an expletive-filled online post, after the president-elect criticized last week’s show as unfunny and “biased.” “F--- you bitch,” comedian Pete Davidson posted on Instagram, in response to Trump’s critical tweet about “SNL.” The 23-year-old comedian — who had supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonLewandowski on potential NH Senate run: If I run, 'I'm going to win' Fighter pilot vs. astronaut match-up in Arizona could determine control of Senate Progressive Democrats' turnout plans simply don't add up MORE — wrote to his more than 400,000 Instagram followers that he’s “never been more proud.” Never been more proud. Fuck you bitch A photo posted by pete davidson (@petedavidson) on Nov 20, 2016 at 10:51am PST Never been more proud. Fuck you bitch A photo posted by pete davidson (@petedavidson) on Nov 20, 2016 at 10:51am PST Alec Baldwin reprised his role as Trump for a sketch on Saturday in which the real estate mogul appears unprepared for office as he discusses military strategy and interviews potential Cabinet picks. Trump has slammed “SNL” before after it poked fun at him. “Time to retire boring and unfunny show,” he wrote on Twitter last month. Trump guest hosted an episode of “SNL” last November. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2017-05-08 00:00:00

Maple, a New York City-based startup that delivered healthy meals, has shut down its operations and sold its tech assets to Deliveroo, a big European food delivery startup. As part of the deal, Maple's C-suite executives (likely along with other company employees) will join Deliveroo's team in London. Pedigree: Maple was initially backed by Momofuko chef David Chang, but Chang would later help launch a rival meal delivery service called Ando. After raising a $26 million Series A round in 2015, Maple was valued at around $115 million. Tough job: Meal delivery startups have been cropping up in the last few years, but it's a challenging business that involves complex labor operations, perishable goods, and tricky forecasting. Many have struggled ― including Munchery and SpoonRocket ― while Postmates and DoorDash had to settle with modest valuations during their recent funding rounds. Leaked financial docs from December revealed a business with tough margins, making Monday's news not much of a surprise.

2019-06-18 00:00:00

It took a YouTube video, a walk-in freezer kept at negative 20 degrees Celsius, and some very cold-tolerant engineering students for researchers to finally figure out why freezing soap bubbles resemble glitter in a snow globe. The trick itself is a popular winter science experiment when temperatures dip below freezing: head outside, blow a soap bubble, gently plop it onto some snow or ice, and watch as crystals dance around on the film until the entire thing is a delicate ice ball. It’s visually stunning — but until very recently, people didn’t know exactly why bubbles freeze in this particular, mesmerizing way. Normally, when a drop of water or a puddle freezes, it starts solidifying into ice at the coldest spot, where it comes in contact with other snow or ice. Fresh ice freezes the neighboring water, creating a nice orderly progression across the puddle called a freeze front. But when you freeze a bubble in a frigid room, all that order quickly goes out the window. It starts growing normally, freezing from the bottom, where it touches the ice, up toward the top, but then, suddenly, hundreds of freeze fronts appear on the bubble’s surface. “It kind of looks like the swirling crystals you’d see in a toy snow globe. That’s why we call it a snow globe effect,” says Jonathan Boreyko, the co-author of a new article about the snow globe effect, just published in the journal Nature Communications. Boreyko, a mechanical engineer, leads a lab at Virginia Tech that focuses on how fluids behave — including how puddles and droplets freeze. When some of his grad students wanted to know if they could look into why bubbles in popular YouTube videos froze in those distinct patterns, he was excited. “I think this is the first time in my life I can say that my paper was inspired by YouTube” Boreyko says. For years, graduate student Farzad Ahmadi and undergraduate Christian Kingett would periodically bundle up in jackets and borrow a neighboring lab’s walk-in freezer — chilled to negative 20 degrees Celsius (negative four degrees Fahrenheit) — to carefully deposit soap bubbles onto ice using pipettes. As a result of all that cold labor, they found that the snow globe effect was driven by something called a Marangoni flow. “That’s just fancy talk for basically, fluids flow from hot to cold at an interface,” Boreyko says. As the bubbles froze in the freezer, the still-liquid part of the bubble kept moving, ripping ice crystals off the growing freeze front and tossing them around. Those ice crystals each created their own freeze front, making the bubble’s surface solidify faster. But in a freezer where everything is the same temperature, how were parts of the bubble heating up enough to create the flow? “It turns out the answer is in the freezing itself,” Boreyko says. “Its very counterintuitive to people not in the field, but when you freeze water it actually warms it up.” That tiny bit of heat (usually just a few degrees) is enough to start the soap moving up toward the top of the bubble, where the freezer is still keeping it cold. After the grad students thawed out a bit, they tried the same experiment at room temperature, again blowing bubbles onto a block of ice. The results were wildly different, as you can see in this video: Instead of freezing entirely, halfway up the bubble the freeze front just... stops. The warmer air in the room keeps the bubble in a weird purgatory until air starts slowly seeping out of tiny holes in the frozen half of the bubble. The holes are so small, that Boreyko says it took several minutes for some of the half-frozen bubbles to collapse fully. Both experiments have wild-looking results, and if you live in a cold climate, you might get the chance to try the experiments for yourself this winter. All you need is some soap solution, a cold surface (like snow), and a day where the air is below freezing. “It’s pretty easy for people to do and that’s part of why I wanted to do this,” Boreyko says. “Anybody can see the effects themselves, and this can inform the why behind the beauty they’re seeing, if they are interested in learning more about it.”

2016-03-16

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Protests erupted in several Brazilian cities on Wednesday after President Dilma Rousseff named her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva chief of staff and a taped conversation fed opposition claims the move was meant to shield Lula from prosecution. In the capital Brasilia, riot police fired pepper spray at more than 5,000 demonstrators who filled the streets outside the presidential palace and Congress building. They waved banners calling for the leftist leader’s resignation and Lula’s arrest. Thousands more demonstrators packed the main Avenue Paulista in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s financial hub, which was the center of national protests on Sunday that drew more than 1 million people onto the streets in a call for Rousseff’s departure. With Brazil’s economy mired in its worst recession in a generation, popular anger at Rousseff is mounting as an investigation into bribes and political kickbacks at state oil company Petrobras (PETR4.SA) taints her inner circle. “I am here for the future of my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren,” said Vera Carneiro, 75, draped in a yellow-and-green Brazilian flag outside the presidency. “Dilma has to go. She and Lula both. Enough is enough.” Rousseff’s appointment of Lula, who was charged last week with money laundering and fraud as part of the probe, was slammed by opposition parties as a desperate attempt to rally support in Congress against impeachment proceedings due to start on Thursday. Lula, a 70-year-old former union leader whose 2003-2010 government helped lift some 40 million Brazilians out of poverty, remains one of Brazil’s most influential politicians. However, the corruption investigation has weakened his sway in Congress and there are growing signs that Rousseff’s main coalition partner is preparing to abandon the government. “Brazil cannot continue with them anymore,” said Rubens Bueno, one of dozens of opposition lawmakers who interrupted a session with chants for Rousseff to resign. “They are using their positions to stay in power at all cost.” The hurried publication of Lula’s appointment as Rousseff’s chief of staff in a special edition of the government’s Official Gazette on Wednesday gave him immunity from all but the Supreme Court, delaying any attempts to prosecute him. The federal judge overseeing the graft probe said in a court filing released on Wednesday that taped telephone conversations showed Lula and Rousseff considered trying to influence prosecutors and courts in favor of the former president. He admitted, however, there was no evidence they actually carried this out. One recording, made public by the court, showed Rousseff offering to send Lula a copy of his appointment “in case it was necessary” - a possible reference to it providing him with immunity. Facing a government backlash against his release of the recordings, Judge Sergio Moro - whose uncompromising tactics have been repeatedly criticized by authorities - said they allowed the public to scrutinize Brazil’s leaders. “Democracy in a free society requires that the governed know what their leaders do, even when they try to act in the protected shadows,” he wrote. Lula’s lawyer, Cristiano Zanin Martins, said the decision to release the wiretaps by the court was arbitrary and intended to stir up demonstrations. The presidential palace said it would take action against the judge and that Lula’s swearing in would go ahead as planned on Thursday morning. Rousseff said Lula was chosen as chief of staff for his experience and that he has a history of championing sound economic policies and fighting inflation. She said his appointment would not mean he was above investigation as he could be tried by the Supreme Court. The former president’s return to Brasilia was overshadowed on Tuesday by the release of plea bargain testimony from Senator Delcídio do Amaral, who alleged Lula and Rousseff knew about the graft scheme at Petrobras and one of her ministers had tried to buy his silence. Lula, Rousseff and her ministers have denied any wrongdoing. Veja magazine reported on Wednesday that Prosecutor-General Rodrigo Janot has decided to request an investigation of Rousseff based on the testimony. Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Lula’s nomination stirred concern among investors that he might push Rousseff to abandon austerity measures aimed at cutting a fiscal deficit that hit more than 10 percent of GDP last year. Lula has publicly called for more public spending to drag Brazil out of recession. Credit rating agency Moody’s, which downgraded Brazil’s debt to junk status last month, said his appointment marked a shift toward political expediency at the expense of fiscal reforms. Brazil’s currency slid as much as 2 percent on Wednesday, and has lost around 6 percent this week as Rousseff’s invitation to Lula fed fears of a policy swing. Additional reporting by Alonso Soto, Lisandra Paraguassy and Maria Carolina Marcello in Brasilia and Guillermo Parra-Bernal in Sao Paulo; Writing by Brad Haynes and Daniel Flynn; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Kieran Murray

2020-02-28 00:00:00

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand said on Friday that it would release provisional data on its trade with China in the four weeks to Feb. 23, in a special release prompted by heightened interest in the impact on businesses from the coronavirus epidemic. Statistics New Zealand will release the data on Monday at 0130 GMT, which will provide an initial snapshot of trade with China in those weeks compared with same period last year. This data will include total trade value with China as well as key exports of meat, fish, dairy and forestry products, the agency said in an media invitation. Global markets headed for the worst week since the world financial crisis in 2008 as investors braced for the coronavirus to become a pandemic. New Zealand’s finance minister said on Thursday that the virus could have a serious impact on the economy in the short-term while new data showed businesses were more pessimistic about their prospects. Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Sam Holmes

2018-07-05 00:00:00

The AP today paints a picture of Trump's cabinet as a life of "everyday doses of presidential adulation, humiliation, perks and pestering" after interviewing almost two dozen officials, lawmakers and outside advisers. Why it matters: "Trump has had more turnover of Cabinet-level positions than any president at this point in their tenure in the last 100 years," the AP reports Highlight reel: “The president has complained to confidants that more members of his Cabinet “weren’t good on TV.”” Rex Tillerson and Trump "never clicked" and Tillerson's "passive-aggressive manner infuriated the president, delivering retorts like “if you say so” and “you know best, sir.”” At the end of a speech praising the EPA for its deregulatory accomplishments, "Trump turned to Pruitt across the Oval Office to discuss one other matter, [Scott Pruitt's scandals.] “Knock it off,” Trump said."" When Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced his recusal from the Russia investigation, “Trump screamed at" staffers he'd called to the Oval Office, including Jared Kushner, then-adviser Steve Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Preibus. "He demand[ed] to know how Sessions could be so “disloyal” while musing that he should fire the attorney general…" “Earlier this year, to mark the one-year anniversary of his confirmation, his senior aides gave [Sessions] a gift: a bulletproof vest emblazoned with his name.” "Trump has remained fond of hard-charging Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, praising his combative briefings with the press." Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis is believed to be the "most successful in managing Trump because he is "soft-spoken in his interactions with the president — often passing up the chance to speak in meetings." "Mattis is a frequent guest at White House lunches and dinners, a sign of his elevated status. He frames his suggestions to the president in terms of his expertise ... White House officials have noticed that Trump sometimes later repeats historical military anecdotes that Mattis related to him — evidence the president was really listening." Go deeper: Read the full report.

2016-09-27 19:19:00

Over a year ago, I told my coming out story on a popular LGBTQ YouTube channel called I'm from Driftwood. In the video, I talked about how difficult it was for me, at age 26, to come out to my Muslim, Palestinian father, despite the fact that I'm not Muslim, was born in Iowa, and came out to most family and friends by age 20. I was surprised by how many people reached out after the video was posted, relating to what I felt was a wholly unique—almost isolating—experience. But what struck me most were two specific emails I received from viewers: one from a closeted Palestinian-American who said my video was the first time he heard the words "gay", "Muslim", and "Palestinian" from the same mouth, and another from a gay Middle Eastern man who called me "a role model for gay people from Muslim backgrounds." My relationship with Islam has always been limited to my relationship with my father; I've never practiced. To suggest I am a role model for young Muslims due to a mere YouTube video wasn't just surprising, it was a reality check: Few role models exist for gay Muslims searching for answers about their identity online. That's why these two had turned to me. Google results for "young, gay, Muslim" or "gay Muslim" show it's both easier and harder to be gay and Muslim today than ever before. Great headway has been made in efforts to bring visibility to the gay Muslim community over the past decade, but what becomes clear after surveying the articles and media you'll find is that homophobia remains nearly as entrenched in Muslim communities as ever. Films like I Am Gay and Muslim, A Jihad for Love, Naz & Maalik or the documentary series Gay Muslims from the UK's Channel 4 relate the struggles faced by gay Muslims, from struggling to come out to coming to terms with "the ambiguity and secretiveness of the life they feel condemned to live," as I Am Gay and Muslim puts it. Articles relate challenges faced by young, gay Muslims who choose to come out and the plight of those who feel they can't. Some tell of the soul-searching or guilt provoked by the Pulse tragedy. More general articles tell of the immense difficulty faced by gay Muslims to reconcile their faith and sexuality, and of the little progress that has been made in bringing visibility to and changing attitudes about the community. What becomes clear is that for gay Muslims searching for resources online, at least in the US, progressive efforts like the Trevor Project or It Gets Better have no match. Instead, they'll be met by a disjointed array of articles and films, only some of which provide positive role models and hope that things do, indeed, get better. Samer, a 25-year-old gay Palestinian living in Maryland, says he "learned to be gay and Muslim through Google and talking to strangers online." He adds that "there are a few resources for adult gay Muslims, but definitely not enough for young gay Muslims." Tareq, a Lebanese gay man born Shia Muslim who has since left the religion, advocates for taking a global perspective when thinking about how things may be getting better or worse for young gay Muslims. "Lebanon is better off than most [Arab countries] in terms of resources," he said. "We have had a gay rights NGO since 2002, but that NGO has had its fair share of controversies. There's now an Arabic word for gay that is not derogatory—'mithly'—and a number of talk shows have discussed the matter, and a number of gay people have come out on them. Yet we still have a long way to go before being gay is tolerated in our part of the world." Both Tareq and Samer refused to disclose their full names for this article. While Tareq said he would settle for any increase in resources online, Samer wished specifically for a support group of people like him—people with unaccepting families and a crisis of faith brewing within. But if the internet's answer to a support group is a message board, resources available for gay Muslims are bleak. The first message board I found through Google, Al-Jannah, alleges it's "concentrating on creating a strong community for various types of LGBT Muslims, not just for those who are out, also those who are in closet." The first thread on the page, labeled "Introductions" and updated as recently as last week, is mostly peppered with classified soliciting "MOCs". MOCs, or marriages of convenience—marriages established for some practical purpose other than that of love or family ties—are still a reality in many parts of the Arab world. One post on Al-Jannah relates a woman's search for a masculine gay man for an MOC, because it would devastate her family should they discover she's a lesbian. Her ideal gay husband would be a great friend, someone who would understand that eventually, they may both find other, same-sex partners. It's a bleak but representative example of the kind of arrangement many gay Muslims seek out in lieu of coming out. For a young person to stumble upon such a post in the course of naturally curious online research is unsettling, and it's not a far leap to expect they may come to see such arrangements as normal. Legitimate Muslim LGBTQ advocacy organizations exist, but their websites are difficult to find and tricky to navigate. Several articles cite the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity as an authority, but their web presence is updated infrequently and contains little actionable information. Muslims for Progressive Values has a more robust web and social presence for LGBTQ Muslims, and should be a guiding light for current and future organizations in the space. After an exhaustive look at myriad search results, what's noticeably absent from the most accessible news articles and advocacy organizations online are far-reaching campaigns or stories that give LGTBQ Muslims a human voice. Where It Gets Better and the Trevor Project have succeeded is in their ability to humanize gay people and start a loud conversation about issues like bullying and suicide that were once only whispered about. Janet Mock launched a hashtag, #girlslikeus, in 2012 in pursuit of trans visibility. It still trends today. With more resources like those—those which seek to humanize the lives of gay Muslims—young people might see that they aren't condemned to the closet. "I think sharing your story is the biggest responsibility a LGBTQ person has," said Nathan Manske, the founder of I'm from Driftwood. "It changes lives, it saves lives, and to keep your story a secret is a disservice to the community." Follow Khalid El Khatib on Twitter.

2016-04-14 10:15:00

We knew Princess Kate couldn’t resist the opportunity to pack a certain Bhutanese style – and we were right! Not long after stepping off the plane in the magical Himalayan country of Bhutan, Kate had slipped out of her Emilia Wickstead yellow coat dress (a re-wear with the addition of a new matching belt) and straight into a Bhutanese “kira” – the traditional dress still proudly worn by many Bhutanese women today. The chosen design is “simple and not very intricate but very beautiful,” Bhutanese weaver Kelzang Wangmo told PEOPLE through a translator. • Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter. This was Mrs Wangmo's reaction when we told her the news: pic.twitter.com/mbgdAKemp1 — Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) April 14, 2016 With a decadent purple hue and a delicate blue floral pattern, the fabric takes up to two months to make, despite the simplicity of the piece. Putting her own spin on the look, Kate chose not to wear the full kira, which is normally draped around the entire body and secured with a brooch and a hand woven belt. Instead, Kate opted to wear a sarong-style kira skirt with a contemporary Paul & Joe wool cape, which was embroidered in India and retails for $520. “Normally the kira is not really a skirt, it is more of a dress because it comes right up to the neck – which is the traditional way of wearing it,” explains the translator. “But some Bhutanese women wear a half kira, which is more modern and similarly the Duchess has chosen this style.”

2018-04-01 00:00:00

Here's Joanna Krupa declaring her allegiance to Poland's #1 UFC star, Joanna Jedrzejczyk ... and using some questionable vernacular along the way. We got Krupa -- who moved from Poland to the U.S. when she was 5 -- in the Bev Hills ... where 'The Real Housewives' star told us she was a huge fan of her same-name sister. "I love her. She’s Polish, of course I support her!" Krupa told TMZ Sports. But when we asked if JJ could beat Rose Namajunas in their UFC title rematch ... that's when things got a little dicey. "She can do it, she’s a Pol**k. Pol**k’s rule!" "We're driven ... especially if you come from a communist country you have that in your blood." FYI, the P-word ain't really the most P.C. term ... and Poland hasn't technically been communist in 3 decades. But, hey -- we're sure JJ still appreciates all the love.

2019-04-11 13:30:01

update The 10-story Jewel, offering visitors a forest, indoor waterfall and more than 280 stores and restaurants, hopes to make the Singapore airport a destination in itself. At first glance, visitors to the new Jewel complex at Singapore’s Changi Airport might feel like they have entered some mythical dimension. An indoor waterfall — the tallest in the world — drops 130 feet from an oculus the size of a bus. A Canopy Park has nets for bouncing and walking strung as high as 80 feet above the ground. A forest of 1,400 trees provides greenery and shade. The multi-floored Jewel, an asymmetrical toroid-shaped building between the airport’s existing terminals and the air-traffic control tower, opens officially on April 17. The result of four years of construction and $1.25 billion in investment, the commercial and entertainment structure aims to do what no other building has done: make an airport the destination. “Singapore is a tourist destination, but 30 percent of the people coming through Changi don’t visit,” said Ivan Tan, a senior vice president for Changi Airport Group. The country wants to draw those passengers on connecting flights, get them out to experience a taste of Singapore, so that they might come back for a longer stay. The centerpiece of the building is the Forest Valley with a terraced garden, and its heart is the Rain Vortex waterfall. The top floor, called Canopy Park, features bouncing and walking nets, a 165-foot sky bridge, two mazes (one with mirrors, the other hedges), a giant slide, and eight bars and restaurants. The exterior of the 10-story building, which was designed by the architect Moshe Safdie and built by CapitaLand, an Asian developer, is made of glass and crisscrossed with an aluminum-and-steel framework, allowing the entire interior to be bathed in natural light. “Airports are places of anxiety, and I’d like people to be uplifted and serene and feel good about themselves,” said Mr. Safdie. The Jewel is “the first airport center that serves passengers, airport employees and the people of the city.” The Jewel offers plenty of options for keeping visitors busy, even if shops and other amenities in airports are nothing new. Amsterdam’s Schiphol has a branch of the city’s famous Rijksmuseum, Vancouver International Airport features a 114,000-liter aquarium, and at Kennedy International Airport in New York, JetBlue once ran a concert series. Hong Kong International Airport’s SkyMart and SkyPlaza have more than 350 shops and restaurants spread across two terminals. But the Jewel is an airport mall on steroids: In total, there are 280 retail outlets and food and beverage stops. Familiar stores line the floors — Foot Locker, Nike, the first Shake Shack in Southeast Asia — as well as local Singaporean brands like Naiise and Supermama. Other amenities include a 130-room Yotelair hotel, a full-size supermarket, an 11-screen cinema, and — don’t forget it’s an airport — early check-in counters. In 2018, nearly 66 million passengers flew through the airport, a number that continues to rise. “There is growing demand for air travel,” Mr. Tan said, “Changi had to see how to have capacity to meet that demand.” Mr. Tan and other officials hope that the amenities will lure travelers to leave the terminals during their layovers, even for a short time. (Singapore’s entry policy, which allows citizens of about four-fifths of the world’s countries to enter without a visa, should help.) For that reason the Jewel was designed to adjoin one terminal and link to two others by footbridges (passengers in Terminal 4 need a shuttle bus). As entry to the Jewel does not require airport security screening, Mr. Tan believes locals will also arrive in droves. Officials estimate between 40 to 50 million people will visit during the first year, he said, 60 percent of whom are expected to be residents. “Gardens have always been a place of pleasure,” said Charu Kokate, the principal at Safdie Architects who oversaw the project. On a recent tour of the Jewel, Ms. Kokate pointed out marble floors from China, lava stone blocks from Indonesia and other design considerations. There were many layers to the project, she said. “The sky, the waterfall, the people hidden by the landscaping. Through the glass roof you can see a plane flying overhead, up there are reflections of people next to the slide,” she said. “It’s very active and yet tranquil.” 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you’ll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the senior vice president for Changi Airport Group. He is Ivan Tan, not Heng.

2019-08-26 00:00:00

Russell@ (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) LAUNCESTON, Australia, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Is a global recession now the best chance of forcing a resolution to the escalating trade conflict between the United States and China? If there was any hope of a negotiated solution to the dispute between the world's two largest economies, then U.S. President Donald Trump probably extinguished it last week. Trump reacted to China's imposition of new tariffs on $75 billion in annual imports from the United States by ratcheting up his own tariffs to 30% on $250 billion of Chinese goods, and to 15% on the remaining $300 billion in annual imports. Up until recently many investors and corporates had clung to the view that a deal would eventually be agreed between Washington and Beijing, as it was logical that the two powers would rather compromise than risk lasting damage to their own, and by extension, the global economies. Such optimism ignored the path of the trade dispute, where both sides appear to have woefully misread the intentions and motivations of the other. This has led to a cycle of imposing tariffs, negotiate, fail to agree, exchange condemnatory statements, raise tariffs and then repeat the process all over again, with the occasional optimistic note from Trump's Twitter feed or Beijing's tame media to fuel hope that all will end well. Trump has shown that compromise isn't a concept he understands and that for him to win, you must lose. His Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping has also failed to understand that Trump may well be prepared to keep doubling down on tariffs and the subsequent economic fallout long beyond the point where compromise would have been the more rational option. While Trump's bombast and Twitter tirades gather more of the media attention, Beijing also has been inflexible on legitimate U.S. concerns over intellectual property and market access, and can share the blame for the failure to reach a deal. Financial and commodity markets are now coming to the realisation that the trade war is likely to be prolonged and may well get considerably worse before it gets better. A reflection on the realistic options now available to Trump and Xi makes for sober reading. The best, but probably least likely option, is that two leaders could use their supposed friendship to strike a "captain's deal" whereby they reach a deal amid the fanfare of a one-on-one summit that makes everybody look like a winner, irrespective of the actual content of the agreement. The second option is that tariffs and other non-trade barriers continue to be raised, until they reach a level where the Chinese and U.S. economies are completely divorced from each other. Trump may well be prepared to go down this road, whether he can will depend on whether enough centres of power in the United States could join together to thwart such a destructive path. Given the craven reaction by Trump's fellow Republicans to the escalating trade dispute, it's hard to see Congress acting to rein in the president, give the president's party controls the Senate. NO WINNERS, OTHER THAN GOLD? The corporate sector may be prepared to ramp up its opposition to the tariffs, but whether enough chief executives have the gumption to risk Trump's ire is a question. If the stock market continues to post losses and the tariffs start to make an impact on the real economy through job losses in manufacturing and agriculture, it's possible that Trump may move to end the trade war because his chances of re-election in November next year would be falling. It's also possible that U.S. voters will end the Trump presidency before the trade dispute is resolved, leaving negotiations to the next leader. There is also a chance that Washington and Beijing could agree to at least de-escalate the tensions by rescinding some of the tariffs and agreeing to re-open negotiations. But for now there is little sign that an easing of tensions is likely, meaning both the United States and China will likely have to experience more economic pain before fresh moves are made. The problem for the rest of the world is that it is collateral damage. For crude oil exporters already struggling with low prices, the trade conflict is further bad news as the increasing chance of recession, or at least weak global growth, will weigh on demand. The same applies to other energy producers, such as liquefied natural gas companies and coal miners, not to mention miners of industrial metals such as copper and iron ore. Only gold producers are likely to see any benefit, with the precious metal enjoying more gains in early trade on Monday, climbing as much as 1.9% to a fresh six-year high of $1,554.56 an ounce. While gold is the silver lining of the trade dispute, perhaps another is that last week's escalation should finally put to rest the market hope that this conflict will be resolved and that the extended recovery from the 2008 global recession can continue on its merry way. A realistic assessment of the dispute is that neither the Trump administration or its counterpart in Beijing has yet realised what virtually every economist and business leader already knows, namely that nobody will win the trade war. The only question that remains is how bad will matters have to get before both sides realise that to keep bashing your head against a brick wall isn't a winning strategy. (Editing by Richard Pullin)

2018-01-29

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who abruptly stepped down on Monday, told friends that he felt pressure to leave from the bureau's Director Christopher Wray, The New York Times reported. Wray raised concerns about an impending inspector general report about the actions of FBI officials when the bureau was investigating both Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, the report said. After Wray suggested putting McCabe into another job, which would have been a demotion, the FBI's No. 2 official chose to leave, according to the Times. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment. McCabe already planned to leave in March, when he was eligible for full retirement benefits. Trump has repeatedly and publicly blasted McCabe for what he calls political motivations behind the investigations into Clinton's email server and the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. The president and some congressional Republicans accused him of bias. McCabe was a holdover from the tenure of former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May. He had served in the FBI's No. 2 role since January 2016. McCabe briefly was acting FBI director until the Senate confirmed Wray. The president had thrown jabs at McCabe in a manner unusual for a president and a top FBI official. Trump repeatedly accused McCabe of improper ties to Clinton because former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe — a Clinton ally — backed McCabe's wife's run for a state office in 2015. The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2016 that McAuliffe's political organization gave nearly $500,000 to Jill McCabe's campaign for state Senate. The FBI says McCabe followed the proper steps to avoid conflicts of interest. His wife's run for office also started months before he had any role in the Clinton probe. Later Monday, an NBC News report shed more light on the tensions between the president and the Justice Department. A day after Trump fired Comey, he called McCabe to vent and ask why the ex-FBI director got to take a government-funded plane from Los Angeles to Washington. During the call, Trump suggested that McCabe ask his wife how it feels to be a loser, in an apparent reference to her failed campaign for office, according to NBC. The White House was not involved in McCabe's decision, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday afternoon. "The president was not part of this decision-making process," she said. Read the full New York Times story here.

2019-09-10 16:52:11

The Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea are considered strategically vital zones by Israel for security. If Israel annexed them, it would encircle any future Palestinian state in the West Bank. The vow made on Tuesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex a chunk of the occupied West Bank if he is returned to power by voters next week would, if carried out, mean that Israel would literally surround any future Palestinian state. The area he was talking about covers the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea bordering Jordan, and is roughly a third of the West Bank’s territory. Here’s why the zone is considered so important by Israel and why, in the view of Mr. Netanyahu’s critics, annexation could doom the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. SYRIA Nablus Mediterranean Sea WEST BANK Proposed annexation Tel Aviv Amman Ramallah Jericho Jordan River Jerusalem Dead Sea Hebron JORDAN GAZA STRIP ISRAEL 4 Miles EGYPT Mediterranean Sea Nablus WEST BANK Proposed annexation Tel Aviv Jericho Ramallah Jordan River Jerusalem Dead Sea Hebron GAZA STRIP JORDAN ISRAEL 4 Miles Mediterranean Sea Nablus WEST BANK Jordan River Proposed annexation Tel Aviv Ramallah Jericho Jerusalem Hebron Dead Sea GAZA STRIP ISRAEL JORDAN 4 Miles Source: Government of Israel By The New York Times Speaking at a news conference near Tel Aviv, Mr. Netanyahu asserted that along with the Golan Heights, the valley and northern Dead Sea are “the eastern border of the State of Israel.” He was referring to how the Jordan River separates Jordan, to the east, from Israel and the West Bank. The river flows south from the Sea of Galilee for about 185 miles and feeds into the Dead Sea. Israel considers that natural barrier “an essential strategic asset” to ensure its security and prevent weapons smuggling by Palestinian militants into the West Bank. [If re-elected, Netanyahu says he will annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank.] It’s also a big swath of land. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea comprise almost 30 percent of the West Bank, much of which is already under Israeli control. “This is the eastern defensive wall that guarantees that we will never again be a mere few miles wide,” Mr. Netanyahu said. Much of the area in question is open, arable land that the Israeli Army already uses for operations. The area also has enormous potential for agricultural and energy projects, among other uses. The Dead Sea draws tourists, and salt and minerals are mined there. Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Most of the world considers it occupied territory and Israeli settlements there to be illegal. Nonetheless, about 200 settlements have been established in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their capital under a two-state solution to the conflict. The Jewish Virtual Library, a website run by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, said that efforts to establish Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley date back to shortly after the 1967 war. The thinking was that if the area were settled by Jews, then Jerusalem, the disputed holy city regarded by Israel as its capital, would be more central in relation to the rest of the country. (In a diplomatic victory for Mr. Netanyahu, President Trump moved the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last year, despite international criticism that Jerusalem’s status has not been resolved.) Palestinian leaders have said that the settlements are among the major obstacles to any possible peace agreement with Israel. [Why the Arab world isn’t outraged by Netanyahu’s West Bank vow.] According to B’Tselem, nearly 90 percent of the Jordan Valley and the area around the northern Dead Sea has already been designated as part of what is known as Area C, meaning it is under full Israeli security and civil control. B’Tselem says Israel has restricted Palestinians from building, or even entering much of the land. By its count, in 2016, there were about 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 settlers living there, B’Tselem said. The areas not designated as Area C include the city of Jericho, which would not be annexed under Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal. The prime minister argued that his plan would give Israel “secure, permanent borders” to the east for the first time in its history. He said he wanted to seize on the Trump administration’s openness to Israeli annexation of at least parts of the West Bank. In an interview in June, the United States ambassador, David M. Friedman, asserted that Israel has a right to annex at least some of the West Bank, a view that is rejected by many other countries.

2018-01-22 00:00:00

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday the U.S. has been "discouraging the Kurds from dialogue" with the Syrian government and sowing “separatist sentiment” among them, per the AP. Lavrov said this shows a “lack of understanding of the situation or a deliberate provocation” and urged all involved parties to recognize Syria’s sovereignty. Why it matters: This comes as Turkey is launching an offensive to boot out Kurdish forces with links to the U.S. in Syria over the weekend, and Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said Turkey has an agreement with Russia over the assault. The U.S. detailed plans last week to continue backing Kurdish forces in the region to ensure that ISIS or other rogue elements don’t regain control of the territory, setting up fuel for the showdown to continue. Now that ISIS lacks a physical caliphate in the region, the powers with overlapping and conflicting interests in the region are butting heads — not that they weren’t before. The conflict now is taking on a different form, one in which the various parties in Syria tend to disagree about Syria’s future, in which a political solution post-ISIS remains to be determined, and on top of all that, the war is ongoing. These tensions will only ramp up from here. Keep in mind... Russia supports a Syrian future with President Bashar al-Assad in power. Iran has been backing Assad as well. Turkey's Erdogan broke with Russia and Iran last month when he called Assad a terrorist and questioned whether there could be a political solution involving the president. The U.S. has said there is no future for Assad in Syria, but has also said the future of Syria must be determined by the Syrian people.

2018-11-21 00:00:00

London 1938: Defending “Degenerate” German Art tells the story of a monumental British exhibition of artists persecuted by the Nazis. Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads BERLIN — In January 1933, the Nazis celebrated their first General Election victory with an elaborate parade down the streets of Berlin. After watching them march triumphantly through the Brandenburg Gate, the famous painter and printmaker Max Liebermann was said to have proclaimed, “I want to throw up.” Though he would not live to see the systematic genocide of Europe’s Jewish population, the end of Liebermann’s life was indelibly marked by Nazi policies as they veered ever closer towards the so-called “Final Solution.” Throughout the Weimar period, prior to the Nazis taking power, Liebermann had been a celebrated German-born Jewish painter, one of the leading proponents of impressionism in Germany well before it had become fashionable. In 1920, he took up the post of President at the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts; in 1932, the Nazis forced him to resign from this position. He died in 1935. Three years later, 22 of Liebermann’s paintings were shown in a historic exhibition in London, titled Twentieth Century German Art. Featuring 300 works by modern artists who were facing persecution in Germany, the exhibition was the largest foreign response to the Nazis’ censure of so-called “degenerate art.” A new exhibition in Berlin, titled London 1938: Defending “Degenerate” German Art, marks the 80th anniversary of Twentieth Century German Art. On view at the Liebermann Villa, which served as Liebermann’s summer residence for many years, the show illustrates the cultural climate and ideologies that led to National Socialists’ persecution of modern artist, and delves into the context and the impact of the 1938 exhibition within Britain and Germany. Among the featured works are paintings from the original London show, including Max Slevogt’s “The Panther” (1931) and Emil Nolde’s “The Young Academic” (1918). (Ironically, Nolde supported the Nazi party and was not Jewish, but his expressionist work still earned him the “degenerate” label.) The Nazis adopted the concept of degenerate art (“entartete kunst”) in the 1920s, influenced by Austro-Hungarian physician and critic Max Nordau, whose 1892-93 book Entartung (“Degeneration”) suggested that ideal beauty could be corrupted by art and aesthetics. “Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists and pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists,” Nordau wrote. The Nazis came to view modernism as a perverted style that went against their concept of ethnically pure beauty; Hitler believed this type of art was dangerous because it was celebrated by Jews and communists, whom he believed would contaminate Aryan identity. In July 1937, the Nazis staged their infamous Degenerate Art exhibition at the Haus der Deutsche Kunst (known today as the Haus der Kunst) in Munich. It featured about 650 works of modern art seized by Adolf Ziegler, whom Hitler had tasked with purging German museums of art deemed antithetical to Nazi ideology. Works by the likes of Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Oskar Kokoschka were hung in a haphazard and chaotic manner. Some of the wall texts read “madness becomes method” or “revelation of the Jewish racial soul.” Degenerate Art came to be one of the most attended exhibitions in recorded history: over the course of five months, it attracted more than two million visitors. Ironically, in their attempts to purge modern art, the Nazis effectively canonized it, helping to draw the world’s attention to an entire generation of artists who had been adversely affected by persecution. Soon after the Degenerate Art exhibition, the British art dealer Noel “Peter” Norton and her colleagues began making plans to stage a response to it. At the same time, Zurich-based art dealer Irmgard Burchard was arranging a show of many of the émigré German artists persecuted by the Nazis. The two women agreed to combine their efforts. With the help of German-Jewish art critic Paul Westheim, they selected works to feature in what became the 1938 Twentieth Century German Art exhibition in London. In little over nine months, the group secured over 90 lenders for the London exhibition. However, from the original group of three organizers, only Burchard was named in the catalogue as an “honorary organizer.” Westheim had stepped down after learning that the exhibition’s title would be changed from Banned Art to Twentieth Century German Art, which he believed de-politicized the exhibition’s significance. Nevertheless, the opening night of the London exhibition saw many cultural luminaries from far and wide in attendance, including then-director of the National Gallery, Sir Kenneth Clark, Virginia Woolf, Pablo Picasso, and Le Corbusier. Although the exhibition’s title and accompanying catalogue essay attempted to downplay its political significance, the high-profile guests in attendance sent a clear and powerful message that “degenerate art” was now the toast of European high art. 80 years later, the Liebermann Villa, in conjunction with the Wiener Library in London, has organized a show that tells the remarkable story of this momentous exhibition. It juxtaposes samples of the original London artworks with documentary information regarding their lenders and the reasons for their loans. Noteworthy works featured include a landscape painting of Murnau by Wassily Kandinsky, 13 of whose works were originally included in Twentieth Century German Art, as well as “Poison” (1932), by Paul Klee. Amid a disturbing resurgence of far-right ideologies throughout Europe and the US, London 1938 — Defending “Degenerate” German Art attests to the importance of cultural freedom and international exchange as a means of countering fascist propaganda. It reminds us that #MuseumsAreNotNeutral; they actively shape public values. They have power. A power that can act as a catalyst for social change, or a power that can generate hate and putrefaction — a point that is as important to remember today as it was in 1938. London 1938 — Defending “Degenerate” German Art is on view from October 7, 2018 until January 14 2019 at Liebermann Villa (Colomierstraße 3 14109 Berlin, Germany). The exhibition is co-curated by Christine Schmidt and Barbara Warnock.

2020-01-22 00:00:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain moved a step closer to its Jan. 31 exit from the European Union when the legislation required to ratify its deal with Brussels passed its final stage in parliament on Wednesday. The bill will officially become law when it receives Royal Assent from Queen Elizabeth, something that could happen as soon as Thursday. “At times it felt like we would never cross the Brexit finish line, but we’ve done it,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement. “Parliament has passed the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, meaning we will leave the EU on 31 January and move forwards as one United Kingdom.” Earlier on Wednesday, the lower house of parliament, the House of Commons overturned changes the upper house, the House of Lords, had made to the legislation, including a clause to ensure protections for child refugees after Brexit. Johnson had refused to accept any changes to the bill, which will enact Britain’s departure from the EU, facing down opposition lawmakers who say he has hardened its terms. The Lords could have sought to reinstate the changes, but opted not to, allowing the legislation to clear its final hurdle in Britain. A consent vote in the EU Parliament will take place on Jan 29. Johnson’s Conservatives won a large majority in the House of Commons in a general election last month, enabling the government to bring an end to more than three years of wrangling in parliament over Britain’s EU exit. Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Kylie MacLellan and Alistair Smout, editing by William James and Stephen Addison

2016-11-02 00:00:00

Nov 2 (Reuters) - Summit Materials Inc * Q3 adjusted earnings per share $0.73 * Q3 revenue $480.2 million versus $426.3 million * Summit materials inc says reaffirmed full year 2016 adjusted EBITDA financial guidance of $360.0 million to $370.0 million * Q3 earnings per share view $0.70, revenue view $477.9 million — Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S * Summit materials inc says for full year 2016, company is reiterating its gross capital expenditures guidance to be in range of $150.0 million to $170.0 million * Q3 earnings per share $0.61 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

2018-12-24

CASILLAS, Guatemala (Reuters) - A bitter drama playing out over a Guatemalan silver project forced to close by the courts has shocked miners throughout Latin America, sounding a warning to firms to approach indigenous issues more cautiously or pay the consequences. Work at the Escobal mine, where U.S.-based Tahoe Resources has invested more than $500 million, was abruptly suspended last year by judges pending consultation of nearby indigenous Xinca communities, a decision upheld by Guatemala’s top court in September. Leaders of the Xinca, a mainly farming community which claims a 400,000-strong population, oppose the mine due to worries it will harm their ancestral land and water resources. The court ordered the mining ministry to “immediately” begin consultations, although the process is already bogged down in litigation over which specific Xinca towns should take part. The slow-burning squabble illustrates the pitfalls firms can face from determined and increasingly sophisticated opponents, often a combination of environmental activists and local communities, according to company executives and sector analysts. “It’s a reminder that a secure mining investment requires obtaining a social license first,” said Luis Rivera, a Lima-based executive with South African miner Gold Fields. The Santiago-based Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America estimates there are 256 active disputes spread across 20 countries, with the highest number in Mexico, Chile and Peru. “Everywhere in the world, indigenous people have a lot of influence on politicians and when you go up against some of these groups... you almost can’t win,” said an executive at a Canada-based miner with projects across the Americas, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. The executive has decades of experience negotiating over indigenous consultations required by the United Nations International Labor Organization’s Convention 169 (ILO 169), which was invoked in the Guatemalan court decision. ILO 169 requires that companies enter into a dialogue with affected indigenous communities in the early phases of projects, something that did not happen before construction of Escobal, home to the world’s second largest silver deposit. In neighboring Mexico, around 10 mining and energy projects suffered major delays this year alone due to problems with indigenous consultations, said Gabino Fraga, a consultant who has helped firms including miner Penoles and state oil company Pemex navigate consultations. Fraga says more clashes are likely across the region if governments and companies do not spend more time and resources on consultations. Escobal secured its extraction license in 2013 - producing some 20 million ounces of silver through 2017 - but the court’s decision to side with its environmentalist and Xinca foes was the first time Guatemalan judges had halted an operational mine over indigenous consultations. Tahoe Resources’ shares have fallen by more than half since last year, with losses deepening since the September ruling. In a new twist, Canadian miner Pan American Silver Corp offered to buy Tahoe last month, including a conditional payment hinging on the restart of shipping silver concentrate from Escobal. That could prove a risky bet if the Xinca dig in their heels on the consultation. Gabriela Roca, an executive and lawyer with Tahoe Resource’s local unit Minera San Rafael, suggested the court-ordered consultations could take as little as a few months if all parties act in “good faith”. If not, they could drag on for up to five years. “The consultation isn’t a vote, it isn’t a veto or a plebiscite, it’s a dialogue,” she said. An Inter-American Development Bank report published last year on conflicts in 200 projects in Latin America and the Caribbean - nearly half from extractive industries - said a lack of adequate consultations caused them in 74 percent of cases. The report further concluded that in nearly 9 out of 10 cases conflicts involving indigenous communities worsened when potentially affected groups were not consulted. Far from easing tensions, the court ruling appears to have galvanized Escobal’s opponents. Next to the mine’s mothballed property in the town of Casillas, approaching trucks are inspected by locals seeking to enforce the suspension at what they dub a “resistance camp”. A few dozen young men sat watching, several of whom carried machetes, while a couple of others held what appeared to be pipes at the ready that could be used to fire crude projectiles. Minera San Rafael and its workers have also been accused of heavy-handedness by critics, including allegations of kidnapping and violent intimidation. The company rejects the accusations. As Guatemala’s mining ministry prepares for consultations to kick off some time next year, the Xinca leadership is adamant it will not participate in any future dialogue over the mine, the president of their parliament, Aleisar Arana, said in a recent interview. Hailing the court ruling as a new “independence”, Arana hopes it will inspire other indigenous groups to join the fight against projects like the Escobal mine. “It’s something we view as a threat and an invasion,” he said. Additional reporting by Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City and Mitra Taj in Lima; editing by Richard Pullin

2020-03-04 00:00:00

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s services sector shrank at the fastest pace in nearly six years in February as a jolt from the coronavirus threatens to push the economy into recession, dashing hopes of a domestic-led recovery. Pressure on the world’s third-largest economy has built rapidly during the past weeks as consumer and business sentiment are taking a sharp hit from a deepening slowdown in China, Asia’s largest economy. The final seasonally adjusted au Jibun Bank Japan Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) slumped to 46.8 in February from 51.0 in the previous month, its lowest reading since April 2014 when a nationwide tax hike jolted the economy. The headline figure was slightly above a preliminary reading of 46.7. The survey data highlighted a widening fallout from the coronavirus epidemic just as consumers were coming to grips with October’s tax hike, with new business contracting at the fastest pace in eight-and-a-half years. Japan’s economy is “exceedingly likely” to slip into recession in the current quarter following its contraction in the three months to December unless it sees an exceptional rebound in March, said Joe Hayes, economist at IHS Markit, which compiled the survey. “Policymakers are powerless in offsetting the economic effects of coronavirus,” Hayes said. “Supply chains are likely to face bottlenecks as Chinese vendors face heavy backlogs, while increasing cases of COVID-19 outside of China will do little to spur consumers to travel and go out to restaurants.” Firms were hit by lower levels of tourism because of fewer foreign visitors in Japan, with survey respondents saying they had to close their stores due to a lack of work. Business expectations fell, growing at the slowest pace since July 2016, suggesting the economy is likely to remain under pressure for the time being. The composite PMI, which includes both manufacturing and services, also shrank at the fastest pace since April 2014, falling to 47.0 from January’s final 51.0. Reporting by Daniel Leussink; Editing by Sam Holmes

2016-08-13

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2018-03-07 09:39:08

Kimba Journal KIMBA, Australia — A giant gray and rosy pink bird towers over travelers as they enter this dry, isolated rural town on the edge of a vast grain-growing belt in South Australia. The aging 8-meter statue, of a local species of cockatoo called the galah, marks a roughly midway point between the eastern and western coasts of Australia. Standing in front of the Halfway Across Australia Gem Shop, the Big Galah is all Kimba was ever really known for — until about a year ago. That’s when two local farming families offered their properties to the federal government as potential storage sites for Australia’s nuclear waste. Now, as the federal government considers whether to build the site on one of these two farms in Kimba, this community of about 650 people finds itself divided and angry. The prospect of jobs and subsidies that the site would bring has split locals between those who want to preserve rural Australia’s way of life and those who say the glory days of farming are over. “People say it’s a really thriving town, but underneath people are paddling like hell to keep up,” said Annie Clements, in her 70s, and a member of the Working for Kimba’s Future Group that supports the nuclear dump. “This would be something not reliant on agriculture and that’s what we need.” Located near the center of one of the world’s most productive wheat-growing areas, this small farming town on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula is still filled with old stone homes from when it was settled more than a century ago. The bitumen road out of town soon turns to dirt, and farmhouses on big wheat properties are dotted every several miles. Despite the distances, locals say Kimba always had a strong sense of community, at least until the nuclear site was proposed. Some said the allure of millions of dollars’ worth of grants and subsidies that the government was offering the host community had blinded people to the risks. “If it wasn’t for the money that the government’s offering, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Austin Eatts, 89, said on the large wheat farm just out of town where he has lived all his life. Mr. Eatts, from one of the town’s original families, is a neighboring landowner to Michelle and Brett Rayner, who have nominated their farm as a potential site for the nuclear dump. “I share a pipeline with them; I don’t want to share a nuclear waste dump with them,” Mr. Eatts said. Looking at a pile of documents about the proposed facility he had collected over the past year or so, he said he worried about the effect of the radioactive waste on the town’s future generations. The public battle over where to store Australia’s growing pile of medical nuclear waste — including low- and intermediate-level waste like contaminated plastic containers and protective clothing from nuclear research — stretches back years, and several aborted sites. But as the federal government narrows in on this tiny community as one of two potential host communities, fear and outrage about the potential effect of it on Kimba’s farming land has grown. Now the subject of national news coverage, Kimba is so polarized about the debate that families who have been friends for generations now stare at the ground as they walk past each other on the street. Businesses have been boycotted, locals say. Some people have even left the town because of it. Despite the fractures, residents have one thing in common: They want the best for their town. They just can’t agree on what that might be. Ms. Clements, citing the decreasing number of school children and the fact that Kimba will soon lose its only doctor, said she worried that the town is shrinking along with the vigor of the farming economy. “Businesses are struggling,” she said, noting the dozens of empty houses that line the streets here. The farms being considered for the proposed site are 10 to 15 miles outside town. Each year, the amount of low-level waste generated in Australia is smaller than one shipping container, according to government figures, along with intermediate-level radioactive waste the size of a Dumpster. The country has no nuclear power plants. The site is expected to bring more than a dozen jobs, leading supporters to call it a much needed alternative to agriculture for the local economy. Those against the facility, like Peter Woolford, a third-generation Kimba farmer, and part of the No Radioactive Waste on Agricultural Land in Kimba or South Australia group, say it will hurt the prices of crops and farmland. They also worry that Kimba will forever be known as the nuclear dump town. The state of South Australia, where Kimba is located, is no stranger to radiation and radioactive waste. Most of Australia’s uranium mines are here, as is the remote area known as Maralinga where the British tested nuclear weapons in the 1950s. With the site selection process in its final stages, the government has opened an office in the center of Kimba to improve communications with the community. Federal government workers roam the town’s main streets and are often seen mingling with locals — answering questions and trying to assuage fears. Some say their presence has cast a shadow over the town; others say the influx of government officials and the news media has already benefited it. To persuade residents to accept the site, the government has also flown some on all-expenses paid trips to Sydney to view a nearby nuclear laboratory. The federal government has said that it will not choose any site without broad community support. In early 2016, a vote showed that Kimba was almost split down the middle. Later that year, the number in favor had increased slightly. To end the sometimes bitter rift in the community, some politicians are urging the government to find another site. “This has been a needless point of division in the community for more than 18 months now,” Nick Xenophon, a former senator who used to represent the state of South Australia, said in a statement. “It’s time for that to stop.” The Rayners, who offered land on their farm for the waste repository, said that they were convinced of its safety and that they had made the decision to give Kimba a boost. “It’s mainly about the benefits for the town and becoming a federal government town,” Ms. Rayner said. She said she hoped an influx of government workers would bring improved hospital facilities, a higher-quality internet connection and even better television and radio service. “We’re right on the corner of remote,” said her husband, who has been farming the property since 2000. The couple said that while they had no regrets about their decision, what has happened in the community has bothered them. “I think that word nuclear has scared a lot of people,” Ms. Rayner said. “A lot of people don’t know why they don’t want it, they just don’t want it.”

2017-05-25

Is the lack of media diversity a serious national problem? Yes.  Can we do anything about it?  Yes, but only if those of us who truly want media diversity commit to doing more.   In Spring of 2016, we created the Multicultural Media Correspondents Dinner. When the White House Correspondents Association, and its signature event, the White House Correspondents Dinner started over 100 years ago, it was trumpeted as a celebration of journalistic excellence for those select reporters tasked with covering the President of the United States. To this elite group of journalists falls the awesome responsibility of examining and challenging the Administration and ensuring that the public had accurate — fair and balanced — reporting on activities shaping the republic and the world. The WHCA and the dinner itself have remained faithful to its core principles even while becoming a high-profile and star-studded event. However, as the country’s population has grown in ethnic diversity and more Americans are receiving news at a breakneck pace from social and new media, the WHCD has come to exemplify how the media continues to cling to a past that has declining relevance for the future. The elephant in the room — the lack of diversity and inclusion — detracts from what should be a celebration of truth and transparency. Why does this matter?  This crucial reporting continues to be provided predominantly through a lens and mapping that lacks the broader perspective of journalists of color who possess the most sensitivity and proximity to racism, classism and other oppressive forces negatively impacting our society and world view. As a result, trust in the media is at an all-time low among conservatives, liberals, and people of color alike. Furthermore, Millennials and Gen Xers, who are turned off by the lack of cultural diversity in media, are rejecting establishment media outlets in increasing numbers. Further troubling is that this lack of diversity is playing out across the entire digital telecom and media landscape, which accounts for over 25 percent of the GDP and is responsible for shaping the larger social and cultural narrative.  The result is that the media continues to promote misrepresentations and cultural insensitivities that help to perpetuate sharp divisions and negative attitudes toward each other by different racial and socio-economic groups. Similarly, small independent and multicultural media stakeholders — distributors, programmers, journalists, content creators, advertisers, and talent – are struggling to survive and opportunities for new entrants are almost nonexistent. Though great friends, Aaron is a proud Republican, and I am a proud Democrat.  However, we had both grown dismayed at the narrowed fields of vision from mainstream media helping to keep our country artificially divided.  We were similarly dismayed at seeing the negative impact technology transformation, and telecom and media consolidation were having on the already fragile small independent and multicultural media landscape. Added to these threats were rushed efforts to implement a regulatory policy that failed to take into consideration the impact on needed diversity. Thus, we joined forces to do our part.  Though not directly in the media field, we felt that the affected stakeholders were too important to civic engagement and increasing cultural awareness to allow them to die. In 2016, we founded the Multicultural Media Correspondents’ Dinner — MMCD. This somewhat daring notion was to create a new signature event, loosely modeled after the WHCD, with one distinct difference — we would recognize multicultural media luminaries and illuminate the need for diverse perspectives and greater representation across all media. Like the WHCD, we wanted the event to be highly visible and compelling enough to entice corporations, celebrities, and other social influencers to join in the effort and resulting call to action. To coordinate the MMCD with the highest level of integrity, we’ve worked to ensure balance and inclusion. We believe it’s crucial that the event is bipartisan, intergenerational, ethnically diverse, and gender-conscious, and our partnerships at every level reflect this.  No matter what our differences are, as we’ve focused on honoring individuals of color, we’ve zeroed in on two key traits among honorees: First, an unwavering commitment to personal excellence. Second, a demonstrated initiative to lift and help others, especially those within communities of color. Fusing so many fundamental aspects together was no small task, but we’ve made it work. At the end of the day, history is replete with unsung heroes and heroines in the multicultural media space. We only wish to create a platform for the world to hear their stories, and to say, “thank you.” We are profoundly grateful to all the people who have helped make the MMCD so incredible. As we embark on our second year, we are hopeful that this will be a cornerstone and marquee event for many years to come. We invite you to lend your talents and your presence as we honor this year’s brightest luminaries.  David A. Morgan is managing partner of D. Morgan & Partners.  Aaron T. Manaigo is managing partner of Global Political Solutions. The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill. View the discussion thread. Contributor's Signup The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2017-06-13

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark’s Finance Minister said on Tuesday he hoped the outcome of the British election would lead to a time-out and provide a chance to rethink the direction in which negotiations about the country’s decision to leave the European Union are heading. “After the general election (in the UK) it is very unclear to know exactly what the UK approach to Brexit now will be,” Kristian Jensen told a conference. “I hope that the general election (in the UK) will mean a time-out, a pause in the direction the UK was taking, and a chance to rethink how the UK and EU27 will go forward,” the minister added. Reporting by Teis Jensen, writing by Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Hugh Lawson

2018-01-02

CHENNAI, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - High school teacher Rajkumar Kotal had run out of ideas. News about his students being pushed into early marriage and lured by traffickers reached him, but often too late to stop it. But when police officials put a letter box in a discreet corner of the Ramgarhat High School in east Indian state of West Bengal, the problem was suddenly solved. “The anonymity of that box gave students the confidence to ask questions, alert authorities and slowly we built a campaign around it to stop child marriages and prevent trafficking,” Kotal, who teaches English, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. West Bengal accounted for 44 percent of human trafficking cases reported in India in 2016 and also had the most missing children reports, according to government data. Young girls from poor families are lured with promises of marriage or jobs and trafficked to cities where they are sold to brothels or into domestic slavery, campaigners said. The state government and charities working to prevent human trafficking have initiated a host of measures, including efforts to create a database of known traffickers. The letter box scheme is part of a larger initiative by the West Bengal police which has proved so successful that now more than 20,000 students across 200 schools in the most vulnerable districts of the state have “shared secrets” and sought help. Recognising the impact of the initiative, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF has now partnered with the police to expand the scope of the program across the state. “Girls from the state were being trafficked and then dumped on the streets of Delhi to die,” said police officer Ajey Ranade, who is heading the initiative that is largely targeting school girls in vulnerable districts. Police officers in plain clothes first started visiting schools in South 24 and North 24 Parganas districts - identified as trafficking hotspots - in 2016 to talk to students. Many policemen had been on rescue missions and had been “emotionally moved” by the plight of trafficking survivors as they saw the impact it was having on young girls, Ranade said. In schools, adolescents were at first reluctant to engage. “We started playing a game called share your secret and suddenly information was flowing,” said Suravi Sarkar of non-profit banglanatak.com which helped the police reach students. Under the program, the police set up committees in schools to educate students about trafficking traps. “Girls appear to be more alert now and information has started flowing in,” Ranade said. “Students are telling us if a classmate has missed school for a few days, strangers hanging around the school route are being reported and some of this information has even led to arrests.” Kotal, who has been a teacher for 10 years, said he found courage to confront his students’ problems with police backing. “Earlier some students would ask for help but we couldn’t do much. This initiative has brought students, law enforcement, parents and teachers on the same platform,” he said. Reporting by Anuradha Nagaraj, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking and climate change. Visit www.trust.org

2016-09-14

– This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on July 29, Friday. Welcome to CNBC Business Daily, I'm Qian Chen. Besides the BOJ rate decision that's expected to come out today, a few other central banks which are adopting negative interet rates are in the spotlight as well. Take a look at the WALL... ECB, Swiss, Sweden, Denmark, etc. The idea of savers being charged to keep their money in the bank might seem extraordinary even in an era of unprecedented monetary policy measures. Near-zero interest rates aren't good for the economy in the long run, bond guru Bill Gross said Wednesday. That's because low rates hinder the ability of savers to earn a return on their money, and that impedes investment, he said. "Capitalism can't really thrive," the manager of the Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund said in an interview with CNBC's "Power Lunch." Now, after the BOJ, all eyes are on the BOE meeting next week. The question now is -- is BOE going to join the team of negative rates? Now one of the country's biggest banks, NatWest, part of RBS, has warned its business customers that it may have to charge for deposits. The announcement comes ahead of a meeting by the Bank of England next week which is widely expected to set a further historically low interest rate. Expectations for the Bank of England to cut rates by 25 basis points to 0.25 percent next month are growing. While the central bank is not forecast to mimic its counterparts at the European Central Bank, Swiss National Bank or Bank of Japan by moving to negative interest rates any time soon, it is expected to hold rates at what would be a further historic low until the end of 2018, according to forecasts from Capital Economics. The news of NatWest's letter caused consternation in the U.K., where recent data from the British Bankers' Association (BBA) showed business borrowing dropped for the first time in June as businesses delayed investment ahead of the Brexit vote. CNBC's Qian Chen, reporting from Singapore. Follow CNBC International on and Facebook.

2020-02-17 00:00:00

ROME/MILAN (Reuters) - The Italian government is leaning toward reappointing Claudio Descalzi as CEO of state-controlled oil firm Eni, provided he will work with a new board to speed up efforts to cut carbon emissions, four senior political sources told Reuters. The largest member of the ruling coalition, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, has been highly critical of the veteran oilman in the past, not least because he is being tried in Italy for alleged corruption over a 2011 oil deal in Nigeria. Descalzi denies any wrongdoing. However, Rome is keen for an experienced leader with a track record of dealing with geopolitically sensitive areas such as Africa and the Middle East to oversee interests there, and to help Eni (ENI.MI) shift toward cleaner sources of energy without inflicting too much damage on profitability. “No final decision has been made yet, but Descalzi has a good chance to be reappointed,” a government member of the ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD) said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter. Eni, a rich source of dividends for stretched state coffers, has traditionally been seen as a key piece of Italy’s energy policy and also important for foreign policy because of its extensive overseas presence. Descalzi’s second term leading the company comes to an end in May and the government is expected to flag as soon as March whether or not he will be kept on. The 64-year old executive is due to present Eni’s latest business plan on Feb. 28. Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri, a PD minister, said on Friday that “very valuable people” were running state-owned companies, which also include utility giant Enel (ENEI.MI) and defense group Leonardo (LDOF.MI), but did not elaborate. The 5-Star Movement is not opposing Descalzi’s reappointment as long as he is prepared to work with a new board to accelerate moves to cut carbon emissions, a prominent member of the movement said. “He is winning round key figures in the party,” the official said, also asking not to be named. The nomination process at Italy’s state-controlled companies is traditionally the subject of intense political horse trading because of their size and importance. Talks usually go down to the wire and can change unexpectedly on political vagaries. The Treasury, which owns 4.34% of Eni and controls another 25.76% via state lender CDP, has the right to appoint six members of Eni’s nine-strong board. It is expected to present a list of candidates that will include the name of the new CEO. The Treasury declined to comment for this story, as did Eni. Descalzi was first appointed to the top job at Eni in 2014 by the government of Matteo Renzi, whose Italy Alive party is now a junior member of the ruling coalition. Helped by major discoveries in Egypt and Mozambique, Descalzi transformed the company into one of the industry’s most successful oil and gas explorers. He has shunned costly bets on North American shale gas and more recently won accolades from investors by signing a flurry of deals in the Gulf. However, his leadership has not been without controversy. In one of the oil industry’s biggest ever scandals, Italian prosecutors allege Eni and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) bought a Nigerian oilfield in 2011 knowing most of the $1.3 billion purchase price would go to agents and middlemen in bribes. The trial, which includes Descalzi because he led Eni’s exploration and production business at the time of the transaction, is drawing to a close, but is not expected to conclude until after the nomination process for a new CEO. Eni and Shell, like Descalzi, have denied wrongdoing. Despite the allegations, two of the sources said Rome was drawn to keeping Descalzi as a steady pair of hands at a time of increasing turmoil in Libya, where Eni is the biggest foreign oil and gas producer. “The (Italian) government at the moment is weak and the message coming out of Rome is to rock the boat as little as possible,” one of them said. Descalzi’s experience could also help Eni meet growing pressure from politicians and investors for oil companies to do more to address global warming. The CEO, a physicist by training, set up Eni’s green energy unit in 2015 and introduced a target for net-zero carbon emissions from exploration and production operations by 2030. However, rivals such as Repsol (REP.MC), Shell (RDSa.L) and, more recently, BP (BP.L), have gone further, and Descalzi is under pressure to set bolder targets. “He’s got the ball rolling but now he’s got to raise the bar,” one of the sources said. Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte and Giselda Vagnoni in Rome, Stephen Jewkes in Milan, Editing by Mark Potter

2017-05-10 00:00:00

UK police in the city of Durham, England, are prepared to go live with a predictive artificial intelligence system that will determine whether a suspect should be kept in custody, according to the BBC. Called Hart, which stands for Harm Assessment Risk Tool, the system is designed to classify individuals based on a low, medium, or high risk of committing a future offense. Police plan to put it live in the next few months to test its effectiveness against cases in which custody specialists do not rely on the system’s judgement. The AI assessment could be used for a number of different determinations, like whether a suspect should be kept for a longer length of time and whether bail should be set before or after a charge is issued. According to the BBC, Hart’s decision-making is based on Durham police data gathered between 2008 and 2013, and it accounts for factors like criminal history, severity of the current crime, and whether a suspect is a flight risk. In initial tests in 2013, in which suspects’ behavior were tracked for two years after an initial offense, Hart’s low-risk forecasts were accurate 98 percent of the time and its high-risk forecasts were accurate 88 percent of the time. Hart is just one of many algorithmic and predictive software tools being used by law enforcement officials and court and prison systems around the globe. And although they may improve efficiency in police departments, the Orwellian undercurrents of a algorithmic criminal justice system have been backed up by troubling hard data. In a thorough investigation from ProPublica published last year, these risk-assessment tools were found to be deeply flawed, with inherent human bias built in that made them twice as likely to flag black defendants as future criminals and far more likely to treat white defendants as low-risk, standalone offenders. Many algorithmic systems today, including those employed by Facebook, Google, and other tech companies, are similarly at risk of injecting bias into a system, as the judgement of human beings was used to craft the software in the first place. Durham police were quick to reassure the BBC that Hart’s decisions will only be “advisory” during its preliminary and experimental use. Because the system will take into account factors like gender and postal code, law enforcement and academic advisors say it will remain incomplete and should never wholly inform decision-making. “Simply residing in a given post code has no direct impact on the result, but must instead be combined with all of the other predictors in thousands of different ways before a final forecasted conclusion is reached,” wrote the authors of report submitted following a parliamentary inquiry on algorithmic decision-making, according to the BBC. The authors — which included Professor Lawrence Sherman, director of the University of Cambridge's Centre for Evidence-based Policing — also say Hart will have an auditing system built in to track how it arrived at its conclusions.

2018-06-12

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, said Tuesday financial advisors still play a major role in the finance world — despite recent technological disruptions in the industry — as they act as therapists for investors. As an advisor, you have to find out "what the client's needs are, what the client's capabilities are in terms of taking risks," as well as their dreams and fears, Kahneman, known for his work in behavioral economics, said in a keynote at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago. "When bad things happen, you have to be there. [Clients] need to have a sense that there's someone that they trust and has their interests in mind and who knows what they want." In recent years, the financial industry has been disrupted by technological advances that have led to job losses as well as lower fees for advisors. One of the biggest disruptions has been the rise in so-called robo-advisors, which provide financial advice to investors with next to no human interaction and at a far lower price. Robo-advisors are also growing at a very fast rate, surpassing $200 billion in assets under management last year, according to BackEnd Benchmarking, which releases quarterly data on robo-advisors. Other major wealth management firms have developed their own internal versions of robo-advisors. Still, Kahneman said, "There is a hand-holding function" for advisors which is "very important." Kahneman won the Nobel in 2002 for his work in behavioral economics. The Nobel laureate also said he is researching "unsystematic errors," which refer to random mistakes made by individuals or a group of people. "During my career, I've done a lot of work on systematic errors that people make," Kahneman said. "In recent years, I've become more convinced that there is something more important than systematic error. That's unsystematic error. We call that noise." Kahneman gave an example of two insurance underwriters presented with the same case in a study to illustrate his point. In theory, there should be about a 10 percent difference between the two estimates provided by the underwriters. However, that difference totaled 50 percent. "There's a lot of noise when making a decision. Not in the decision itself, but in the making of the decision," he said. "It is possible that an algorithm, and even an unsophisticated algorithm, will do better because the main characteristic of algorithms is they're noise-free. You give them the same problem twice, you get the same result. People don't."

2018-08-22

Political journalist and analyst Bill Schneider said on Wednesday that the Republican Party is "bleeding educated, suburban voters" under President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE.  "We've been seeing that happen for a long time, including in the 2016 election," Schneider, who is a professor at George Mason University, told Hill.TV's Jamal Simmons on "What America's Thinking."  "We have a very odd relationship with the polls that's new in the polls since 2016, and Trump has caused this," he continued. "The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to be a Republican, but the better educated you are the more likely you are to be Democrat."  Schneider went on to say that Trump has turned off educated, wealthy Republicans, living in traditional Republican strongholds.  "In 2012, Mitt RomneyWillard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyA US-UK free trade agreement can hold the Kremlin to account Ex-CIA chief worries campaigns falling short on cybersecurity Overnight Defense: US, Russia tensions grow over nuclear arms | Highlights from Esper's Asia trip | Trump strikes neutral tone on Hong Kong protests | General orders ethics review of special forces MORE was the prince of wealth, Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaBen Shapiro: No prominent GOP figure ever questioned Obama's legitimacy 3 real problems Republicans need to address to win in 2020 Obama's high school basketball jersey sells for 0,000 at auction MORE was the prince of education. That's a division that has become bigger and bigger particularly the differences by education," he said. "Trump turns off a lot of well-educated, affluent Republican voters who live in suburbs like Fairfax County, Va., Montgomery County, Pa.," he continued.  Republicans will have to defend a slew of what have normally been safe districts for the GOP in November's midterm elections.  The GOP's troubles in suburban districts was illustrated earlier this month in the special House election for Ohio's 12th congressional district, which was deemed too close to call. Trump won the district in 2016 by 11 points.  An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released earlier this year showed Republican support among suburbanites dropping 7 points from 50 percent in February to 43 percent in March.   — Julia Manchester An overwhelming majority of voters are concerned that the U.S. will enter a recession in 2020, according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released Monday. A majority of Republican voters -- 62 percent -- identify as both fiscally and socially conservative, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll released on Friday. More than half of voters would not consider reelecting President Trump in 2020, according to a new poll released on Thursday. Top-tier candidates, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Two-thirds of voters said in a poll released Tuesday that President Trump’s next round of China tariffs will increase prices on U.S. consumer goods. Mental illness, weak gun laws and hateful public rhetoric are largely to blame for mass shootings in the United States, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll. Just over half of Republicans — 51 percent — said in a new Hill-HarrisX poll that the federal deficit is a problem that the government needs to deal with immediately.  Less than half of U.S. voters trust companies headquartered in Mexico and China, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll. President Trump’s job approval rating has dropped six points among voters between the ages of 18 and 34 in the latest Hill-HarrisX poll. A plurality of voters — 44 percent — say they think President Trump responds more fiercely to critics who aren’t white, according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released on Tuesday. Almost half of voters polled — 47 percent — say there was no clear winner from last week’s Democratic presidential primary debate in Detroit, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll. Twenty-seven percent of Americans said that they thought the latest two-year budget deal would have no impact on their financial situation, according to a new poll out Friday. Support for impeachment proceedings against President Trump has slipped among Democratic voters following special counsel Robert Mueller’s public testimony before Congress last week, according to a poll released on Thursday. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2020-03-04 00:00:00

(Adds more details on flight cutbacks, shares) OSLO, March 4 (Reuters) - Finnair is cancelling flights to mainland China, South Korea and Milan because of the coronavirus outbreak and will open talks with unions next week about temporary staff layoffs, the airline said on Wednesday. Airlines around the globe have cancelled flights to regions worst hit by coronavirus, suspended other routes as bookings dry up and warned that profits will suffer this year because of the health crisis. Finnair is cancelling all flights to mainland China until April 30, to Milan in northern Italy from March 9 to April 7, and to Seoul in South Korea from March 9 until April 16. It is also postponing its new Korean route to Busan by three months to July 1 and is reducing services to Hong Kong and Osaka in Japan. The carrier warned on Feb. 28 of a significant fall in profit this year due to the coronavirus outbreak. Negotiations with labour unions in Finland will start on March 12 and last for two weeks. Employees could face layoffs lasting between 14 and 30 days, the airline said. “Similar personnel measures will also be taken in countries outside Finland,” it said. “As announced on Feb. 28, Finnair is also adjusting its other costs globally, such as sales and marketing activities and other external spend.” Shares in Finnair were down 0.4% at 4.67 euros by 1022 GMT. Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo and Tarmo Virki in Tallinn; Editing by Terje Solsvik and David Clarke

2020-02-23 00:00:00

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Police used tear gas to disperse large crowds in India’s capital of New Delhi on Sunday in the latest eruption of violence at protests over a new citizenship law, police officials said. Hundreds of people supporting the new law clashed with those opposing it, with the two groups pelting each other with stones in the Maujpur area in the northeastern part of the city, according to television footage. “There must be some miscreants who want to spoil the peace in the area. We will identify them and take action against them,” Alok Kumar, a senior Delhi police official, told reporters about the protest. “The situation is under control now,” he added. The protest comes just a day before U.S. President Donald Trump begins a two-day visit to India, where he is expected to raise the issue of religious freedom in the country with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, which eases the path for non-Muslims from neighboring Muslim-majority nations to gain citizenship, has triggered weeks of sometimes violent protests against Modi’s government. The Indian law is seen by opponents as discriminating against Muslims and has deepened concerns that Modi’s administration is undermining India’s secular traditions. Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party denies any bias against the country’s 180 million Muslims. On Sunday, a separate protest also erupted in the northern Indian city of Aligarh, where protesters threw stones at the police, state administration official Chandra Bhushan Singh said. The internet in the area had been suspended until midnight, he added. Reporting by Aditi Shah in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma in Lucknow; Editing by Aditya Kalra and Alex Richardson

2016-01-04

Congress is hopelessly gridlocked — or so we've been told for years now. Some toxic brew of political polarization, gerrymandering and our cumbersome constitutional structure has left us with a legislature that is institutionally incapable of doing anything more than lurching from crisis to crisis, usually (but not always!) avoiding disaster at the last minute. I have been a skeptic of this conventional narrative of congressional dysfunction for some time (see here for the scholarly version and here for an extended interview with National Review's Reihan Salam). But I certainly never claimed that the 112th and 113th Congresses (2011 to 2015) got a lot done. My claim, instead, was that their failure to do so was not an indication of any particular institutional dysfunction, but rather a manifestation of a larger politics in which there simply was not adequate public consensus over which laws to pass. Recent congressional activity lends further support to the notion that claims of institutional dysfunction were indeed premature. After all, we still have the same constitutional structure, and we still have divided government. There hasn't been an infusion of new members of Congress since last January. And yet the national legislature has suddenly sprung into action. Consider what has happened since John BoehnerJohn Andrew BoehnerLobbyists race to cash in on cannabis boom Rising star Ratcliffe faces battle to become Trump's intel chief This little engine delivers results for DC children MORE (R-Ohio) announced, less than four months ago, that he was resigning the Speakership. First, Boehner "cleaned the barn" for his successor by pushing through a two-year budget resolution and a suspension of the debt ceiling through March 2017, largely removing the specter of fiscal crisis for the rest of the 114th Congress (and for the rest of the Obama administration). Then Congress went on something of a tear: between Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanEmbattled Juul seeks allies in Washington Ex-Parkland students criticize Kellyanne Conway Latina leaders: 'It's a women's world more than anything' MORE's swearing in as Speaker on Oct. 29 and the end of the session on Dec. 18, Congress passed 42 new laws. Some of these were truly major accomplishments: The zippily named FAST Act was the first long-term legislation funding transportation infrastructure since a 2005 law that had expired in 2009, and it reauthorized the Export-Import Bank, to boot. The Every Student Succeeds Act was the first major federal K-12 education bill since the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, and it repealed or modified many of the most unpopular elements of its predecessor. Then, just before adjourning, Congress passed a bill funding the government for the next fiscal year, extending certain tax breaks for another year and making others permanent. The bill contained several notable policy breakthroughs, including good news for the oil industry, the renewable power industry (and therefore the environment) and low-income Americans. Additionally, some experts are optimistic that, by making some of the most important tax breaks permanent, the bill paves the way for allowing the rest to quietly expire next year. Each of these major laws passed with strong bipartisan majorities. Of course, many of the 42 new laws are smaller-bore: post office naming bills, an act to establish a "Social Media Working Group" in the Department of Homeland Security, and the like. But some of those new laws are more important than they look: microbeads in cosmetics are an environmental disaster, and the Microbead-Free Waters Act bans them. And the fact that ordinary, smaller bills can get through is evidence that partisan polarization and acrimony are not paralyzing Congress: After all, such bills are nothing if not the ordinary functioning of democratic politics. To be sure, no one thinks that any of these 42 new laws is perfect. But that's exactly the point. In the absence of consensus as to what constitutes a "perfect" bill, the two options are compromise, which leaves everyone at least a little unsatisfied, or holding out. The latter, of course, results in inaction — the "gridlock" of which we've heard so much in recent years. At least for the last couple of months of 2015, Congress seems to have decided that the public wanted to see compromise. And so, they began to act. Chafetz is professor of law at Cornell Law School, where he writes on legislative procedure, the separation of powers and constitutional history. His first book, "Democracy's Privileged Few," was published by Yale University Press in 2007. His second book, "Congress's Constitution," will be published by Yale University Press. Follow him on Twitter @joshchafetz. View the discussion thread. Contributor's Signup The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2016-04-08 12:55:13

Editorial It takes a bit of effort to take seriously Wednesday’s Dutch referendum, in which voters rejected the European Union’s trade and cooperation agreement with Ukraine. The turnout barely nudged past the 30 percent needed for the referendum to be legally valid; the vote was nonbinding; and the pact remains in force (it would take a unanimous vote by the 28 E.U. governments to suspend it). Still, the implications for relations with Ukraine and Russia and for the future of Europe cannot be dismissed.. Organizers of the referendum acknowledge that Ukraine was not the real issue and that the vote was a way to express broad discontent with the European Union. Even if the vote did not put the E.U.-Ukraine agreement in danger, President Vladimir Putin of Russia got a boost. It was Russia’s fierce opposition to the 2014 agreement that led Viktor Yanukovych, then president of Ukraine, to balk at signing it. That in turn led to mass protests in Kiev, Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster and the rise of a Russian-backed rebellion in eastern Ukraine. The Dutch vote was thus a chilling signal to Kiev that European support for Ukraine’s westward course may not be strong or united. The vote was also another illustration of the anti-E.U. sentiments swelling across Europe in reaction to the refugee crisis and the economic crisis before it. The Netherlands has a history of euroskepticism — Dutch voters, along with the French, torpedoed plans for an E.U. constitution in 2005, and the anti-E.U., anti-Muslim Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders has a strong following. “The beginning of the end of the E.U.,” Mr. Wilders celebrated on Twitter after the results came in. Probably not, but the referendum should be recognized for what it is: an expression of discontent. That is something the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, should think about. But he and other European leaders should also make clear to Kiev and the Kremlin that Europe’s support for Ukraine’s aspirations remains firm, and that the need to strengthen European solidarity has never been as great as it is now.

2017-12-05

Dec 5 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. ** Tougher mortgage stress-testing rules could make it impossible for 40,000 to 50,000 Canadians to buy a home each year, driving down real estate sales and reducing the anticipated pace of new mortgage-lending growth, according to a report by Mortgage Professionals Canada. (tgam.ca/2korcMQ) ** Canadian cannabis producer Aphria Inc has inked a deal to supply medical marijuana to Shoppers Drug Mart, the country's biggest chain of pharmacies. (tgam.ca/2kovOSX) ** Home buyers seeking refuge in Vancouver's suburbs face a harsh reality - it has become increasingly tough to find bargains in recent years. (tgam.ca/2knxBrv) ** Emboldened by an improved outlook for oil prices, Husky Energy Inc will boost spending next year for the first time since 2014 even as its direct competitors pare their budgets back. (bit.ly/2kl7UYK) ** Airbus SE has selected Bombardier Inc to supply a new engine part for its A320neo program, weeks after the two companies announced a partnership that will see Airbus acquire a majority stake in the CSeries program. (bit.ly/2kjqLDk) ** Municipal permitting delays related to the C$7.4 billion ($5.85 billion) Trans Mountain pipeline expansion were due to Kinder Morgan Canada Ltd's incompetence, not political interference, the city of Burnaby told the National Energy Board Monday. (bit.ly/2kmI32y) ($1 = C$1.26) (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)

2018-10-11 10:52:00

Two years ago, Olivia Wilde was very pregnant. The actress, 34, shared a throwback selfie on Instagram early Thursday, and in it, she’s wearing a black bikini showing off her then-large baby bump. At the time, Wilde was pregnant with her daughter Daisy. The proud mom captioned the sweet snap, “2 years ago exactly, the night before Daisy joined the party. Whoa,” and added the hashtag “#thassabigbaby.” Wilde and her partner, fellow actor Jason Sudeikis, are also parents to 4-year-old Otis, and she recently spoke with PEOPLE about the difference between raising a girl and boy. Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Parents newsletter. “It’s really interesting having a boy and a girl because you see the difference in the way that their consciousness blossoms amidst the onslaught of marketing and messaging that comes towards kids,” she said at an event promoting her partnership with Dunkin Donuts. “Little kids are still being told men are the powerful, strong ones and women are the weaker, more vulnerable ones… When I witness that in my kids, I realize how much of a responsibility it is of parents and caretakers to show them every example you can think of a more balanced, fair society.” To that end, Wilde is determined to raise her children without gendered stereotypes. “My little girl immediately assumes that anything pink is for her and anything blue is for her brother. And she’s only 2!” she says. “So that means it’s out there in the world, women limiting themselves from a young age, and I’m just determined to raise her without those self-imposed limitations because the world’s gonna do it no matter what.”

2017-12-27

The "Fast Money " traders shared their first moves for the market open. Tim Seymour was a buyer of Melco Crown Entertainment. Rich Ross was a buyer of NVIDIA. Gene Munster was a buyer of Tesla. Dan Nathan was a seller of VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF. Trader disclosure: On December 26, 2017, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Tim Seymour is long AMZA, APC, BABA, BAC, C, CCJ, CLF, CMG, CSCO, DAL, DPZ, DVYE, EEM, EUFN, EWM, FB, FXI, GE, GILD, GM, GOOGL, HAL, INTC, LOW, M, MAT, MCD, MO, MOS, MPEL, PHM, PYPL, RAI, RH, RL, SBUX, SQ, T, 700.HK, TWTR, UA, UAL, VALE, VIAB, VOD, VRX, XLE, XRT. Tim is short IWM, RACE, SPY. Dan Nathan is long puts FNSR, GM, INTC, SPY. Dan is short SMH.

2016-05-05

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Pennsylvania woman who suffered severe injuries when an 18-year-old college student fell on her from an eighth-story window has sued the dead teenager’s estate, claiming permanent disabilities. Erica Goodwin, 45, was walking in Philadelphia’s Center City district on Jan. 15, 2015, when Rebecca Kim landed on her after falling from the eighth floor of an apartment building, leaving her with spinal fractures and other injuries. The Philadelphia medical examiner’s office ruled Kim’s death a suicide. According to Goodwin’s lawsuit, Kim, a first-year student at Temple University, was visiting friends who lived in the apartment, which houses students at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. She told them she wanted to take photographs from the ledge and then either fell or jumped to her death, the complaint said. In addition to Kim’s estate, the lawsuit also names as defendants the Art Institute and its parent company Education Management Corp, the students who lived in the apartment and the companies that managed and owned the building, among other entities. Goodwin’s injuries were the result of the defendants’ negligence for allowing access to the ledge, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia. A lawyer and a spokeswoman for the Art Institute declined to comment on Thursday. Kim’s relatives filed their own wrongful death lawsuit in December against many of the same corporate defendants, claiming they did not take appropriate steps to secure the building’s windows. The lawsuit characterized Kim’s death as a “fall,” and did not address whether she acted intentionally.

2019-11-08 17:30:00

The factory makes 7 million poppies every year.Army veterans are employed to work inside the factory.Poppies are worn every year to remember those who have given their lives in conflicts around the world.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.The Poppy Factory in Richmond creates poppy products for the Royal British Legion's annual poppy appeal.Each poppy starts as a plastic stem, imported into the factory. The paper leaf and petal are cut out using machines. The factory assembles these together using a plastic button. Around 140,000 wreaths are made at the factory each year. These are made using fabric materials instead of paper. The Royal family's remembrance wreaths are assembled at the factory. The factory has employed 28 ex-servicemen and women since 1922 as part of ongoing charitable activities. Produced by Ju Shardlow

2016-12-05 16:30:00

If you think that two of the characters on the upcoming season of Scandal favor each other, it’s not a coincidence. Zoe Perry has been cast in a recurring role on the upcoming sixth season of Scandal. According to the Hollywood Reporter, she will take on the yet unknown role alongside her father, Jeff Perry, who plays Cyrus Beene on the show. But Zoe didn’t drop her father’s name to get the gig. The 32-year-old actress was already part of the Shondaland family with a previous role on Grey’s Anatomy, and she has acting credits on NCIS, Private Practice, and My Boys.You might recognize Zoe’s mom, too. Laurie Metcalf played Jackie Harris on the beloved late 80's and 90’s sitcom Roseanne. She was the high-strung younger sister of Roseanne who was always looking for love, sometimes in the wrong places. Metcalf and Jeff Perry were married for nearly a decade before divorcing in 1992. These are the connections you can only make by falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. Hollywood is all about its nepotism.In addition to her Shondaland roles, Zoe played a younger version of her mother’s Jackie character twice on Roseanne. So what character do you think she’s going to play on this season of Scandal? My theories are: Cyrus’s estranged daughter from a previous relationship, another one of Fitz’s side chicks, an aspiring Democratic politician who needs Olivia Pope to help hide her family’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan. So many options.

2019-02-22

(Reworks to add Interserve comments, shares) Feb 22 (Reuters) - Troubled British support services provider Interserve Plc said on Friday it was considering a proposal from its largest shareholder to reduce debt, weeks after striking a rescue deal with its lenders. Racing to avert a collapse like that of peer Carillion, Interserve, said it received an outline proposal from Coltrane Asset Management, which it was considering. Coltrane owns about 28 percent of the Reading-based outsourcer, according to Refinitiv Eikon data. Shares in the company closed up 52.4 percent at 15.6 pence on Friday. This comes weeks after Interserve struck a deal that will see lenders take control of the company by swapping millions of pounds worth of debt for new shares, giving the group a chance of survival. “The board confirms that it remains committed to achieving a consensual deleveraging plan,” the company said, adding that it will publish shareholder documents with details on its debt reduction plan next week. Coltrane had earlier this month called for eight of the company’s directors to be removed, adding it supported Chief Executive Debbie White. Coltrane did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Interserve is one of Britain’s biggest outsourcing and construction companies, employing 75,000 globally to deliver contracts including hospital cleaning and serving school meals. Interserve’s high level of debt had come under intense scrutiny after peer Carillion collapsed last year under a weight of debt and pension dues, forcing the government to step in to guarantee services. Interserve shares jumped more than 20 percent earlier in the day after Sky News reported the firm’s lenders will improve the terms of a 500 million pound ($650 million) rescue deal to win over the company’s biggest shareholders. The lenders are in talks to double the proportion of Interserve's equity that would be owned by existing investors, Sky News reported here, citing sources close to the company. Interserve said the deal secured weeks ago would cut debt by more than half to about 275 million pounds after creditors wrote off loans in return for new equity worth 97.5 percent of the share capital. Existing shareholders, who saw the company lose 90 percent of its value in 2018, will largely be wiped out under the existing deal. Under a new deal, the investors would own 5 percent of the outsourcer, Sky News said. The firm said earlier it was also “actively preparing” alternative plans to ensure the proposed deal can be implemented in the event that shareholders shoot it down. Aberdeen Standard Investments, which owns about 6.9 percent of Interserve, is one of the shareholders which could support the revised debt-for-equity swap, the report said. ($1 = 0.7688 pounds) (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain, Sangameswaran S and Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru and Maiya Keidan in London Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Anil D’Silva and David Evans)

2018-01-18 09:30:40

WASHINGTON — The House approved a stopgap spending bill on Thursday night to keep the government open past Friday, but Senate Democrats — angered by President Trump’s vulgar aspersions and a lack of progress on a broader budget and immigration deal — appeared ready to block the measure. The House approved the measure 230 to 197, despite conflicting signals by President Trump sent throughout the day and a threatened rebellion from conservatives that ended up fizzling. But the bill, which would keep the government open through Feb. 16, provided only a faint glimmer of hope that a crisis could be averted before funding expires at midnight on Friday. In the Senate, at least about a dozen Democratic votes would be needed to approve the measure, and there was little chance that those would materialize. Democrats are intent on securing concessions that would, among other things, protect from deportation young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, increase domestic spending, aid Puerto Rico and bolster the government’s response to the opioid crisis. The Senate held only a procedural vote on the stopgap bill late Thursday night, leaving for Friday a more consequential vote when Democrats are expected to block the measure. In addition to keeping the government open, the bill would provide funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years, and it would delay or suspend a handful of taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act. The weeks-old standoff on immigration and spending only grew more charged last week after Mr. Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries.” By Thursday, talks on those matters had produced little visible progress, and prominent House Democrats were introducing a resolution to censure the president for his words. In the Senate, Democrats were unifying around a “no” vote. If the stopgap bill passes, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said, “there’ll be no incentive to negotiate, and we’ll be right back here in a month with the same problems at our feet.” Republicans were left seething. “We’re either going to act like 13-year-olds or not,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. “Our first job is to keep government going, and if you’re going to shut her down, it better be for a damn good reason.” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, lamented the Democrats’ “fixation on illegal immigration” at the expense of addressing other matters. It is anything but clear which side would pay the steepest political price if the government does indeed run out of money a year to the day after Mr. Trump took office. But Democrats appear poised to force the issue. A deal to avoid closing the federal government hinges on Senate Democrats, and some Republicans, who want to include protections for young undocumented immigrants. Senator Mazie K. Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, complained that Republicans had waited until the last minute to address the fate of the young immigrants and to deal with other pressing issues. “But no, they have to fool around with giving the richest people in our country and the corporations huge, huge tax breaks,” she said. “That’s what they were running around doing in the dark of night. You think I’m a little upset? Damn right I am.” Mr. Trump is not making it easier for congressional Republicans. The perilous day on Capitol Hill began with the president firing off a Twitter message that undermined his party’s strategy to keep the government open. Republican leaders had spent Wednesday pressuring Democrats to vote for the spending bill, arguing that opposing it would effectively block the extension of the child health program, known as CHIP, which they had included in the spending bill. Funding for the program lapsed at the end of September. Yet on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump suggested that the funding should not be part of the stopgap bill, writing on Twitter: “CHIP should be part of a long term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!” Hours after Mr. Trump’s message, the administration tried to walk it back. A White House spokesman said that the president supported the stopgap bill. But Democrats pressed their advantage. Mr. Schumer brought up the tweet and questioned whether it meant that the president opposed the stopgap measure that congressional leaders from his own party were trying to pass. “Who knows?” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s a mess.” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, made clear that she was unmoved by the inclusion of CHIP funding in the stopgap bill. “This is like giving you a bowl of doggy doo, put a cherry on top and call it a chocolate sundae,” she said. In a sign of the growing opposition, Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, whose constituents include tens of thousands of federal workers, announced that they, too, would oppose the temporary spending bill in the Senate. “Congress should remain in session with no recess until we work out a long-term bipartisan budget deal that addresses all issues,” Mr. Warner and Mr. Kaine said in a joint statement. If Senate Republicans were unified in support and continued to lack the vote of Senator John McCain of Arizona, they would still need at least 10 Democrats to join them for the bill to succeed in that chamber. With a few expected Republican defections, that number would grow even larger. Against that darkening backdrop, House leaders pressed forward with a planned vote on the temporary spending bill. Not only were Democrats opposed, but many members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-line conservatives, had reservations. Earlier in the day, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, the leader of the Freedom Caucus, expressed frustration that Congress was looking to pass its fourth stopgap spending measure for the 2018 fiscal year. “Three strikes, you’re out,” he said, adding, “I guess the speaker has the best plan, and so we’ll just see how that works out.” But shortly before the vote on Thursday night, the Freedom Caucus announced that it had decided to support the stopgap bill, having extracted other concessions from the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Traveling in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump accused Democrats of provoking a shutdown to drown out discussion of the Republican tax overhaul. “I think the Democrats would like to see a shutdown in order to get off that subject,” Mr. Trump told reporters before delivering a speech. Eighteen members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted for the last stopgap measure in December. But many of those members have already said they would oppose the latest bill, including Mr. Warner, Mr. Kaine, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Senator Jon Tester of Montana. Mr. Tester, who is up for re-election this year in a state that Mr. Trump won by 20 percentage points, denounced the stopgap bill as a “disgrace.” “We keep doing patches and patches and patches and I’m done,” he said, adding: “We have to do our job, for God’s sake! People need predictability in government.” Lawmakers were growing frustrated. “I don’t want to play shutdown politics,” said Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “I think it’s a bad idea and a pox on both parties.” His Colorado colleague, Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, agreed. “It just makes us all look terrible,” Mr. Bennet said. OpinionThe Editorial Board OpinionSteve Israel

2020-01-17 00:00:00

official@ * More areas off limits to development in next 5-year plan * Arrests for environment crimes on Yangtze in 2019 up 43% on year * China's overall water quality improved last year BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Jan 17 (Reuters) - China will impose more curbs on agriculture and widen restrictions on industrial development in the next five years in a bid to protect scarce, already contaminated water supplies from further pollution, a government official said on Friday. The government is planning to restrict farming that encroaches on major rivers, restore wetlands and ecosystems and tackle excess water consumption in its 2021-2025 five-year plan, said Zhang Bo, head of the water department at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, speaking at a news briefing. With per capita water resources only a quarter of the global average, China has made the restoration of contaminated supplies a priority. Zhang said the government would now take ecological value into consideration as well as economic value. Beijing has been drawing what it calls "ecological protection red lines" that make areas off-limits to agriculture and industry. But with water demand still on the rise, it must strike a balance between bolstering economic growth, maximising agricultural output and protecting its rivers. "Farmland that encroaches on the river is essentially not allowed to be there anyway," Zhang told Reuters on the sidelines of the briefing in Beijing. "The drawing of 'ecological protection red lines' will take food security into consideration and strike that balance." China is in the middle of a campaign to restore the environment of the Yangtze river, which provides water to around 40% of the country's population. The river has been damaged by decades of land reclamation, water diversion and the dumping of toxic waste. Local governments have already been demolishing dams, relocating chemical plants, restoring wetlands and banning farming and fishing in ecologically sensitive areas, but some regions still fail to meet state water standards. Earlier this week, China's top prosecution office said 7,084 people were arrested for environmental crimes on the Yangtze in 2019, up 43% on the year, with offences including illegal fishing and sand mining as well as the dumping of waste. The environment ministry said water quality was improving overall, with 75% of surface water sampled at 1,940 sites across the country up to standard in 2019, up 3.9 percentage points compared to 2018. China divides its water into six grades, with the first three considered safe for human use. The ministry said 3.4% remained "below grade V" - meaning it was unfit even for industrial or agricultural use - down 3.3 percentage points on the year. (Reporting by Muyu Xu and David Stanway; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

2018-12-01

EditorsNote: Clarifies that Korver previously played for Utah from 2007-10 Kyle Korver scored 14 points off the bench, 12 of those on 3-pointers, in his first game back with Utah on Friday night, helping the Jazz overpower the host Charlotte Hornets 119-111 to win a second straight to start its three-game trip. Donovan Mitchell led all scorers with 30, Jae Crowder came off the bench for 24 points and a team-high seven assists, and Rudy Gobert contributed 20 points and 17 rebounds for the Jazz, who had not won at Charlotte since December 2013, when the opponents were known as the Bobcats. Jeremy Lamb had 24 points, Kemba Walker 21 and Tony Parker 20 points and a game-high nine assists to pace the Hornets. After blowing a 16-point lead, the Jazz used a 15-2 burst to break from a 64-all tie to a 13-point advantage with 4:27 remaining in the third quarter. Crowder had seven points, including a 3-pointer, in the run. Charlotte scratched back within six with still 9:01 to play, but Crowder countered with another 3-pointer and Korver added his only two-point hoop, extending the Utah lead to double figures and allowing the guests to coast home. Korver, who played for the Jazz from 2007-2010 and was acquired earlier this week from Cleveland, hit five of his seven shots overall and four of his six 3-point attempts, helping Utah go 18 of 40 (45 percent) from long distance. Mitchell hit 12 of his 22 shots. The Jazz outscored the Hornets 54-27 from beyond the arc. Ricky Rubio added 13 points for Utah, which had opened its trip with a 101-91 win at Brooklyn. Marvin Williams had 15 points and 11 rebounds for Charlotte, which had opened a four-game homestand with wins over Milwaukee and Atlanta. Miles Bridges added 12 points and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist 11 for the Hornets. —Field Level Media

2017-12-19

ROME (Reuters) - Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco on Tuesday defended his record as a custodian of local banks, telling parliament the collapse of numerous lenders was not due to careless supervision but to a deep recession and unhelpful European Union rules. Addressing a parliamentary commission, Visco denied the central bank had acted late in preventing scandals at a string of lenders or underestimated the effect of the economic downturn on banks’ balance sheets. “The marked deterioration of banks’ assets and the crises of recent years were above all the inevitable consequence of the deep, double-dip recession that hit the economy,” he said. Visco also took aim at EU “bail-in” rules forcing investors to takes losses at failing banks, which Italy argued in vain should be introduced more gradually. Italy’s position was ignored by “many countries which previously intervened massively with public money to support their banks,” he said. The commission, which was set up in September to look into the collapse of 10 Italian banks in the past two years, has become a focal point of political campaigning ahead of a national election expected to be held in March. So far, it has hurt the ruling Democratic Party (PD) and its leader Matteo Renzi, showing one of his closest allies was active in trying to save a local bank where her father worked, allowing the opposition to allege a conflict of interest. The PD is sliding in opinion polls and lags a center-right coalition and the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The government reappointed Visco in October despite opposition from Renzi and the PD. His testimony was eagerly awaited by politicians of all stripes. Opposition parties, led by 5-Star and the right-wing Northern League, have attacked the PD for the banking scandals in which thousands of Italians lost their savings. Renzi says the blame lies with the Bank of Italy. In a spirited defense of the institution he has led since 2011, Visco argued that the central bank has limited scope to prevent bank scandals because its inspectors can only intervene when improper conduct at banks is already clear and established. “In more than 120 years of our history ... the honesty and integrity of the Bank of Italy’s staff has never been found lacking,” he said. Visco pointed the finger at “widespread failings in banks’ management of their bad loans,” and said the Bank of Italy had repeatedly told lenders to produce more timely and comprehensive information on their situation as they ran into trouble. He said he had declined to answer Renzi when the former prime minister tried to speak to him in 2014 about a possible interest by Banca Popolare di Vicenza in buying Banca Etruria, two local lenders which eventually collapsed. “He asked me why Vicenza wanted to buy Etruria and talked about the (impact on) the local gold trade. I didn’t answer him, I thought he was joking,” Visco said, adding that he only spoke to Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan about banking supervision. Visco also said Renzi’s close ally, cabinet undersecretary Maria Elena Boschi, had told a Bank of Italy board member, Fabio Panetta, that she was worried about the effects of Banca Etruria’s problems on the local economy. The opposition accuses Boschi of having a conflict of interest when she took steps to try to save Banca Etruria, based in her home town of Arezzo and where her father was a board member. It has already emerged that Boschi, who was then minister for constitutional reforms and had no economic brief, held several meetings with bankers and regulators to try to save the lender. She denies wrongdoing. Visco said she had not asked Panetta for any specific intervention to help Banca Etruria, or exerted any pressure. Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, writing by Gavin Jones; editing by Crispian Balmer and John Stonestreet

2017-02-23 00:00:00

Faraday Future employees have been doing a lot of talking since we first learned about the company in late 2015. The problem with that is they only started backing it all up in January at CES, when we finally got a look at — and more importantly, a ride in — the FF91, the mass-market electric vehicle Faraday plans to build. That car now has a new test ahead of it that will take place in the public eye, because Faraday has entered the FF91 in this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The Hill Climb takes place in June, and it’s a 101-year-old competition where drivers race their cars through 156 turns and 12.42 miles in an attempt to set the fastest time — all while climbing nearly a mile to the 14,115-foot summit. The FF91 will be driven by British GT Championship driver Robin Shute. Faraday will compete in the “exhibition class,” which the Hill Climb organizers explain as a way to “demonstrate advancements in the practical application of motor sports technology.” It’s essentially a class for cars that don’t meet the requirements for the more competitive divisions, but it still allows entrants to record an official climb time. But there’s a fun wrinkle here, too — there’s a Tesla Model S P100D entered in the same class, and it will be driven by Formula Drift champion Dai Yoshihara. A spokesperson for Faraday tells The Verge that the company is bringing the FF91 to Pikes Peak “to further facilitate our internal engineering development” of the car. “We continue to improve the powertrain we are preparing for our car, and Pikes Peak offers a demanding environment in which we can evaluate it,” they write. Faraday will use a “beta level development car” like the one shown off at CES. The FF91 is supposed to go into production in 2018, though the company has spent the better part of the last year dealing with serious financial turmoil that spurred resignations, debts, and major hiccups in the process of building its $1 billion factory in Nevada. Faraday Future has had connections to motorsports since the company came out of stealth mode. The company is partnered up with one of the teams in the all-electric racing series Formula E, and it unveiled a racey (but static) concept car at last year’s CES. So Pikes Peak isn’t that much of a reach. But it’s also not like Faraday is going to disrupt anything as it rolls up the hill. Electric cars have been competing in the Hill Climb for a few years now, and they’re already pretty dominant since their performance isn’t affected by a change in altitude. Both before and after its announcement, Faraday Future couldn’t help but surround the FF91 with smoke and mirrors. But heavily edited clips of the car beating its contemporaries in a drag race and carefully controlled events at CES only go so far when it comes to speaking to the FF91’s actual performance. Who knew the first chance we’d get to see the FF91 perform on even ground would be in a race up a hill?

2016-05-26 00:00:00

May 26 (Reuters) - Sofibus Patrimoine SA : * Q1 rental income 2.8 million euros ($3.14 million) versus 2.9 million euros year ago Source text: bit.ly/1TDg9Kn Further company coverage: ($1 = 0.8930 euros) (Gdynia Newsroom:)

2020-01-14 00:00:00

A Wisconsin state court of appeals on Tuesday put on hold a ruling requiring the urgent removal of more than 200,000 names from the state’s voter rolls, the latest twist in a closely watched legal fight playing out in the battleground state ahead of the 2020 election. The ruling comes after a lower court judge last month ordered the purging of roughly 234,000 people from voter rolls because they may have moved, and a day after the state's elections commission and several of its members were found in contempt of court for not complying with the removal order. The latest development represented a win for Democrats in a state that may help decide the 2020 contest, and which President TrumpDonald John TrumpDem lawmaker says Nunes threatened to sue him over criticism Parnas: U.S. ambassador to Ukraine removed to clear path for investigations into Bidens Five takeaways from Parnas's Maddow interview MORE won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016.  The lawsuit challenging the rolls was brought by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of several Wisconsin voters. The group claims the state elections commission should have immediately deactivated voters who didn’t respond within 30 days to a mailing sent in October, an indication that the person may have moved, say the litigants. Judge Paul Malloy last month sided with the conservative group and declined a request by the state elections commission to halt the purge while the case plays out in court.   The order on Tuesday to pause the lower court ruling came from a three-judge panel in the fourth district of the state appeals court.  The commission, comprising three Democrats and three Republicans, was slated on Tuesday to kick off meetings over the removal of the more than 200,000 voters in question. The group previously deadlocked over the issue, according to The Associated Press. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2020 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

2017-04-26 00:00:00

After months of blunt force foreshadowing, the Federal Communications Commission announced today that it’s ready to pick a fight with the public over the future of the open internet. It’s great news if you’re a lawyer for Verizon or Comcast, and terrible news for the rest of us. In its first wave of propaganda, the FCC says that its proposal to roll back internet regulation will “Restore Internet Freedom for all Americans” — a mendacious slogan on the level of the “Patriot Act,” or the “World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan.” Like the first fight for net neutrality, this one is going to be about words and what they mean. For instance: “internet freedom.” What does the FCC mean now when it talks about “internet freedom?” Here’s what Chairman Pai’s office said today in a press release: Chairman Pai is now setting the FCC on a course to fix the problems that the prior FCC created. His plan to restore Internet Freedom by repealing Obama-era Internet regulations will benefit all Americans. It will restore Internet Freedom by ending government micromanagement and returning to the bipartisan regulatory framework that worked well for decades. This is the same tired line that Republicans have been trotting out for years, and it’s based on a dumb, misleading conflation of “the internet” with “the behavior of internet service providers.” The current net neutrality rules already give consumers “internet freedom” by restraining internet providers from dividing the internet into a nightmare of toll zones and walls. Net neutrality rules aren’t “government micromanagement,” they’re the exact opposite: they are a condition of possibility for the competitive anarchy that has defined the internet and allowed companies to rise and fall without permission from their ISP. “Title II regulation” simply gives the FCC the authority to make sure those ISPs are behaving — a power the Republican-controlled FCC wants to relinquish to the very companies they’re supposed to monitor. Chairman Pai said as much earlier this month when he floated the nonsensical idea that broadband providers self-regulate by putting net neutrality provisions in their terms of service agreements. Here are just some of the things those broadband companies have done in the past 10 years: The FCC wants to put these companies in charge of the internet. Let’s work together to make sure that doesn’t happen. Tell the FCC we’re not going back. You can contact FCC chairman Ajit Pai and let him know what you think by emailing him: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov. You can also call the FCC at 1-888-225-5322. At the prompt, press 1, then 4, then 2, then 0 to be connected to an agent and file a complaint.

2017-11-30

(The following statement was released by the rating agency) MOSCOW, November 30 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings has revised AzInsurance OJSC's (AzInsurance) Outlook to Negative from Stable. At the same time, Fitch has affirmed AzInsurance's Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) Rating at 'B'. KEY RATING DRIVERS The revision of the Outlook reflects AzInsurance's weak business profile and low resilience to a difficult operating environment in Azerbaijan, deteriorated financial performance in 9M17 and the lack of distinctive competitive advantages. The affirmation of the rating reflects AzInsurance's strong regulatory capital position. The operating environment is challenging in Azerbaijan with continued risks and uncertainty around the macroeconomic and financial sector adjustment currently underway. Policy credibility continues to be tested by the fallout from low oil prices. The impact of a mishandled devaluation is still reverberating across the economy. AzInsurance is a medium-sized insurer and is ranked sixth on the Azerbaijani non-life and life insurance markets, with gross written premiums of AZN17 million in 9M17, after adjusting for inwards reinsurance and early policy terminations. Fitch believes that the company has no distinctive competitive advantages that could support an improvement of its financial performance or boost business volumes. In 3Q17, in response to the weaker economic environment, AzInsurance decided to launch a new business plan. The company intends now to optimise its business processes through digitalisation, reduce its cost base and diversify its insurance product mix through product innovation. However, Fitch views this business strategy as challenging to implement successfully. In Fitch's view, AzInsurance faces challenges in finding a stable market position and implementing the strategic steps that could make the company more resilient to the operating environment. AzInsurance is in compliance with regulatory solvency requirements. The regulatory solvency margin, calculated according to the Solvency-I like formula, was a strong 281% at end-9M17 compared with 341% at end-2016. Historically, AzInsurance's shareholder repatriated nearly 100% of its net profits in the form of dividends. However, in 2016-9M17, AzInsurance paid out 22% and 48% of prior year net profit. Fitch understands from management that AzInsurance's shareholder has decided to reduce the sum of expected dividends to maintain the company's sound capitalisation. This decision should support the company throughout the restructuring of its business. In 9M17 AzInsurance reported a net loss of AZN4.8 million, which was adversely impacted by a worsened underwriting result and, to a lesser extent, by FX losses on investments. The underwriting loss of AZN4 million was driven by increased administrative expenses stemming from the restructuring. In 2016 AzInsurance reported a net profit of AZN2.3 million compared with a net profit of AZN18.5 million in 2015. As in 2015, the 2016 net result was mainly driven by FX gains on investments of AZN4.9 million (2015: AZN10.4 million). Adversely the net result was impacted by negative underwriting profitability. AzInsurance reported an underwriting loss of AZN3.8 million in 2016. AzInsurance's portfolio contains significant concentrations in single counterparties. Cash and bank deposits with sister AFB Bank ASC accounted for 47% of the insurer's investments at end-9M17 (end-2016: 28%). RATING SENSITIVITIES Capital depletion due to investment or operating losses could lead to a downgrade of AzInsurance's rating. Successful implementation of the new business plan, resulting in improved financial performance, could lead to a revision of the Outlook to Stable. Contact: Primary Analyst Anastasia Surudina Analyst +7 495 956 5570 Fitch Ratings CIS Limited Valovaya Street, 26 Moscow 115054 Secondary Analyst Stephan Kalb Senior Director +49 69 768076 118 Committee Chairperson Federico Faccio Senior Director +44 20 3530 1394 Media Relations: Athos Larkou, London, Tel: +44 203 530 1549, Email: athos.larkou@fitchratings.com. Additional information is available on www.fitchratings.com Applicable Criteria Insurance Rating Methodology (pub. 26 Apr 2017) here Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form here Solicitation Status here Endorsement Policy here ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: here. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEB SITE AT WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM. 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2017-07-12

July 12(Reuters) - Shanghai Jinjiang International Travel Co Ltd : * Says it will pay FY 2016 dividend to shareholders of record on July 21 * The company’s shares will be traded ex-right and ex-dividend on July 28 and the dividend will be paid on July 28 Source text in Chinese: goo.gl/XukJHC Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)

2017-07-11 10:52:11

Best Buy lost $1 billion in value after Recode broke the news that Amazon has stealth-launched a Geek Squad competitor. The internet retailer’s at-home gadget repair and installation service is now live in seven West Coast cities. Here’s a look at how Amazon has wreaked stock-price havoc to other competitors of all kinds in just the past month. [Jason Del Rey] The Trump administration has pushed back the start date for an Obama-era immigration program, and signaled its intent to ultimately eliminate the rule. The International Entrepreneur Rule, which would have allowed foreign entrepreneurs to come to the U.S. to start companies, was slated to go into effect on Friday and has been rolled back to March 14, 2018. [Tony Romm / Recode] Microsoft will try to bring better broadband to two million rural Americans in the next five years. Starting out in 12 states, the company’s so-called Rural Airband Initiative is an attempt to partner with local telecom providers to boost wireless internet. [Tony Romm / Recode] Media execs, investment bankers and lenders convene today in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the annual Allen & Co. media finance conference. Starting with Verizon, here’s a look at which companies are likely to make an M&A move at the weeklong mogulfest. [Richard Morgan / The New York Post] The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is adopting a rule that would restore the right for millions of American to bring class-action suits against banks and credit card companies. The financial institutions could no longer force customers into arbitration and block them from banding together to file a class-action suit; the change could cost Wall Street billions of dollars. [The New York Times] Priscilla Chan is running one of the most ambitious and well-funded philanthropies in the world. A pediatrician and teacher — and First Lady of Facebook, as the wife and partner of Mark Zuckerberg — Chan runs the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is dedicated to improving education, medicine and the criminal justice system, and which has more money than the 10 biggest active private and community foundations. Meanwhile, Warren Buffett donated $3.17 billion of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and four family charities, his largest contribution in a more than decade-long plan to give away his fortune. [Kurt Wagner / Recode] The cannabis cotillion This report on a high-society San Francisco party to launch an LA-based luxury cannabis brand has everything: An animal-skin rug, a celebrity tattoo artist, social circuit veterans, Yves Béhar, rose-gold vaporizer pens, Provencal rosé, apple-spice THC pastilles, a namesake grandma, compassionate baking and college funding, a newspaper cannabis editor and “OG without being dank." [Carolyne Zinko / San Francisco Chronicle] This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

2019-09-12 16:53:56

An N.F.C. championship rematch, a game with an 18.5-point spread and the Ravens trying to live up to last week’s explosion are among the week’s highlights. Last week was a crash course in quick reversals of expectations: For example, the Cleveland Browns failed to deliver on their hype, and Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens proved far better at passing than some had expected. But it’s far too early to assume we know much about these teams. Week 2 should be approached with an open mind — even in Miami, where the Dolphins are underdogs with one of the widest spreads in recent N.F.L. history. This week already has been filled with news. Antonio Brown of the Patriots is facing a lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault, Sam Darnold of the Jets is out indefinitely with mononucleosis, a Bills rookie was suspended after he was charged in a domestic violence incident and the Buccaneers survived in an ugly Thursday night game against the Panthers. Here is a look at N.F.L. Week 2, with all picks made against the point spread. Last week’s record: 12-4 Saints at Rams, 4:25 p.m., Fox Line: Rams -2.5 | Total: 52 Instead of talking about a matchup of two of the N.F.L.’s best teams — a rubber match, after each beat the other last season — most people are just going to talk about the play. It’s the one where Nickell Robey-Coleman, a defensive back for the Rams, clearly interfered with Tommylee Lewis, a wide receiver for the Saints, near the end of the N.F.C. championship game last season, and no call was made. But if we move beyond a noncall that cost New Orleans a trip to the Super Bowl — and focus on this game — it’s easy to be excited about a matchup of teams that could end up in a second consecutive conference championship this year. Both teams have terrific quarterbacks, exciting running backs and talented wide receivers. Both teams have defenses that are a strange mix of porous and opportunistic. Both teams have coaches who have had a turn as the N.F.L.’s hottest new thing. A concern for Los Angeles is how Christian McCaffrey of the Panthers exploited its defense last week (209 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns). Alvin Kamara of the Saints is a very different running back than McCaffrey, but he presents a similar challenge as a runner and receiver. New Orleans, meanwhile, gave up 180 yards on the ground last week to a group of Houston running backs that is not nearly as talented as the Los Angeles duo of Todd Gurley II and Malcolm Brown. Does that mean this game will be decided by running backs? Probably not. In what will almost assuredly be a close game, an interception, a fumble or even a missed call late in the game could decide things. Pick: Rams -2.5 Patriots at Dolphins, 1 p.m., CBS Line: Patriots -18.5 | Total: 48 From a football standpoint, there is little to speak of. The N.F.L.’s reigning champion (New England) is coming off a thrashing of a quality team (Pittsburgh) and a team that has been accused of openly tanking (Miami) is coming off a game in which it allowed the most points in an N.F.L. game since 2012. The Patriots (1-0) are better at everything than the Dolphins (0-1), and everyone knows it. So how do oddsmakers come up with a reason for anyone to care about what should be a blowout? A comically large point spread will do. No favored N.F.L. team has covered a spread of more than 16 points on the road, and the Patriots are being asked to cover 18.5 (a number that rose from an opening spread of 15, and one that could rise even more based on plausible scenarios like the Dolphins’ few decent remaining players quitting to become long-haul truck drivers). But there’s a reason gigantic point spreads on the road are not typically covered, and it has to do with things like motivation, garbage-time touchdowns, injuries and other factors. Will New England win? Almost certainly, yes. Could New England cover? Yes. Will they? Probably not. Pick: Dolphins +18.5 Cardinals at Ravens, 1 p.m., Fox Line: Ravens -13.5 | Total: 46 There are two games this week in which both quarterbacks are Heisman Trophy winners: this one and Tampa Bay vs. Carolina. After Lamar Jackson’s explosion against Miami last week, and Kyler Murray’s electric fourth quarter against Detroit, this one figures to be the more exciting matchup. The big questions are whether the connection between Jackson and Marquise (Hollywood) Brown of the Ravens (1-0) is really that strong and whether Arizona’s Murray can figure out how to replicate last week’s fourth quarter while hoping everyone forgets just how bad he and the Cardinals (0-0-1) looked for the first 45 minutes of their opener. Baltimore, a playoff team a year ago, is rightly favored, but Arizona’s secondary will be much more active than Miami’s in making life hard for Jackson. Pick: Cardinals +13.5 Eagles at Falcons, 8:20 p.m., NBC Line: Eagles -1.5 | Total: 52.5 The Falcons (0-1) need a pick-me-up on offense after managing just 12 points in a loss to Minnesota last week. A home game against the Eagles (1-0), who looked vulnerable on defense last week, could be just what the doctor ordered. In truth, both of these teams have been fairly frustrating going back to last year. That is unlikely to change, but Matt Ryan has a 57-29 career record at home, so Atlanta shouldn’t be an underdog. Pick: Falcons +1.5 Cowboys at Redskins, 1 p.m., Fox Line: Cowboys -5 | Total: 46 How are things going in Washington? Much to the surprise of many of his players, Coach Jay Gruden made running back Adrian Peterson a healthy scratch for the Redskins (0-1) last week despite the team’s starter, Derrius Guice, not appearing to be fully recovered from a knee injury last year, and Peterson, likely a future Hall of Famer, having been brilliant at times in 2018. Guice proceeded to injure his other knee and is now expected to miss a few weeks, and Peterson is suddenly Gruden’s starter. So … not great! The Cowboys (1-0) have a far rosier outlook. Ezekiel Elliott is locked up for the foreseeable future, as are several other key components of the team, and Dak Prescott looked sensational in his first game with Kellen Moore, Dallas’s new offensive coordinator, calling plays. Pick: Cowboys -5 Chiefs at Raiders, 4:05 p.m., CBS Line: Chiefs -7.5 | Total: 50 There have been relatively few hiccups in the still-young career of Patrick Mahomes. He can’t quite manage a road win in New England — some other quarterbacks have also struggled to do that — but he has found success virtually everywhere else. So with the Chiefs (1-0) traveling to Oakland to face a fierce A.F.C. West rival in the Raiders (1-0), it’s with a reasonable amount of certainty that you can predict a Kansas City victory. But any anticipation of a blowout ignores the Raiders looking improved from last season and the fact that Mahomes has typically saved his laughers for home games. Pick: Raiders +7.5 Vikings at Packers, 1 p.m., Fox Line: Packers -4 | Total: 44.5 Coach Matt LaFleur was supposed to bring the N.F.L.’s offensive revolution to Green Bay, but in a season-opening road win in Chicago, the Packers (1-0) showed a lot more aptitude on defense. Having a healthy Aaron Rodgers starting at home against the Vikings (1-0), a division rival he loves to beat up at Lambeau (7-2-1 for his career), will most likely wake things up on that side of the ball. Just as vital, though, is the open question of whether Green Bay’s defense is actually that good. If it is, the rest of the N.F.C. North is in trouble. Pick: Packers -2.5 Jaguars at Texans, 1 p.m., CBS Line: Texans -9.5 | Total 43 Here’s what you need to know about Gardner Minshew, the sixth-round draft pick of the Jaguars (0-1) who stepped in for the injured Nick Foles and completed 22 of 25 passes for 275 yards in last week’s loss to Kansas City: There are plenty of reasons the Texans (0-1) are huge favorites in this game, and Houston will almost assuredly win, but Minshew did not appear tentative at all last week, and he just might keep this game somewhat competitive. Pick: Jaguars +9.5 Colts at Titans, 1 p.m., CBS Line: Titans -3 | Total: 45 They had opposite results in terms of wins and losses, but the Colts (0-1) and Titans (1-0) had a lot of reason for optimism after Week 1. The Indianapolis offense looked decidedly competent with Jacoby Brissett at quarterback rather than Andrew Luck, and running back Marlon Mack showed that his breakout last season was no fluke. Tennessee, meanwhile, went on the road and obliterated a Browns team that had been talked about as a dark horse Super Bowl contender. The Colts’ defense is probably a little better than it showed in a loss to the Chargers, and the Titans’ 43 points owed a great deal of favors to Baker Mayfield’s mistakes. But even once you adjust for some regression to the mean, Tennessee is a solid home favorite. Pick: Titans -3 Chargers at Lions, 1 p.m., CBS Line: Chargers -2.5 | Total: 48 Both of these teams are coming off overtime games, but the Chargers (1-0) have much better memories of last week than the Lions (0-0-1), who had to settle for a tie in a game that they’d led by as much as 17-0 in the first half. There is no question that both teams can muster some offense — and their respective quarterbacks are as durable as they come — but Los Angeles should be concerned about its defensive showing in Week 1. Pick: Lions +2.5 Bears at Broncos, 4:25 p.m., Fox Line: Bears -2.5 | Total: 40.5 You would think that after a hard-to-watch season opener for the Bears (0-1), Coach Matt Nagy would realize that his rookie running back, David Montgomery, had been dramatically underused. But Nagy, citing things beyond just success running the ball — like pass protection and running routes — said Chicago would continue to ease in the much-hyped third-round pick. Chicago will, almost by default, be better on offense this week, especially against the Broncos (0-1), whose defense looked terrible in a loss to the Raiders on Monday night. Road games in Denver can be tough, but the Bears have the added motivation of proving last year’s success was not a fluke. Pick: Bears -2.5 49ers at Bengals, 1 p.m., Fox Line: Bengals -2 | Total: 45 In last week’s convincing win over Tampa Bay, the 49ers (1-0) with Jimmy Garoppolo back under center were not particularly effective on offense. But the team’s defense, thanks in part to a strong push from its rebuilt front seven, managed three interceptions, two of which were returned for touchdowns. The Bengals (0-1) were aggressive and productive in Coach Zac Taylor’s first game, but San Francisco looks like a better team. Pick: 49ers +2 Seahawks at Steelers, 1 p.m., Fox Line: Steelers -4 | Total: 45.5 The injury report for the Steelers (0-1) is a bit daunting, but running back James Conner is just working his way through what is believed to be a mild illness, and Pittsburgh is optimistic that JuJu Smith-Schuster, the team’s star wide receiver, should be fine to play despite being listed as questionable with a toe injury. If Smith-Schuster is anywhere near 100 percent, Seattle’s rebuilt secondary — Legion of Whom? — could be in big trouble. Pick: Steelers -4 Bills at Giants, 1 p.m., CBS Line: Bills -1.5 | Total 44 The Bills (1-0), who pulled off a remarkable comeback against the Jets last week, have the unusual distinction of playing consecutive road games in the same stadium against different teams. If all goes well this week, they could be 2-0 at MetLife before the Giants or Jets have a win there. That’s about as interesting of a tidbit that you’ll come across with this game. Pick: Bills -1.5 Browns at Jets, 8:15 p.m., ESPN Line: Browns -2.5 | Total: 46 Picking one thing to complain about in a game that was an absolute failure on every level seems petty, but the Browns (0-1) need to find a way to protect Baker Mayfield. Not having the team’s starting left tackle (Greg Robinson) get ejected for kicking an opponent in the face could certainly help. There’s a reason people were so high on the Browns in the preseason — even if it’s suddenly hard to remember it — and a road game in prime time against the Jets (0-1) — who will be without their starting quarterback, Sam Darnold — will give Mayfield a giant spotlight to prove his doubters wrong. And Mayfield does love to prove his doubters wrong. Pick: Browns -2.5 Buccaneers at Panthers, 8:20 p.m., NFL Network Line: Panthers -7 | Total: 48.5 There is a distinct possibility that defensive tackle Gerald McCoy will turn himself into a one-man wrecking crew when the Panthers (0-1) host his former team, the Buccaneers (0-1). McCoy’s nine-year tenure in Tampa Bay ended when the Bucs’ new head coach, Bruce Arians, declared him not as disruptive as he once was and proceeded to release him. Things only went south from there, with one of the team’s most prominent former players, Warren Sapp, openly questioning if McCoy had a legacy that could justify his complaints. But even if McCoy can get to quarterback Jameis Winston early and often, will that be enough to balance out the rest of a Panthers defense that was exposed last week in a loss to the Rams? A more likely outcome is a narrow Panthers victory followed by some questioning of whether the pairing of Arians and Winston is working out. Pick: Buccaneers +7; Result: Buccaneers 20, Panthers 14 A quick primer for those who are not familiar with betting lines: Favorites are listed next to a negative number that represents how many points they must win by to cover the spread. Patriots -18.5, for example, means that New England must beat the Dolphins by at least 19 points for its backers to win their bet. Gamblers can also bet on the total score, or whether the teams’ combined score in the game is over or under a preselected number of points. All times are Eastern. An earlier version of this article misstated the Vikings' won-lost record entering Week 2. They were 1-0, not 0-1.

2020-03-05 00:00:00

ROME (Reuters) - The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has risen by 41 over the past 24 hours to 148, the Civil Protection Agency said on Thursday, with the contagion in Europe’s worst-hit country showing no sign of slowing. The government, which has imposed draconian measures to try to contain the outbreak, said it would double the money pledged to help the economy cope with the impact of the epidemic. The accumulative number of cases in the country totaled 3,858, up from 3,089 on Wednesday. The increase in both the number of deaths and the number of infections was by far the largest since the outbreak began in northern regions two weeks ago. As the strain on hospitals increased, the northern Lombardy region, Italy’s industrial and financial heartland that has reported by far the highest number of patients and deaths, told inhabitants not to go to hospital with anything other than urgent problems. The epidemic is focused on a handful of hotspots in the north of Italy. However, cases have now been confirmed in each of the country’s 20 regions, with 44 in central Lazio around Rome, and 45 in southern Campania, around Naples. “We are asking the country for unity, we are all in the same boat and we need to work together otherwise it will be hard to overcome this crisis,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told a news conference. On Wednesday the government shut all schools until March 15, closed cinemas and theaters for longer periods and ordered that sporting events, including top flight Serie A soccer matches, be played in empty stadiums. On Thursday Italy announced it had canceled a rugby match with England, part of the Six Nations Championship, which had been scheduled for March 14. Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri said the government would spend 7.5 billion euros ($8.4 billion) on the emergency and told the European Commission it would raise this year’s deficit goal to 2.5% of national output from the current 2.2% target. Just four days ago the minister had promised a smaller package worth 3.6 billion euros, a sum that the opposition and much of Italy’s media deemed inadequate. Civil Protection Agency chief Angelo Borrelli said more than 3.8% of those who had tested positive in Italy had died, up from 3.5% on Wednesday. In a video message to the nation, the head of state Sergio Mattarella called on Italians to remain calm. “Without alarmism, we must have confidence in our abilities and resources, we can and we must have faith in Italy,” he said. The government postponed a referendum over legislation to cut the number of parliamentarians that was slated for March 29, due to the coronavirus epidemic, without setting a new date. The delay reduces the possibility of an early election this year, a prospect often mooted due to persistent squabbling in the ruling coalition dominated by the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD). The referendum is widely expected to pass, in which case various time-consuming changes would be needed to re-draw electoral boundaries and adjust the voting system. Ordinary political business has ground to a halt, with the Chamber of Deputies in Rome announcing it will only meet once per week to deal with emergency matters. National statistics bureau ISTAT, also based in Rome, said it had suspended presentations of economic data to reporters, with future releases to be emailed directly to newsrooms. Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer and Angelo Amante; Editing by Alex Richardson

2019-12-13 00:00:00

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said time was “extremely short” to seal a deal on the EU’s new relationship with Britain before the end of 2020. “We aim at zero tariff, zero quotas and zero dumping, and this is very important for us,” she told a news conference after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a landslide election victory at home on a promise to get Brexit done by Jan.31, 2020. “We are addressing the challenge that the time is very short, we have 11 months to negotiate a broad field,” von der Leyen said. “And it’s not only about trade, but we are also speaking about education, transport, fisheries, many, many other fields are in the portfolio to be negotiated.” Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska, Jan Strupczewskil Editing by Catherine Evans

2019-08-27 06:02:20

MADRID — Spanish emergency services were working on Tuesday morning to clear roads, tunnels and houses that were inundated overnight after severe rain and hail pummeled the region around Madrid a day earlier, prompting dramatic flooding in some municipalities. The storm, which began on Monday afternoon and extended into the evening, transformed some streets into muddied torrents that swept away cars and dumpsters on the outskirts of the Spanish capital. A portion of Madrid’s highway and subway networks remained closed early Tuesday, as emergency services worked to clear the flooded tunnels and inundated roads. Areas to the south and east of Madrid were hit particularly hard. In the municipalities of Valdemoro and Arganda del Rey, hailstones the size of golf balls transformed some areas into winter landscapes, as if blanketed by snow. Local television showed residents trying to barricade their garages with mattresses to block the floodwaters, while others posted videos on social media of the views from their balconies as the water swept vehicles and trash cans down their streets. The flash flood also prompted some mudslides that cut off roads and brought down trees. Two of the main highways that circumvent Madrid had to be temporarily closed, and some flights were delayed or diverted away from the city’s airport to other neighboring airfields. The Madrid emergency services said they received over 1,100 calls on Monday evening and firefighters said they responded to over 200 calls, but nobody was reported injured in the summer storm. The national weather agency had issued a warning ahead of the arrival of the storm, which helped minimize the damage and ensured that firefighters and other emergency services were ready to respond, the director of the Madrid emergency services, José Luis Villarroel, told Telemadrid, a local television station. “There was the possibility that some people would get trapped and swept away by the water flows, but luckily the few incidents in which people were involved were resolved without any damage,” Mr. Villarroel. While the storm had been particularly violent, it is not an unusual phenomenon in Spain, particularly at the end of a hot and dry summer, weather experts said.