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<p>Yves Engler is a Canadian commentator and <a href="http://yvesengler.com/" type="external">author</a>. His most recent book is The Ugly Canadian - Stephen Harper's Foreign Policy, and previously he published The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy and Canada in Haiti: Waging War on The Poor Majority</p> <p>Jenny Uechi is the managing editor and senior reporter of the <a href="http://www.vancouverobserver.com/" type="external">Vancouver Observer</a>. She has worked previously as a news director for NHK news in Tokyo, as well as a freelance writer for The Japan Times. During her time editing at the Vancouver Observer, the publication has won the Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award in 2012.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> SHARMINI PERIES, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries in Baltimore. <p /> <p />You have joined us for our Canada panel. Today we have two panelists joining us. <p /> <p />Our regular, Yves Engler. Yves Engler is a Canadian commentator and author. His most recent book is The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper's Foreign Policy. <p /> <p />And we are also joined by Jenny Uechi. She's the managing editor and senior reporter of The Vancouver Observer. During her time editing The Vancouver Observer, the publication won the 2012 Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award. <p /> <p />Thank you both for joining us. <p /> <p />JENNY UECHI, MANAGING EDITOR, THE VANCOUVER OBSERVER : Thank you. <p /> <p />PERIES: Jenny, why don't you go first? Let us know what's going on in Canada, in Vancouver in particular, and with The Vancouver Observer more specifically. <p /> <p />UECHI: Sure. So this week The Vancouver Observer broke a story about how the premier of this province, Christy Clark, was found to--we found documents that say that she was listed as a partner in a lobbying firm which had among its clients Enbridge, the big pipeline company that's trying to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline right now. It's a big, controversial project that would bring Albertan oil from the tar sands through to B.C.'s coast. <p /> <p />Now, the premier has said that she was in the company [incompr.] by the time that she joined the company, Enbridge was no longer listed as a client and that she personally has not done any lobbying. But, still, people are wondering why this was never made public. <p /> <p />PERIES: And what is the real controversy behind the story? <p /> <p />UECHI: The controversy is that the lobbying firm was actually operating out of her house during the time that her ex-husband was in fact lobbying the federal government for Enbridge on a project that was called the Gateway Project, which later turned out to be the Northern Gateway Pipeline. And it is controversial not only because it was operating out of her home at the time, but also--or registered to have operated out of her home at the time, but also because people who had worked with her on that firm, including a person named John Fraser, actually was hired to work with her in the B.C. government afterwards, and also that another Enbridge lobbyist, named Ken Boessenkool, was hired as her chief of staff in 2011, I believe. And for all those reasons, people are wondering, now that the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline is such a huge issue in B.C., whether that has any influence on the way that she makes decisions today. <p /> <p />But after the news has broke, some environmentalists have been coming forward to say that, really, the onus is on the premier right now to prove whether or not she works for the people of B.C. or if she still has these kind of connections to the--or if she works for the oil industry, basically. <p /> <p />PERIES: It appears that Enbridge and the pipeline and the connection to the premier's office is a sensitive story in Vancouver. Can you elaborate on the next story that you wanted to propose to us, which also is connected through Enbridge? <p /> <p />UECHI: Yes. Right now through to--like, yesterday, Kitimat--it's a tiny northern community in B.C. which has a population of about--less than 10,000. They are holding a plebiscite about whether or not they approve of the Joint Review Panel's decision to--for the federal--not decision--recommendation for the federal government to give the green light to the Northern Gateway Pipeline. This plebiscite has been significant and in the news because Enbridge has been spending a lot of money to campaign, almost as if they're running a political campaign, to convince people in Kitimat to vote yes for the pipeline. And because this isn't a political campaign, they have no spending limit and have--they've been going door to door, knocking on people's--talking to people, and putting in ads in the newspaper. <p /> <p />But the other important thing to remember about this vote is that regardless of what people--how the vote goes, basically it's a vote for a social license. The final decision still rests with the federal government. But if the people were to vote--the majority of the people were to vote yes for the pipeline, it would give the appearance that Enbridge has the social license to build this highly controversial pipeline. And that's what the company is aiming for. <p /> <p />PERIES: Jenny, the community that is going to be voting, are they aware of what just happened in terms of the premier's connection to Enbridge? And what are they saying about that? <p /> <p />UECHI: I'm certain that they've heard. The opinions are very, I think, divided. In terms of the reaction from Kitimat, I think that some people have just scanned the headline and decided that she must have lingering ties to the company and--or that she must have some ties to the company, and therefore that she should answer to the public about that. But other people have defended her, saying that really she had done no wrong and that it was all connections through her ex-husband, and that some people have basically said, let's sit back and see how things proceed with the pipeline. <p /> <p />PERIES: Does Vancouver have a policy where they have to declare their interest of this sort before becoming the premier of the province? <p /> <p />UECHI: Not legally, no. I think it's more about--somebody commented that the bar that society sets, at least in terms of perception, is a lot higher than the legal bar. She would have had to declare, of course, if she was, you know, involved in provincial politics at the time that all this was going on. However, because it was during her break from politics in 2005, legally she was not obliged to disclose it. <p /> <p />But people think that--a lot of people are saying that it was something that they would have liked to know before she was elected premier. <p /> <p />PERIES: And did the premier's husband continue to lobby with Enbridge after she becomes premier? <p /> <p />UECHI: No. That ended in 2006, ostensibly. <p /> <p />PERIES: Yves, so tell us what's going on in Quebec. <p /> <p />YVES ENGLER, AUTHOR AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST: Well, today in Montreal there's a major demonstration organized by the student movement, thousands, maybe up to 10,000 people protesting. Fifty thousand students across the province voted for a strike day against austerity. And the main theme of the demonstration is to make the rich pay their fair part. (It sounds better in French, the slogan.) And it comes in the midst of elections, the election campaign campaign coming to an end with the election on Monday, and a very bizarre four-way election race for the provincial government. <p /> <p />PERIES: Tell us more about the student movement. What was the nature of the demonstration? How many--you said 50,000 students came out to demonstrate. What are their particular calls? <p /> <p />ENGLER: Well, [incompr.] 50,000 students voted to take a one-day strike. It's probably not that many people on the street--in the thousands. I wasn't there, of course, but from the pictures I've seen, it looks like it could be up to 10,000 people. <p /> <p />Well, the student ASS&#201; [incompr.] federation that organized the demonstration, that was the main organization behind the massive student strike that rocked Quebec about two years ago, they are critical of the austerity of the current Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois government. They obviously were critical of the tuition increases of the previous Liberal government. And they're sending a message for whoever wins this upcoming election that the austerity model of increasing daycare costs, of increasing tuition costs, of adding to health costs, while simultaneously cutting taxes on banks, cutting taxes for higher income people, is not a desired route. <p /> <p />In terms of the election, it's a very interesting four-way race that looks like--the polls are suggesting that the Liberal government will--Liberal Party will probably form the next government. It's not clear if it would be a minority or a majority government. <p /> <p />This week, this past week, Pauline Marois, the current premier of the province and the head of the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois, she was basically accepting, almost lauding the comments of a prominent Quebecois feminist, 87-year-old woman, who basically said the Charter of Values that the Quebec government is pursuing, the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois government is pursuing, it's to stop it so Muslim men, when she's swimming and they come in and they don't want to swim with her--and that basically the Muslims are taking over. So there's this rightward shift at an identity level of the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois, which was traditionally the social democratic government, obviously a sovereigntist government that, you know, pursues Quebec independence. In recent months, they have pushed a very xenophobic form of nationalism, very much moving away from the roots of the sort of more social democratic oriented nature of the sovereigntist movement. That's playing out in these elections campaign. <p /> <p />There's a rise of the left-wing party, Qu&#233;bec solidaire, which is now polling as high as 13 percent, which is a huge breakthrough for a party that would be akin to the Green Party in the U.S. They will almost certainly win--well, they already have two seats in the provincial legislature, but they're likely to win a couple more seats and possibly get over, you know, 10 percent of the popular vote, which would be a big step forward for this fairly new left-wing party. <p /> <p />And there's obviously--on the right end of the political spectrum you have a far-right party pursuing, you know, attacks against unions. <p /> <p />And then you have the Liberal Party, which is sort of the traditionally dominant party, actually making some positive [incompr.] they're criticizing the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois for their sort of sellout to oil interests in the Saint Lawrence River area. <p /> <p />And so it's a very interesting mix of economic issues, of national--of sort of race-relation issues, and of the question of Quebec sovereignty that's going to be decided on Monday. <p /> <p />PERIES: Yves, are the students putting their weight behind any particular party at this point? <p /> <p />ENGLER: Well, the student movement, the mainstream of the student movement has historically close relations with the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois. And so two of the leaders of the student movement, the more right-wing element of the student movement, they're actually running their candidates for the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois, two leaders for the last--during the student strike of two years ago, one of them, who's already been an MP, who was elected right after the student strike, and another one who is joining it this election. <p /> <p />The ASS&#201; has a bit more of an anarchist kind of orientation, so they would be sort of split between a more sort of anarchist component of ASS&#201; and a component that's closer to Qu&#233;bec solidaire. So ASS&#201;, who organized this major demonstration today in Montreal, they have not taken an official position on the elections. They're not calling for people to vote for any of the parties. But they are sending a message that they believe the money for education, the money for health services, daycare services, that should come from the wealthy, and the moves to increase tuition, the move that even the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois has suggested, to increase daycare costs from $7 a day to $9 a day, that that's not acceptable and in fact that, again, the rich should pay their fair part. <p /> <p />PERIES: Explain that again, Yves. The fact--the cost of daycare in Quebec will be a surprise to most of our listeners. <p /> <p />ENGLER: Yeah, and that's why I said the $7 to $9. It's--Quebec has had a--for--it's the preeminent daycare model in North America, where it was $5 until very recently, $5 a day, a publicly funded daycare system. It's really at the cutting edge. And the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois, who implemented the daycare program a number of years ago, they have--as part of their sort of more rightward shift, they're calling for an increase in the daycare fee, which had already just been increased a couple of years ago from $5 to $7, and now up to $9. <p /> <p />And the same thing goes when it comes to, you know, tuition costs. Tuition in Quebec is around $3,000 a year, which is about half of the national average in Canada, and obviously much less than most places in the U.S. <p /> <p />The same thing goes for, you know, some of the health services, where, you know, this is--obviously, in Canada it's across the country, but there's, you know, a model of community clinic model. And that's one of the things that Qu&#233;bec solidaire, the left-wing party, is proposing to really expand is to hire a lot more people in the community clinic, the so-called CLSCs, and to orient it more towards house visits of medical professionals, you know, more rooted in the actual community, which I think is ultimately--you know, is the model that health should be focused on, rather than the sort of curative model of more--you know, more pharmaceutical drugs or more incursions, which tend to be beneficial to medical lobbying groups and companies. <p /> <p />So the Quebec--in total, the Quebec sort of social entitlement system is much more generous than the rest of--anywhere else in North America. So, you know, moves to increase daycare from $7 to $9 actually prompt significant resistance, just as moves to increase tuition by a couple of hundred dollars a year prompted that massive student strike two years ago. <p /> <p />PERIES: Right. But what do you expect will happen on Monday? <p /> <p />ENGLER: It's looking like there will be a minority or slim majority Liberal Party victory. If that happens, hopefully the Qu&#233;bec solidaire will get up to four or five seats and over 10 percent of the vote. But it's still possible, because it's a four-way race and there's quite a bit of fluidity between people voting, the people who tend to be sovereigntist-oriented, who tend to have a certain sympathy for sort of cultural rights of the French language, of support for sort of the sovereigntist movement. Some of these people flow between the most right-wing party, the CAQ, and the Parti Qu&#233;b&#233;cois, and its a little bit unclear where the votes will fall on Monday. But it's likely to be a liberal government at this point. <p /> <p />PERIES: Okay. Thank you very much for joining us. And we will make sure that we come back to you sometime next week to give us an update. <p /> <p />ENGLER: Thank you. <p /> <p />PERIES: And, Jenny, thank you for joining us as well. <p /> <p />UECHI: Thank you so much for having me. <p /> <p />PERIES: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. <p /> <p />End <p /> <p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Elections, Pipelines, and Protests - The Canada Panel

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D767%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D11693

2014-04-02

4left

Yves Engler is a Canadian commentator and author His most recent book is The Ugly Canadian Stephen Harpers Foreign Policy and previously he published The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy and Canada in Haiti Waging War on The Poor Majority Jenny Uechi is the managing editor and senior reporter of the Vancouver Observer She has worked previously as a news director for NHK news in Tokyo as well as a freelance writer for The Japan Times During her time editing at the Vancouver Observer the publication has won the Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award in 2012 SHARMINI PERIES TRNN PRODUCER Welcome to The Real News Network Im Sharmini Peries in Baltimore You have joined us for our Canada panel Today we have two panelists joining us Our regular Yves Engler Yves Engler is a Canadian commentator and author His most recent book is The Ugly Canadian Stephen Harpers Foreign Policy And we are also joined by Jenny Uechi Shes the managing editor and senior reporter of The Vancouver Observer During her time editing The Vancouver Observer the publication won the 2012 Canadian Journalism Foundation Excellence in Journalism Award Thank you both for joining us JENNY UECHI MANAGING EDITOR THE VANCOUVER OBSERVER Thank you PERIES Jenny why dont you go first Let us know whats going on in Canada in Vancouver in particular and with The Vancouver Observer more specifically UECHI Sure So this week The Vancouver Observer broke a story about how the premier of this province Christy Clark was found towe found documents that say that she was listed as a partner in a lobbying firm which had among its clients Enbridge the big pipeline company thats trying to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline right now Its a big controversial project that would bring Albertan oil from the tar sands through to BCs coast Now the premier has said that she was in the company incompr by the time that she joined the company Enbridge was no longer listed as a client and that she personally has not done any lobbying But still people are wondering why this was never made public PERIES And what is the real controversy behind the story UECHI The controversy is that the lobbying firm was actually operating out of her house during the time that her exhusband was in fact lobbying the federal government for Enbridge on a project that was called the Gateway Project which later turned out to be the Northern Gateway Pipeline And it is controversial not only because it was operating out of her home at the time but alsoor registered to have operated out of her home at the time but also because people who had worked with her on that firm including a person named John Fraser actually was hired to work with her in the BC government afterwards and also that another Enbridge lobbyist named Ken Boessenkool was hired as her chief of staff in 2011 I believe And for all those reasons people are wondering now that the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline is such a huge issue in BC whether that has any influence on the way that she makes decisions today But after the news has broke some environmentalists have been coming forward to say that really the onus is on the premier right now to prove whether or not she works for the people of BC or if she still has these kind of connections to theor if she works for the oil industry basically PERIES It appears that Enbridge and the pipeline and the connection to the premiers office is a sensitive story in Vancouver Can you elaborate on the next story that you wanted to propose to us which also is connected through Enbridge UECHI Yes Right now through tolike yesterday Kitimatits a tiny northern community in BC which has a population of aboutless than 10000 They are holding a plebiscite about whether or not they approve of the Joint Review Panels decision tofor the federalnot decisionrecommendation for the federal government to give the green light to the Northern Gateway Pipeline This plebiscite has been significant and in the news because Enbridge has been spending a lot of money to campaign almost as if theyre running a political campaign to convince people in Kitimat to vote yes for the pipeline And because this isnt a political campaign they have no spending limit and havetheyve been going door to door knocking on peoplestalking to people and putting in ads in the newspaper But the other important thing to remember about this vote is that regardless of what peoplehow the vote goes basically its a vote for a social license The final decision still rests with the federal government But if the people were to votethe majority of the people were to vote yes for the pipeline it would give the appearance that Enbridge has the social license to build this highly controversial pipeline And thats what the company is aiming for PERIES Jenny the community that is going to be voting are they aware of what just happened in terms of the premiers connection to Enbridge And what are they saying about that UECHI Im certain that theyve heard The opinions are very I think divided In terms of the reaction from Kitimat I think that some people have just scanned the headline and decided that she must have lingering ties to the company andor that she must have some ties to the company and therefore that she should answer to the public about that But other people have defended her saying that really she had done no wrong and that it was all connections through her exhusband and that some people have basically said lets sit back and see how things proceed with the pipeline PERIES Does Vancouver have a policy where they have to declare their interest of this sort before becoming the premier of the province UECHI Not legally no I think its more aboutsomebody commented that the bar that society sets at least in terms of perception is a lot higher than the legal bar She would have had to declare of course if she was you know involved in provincial politics at the time that all this was going on However because it was during her break from politics in 2005 legally she was not obliged to disclose it But people think thata lot of people are saying that it was something that they would have liked to know before she was elected premier PERIES And did the premiers husband continue to lobby with Enbridge after she becomes premier UECHI No That ended in 2006 ostensibly PERIES Yves so tell us whats going on in Quebec YVES ENGLER AUTHOR AND POLITICAL ACTIVIST Well today in Montreal theres a major demonstration organized by the student movement thousands maybe up to 10000 people protesting Fifty thousand students across the province voted for a strike day against austerity And the main theme of the demonstration is to make the rich pay their fair part It sounds better in French the slogan And it comes in the midst of elections the election campaign campaign coming to an end with the election on Monday and a very bizarre fourway election race for the provincial government PERIES Tell us more about the student movement What was the nature of the demonstration How manyyou said 50000 students came out to demonstrate What are their particular calls ENGLER Well incompr 50000 students voted to take a oneday strike Its probably not that many people on the streetin the thousands I wasnt there of course but from the pictures Ive seen it looks like it could be up to 10000 people Well the student ASS201 incompr federation that organized the demonstration that was the main organization behind the massive student strike that rocked Quebec about two years ago they are critical of the austerity of the current Parti Qu233b233cois government They obviously were critical of the tuition increases of the previous Liberal government And theyre sending a message for whoever wins this upcoming election that the austerity model of increasing daycare costs of increasing tuition costs of adding to health costs while simultaneously cutting taxes on banks cutting taxes for higher income people is not a desired route In terms of the election its a very interesting fourway race that looks likethe polls are suggesting that the Liberal government willLiberal Party will probably form the next government Its not clear if it would be a minority or a majority government This week this past week Pauline Marois the current premier of the province and the head of the Parti Qu233b233cois she was basically accepting almost lauding the comments of a prominent Quebecois feminist 87yearold woman who basically said the Charter of Values that the Quebec government is pursuing the Parti Qu233b233cois government is pursuing its to stop it so Muslim men when shes swimming and they come in and they dont want to swim with herand that basically the Muslims are taking over So theres this rightward shift at an identity level of the Parti Qu233b233cois which was traditionally the social democratic government obviously a sovereigntist government that you know pursues Quebec independence In recent months they have pushed a very xenophobic form of nationalism very much moving away from the roots of the sort of more social democratic oriented nature of the sovereigntist movement Thats playing out in these elections campaign Theres a rise of the leftwing party Qu233bec solidaire which is now polling as high as 13 percent which is a huge breakthrough for a party that would be akin to the Green Party in the US They will almost certainly winwell they already have two seats in the provincial legislature but theyre likely to win a couple more seats and possibly get over you know 10 percent of the popular vote which would be a big step forward for this fairly new leftwing party And theres obviouslyon the right end of the political spectrum you have a farright party pursuing you know attacks against unions And then you have the Liberal Party which is sort of the traditionally dominant party actually making some positive incompr theyre criticizing the Parti Qu233b233cois for their sort of sellout to oil interests in the Saint Lawrence River area And so its a very interesting mix of economic issues of nationalof sort of racerelation issues and of the question of Quebec sovereignty thats going to be decided on Monday PERIES Yves are the students putting their weight behind any particular party at this point ENGLER Well the student movement the mainstream of the student movement has historically close relations with the Parti Qu233b233cois And so two of the leaders of the student movement the more rightwing element of the student movement theyre actually running their candidates for the Parti Qu233b233cois two leaders for the lastduring the student strike of two years ago one of them whos already been an MP who was elected right after the student strike and another one who is joining it this election The ASS201 has a bit more of an anarchist kind of orientation so they would be sort of split between a more sort of anarchist component of ASS201 and a component thats closer to Qu233bec solidaire So ASS201 who organized this major demonstration today in Montreal they have not taken an official position on the elections Theyre not calling for people to vote for any of the parties But they are sending a message that they believe the money for education the money for health services daycare services that should come from the wealthy and the moves to increase tuition the move that even the Parti Qu233b233cois has suggested to increase daycare costs from 7 a day to 9 a day that thats not acceptable and in fact that again the rich should pay their fair part PERIES Explain that again Yves The factthe cost of daycare in Quebec will be a surprise to most of our listeners ENGLER Yeah and thats why I said the 7 to 9 ItsQuebec has had aforits the preeminent daycare model in North America where it was 5 until very recently 5 a day a publicly funded daycare system Its really at the cutting edge And the Parti Qu233b233cois who implemented the daycare program a number of years ago they haveas part of their sort of more rightward shift theyre calling for an increase in the daycare fee which had already just been increased a couple of years ago from 5 to 7 and now up to 9 And the same thing goes when it comes to you know tuition costs Tuition in Quebec is around 3000 a year which is about half of the national average in Canada and obviously much less than most places in the US The same thing goes for you know some of the health services where you know this isobviously in Canada its across the country but theres you know a model of community clinic model And thats one of the things that Qu233bec solidaire the leftwing party is proposing to really expand is to hire a lot more people in the community clinic the socalled CLSCs and to orient it more towards house visits of medical professionals you know more rooted in the actual community which I think is ultimatelyyou know is the model that health should be focused on rather than the sort of curative model of moreyou know more pharmaceutical drugs or more incursions which tend to be beneficial to medical lobbying groups and companies So the Quebecin total the Quebec sort of social entitlement system is much more generous than the rest ofanywhere else in North America So you know moves to increase daycare from 7 to 9 actually prompt significant resistance just as moves to increase tuition by a couple of hundred dollars a year prompted that massive student strike two years ago PERIES Right But what do you expect will happen on Monday ENGLER Its looking like there will be a minority or slim majority Liberal Party victory If that happens hopefully the Qu233bec solidaire will get up to four or five seats and over 10 percent of the vote But its still possible because its a fourway race and theres quite a bit of fluidity between people voting the people who tend to be sovereigntistoriented who tend to have a certain sympathy for sort of cultural rights of the French language of support for sort of the sovereigntist movement Some of these people flow between the most rightwing party the CAQ and the Parti Qu233b233cois and its a little bit unclear where the votes will fall on Monday But its likely to be a liberal government at this point PERIES Okay Thank you very much for joining us And we will make sure that we come back to you sometime next week to give us an update ENGLER Thank you PERIES And Jenny thank you for joining us as well UECHI Thank you so much for having me PERIES And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network End DISCLAIMER Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy

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<p>Born in Naples in 1952, graduated in 1976 at the University of Naples and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge (UK) in 1983. Since 1990 he is full professor of Political Economy, first at the University of Catania and then at the University of Naples 'Federico II'. From 1990 he has been Chairman of the Institute of Economics and President of the Specialized Degree Committee of Political Economy at the University of Catania; Chairman of Department of Economic Theory and Application and of the Ph.D. program in Economics at the University &#8216;Federico II&#8217; of Naples. His main scientific interests are on monetary theory, theory of value, growth and distribution, history of economic thought, institutional organization of the European Monetary Union. On these subjects he has published articles on scientific journals, like Economic Journal, Metroeconomica, Cambridge Journal of Economics, European History of Economic Thought, Contributions to Political Economy, and monographic and collective volumes with publishers, like Macmillan, Routledge, Elgar.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. <p /> <p />When the mainstream media covers the crisis in Europe, there's sort of a truism underlying most of the reporting, and that is: overspending by governments, wages got too high, too much social safety net, all of these contributed to people, quote-unquote, living beyond their means, governments living beyond their means, and that's the underlying reason for the crisis. Well, is that borne up by scientific research? If you actually do the numbers, is that really the cause of the crisis? <p /> <p />Well, our next guest suggests it's not the case. Now joining us from Mexico City is professor Carlo Panico. He's normally in Naples. He's a visiting professor now in Mexico City. His full-time job: he's professor of political economy at the University of Federico II in Naples. And he recently published a paper at the PERI institute called "The Role of Institutional and Political Factors in the European Debt Crisis". Thanks very much for joining us, Carlo. <p /> <p />CARLO PANICO, PROF. POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF NAPLES FEDERICO II: Thank you very much. <p /> <p />JAY: Alright. So, I mean, the gist of your paper, at least the beginning of it, of the gist of it, is that this idea that, you know, governments spending beyond their means and too much social safety net and all this, that this really isn't the underlying cause of the crisis. So what did you find when you look into this issue? <p /> <p />PANICO: Well, what I find is that that is the rhetoric of the political economy which is presented by media, mainly, but you don't find this sort of explanation in the scientific literature [incompr.] scientific literature there is&#226;&#128;&#148;they are much more cautious and analytical, and they see that the problem comes from the way the European Monetary Union is organized. <p /> <p />The European Monetary Union's organized in this way. I mean, we have 17 countries belonging to the&#226;&#128;&#148;which have adopted the euro, this new currency, and they are within a larger area, which is called European Union, formed by 27 countries. Within the European Monetary Union, the 17 countries that have adopted the euro, they have one&#226;&#128;&#148;but they have&#226;&#128;&#148;the monetary policy is a single monetary policy. We have just one monetary policy, which is decided at the supranational level, at the European level. But then the fiscal policy is conducted national level. So you have this disparity, which is unusual in other countries. Normally you have the monetary authority and the fiscal authority, they are the same national level. But this does not happen in the European Monetary Union. <p /> <p />So what you need is a process of coordination between the supranational level (the European level) and the national level. And this cause a big problem, which is called the moral hazard problem, in the sense that the national government may misbehave with respect to the decisions taken at the European level. When the central banks stabilize the interest rate all over the 17 countries, I mean, the national government can use the funding coming from Europe, from the European level, to favor their own elections, so to increase the expenditure in favor of their own elections. And this increases finance by all the other elections of the European Monetary Union, the euro area, see. So you try to stabilize the interest rate at the European level, and then this cause an incentive for a national government to misbehave. And this is what is called the moral hazard problem, and this is the main cause of all this situation. <p /> <p />JAY: Now, when you say "misbehave", there's different definitions of what that is and who misbehave, in the sense that this structure had favored Germany for many years. They were able to export to the rest of Europe at a time when they didn't mind that there was debt building up and such in these countries, 'cause it gave Germany a great market. Now that this thing is starting to go into crisis, now instead of sort of Germany willing to sort of pay the piper, if I understand it correctly, they want to shift this&#226;&#128;&#148;consequences of this crisis back right into the countries that they were profiting from their exports. I mean, is this part of the question? <p /> <p />PANICO: It is part of the question, because all the country of the European Monetary Union have benefited enormously from the fact that they put together their countries here and participated in this new experience of a single currency, of the euro. So all the people, all the firms producing goods were&#226;&#128;&#148;took advantage of the fact that they do not have to run the risk of the change. So there was no more risk that the exchange rate could change. So there was the huge increase of commercial integration within the euro area. You must consider that 70 percent of the international trade of these country are within the area. So they are all integrated. <p /> <p />But now there is a tendency to believe that there are [incompr.] problems to each country coming from the misbehavior of the other governments. And this is the source of all the difficulties. <p /> <p />JAY: Now, one of the points you make in your paper is that in '07, '08, when it came time to bail out the banks and the banks were in crisis, this structure had no problem responding very quickly to make sure the banks were saved. When it came time to deal with the sovereign debt crisis and the sort of sovereign Raiders that were, you know, forcing the interest rates up on the bond issues from the various countries, now all of sudden this structure doesn't want to respond. <p /> <p />PANICO: Yes, you are exactly&#226;&#128;&#148;you are right on this point. I mean, when there was the start of the financial crisis, both in 2007, in August, I mean, the European Central Bank responded immediately, in less than half an hour, by playing its role of lender of last resort to stabilize the interest rate into interbank markets. Then, I mean, the ECB has done it again, spending a huge amount of money to&#226;&#128;&#148;I mean, always to play this role of lender of last resort for the banking system after the breakdown of the Lehman Brothers. What is happening now that seems&#226;&#128;&#148;I mean, the attack, the speculative attacks have been against the government securities, the government bonds. The ECB is not acting in the same way. I mean, there is&#226;&#128;&#148;the ECB is not playing the role of lender of last resort. It is not trying to stabilize the interest rate on these bonds. And this is its duty, because the central bank must operate in such a way as to avoid any disruption of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. And the central bank, the European Central Bank, is not doing that. <p /> <p />JAY: Now, I take your point about the structural issue of, you know, this kind of supranational bank without actually being able to control individual countries' monetary policy and such. But isn't there something else happening here, which is that the European&#226;&#128;&#148;or at least the majority of the European financial and political elite, they think it's in their interest to drive these countries into crisis for some time. You know. And some people make the argument it's about breaking the back of the sort of social safety net, the European welfare state, to develop the conditions for much more privatization, as what's going on in Greece, that there's an agenda here, that it's not just a structural question. <p /> <p />PANICO: Listen, they think that [incompr.] but they are wrong, because, I mean, we have already seen this kind of experience. I mean, what is happening in Europe nowadays is exactly the same thing that happened in Latin America and East Asia during the '80s and the '90s. I mean, the government of Latin American countries were issuing their debt in a currency they could not control, like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland are doing within the euro area. They issue bonds in the euro, and they do not control the issue of euro, because this is controlled not by their own national banks, it's controlled by European central banks. So the European central banks must act in a way that&#226;&#128;&#148;as any other national central banks in the world, like the Japanese central bank, like the Bank of England, like the Federal Reserve. I mean, Japan has got a ratio between government debt and the GDP which is over 200 percent, but they do not attack Japan, because, I mean, the financial speculators know that if they attack Japan, the national bank, the central bank of Japan, would react and stabilize the interest rate, whereas the European Central Bank is not doing that. <p /> <p />JAY: Well, if you listen to some&#226;&#128;&#148;certainly you find Greeks that argue this, but other people in some of the other European countries are saying that what's happening is primarily German national interest is being served through the European Central Bank, and I guess maybe to some extent France. But the other countries, it's not their national interest that's being served, and maybe&#226;&#128;&#148;certainly this argument's being made most powerfully in Greece&#226;&#128;&#148;the answer is get out of the eurozone, because it's never going to serve your national interests. What do you make of that? <p /> <p />PANICO: Well, I think it's almost impossible to go out of the eurozone. And so we must all be to&#226;&#128;&#148;inside it. And the interests of the Germans, the interests of the French is that we must grow all together. There is no way, there is no way of coming to have more stability, more growth in Europe without a policy which involve all together, all the country together. So if we keep having this attitude that every country want to punish the other because they do not have confidence in the other, this is not going to work. This is going to create more and more crisis. Like, I mean, the policy that we're implementing in Latin America created huge problems, huge catastrophes, like in Argentina in 2001 and 2002. It's exactly the same mechanism that is working there. We must understand in Europe that we must all grow together and avoid this conflict. <p /> <p />These conflict, these national conflict at present are paralyzing the European Central Bank, because they reflect inside the government bodies of the central bank, of the European Central Bank. And it's happening&#226;&#128;&#148;exactly the same thing that was happening in the United States in 1929. The Federal Reserve was paralyzed by the conflicts between the national interest inside the Federal Reserve. And then there was the tremendous collapse of Wall Street and the Great Depression that came out of that. This is exactly the same situation. <p /> <p />JAY: But you would think that's rather obvious to the people controlling the European Central Bank, which&#226;&#128;&#148;primarily the German elites. But they don't want to change the course. <p /> <p />PANICO: They are right if they&#226;&#128;&#148;if the situation, the institutional organization of the euro area keeps going like it is, because we have a problem with moral hazard, as I said at the beginning. We must make sure that if the European Central Bank stabilize the financial market and the security market, the sovereign security market, I mean, we must have a perfectly working, efficiently working system of coordination, of policy among different nation. This is possible. This can be done. <p /> <p />As a matter of fact, what we had in place, [incompr.] which was based on two different tools. On the one side, what are called the soft coordinating regimes are tools like multilateral surveillance, and on the other side, the Stability and Growth Pact. I mean, the multilateral surveillance was working and working well. What was not working well was the Stability and Growth Pact. We must reform the Stability and Growth Pact to create the condition of enforcement of the decision taken [snip] European level when they are&#226;&#128;&#148;then could pass to national level. <p /> <p />JAY: But they seem more intent on creating conditions to drive down wages and have, you know, a race-to-the-bottom kind of competition between countries to see who can have the least wages and the weakest social safety net. That seems to be what they seem to want. <p /> <p />PANICO: Yes, but this is a great mistake. If they keep on going like that&#226;&#128;&#148;I mean, there is a vicious circles, you know, circle that drives the economies down, not only the Greek economy, the Italian economy, the Spanish economy, but all the economy of the euro area. They're integrated by the strong ties that they have [incompr.] exports among themselves. So this is already happening. As matter of fact, since the last trimester of 2011, even Germany is going into depression. And this is going to worsen. <p /> <p />The only solution is to grow. And to grow we must have&#226;&#128;&#148;we must stabilize the security market, the government security market. And this is a task of the central bank, the European Central Bank. At the same time, you have to make sure that we are not going to have tricky behavior by the national authority, by the national government. There are tools. There is a way of doing that. We can implement it. As a matter of fact, the moral hazard problem exist also for the banking system, but they do not withdraw the function of lender of last resort. <p /> <p />JAY: Yeah, I mean, of course, yeah, the banks can misbehave all they want and they get bailed out. We're going to have&#226;&#128;&#148;. Yeah, go ahead. Just your final thought. <p /> <p />PANICO: Yes. I mean, the regulation system that we have for government, what is called the coordination&#226;&#128;&#148;the policy coordination tools that we have, have worked well during the last 20 years. Government have been disciplined, whereas the banking [incompr.] of the managers of the [incompr.] have not been disciplined by the financial regulation during the last 20 years. <p /> <p />JAY: Yeah, the finance sector can misbehave, and then governments bail them out. And now the problem's supposed to be the governments. <p /> <p />PANICO: Exactly. <p /> <p />JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Carlo. <p /> <p />PANICO: Thank you, too. Bye-bye. <p /> <p />JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. <p /> <p />End <p /> <p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Did Social Over Spending Cause the Euro-Crisis?

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D8309

2012-05-10

4left

Born in Naples in 1952 graduated in 1976 at the University of Naples and PhD at the University of Cambridge UK in 1983 Since 1990 he is full professor of Political Economy first at the University of Catania and then at the University of Naples Federico II From 1990 he has been Chairman of the Institute of Economics and President of the Specialized Degree Committee of Political Economy at the University of Catania Chairman of Department of Economic Theory and Application and of the PhD program in Economics at the University 8216Federico II8217 of Naples His main scientific interests are on monetary theory theory of value growth and distribution history of economic thought institutional organization of the European Monetary Union On these subjects he has published articles on scientific journals like Economic Journal Metroeconomica Cambridge Journal of Economics European History of Economic Thought Contributions to Political Economy and monographic and collective volumes with publishers like Macmillan Routledge Elgar PAUL JAY SENIOR EDITOR TRNN Welcome to The Real News Network Im Paul Jay in Washington When the mainstream media covers the crisis in Europe theres sort of a truism underlying most of the reporting and that is overspending by governments wages got too high too much social safety net all of these contributed to people quoteunquote living beyond their means governments living beyond their means and thats the underlying reason for the crisis Well is that borne up by scientific research If you actually do the numbers is that really the cause of the crisis Well our next guest suggests its not the case Now joining us from Mexico City is professor Carlo Panico Hes normally in Naples Hes a visiting professor now in Mexico City His fulltime job hes professor of political economy at the University of Federico II in Naples And he recently published a paper at the PERI institute called The Role of Institutional and Political Factors in the European Debt Crisis Thanks very much for joining us Carlo CARLO PANICO PROF POLITICAL ECONOMY UNIVERSITY OF NAPLES FEDERICO II Thank you very much JAY Alright So I mean the gist of your paper at least the beginning of it of the gist of it is that this idea that you know governments spending beyond their means and too much social safety net and all this that this really isnt the underlying cause of the crisis So what did you find when you look into this issue PANICO Well what I find is that that is the rhetoric of the political economy which is presented by media mainly but you dont find this sort of explanation in the scientific literature incompr scientific literature there is226128148they are much more cautious and analytical and they see that the problem comes from the way the European Monetary Union is organized The European Monetary Unions organized in this way I mean we have 17 countries belonging to the226128148which have adopted the euro this new currency and they are within a larger area which is called European Union formed by 27 countries Within the European Monetary Union the 17 countries that have adopted the euro they have one226128148but they have226128148the monetary policy is a single monetary policy We have just one monetary policy which is decided at the supranational level at the European level But then the fiscal policy is conducted national level So you have this disparity which is unusual in other countries Normally you have the monetary authority and the fiscal authority they are the same national level But this does not happen in the European Monetary Union So what you need is a process of coordination between the supranational level the European level and the national level And this cause a big problem which is called the moral hazard problem in the sense that the national government may misbehave with respect to the decisions taken at the European level When the central banks stabilize the interest rate all over the 17 countries I mean the national government can use the funding coming from Europe from the European level to favor their own elections so to increase the expenditure in favor of their own elections And this increases finance by all the other elections of the European Monetary Union the euro area see So you try to stabilize the interest rate at the European level and then this cause an incentive for a national government to misbehave And this is what is called the moral hazard problem and this is the main cause of all this situation JAY Now when you say misbehave theres different definitions of what that is and who misbehave in the sense that this structure had favored Germany for many years They were able to export to the rest of Europe at a time when they didnt mind that there was debt building up and such in these countries cause it gave Germany a great market Now that this thing is starting to go into crisis now instead of sort of Germany willing to sort of pay the piper if I understand it correctly they want to shift this226128148consequences of this crisis back right into the countries that they were profiting from their exports I mean is this part of the question PANICO It is part of the question because all the country of the European Monetary Union have benefited enormously from the fact that they put together their countries here and participated in this new experience of a single currency of the euro So all the people all the firms producing goods were226128148took advantage of the fact that they do not have to run the risk of the change So there was no more risk that the exchange rate could change So there was the huge increase of commercial integration within the euro area You must consider that 70 percent of the international trade of these country are within the area So they are all integrated But now there is a tendency to believe that there are incompr problems to each country coming from the misbehavior of the other governments And this is the source of all the difficulties JAY Now one of the points you make in your paper is that in 07 08 when it came time to bail out the banks and the banks were in crisis this structure had no problem responding very quickly to make sure the banks were saved When it came time to deal with the sovereign debt crisis and the sort of sovereign Raiders that were you know forcing the interest rates up on the bond issues from the various countries now all of sudden this structure doesnt want to respond PANICO Yes you are exactly226128148you are right on this point I mean when there was the start of the financial crisis both in 2007 in August I mean the European Central Bank responded immediately in less than half an hour by playing its role of lender of last resort to stabilize the interest rate into interbank markets Then I mean the ECB has done it again spending a huge amount of money to226128148I mean always to play this role of lender of last resort for the banking system after the breakdown of the Lehman Brothers What is happening now that seems226128148I mean the attack the speculative attacks have been against the government securities the government bonds The ECB is not acting in the same way I mean there is226128148the ECB is not playing the role of lender of last resort It is not trying to stabilize the interest rate on these bonds And this is its duty because the central bank must operate in such a way as to avoid any disruption of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy And the central bank the European Central Bank is not doing that JAY Now I take your point about the structural issue of you know this kind of supranational bank without actually being able to control individual countries monetary policy and such But isnt there something else happening here which is that the European226128148or at least the majority of the European financial and political elite they think its in their interest to drive these countries into crisis for some time You know And some people make the argument its about breaking the back of the sort of social safety net the European welfare state to develop the conditions for much more privatization as whats going on in Greece that theres an agenda here that its not just a structural question PANICO Listen they think that incompr but they are wrong because I mean we have already seen this kind of experience I mean what is happening in Europe nowadays is exactly the same thing that happened in Latin America and East Asia during the 80s and the 90s I mean the government of Latin American countries were issuing their debt in a currency they could not control like Greece Spain Portugal Ireland are doing within the euro area They issue bonds in the euro and they do not control the issue of euro because this is controlled not by their own national banks its controlled by European central banks So the European central banks must act in a way that226128148as any other national central banks in the world like the Japanese central bank like the Bank of England like the Federal Reserve I mean Japan has got a ratio between government debt and the GDP which is over 200 percent but they do not attack Japan because I mean the financial speculators know that if they attack Japan the national bank the central bank of Japan would react and stabilize the interest rate whereas the European Central Bank is not doing that JAY Well if you listen to some226128148certainly you find Greeks that argue this but other people in some of the other European countries are saying that whats happening is primarily German national interest is being served through the European Central Bank and I guess maybe to some extent France But the other countries its not their national interest thats being served and maybe226128148certainly this arguments being made most powerfully in Greece226128148the answer is get out of the eurozone because its never going to serve your national interests What do you make of that PANICO Well I think its almost impossible to go out of the eurozone And so we must all be to226128148inside it And the interests of the Germans the interests of the French is that we must grow all together There is no way there is no way of coming to have more stability more growth in Europe without a policy which involve all together all the country together So if we keep having this attitude that every country want to punish the other because they do not have confidence in the other this is not going to work This is going to create more and more crisis Like I mean the policy that were implementing in Latin America created huge problems huge catastrophes like in Argentina in 2001 and 2002 Its exactly the same mechanism that is working there We must understand in Europe that we must all grow together and avoid this conflict These conflict these national conflict at present are paralyzing the European Central Bank because they reflect inside the government bodies of the central bank of the European Central Bank And its happening226128148exactly the same thing that was happening in the United States in 1929 The Federal Reserve was paralyzed by the conflicts between the national interest inside the Federal Reserve And then there was the tremendous collapse of Wall Street and the Great Depression that came out of that This is exactly the same situation JAY But you would think thats rather obvious to the people controlling the European Central Bank which226128148primarily the German elites But they dont want to change the course PANICO They are right if they226128148if the situation the institutional organization of the euro area keeps going like it is because we have a problem with moral hazard as I said at the beginning We must make sure that if the European Central Bank stabilize the financial market and the security market the sovereign security market I mean we must have a perfectly working efficiently working system of coordination of policy among different nation This is possible This can be done As a matter of fact what we had in place incompr which was based on two different tools On the one side what are called the soft coordinating regimes are tools like multilateral surveillance and on the other side the Stability and Growth Pact I mean the multilateral surveillance was working and working well What was not working well was the Stability and Growth Pact We must reform the Stability and Growth Pact to create the condition of enforcement of the decision taken snip European level when they are226128148then could pass to national level JAY But they seem more intent on creating conditions to drive down wages and have you know a racetothebottom kind of competition between countries to see who can have the least wages and the weakest social safety net That seems to be what they seem to want PANICO Yes but this is a great mistake If they keep on going like that226128148I mean there is a vicious circles you know circle that drives the economies down not only the Greek economy the Italian economy the Spanish economy but all the economy of the euro area Theyre integrated by the strong ties that they have incompr exports among themselves So this is already happening As matter of fact since the last trimester of 2011 even Germany is going into depression And this is going to worsen The only solution is to grow And to grow we must have226128148we must stabilize the security market the government security market And this is a task of the central bank the European Central Bank At the same time you have to make sure that we are not going to have tricky behavior by the national authority by the national government There are tools There is a way of doing that We can implement it As a matter of fact the moral hazard problem exist also for the banking system but they do not withdraw the function of lender of last resort JAY Yeah I mean of course yeah the banks can misbehave all they want and they get bailed out Were going to have226128148 Yeah go ahead Just your final thought PANICO Yes I mean the regulation system that we have for government what is called the coordination226128148the policy coordination tools that we have have worked well during the last 20 years Government have been disciplined whereas the banking incompr of the managers of the incompr have not been disciplined by the financial regulation during the last 20 years JAY Yeah the finance sector can misbehave and then governments bail them out And now the problems supposed to be the governments PANICO Exactly JAY Thanks very much for joining us Carlo PANICO Thank you too Byebye JAY And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network End DISCLAIMER Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy

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<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - MGTS:</p> <p>* SAYS INCREASES ITS STAKE PRIAZOVYE GUEST HOUSE TO 100 PERCENT FROM 67.1 PERCENT Source text: <a href="http://bit.ly/2n93zGG" type="external">bit.ly/2n93zGG</a> Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Prudential ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PRU.L" type="external">PRU.L</a>) is to spin its British and European business off from its international operations, breaking up the 170-year-old insurer in the latest shake-up in a fast-changing industry.</p> FILE PHOTO: The logo of British life insurer Prudential is seen on their building, in London October 21, 2008. REUTERS/Stephen Hird /File Photo <p>Insurers in Britain have been changing strategy to reduce exposure to capital-heavy products following the introduction of rigorous European solvency rules two years ago, while also seeking ways to deal with growing pressure on fees.</p> <p>Prudential said on Wednesday it is splitting off its savings and investment-focused business M&amp;amp;G Prudential, which will be headquartered in London.</p> <p>That will leave Prudential plc focused on Asia, the United States and Africa. It will also remain headquartered and listed in London and be led by present chief executive Mike Wells.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not looking to get rid of all of our capital-intensive products, we&#8217;re looking to grow the piece that&#8217;s capital-light,&#8221; Wells told Reuters, adding that the M&amp;amp;G Prudential business &#8220;is better off standalone, competing domestically for people, for capital&#8221;.</p> <p>Once the proposed split is complete, Prudential said it expects both companies to be big enough to feature on Britain&#8217;s benchmark FTSE 100 stock index.</p> FILE PHOTO: The company logo of Prudential is seen at its headquarters in Hong Kong March 9, 2010. REUTERS/Bobby Yip /File Photo <p>John Foley, who heads M&amp;amp;G Prudential, will steer that business through the demerger and investors will hold shares in both at the end of the process.</p> <p>The industry is wrestling with the rising cost of regulation and pressure on fund management fees and Prudential&#8217;s move follows Standard Life&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SLA.L" type="external">SLA.L</a>) merger with Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017 which led to the sale of the bulk of its insurance business to Phoenix Group ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PHNX.L" type="external">PHNX.L</a>) last month.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PRU.L" type="external">Prudential PLC</a> 1915.0 PRU.L London Stock Exchange +89.50 (+4.90%) PRU.L SLA.L PHNX.L OML.L <p>Anglo-South African financial services group Old Mutual ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OML.L" type="external">OML.L</a>) is also in the midst of a four-way split.</p> <p>As well as the demerger, Prudential disclosed the sale of a 12 billion-pound UK annuities book to Rothesay Life and posted results for 2017, which showed a 6 percent rise in operating profit to 4.7 billion pounds, beating market expectations of 4.6 billion pounds.</p> <p>Prudential, which said in August that it was embarking on a restructuring that would see it combine its M&amp;amp;G asset management and UK and European insurance businesses, said the timing of the spin-off has not yet been set and would depend on a range of factors, including completion of the Rothesay Life deal.</p> <p>Analysts at JPMorgan said it was too soon to conclude whether the planned demerger &#8220;will be a straightforward positive or not&#8221;, reiterating their neutral rating on the stock.</p> <p>Prudential&#8217;s shares were up 5.4 percent to 19.25 pounds at 0841 GMT, taking it to the top of the FTSE 100 index.</p> <p>Reporting by Ben Martin, additional reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain, editing by Sinead Cruise and Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Oil edged up on Wednesday as strong Chinese factory activity encouraged investor inflows into industrial commodities such as copper, although fast-growing U.S. crude output tempered price gains.</p> FILE PHOTO - A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield, California October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo <p>China reported a 7.2 percent year-on-year increase in industrial output in the first two months of the year, roundly beating expectations and, in a dose of support for oil bulls, the data showed crude production fell 1.9 percent.</p> <p>Copper CMCU3 and palladium XPD=, a key component in gasoline-powered vehicles, both rose around 1 percent, which in turn encouraged a bounce in the oil price.</p> <p>Brent crude LCOc1 was last up 27 cents at $64.92 a barrel, off an earlier low of $64.43, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures CLc1 were up 31 cents at $61.02 a barrel.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve seen copper breach above $7,000 (a tonne) ... and I think a lot of this is coming out of this really big beat in the Chinese industrial production, so general macro flows, I would say, are reinforcing that bullish narrative,&#8221; ING commodities strategist Oliver Nugent said.</p> <p>China is the world&#8217;s largest importer of commodities and is the world&#8217;s biggest car market.</p> <p>Chinese oil production fell 1.9 percent in January and February to a daily rate of around 3.77 million barrels per day, while the amount of crude processed by refineries rose 7.3 percent to 93.4 million bpd, implying that its import demand will remain strong.</p> <p>Brent crude has fallen by around 1 percent so far this week, as traders and investors have grown increasingly doubtful that coordinated supply cuts by OPEC and some of its partners might not be enough to offset the relentless rise in U.S. crude production.</p> <p>U.S. oil production C-OUT-T-EIA is expected to top 11 million bpd later this year.</p> <p>(For a graphic on Russia vs Saudi vs U.S. oil production click <a href="http://reut.rs/2FrFVMF" type="external">reut.rs/2FrFVMF</a>)</p> <p>Rising output, as well as seasonally low demand, mean that U.S. crude inventories rose by 1.2 million barrels in the week to March 9, to 428 million barrels, the American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday.</p> <p>Seasonal demand patterns for crude and refined products mean the market may only be weeks away from a run of declines.</p> <p>&#8220;The total U.S. crude, gasoline and distillate stocks have increased in eight of the past 10 weeks, raising 24 million bl in total since the start of the year. So if inventories declined last week it will definitely be a positive turn,&#8221; SEB commodities strategist Bjarne Schieldrop said.</p> <p>&#8220;We are now only 2-4 weeks away from when weekly oil inventory data will start to draw again which should be supportive for oil prices.&#8221;</p> <p>Weekly U.S. crude production figures will be published by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) later on Wednesday.</p> <p>(For a graphic on World oil supply and demand balance click <a href="http://reut.rs/2FIxGvP" type="external">reut.rs/2FIxGvP</a>)</p> <p>Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Tom Hogue and Susan Fenton</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street&#8217;s major indexes fell on Tuesday as the dismissal of U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the possibility of additional U.S. import tariffs against China dragged down stocks across sectors.</p> <p>President Donald Trump fired Tillerson after a series of public rifts over issues including North Korea and Russia. Trump has appointed CIA Director Mike Pompeo, seen as loyal to the president, to replace Tillerson. To lead the CIA, the president has tapped Gina Haspel, the agency&#8217;s deputy director.</p> <p>&#8220;Any time there&#8217;s change, investors get nervous,&#8221; said John Carey, portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer Asset Management in Boston. &#8220;They have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what the implications might be.&#8221;</p> <p>Still, Carey said, at least the nominees to lead the State Department and the CIA are familiar names.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think either change will be troubling to the market as people reflect on the qualifications of the people stepping into the roles,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>U.S. stocks added to losses after Politico reported that a package of tariffs targeting $30 billion a year in Chinese imports could be rolled out as soon as next week.</p> <p>&#8220;This may be upsetting the apple cart,&#8221; said Bryan Novak, senior managing director at Astor Investment Management in Chicago. &#8220;When you look at tariffs, you don&#8217;t just look in a vacuum. You look at what follows on top of (them). It&#8217;s worth watching a bit more, to see the follow-through on our side and their side, but there could be some anxiety around it.&#8221;</p> <p>The markets had opened higher after data showed U.S. consumer price growth slowed in February, an indication that an anticipated pickup in inflation probably will be only gradual.</p> Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> fell 171.58 points, or 0.68 percent, to 25,007.03, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> lost 17.71 points, or 0.64 percent, to 2,765.31 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> dropped 77.31 points, or 1.02 percent, to 7,511.01.</p> <p>Tech .SPLRCT and financial .SPSY stocks were the biggest laggards among the S&amp;amp;P 500&#8217;s 11 major sectors.</p> <p>Shares of Microsoft Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MSFT.O" type="external">MSFT.O</a>), Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) and Alphabet Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) fell between 1.5 percent and 2.4 percent.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 25007.03 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes -171.58 (-0.68%) .DJI .SPX .IXIC MSFT.O FB.O <p>&#8220;Technology rallied hard yesterday and last week, and there is profit-taking, but it&#8217;s just a short-term pressure,&#8221; said Ken Polcari, director of the NYSE floor division at O&#8217;Neil Securities in New York.</p> <p>Financial stocks were weighed as U.S. Treasury yields fell in response to the CPI data and Tillerson&#8217;s exit.</p> <p>Among individual stocks, General Electric Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GE.N" type="external">GE.N</a>) fell 4.4 percent after J.P. Morgan cut its price target on the stock to $11 from $14, saying the industrial conglomerate was not a &#8220;safety stock&#8221; in a volatile market.</p> <p>Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.27-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.55-to-1 ratio favored decliners.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 posted 43 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 180 new highs and 24 new lows.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.89 billion shares, compared to the 7.13 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur, James Dalgleish and Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Boeing Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>) is doubling down on its landmark new strategy designed to muscle in on the business of maintenance providers by making its next jet the laboratory for in-house services that could radically alter the global business model for selling planes.</p> FILE PHOTO: President, Chairman and CEO of The Boeing Company Dennis Muilenburg speaks at the "What's Next?" conference in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., October 4, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo <p>Unlike Boeing&#8217;s last all-new design, the 787 Dreamliner, its proposed new mid-market plane will not bring a flood of revolutionary technical designs to the drawing board.</p> <p>But it will give the world&#8217;s largest plane maker a chance to test its new business approach of designing the plane so that it generates lucrative services revenues for Boeing while also offering efficiencies to airlines over the aircraft&#8217;s decades-long lifespan.</p> <p>Along with production costs, the new approach could help Boeing decide whether to invest the $15 billion or more in development needed to build the jet.</p> <p>&#8220;If we decide to launch, it&#8217;s a big investment and it&#8217;s an investment that has to contemplate not only the product itself but all of our other strategic objectives,&#8221; Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;So you can imagine we would want to look at this airplane through the lens of lifecycle value as we are growing our services business,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Until recently, Boeing and Europe&#8217;s Airbus ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AIR.PA" type="external">AIR.PA</a>) sold planes with little involvement in the way they were operated and maintained. Instead, that was work carried out by their own suppliers or third-party shops.</p> <p>Heavy outsourcing on jets like the 787 expanded the trend by leaving suppliers - such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=7011.T" type="external">7011.T</a>), which supplies the 787&#8217;s carbon wings - in command of key components.</p> <p>While Boeing and others squeezed their balance sheets to launch jets, many of their suppliers used their design influence to forge profitable relationships directly with airlines as they conducted part swaps or repairs required by regulators.</p> <p>&#8220;That seems a little out of balance, doesn&#8217;t it?&#8221; said Muilenburg, describing how the pendulum is now swinging back to give Boeing more control over parts and therefore the stream of aftermarket services that comes with owning a part&#8217;s design.</p> <p>&#8220;We do take the majority of the risk in developing new products, and we think that would cause us to want to gain the financial benefit of that risk-taking for the long term,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The long-term approach to the new jet is the latest evidence of changes in the $180 billion aero-aftermarket as planemakers jostle with suppliers - and even airlines - for control of repairs, training and data in pursuit of higher margins.</p> <p>Last year, Boeing centralized services formerly spread across the company in a new division with a goal to more than treble sales to $50 billion in a decade.</p> <p>The new unit posted operating margins of 15.4 percent last year, compared with 16.1 percent that United Technologies Aerospace Systems ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=UTX.N" type="external">UTX.N</a>), a major supplier, earned from selling new equipment, services and aftermarket parts.</p> ENGINEERING DEPTH <p>The aftermarket is not entirely new to Boeing, and is common in defense, where Muilenburg ran services between 2008 and 2009. Airbus set ambitious internal targets last week and Canada&#8217;s Bombardier Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BBDb.TO" type="external">BBDb.TO</a>) is banking on maintenance.</p> <p>But after airplane demand peaked since 2014, Boeing has turned more aggressively to parts and services to help meet a target of doubling margins to the mid-teens by 2020. Its core jet margin widened to 9.6 percent last year from 3.4 percent in 2016.</p> <p>To support the strategy, Boeing is bringing back key in-house technology like avionics - the brains of a modern jet -partly with an eye to future aftermarket revenue.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">Boeing Co</a> 338.67 BA.N New York Stock Exchange -5.52 (-1.60%) BA.N AIR.PA 7011.T UTX.N BBDb.TO <p>&#8220;It is important that we build out vertical capabilities that sustain our engineering depth...as airplanes become more digital,&#8221; Muilenburg said, adding that broader growth in the industry would also provide a boon to suppliers.</p> <p>Suppliers say Boeing is also less willing than before to share risks - and profits - with them on the systems they do build. Instead it wants them to build to Boeing&#8217;s designs rather than leaving them with keys to the all-important aftermarket.</p> <p>Already, there are signs the mid-market jet could see a swing away from risk-sharing towards straight procurement deals,the head of a major supplier told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;It depends on the area of the airplane we are talking about but we are very clear in our intent to grow our services business, and part of that is bringing back inside some engineering and intellectual property,&#8221; Muilenburg commented.</p> <p>The downside of doing more by itself, suppliers and analysts say, is that Boeing could weaken access to outside innovation, import risk and tie up capital and finite engineering resources.</p> <p>Depending on how far this goes, industry sources say it may also herald gradual changes in patterns of cash generation.</p> <p>While planemakers get paid on delivery, engine makers charge little upfront and make money on services provided over years.</p> <p>Some analysts say new plane manufacturer strategies suggest those business models could start to converge and put pressure on them to be more generous with discounts on jets.</p> <p>Muilenburg declined to address pricing directly, but acknowledged Boeing&#8217;s cradle-to-grave services strategy could have some impact on the timing of future income.</p> <p>&#8220;The services business tends to be accretive to margin, but this does give us the flexibility of where we drive margin in the business with the idea of raising the bar overall,&#8221; he said when asked if bundling services could lead to bigger jet discounts.</p> <p>Reporting by Tim Hepher; Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Edward Tobin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-MGTS Increases Its Stake Priazovye Guest House To 100 Pct Britain's Prudential to split in new world order for insurers Oil rises as Chinese factory data boosts commodities Wall Street slides on Tillerson exit, tariff worries New Boeing jet to accelerate services shake-up

https://reuters.com/article/brief-mgts-increases-its-stake-priazovye/brief-mgts-increases-its-stake-priazovye-guest-house-to-100-pct-idUSFWN1PK0TV

2018-01-25

2least

Jan 25 Reuters MGTS SAYS INCREASES ITS STAKE PRIAZOVYE GUEST HOUSE TO 100 PERCENT FROM 671 PERCENT Source text bitly2n93zGG Further company coverage Gdynia Newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Prudential PRUL is to spin its British and European business off from its international operations breaking up the 170yearold insurer in the latest shakeup in a fastchanging industry FILE PHOTO The logo of British life insurer Prudential is seen on their building in London October 21 2008 REUTERSStephen Hird File Photo Insurers in Britain have been changing strategy to reduce exposure to capitalheavy products following the introduction of rigorous European solvency rules two years ago while also seeking ways to deal with growing pressure on fees Prudential said on Wednesday it is splitting off its savings and investmentfocused business MampampG Prudential which will be headquartered in London That will leave Prudential plc focused on Asia the United States and Africa It will also remain headquartered and listed in London and be led by present chief executive Mike Wells 8220We8217re not looking to get rid of all of our capitalintensive products we8217re looking to grow the piece that8217s capitallight8221 Wells told Reuters adding that the MampampG Prudential business 8220is better off standalone competing domestically for people for capital8221 Once the proposed split is complete Prudential said it expects both companies to be big enough to feature on Britain8217s benchmark FTSE 100 stock index FILE PHOTO The company logo of Prudential is seen at its headquarters in Hong Kong March 9 2010 REUTERSBobby Yip File Photo John Foley who heads MampampG Prudential will steer that business through the demerger and investors will hold shares in both at the end of the process The industry is wrestling with the rising cost of regulation and pressure on fund management fees and Prudential8217s move follows Standard Life8217s SLAL merger with Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017 which led to the sale of the bulk of its insurance business to Phoenix Group PHNXL last month Prudential PLC 19150 PRUL London Stock Exchange 8950 490 PRUL SLAL PHNXL OMLL AngloSouth African financial services group Old Mutual OMLL is also in the midst of a fourway split As well as the demerger Prudential disclosed the sale of a 12 billionpound UK annuities book to Rothesay Life and posted results for 2017 which showed a 6 percent rise in operating profit to 47 billion pounds beating market expectations of 46 billion pounds Prudential which said in August that it was embarking on a restructuring that would see it combine its MampampG asset management and UK and European insurance businesses said the timing of the spinoff has not yet been set and would depend on a range of factors including completion of the Rothesay Life deal Analysts at JPMorgan said it was too soon to conclude whether the planned demerger 8220will be a straightforward positive or not8221 reiterating their neutral rating on the stock Prudential8217s shares were up 54 percent to 1925 pounds at 0841 GMT taking it to the top of the FTSE 100 index Reporting by Ben Martin additional reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain editing by Sinead Cruise and Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Oil edged up on Wednesday as strong Chinese factory activity encouraged investor inflows into industrial commodities such as copper although fastgrowing US crude output tempered price gains FILE PHOTO A pump jack is seen at sunrise near Bakersfield California October 14 2014 REUTERSLucy NicholsonFile Photo China reported a 72 percent yearonyear increase in industrial output in the first two months of the year roundly beating expectations and in a dose of support for oil bulls the data showed crude production fell 19 percent Copper CMCU3 and palladium XPD a key component in gasolinepowered vehicles both rose around 1 percent which in turn encouraged a bounce in the oil price Brent crude LCOc1 was last up 27 cents at 6492 a barrel off an earlier low of 6443 while US West Texas Intermediate WTI futures CLc1 were up 31 cents at 6102 a barrel 8220We8217ve seen copper breach above 7000 a tonne and I think a lot of this is coming out of this really big beat in the Chinese industrial production so general macro flows I would say are reinforcing that bullish narrative8221 ING commodities strategist Oliver Nugent said China is the world8217s largest importer of commodities and is the world8217s biggest car market Chinese oil production fell 19 percent in January and February to a daily rate of around 377 million barrels per day while the amount of crude processed by refineries rose 73 percent to 934 million bpd implying that its import demand will remain strong Brent crude has fallen by around 1 percent so far this week as traders and investors have grown increasingly doubtful that coordinated supply cuts by OPEC and some of its partners might not be enough to offset the relentless rise in US crude production US oil production COUTTEIA is expected to top 11 million bpd later this year For a graphic on Russia vs Saudi vs US oil production click reutrs2FrFVMF Rising output as well as seasonally low demand mean that US crude inventories rose by 12 million barrels in the week to March 9 to 428 million barrels the American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday Seasonal demand patterns for crude and refined products mean the market may only be weeks away from a run of declines 8220The total US crude gasoline and distillate stocks have increased in eight of the past 10 weeks raising 24 million bl in total since the start of the year So if inventories declined last week it will definitely be a positive turn8221 SEB commodities strategist Bjarne Schieldrop said 8220We are now only 24 weeks away from when weekly oil inventory data will start to draw again which should be supportive for oil prices8221 Weekly US crude production figures will be published by the Energy Information Administration EIA later on Wednesday For a graphic on World oil supply and demand balance click reutrs2FIxGvP Reporting by Henning Gloystein Editing by Tom Hogue and Susan Fenton Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Wall Street8217s major indexes fell on Tuesday as the dismissal of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the possibility of additional US import tariffs against China dragged down stocks across sectors President Donald Trump fired Tillerson after a series of public rifts over issues including North Korea and Russia Trump has appointed CIA Director Mike Pompeo seen as loyal to the president to replace Tillerson To lead the CIA the president has tapped Gina Haspel the agency8217s deputy director 8220Any time there8217s change investors get nervous8221 said John Carey portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer Asset Management in Boston 8220They have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what the implications might be8221 Still Carey said at least the nominees to lead the State Department and the CIA are familiar names 8220I don8217t think either change will be troubling to the market as people reflect on the qualifications of the people stepping into the roles8221 he said US stocks added to losses after Politico reported that a package of tariffs targeting 30 billion a year in Chinese imports could be rolled out as soon as next week 8220This may be upsetting the apple cart8221 said Bryan Novak senior managing director at Astor Investment Management in Chicago 8220When you look at tariffs you don8217t just look in a vacuum You look at what follows on top of them It8217s worth watching a bit more to see the followthrough on our side and their side but there could be some anxiety around it8221 The markets had opened higher after data showed US consumer price growth slowed in February an indication that an anticipated pickup in inflation probably will be only gradual Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in Manhattan New York City US March 2 2018 REUTERSAndrew Kelly The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI fell 17158 points or 068 percent to 2500703 the SampampP 500 SPX lost 1771 points or 064 percent to 276531 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC dropped 7731 points or 102 percent to 751101 Tech SPLRCT and financial SPSY stocks were the biggest laggards among the SampampP 5008217s 11 major sectors Shares of Microsoft Corp MSFTO Facebook Inc FBO and Alphabet Inc GOOGLO fell between 15 percent and 24 percent Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 2500703 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 17158 068 DJI SPX IXIC MSFTO FBO 8220Technology rallied hard yesterday and last week and there is profittaking but it8217s just a shortterm pressure8221 said Ken Polcari director of the NYSE floor division at O8217Neil Securities in New York Financial stocks were weighed as US Treasury yields fell in response to the CPI data and Tillerson8217s exit Among individual stocks General Electric Co GEN fell 44 percent after JP Morgan cut its price target on the stock to 11 from 14 saying the industrial conglomerate was not a 8220safety stock8221 in a volatile market Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 127to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 155to1 ratio favored decliners The SampampP 500 posted 43 new 52week highs and no new lows the Nasdaq Composite recorded 180 new highs and 24 new lows Volume on US exchanges was 689 billion shares compared to the 713 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Arun Koyyur James Dalgleish and Susan Thomas Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Boeing Co BAN is doubling down on its landmark new strategy designed to muscle in on the business of maintenance providers by making its next jet the laboratory for inhouse services that could radically alter the global business model for selling planes FILE PHOTO President Chairman and CEO of The Boeing Company Dennis Muilenburg speaks at the Whats Next conference in Chicago Illinois US October 4 2016 REUTERSJim YoungFile Photo Unlike Boeing8217s last allnew design the 787 Dreamliner its proposed new midmarket plane will not bring a flood of revolutionary technical designs to the drawing board But it will give the world8217s largest plane maker a chance to test its new business approach of designing the plane so that it generates lucrative services revenues for Boeing while also offering efficiencies to airlines over the aircraft8217s decadeslong lifespan Along with production costs the new approach could help Boeing decide whether to invest the 15 billion or more in development needed to build the jet 8220If we decide to launch it8217s a big investment and it8217s an investment that has to contemplate not only the product itself but all of our other strategic objectives8221 Chairman and Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told Reuters 8220So you can imagine we would want to look at this airplane through the lens of lifecycle value as we are growing our services business8221 he said Until recently Boeing and Europe8217s Airbus AIRPA sold planes with little involvement in the way they were operated and maintained Instead that was work carried out by their own suppliers or thirdparty shops Heavy outsourcing on jets like the 787 expanded the trend by leaving suppliers such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 7011T which supplies the 7878217s carbon wings in command of key components While Boeing and others squeezed their balance sheets to launch jets many of their suppliers used their design influence to forge profitable relationships directly with airlines as they conducted part swaps or repairs required by regulators 8220That seems a little out of balance doesn8217t it8221 said Muilenburg describing how the pendulum is now swinging back to give Boeing more control over parts and therefore the stream of aftermarket services that comes with owning a part8217s design 8220We do take the majority of the risk in developing new products and we think that would cause us to want to gain the financial benefit of that risktaking for the long term8221 he said The longterm approach to the new jet is the latest evidence of changes in the 180 billion aeroaftermarket as planemakers jostle with suppliers and even airlines for control of repairs training and data in pursuit of higher margins Last year Boeing centralized services formerly spread across the company in a new division with a goal to more than treble sales to 50 billion in a decade The new unit posted operating margins of 154 percent last year compared with 161 percent that United Technologies Aerospace Systems UTXN a major supplier earned from selling new equipment services and aftermarket parts ENGINEERING DEPTH The aftermarket is not entirely new to Boeing and is common in defense where Muilenburg ran services between 2008 and 2009 Airbus set ambitious internal targets last week and Canada8217s Bombardier Inc BBDbTO is banking on maintenance But after airplane demand peaked since 2014 Boeing has turned more aggressively to parts and services to help meet a target of doubling margins to the midteens by 2020 Its core jet margin widened to 96 percent last year from 34 percent in 2016 To support the strategy Boeing is bringing back key inhouse technology like avionics the brains of a modern jet partly with an eye to future aftermarket revenue Boeing Co 33867 BAN New York Stock Exchange 552 160 BAN AIRPA 7011T UTXN BBDbTO 8220It is important that we build out vertical capabilities that sustain our engineering depthas airplanes become more digital8221 Muilenburg said adding that broader growth in the industry would also provide a boon to suppliers Suppliers say Boeing is also less willing than before to share risks and profits with them on the systems they do build Instead it wants them to build to Boeing8217s designs rather than leaving them with keys to the allimportant aftermarket Already there are signs the midmarket jet could see a swing away from risksharing towards straight procurement dealsthe head of a major supplier told Reuters 8220It depends on the area of the airplane we are talking about but we are very clear in our intent to grow our services business and part of that is bringing back inside some engineering and intellectual property8221 Muilenburg commented The downside of doing more by itself suppliers and analysts say is that Boeing could weaken access to outside innovation import risk and tie up capital and finite engineering resources Depending on how far this goes industry sources say it may also herald gradual changes in patterns of cash generation While planemakers get paid on delivery engine makers charge little upfront and make money on services provided over years Some analysts say new plane manufacturer strategies suggest those business models could start to converge and put pressure on them to be more generous with discounts on jets Muilenburg declined to address pricing directly but acknowledged Boeing8217s cradletograve services strategy could have some impact on the timing of future income 8220The services business tends to be accretive to margin but this does give us the flexibility of where we drive margin in the business with the idea of raising the bar overall8221 he said when asked if bundling services could lead to bigger jet discounts Reporting by Tim Hepher Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott Editing by Edward Tobin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - NETGEM SA:</p> <p>* Q4 REVENUE EUR 16.5 MILLION VERSUS EUR 15.5 MILLION YEAR AGO</p> <p>* FY GROSS PROFIT EUR 24.6 MILLION VERSUS EUR 27.5 MILLION YEAR AGO</p> <p>* AS AT DECEMBER 31ST, 2017, GROUP NET CASH POSITION AMOUNTED TO EUR 10.2 MILLION , POST COMPLETION</p> <p>* &#8205;END-DEC ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS BASE WENT UP 18% COMPARED TO END OF DECEMBER 2016 &#8203; Source text: <a href="http://bit.ly/2DosdNt" type="external">bit.ly/2DosdNt</a> Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A $117 million verdict against Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JNJ.N" type="external">JNJ.N</a>) and a supplier in favor of a man who said his asbestos-related cancer was caused by long-term use of J&amp;amp;J&#8217;s Baby Powder could open a new front for thousands of cases claiming the widely-used product caused cancer, legal experts and plaintiffs lawyers said.</p> FILE PHOTO: Bottles of Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson baby powder line a drugstore shelf in New York October 15, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo <p>J&amp;amp;J has been battling some 6,000 cases claiming its baby powder and Shower to Shower products cause ovarian cancer. The $117 million verdict by a New Jersey jury last week, however, involved a different form of cancer that is clearly linked to asbestos.</p> <p>Plaintiffs lawyers claim that internal J&amp;amp;J documents seen in that trial show that baby powder had been contaminated with asbestos. They now plan to use the documents in upcoming ovarian cancer trials to allege that the asbestos contamination also caused that form of cancer.</p> <p>J&amp;amp;J and Imerys Talc America, a unit of Imerys SA ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=IMTP.PA" type="external">IMTP.PA</a>), have vowed to appeal the New Jersey verdict and deny asbestos has ever been present in their products or that their talc can cause any form of cancer.</p> <p>The case of Stephen Lanzo, a New Jersey resident who claimed he developed mesothelioma after using baby powder since his birth in 1972, was the first time a jury saw the internal J&amp;amp;J documents which plaintiffs claim show that J&amp;amp;J knew since the 1970s that the talc in its baby powder was contaminated by asbestos during the mining process.</p> <p>J&amp;amp;J says the documents present no such evidence, but merely show the company&#8217;s caution.</p> <p>Peter Bicks, a lawyer leading J&amp;amp;J&#8217;s talc asbestos defense, said that in the early 1970s, the company was looking at how it could potentially remove asbestos from talc if the two became intermingled in the mining process. He says no contamination was ever found, citing decades of testing by independent laboratories and scientists.</p> <p>Bicks called the claims of a link between talc and asbestos &#8220;junk science.&#8221;</p> <p>Mesothelioma, a rare and deadly form of cancer closely associated with exposure to asbestos, affects the delicate tissue that lines body cavities.</p> <p>While the link between asbestos and mesothelioma is sufficiently established, scientists are divided on whether asbestos exposure can cause ovarian cancer. Some studies have shown an association between the two, while other studies have found no such link.</p> <p>Elizabeth Burch, holder of the Charles H. Kirbo Chair of Law at the University of Georgia, said it remained an open question whether talc contained asbestos and that each case would turn on the facts.</p> <p>But J&amp;amp;J, which had $76.5 billion in sales in 2017, gives the plaintiffs&#8217; bar an enticing new target, said Nathan Schachtman, a lecturer at Columbia University who used to defend asbestos cases.</p> <p>Some 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year, according to the American Cancer Society, a number that Howard Erichson, a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in mass tort litigation, called significant from a legal standpoint.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JNJ.N" type="external">Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson</a> 130.62 JNJ.N New York Stock Exchange +0.19 (+0.15%) JNJ.N IMTP.PA <p>But the roughly 22,000 women who were diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year, according to the National Cancer Institute, provide lawyers with a potentially much larger pool of plaintiffs to tap.</p> <p>&#8220;This is just the tip of the iceberg,&#8221; said Mark Lanier, one of the lawyers representing consumers, who said plaintiffs would file thousands of additional mesothelioma and ovarian cancer cases.</p> <p>New Jersey-based J&amp;amp;J in a statement after the Lanzo verdict said plaintiffs&#8217; attorneys had shifted their strategy to focus on asbestos after a series of losses at trial and in court rulings over previous allegations that the talc itself causes cancer.</p> <p>Of the six ovarian cancer trials to date, juries found J&amp;amp;J liable five times, but a Missouri appellate court threw out the first verdict and a California judge tossed another. Appeals of the other cases are pending.</p> <p>J&amp;amp;J in November also won the first trial over allegations that its talc contained asbestos and caused a woman&#8217;s mesothelioma. Plaintiffs lawyers say the jury in that case did not see the documents presented during the Lanzo trial.</p> <p>But Erichson said the widespread use of J&amp;amp;J&#8217;s consumer products generally make the company an attractive litigation target.</p> <p>&#8220;Baby powder is as ubiquitous a product you can think of and there are lots of people who can testify they&#8217;ve been exposed to it,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Tina Bellon; editing by Noeleen Walder and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ATLANTA (Reuters) - Deadly slow-moving storms generated record or near-record snowfall and low temperatures in the U.S. Midwest and tornadoes further east on Sunday, leaving airline travelers stranded and thousands without power.</p> <p>In Michigan, where snowfall was expected to reach 18 inches in some areas, about 310,000 homes and businesses were without power because of an ice storm, most of them in the southeast of the state.</p> <p>Large areas of Detroit were without power and customers were not expected to have it back on Sunday night, utility DTE Energy ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DTE.N" type="external">DTE.N</a>) said. It was working to have 90 percent of outages restored by Tuesday, DTE spokeswoman Carly Getz said in a statement.</p> <p>The weight of ice on power lines, coupled with high winds, caused more than 1,000 power lines to fall in Detroit and Wayne County, DTE said.</p> <p>The worst of the snow was focused on the upper Great Lakes, with Green Bay, Wisconsin, seeing its second largest snowstorm ever after 23.2 inches fell as of Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.</p> <p>For the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, the April monthly record for snowfall of 21.8 inches (55 cm) was surpassed on Saturday, the National Weather Service said.</p> <p>Two tornadoes tore up trees and ripped apart homes in Greensboro and Reidsville, North Carolina, killing a motorist who was hit by a tree, according to Greensboro&#8217;s city manager, local media reported.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>The storms stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest and were moving into the Northeast and New England.</p> <p>Record low temperatures for the date were expected in Oklahoma City on Monday at 30 degrees F (-1 C), and in Kansas City, Missouri, at 25 F (-4 C), Hurley said.</p> <p>On Friday, the weather system produced 17 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas, with four people injured and 160 buildings damaged in a possible tornado in northwest Arkansas, local media reported.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DTE.N" type="external">DTE Energy Co</a> 102.44 DTE.N New York Stock Exchange +0.34 (+0.33%) DTE.N <p>The weather was blamed for two traffic deaths in western Nebraska and Wisconsin, according to National Public Radio.</p> <p>The storms also killed a one-year-old girl when a tree fell on a recreational vehicle where she was sleeping, the sheriff&#8217;s office in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, said.</p> <p>By Sunday night, 1,804 flights had been canceled into or out of U.S. airports, the website flightaware.com reported, including 148 flights in or out of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.</p> <p>Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. and Andrew Hay in Taos, N.M.; Editing by Adrian Croft and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI director James Comey said in an ABC News interview on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump is a dangerous, &#8220;morally unfit&#8221; leader doing &#8220;tremendous damage&#8221; to institutional and cultural norms.</p> <p>Comey, fired by Trump in May last year, was worried the president may be open to blackmail by Russia given claims he was present when prostitutes urinated on each other during a 2013 Moscow visit.</p> <p>Comey&#8217;s firing came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing possible connections between Trump&#8217;s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia&#8217;s meddling in the U.S. election.</p> <p>Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion or improper activity.</p> <p>Comey said in the exclusive interview with ABC News&#8217; George Stephanopoulos, which aired at 10 p.m. on Sunday, that it is &#8220;possible, but I don&#8217;t know&#8221; whether Russia has evidence to back up the allegations about Trump&#8217;s Moscow trip.</p> <p>Trump told Comey that he had not stayed overnight in the Moscow hotel and that the claims related to the prostitutes were not true, Comey said.</p> <p>&#8220;A person ... who talks about and treats women like they&#8217;re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person&#8217;s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that&#8217;s not a policy statement,&#8221; Comey said.</p> <p>&#8220;He is morally unfit to be president,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>Comey has a tell-all book, &#8220;A Higher Loyalty,&#8221; due out on Tuesday.</p> <p>The book&#8217;s imminent release - and the slated ABC News interview - prompted Trump to hurl a new set of insults at Comey earlier on Sunday, challenging accusations made in the book, and insisting that he never pressed Comey to be loyal to him.</p> <p>&#8220;Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!&#8221; Trump wrote early on Sunday in one of five Twitter posts aimed directly at Comey.</p> <p>Reuters and other news outlets have obtained copies of Comey&#8217;s book before its formal release. In it, Comey wrote that Trump, in a private meeting, pressed the then-FBI director for his loyalty.</p> <p>Comey told ABC News that the title of the book came from that &#8220;bizarre conversation&#8221; he had with Trump at the White House in January 2017, shortly after his inauguration.</p> <p>&#8220;He asked for my loyalty personally as the F.B.I. director. My loyalty&#8217;s supposed to be to the American people and to the institution,&#8221; Comey said in the interview.</p> <p>The FBI has long tried to operate as an independent law enforcement agency.</p> <p>&#8220;I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies,&#8221; Trump said on Twitter.</p> <p>Comey is now a crucial witness for Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into whether Trump has tried to obstruct the Russia probe.</p> <p>Comey told ABC News that he believes there is &#8220;certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice.&#8221;</p> <p>Comey also defended his decision to publicly disclose the FBI&#8217;s re-opening of its investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton&#8217;s handling of email when she was secretary of state.</p> A copy of former FBI director James Comey's book "A Higher Loyalty" is seen in New York City, New York, U.S. April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Soren Larson <p>The Clinton probe was already public, Comey said, whereas the FBI&#8217;s examination of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was in its early stages. It did not become publicly known until after the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>Despite his myriad of reservations about Trump, Comey told ABC News that he did not believe the U.S. Congress should impeach him, as it would let the American people &#8220;off the hook&#8221; for something &#8220;they&#8217;re duty bound to do directly.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, interviewed on NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; on Sunday morning, expressed qualified support for Comey. Asked whether Comey was a man of integrity, the Republican speaker said: &#8220;As far as I know,&#8221; but added that he did not know him well.</p> <p>Asked about Trump&#8217;s use last week of the words &#8220;slime ball&#8221; to describe Comey, Ryan said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t use words like that.&#8221;</p> <p>Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the ABC interview reaffirms that Comey&#8217;s &#8220;higher loyalty is to himself.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;He has no credibility and President Trump was right to follow through on the bipartisan calls for him to be fired,&#8221; McDaniel said in a statement.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>(Refiles to add dropped article &#8220;A&#8221; from book title, paragraph 9.)</p> <p>Reporting by Amanda Becker and Sarah Lynch; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Taro Kono and his Chinese counterpart have pledged to improve ties between their nations and affirmed a commitment to stick with U.N. resolutions aimed at forcing North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons.</p> Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono gesture at their meeting in Tokyo, Japan April 15, 2018. Behrouz Mehri/Pool via Reuters <p>Kono met the Chinese government&#8217;s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, in Tokyo on Sunday, having made his own official visit to Beijing earlier this year.</p> <p>Wang is the first Chinese foreign minister to visit Japan in a bilateral context in the nine years. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping last year promised to reset the sometimes fraught relations between Asia&#8217;s two largest economies.</p> Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (2nd L) and Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono (2nd R) meet in Tokyo, Japan April 15, 2018. Behrouz Mehri/Pool via Reuters <p>&#8220;Through mutual visits between our two leaders we agreed to pursue wide-reaching cooperation and improved ties,&#8221; Kono said after Sunday&#8217;s meeting.</p> <p>Economic ties between Japan and China are close, led by corporate investment. The neighbors remain at odds, however, over China&#8217;s growing military presence in the South China Sea, through which much of the region&#8217;s sea-borne trade sails, and a dispute over ownership of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku in Tokyo and the Diaoyu in Beijing.</p> <p>Wang said his visit was in response to Japan&#8217;s positive attitude towards China.</p> Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) shakes hands with Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono at their meeting in Tokyo, Japan April 15, 2018. Behrouz Mehri/Pool via Reuters <p>&#8220;Since last year Japan has, in relations with China, displayed a positive message and friendly attitude,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The talks came ahead of a summit between the two Koreas this month and a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jon Un and U.S. President Donald Trump. The U.S-North Korea talks are aimed at ending a stand-off over Pyongyang&#8217;s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.</p> <p>&#8220;To establish a complete, irreversible and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea we agreed to continue to fully implement all relevant U.N. resolutions and to work closely together,&#8221; Kono said.</p> <p>Wang, who spent eight years in Japan as a diplomat, including three as China&#8217;s ambassador, is scheduled to hold further talks with Kono and other Japanese Cabinet ministers on Monday.</p> <p>On Tuesday Japanese Self Defense Force officers will meet counterparts from China&#8217;s People&#8217;s Liberation Army at a reception hosted by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in an effort to build trust between the military rivals.</p> <p>(Changes to Japan and China pledged relationship reset last year.)</p> <p>Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo; Writing by Tim Kelly and Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Sam Holmes and David Goodman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Netgem FY Gross Profit Down At 24.6 Million Euros J&J Baby Powder litigation takes new focus with asbestos claims Storms unleash tornadoes in U.S. east, record snow in Midwest Fired FBI director Comey says Trump 'morally unfit': ABC News interview Japan and China's foreign ministers pledge to pursue improved ties

https://reuters.com/article/brief-netgem-fy-gross-profit-down-at-246/brief-netgem-fy-gross-profit-down-at-246-million-euros-idUSFWN1PD034

2018-01-18

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Jan 18 Reuters NETGEM SA Q4 REVENUE EUR 165 MILLION VERSUS EUR 155 MILLION YEAR AGO FY GROSS PROFIT EUR 246 MILLION VERSUS EUR 275 MILLION YEAR AGO AS AT DECEMBER 31ST 2017 GROUP NET CASH POSITION AMOUNTED TO EUR 102 MILLION POST COMPLETION 8205ENDDEC ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS BASE WENT UP 18 COMPARED TO END OF DECEMBER 2016 8203 Source text bitly2DosdNt Further company coverage Gdynia Newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters A 117 million verdict against Johnson ampamp Johnson JNJN and a supplier in favor of a man who said his asbestosrelated cancer was caused by longterm use of JampampJ8217s Baby Powder could open a new front for thousands of cases claiming the widelyused product caused cancer legal experts and plaintiffs lawyers said FILE PHOTO Bottles of Johnson ampamp Johnson baby powder line a drugstore shelf in New York October 15 2015 REUTERSLucas JacksonFile Photo JampampJ has been battling some 6000 cases claiming its baby powder and Shower to Shower products cause ovarian cancer The 117 million verdict by a New Jersey jury last week however involved a different form of cancer that is clearly linked to asbestos Plaintiffs lawyers claim that internal JampampJ documents seen in that trial show that baby powder had been contaminated with asbestos They now plan to use the documents in upcoming ovarian cancer trials to allege that the asbestos contamination also caused that form of cancer JampampJ and Imerys Talc America a unit of Imerys SA IMTPPA have vowed to appeal the New Jersey verdict and deny asbestos has ever been present in their products or that their talc can cause any form of cancer The case of Stephen Lanzo a New Jersey resident who claimed he developed mesothelioma after using baby powder since his birth in 1972 was the first time a jury saw the internal JampampJ documents which plaintiffs claim show that JampampJ knew since the 1970s that the talc in its baby powder was contaminated by asbestos during the mining process JampampJ says the documents present no such evidence but merely show the company8217s caution Peter Bicks a lawyer leading JampampJ8217s talc asbestos defense said that in the early 1970s the company was looking at how it could potentially remove asbestos from talc if the two became intermingled in the mining process He says no contamination was ever found citing decades of testing by independent laboratories and scientists Bicks called the claims of a link between talc and asbestos 8220junk science8221 Mesothelioma a rare and deadly form of cancer closely associated with exposure to asbestos affects the delicate tissue that lines body cavities While the link between asbestos and mesothelioma is sufficiently established scientists are divided on whether asbestos exposure can cause ovarian cancer Some studies have shown an association between the two while other studies have found no such link Elizabeth Burch holder of the Charles H Kirbo Chair of Law at the University of Georgia said it remained an open question whether talc contained asbestos and that each case would turn on the facts But JampampJ which had 765 billion in sales in 2017 gives the plaintiffs8217 bar an enticing new target said Nathan Schachtman a lecturer at Columbia University who used to defend asbestos cases Some 3000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year according to the American Cancer Society a number that Howard Erichson a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in mass tort litigation called significant from a legal standpoint Johnson ampamp Johnson 13062 JNJN New York Stock Exchange 019 015 JNJN IMTPPA But the roughly 22000 women who were diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year according to the National Cancer Institute provide lawyers with a potentially much larger pool of plaintiffs to tap 8220This is just the tip of the iceberg8221 said Mark Lanier one of the lawyers representing consumers who said plaintiffs would file thousands of additional mesothelioma and ovarian cancer cases New Jerseybased JampampJ in a statement after the Lanzo verdict said plaintiffs8217 attorneys had shifted their strategy to focus on asbestos after a series of losses at trial and in court rulings over previous allegations that the talc itself causes cancer Of the six ovarian cancer trials to date juries found JampampJ liable five times but a Missouri appellate court threw out the first verdict and a California judge tossed another Appeals of the other cases are pending JampampJ in November also won the first trial over allegations that its talc contained asbestos and caused a woman8217s mesothelioma Plaintiffs lawyers say the jury in that case did not see the documents presented during the Lanzo trial But Erichson said the widespread use of JampampJ8217s consumer products generally make the company an attractive litigation target 8220Baby powder is as ubiquitous a product you can think of and there are lots of people who can testify they8217ve been exposed to it8221 he said Reporting by Tina Bellon editing by Noeleen Walder and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ATLANTA Reuters Deadly slowmoving storms generated record or nearrecord snowfall and low temperatures in the US Midwest and tornadoes further east on Sunday leaving airline travelers stranded and thousands without power In Michigan where snowfall was expected to reach 18 inches in some areas about 310000 homes and businesses were without power because of an ice storm most of them in the southeast of the state Large areas of Detroit were without power and customers were not expected to have it back on Sunday night utility DTE Energy DTEN said It was working to have 90 percent of outages restored by Tuesday DTE spokeswoman Carly Getz said in a statement The weight of ice on power lines coupled with high winds caused more than 1000 power lines to fall in Detroit and Wayne County DTE said The worst of the snow was focused on the upper Great Lakes with Green Bay Wisconsin seeing its second largest snowstorm ever after 232 inches fell as of Sunday afternoon the National Weather Service said For the twin cities of MinneapolisSt Paul Minnesota the April monthly record for snowfall of 218 inches 55 cm was surpassed on Saturday the National Weather Service said Two tornadoes tore up trees and ripped apart homes in Greensboro and Reidsville North Carolina killing a motorist who was hit by a tree according to Greensboro8217s city manager local media reported Slideshow 2 Images The storms stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest and were moving into the Northeast and New England Record low temperatures for the date were expected in Oklahoma City on Monday at 30 degrees F 1 C and in Kansas City Missouri at 25 F 4 C Hurley said On Friday the weather system produced 17 reports of tornadoes in Arkansas Louisiana Missouri and Texas with four people injured and 160 buildings damaged in a possible tornado in northwest Arkansas local media reported DTE Energy Co 10244 DTEN New York Stock Exchange 034 033 DTEN The weather was blamed for two traffic deaths in western Nebraska and Wisconsin according to National Public Radio The storms also killed a oneyearold girl when a tree fell on a recreational vehicle where she was sleeping the sheriff8217s office in Bossier Parish Louisiana said By Sunday night 1804 flights had been canceled into or out of US airports the website flightawarecom reported including 148 flights in or out of the MinneapolisSt Paul airport Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale Fla and Andrew Hay in Taos NM Editing by Adrian Croft and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Former FBI director James Comey said in an ABC News interview on Sunday that US President Donald Trump is a dangerous 8220morally unfit8221 leader doing 8220tremendous damage8221 to institutional and cultural norms Comey fired by Trump in May last year was worried the president may be open to blackmail by Russia given claims he was present when prostitutes urinated on each other during a 2013 Moscow visit Comey8217s firing came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing possible connections between Trump8217s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia8217s meddling in the US election Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has denied any collusion or improper activity Comey said in the exclusive interview with ABC News8217 George Stephanopoulos which aired at 10 pm on Sunday that it is 8220possible but I don8217t know8221 whether Russia has evidence to back up the allegations about Trump8217s Moscow trip Trump told Comey that he had not stayed overnight in the Moscow hotel and that the claims related to the prostitutes were not true Comey said 8220A person who talks about and treats women like they8217re pieces of meat who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it that person8217s not fit to be president of the United States on moral grounds And that8217s not a policy statement8221 Comey said 8220He is morally unfit to be president8221 he added Comey has a tellall book 8220A Higher Loyalty8221 due out on Tuesday The book8217s imminent release and the slated ABC News interview prompted Trump to hurl a new set of insults at Comey earlier on Sunday challenging accusations made in the book and insisting that he never pressed Comey to be loyal to him 8220Slippery James Comey a man who always ends up badly and out of whack he is not smart will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history by far8221 Trump wrote early on Sunday in one of five Twitter posts aimed directly at Comey Reuters and other news outlets have obtained copies of Comey8217s book before its formal release In it Comey wrote that Trump in a private meeting pressed the thenFBI director for his loyalty Comey told ABC News that the title of the book came from that 8220bizarre conversation8221 he had with Trump at the White House in January 2017 shortly after his inauguration 8220He asked for my loyalty personally as the FBI director My loyalty8217s supposed to be to the American people and to the institution8221 Comey said in the interview The FBI has long tried to operate as an independent law enforcement agency 8220I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty I hardly even knew this guy Just another of his many lies8221 Trump said on Twitter Comey is now a crucial witness for Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation into whether Trump has tried to obstruct the Russia probe Comey told ABC News that he believes there is 8220certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice8221 Comey also defended his decision to publicly disclose the FBI8217s reopening of its investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton8217s handling of email when she was secretary of state A copy of former FBI director James Comeys book A Higher Loyalty is seen in New York City New York US April 13 2018 REUTERSSoren Larson The Clinton probe was already public Comey said whereas the FBI8217s examination of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was in its early stages It did not become publicly known until after the 2016 presidential election Despite his myriad of reservations about Trump Comey told ABC News that he did not believe the US Congress should impeach him as it would let the American people 8220off the hook8221 for something 8220they8217re duty bound to do directly8221 8220People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values8221 he said US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan interviewed on NBC8217s 8220Meet the Press8221 on Sunday morning expressed qualified support for Comey Asked whether Comey was a man of integrity the Republican speaker said 8220As far as I know8221 but added that he did not know him well Asked about Trump8217s use last week of the words 8220slime ball8221 to describe Comey Ryan said 8220I don8217t use words like that8221 Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the ABC interview reaffirms that Comey8217s 8220higher loyalty is to himself8221 8220He has no credibility and President Trump was right to follow through on the bipartisan calls for him to be fired8221 McDaniel said in a statement Slideshow 2 Images Refiles to add dropped article 8220A8221 from book title paragraph 9 Reporting by Amanda Becker and Sarah Lynch Additional reporting by Richard Cowan Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters Japanese Foreign Affairs Minister Taro Kono and his Chinese counterpart have pledged to improve ties between their nations and affirmed a commitment to stick with UN resolutions aimed at forcing North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi L and Japans Foreign Minister Taro Kono gesture at their meeting in Tokyo Japan April 15 2018 Behrouz MehriPool via Reuters Kono met the Chinese government8217s top diplomat State Councillor Wang Yi in Tokyo on Sunday having made his own official visit to Beijing earlier this year Wang is the first Chinese foreign minister to visit Japan in a bilateral context in the nine years Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping last year promised to reset the sometimes fraught relations between Asia8217s two largest economies Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi 2nd L and Japans Foreign Minister Taro Kono 2nd R meet in Tokyo Japan April 15 2018 Behrouz MehriPool via Reuters 8220Through mutual visits between our two leaders we agreed to pursue widereaching cooperation and improved ties8221 Kono said after Sunday8217s meeting Economic ties between Japan and China are close led by corporate investment The neighbors remain at odds however over China8217s growing military presence in the South China Sea through which much of the region8217s seaborne trade sails and a dispute over ownership of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku in Tokyo and the Diaoyu in Beijing Wang said his visit was in response to Japan8217s positive attitude towards China Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi L shakes hands with Japans Foreign Minister Taro Kono at their meeting in Tokyo Japan April 15 2018 Behrouz MehriPool via Reuters 8220Since last year Japan has in relations with China displayed a positive message and friendly attitude8221 he said The talks came ahead of a summit between the two Koreas this month and a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jon Un and US President Donald Trump The USNorth Korea talks are aimed at ending a standoff over Pyongyang8217s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles 8220To establish a complete irreversible and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea we agreed to continue to fully implement all relevant UN resolutions and to work closely together8221 Kono said Wang who spent eight years in Japan as a diplomat including three as China8217s ambassador is scheduled to hold further talks with Kono and other Japanese Cabinet ministers on Monday On Tuesday Japanese Self Defense Force officers will meet counterparts from China8217s People8217s Liberation Army at a reception hosted by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in an effort to build trust between the military rivals Changes to Japan and China pledged relationship reset last year Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo Writing by Tim Kelly and Ritsuko Ando Editing by Sam Holmes and David Goodman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Wall Street is hoping that first-quarter earnings growth and corporate forecasts are strong enough to bring the FAANG group of stocks back into favor and take the spotlight off worries that caused the recent sell-off in the high-flying group.</p> FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>With valuations below recent peaks, the group - comprised of Facebook, Amazon.com, Apple Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>), Netflix ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NFLX.O" type="external">NFLX.O</a>) and Google parent Alphabet Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) - could get some relief if the companies beat, or at least meet, Wall Street estimates.</p> <p>Shares in the group, which led the S&amp;amp;P 500 to record highs in January, often trade together. They were pummeled late in the quarter on worries about a data privacy scandal at Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) and U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s public criticism of Amazon.com ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>). On top of this, fears of a trade war with China escalated during the quarter.</p> <p>For the group, analysts expect average first-quarter year-over-year earnings growth of 25.8 percent, up from 12.4 percent growth in the fourth quarter and a 12.8 percent increase a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data.</p> <p>&#8220;All we&#8217;re getting now is negative news ... once we start to see the numbers, you&#8217;re going to see a bigger spotlight on the success these companies are having,&#8221; said Daniel Morgan, portfolio manager at Synovus Trust in Atlanta, which holds shares in the FAANG stocks.</p> <p>Morgan says he is in a wait-and-see mode until after the first report from Netflix, which is due to be issued on Monday. Analysts expect Netflix earnings growth of 59 percent and revenue growth of 39 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.</p> <p>The entire group was hurt by fears that Facebook and other internet firms including Google would face onerous regulations or slowing advertising revenue growth after Facebook said nearly 87 million of its members&#8217; personal data was improperly leaked.</p> <p>Facebook fell almost 24 percent below its early February record to hit $149.02 on March 26, its lowest point since July last year, due to the scandal. Google had fallen almost 18 percent below its late January record by March 28.</p> <p>Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia said the $76-million Chase Growth fund cut its Facebook investments to 1.8 percent from 3.1 percent of its portfolio due to the scandal. Tuz may stay on the sidelines until there is more clarity on Facebook&#8217;s prospects.</p> <p>&#8220;If fundamentals remain strong with usage staying strong and the company doesn&#8217;t get hit with any severe fines or regulations we might very well buy again,&#8221; said Tuz, whose firm also owns Amazon.com, Apple and Google shares.</p> <p>&#8220;We feel good about three out of the five FAANGs- Amazon, Apple, Google,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Amazon.com stock was hurt by criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he would take a serious look at what he claimed were the online retailer&#8217;s unfair advantages with taxes and shipping rates. It fell 16.3 percent between March 13 and April 4.</p> <p>The broader technology sector was also hammered by fears of a trade war with China, a big source of revenue. Apple derived about 20 percent of its revenue from China in its fiscal year 2017. Investors seek details how big the financial risks are in the face of events such as a trade war, new regulations or a stronger dollar.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">Apple Inc</a> 174.73 AAPL.O Nasdaq +0.59 (+0.34%) AAPL.O NFLX.O GOOGL.O FB.O AMZN.O <p>&#8220;The guidance will be more important,&#8221; said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, referring to comments on quarterly conference calls about the potential financial impact of all these issues.</p> <p>But Patrick Palfrey, equity Strategist at Credit-Suisse in New York is mainly focused on strong estimates for the sector, which has posted impressive growth &#8220;time and time again.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t help but look at the group and have a positive outlook even with the current uncertainties,&#8221; said Palfrey.</p> <p>Fund flow data shows investors were warming up to the sector again. Science and technology funds showed inflows of $152 million on the week ending April 11 after outflows of $610.9 million the previous week, which had marked the first weekly retreat since early February, according to Thomson Reuters Lipper data.</p> <p>Facebook has risen about 11 percent from its most recent low while Google has climbed 5 percent above its recent trough; Apple is roughly 6 percent higher than its early April low, as is Amazon.com. Netflix has gained about 15 percent in the last 7 sessions.</p> <p>Options trading flows suggest that much of the fear of the recent sell-off has faded. But while bears have been exiting positions, bulls have yet to make a big move into the space.</p> <p>Open options contracts on key sector exchange-traded funds, PowerShares QQQ Trust ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QQQ.O" type="external">QQQ.O</a>) and Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=XLK.P" type="external">XLK.P</a>), show investor preferences for puts at or close to multi-month lows, according to Trade Alert data. Put options give investors the right to sell shares at a certain price in the future and are often used as a hedge.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;</p> <p>&#8220;Investors have been buying the dip a little bit, but in very small sizes, without very large conviction, until they see the earnings,&#8221; said Ilya Feygin, senior strategist at WallachBeth Capital LLC, in Jersey City, New Jersey.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Tesla Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O" type="external">TSLA.O</a>) will be profitable in the third and fourth quarters of this year and will not have to raise any money from investors, billionaire Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday, driving shares in the electric carmaker higher.</p> FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, U.S., July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>Tesla has already sought this month to play down widespread Wall Street speculation that it would need to return to capital markets this year to raise more funds for the money-losing company as it ramps up production of the Model 3 sedan seen as crucial to its long-term profitability.</p> <p>The Silicon Valley car maker, which has consistently fallen short of promised production targets and is fighting bad publicity over a fatal crash of a car using its Autopilot system, said 10 days ago it would have positive cash flow from the third quarter.</p> <p>Musk went further on Friday in a tweeted response to a story in The Economist which cited estimates Tesla would need $2.5 billion to $3 billion this year in additional funding.</p> <p>&#8220;The Economist used to be boring, but smart with a wicked dry wit. Now it&#8217;s just boring (sigh). Tesla will be profitable &amp;amp; cash flow+ in Q3 &amp;amp; Q4, so obv no need to raise money,&#8221; Musk wrote.</p> <p>Tesla shares, which have gained nearly 10 percent since disclosing the Model 3 production numbers on April 3, were up 1.8 percent in afternoon trading on Wall Street.</p> <p>Musk&#8217;s claim about profit and cash flow hinges on a rapid rise in production of the Model 3 sedan, Tesla&#8217;s latest vehicle to have experienced production delays. That has postponed revenue from reaching Tesla&#8217;s bottom line from cars being delivered to customers.</p> <p>An unprecedented level of robots used in the Model 3&#8217;s final assembly, in a break with automotive manufacturing norms, has added complexity and delays, which Musk acknowledged on Friday.</p> <p>&#8220;Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,&#8221; Musk tweeted. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.&#8221;</p> <p>Thomson Reuters consensus of analyst estimates predicts Tesla&#8217;s free cash flow to be negative well into 2019, thanks in part to heavy investments. Only one of 19 analysts covering the stock see positive adjusted earnings per share in the third quarter, with that number growing to four for the fourth quarter.</p> FILE PHOTO: A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton, just outside London, Britain, February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo <p>Wall Street brokerage Jefferies, which provided the funding estimate cited by The Economist, said in a note last week it expects refinancing risk to remain high for Tesla until it can consistently produce 10,000 Model 3s a week.</p> <p>The company again missed its own 2,500 target for weekly production at the end of the first quarter, and analysts and fund managers doubt Tesla&#8217;s ability to keep production growing to a promised 5,000 Model 3s per week in three months time.</p> <p>Musk in July said Tesla was going through &#8220;manufacturing hell&#8221; in ramping up production of the Model 3.</p> <p>He told &#8220;CBS News&#8221; in an interview that aired Friday the company &#8220;got complacent&#8221; and &#8220;put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once.&#8221; Part of the interview took place in a Tesla Model 3 Musk was driving with Autopilot activated at times.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O" type="external">Tesla Inc</a> 300.34 TSLA.O Nasdaq +6.26 (+2.13%) TSLA.O <p>Musk told CBS Tesla is currently producing 2,000 Model 3 cars a week.</p> <p>Last month, Moody&#8217;s Investors Service downgraded Tesla&#8217;s credit rating to B3 from B2, reflecting &#8220;the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company&#8217;s Model 3.&#8221;</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s added that its negative outlook for Tesla &#8220;reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large, near-term capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall.&#8221;</p> <p>On Thursday, the National Transportation Safety Board said that after a series of public disclosures by Tesla it had taken the unusual step of revoking Tesla&#8217;s status as a formal party to its investigation of a March 23 crash in California that killed a driver who was using Autopilot. The NTSB is also investigating two other Tesla crashes.</p> <p>Tesla lashed out at the NTSB and said it planned to complain to Congress.</p> <p>Asked by CBS if there was a defect with Autopilot, Musk responded: &#8220;The system worked as described, which is that it is a hands-on system. It is not a self-driving system.&#8221;</p> <p>At one point during the interview, Musk did not have his hands on the wheel and the car beeped at him to retake the wheel.</p> <p>Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; additional reporting by Dan Burns and Alexandria Sage; editing by Phil Berlowitz</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services on Saturday recommended investors vote against the re-election of five Equifax Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EFX.N" type="external">EFX.N</a>) directors who served on the company&#8217;s audit and technology committees prior to a 2017 data breach.</p> Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell <p>The Atlanta-based consumer credit company last fall said hackers had stolen personally identifiable information of U.S., British and Canadian consumers, including names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver&#8217;s license and credit card numbers. Over time, Equifax has increased the number affected to more than 147 million people.</p> <p>ISS said in a report to shareholders sent to Reuters by a spokesman that the company&#8217;s reputation and shareholder value had been damaged by the extent of the breach and the company&#8217;s slow response to it, placing a cloud over the company.</p> <p>In response, it recommended against voting for directors Mark L. Feidler, G. Thomas Hough, John A. McKinley, Elane B. Stock and Mark B. Templeton, who served on the two committees with relevant oversight duties. It recommended votes in support of the remaining five director candidates at the company, including Siri S. Marshall, head of the governance committee.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EFX.N" type="external">Equifax Inc</a> 116.0 EFX.N New York Stock Exchange -0.91 (-0.78%) EFX.N <p>An Equifax spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the recommendations.</p> <p>Equifax has said breach-related costs could reach $439 million through year-end, potentially making it the most costly U.S. hack yet disclosed. The company has lost 19 percent of its market value since the massive cybertheft was disclosed. Its shares traded at $116 on Friday. [L2N1QK1Q1]</p> <p>The credit reporting company is facing 100s of lawsuits by consumers, financial institutions and even the city of Chicago relating to the cybersecurity breach. The company disputes the claims and has said it intends to defend against them.</p> <p>ISS also recommended &#8220;cautionary support&#8221; for the company&#8217;s say-on-pay resolution, noting the compensation committee&#8217;s decision to not pay annual incentives, steps to adjust incentive metrics and strengthen clawback provisions. However, it said there are ongoing questions about former Chief Executive Richard F. Smith&#8217;s pay and &#8220;the issue warrants continued monitoring.&#8221;</p> <p>It also recommended a vote in favor of a shareholder resolution seeking a report on political contributions by the company, saying holders would benefit from more disclosure of the company&#8217;s political spending, payments to trade groups, its management of related risks.</p> <p>The company&#8217;s annual general meeting is scheduled for May 3.</p> <p>Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Alistair Bell</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BERLIN (Reuters) - German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Saturday he would press for &#8220;reasonable results&#8221; in the next round of pay talks with more than two million public sector workers, but he rejected the Verdi union&#8217;s demand for a six percent increase.</p> FILE PHOTO: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Justice Minister Katarina Barley and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer react as they pose for a group photo at the German government guesthouse Meseberg Palace in Meseberg, Germany, April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch <p>Wage talks are due to resume on Sunday after 150,000 public sector employees staged warning strikes and walkouts last week that left thousands of passengers stranded at airports, and hit hospitals, childcare centres and waste depots.</p> <p>Seehofer, the federal government&#8217;s top negotiator in the talks, underscored the importance of public sector workers and said it was &#8220;self-evident&#8221; that they should benefit from the country&#8217;s economic growth.</p> <p>However, he said Verdi&#8217;s demand was unreasonable.</p> <p>&#8220;It is and remains clear that the union demand for a six percent increase is too high for one year,&#8221; he said in a statement issued by his ministry. &#8220;We will continue the negotiations in such a way that we can quickly achieve reasonable results.&#8221;</p> <p>Verdi said 17,000 people participated in walkouts on Friday, bringing the total for the week&#8217;s labour actions to 150,000.</p> <p>Verdi leader Frank Bsirske said last week he expected a breakthrough in the third round of talks that will begin on Sunday in Potsdam, near Berlin. He said public sector workers should benefit from surging German tax revenues.</p> <p>The federal government and municipalities have rejected the union&#8217;s demands, but the head of the VKA association of local employer organisations last week said he expected an agreement to emerge from the next round of talks.</p> <p>In the industrial sector, 3.9 million workers agreed on a pay and flexible working hours deal in February that amounted to a roughly 4 percent rise per year for 2018 and 2019. Inflation edged up to 1.5 percent in March.</p> <p>Germany, Europe&#8217;s biggest economy, is in solid shape, with buoyant tax revenues and a record budget surplus. Falling unemployment, inflation-busting pay rises and low borrowing costs are fuelling a consumer-led upswing.</p> <p>The European Central Bank (ECB) is keeping a close eye on the German pay talks for any sign that wage growth is picking up, potentially lifting inflation and giving the ECB added leeway to start winding down its massive stimulus programme.</p> <p>Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Helen Popper</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

LIVE MARKETS-Finding opportunities among the disrupted Wall Street eyes earnings stabilizer after FAANG stocks wobble Musk insists Tesla does not need more capital, predicts profit soon Proxy adviser ISS recommends against five Equifax directors over cyberbreach German interior minister rejects union's six percent wage demand

https://reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/live-markets-finding-opportunities-among-the-disrupted-idUSL8N1PD3KQ

2018-01-18

2least

The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Wall Street is hoping that firstquarter earnings growth and corporate forecasts are strong enough to bring the FAANG group of stocks back into favor and take the spotlight off worries that caused the recent selloff in the highflying group FILE PHOTO Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 10 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid With valuations below recent peaks the group comprised of Facebook Amazoncom Apple Inc AAPLO Netflix NFLXO and Google parent Alphabet Inc GOOGLO could get some relief if the companies beat or at least meet Wall Street estimates Shares in the group which led the SampampP 500 to record highs in January often trade together They were pummeled late in the quarter on worries about a data privacy scandal at Facebook FBO and US President Donald Trump8217s public criticism of Amazoncom AMZNO On top of this fears of a trade war with China escalated during the quarter For the group analysts expect average firstquarter yearoveryear earnings growth of 258 percent up from 124 percent growth in the fourth quarter and a 128 percent increase a year ago according to Thomson Reuters data 8220All we8217re getting now is negative news once we start to see the numbers you8217re going to see a bigger spotlight on the success these companies are having8221 said Daniel Morgan portfolio manager at Synovus Trust in Atlanta which holds shares in the FAANG stocks Morgan says he is in a waitandsee mode until after the first report from Netflix which is due to be issued on Monday Analysts expect Netflix earnings growth of 59 percent and revenue growth of 39 percent according to Thomson Reuters data The entire group was hurt by fears that Facebook and other internet firms including Google would face onerous regulations or slowing advertising revenue growth after Facebook said nearly 87 million of its members8217 personal data was improperly leaked Facebook fell almost 24 percent below its early February record to hit 14902 on March 26 its lowest point since July last year due to the scandal Google had fallen almost 18 percent below its late January record by March 28 Peter Tuz president of Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville Virginia said the 76million Chase Growth fund cut its Facebook investments to 18 percent from 31 percent of its portfolio due to the scandal Tuz may stay on the sidelines until there is more clarity on Facebook8217s prospects 8220If fundamentals remain strong with usage staying strong and the company doesn8217t get hit with any severe fines or regulations we might very well buy again8221 said Tuz whose firm also owns Amazoncom Apple and Google shares 8220We feel good about three out of the five FAANGs Amazon Apple Google8221 he said Amazoncom stock was hurt by criticism from US President Donald Trump who said he would take a serious look at what he claimed were the online retailer8217s unfair advantages with taxes and shipping rates It fell 163 percent between March 13 and April 4 The broader technology sector was also hammered by fears of a trade war with China a big source of revenue Apple derived about 20 percent of its revenue from China in its fiscal year 2017 Investors seek details how big the financial risks are in the face of events such as a trade war new regulations or a stronger dollar Apple Inc 17473 AAPLO Nasdaq 059 034 AAPLO NFLXO GOOGLO FBO AMZNO 8220The guidance will be more important8221 said Robert Phipps a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin referring to comments on quarterly conference calls about the potential financial impact of all these issues But Patrick Palfrey equity Strategist at CreditSuisse in New York is mainly focused on strong estimates for the sector which has posted impressive growth 8220time and time again8221 8220I can8217t help but look at the group and have a positive outlook even with the current uncertainties8221 said Palfrey Fund flow data shows investors were warming up to the sector again Science and technology funds showed inflows of 152 million on the week ending April 11 after outflows of 6109 million the previous week which had marked the first weekly retreat since early February according to Thomson Reuters Lipper data Facebook has risen about 11 percent from its most recent low while Google has climbed 5 percent above its recent trough Apple is roughly 6 percent higher than its early April low as is Amazoncom Netflix has gained about 15 percent in the last 7 sessions Options trading flows suggest that much of the fear of the recent selloff has faded But while bears have been exiting positions bulls have yet to make a big move into the space Open options contracts on key sector exchangetraded funds PowerShares QQQ Trust QQQO and Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund XLKP show investor preferences for puts at or close to multimonth lows according to Trade Alert data Put options give investors the right to sell shares at a certain price in the future and are often used as a hedgeamp160amp160amp160 8220Investors have been buying the dip a little bit but in very small sizes without very large conviction until they see the earnings8221 said Ilya Feygin senior strategist at WallachBeth Capital LLC in Jersey City New Jersey Additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York Editing by Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Tesla Inc TSLAO will be profitable in the third and fourth quarters of this year and will not have to raise any money from investors billionaire Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday driving shares in the electric carmaker higher FILE PHOTO Elon Musk founder CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and cofounder of Tesla speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington US July 19 2017 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein Tesla has already sought this month to play down widespread Wall Street speculation that it would need to return to capital markets this year to raise more funds for the moneylosing company as it ramps up production of the Model 3 sedan seen as crucial to its longterm profitability The Silicon Valley car maker which has consistently fallen short of promised production targets and is fighting bad publicity over a fatal crash of a car using its Autopilot system said 10 days ago it would have positive cash flow from the third quarter Musk went further on Friday in a tweeted response to a story in The Economist which cited estimates Tesla would need 25 billion to 3 billion this year in additional funding 8220The Economist used to be boring but smart with a wicked dry wit Now it8217s just boring sigh Tesla will be profitable ampamp cash flow in Q3 ampamp Q4 so obv no need to raise money8221 Musk wrote Tesla shares which have gained nearly 10 percent since disclosing the Model 3 production numbers on April 3 were up 18 percent in afternoon trading on Wall Street Musk8217s claim about profit and cash flow hinges on a rapid rise in production of the Model 3 sedan Tesla8217s latest vehicle to have experienced production delays That has postponed revenue from reaching Tesla8217s bottom line from cars being delivered to customers An unprecedented level of robots used in the Model 38217s final assembly in a break with automotive manufacturing norms has added complexity and delays which Musk acknowledged on Friday 8220Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake8221 Musk tweeted To be precise my mistake Humans are underrated8221 Thomson Reuters consensus of analyst estimates predicts Tesla8217s free cash flow to be negative well into 2019 thanks in part to heavy investments Only one of 19 analysts covering the stock see positive adjusted earnings per share in the third quarter with that number growing to four for the fourth quarter FILE PHOTO A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton just outside London Britain February 7 2018 REUTERSHannah McKayFile Photo Wall Street brokerage Jefferies which provided the funding estimate cited by The Economist said in a note last week it expects refinancing risk to remain high for Tesla until it can consistently produce 10000 Model 3s a week The company again missed its own 2500 target for weekly production at the end of the first quarter and analysts and fund managers doubt Tesla8217s ability to keep production growing to a promised 5000 Model 3s per week in three months time Musk in July said Tesla was going through 8220manufacturing hell8221 in ramping up production of the Model 3 He told 8220CBS News8221 in an interview that aired Friday the company 8220got complacent8221 and 8220put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once8221 Part of the interview took place in a Tesla Model 3 Musk was driving with Autopilot activated at times Tesla Inc 30034 TSLAO Nasdaq 626 213 TSLAO Musk told CBS Tesla is currently producing 2000 Model 3 cars a week Last month Moody8217s Investors Service downgraded Tesla8217s credit rating to B3 from B2 reflecting 8220the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company8217s Model 38221 Moody8217s added that its negative outlook for Tesla 8220reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large nearterm capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall8221 On Thursday the National Transportation Safety Board said that after a series of public disclosures by Tesla it had taken the unusual step of revoking Tesla8217s status as a formal party to its investigation of a March 23 crash in California that killed a driver who was using Autopilot The NTSB is also investigating two other Tesla crashes Tesla lashed out at the NTSB and said it planned to complain to Congress Asked by CBS if there was a defect with Autopilot Musk responded 8220The system worked as described which is that it is a handson system It is not a selfdriving system8221 At one point during the interview Musk did not have his hands on the wheel and the car beeped at him to retake the wheel Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington additional reporting by Dan Burns and Alexandria Sage editing by Phil Berlowitz Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services on Saturday recommended investors vote against the reelection of five Equifax Inc EFXN directors who served on the company8217s audit and technology committees prior to a 2017 data breach Credit reporting company Equifax Inc corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta Georgia US September 8 2017 REUTERSTami Chappell The Atlantabased consumer credit company last fall said hackers had stolen personally identifiable information of US British and Canadian consumers including names Social Security numbers birth dates addresses driver8217s license and credit card numbers Over time Equifax has increased the number affected to more than 147 million people ISS said in a report to shareholders sent to Reuters by a spokesman that the company8217s reputation and shareholder value had been damaged by the extent of the breach and the company8217s slow response to it placing a cloud over the company In response it recommended against voting for directors Mark L Feidler G Thomas Hough John A McKinley Elane B Stock and Mark B Templeton who served on the two committees with relevant oversight duties It recommended votes in support of the remaining five director candidates at the company including Siri S Marshall head of the governance committee Equifax Inc 1160 EFXN New York Stock Exchange 091 078 EFXN An Equifax spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the recommendations Equifax has said breachrelated costs could reach 439 million through yearend potentially making it the most costly US hack yet disclosed The company has lost 19 percent of its market value since the massive cybertheft was disclosed Its shares traded at 116 on Friday L2N1QK1Q1 The credit reporting company is facing 100s of lawsuits by consumers financial institutions and even the city of Chicago relating to the cybersecurity breach The company disputes the claims and has said it intends to defend against them ISS also recommended 8220cautionary support8221 for the company8217s sayonpay resolution noting the compensation committee8217s decision to not pay annual incentives steps to adjust incentive metrics and strengthen clawback provisions However it said there are ongoing questions about former Chief Executive Richard F Smith8217s pay and 8220the issue warrants continued monitoring8221 It also recommended a vote in favor of a shareholder resolution seeking a report on political contributions by the company saying holders would benefit from more disclosure of the company8217s political spending payments to trade groups its management of related risks The company8217s annual general meeting is scheduled for May 3 Reporting by Gary McWilliams Editing by Alistair Bell Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BERLIN Reuters German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Saturday he would press for 8220reasonable results8221 in the next round of pay talks with more than two million public sector workers but he rejected the Verdi union8217s demand for a six percent increase FILE PHOTO German Chancellor Angela Merkel Justice Minister Katarina Barley and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer react as they pose for a group photo at the German government guesthouse Meseberg Palace in Meseberg Germany April 10 2018 REUTERSFabrizio Bensch Wage talks are due to resume on Sunday after 150000 public sector employees staged warning strikes and walkouts last week that left thousands of passengers stranded at airports and hit hospitals childcare centres and waste depots Seehofer the federal government8217s top negotiator in the talks underscored the importance of public sector workers and said it was 8220selfevident8221 that they should benefit from the country8217s economic growth However he said Verdi8217s demand was unreasonable 8220It is and remains clear that the union demand for a six percent increase is too high for one year8221 he said in a statement issued by his ministry 8220We will continue the negotiations in such a way that we can quickly achieve reasonable results8221 Verdi said 17000 people participated in walkouts on Friday bringing the total for the week8217s labour actions to 150000 Verdi leader Frank Bsirske said last week he expected a breakthrough in the third round of talks that will begin on Sunday in Potsdam near Berlin He said public sector workers should benefit from surging German tax revenues The federal government and municipalities have rejected the union8217s demands but the head of the VKA association of local employer organisations last week said he expected an agreement to emerge from the next round of talks In the industrial sector 39 million workers agreed on a pay and flexible working hours deal in February that amounted to a roughly 4 percent rise per year for 2018 and 2019 Inflation edged up to 15 percent in March Germany Europe8217s biggest economy is in solid shape with buoyant tax revenues and a record budget surplus Falling unemployment inflationbusting pay rises and low borrowing costs are fuelling a consumerled upswing The European Central Bank ECB is keeping a close eye on the German pay talks for any sign that wage growth is picking up potentially lifting inflation and giving the ECB added leeway to start winding down its massive stimulus programme Reporting by Andrea Shalal Editing by Helen Popper Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>(Reuters) - France&#8217;s Martin Fourcade underlined his Olympic biathlon credentials when he won the last race before the Pyeongchang Games, the mass start in Antholz-Anterselva in Italy on Sunday.</p> Biathlon - IBU World Championships - Men 15 km Mass Start - Hochfilzen, Austria - 19/2/17 - Martin Fourcade of Fance in action. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>Fourcade, the World Cup overall leader, made two mistakes at the first shooting session, before getting his composure back and taking a comfortable victory. His main rival, Norway&#8217;s Johannes Boe, finished a distant sixth.</p> <p>The 29-year-old, who already has two Olympic gold medals and 11 world titles, snatched his 15th podium finish in as many World Cup races this season.</p> <p>&#8220;I raced smartly, and I even spared myself for the last lap but I didn&#8217;t even need that energy,&#8221; said Fourcade.</p> <p>Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Davis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures signaled a higher opening for Wall Street on Tuesday, supported by slight gains in beaten-down technology stocks, but Amazon remained on track to open lower after dragging down the markets on Monday.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Facebook, Netflix and Alphabet rose marginally in premarket trading after steep declines in recent weeks.</p> <p>The main U.S. indexes wiped out their gains for the year on Monday and dipped below their key support levels following a selloff in technology stocks and renewed trade war fears.</p> <p>China&#8217;s ambassador to the United States said Beijing will take counter-measures of the same proportion and scale if Washington imposes more tariffs on Chinese goods from a trade probe, state television reported on Tuesday.</p> <p>The Trump administration is expected sometime this week to publish a list of Chinese goods that could be subjected to new U.S. tariffs.</p> <p>Amazon.com Inc was down 1 percent premarket, after closing down more than 5 percent on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s again criticized the online retailer.</p> <p>At 7:05 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 80 points, or 0.34 percent, with 39,200 contracts changing hands.</p> People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton <p>S&amp;amp;P 500 e-minis were up 11.75 points, or 0.46 percent, with 166,997 contracts traded.</p> <p>Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 33.75 points, or 0.53 percent, on volume of 50,281 contracts.</p> <p>On Tuesday, investors will be able to buy and sell shares in the Swedish music streaming service Spotify in the New York Stock Exchange&#8217;s first-ever direct floor listing.</p> <p>Tesla shares rose 1.3 percent after a company spokesperson said founder Elon Musk was focusing on production of Model 3, a cheaper vehicle that analysts see as crucial to the electric automaker&#8217;s long-term profitability. The stock had closed down 5 percent on Monday.</p> <p>Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>IXTEPEC, Mexico/EDINBURG, Texas (Reuters) - In some of the Mexican towns playing host to a &#8220;caravan&#8221; of more than 1,200 Central American migrants heading to the U.S. border, the welcome mat has been rolled out despite President Donald Trump&#8217;s call for Mexican authorities to stop them.</p> <p>Local officials have offered lodging in town squares and empty warehouses or arranged transport for the migrants, participants in a journey organized by the immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. The officials have conscripted buses, cars, ambulances and police trucks. But the help may not be entirely altruistic.</p> <p>&#8220;The authorities want us to leave their cities,&#8221; said Rodrigo Abeja, an organizer from Pueblo Sin Fronteras. &#8220;They&#8217;ve been helping us, in part to speed the massive group out of their jurisdictions.&#8221;</p> <p>At some point this spring, the caravan&#8217;s 2,000-mile (3,200-km) journey that began at Tapachula near the Guatemalan border on March 25 will end at the U.S. border, where some of its members will apply for asylum, while others will attempt to sneak into the United States.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-immigration-caravan-mexico/mexico-says-migrants-in-caravan-face-administrative-procedure-idUSKCN1HA06W" type="external">Mexico says migrants in caravan face administrative procedure</a> <p>So far the Mexican federal government has provided little guidance on how to handle the migrants but Abeja worries that local reactions will change.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of pressure from authorities to stop the caravan because of Donald Trump&#8217;s reaction,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Trump railed on Twitter against the caravan on Monday, accusing Mexico of &#8220;doing very little, if not NOTHING&#8221; to stop the flow of immigrants crossing the U.S. border illegally. &#8220;They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA,&#8221; he concluded.</p> <p>Mexico&#8217;s interior minister Alfonso Navarrete did not directly address the caravan, but he wrote on Twitter that he spoke to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday, and that the two had &#8220;agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country.&#8221;</p> <p>Mexico must walk a delicate line with the United States as the countries are in the midst of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) along with Canada. At the same time, Mexican left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 18-point lead ahead of the July 1 election, according to a poll published on Monday. A Lopez Obrador victory could usher in a Mexican government less accommodating toward the United States on both trade and immigration issues.</p> <p>Mexican Senator Angelica de la Pena, who presides over the Senate&#8217;s human rights commission, told Reuters that Mexico should protect migrants&#8217; rights despite the pressure from Trump. &amp;#160;</p> <p>Former President Vicente Fox called for Mexican officials to take a stand against Trump&#8217;s attacks.&amp;#160;Trump keeps &#8220;blackmailing, offending and denigrating Mexico and Mexicans,&#8221; he wrote on Twitter on Monday.</p> <p>Under Mexican law, Central Americans who enter Mexico legally are generally allowed to move freely through the country, even if their goal is to cross illegally into the United States.</p> &#8216;WE&#8217;RE SUFFERING&#8217; <p>Migrants in the caravan cite a variety of reasons for joining it. Its members are disproportionately from Honduras, which has high levels of violence and has been rocked by political upheaval in recent months following the re-election of U.S.-backed president, Juan Orlando Hern&#225;ndez in an intensely disputed election.</p> Central American migrants participating in a caravan heading to the U.S. take a pause from their journey in Matias Romero, Oaxaca, Mexico April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Jose de Jesus Cortes <p>Maria Elena Colindres Ortega, a member of caravan and, until January, a member of Congress in Honduras, said she is fleeing the political upheaval at home. &#8220;We&#8217;ve had to live through fraudulent electoral process,&#8221; she said. &#8220;We&#8217;re suffering a progressive militarization and lack of institutions, and &#8230; they&#8217;re criminalizing those who protested.&#8221;</p> <p>Colindres Ortega, who opposed the ruling party in Honduras, said she spiraled into debt, after serving without pay for the last 18 months of her four-year term. She decided to head north after a fellow congressman from her party put out word on Facebook that a caravan of migrants was gathering in southern Mexico, leaving home with a small bag with necessities and photos of her children.</p> <p>Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped coordinate migrant caravans for the last several years, though previously they had a maximum of several hundred participants. During the journey members of the organization instruct the migrants about their rights.</p> <p>&#8220;We accompany at least those who want to request asylum,&#8221; said Alex Mensing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras&#8217; program director. &#8220;We help prepare them for the detention process and asylum process before they cross the border, because it&#8217;s so difficult for people to have success if they don&#8217;t have the information.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Typically, Central Americans have not fared well with U.S. asylum claims, particularly those from Honduras. A Reuters analysis of immigration court data found that Hondurans who come before the court receive deportation orders in more than 83 percent of cases, the highest rate of any nationality. Hondurans also face deportation in Mexico, where immigration data shows that 5,000 Hondurans were deported from Mexico in February alone, the highest number since May 2016.</p> <p>Maunel Padilla, chief of the border patrol&#8217;s Rio Grande Valley sector, one of the busiest crossing points on the U.S. Mexico border, said in an interview with Reuters that he worries the caravan could &#8220;generate interest for other groups to do the same thing,&#8221; but he was not terribly nervous about coping with the group currently traveling.</p> <p>&#8220;Not to be flippant,&#8221; Padilla said, &#8220;but it&#8217;s similar numbers to what we are seeing every day pretty much.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Delphine Schrank and Mica Rosenberg; Additional reporting by Dave Graham, Lizbeth Diaz, Diego Ore and Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Sue Horton and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - World share markets struggled to regain their poise on Tuesday, with hopes pinned on a modest Wall Street recovery after both Europe and Asia had fallen on tech and trade war tensions.</p> The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tilman Blasshofer <p>Traders were looking to a near $25 billion float of music app Spotify to lift the tech gloom, after a clobbering on Monday had pushed the S&amp;amp;P 500 ESc1, Dow 1YMc1 and Nasdaq NQc1 below pivotal technical levels [.N].</p> <p>Having been shut on Monday and feeling that impact a day later, Europe's main bourses in London <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FTSE" type="external">.FTSE</a>, Paris .FCHE and Frankfurt <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.GDAXI" type="external">.GDAXI</a> were down 0.2-0.9 percent. [.EU]</p> <p>Tech stocks remained the pressure point there too .SX8P after more criticism of Amazon by U.S. President Donald Trump and as reports that Apple intended to make more of its own parts burnt European chipmakers including AMS ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMS.S" type="external">AMS.S</a>) and STMicroelectronics ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=STM.MI" type="external">STM.MI</a>).[.EU][LIVE/]</p> <p>&#8220;Equities are having a driving force on markets and who knows where that is going,&#8221; said National Australia Bank strategist Gavin Friend market strategist, adding that other markets were struggling for direction as a result.</p> <p>Some signs of stability were emerging, however.</p> <p>As well Wall Street futures pointing 0.4 percent higher ESc1, the dollar steadied against the yen after three days of falls [/FRX] and safety plays like gold and government bonds were back in reverse [GOL/][GVD/EUR].</p> <p>Asia&#8217;s shares had stumbled overnight, although its moves too had been small compared to Wall Street where the S&amp;amp;P 500 closed below its 200-day moving average for the first time since Britain&#8217;s 2016 vote to leave the European Union [.N].</p> <p>As well as the tech problems, investors were wary after China imposed extra tariffs on 128 U.S. products, deepening a dispute between the world&#8217;s two biggest economies and stoking concerns about the impact on global growth.</p> <p>&#8220;China does not provoke a trade war, and doesn&#8217;t want to fight a trade war, but we also aren&#8217;t afraid of a trade war,&#8221; Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a news briefing.</p> <p>Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> ended down 0.45 percent, after initially falling as much as 1.6 percent. China's Shanghai Composite index <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SSEC" type="external">.SSEC</a> eased 0.9 percent and the blue-chip CSI300 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.CSI300" type="external">.CSI300</a> was off 0.7 percent.</p> <p>The slight recovery in risk appetite meant U.S. Treasuries, German Bunds and UK Gilts all saw a bit of selling too in Europe. Yields on 10-year notes US10YT=TWEB DE10YT=RR GB10YT=RR were all off two- to three-month lows. [GVD/EUR]</p> <p>&#8220;The big question is how far the current tremor in the equity market will affect bonds, given it is driven by a single company - even if it is a tech giant having a huge market weight,&#8221; said DZ Bank strategist Christian Lenk.</p> People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton <p>(For a graphic on 'FAANG stocks' click <a href="https://reut.rs/2Jc9fcp" type="external">reut.rs/2Jc9fcp</a>)</p> <a href="https://reut.rs/2Jc9fcp" type="external" /> MUSIC TO THE BEARS? <p>Music streaming leader Spotify was heading for a potentially choppy inaugural stock market ride following Monday&#8217;s sell-off.</p> <p>In a public letter published ahead of its listing, Chief Executive Daniel Ek cautioned employees and fans that &#8220;sometimes we succeed, sometimes we stumble&#8221; and &#8220;I have no doubt that there will be ups and downs&#8221;.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FTSE" type="external">FTSE International</a> 7057.39 .FTSE FT-SE International +0.78 (+0.01%) .FTSE .GDAXI AMS.S STM.MI .N225 <p>In informal premarket trading, pricing appeared to be holding up at around $132 a share, however, valuing the company at more than $23 billion.</p> <p>Gobal data had also been mixed. Europe&#8217;s manufacturing boom stumbled in March as optimism waned and demand was hit by icy winter storms, though that followed a bumper few months and overall expansion was still broad-based.</p> <p>Among the main commodities, Brent oil futures nudged back up towards $68 a barrel.</p> <p>They had fallen more than 3.7 percent on Monday after signs of rising Russian output and possible Saudi price cuts had compounded weaker U.S. and Chinese data on Monday and the escalating trade dispute between the two countries [O/R].</p> <p>U.S. crude CLc1 gained 14 cents to $63.15, copper jumped 1.4 percent for its fourth straight gain CMCU3 and spot gold XAU= ticked down 0.2 percent to $1,338.08 an ounce. [GOL/]</p> <p>Mexico&#8217;s peso made ground meanwhile on hopes that the reworking of the NAFTA trade deal it has with the United States and Canada is making progress.</p> <p>Mexico&#8217;s economy minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Mexican radio late on Monday that he would travel to Washington on Wednesday for ministerial talks, adding that the United States was looking for a &#8220;quick solution.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan in London, editing by Larry King and John Stonestreet</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday U.S. foreign aid to Honduras and other countries was at risk unless they stop a so-called caravan of more than 1,200 Central American migrants headed to the U.S. border with Mexico.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the Easter service at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Trump&#8217;s latest salvo against the migrants&#8217; journey comes as the president has stepped up his immigration rhetoric in recent days and his administration has moved to further crack down on people who are in the United States illegally.</p> <p>The migrants&#8217; 2,000-mile (3,200-km) journey from the Mexico-Guatemalan border is expected to end at the U.S. border. Mexico&#8217;s government has said such caravans of mostly Central Americans, including many escaping violence in Honduras, have occurred since 2010.</p> <p>Trump has already blasted Mexico and threatened to upend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) over the caravan, and on Tuesday also raised the prospect of withholding U.S. assistance. The current trip has also put pressure on Mexican authorities ahead of the July 1 presidential election there.</p> <p>&#8220;The big Caravan of People from Honduras, now coming across Mexico and heading to our &#8216;Weak Laws&#8217; Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!&#8221; Trump wrote in an early morning post on Twitter.</p> <p>On Monday, the Republican president railed against Democrats over immigration and again pressed U.S. lawmakers to pass legislation to build his long-promised border wall between the United States and Mexico.</p> <p>Despite months of efforts, no immigration deal has emerged in the Republican-led Congress, where lawmakers are not expected to pass much major legislation ahead of November&#8217;s midterm congressional elections.</p> <p>Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Frances Kerry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Biathlon: Frenchman Fourcade wins last race before Olympics Futures inch higher after tech-led slide Migrant caravan heading to U.S. border puts Mexico in tough spot with Trump Wall Street eyes rebound as Europe succumbs to sell-off Trump threatens aid for Honduras, other nations over 'caravan'

https://reuters.com/article/us-olympics-biathlon-fourcade/biathlon-frenchman-fourcade-wins-last-race-before-olympics-idUSKBN1FA0UB

2018-01-21

2least

Reuters France8217s Martin Fourcade underlined his Olympic biathlon credentials when he won the last race before the Pyeongchang Games the mass start in AntholzAnterselva in Italy on Sunday Biathlon IBU World Championships Men 15 km Mass Start Hochfilzen Austria 19217 Martin Fourcade of Fance in action REUTERSLeonhard Foeger Fourcade the World Cup overall leader made two mistakes at the first shooting session before getting his composure back and taking a comfortable victory His main rival Norway8217s Johannes Boe finished a distant sixth The 29yearold who already has two Olympic gold medals and 11 world titles snatched his 15th podium finish in as many World Cup races this season 8220I raced smartly and I even spared myself for the last lap but I didn8217t even need that energy8221 said Fourcade Reporting by Julien Pretot Editing by Toby Davis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters US stock index futures signaled a higher opening for Wall Street on Tuesday supported by slight gains in beatendown technology stocks but Amazon remained on track to open lower after dragging down the markets on Monday Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 26 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Facebook Netflix and Alphabet rose marginally in premarket trading after steep declines in recent weeks The main US indexes wiped out their gains for the year on Monday and dipped below their key support levels following a selloff in technology stocks and renewed trade war fears China8217s ambassador to the United States said Beijing will take countermeasures of the same proportion and scale if Washington imposes more tariffs on Chinese goods from a trade probe state television reported on Tuesday The Trump administration is expected sometime this week to publish a list of Chinese goods that could be subjected to new US tariffs Amazoncom Inc was down 1 percent premarket after closing down more than 5 percent on Monday after US President Donald Trump8217s again criticized the online retailer At 705 am ET Dow eminis were up 80 points or 034 percent with 39200 contracts changing hands People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 2 2018 REUTERSShannon Stapleton SampampP 500 eminis were up 1175 points or 046 percent with 166997 contracts traded Nasdaq 100 eminis were up 3375 points or 053 percent on volume of 50281 contracts On Tuesday investors will be able to buy and sell shares in the Swedish music streaming service Spotify in the New York Stock Exchange8217s firstever direct floor listing Tesla shares rose 13 percent after a company spokesperson said founder Elon Musk was focusing on production of Model 3 a cheaper vehicle that analysts see as crucial to the electric automaker8217s longterm profitability The stock had closed down 5 percent on Monday Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles IXTEPEC MexicoEDINBURG Texas Reuters In some of the Mexican towns playing host to a 8220caravan8221 of more than 1200 Central American migrants heading to the US border the welcome mat has been rolled out despite President Donald Trump8217s call for Mexican authorities to stop them Local officials have offered lodging in town squares and empty warehouses or arranged transport for the migrants participants in a journey organized by the immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras The officials have conscripted buses cars ambulances and police trucks But the help may not be entirely altruistic 8220The authorities want us to leave their cities8221 said Rodrigo Abeja an organizer from Pueblo Sin Fronteras 8220They8217ve been helping us in part to speed the massive group out of their jurisdictions8221 At some point this spring the caravan8217s 2000mile 3200km journey that began at Tapachula near the Guatemalan border on March 25 will end at the US border where some of its members will apply for asylum while others will attempt to sneak into the United States Related Coverage Mexico says migrants in caravan face administrative procedure So far the Mexican federal government has provided little guidance on how to handle the migrants but Abeja worries that local reactions will change 8220There8217s a lot of pressure from authorities to stop the caravan because of Donald Trump8217s reaction8221 he said Trump railed on Twitter against the caravan on Monday accusing Mexico of 8220doing very little if not NOTHING8221 to stop the flow of immigrants crossing the US border illegally 8220They must stop the big drug and people flows or I will stop their cash cow NAFTA8221 he concluded Mexico8217s interior minister Alfonso Navarrete did not directly address the caravan but he wrote on Twitter that he spoke to the US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday and that the two had 8220agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country8221 Mexico must walk a delicate line with the United States as the countries are in the midst of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA along with Canada At the same time Mexican leftwing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 18point lead ahead of the July 1 election according to a poll published on Monday A Lopez Obrador victory could usher in a Mexican government less accommodating toward the United States on both trade and immigration issues Mexican Senator Angelica de la Pena who presides over the Senate8217s human rights commission told Reuters that Mexico should protect migrants8217 rights despite the pressure from Trump amp160 Former President Vicente Fox called for Mexican officials to take a stand against Trump8217s attacksamp160Trump keeps 8220blackmailing offending and denigrating Mexico and Mexicans8221 he wrote on Twitter on Monday Under Mexican law Central Americans who enter Mexico legally are generally allowed to move freely through the country even if their goal is to cross illegally into the United States 8216WE8217RE SUFFERING8217 Migrants in the caravan cite a variety of reasons for joining it Its members are disproportionately from Honduras which has high levels of violence and has been rocked by political upheaval in recent months following the reelection of USbacked president Juan Orlando Hern225ndez in an intensely disputed election Central American migrants participating in a caravan heading to the US take a pause from their journey in Matias Romero Oaxaca Mexico April 2 2018 REUTERSJose de Jesus Cortes Maria Elena Colindres Ortega a member of caravan and until January a member of Congress in Honduras said she is fleeing the political upheaval at home 8220We8217ve had to live through fraudulent electoral process8221 she said 8220We8217re suffering a progressive militarization and lack of institutions and 8230 they8217re criminalizing those who protested8221 Colindres Ortega who opposed the ruling party in Honduras said she spiraled into debt after serving without pay for the last 18 months of her fouryear term She decided to head north after a fellow congressman from her party put out word on Facebook that a caravan of migrants was gathering in southern Mexico leaving home with a small bag with necessities and photos of her children Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped coordinate migrant caravans for the last several years though previously they had a maximum of several hundred participants During the journey members of the organization instruct the migrants about their rights 8220We accompany at least those who want to request asylum8221 said Alex Mensing Pueblo Sin Fronteras8217 program director 8220We help prepare them for the detention process and asylum process before they cross the border because it8217s so difficult for people to have success if they don8217t have the information8221 Slideshow 6 Images Typically Central Americans have not fared well with US asylum claims particularly those from Honduras A Reuters analysis of immigration court data found that Hondurans who come before the court receive deportation orders in more than 83 percent of cases the highest rate of any nationality Hondurans also face deportation in Mexico where immigration data shows that 5000 Hondurans were deported from Mexico in February alone the highest number since May 2016 Maunel Padilla chief of the border patrol8217s Rio Grande Valley sector one of the busiest crossing points on the US Mexico border said in an interview with Reuters that he worries the caravan could 8220generate interest for other groups to do the same thing8221 but he was not terribly nervous about coping with the group currently traveling 8220Not to be flippant8221 Padilla said 8220but it8217s similar numbers to what we are seeing every day pretty much8221 Reporting by Delphine Schrank and Mica Rosenberg Additional reporting by Dave Graham Lizbeth Diaz Diego Ore and Daina Beth Solomon Editing by Sue Horton and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters World share markets struggled to regain their poise on Tuesday with hopes pinned on a modest Wall Street recovery after both Europe and Asia had fallen on tech and trade war tensions The German share price index DAX board is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt Germany March 21 2018 REUTERSTilman Blasshofer Traders were looking to a near 25 billion float of music app Spotify to lift the tech gloom after a clobbering on Monday had pushed the SampampP 500 ESc1 Dow 1YMc1 and Nasdaq NQc1 below pivotal technical levels N Having been shut on Monday and feeling that impact a day later Europes main bourses in London FTSE Paris FCHE and Frankfurt GDAXI were down 0209 percent EU Tech stocks remained the pressure point there too SX8P after more criticism of Amazon by US President Donald Trump and as reports that Apple intended to make more of its own parts burnt European chipmakers including AMS AMSS and STMicroelectronics STMMIEULIVE 8220Equities are having a driving force on markets and who knows where that is going8221 said National Australia Bank strategist Gavin Friend market strategist adding that other markets were struggling for direction as a result Some signs of stability were emerging however As well Wall Street futures pointing 04 percent higher ESc1 the dollar steadied against the yen after three days of falls FRX and safety plays like gold and government bonds were back in reverse GOLGVDEUR Asia8217s shares had stumbled overnight although its moves too had been small compared to Wall Street where the SampampP 500 closed below its 200day moving average for the first time since Britain8217s 2016 vote to leave the European Union N As well as the tech problems investors were wary after China imposed extra tariffs on 128 US products deepening a dispute between the world8217s two biggest economies and stoking concerns about the impact on global growth 8220China does not provoke a trade war and doesn8217t want to fight a trade war but we also aren8217t afraid of a trade war8221 Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a news briefing Japans Nikkei N225 ended down 045 percent after initially falling as much as 16 percent Chinas Shanghai Composite index SSEC eased 09 percent and the bluechip CSI300 CSI300 was off 07 percent The slight recovery in risk appetite meant US Treasuries German Bunds and UK Gilts all saw a bit of selling too in Europe Yields on 10year notes US10YTTWEB DE10YTRR GB10YTRR were all off two to threemonth lows GVDEUR 8220The big question is how far the current tremor in the equity market will affect bonds given it is driven by a single company even if it is a tech giant having a huge market weight8221 said DZ Bank strategist Christian Lenk People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 2 2018 REUTERSShannon Stapleton For a graphic on FAANG stocks click reutrs2Jc9fcp MUSIC TO THE BEARS Music streaming leader Spotify was heading for a potentially choppy inaugural stock market ride following Monday8217s selloff In a public letter published ahead of its listing Chief Executive Daniel Ek cautioned employees and fans that 8220sometimes we succeed sometimes we stumble8221 and 8220I have no doubt that there will be ups and downs8221 FTSE International 705739 FTSE FTSE International 078 001 FTSE GDAXI AMSS STMMI N225 In informal premarket trading pricing appeared to be holding up at around 132 a share however valuing the company at more than 23 billion Gobal data had also been mixed Europe8217s manufacturing boom stumbled in March as optimism waned and demand was hit by icy winter storms though that followed a bumper few months and overall expansion was still broadbased Among the main commodities Brent oil futures nudged back up towards 68 a barrel They had fallen more than 37 percent on Monday after signs of rising Russian output and possible Saudi price cuts had compounded weaker US and Chinese data on Monday and the escalating trade dispute between the two countries OR US crude CLc1 gained 14 cents to 6315 copper jumped 14 percent for its fourth straight gain CMCU3 and spot gold XAU ticked down 02 percent to 133808 an ounce GOL Mexico8217s peso made ground meanwhile on hopes that the reworking of the NAFTA trade deal it has with the United States and Canada is making progress Mexico8217s economy minister Ildefonso Guajardo told Mexican radio late on Monday that he would travel to Washington on Wednesday for ministerial talks adding that the United States was looking for a 8220quick solution8221 Additional reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan in London editing by Larry King and John Stonestreet Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump said on Tuesday US foreign aid to Honduras and other countries was at risk unless they stop a socalled caravan of more than 1200 Central American migrants headed to the US border with Mexico US President Donald Trump arrives for the Easter service at BethesdabytheSea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach Florida US April 1 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas Trump8217s latest salvo against the migrants8217 journey comes as the president has stepped up his immigration rhetoric in recent days and his administration has moved to further crack down on people who are in the United States illegally The migrants8217 2000mile 3200km journey from the MexicoGuatemalan border is expected to end at the US border Mexico8217s government has said such caravans of mostly Central Americans including many escaping violence in Honduras have occurred since 2010 Trump has already blasted Mexico and threatened to upend the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA over the caravan and on Tuesday also raised the prospect of withholding US assistance The current trip has also put pressure on Mexican authorities ahead of the July 1 presidential election there 8220The big Caravan of People from Honduras now coming across Mexico and heading to our 8216Weak Laws8217 Border had better be stopped before it gets there Cash cow NAFTA is in play as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen Congress MUST ACT NOW8221 Trump wrote in an early morning post on Twitter On Monday the Republican president railed against Democrats over immigration and again pressed US lawmakers to pass legislation to build his longpromised border wall between the United States and Mexico Despite months of efforts no immigration deal has emerged in the Republicanled Congress where lawmakers are not expected to pass much major legislation ahead of November8217s midterm congressional elections Writing by Susan Heavey Editing by Frances Kerry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>The day after Philando Castile was shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop, his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds spoke at a march on the Minnesota governor&#8217;s mansion. Reynolds, who filmed the aftermath of the shooting, made an unusual first demand for an African-American protester decrying police violence: She insisted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDvT1VenUDA" type="external">police treat concealed carriers with respect</a>.</p> <p>Reynolds says Castile, who <a href="http://www.startribune.com/philando-castile-had-permit-to-carry-gun/386054481/" type="external">held</a> a concealed weapons permit, told the officer that pulled him over that he was armed, a commonly accepted protocol taught in concealed carry classes. The policeman delivered contradictory instructions, she says, ordering Castile to put his hands up and also to produce his license from his wallet. Castile was shot attempting to comply with the latter demand, Reynolds says.</p> <p>On July 7, the same day Reynolds spoke in Minnesota, protesters also marched in Dallas. The peaceful demonstration turned deadly when a gunman ambushed police officers, killing five and wounding nine more. In the immediate aftermath, Mark Hughes, who is black and was openly carrying an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle, was erroneously identified as a suspect.</p> <p>Hughes&#8217;s brother Cory, who also attended the protest, defended the open carrying on Second Amendment grounds. Mark Hughes carried his rifle at the protest, Cory <a href="http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/mark-hughes-right-bear-arms/" type="external">said</a>, for &#8220;the same reason, that across the country, other people bring their gun: because it is his right.&#8221;</p> <p>Here were people who might have become cause celebres for the National Rifle Association, the oldest and largest organization devoted to defending the civil rights of gun owners. The NRA aggressively supports concealed carry and has also backed open carry, though with less enthusiasm.</p> <p>Forcefully defending the freedoms of Castile and Hughes could also have paid strategic dividends for the NRA. Since 2013, the gun group has <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/nra-plans-to-reach-out-to-minorities-in-new-campaign" type="external">waged a publicity campaign</a> to recruit minority members, running ads and putting forward African-American spokesmen.</p> <p>The group helped Otis McDonald, a black Chicago resident, successfully challenge that city&#8217;s handgun ban in the Supreme Court. It submitted amicus briefs on behalf of&amp;#160; <a href="http://courts.delaware.gov/supreme/oralarguments/download.aspx?id=201" type="external">black Delaware residents challenging</a> that state&#8217;s ban on guns in public housing. The NRA took up the cause of <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/20150412/gov-chris-christie-pardons-shaneen-allen" type="external">Shaneen Allen</a>, a black Pennsylvanian who was arrested in New Jersey after she mistakenly believed her state&#8217;s concealed carry license allowed her to bring her gun across the Delaware River.</p> <p>The NRA could have seized on Castile and Hughes&#8217;s cases to create a politically advantageous fissure between black rights&#8217; activists and predominantly white gun violence prevention groups.</p> <p>But the NRA didn&#8217;t do any of those things. Instead, after a licensed concealed carrier with no criminal record was shot dead by an apparently panicking police officer, the NRA said <a href="https://twitter.com/NRA/status/751501317844107266" type="external">it would not officially comment</a> until more facts were known. Hughes didn&#8217;t even warrant a &#8220;no comment&#8221; from the NRA, even though conservative writers in outlets like <a href="http://www.redstate.com/jaycaruso/2016/07/08/dallas-mark-hughes-exercising-rights-leads-rush-to-judgement/" type="external">RedState</a> eagerly took up his cause.</p> <p>Why stand up for the rights of some black gun owners, but not others? When the NRA advocated for McDonald and Allen, its efforts dovetailed with the group&#8217;s larger political project of rolling back gun restrictions. But standing up for Castile and Hughes would have required the NRA to explicitly criticize police, which the organization cannot afford to do. That&#8217;s because the NRA describes law enforcement as an ally in an ongoing culture war against forces like Black Lives Matter, which the gun group believes would irrevocably damage the country&#8217;s essential character. Gun owners need to side with cops against critics, the group argues, not just to maintain law and order but also to preserve conservative values and lifestyles under threat from others.</p> <p>Closely aligning itself with police energizes its overwhelmingly white member base, which provides the group with its political power. Right now, that base is scared that social change demanded by Black Lives Matter will come at the expense of whites&#8217; own security and identity. The NRA has decided it must stay on its constituents side in a battle against what those millions believe is an existential threat, even when that means taking a pass on a fight for the gun rights principles it has sworn to protect.</p> <p>The NRA &#8220;claims to be America&#8217;s oldest civil rights organization, [but] it&#8217;s not acting as a civil rights organization,&#8221; says Alexandra Filindra, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied the relationship between racial prejudice and opinions on gun rights. Filindra says the NRA has compromised its principles in order to develop a constituency of older white conservatives whose derive&amp;#160;their identities from the gun group.</p> <p>Put simply: The NRA needs white people. The NRA cultivates its&amp;#160;political power based on&amp;#160;its very close relationship with&amp;#160;its engaged member base, which is much older and whiter than the rest of the country.</p> <p>Subscribe to receive The Trace&#8217;s newsletters on important gun news and analysis.</p> <p>In a study released last November, Filandra and her colleague Noah Kaplan found that white people with racial prejudices were 25 percent less likely to support gun control after having viewed pictures of black people than white people with less racial prejudice.</p> <p>The researchers interpret that finding as evidence that racial resentment is a significant predictor of opposition to gun control.</p> <p>The NRA practices white identity politics, Filindra and others argue, a politics that sides with police against critics like Black Lives Matter, which it characterizes as enablers of criminals. Some people who oppose encroachments on gun rights may be as motivated by racial resentment as they are by any constitutional principle, Filindra says. The NRA, she observes, &#8220;has a membership whose demands, needs, and identity the group is feeding. It can&#8217;t contradict who they are and what they expect to hear. And the messaging is consistent with one group: whites.&#8221;</p> <p>The NRA&#8217;s identity politics stands in contrast to the behavior of the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights advocates like the National Lawyer&#8217;s Guild. Conservatives often tar the ACLU as a group of leftists, but the Union has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/06/19/a-history-of-the-aclu-defending-confederate-veterans-the-kkk-and-rush-limbaugh/" type="external">defended the rights of right-wing groups</a>&amp;#160;like the Ku Klux Klan that have&amp;#160;little in common with the ACLU&#8217;s own membership. The ACLU frequently argues in court for the Klan&#8217;s right to hold public demonstrations, often against local communities&#8217; wishes.</p> <p>Similarly, the National Lawyer&#8217;s Guild is an avowedly left-leaning group, but it provides legal services to anyone arrested at a protest. Lee Stranahan, a reporter for conservative website Breitbart News, calls himself a &#8220;tireless critic&#8221; of Black Lives Matter, and has covered many of their demonstrations in a negative light. He went to Baton Rouge after activists marched to condemn the the police killing of Alton Sterling. After Stranahan was arrested at the protest, the NLG provided free legal aid. Stranahan <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/07/12/lee-stranahan-my-weekend-incarceration-in-a-baton-rouge-prison/" type="external">wrote</a> that the Guild is an &#8220;Institutional Left group that was founded by communist attorneys and that has protected people and groups that I find repugnant. That being said: in this case, thank God for the National Lawyers Guild.&#8221;</p> <p>The NRA has a strong incentive to stoke white fears by highlighting anti-police statements by blacks, and it&#8217;s done so for years.</p> <p>In 1999, then-NRA president Charlton Heston gave a talk at Harvard Law School titled, &#8220; <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/19990216/winning-the-cultural-war-by-charlton-heston" type="external">Winning the Cultural War</a>.&#8221; In the speech, he cited the lyrics to the rap-rock song &#8220;Cop Killer,&#8221; by rapper Ice-T&#8217;s band Body Count. Heston decried the lyrics as &#8220;vicious, vulgar&#8221; and, importantly, &#8220;instructional.&#8221; Americans had a duty to resist these calls, Heston said, and join forces with cops against these threatening groups. He painted a picture of alliance between gun owners and traditional sources of authority that recalled the early Americans who won the country&#8217;s independence, &#8220;an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men who, by God&#8217;s grace, built this country.&#8221;</p> <p>The gun group has also cultivated close organizational ties with the Fraternal Order of Police, the national patrolmen&#8217;s union. In 2011, then-president of the FOP Chuck Canterbury&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/20110616/political-report-one-on-one-with-chuck" type="external">told the NRA&#8217;s top lobbyist Chris Cox</a>&amp;#160;that both groups had the same enemy: &#8220;Reckless politicians who interfere with law enforcement.&#8221; The FOP has backed the NRA by endorsing policies like the Tiahrt amendments, a set of funding bills that strictly limits how the federal government uses and publicizes gun trace data.</p> <p>In 2014, the group <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/20140829/reclaiming-america" type="external">told members</a> &#8220;the NRA is your refuge&#8221; in the midst of a war against &#8220;a political culture where madmen are famous and good guys forgotten,&#8221; a culture that lets &#8220;crimes go unpunished, leaving violent criminals to prey upon the innocent.&#8221;</p> <p>As the Black Lives Matter movement gained steam, the call to stand with cops against black critics gained new relevance. When Cox and LaPierre spoke at the group&#8217;s <a href="" type="internal">annual convention in Louisville in May</a>, both stressed loyalty to police, arguing they shared values and a traditional American identity with the NRA (if not necessarily Second Amendment absolutism &#8212; police often condemn NRA-backed policies like expanding rights to carry guns in public or in places like college campuses). At the NRA&#8217;s annual convention in Louisville, Cox told the assembled crowd that being &#8220;suspicious of police officers&#8221; was &#8220;twisted&#8221; and &#8220;perverted.&#8221; LaPierre mentioned police first when he listed the sorts of Americans who make up the NRA&#8217;s ranks.</p> <p>The Dallas police department is among those embracing a new strategy meant to reduce community conflict. But the rising number of firearms carried by civilians can make de-escalation more difficult.</p> <p>by <a href="" type="internal">Alex Yablon</a></p> <p>The group has stood up for white gun owners even when there&#8217;s reason to believe they could be dangerous and unfit to own a gun. In the case of Voisine v. the United States, which went before the Supreme Court this March, two white men from Maine challenged the constitutionality of the federal ban on gun possession for people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. Both men had such convictions. One had also violated the ban against&amp;#160; <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/13/news/bangor/wytopitlock-man-sentenced-for-shooting-bald-eagle/" type="external">hunting bald eagles</a>, a national symbol and protected species. A poll conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine found more than <a href="http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/background-checks/domestic-violence-firearms/" type="external">70 percent</a> of Americans support restricting gun ownership for domestic abusers like those plaintiffs. The NRA <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/20160304/second-amendment-as-second-class-right-a-dismal-warning" type="external">thanked</a> Justice Clarence Thomas for suggesting during oral arguments that the domestic violence restriction was a uniquely burdensome one.</p> <p>The NRA appears to have let white grievance politics guide its role in the 2016 election as well.</p> <p>Before he dropped out of the race in early May, Ted Cruz was the clear choice of orthodox gun rights voters. As Texas&#8217;s attorney general, he had submitted a brief in favor of the plaintiff in Heller v. District of Columbia, the Supreme Court case that established an individual right to gun ownership. Gun Owners of America, a group even more strident than the NRA, endorsed Cruz before a single primary vote had been cast.</p> <p>But the NRA did not support Cruz. Instead, the NRA gave Donald Trump a full throated endorsement even though many other gun rights advocates were wary of him. For most of his life, Trump was a New York City Democrat. He&#8217;s expressed support for an assault weapons ban. He has criticized other Republican lawmakers for their fealty to the NRA. When he has tried to impress Republican primary voters on the issue of guns, he&#8217;s often done so in a tone-deaf way: When Trump accepted the NRA&#8217;s endorsement, he <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/280718-trump-sons-have-so-many-guns-i-get-a-little-concerned" type="external">said</a> that his sons, who go on big-game hunting safaris in Africa, &#8220;have so many rifles and so many guns, even I get concerned.&#8221;</p> <p>The NRA&#8217;s message to members who disagreed with the endorsement was to &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">get over it</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>More important to the NRA than Trump&#8217;s suspect Second Amendment credentials may be the fact that he has demonstrated he can effectively mobilize the anger of white people in a diversifying country and changing world order. Trump attracted voters away from his more experienced opponents for the GOP nomination with his willingness to offend racial minorities.</p> <p>He began his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants &#8220;rapists&#8221; and &#8220;murderers.&#8221; This winter, he promised to ban Muslims from entering the country on the basis of their faith or national origin. At rallies, he&#8217;s encouraged supporters who violently attacked black protesters. He&#8217;s blamed the Chinese for the decline in American manufacturing and claimed China invented global warming as a fiction to limit American growth. He was slow to disavow the endorsement of David Duke, a one-time leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He routinely retweets white supremacists without apology. His last name has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/us/politics/donald-trump-white-identity.html?_r=0" type="external">become a chant</a>for angry whites trying to intimidate minorities in settings far removed from the campaign.</p> <p>The unifying theme of Trump&#8217;s campaign is that changes at home and abroad have come at the expense of American greatness, which he says peaked in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy.html?action=Click&amp;amp;contentCollection=BreakingNews&amp;amp;contentID=61307450&amp;amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;amp;_r=1" type="external">1950s</a>. That was an era, Trump said in an interview with the New York Times, when &#8220;we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody.&#8221; It was also the last decade before the civil rights movement achieved a string of victories like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, which were opposed in violent ways by many whites.</p> <p>Both the NRA and Donald Trump inspire loyalty by claiming they&#8217;ll fight for their supporters in what are zero-sum games of gun rights versus gun violence prevention, or liberal tolerance versus American greatness. By casting politics as a game of winners and losers, they replicate a pattern of thought identified by researchers in the minds of racist whites. For the NRA, the important thing is not the ideological purity of a candidate like Cruz. It&#8217;s an eagerness to fight for the same people that form the group&#8217;s constituency, in the same aggressive way.</p> <p>In a <a href="http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20sommers.pdf" type="external">2011 paper</a>, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Samuel Summers of Tufts argued that whites increasingly believe that increased social acceptance of minorities has come at the expense of the dwindling majority&#8217;s own status. The authors cited survey data which found that both black and white Americans believed anti-black bias decreased steadily from the 1950s to the 2000s. But only white Americans believed that change was accompanied by a significant rise in anti-white bias &#8212; so much so that white Americans believe they are the now victims of more prejudice than blacks.</p> <p>&#8220;White people now say, &#8216;You know what? There wasn&#8217;t racism against whites in the 1950s but now there is and there&#8217;s so much now that in fact there&#8217;s more racism against us than there is against black people,&#8217;&#8221; Norton has <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137818177/racism-as-a-zero-sum-game" type="external">said</a>. &#8220;One job for a black person equals one job that a white person didn&#8217;t get.&#8221;</p> <p>When sociologist Jennifer Carlson studied gun owners in Michigan, she found they reflected a similarly embattled mindset. The gun owners who spoke with Carlson, overwhelmingly middle aged or older men, turned to firearms to protect not just their physical person and property, but <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-carlson-gun-carry-culture-20150526-story.html" type="external">also their cultural identity</a> as &#8220;good guys with guns.&#8221;</p> <p>Filindra believes the NRA is aware that its members are motivated by these kinds of fears. &#8220;The NRA is an incredibly politically savvy organization,&#8221; she says, and &#8220;they know how to exploit and marshal the resources and their people.&#8221;</p> <p>Advocating for Castile&#8217;s right to carry a gun or condemning Dallas police for their treatment of Hughes could undermine the NRA&#8217;s close relationship with its constituents if doing so puts the group in common cause with Black Lives Matter. As Filindra puts it, &#8220;Wayne LaPierre walking hand in hand with the leaders of Black Lives Matter is something that I don&#8217;t expect to see in my lifetime.&#8221;</p> <p>[Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images]</p>

Why the NRA Stands Up for Some Black Gun Owners, But Not Others

https://thetrace.org/2016/07/nra-black-gun-owners-philando-castile/

2016-07-21

3left-center

The day after Philando Castile was shot dead by a police officer during a traffic stop his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds spoke at a march on the Minnesota governor8217s mansion Reynolds who filmed the aftermath of the shooting made an unusual first demand for an AfricanAmerican protester decrying police violence She insisted police treat concealed carriers with respect Reynolds says Castile who held a concealed weapons permit told the officer that pulled him over that he was armed a commonly accepted protocol taught in concealed carry classes The policeman delivered contradictory instructions she says ordering Castile to put his hands up and also to produce his license from his wallet Castile was shot attempting to comply with the latter demand Reynolds says On July 7 the same day Reynolds spoke in Minnesota protesters also marched in Dallas The peaceful demonstration turned deadly when a gunman ambushed police officers killing five and wounding nine more In the immediate aftermath Mark Hughes who is black and was openly carrying an AR15 style semiautomatic rifle was erroneously identified as a suspect Hughes8217s brother Cory who also attended the protest defended the open carrying on Second Amendment grounds Mark Hughes carried his rifle at the protest Cory said for 8220the same reason that across the country other people bring their gun because it is his right8221 Here were people who might have become cause celebres for the National Rifle Association the oldest and largest organization devoted to defending the civil rights of gun owners The NRA aggressively supports concealed carry and has also backed open carry though with less enthusiasm Forcefully defending the freedoms of Castile and Hughes could also have paid strategic dividends for the NRA Since 2013 the gun group has waged a publicity campaign to recruit minority members running ads and putting forward AfricanAmerican spokesmen The group helped Otis McDonald a black Chicago resident successfully challenge that city8217s handgun ban in the Supreme Court It submitted amicus briefs on behalf ofamp160 black Delaware residents challenging that state8217s ban on guns in public housing The NRA took up the cause of Shaneen Allen a black Pennsylvanian who was arrested in New Jersey after she mistakenly believed her state8217s concealed carry license allowed her to bring her gun across the Delaware River The NRA could have seized on Castile and Hughes8217s cases to create a politically advantageous fissure between black rights8217 activists and predominantly white gun violence prevention groups But the NRA didn8217t do any of those things Instead after a licensed concealed carrier with no criminal record was shot dead by an apparently panicking police officer the NRA said it would not officially comment until more facts were known Hughes didn8217t even warrant a 8220no comment8221 from the NRA even though conservative writers in outlets like RedState eagerly took up his cause Why stand up for the rights of some black gun owners but not others When the NRA advocated for McDonald and Allen its efforts dovetailed with the group8217s larger political project of rolling back gun restrictions But standing up for Castile and Hughes would have required the NRA to explicitly criticize police which the organization cannot afford to do That8217s because the NRA describes law enforcement as an ally in an ongoing culture war against forces like Black Lives Matter which the gun group believes would irrevocably damage the country8217s essential character Gun owners need to side with cops against critics the group argues not just to maintain law and order but also to preserve conservative values and lifestyles under threat from others Closely aligning itself with police energizes its overwhelmingly white member base which provides the group with its political power Right now that base is scared that social change demanded by Black Lives Matter will come at the expense of whites8217 own security and identity The NRA has decided it must stay on its constituents side in a battle against what those millions believe is an existential threat even when that means taking a pass on a fight for the gun rights principles it has sworn to protect The NRA 8220claims to be America8217s oldest civil rights organization but it8217s not acting as a civil rights organization8221 says Alexandra Filindra a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied the relationship between racial prejudice and opinions on gun rights Filindra says the NRA has compromised its principles in order to develop a constituency of older white conservatives whose deriveamp160their identities from the gun group Put simply The NRA needs white people The NRA cultivates itsamp160political power based onamp160its very close relationship withamp160its engaged member base which is much older and whiter than the rest of the country Subscribe to receive The Trace8217s newsletters on important gun news and analysis In a study released last November Filandra and her colleague Noah Kaplan found that white people with racial prejudices were 25 percent less likely to support gun control after having viewed pictures of black people than white people with less racial prejudice The researchers interpret that finding as evidence that racial resentment is a significant predictor of opposition to gun control The NRA practices white identity politics Filindra and others argue a politics that sides with police against critics like Black Lives Matter which it characterizes as enablers of criminals Some people who oppose encroachments on gun rights may be as motivated by racial resentment as they are by any constitutional principle Filindra says The NRA she observes 8220has a membership whose demands needs and identity the group is feeding It can8217t contradict who they are and what they expect to hear And the messaging is consistent with one group whites8221 The NRA8217s identity politics stands in contrast to the behavior of the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights advocates like the National Lawyer8217s Guild Conservatives often tar the ACLU as a group of leftists but the Union has defended the rights of rightwing groupsamp160like the Ku Klux Klan that haveamp160little in common with the ACLU8217s own membership The ACLU frequently argues in court for the Klan8217s right to hold public demonstrations often against local communities8217 wishes Similarly the National Lawyer8217s Guild is an avowedly leftleaning group but it provides legal services to anyone arrested at a protest Lee Stranahan a reporter for conservative website Breitbart News calls himself a 8220tireless critic8221 of Black Lives Matter and has covered many of their demonstrations in a negative light He went to Baton Rouge after activists marched to condemn the the police killing of Alton Sterling After Stranahan was arrested at the protest the NLG provided free legal aid Stranahan wrote that the Guild is an 8220Institutional Left group that was founded by communist attorneys and that has protected people and groups that I find repugnant That being said in this case thank God for the National Lawyers Guild8221 The NRA has a strong incentive to stoke white fears by highlighting antipolice statements by blacks and it8217s done so for years In 1999 thenNRA president Charlton Heston gave a talk at Harvard Law School titled 8220 Winning the Cultural War8221 In the speech he cited the lyrics to the raprock song 8220Cop Killer8221 by rapper IceT8217s band Body Count Heston decried the lyrics as 8220vicious vulgar8221 and importantly 8220instructional8221 Americans had a duty to resist these calls Heston said and join forces with cops against these threatening groups He painted a picture of alliance between gun owners and traditional sources of authority that recalled the early Americans who won the country8217s independence 8220an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men who by God8217s grace built this country8221 The gun group has also cultivated close organizational ties with the Fraternal Order of Police the national patrolmen8217s union In 2011 thenpresident of the FOP Chuck Canterburyamp160 told the NRA8217s top lobbyist Chris Coxamp160that both groups had the same enemy 8220Reckless politicians who interfere with law enforcement8221 The FOP has backed the NRA by endorsing policies like the Tiahrt amendments a set of funding bills that strictly limits how the federal government uses and publicizes gun trace data In 2014 the group told members 8220the NRA is your refuge8221 in the midst of a war against 8220a political culture where madmen are famous and good guys forgotten8221 a culture that lets 8220crimes go unpunished leaving violent criminals to prey upon the innocent8221 As the Black Lives Matter movement gained steam the call to stand with cops against black critics gained new relevance When Cox and LaPierre spoke at the group8217s annual convention in Louisville in May both stressed loyalty to police arguing they shared values and a traditional American identity with the NRA if not necessarily Second Amendment absolutism 8212 police often condemn NRAbacked policies like expanding rights to carry guns in public or in places like college campuses At the NRA8217s annual convention in Louisville Cox told the assembled crowd that being 8220suspicious of police officers8221 was 8220twisted8221 and 8220perverted8221 LaPierre mentioned police first when he listed the sorts of Americans who make up the NRA8217s ranks The Dallas police department is among those embracing a new strategy meant to reduce community conflict But the rising number of firearms carried by civilians can make deescalation more difficult by Alex Yablon The group has stood up for white gun owners even when there8217s reason to believe they could be dangerous and unfit to own a gun In the case of Voisine v the United States which went before the Supreme Court this March two white men from Maine challenged the constitutionality of the federal ban on gun possession for people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence Both men had such convictions One had also violated the ban againstamp160 hunting bald eagles a national symbol and protected species A poll conducted by the New England Journal of Medicine found more than 70 percent of Americans support restricting gun ownership for domestic abusers like those plaintiffs The NRA thanked Justice Clarence Thomas for suggesting during oral arguments that the domestic violence restriction was a uniquely burdensome one The NRA appears to have let white grievance politics guide its role in the 2016 election as well Before he dropped out of the race in early May Ted Cruz was the clear choice of orthodox gun rights voters As Texas8217s attorney general he had submitted a brief in favor of the plaintiff in Heller v District of Columbia the Supreme Court case that established an individual right to gun ownership Gun Owners of America a group even more strident than the NRA endorsed Cruz before a single primary vote had been cast But the NRA did not support Cruz Instead the NRA gave Donald Trump a full throated endorsement even though many other gun rights advocates were wary of him For most of his life Trump was a New York City Democrat He8217s expressed support for an assault weapons ban He has criticized other Republican lawmakers for their fealty to the NRA When he has tried to impress Republican primary voters on the issue of guns he8217s often done so in a tonedeaf way When Trump accepted the NRA8217s endorsement he said that his sons who go on biggame hunting safaris in Africa 8220have so many rifles and so many guns even I get concerned8221 The NRA8217s message to members who disagreed with the endorsement was to 8220 get over it8221 More important to the NRA than Trump8217s suspect Second Amendment credentials may be the fact that he has demonstrated he can effectively mobilize the anger of white people in a diversifying country and changing world order Trump attracted voters away from his more experienced opponents for the GOP nomination with his willingness to offend racial minorities He began his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants 8220rapists8221 and 8220murderers8221 This winter he promised to ban Muslims from entering the country on the basis of their faith or national origin At rallies he8217s encouraged supporters who violently attacked black protesters He8217s blamed the Chinese for the decline in American manufacturing and claimed China invented global warming as a fiction to limit American growth He was slow to disavow the endorsement of David Duke a onetime leader of the Ku Klux Klan He routinely retweets white supremacists without apology His last name has become a chantfor angry whites trying to intimidate minorities in settings far removed from the campaign The unifying theme of Trump8217s campaign is that changes at home and abroad have come at the expense of American greatness which he says peaked in the 1950s That was an era Trump said in an interview with the New York Times when 8220we were not pushed around we were respected by everybody8221 It was also the last decade before the civil rights movement achieved a string of victories like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act which were opposed in violent ways by many whites Both the NRA and Donald Trump inspire loyalty by claiming they8217ll fight for their supporters in what are zerosum games of gun rights versus gun violence prevention or liberal tolerance versus American greatness By casting politics as a game of winners and losers they replicate a pattern of thought identified by researchers in the minds of racist whites For the NRA the important thing is not the ideological purity of a candidate like Cruz It8217s an eagerness to fight for the same people that form the group8217s constituency in the same aggressive way In a 2011 paper Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Samuel Summers of Tufts argued that whites increasingly believe that increased social acceptance of minorities has come at the expense of the dwindling majority8217s own status The authors cited survey data which found that both black and white Americans believed antiblack bias decreased steadily from the 1950s to the 2000s But only white Americans believed that change was accompanied by a significant rise in antiwhite bias 8212 so much so that white Americans believe they are the now victims of more prejudice than blacks 8220White people now say 8216You know what There wasn8217t racism against whites in the 1950s but now there is and there8217s so much now that in fact there8217s more racism against us than there is against black people82178221 Norton has said 8220One job for a black person equals one job that a white person didn8217t get8221 When sociologist Jennifer Carlson studied gun owners in Michigan she found they reflected a similarly embattled mindset The gun owners who spoke with Carlson overwhelmingly middle aged or older men turned to firearms to protect not just their physical person and property but also their cultural identity as 8220good guys with guns8221 Filindra believes the NRA is aware that its members are motivated by these kinds of fears 8220The NRA is an incredibly politically savvy organization8221 she says and 8220they know how to exploit and marshal the resources and their people8221 Advocating for Castile8217s right to carry a gun or condemning Dallas police for their treatment of Hughes could undermine the NRA8217s close relationship with its constituents if doing so puts the group in common cause with Black Lives Matter As Filindra puts it 8220Wayne LaPierre walking hand in hand with the leaders of Black Lives Matter is something that I don8217t expect to see in my lifetime8221 Photo Scott OlsonGetty Images

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<p>Illustration by Pete Ryan</p> <p>By January, Kiera had stuffed so many small bills into the envelope hidden in her underwear drawer that it split open. Kiera knew her mother occasionally cased her room, so to be safe, she&#8217;d labeled the envelope &#8220;soccer camp.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;It had to be cash,&#8221; says Kiera (not her real name). She lets out a nervous laugh. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t write a check and write &#8216;abortion&#8217; on the memo line.&#8221;</p> <p>Kiera, who lives in the Florida panhandle, is thoughtful, sarcastic, and whip-smart. It&#8217;s easy to forget that she&#8217;s only 18. But in December&#8212;when she was staring down a positive pregnancy test, thinking, shit&#8212;she was only 17. Florida is one of 37 states where a minor can&#8217;t have an abortion unless at least one of her parents knows about it. Twenty-one of those states (though not Florida) require at least one parent to grant permission.</p> <p>Kiera&#8217;s parents are divorced, and her father lives on the other side of the country. Her mother, Kiera says, is &#8220;unstable,&#8221; unpredictable, and sometimes violent. Once, she kicked Kiera out of the house for forgetting to tell her about a sleepover, and it took a whole weekend for her to cool down. Kiera was sure that if she told her mom, who volunteered for an anti-abortion group, that she wanted to end her pregnancy, she&#8217;d be out of the house for good.</p> <p>But when Kiera confided in a school counselor, she learned about another option: She could ask a judge for permission to have an abortion. Her panic melted away. &#8220;I thought, &#8216;This will save me,'&#8221; she recalls. She started socking away every dollar she could get her hands on&#8212;lunch money, tips from her waitressing job. And she started calling courthouses.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>EACH YEAR, HUNDREDS of girls in Florida petition judges for permission to have abortions; the nationwide number is likely in the thousands. But those statistics only include the girls who make it to court. Poorly trained court staff, anti-abortion judges, and a spate of increasingly restrictive laws have made it harder than ever for minors to exercise their legal rights.</p> <p>Abortion foes have pushed for new restrictions because they believe the process, which is known as judicial bypass, is simply a loophole girls use to avoid talking to their parents. &#8220;Judges are rubber-stamping these requests,&#8221; Ohio Right to Life <a href="http://www.ohiolife.org/press-releases/2011/11/4/governor-john-kasich-signs-pro-life-legislation.html" type="external">warned</a> in a press release in 2011, just after John Kasich, the state&#8217;s new Republican governor, signed a bill making the bypass process stricter.</p> <p>But a review of more than 40 cases, along with interviews with minors and their attorneys, reveals that in much of the country, obtaining a judge&#8217;s approval to get an abortion is a mammoth struggle.</p> <p>&#8220;&#8216;Daunting&#8217; doesn&#8217;t begin to cover it,&#8221; says Jennifer Dalven, who runs the reproductive rights arm of the American Civil Liberties Union. &#8220;Imagine it: You&#8217;re 17 years old. You&#8217;re already struggling with this unplanned pregnancy. You may be afraid of your parents. And now you&#8217;re told, &#8216;Go to court&#8217;?&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Susan Hays, a Texas attorney who represents minors through a group called <a href="http://janesdueprocess.org/" type="external">Jane&#8217;s Due Process</a>, says about a third of the girls she works with don&#8217;t have the option of asking their parents for permission&#8212;they&#8217;re undocumented immigrants whose parents are not in the country, orphans, or what Hays calls &#8220;de facto orphans&#8221;: &#8220;Mom&#8217;s dead, Dad&#8217;s in prison, they never liked me much anyway.&#8221; She once represented a minor whose parents ran a meth ring: &#8220;She had split because she had the distinct impression they were going to start pimping her out.&#8221; Legal guardians may grant permission for an abortion in most states. But this is no help to girls who live with family members who never established guardianship.</p> <p>It isn&#8217;t supposed to be this way. In 1979, the Supreme Court <a href="" type="internal">ruled</a> that a girl&#8217;s parents can&#8217;t exercise an absolute veto over her right to an abortion: States requiring parental notification or consent had to provide an escape hatch. The court did not mandate what form this escape hatch should take. Maine, for example, allows a physician to decide whether the minor is competent enough to make her own decision. But that&#8217;s not good enough for anti-abortion activists. Led by <a href="" type="internal">Americans United for Life</a>, the legislative wing of the pro-life movement, they&#8217;ve advanced laws to put the decision in the hands of judges instead.</p> <p>The process sounds simple: Go to a courthouse, file a form, and get a private hearing within a day or so. If the judge&#8212;who usually holds the hearing in his or her chambers&#8212;denies the petition, a minor has a right to a speedy appeal. A pregnant teen, according to standards defined by the Supreme Court, must show either that she is mature enough to have an abortion without her parents&#8217; involvement or that an abortion is in her best interest. &#8220;The way most laws are written, if you follow the statute, Jane Doe wins almost every time,&#8221; Hays says. But in practice, girls are at the mercy of whichever judge they happen to draw, says Anne Dellinger, a retired University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill professor who has studied the bypass system. &#8220;If a girl wanders into the wrong [court], she doesn&#8217;t have a chance,&#8221; Dellinger says. With few checks on the system, Hays adds, judges are free to impose their beliefs on the girls who appear before them: &#8220;It&#8217;s the law of bullies.&#8221;</p> <p>KIERA FINALLY APPEARED before a judge, a man nearing retirement age, when she was about 10 weeks along. Playing phone tag with the court had taken nearly three weeks.</p> <p>Her school counselor said financial assistance from the clinic covered the gap between what she had squirreled away in the envelope and the cost of the abortion, but Kiera suspected her counselor paid the difference herself. She didn&#8217;t care. By now, she had begun gaining weight and was sweating nonstop.</p> <p>From the outset of her hearing, which Kiera weathered without a lawyer, the judge made his feelings about abortion clear. &#8220;I said, &#8216;I&#8217;m an A and B student,'&#8221; Kiera recalls. &#8220;I tried to use my SAT words.&#8221; The judge was not interested. He grilled her on whether she had contemplated her decision in church, or thought about how she might regret an abortion when she looked at her children in the future. He was upset to learn Kiera wasn&#8217;t dating the father.</p> <p>When they discussed her family, the judge began pleading. &#8220;He said, &#8216;I&#8217;m sure your mother would understand,'&#8221; Kiera recalls. &#8220;He was kind of panicking&#8212;I felt like he was saying, &#8216;Well, have you tried having a better mother? Have you tried religion?'&#8221; The judge adjourned the hearing without a ruling. It wasn&#8217;t until two days later, after Kiera had already canceled her appointment at the clinic, that she got a call to come back to court. He&#8217;d granted her petition.</p> <p>Kiera&#8217;s case ended as she&#8217;d hoped. But court records show many girls are not so lucky. In the 40 cases I reviewed, judges denied minors&#8217; petitions for arbitrary, absurd, or personal reasons&#8212;such as a minor&#8217;s failure to discuss her decision with a priest. (Although the initial hearings are private, summaries and partial transcripts became public when the minors appealed.)</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">In 2008</a>, Florida Judge Raul Palomino Jr. urged a 17-year-old to think of how distressed her Catholic parents would be if they discovered her secret abortion. In a <a href="" type="internal">2006 Florida case</a>, a girl testified she wasn&#8217;t financially or emotionally equipped to raise a child&#8212;a claim, the judge ruled, that proved she wasn&#8217;t mature enough to choose abortion. Three judges denied petitions because becoming pregnant by accident indicated a young woman was too immature to choose abortion.</p> <p>The records I reviewed show that if a judge doesn&#8217;t want to grant a petition, she will find a reason to deny it. <a href="" type="internal">One 17-year-old in Alabama</a> tried to satisfy the state&#8217;s requirement that minors be well informed by asking six people&#8212;a woman who&#8217;d had an abortion, a family friend, two nurses, and staffers at Planned Parenthood and the local health department&#8212;about the procedure. In court, she described the procedure in detail, naming the surgical instruments used. When the judge asked the girl&#8212;a straight-A student bound for college on two scholarships&#8212;if she felt emotionally ready to have an abortion, she replied, &#8220;I am. I&#8217;ve been strong-minded about all of this.&#8221;</p> <p>The judge then denied her petition because she hadn&#8217;t spoken to the doctor who would perform the procedure. (The girl said the doctor refused to talk to her; clinics often limit contact with minors before their bypass hearing.)</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a mother,&#8221; said the judge, who is not named in the court documents. &#8220;These people are interested in one thing, it appears to me, and that is getting this young lady&#8217;s money&#8230;This is a beautiful young girl with a bright future, and she does not need to have a butcher get ahold of her.&#8221; A divided appeals court upheld the judge&#8217;s denial.</p> <p>In a 2013 case that made headlines, a Nebraska court <a href="" type="internal">decided</a>a 16-year-old in foster care was not mature&#8212;in part because she was &#8220;not self-sufficient.&#8221; The minor had raised her siblings when her parents weren&#8217;t around. The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the lower court&#8217;s decision.</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">In another case</a>, an appeals court described the testimony of a young woman who petitioned an Alabama judge in 2000:</p> <p>&#8220;Her father drinks to excess and becomes violent. Recently, she said, he slapped her and told her to &#8216;get out of the house&#8217; after she had asked him to turn down the volume of the television because she was trying to do her homework&#8230;Her father had told her that if she ever came home pregnant he would kill her. She also stated that she did not believe he meant this literally, but that she believed he would whip her. She testified that her mother was also violent and had beaten her older sister until she bled.&#8221; The judge denied her petition.</p> <p>In Alabama and Florida, some judges went so far as to <a href="" type="internal">appoint lawyers for girls&#8217; fetuses</a>, even giving them names. &#8220;You say that you are aware that God instructed you not to kill your own baby,&#8221; one attorney, who represented &#8220;Baby Ashley,&#8221; thundered at his 17-year-old adversary. &#8220;But you want to do it anyway?&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>IN SOME WAYS, these girls were lucky to have made it to court at all. They had to get out of school, and in some cases to another town, for the hearing (and the procedure itself). They had to keep the whole process a secret&#8212;some attorneys with Hays&#8217; Texas group use Snapchat, a smartphone app that deletes messages after they&#8217;ve been viewed. But for many girls, the biggest obstacles are the court employees who act as the gatekeepers of the bypass system. For her 2007 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Stand-Courts-Pregnant-Minors/dp/0814740731" type="external">Girls on the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors</a>, Lafayette College law professor Helena Silverstein and a research team called court employees across three states. They found more than half of the courts &#8220;proved absolutely or materially ignorant of their responsibilities&#8221; under bypass laws. Many court employees, and one judge, told the researchers judicial bypass didn&#8217;t exist. Some court staff lectured callers about abortion or referred them to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. Others warned that their judge had a blanket policy of denying petitions.</p> <p>&#8220;We do not do that here,&#8221; a staffer told Kiera at the first courthouse she called. When Kiera became upset, the staffer hung up on her. She called the courthouse back and spoke with a different staff member, who was apologetic, but equally clueless.</p> <p>At the second courthouse Kiera called, no one answered the phone for several days. Finally, she was told, &#8220;That&#8217;s something you need to ask your mother and father about.&#8221; Kiera cajoled the staffer into looking into the court&#8217;s bypass procedures. Later that week, the staffer left a message on Kiera&#8217;s mom&#8217;s answering machine explaining the process. Kiera frantically deleted the message before her mother got home.</p> <p>None of this is unusual. In March 2012, students at the University of Michigan <a href="" type="internal">replicated Silverstein&#8217;s study</a>, calling each of Florida&#8217;s 67 county courthouses. &#8220;Our results&#8230;were even worse than we had suspected,&#8221; they wrote. &#8220;Over two thirds of courts were unable or unwilling to provide callers with the correct or complete information.&#8221;</p> <p>Sometimes, lawyers can counter the system&#8217;s failings. In the early 2000s, the ACLU won several cases that sharpened Florida&#8217;s legal definition of maturity, resulting in fewer arbitrary rulings. In Illinois, the group is collaborating with the courts to make the process quicker and fairer. In Texas, Jane&#8217;s Due Process has had several judges who never approved petitions removed from the rotation of those hearing cases.</p> <p>But since 2010, many states with new Republican governors&#8212;or new GOP majorities in their legislatures&#8212;have made the bypass process stricter. Lawmakers in Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Ohio have ratcheted up the standard of evidence in bypass hearings. Ohio and Oklahoma restricted the counties where young women can petition. Arizona and Arkansas passed laws forbidding anyone other than lawyers or court staff from helping a girl obtain a bypass.</p> <p>A new Florida law requiring minors to seek judicial bypass in courts close to their homes is the work of state Sen. Kelli Stargel, an abortion foe who became pregnant at 17, married the father, and had the baby. John, Stargel&#8217;s husband, went on to serve in the Florida House, where he helped write Florida&#8217;s parental notification law in 2005. He now serves as a circuit judge&#8212;and sometimes rules on bypass petitions.</p> <p>&#8220;Some of these children were being taken many, many miles from home,&#8221; Kelli Stargel told me. &#8220;The child doesn&#8217;t need to go out of the umbrella of the parent&#8217;s protection. For all we know, the judge will deny the bypass petition, because he determines the parent should become involved.&#8221;</p> <p>In April, Alabama passed a <a href="" type="internal">law</a> formally recognizing the right of judges to appoint lawyers to represent fetuses in the proceedings. I called Walter Mark Anderson III, a retired judge who began the practice, and told him the news. &#8220;That&#8217;s fantastic!&#8221; he exclaimed. Before fetal attorneys, he explained, girls &#8220;came in, said this, that, and the other&#8230;and nobody really questioned her.&#8221; The new law also requires district attorneys to cross-examine minors seeking a bypass&#8212;making the hearings, which are supposed to be fact-finding exercises, more like criminal trials. The judge may adjourn a hearing for as long as he sees fit, and he may disclose the minor&#8217;s identity to any person he determines &#8220;needs to know.&#8221; If a minor&#8217;s parents become aware of the petition, which the Supreme Court intended to be confidential, they are entitled to participate in the hearing and be represented by a lawyer. On October 1, the ACLU filed a suit asking a federal court to stop the law from taking effect and rule it unconstitutional.</p> <p>It&#8217;s been eight months since Kiera&#8217;s hearing, but the memory still sets her off. &#8220;I had to walk this total stranger through my life,&#8221; she recalls angrily. &#8220;I had to open up one of the most embarrassing parts of my life.&#8221; But she knows she was lucky. She has a friend whose dad used to hit her before she moved out of his house. If that friend got pregnant, Kiera asks, &#8220;should she ask him if she can have an abortion? Or should she go in front of a court that says, &#8216;I&#8217;m sure your parents would understand&#8217;? No, really, tell me&#8212;which should she pick?&#8221;</p> <p />

This Is How Judges Humiliate Pregnant Teens Who Want Abortions

https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/teen-abortion-judicial-bypass-parental-notification/

2018-09-01

4left

Illustration by Pete Ryan By January Kiera had stuffed so many small bills into the envelope hidden in her underwear drawer that it split open Kiera knew her mother occasionally cased her room so to be safe she8217d labeled the envelope 8220soccer camp8221 8220It had to be cash8221 says Kiera not her real name She lets out a nervous laugh 8220I couldn8217t write a check and write 8216abortion8217 on the memo line8221 Kiera who lives in the Florida panhandle is thoughtful sarcastic and whipsmart It8217s easy to forget that she8217s only 18 But in December8212when she was staring down a positive pregnancy test thinking shit8212she was only 17 Florida is one of 37 states where a minor can8217t have an abortion unless at least one of her parents knows about it Twentyone of those states though not Florida require at least one parent to grant permission Kiera8217s parents are divorced and her father lives on the other side of the country Her mother Kiera says is 8220unstable8221 unpredictable and sometimes violent Once she kicked Kiera out of the house for forgetting to tell her about a sleepover and it took a whole weekend for her to cool down Kiera was sure that if she told her mom who volunteered for an antiabortion group that she wanted to end her pregnancy she8217d be out of the house for good But when Kiera confided in a school counselor she learned about another option She could ask a judge for permission to have an abortion Her panic melted away 8220I thought 8216This will save me8221 she recalls She started socking away every dollar she could get her hands on8212lunch money tips from her waitressing job And she started calling courthouses amp160 EACH YEAR HUNDREDS of girls in Florida petition judges for permission to have abortions the nationwide number is likely in the thousands But those statistics only include the girls who make it to court Poorly trained court staff antiabortion judges and a spate of increasingly restrictive laws have made it harder than ever for minors to exercise their legal rights Abortion foes have pushed for new restrictions because they believe the process which is known as judicial bypass is simply a loophole girls use to avoid talking to their parents 8220Judges are rubberstamping these requests8221 Ohio Right to Life warned in a press release in 2011 just after John Kasich the state8217s new Republican governor signed a bill making the bypass process stricter But a review of more than 40 cases along with interviews with minors and their attorneys reveals that in much of the country obtaining a judge8217s approval to get an abortion is a mammoth struggle 82208216Daunting8217 doesn8217t begin to cover it8221 says Jennifer Dalven who runs the reproductive rights arm of the American Civil Liberties Union 8220Imagine it You8217re 17 years old You8217re already struggling with this unplanned pregnancy You may be afraid of your parents And now you8217re told 8216Go to court82178221 Susan Hays a Texas attorney who represents minors through a group called Jane8217s Due Process says about a third of the girls she works with don8217t have the option of asking their parents for permission8212they8217re undocumented immigrants whose parents are not in the country orphans or what Hays calls 8220de facto orphans8221 8220Mom8217s dead Dad8217s in prison they never liked me much anyway8221 She once represented a minor whose parents ran a meth ring 8220She had split because she had the distinct impression they were going to start pimping her out8221 Legal guardians may grant permission for an abortion in most states But this is no help to girls who live with family members who never established guardianship It isn8217t supposed to be this way In 1979 the Supreme Court ruled that a girl8217s parents can8217t exercise an absolute veto over her right to an abortion States requiring parental notification or consent had to provide an escape hatch The court did not mandate what form this escape hatch should take Maine for example allows a physician to decide whether the minor is competent enough to make her own decision But that8217s not good enough for antiabortion activists Led by Americans United for Life the legislative wing of the prolife movement they8217ve advanced laws to put the decision in the hands of judges instead The process sounds simple Go to a courthouse file a form and get a private hearing within a day or so If the judge8212who usually holds the hearing in his or her chambers8212denies the petition a minor has a right to a speedy appeal A pregnant teen according to standards defined by the Supreme Court must show either that she is mature enough to have an abortion without her parents8217 involvement or that an abortion is in her best interest 8220The way most laws are written if you follow the statute Jane Doe wins almost every time8221 Hays says But in practice girls are at the mercy of whichever judge they happen to draw says Anne Dellinger a retired University of North CarolinaChapel Hill professor who has studied the bypass system 8220If a girl wanders into the wrong court she doesn8217t have a chance8221 Dellinger says With few checks on the system Hays adds judges are free to impose their beliefs on the girls who appear before them 8220It8217s the law of bullies8221 KIERA FINALLY APPEARED before a judge a man nearing retirement age when she was about 10 weeks along Playing phone tag with the court had taken nearly three weeks Her school counselor said financial assistance from the clinic covered the gap between what she had squirreled away in the envelope and the cost of the abortion but Kiera suspected her counselor paid the difference herself She didn8217t care By now she had begun gaining weight and was sweating nonstop From the outset of her hearing which Kiera weathered without a lawyer the judge made his feelings about abortion clear 8220I said 8216I8217m an A and B student8221 Kiera recalls 8220I tried to use my SAT words8221 The judge was not interested He grilled her on whether she had contemplated her decision in church or thought about how she might regret an abortion when she looked at her children in the future He was upset to learn Kiera wasn8217t dating the father When they discussed her family the judge began pleading 8220He said 8216I8217m sure your mother would understand8221 Kiera recalls 8220He was kind of panicking8212I felt like he was saying 8216Well have you tried having a better mother Have you tried religion8221 The judge adjourned the hearing without a ruling It wasn8217t until two days later after Kiera had already canceled her appointment at the clinic that she got a call to come back to court He8217d granted her petition Kiera8217s case ended as she8217d hoped But court records show many girls are not so lucky In the 40 cases I reviewed judges denied minors8217 petitions for arbitrary absurd or personal reasons8212such as a minor8217s failure to discuss her decision with a priest Although the initial hearings are private summaries and partial transcripts became public when the minors appealed In 2008 Florida Judge Raul Palomino Jr urged a 17yearold to think of how distressed her Catholic parents would be if they discovered her secret abortion In a 2006 Florida case a girl testified she wasn8217t financially or emotionally equipped to raise a child8212a claim the judge ruled that proved she wasn8217t mature enough to choose abortion Three judges denied petitions because becoming pregnant by accident indicated a young woman was too immature to choose abortion The records I reviewed show that if a judge doesn8217t want to grant a petition she will find a reason to deny it One 17yearold in Alabama tried to satisfy the state8217s requirement that minors be well informed by asking six people8212a woman who8217d had an abortion a family friend two nurses and staffers at Planned Parenthood and the local health department8212about the procedure In court she described the procedure in detail naming the surgical instruments used When the judge asked the girl8212a straightA student bound for college on two scholarships8212if she felt emotionally ready to have an abortion she replied 8220I am I8217ve been strongminded about all of this8221 The judge then denied her petition because she hadn8217t spoken to the doctor who would perform the procedure The girl said the doctor refused to talk to her clinics often limit contact with minors before their bypass hearing 8220I8217m a mother8221 said the judge who is not named in the court documents 8220These people are interested in one thing it appears to me and that is getting this young lady8217s money8230This is a beautiful young girl with a bright future and she does not need to have a butcher get ahold of her8221 A divided appeals court upheld the judge8217s denial In a 2013 case that made headlines a Nebraska court decideda 16yearold in foster care was not mature8212in part because she was 8220not selfsufficient8221 The minor had raised her siblings when her parents weren8217t around The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld the lower court8217s decision In another case an appeals court described the testimony of a young woman who petitioned an Alabama judge in 2000 8220Her father drinks to excess and becomes violent Recently she said he slapped her and told her to 8216get out of the house8217 after she had asked him to turn down the volume of the television because she was trying to do her homework8230Her father had told her that if she ever came home pregnant he would kill her She also stated that she did not believe he meant this literally but that she believed he would whip her She testified that her mother was also violent and had beaten her older sister until she bled8221 The judge denied her petition In Alabama and Florida some judges went so far as to appoint lawyers for girls8217 fetuses even giving them names 8220You say that you are aware that God instructed you not to kill your own baby8221 one attorney who represented 8220Baby Ashley8221 thundered at his 17yearold adversary 8220But you want to do it anyway8221 IN SOME WAYS these girls were lucky to have made it to court at all They had to get out of school and in some cases to another town for the hearing and the procedure itself They had to keep the whole process a secret8212some attorneys with Hays8217 Texas group use Snapchat a smartphone app that deletes messages after they8217ve been viewed But for many girls the biggest obstacles are the court employees who act as the gatekeepers of the bypass system For her 2007 book Girls on the Stand How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors Lafayette College law professor Helena Silverstein and a research team called court employees across three states They found more than half of the courts 8220proved absolutely or materially ignorant of their responsibilities8221 under bypass laws Many court employees and one judge told the researchers judicial bypass didn8217t exist Some court staff lectured callers about abortion or referred them to antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers Others warned that their judge had a blanket policy of denying petitions 8220We do not do that here8221 a staffer told Kiera at the first courthouse she called When Kiera became upset the staffer hung up on her She called the courthouse back and spoke with a different staff member who was apologetic but equally clueless At the second courthouse Kiera called no one answered the phone for several days Finally she was told 8220That8217s something you need to ask your mother and father about8221 Kiera cajoled the staffer into looking into the court8217s bypass procedures Later that week the staffer left a message on Kiera8217s mom8217s answering machine explaining the process Kiera frantically deleted the message before her mother got home None of this is unusual In March 2012 students at the University of Michigan replicated Silverstein8217s study calling each of Florida8217s 67 county courthouses 8220Our results8230were even worse than we had suspected8221 they wrote 8220Over two thirds of courts were unable or unwilling to provide callers with the correct or complete information8221 Sometimes lawyers can counter the system8217s failings In the early 2000s the ACLU won several cases that sharpened Florida8217s legal definition of maturity resulting in fewer arbitrary rulings In Illinois the group is collaborating with the courts to make the process quicker and fairer In Texas Jane8217s Due Process has had several judges who never approved petitions removed from the rotation of those hearing cases But since 2010 many states with new Republican governors8212or new GOP majorities in their legislatures8212have made the bypass process stricter Lawmakers in Florida Kansas Nebraska North Dakota and Ohio have ratcheted up the standard of evidence in bypass hearings Ohio and Oklahoma restricted the counties where young women can petition Arizona and Arkansas passed laws forbidding anyone other than lawyers or court staff from helping a girl obtain a bypass A new Florida law requiring minors to seek judicial bypass in courts close to their homes is the work of state Sen Kelli Stargel an abortion foe who became pregnant at 17 married the father and had the baby John Stargel8217s husband went on to serve in the Florida House where he helped write Florida8217s parental notification law in 2005 He now serves as a circuit judge8212and sometimes rules on bypass petitions 8220Some of these children were being taken many many miles from home8221 Kelli Stargel told me 8220The child doesn8217t need to go out of the umbrella of the parent8217s protection For all we know the judge will deny the bypass petition because he determines the parent should become involved8221 In April Alabama passed a law formally recognizing the right of judges to appoint lawyers to represent fetuses in the proceedings I called Walter Mark Anderson III a retired judge who began the practice and told him the news 8220That8217s fantastic8221 he exclaimed Before fetal attorneys he explained girls 8220came in said this that and the other8230and nobody really questioned her8221 The new law also requires district attorneys to crossexamine minors seeking a bypass8212making the hearings which are supposed to be factfinding exercises more like criminal trials The judge may adjourn a hearing for as long as he sees fit and he may disclose the minor8217s identity to any person he determines 8220needs to know8221 If a minor8217s parents become aware of the petition which the Supreme Court intended to be confidential they are entitled to participate in the hearing and be represented by a lawyer On October 1 the ACLU filed a suit asking a federal court to stop the law from taking effect and rule it unconstitutional It8217s been eight months since Kiera8217s hearing but the memory still sets her off 8220I had to walk this total stranger through my life8221 she recalls angrily 8220I had to open up one of the most embarrassing parts of my life8221 But she knows she was lucky She has a friend whose dad used to hit her before she moved out of his house If that friend got pregnant Kiera asks 8220should she ask him if she can have an abortion Or should she go in front of a court that says 8216I8217m sure your parents would understand8217 No really tell me8212which should she pick8221

Illustration/NOUN by/ADP Pete/PROPN Ryan/PROPN By/ADP January/PROPN Kiera/PROPN had/AUX stuffed/VERB so/ADV many/ADJ small/ADJ bills/NOUN into/ADP the/DET envelope/NOUN hidden/VERB in/ADP her/PRON underwear/NOUN drawer/NOUN that/PRON it/PRON split/VERB open/ADJ Kiera/PROPN knew/VERB her/PRON mother/NOUN occasionally/ADV cased/VERB her/PRON room/NOUN so/ADV to/PART be/AUX safe/ADJ she8217d/NOUN labeled/VERB the/DET envelope/NOUN 8220soccer/NOUN camp8221/PROPN 8220It/NUM had/VERB to/PART be/AUX cash8221/NOUN says/VERB Kiera/PROPN not/PART her/PRON real/ADJ name/NOUN She/PRON lets/VERB out/ADP a/DET nervous/ADJ laugh/NOUN 8220I/PROPN couldn8217/PROPN t/NOUN write/VERB a/DET check/NOUN and/CCONJ write/VERB 8216abortion8217/NUM on/ADP the/DET memo/NOUN line8221/NOUN Kiera/PROPN who/PRON lives/VERB in/ADP the/DET Florida/PROPN panhandle/NOUN is/AUX thoughtful/ADJ sarcastic/ADJ and/CCONJ whipsmart/VERB It8217s/PROPN easy/ADJ to/PART forget/VERB that/SCONJ she8217s/PROPN only/ADV 18/NUM 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And/CCONJ she/PRON started/VERB calling/VERB courthouses/NOUN amp160/VERB EACH/DET YEAR/NOUN HUNDREDS/NOUN of/ADP girls/NOUN in/ADP Florida/PROPN petition/NOUN judges/NOUN for/ADP permission/NOUN to/PART have/AUX abortions/NOUN the/DET nationwide/ADJ number/NOUN is/AUX likely/ADJ in/ADP the/DET thousands/NOUN But/CCONJ those/DET statistics/NOUN only/ADV include/VERB the/DET girls/NOUN who/PRON make/VERB it/PRON to/ADP court/NOUN Poorly/ADV trained/VERB court/NOUN staff/NOUN antiabortion/NOUN judges/NOUN and/CCONJ a/DET spate/NOUN of/ADP increasingly/ADV restrictive/ADJ laws/NOUN have/AUX made/VERB it/PRON harder/ADV than/ADP ever/ADV for/SCONJ minors/NOUN to/PART exercise/VERB their/PRON legal/ADJ rights/NOUN Abortion/NOUN foes/NOUN have/AUX pushed/VERB for/ADP new/ADJ restrictions/NOUN because/SCONJ they/PRON believe/VERB the/DET process/NOUN which/PRON is/AUX known/VERB as/ADP judicial/ADJ bypass/NOUN is/AUX simply/ADV a/DET loophole/NOUN girls/NOUN use/VERB to/PART avoid/VERB 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Civil/PROPN Liberties/PROPN Union/PROPN 8220Imagine/NUM it/PRON You8217re/NOUN 17/NUM years/NOUN old/ADJ You8217re/NOUN already/ADV struggling/VERB with/ADP this/DET unplanned/ADJ pregnancy/NOUN You/PRON may/AUX be/AUX afraid/ADJ of/ADP your/PRON parents/NOUN And/CCONJ now/ADV you8217re/NOUN told/VERB 8216Go/NUM to/ADP court82178221/PROPN Susan/PROPN Hays/PROPN a/DET Texas/PROPN attorney/NOUN who/PRON represents/VERB minors/NOUN through/ADP a/DET group/NOUN called/VERB Jane8217s/PROPN Due/PROPN Process/PROPN says/VERB about/ADV a/DET third/NOUN of/ADP the/DET girls/NOUN she/PRON works/VERB with/ADP don8217/ADJ t/NOUN have/VERB the/DET option/NOUN of/ADP asking/VERB their/PRON parents/NOUN for/ADP permission8212they8217re/ADJ undocumented/ADJ immigrants/NOUN whose/DET parents/NOUN are/AUX not/PART in/ADP the/DET country/NOUN orphans/NOUN or/CCONJ what/PRON Hays/PROPN calls/VERB 8220de/ADV facto/X orphans8221/PROPN 8220Mom8217s/PROPN dead/ADJ Dad8217s/PROPN in/ADP prison/NOUN they/PRON 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judge8212who/NOUN usually/ADV holds/VERB the/DET hearing/NOUN in/ADP his/PRON or/CCONJ her/PRON chambers8212denies/NOUN the/DET petition/NOUN a/DET minor/NOUN has/AUX a/DET right/NOUN to/ADP a/DET speedy/ADJ appeal/NOUN A/DET pregnant/ADJ teen/NOUN according/VERB to/ADP standards/NOUN defined/VERB by/ADP the/DET Supreme/PROPN Court/PROPN must/AUX show/VERB either/CCONJ that/SCONJ she/PRON is/AUX mature/ADJ enough/ADV to/PART have/VERB an/DET abortion/NOUN without/ADP her/PRON parents8217/NOUN involvement/NOUN or/CCONJ that/SCONJ an/DET abortion/NOUN is/AUX in/ADP her/PRON best/ADJ interest/NOUN 8220The/NUM way/NOUN most/ADJ laws/NOUN are/AUX written/VERB if/SCONJ you/PRON follow/VERB the/DET statute/NOUN Jane/PROPN Doe/PROPN wins/VERB almost/ADV every/PRON time8221/NOUN Hays/PROPN says/VERB But/CCONJ in/ADP practice/NOUN girls/NOUN are/AUX at/ADP the/DET mercy/NOUN of/ADP whichever/DET judge/NOUN they/PRON happen/VERB to/PART draw/VERB says/VERB Anne/PROPN Dellinger/PROPN a/DET 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<p>Jan 19 (Reuters) - Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co Ltd :</p> <p>* &#8205;TO PLACE 153.2 MILLION NEW H SHARES AT HK$20.43 PER H SHARE&#8203;</p> <p>* &#8205;NET PROCEEDS FROM PLACING EXPECTED TO BE HK$3,116.79 MILLION&#8203;</p> <p>* PROCEEDS TO FUND DEVELOPMENT OF PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING &amp;amp; DISTRIBUTION BUSINESSES &amp;amp; REPLENISH ITS WORKING CAPITAL&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain&#8217;s takeover regulator said Walt Disney ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DIS.N" type="external">DIS.N</a>) must offer to buy all of Sky if it acquires Twenty-First Century Fox&#8217;s 39 percent stake and if Rupert Murdoch&#8217;s Fox is prevented from purchasing all of the European pay-TV company itself.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Sky logo is seen on outside of an entrance to offices and studios in west London, Britain June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo <p>Fox ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FOXA.O" type="external">FOXA.O</a>) agreed an offer to buy all of Sky ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SKYB.L" type="external">SKYB.L</a>) 17 months ago but is still waiting regulatory approval, while Disney has agreed to buy Fox assets, including its stake in Sky, in a separate deal subject to its own regulatory clearance.</p> <p>The ruling means that if Fox&#8217;s bid to buy Sky is blocked by the government in June because of Murdoch&#8217;s media influence, Disney will have to step in to make the same offer to shareholders if and when it becomes the owner of Fox&#8217;s assets.</p> <p>Disney had said it should not be required to make a bid for the whole of Sky in line with Fox&#8217;s existing offer if it bought the Fox assets, but Britain&#8217;s Takeover Panel ruled on Thursday that it must match Fox&#8217;s 10.75 pounds-a-share price.</p> A screen shows the logo and a ticker symbol for The Walt Disney Company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid - RC1277BFE810 <p>Analysts had said Disney wanted a special dispensation to give it more flexibility on whether or when it would bid for the rest of Sky if it only bought the 39 percent stake from Fox.</p> <p>The Takeover Panel, however, said it considered that securing control of Sky might reasonably be considered to be a significant purpose of Disney&#8217;s acquiring control of Fox, and it must make an offer within 28 days of buying the Fox assets.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DIS.N" type="external">Walt Disney Co</a> 100.39 DIS.N New York Stock Exchange -0.41 (-0.41%) DIS.N FOXA.O SKYB.L CMCSA.O FOX COMMITTED <p>The Panel&#8217;s ruling will not stand if Fox has acquired 100 percent of Sky by the time Disney buys the Fox assets, or if Comcast Corp or any other third party has acquired a stake of more than 50 percent in Sky.</p> <p>U.S. cable company Comcast ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CMCSA.O" type="external">CMCSA.O</a>) said on Feb. 27 that it was considering making an offer for Sky.</p> <p>Sky said it noted the Takeover Panel&#8217;s ruling, and it advised shareholders to take no further action at this time.</p> <p>Twenty-First Century Fox said that under the ruling, any mandatory offer by Disney would only be required after Disney&#8217;s acquisition of Fox is completed, which Fox currently expects to occur after completion of Fox&#8217;s offer for Sky.</p> <p>&#8220;21CF (Fox) remains committed to its recommended cash offer for Sky announced on 15th December 2016,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>The offer was supported by revised remedies it had offered to Britain&#8217;s Competition and Markets Authority, it added.</p> <p>Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Kate Holton and Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks climbed on Thursday as investors anticipated a strong earnings season and as U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s suggestion that a military strike on Syria may not be imminent ratcheted down geopolitical worries.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 has now recouped nearly all its losses from earlier this year.</p> <p>Trump said in a tweet on Thursday that a possible attack on Syria could occur &#8220;very soon or not so soon at all,&#8221; easing fears of confrontation with Russia.</p> <p>That lifted U.S. Treasury yields US10YT=RR, leading to a 1.8 percent increase in financial stocks .SPSY, which had the biggest percentage advance among the S&amp;amp;P&#8217;s 11 major sectors.</p> <p>The technology sector .SPLRCT rose 1.3 percent, adding the most gains to the S&amp;amp;P.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re hearing less talk of firing missiles and less talk of trade war,&#8221; said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee. &#8220;Earnings are coming up and expectations are high.&#8221;</p> <p>Strong quarterly results from BlackRock Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BLK.N</a>) and Delta Air Lines Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DAL.N" type="external">DAL.N</a>) added to the sanguine mood.</p> <p>Delta topped profit estimates, sending its shares 2.9 percent higher and boosting other airline stocks.</p> <p>BlackRock gained 1.5 percent after the asset manager&#8217;s quarterly profit rose more than expected.</p> <p>The earnings season begins in earnest on Friday with reports from JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>), Citigroup Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=C.N" type="external">C.N</a>) and Wells Fargo &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>).</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Analysts expect quarterly profit for S&amp;amp;P 500 companies to rise 18.4 percent from a year ago, in what would be the biggest gain in seven years, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <p>&#8220;People are looking forward to earnings season,&#8221; said Tracie McMillion, head of global asset allocation strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. &#8220;Market participants are not wanting to miss out if (earnings are) as good as the forecasts say they will be.&#8221;</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 293.6 points, or 1.21 percent, to 24,483.05, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 21.8 points, or 0.83 percent, to 2,663.99, and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 71.22 points, or 1.01 percent, to 7,140.25.</p> <p>Investor sentiment was also boosted by the weekly U.S. initial jobless claims report, which pointed to sustained labor market strength.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BlackRock Inc</a> 533.01 BLK.N New York Stock Exchange +7.70 (+1.47%) BLK.N DAL.N JPM.N C.N WFC.N <p>Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) was a notable laggard among technology stocks, falling 1.5 percent following a 5.3 percent gain over the past two days when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on the social network&#8217;s data security.</p> <p>Bed Bath &amp;amp; Beyond Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BBBY.O" type="external">BBBY.O</a>) shares dived 20.0 percent after the company&#8217;s full-year profit forecast missed estimates.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 1.20-to-1 ratio and on the Nasdaq, for a 1.84-to-1 ratio.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.12 billion shares, compared to the 7.27 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The global oil stocks surplus is close to evaporating, OPEC said on Thursday, citing healthy energy demand and its own supply cuts while revising up its forecast for production from rivals who have benefited from higher oil prices.</p> A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) logo is seen during a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries in Vienna, Austria September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>U.S. shale oil output has been booming over the past year since OPEC reduced its own production in tandem with Russia to prop up global oil prices.</p> <p>But as oil production collapsed in OPEC member Venezuela and is still facing hiccups in countries such as Libya and Angola, the oil exporters&#8217; group is still producing below its targets meaning the world needs to use stocks to meet rising demand.</p> <p>The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its monthly report oil stocks in the developed world reversed a rise in January to fall by 17.4 million barrels in February to 2.854 billion barrels, around 43 million barrels above the latest five-year average.</p> <p>&#8220;We have achieved an over 150 percent conformity level,&#8221; OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters in New Delhi, referring to OPEC&#8217;s commitments under the supply-cutting pact. He said the glut has effectively shrunk by nine-tenths since the start of 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;We have seen an accelerated shrinkage of stocks in storage from unparalleled highs of about 400 million barrels to about 43 million above the five-year average,&#8221; Barkindo said.</p> <p>Stock levels are now 207 million barrels below their level in February 2017, with crude stocks in a surplus of 55 million barrels and product stocks in a deficit of 12 million.</p> <p>&#8220;Looking forward, a healthy global economic forecast for 2018, positive car sales data in recent months, stronger 2018 yea-on-year U.S. product consumption in January and potentially tighter global product markets are expected to boost gasoline and distillates demand ...,&#8221; OPEC said.</p> <p>&#8220;High conformity levels observed by OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries ... should further enhance market stability and support crude and product markets in the months ahead.&#8221;</p> <p>The 14-member, Vienna-based producer group said its collective output, according to secondary sources, fell 201,000 bpd to 31.96 million bpd in March from February, driven by declines in Angola, Algeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Libya.</p> <p>The figure is below the 32.6 million bpd that OPEC sees as demand for its crude for the whole of 2018.</p> <p>OPEC, Russia and several other non-OPEC producers began to cut supply in January 2017. The pact runs until the end of the year and OPEC meets in Vienna in June to decide on its next course of action.</p> THIRD YEAR OF CUTS <p>OPEC&#8217;s leader Saudi Arabia has said it would like the pact to be extended into 2019.</p> <p>&#8220;There is growing confidence that the declaration of cooperation will be extended beyond 2018,&#8221; Barkindo told Reuters. &#8220;Russia will continue to play a leading role.&#8221;</p> <p>On Thursday, OPEC also revised its forecast for supply growth from its rivals, non-OPEC, which is now forecast to grow by a further 80,000 barrels per day this year to 1.71 million bpd, driven largely by higher-than-anticipated growth in the first quarter in the United States and the former Soviet Union.</p> <p>At the same time, it increased its forecast for global oil demand growth for this year by 30,000 bpd to 1.63 million bpd.</p> <p>&#8220;This mainly reflects the positive momentum in the OECD in the 1Q18 on the back of better-than-expected data, and supported by development in industrial activities, colder-than-anticipated weather and strong mining activities in the OECD Americas and the OECD Asia Pacific,&#8221; it said in the monthly market report.</p> <p>Production in the United Arab Emirates posted the largest month-on-month increase, according to the secondary sources, rising by around 45,000 bpd in March to 2.86 million bpd.</p> <p>OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia told the group it pumped 9.907 million bpd in March, 28,000 bpd below its February level.</p> <p>Venezuela reported production of 1.509 million bpd in March, 77,000 bpd below the level it reported in February.</p> <p>Reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street led stocks higher globally on Thursday, more than offsetting declines in Asia, as an expected strong earnings season took front seat after U.S. President Donald Trump cast doubt over the timing of his threatened strike on Syria.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson <p>The risk of clashes between Western powers and Russia in Syria over an alleged chemical attack eased somewhat as Trump reworded his Wednesday threat that missiles &#8220;will be coming&#8221; while taunting Russia for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.</p> <p>Trump wrote on Thursday that an attack on Syria &#8220;could be very soon or not so soon at all.&#8221; Later, he said decisions will be made &#8220;fairly soon.&#8221;</p> <p>Investors turned their focus to U.S. corporate earnings as BlackRock ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BLK.N</a>), the world&#8217;s largest asset manager, reported quarterly profit above Wall Street estimates with its shares up 1.5 percent.</p> <p>BlackRock&#8217;s results boosted bank shares .SPXBK, which were the largest gainers on Thursday, likely on bets that increased exchange traded funds trading will benefit their bottom lines. Higher U.S. Treasury yields also gave banks support.</p> <p>Analysts expect quarterly profit for U.S. benchmark S&amp;amp;P 500 index companies to rise 18.4 percent from a year ago, the biggest gain in seven years, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re hearing less talk of firing missiles and less talk of trade war. Earnings are coming up and expectations are high,&#8221; said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee. The stock market, he said, is &#8220;returning to normal.&#8221;</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 293.6 points, or 1.21 percent, to 24,483.05, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 21.8 points, or 0.83 percent, to 2,663.99 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 71.22 points, or 1.01 percent, to 7,140.25.</p> <p>The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FTEU3" type="external">.FTEU3</a> rose 0.67 percent and MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS gained 0.37 percent.</p> <p>Emerging market stocks rose 0.11 percent. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS closed 0.27 percent lower, while Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> lost 0.12 percent.</p> <p>The higher risk appetite as geopolitical tensions eased boosted U.S. Treasury yields. The safe-haven Japanese yen also fell.</p> <p>&#8220;There is less immediate concern about military strikes or action in Syria,&#8221; said Jim Vogel, interest rates strategist at FTN Financial in Memphis.</p> <p>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t move it to the back-burner, but it allows you to look around and trade other things and that gives room for rates to rise just a little bit from their sort of cramped or compressed levels,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR last fell 14/32 in price to yield 2.8413 percent, from 2.79 percent late on Wednesday.</p> <p>The 30-year bond US30YT=RR last fell 26/32 in price to yield 3.0455 percent, from 3.005 percent late on Wednesday.</p> <p>Oil prices fell initially as geopolitical concerns eased somewhat, but later rose, supported partly by shrinking global oil inventories.</p> The German share price index, DAX board, is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tilman Blasshofer <p>OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters in New Delhi the global oil glut has effectively shrunk by nine-tenths since the start of 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;We have seen an accelerated shrinkage of stocks in storage from unparalleled highs of about 400 million barrels to about 43 million above the five-year average,&#8221; Barkindo said.</p> <p>U.S. crude CLc1 rose 0.43 percent to $67.11 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $72.09, up 0.04 percent on the day.</p> <p>Both are at levels not seen since 2014.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: Middle East tensions drive crude prices - <a href="https://reut.rs/2ILpqMy" type="external">reut.rs/2ILpqMy</a>)</p> <a href="https://reut.rs/2ILpqMy" type="external" /> <p>The U.S. dollar index .DXY was on track to snap a four-day losing streak as it rose 0.21 percent, with the euro <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a> down 0.3 percent to $1.2328.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BlackRock Inc</a> 533.01 BLK.N New York Stock Exchange +7.70 (+1.47%) BLK.N .DJI .SPX .IXIC .FTEU3 <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a reversal of the safe-haven trade that lifted the yen and the Swiss franc earlier in the week,&#8221; said Karl Schamotta, director of global product and market strategy at Cambridge Global Payments in Toronto.</p> <p>The Japanese yen weakened 0.43 percent versus the greenback at 107.27 per dollar, while the dollar was up 0.48 percent against the Swiss franc <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=CHF&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">CHF=</a>.</p> <p>Sterling <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=GBP&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">GBP=</a> was last trading at $1.4227, up 0.36 percent on the day.</p> <p>Safe-haven gold XAU= fell from an 11-week high as the dollar edged higher and investors booked profits.</p> <p>Spot gold XAU= dropped 1.3 percent to $1,335.06 an ounce. U.S. gold futures GCc1 fell 1.61 percent to $1,334.60 an ounce.</p> <p>Copper CMCU3 lost 1.86 percent to $6,821.00 a ton.</p> <p>Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, April Joyner, Chuck Mikolajczak, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Dan Grebler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding To Place 153.2 Mln New H Shares At HK$20.43 Per H Share Disney must offer to buy all of Sky, Britain's takeover regulator rules Wall Street gains on earnings optimism, waning Syria jitters OPEC sees oil markets tighten further even as U.S. shale booms Stocks, U.S. dollar rise as Trump amends previous comments on Syria

https://reuters.com/article/brief-shanghai-pharmaceuticals-holding-t/brief-shanghai-pharmaceuticals-holding-to-place-1532-mln-new-h-shares-at-hk2043-per-h-share-idUSFWN1PE000

2018-01-19

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Jan 19 Reuters Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Holding Co Ltd 8205TO PLACE 1532 MILLION NEW H SHARES AT HK2043 PER H SHARE8203 8205NET PROCEEDS FROM PLACING EXPECTED TO BE HK311679 MILLION8203 PROCEEDS TO FUND DEVELOPMENT OF PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING ampamp DISTRIBUTION BUSINESSES ampamp REPLENISH ITS WORKING CAPITAL8203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain8217s takeover regulator said Walt Disney DISN must offer to buy all of Sky if it acquires TwentyFirst Century Fox8217s 39 percent stake and if Rupert Murdoch8217s Fox is prevented from purchasing all of the European payTV company itself FILE PHOTO The Sky logo is seen on outside of an entrance to offices and studios in west London Britain June 29 2017 REUTERSToby MelvilleFile Photo Fox FOXAO agreed an offer to buy all of Sky SKYBL 17 months ago but is still waiting regulatory approval while Disney has agreed to buy Fox assets including its stake in Sky in a separate deal subject to its own regulatory clearance The ruling means that if Fox8217s bid to buy Sky is blocked by the government in June because of Murdoch8217s media influence Disney will have to step in to make the same offer to shareholders if and when it becomes the owner of Fox8217s assets Disney had said it should not be required to make a bid for the whole of Sky in line with Fox8217s existing offer if it bought the Fox assets but Britain8217s Takeover Panel ruled on Thursday that it must match Fox8217s 1075 poundsashare price A screen shows the logo and a ticker symbol for The Walt Disney Company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US December 14 2017 REUTERSBrendan McDermid RC1277BFE810 Analysts had said Disney wanted a special dispensation to give it more flexibility on whether or when it would bid for the rest of Sky if it only bought the 39 percent stake from Fox The Takeover Panel however said it considered that securing control of Sky might reasonably be considered to be a significant purpose of Disney8217s acquiring control of Fox and it must make an offer within 28 days of buying the Fox assets Walt Disney Co 10039 DISN New York Stock Exchange 041 041 DISN FOXAO SKYBL CMCSAO FOX COMMITTED The Panel8217s ruling will not stand if Fox has acquired 100 percent of Sky by the time Disney buys the Fox assets or if Comcast Corp or any other third party has acquired a stake of more than 50 percent in Sky US cable company Comcast CMCSAO said on Feb 27 that it was considering making an offer for Sky Sky said it noted the Takeover Panel8217s ruling and it advised shareholders to take no further action at this time TwentyFirst Century Fox said that under the ruling any mandatory offer by Disney would only be required after Disney8217s acquisition of Fox is completed which Fox currently expects to occur after completion of Fox8217s offer for Sky 822021CF Fox remains committed to its recommended cash offer for Sky announced on 15th December 20168221 it said The offer was supported by revised remedies it had offered to Britain8217s Competition and Markets Authority it added Reporting by Paul Sandle Editing by Kate Holton and Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters US stocks climbed on Thursday as investors anticipated a strong earnings season and as US President Donald Trump8217s suggestion that a military strike on Syria may not be imminent ratcheted down geopolitical worries The SampampP 500 has now recouped nearly all its losses from earlier this year Trump said in a tweet on Thursday that a possible attack on Syria could occur 8220very soon or not so soon at all8221 easing fears of confrontation with Russia That lifted US Treasury yields US10YTRR leading to a 18 percent increase in financial stocks SPSY which had the biggest percentage advance among the SampampP8217s 11 major sectors The technology sector SPLRCT rose 13 percent adding the most gains to the SampampP 8220We8217re hearing less talk of firing missiles and less talk of trade war8221 said Michael Antonelli managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W Baird in Milwaukee 8220Earnings are coming up and expectations are high8221 Strong quarterly results from BlackRock Inc BLKN and Delta Air Lines Inc DALN added to the sanguine mood Delta topped profit estimates sending its shares 29 percent higher and boosting other airline stocks BlackRock gained 15 percent after the asset manager8217s quarterly profit rose more than expected The earnings season begins in earnest on Friday with reports from JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co JPMN Citigroup Inc CN and Wells Fargo ampamp Co WFCN Slideshow 3 Images Analysts expect quarterly profit for SampampP 500 companies to rise 184 percent from a year ago in what would be the biggest gain in seven years according to Thomson Reuters IBES 8220People are looking forward to earnings season8221 said Tracie McMillion head of global asset allocation strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in WinstonSalem North Carolina 8220Market participants are not wanting to miss out if earnings are as good as the forecasts say they will be8221 The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 2936 points or 121 percent to 2448305 the SampampP 500 SPX gained 218 points or 083 percent to 266399 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 7122 points or 101 percent to 714025 Investor sentiment was also boosted by the weekly US initial jobless claims report which pointed to sustained labor market strength BlackRock Inc 53301 BLKN New York Stock Exchange 770 147 BLKN DALN JPMN CN WFCN Facebook Inc FBO was a notable laggard among technology stocks falling 15 percent following a 53 percent gain over the past two days when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on the social network8217s data security Bed Bath ampamp Beyond Inc BBBYO shares dived 200 percent after the company8217s fullyear profit forecast missed estimates Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 120to1 ratio and on the Nasdaq for a 184to1 ratio Volume on US exchanges was 612 billion shares compared to the 727 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDONNEW DELHI Reuters The global oil stocks surplus is close to evaporating OPEC said on Thursday citing healthy energy demand and its own supply cuts while revising up its forecast for production from rivals who have benefited from higher oil prices A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC logo is seen during a meeting of OPEC and nonOPEC producing countries in Vienna Austria September 22 2017 REUTERSLeonhard Foeger US shale oil output has been booming over the past year since OPEC reduced its own production in tandem with Russia to prop up global oil prices But as oil production collapsed in OPEC member Venezuela and is still facing hiccups in countries such as Libya and Angola the oil exporters8217 group is still producing below its targets meaning the world needs to use stocks to meet rising demand The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its monthly report oil stocks in the developed world reversed a rise in January to fall by 174 million barrels in February to 2854 billion barrels around 43 million barrels above the latest fiveyear average 8220We have achieved an over 150 percent conformity level8221 OPEC SecretaryGeneral Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters in New Delhi referring to OPEC8217s commitments under the supplycutting pact He said the glut has effectively shrunk by ninetenths since the start of 2017 8220We have seen an accelerated shrinkage of stocks in storage from unparalleled highs of about 400 million barrels to about 43 million above the fiveyear average8221 Barkindo said Stock levels are now 207 million barrels below their level in February 2017 with crude stocks in a surplus of 55 million barrels and product stocks in a deficit of 12 million 8220Looking forward a healthy global economic forecast for 2018 positive car sales data in recent months stronger 2018 yeaonyear US product consumption in January and potentially tighter global product markets are expected to boost gasoline and distillates demand 8221 OPEC said 8220High conformity levels observed by OPEC and nonOPEC producing countries should further enhance market stability and support crude and product markets in the months ahead8221 The 14member Viennabased producer group said its collective output according to secondary sources fell 201000 bpd to 3196 million bpd in March from February driven by declines in Angola Algeria Venezuela Saudi Arabia and Libya The figure is below the 326 million bpd that OPEC sees as demand for its crude for the whole of 2018 OPEC Russia and several other nonOPEC producers began to cut supply in January 2017 The pact runs until the end of the year and OPEC meets in Vienna in June to decide on its next course of action THIRD YEAR OF CUTS OPEC8217s leader Saudi Arabia has said it would like the pact to be extended into 2019 8220There is growing confidence that the declaration of cooperation will be extended beyond 20188221 Barkindo told Reuters 8220Russia will continue to play a leading role8221 On Thursday OPEC also revised its forecast for supply growth from its rivals nonOPEC which is now forecast to grow by a further 80000 barrels per day this year to 171 million bpd driven largely by higherthananticipated growth in the first quarter in the United States and the former Soviet Union At the same time it increased its forecast for global oil demand growth for this year by 30000 bpd to 163 million bpd 8220This mainly reflects the positive momentum in the OECD in the 1Q18 on the back of betterthanexpected data and supported by development in industrial activities colderthananticipated weather and strong mining activities in the OECD Americas and the OECD Asia Pacific8221 it said in the monthly market report Production in the United Arab Emirates posted the largest monthonmonth increase according to the secondary sources rising by around 45000 bpd in March to 286 million bpd OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia told the group it pumped 9907 million bpd in March 28000 bpd below its February level Venezuela reported production of 1509 million bpd in March 77000 bpd below the level it reported in February Reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Wall Street led stocks higher globally on Thursday more than offsetting declines in Asia as an expected strong earnings season took front seat after US President Donald Trump cast doubt over the timing of his threatened strike on Syria Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York US April 12 2018 REUTERSLucas Jackson The risk of clashes between Western powers and Russia in Syria over an alleged chemical attack eased somewhat as Trump reworded his Wednesday threat that missiles 8220will be coming8221 while taunting Russia for supporting Syrian President Bashar alAssad Trump wrote on Thursday that an attack on Syria 8220could be very soon or not so soon at all8221 Later he said decisions will be made 8220fairly soon8221 Investors turned their focus to US corporate earnings as BlackRock BLKN the world8217s largest asset manager reported quarterly profit above Wall Street estimates with its shares up 15 percent BlackRock8217s results boosted bank shares SPXBK which were the largest gainers on Thursday likely on bets that increased exchange traded funds trading will benefit their bottom lines Higher US Treasury yields also gave banks support Analysts expect quarterly profit for US benchmark SampampP 500 index companies to rise 184 percent from a year ago the biggest gain in seven years according to Thomson Reuters IBES 8220We8217re hearing less talk of firing missiles and less talk of trade war Earnings are coming up and expectations are high8221 said Michael Antonelli managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W Baird in Milwaukee The stock market he said is 8220returning to normal8221 The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 2936 points or 121 percent to 2448305 the SampampP 500 SPX gained 218 points or 083 percent to 266399 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 7122 points or 101 percent to 714025 The panEuropean FTSEurofirst 300 index FTEU3 rose 067 percent and MSCIs gauge of stocks across the globe MIWD00000PUS gained 037 percent Emerging market stocks rose 011 percent MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS closed 027 percent lower while Japans Nikkei N225 lost 012 percent The higher risk appetite as geopolitical tensions eased boosted US Treasury yields The safehaven Japanese yen also fell 8220There is less immediate concern about military strikes or action in Syria8221 said Jim Vogel interest rates strategist at FTN Financial in Memphis 8220It doesn8217t move it to the backburner but it allows you to look around and trade other things and that gives room for rates to rise just a little bit from their sort of cramped or compressed levels8221 he said Benchmark 10year Treasury notes US10YTRR last fell 1432 in price to yield 28413 percent from 279 percent late on Wednesday The 30year bond US30YTRR last fell 2632 in price to yield 30455 percent from 3005 percent late on Wednesday Oil prices fell initially as geopolitical concerns eased somewhat but later rose supported partly by shrinking global oil inventories The German share price index DAX board is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt Germany March 21 2018 REUTERSTilman Blasshofer OPEC SecretaryGeneral Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters in New Delhi the global oil glut has effectively shrunk by ninetenths since the start of 2017 8220We have seen an accelerated shrinkage of stocks in storage from unparalleled highs of about 400 million barrels to about 43 million above the fiveyear average8221 Barkindo said US crude CLc1 rose 043 percent to 6711 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at 7209 up 004 percent on the day Both are at levels not seen since 2014 GRAPHIC Middle East tensions drive crude prices reutrs2ILpqMy The US dollar index DXY was on track to snap a fourday losing streak as it rose 021 percent with the euro EUR down 03 percent to 12328 BlackRock Inc 53301 BLKN New York Stock Exchange 770 147 BLKN DJI SPX IXIC FTEU3 8220It8217s a reversal of the safehaven trade that lifted the yen and the Swiss franc earlier in the week8221 said Karl Schamotta director of global product and market strategy at Cambridge Global Payments in Toronto The Japanese yen weakened 043 percent versus the greenback at 10727 per dollar while the dollar was up 048 percent against the Swiss franc CHF Sterling GBP was last trading at 14227 up 036 percent on the day Safehaven gold XAU fell from an 11week high as the dollar edged higher and investors booked profits Spot gold XAU dropped 13 percent to 133506 an ounce US gold futures GCc1 fell 161 percent to 133460 an ounce Copper CMCU3 lost 186 percent to 682100 a ton Reporting by Rodrigo Campos April Joyner Chuck Mikolajczak Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Gertrude ChavezDreyfuss in New York Editing by Nick Zieminski and Dan Grebler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Protecting what they imagine as the virtue of white women, white men also assert their claim on the sexual lives of &#8220;their&#8221; women.</p> <p>Addressing an audience at a rally in Florida on February 18, President Trump yet again used his bully pulpit for harebrained fear mongering:</p> <p>&#8220;You look at what&#8217;s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?&#8221;</p> <p>The comment gave the impression that a terrorist attack had occurred the night before in Sweden; none had.</p> <p>Trump later tweeted an explanation. Apparently, he had been watching Tucker Carlson Tonight&amp;#160;on Fox News, and his comments referred to Carlson&#8217;s interview with Ami Horowitz. Horowitz is a right-wing documentarian whose short film &#8220;Stockholm Syndrome&#8221; covers the purported &#8220;migrant crisis&#8221; in Sweden.</p> <p>Horowitz&#8217;s journalistic methods have recently come under scrutiny after two Swedish police officers recanted the interviews aired during Carlson&#8217;s segment, which alleged a steep rise in the country&#8217;s crime rates. The officers told the Swedish publication <a href="http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/swedish-police-featured-in-fox-news-segment-filmmaker-is-a-madman/" type="external">Dagens Nyheter</a> that they had responded to a question about a rise in crime generally, not one attributed to migrants in particular.</p> <p>The media has rightfully used the episode to highlight how nimbly Trump and co. use imagined terrorist attacks&#8212;&#224;&amp;#160;la the Bowling Green Massacre&#8212;to win public support for their xenophobic policies.</p> <p>But largely left out of discussion of Horowitz&#8217;s Fox interview, indeed largely missing from the mainstream media narrative itself, was an analysis of the gender politics behind the right-wing manufactured &#8220;migrant crisis.&#8221; In a move that has become characteristic of the far Right, Horowitz portrayed Middle Eastern and African migrants as intransigent rapists, whose allegiance to sharia law and sex slavery wreaks havoc on innocent (white) European women.</p> <p>Such rhetoric echoes the assertions made by white nationalists in the U.S., led by Steve Bannon and his Breitbart surrogates, as well as the alt-right &#8220;manosphere&#8221; of bloggers. Breitbart routinely runs articles with headlines like &#8220;Europe&#8217;s Rape Epidemic: Western Women Will Be Sacrificed at the Altar of Mass Migration&#8221; (retweeted by Donald Trump Jr. during the election) and &#8220;Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture.&#8221;</p> <p>Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart editor known in part for his role in Gamergate, an Internet harassment campaign against female video game players, has also fashioned himself a noble protector&amp;#160;of women and gay people from Muslim rapists. He has <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/milo/2016/10/30/milo-muslims-will-bring-lamb-chops-yoghurt-gang-rape-america/" type="external">warned</a> that Muslim immigrants will bring &#8220;lamb chops, yoghurt and gang-rape&#8221; to America. Yiannopoulos, who has urged gay men to <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/17/gay-rights-have-made-us-dumber-its-time-to-get-back-in-the-closet/" type="external">return to the closet</a>, has also portrayed himself as a selective defender of gay rights against the perceived onslaught of Islam. On speaking tours and in Breitbart think pieces, Yiannopoulos has consistently portrayed the Orlando shootings, which resulted in the deaths of 49 people last June, as, in the words of one headline, an example of &#8220;the Left Cho[osing] Islam Over Gays.&#8221;</p> <p><a href="http://time.com/4182186/sweden-feminists-sexual-assault-refugees/" type="external">Feminists</a> and outlets such as The Guardian have&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/sep/20/donald-trump-refugees-skittles-hillary-clinton?page=with:block-57e1432fe4b02abd56c3f616#block-57e1432fe4b02abd56c3f616" type="external">pointed out</a> the racist underpinnings of the so-called migrant rape crisis, arguing that the far Right is only interested in using the issue of rape to garner support for their anti-immigration agenda. But there is more to the migrant rape bogeyman than its use as a tool to advance racism and xenophobia.</p> <p>The Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading hate group watchdog, acknowledges that the alt-right consists of a diverse set of ideologies but sees racism as its single unifying feature.&amp;#160;The ragtag alt-right, according to a recent report by the Center, converges around &#8220;white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.&#8221; Lacking from the report, however, was an analysis of how this white ethno-nationalism interplays with the movement&#8217;s equally virulent sexism.</p> <p>Similarly, the media often ignores the alt-right&#8217;s misogyny, or treats it as a footnote to scientific racism and the desire for a white ethno-state. One of the relatively few mainstream news articles to focus on the sexism of the alt-right, <a href="http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/12/14/13576192/alt-right-sexism-recruitment" type="external">Vox&#8217;s &#8220;How the Alt-Right&#8217;s Sexism Lures Men into White Supremacy</a>,&#8221; described the alt-right&#8217;s hatred of women as a &#8220;gateway drug&#8221; to racism, rather than discussing it as a problem in its own right.</p> <p>But misogyny and heteropatriarchy are as foundational to the alt-right as racism. It would be more accurate to say that sexism and white supremacy are deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing&#8212;you can&#8217;t understand one without the other. When extremists like Bannon and Yiannopoulos position themselves as the sole protectors of white women, they are, in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/magazine/jeff-sessions-stephen-bannon-justice-department.html" type="external">Emily Bazelon words</a>, &#8220;reassert[ing] the country&#8217;s European and Christian heritage.&#8221; But that heritage is indelibly inscribed in patriarchal authority&#8212;and the restoration of that authority is a central aspect of the far-Right platform.</p> <p>The movement&#8217;s favorite term &#8220;cuckservative&#8221; (or just &#8220;cuck&#8221;) is a pejorative for establishment conservatives who have been so emasculated from a culture dominated by &#8220;social justice warriors&#8221; and &#8220;political correctness&#8221; that they have muzzled their own unpopular opinions. At the most basic level, the alt-right defines itself in highly gendered terms. The movement sees itself as a force of detached, masculine &#8220;reason&#8221; defending the honor of Western culture against the hysterical, feminine excesses of liberalism.</p> <p>But the cuck epithet also contains a racist subtext. &#8220;Cuckold&#8221; has long been associated with white men who allow their wives to have sex with black men: an entire offshoot of the porn industry is dedicated to it. In cuckold porn, the (typically white) husband is humiliated by his wife sleeping with a black man. The cultural significance of interracial cuckolding is purportedly rooted in the additional shame of being replaced by a racially inferior black man.</p> <p>The &#8220;cuck&#8221; term draws from a long American tradition. Sex has been at the forefront of white supremacy since slavery, and anxieties about interracial sex and rape fueled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Historian Nancy MacLean, who explores the KKK&#8217;s gender politics in her book Behind the Mask of Chivalry, notes that by the end of the nineteenth century, &#8220;a large number of white Americans &#8230; believed that black men had acquired an incorrigible desire to rape white women.&#8221; Rape allegations against black men were the most common justification for lynchings, and they still form a basis for racially motivated killings:&amp;#160;In the midst of his 2015 shooting rampage in Charleston, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/06/the_deadly_history_of_they_re_raping_our_women_racists_have_long_defended.html" type="external">Dylann Roof</a> told his victims, &#8220;You rape our women, and you&#8217;re taking over our country, and you have to go.&#8221;</p> <p>Beyond its obvious racism, the notion that white men are charged with the &#8220;protection&#8221; of white women reveals the patriarchal values upon which white supremacy rests. This is because allegations of rape against black men&#8212;and the violence produced by these allegations&#8212;also reinforce&amp;#160;white women&#8217;s dependent and subordinate status. Protecting what they imagine as the virtue of white women, white men also assert their claim on the sexual lives of &#8220;their&#8221; women.</p> <p>This brings us back to the symbol of the immigrant rapist, which has seeped from the pages of Breitbart&amp;#160;to the electoral sphere. This shadowy figure played a starring role in the election of Donald Trump, who justified building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico as a vital measure to keep Mexican rapists out of the country. In Germany on New Year&#8217;s Eve 2015, reports of mass sexual assaults perpetrated by refugees stirred talk of a nascent &#8220;migrant rape crisis.&#8221; Since then, the specter of foreign Muslim rapists pillaging &#8220;civilized&#8221; Europe has fueled <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/03/the-new-star-of-germanys-far-right" type="external">the rise of a virulently anti-immigrant populist party in Germany</a>, Alternative f&#252;r Deutschland (AfD).&amp;#160;</p> <p>Scaremongering over sexual assault has helped Steve Bannon, Trump&#8217;s head strategist and one of the chief architects of the administration&#8217;s Muslim ban, advance the idea that Islam is fundamentally at odds with Western culture. (While Bannon himself does not claim the alt-right label, he has conceded that the website he used to run, Breitbart News, is &#8220;the platform&#8221; for the movement.)</p> <p>The portrayal of Muslims as rapists should not be altogether surprising; sex between white women and men of color is the strongest taboo in the white supremacist&#8217;s code. Since slavery, rape allegations against black men received exclusive attention, although rape by white men against black women was much more common. As MacLean observes, the discrepancy is largely because rape against black women confirmed white power over all black Americans. And because racial affiliation is traced through the mother, the rape of white women, and the control of their sexual lives, has always been an integral part of the racial purity myth.</p> <p>Like their forebears, today&#8217;s white supremacists justify their actions in the name of protecting white women. In a viral blog post entitled &#8220; <a href="http://mattforney.com/case-female-self-esteem/" type="external">The Case Against Female Self- Esteem</a>,&#8221; alt-right blogger Matt Forney (who has also written charming posts on &#8220;How to Beat Your Girlfriend or Wife and Get Away With It&#8221; and &#8220;Why Fat Girls Don&#8217;t Deserve to be Loved&#8221;) warns that female empowerment won&#8217;t keep women from being raped or murdered. In the case of an apocalyptic civilizational collapse, he says, &#8220;all the Strong, Independent Women&#8482; who read Jezebel and xoJane would last about five minutes.&#8221;</p> <p>Protecting women from intra-racial sexual violence seems to be a different issue, however. The movement&#8217;s romance with pick-up artist (PUA) culture and men&#8217;s rights-style activism lends itself to a host of defenses for sexual assault. Mike Cernovich, an alt-right media personality and &#8220;men&#8217;s empowerment&#8221; blogger, regularly writes about the &#8220;myth&#8221; of date rape. &#8220;Have you guys ever tried &#8216;raping&#8217; a girl without using force?&#8221; he tweeted in 2012. <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/03/18/foxs-dobbs-cites-great-reporting-from-misogynis/209398" type="external">&#8220;Try it. It&#8217;s basically impossible. Date rape does not exist.&#8221;</a> ( <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/trolls-for-trump" type="external">The New Yorker</a> reports that Cernovich was himself accused of rape in 2003.) Forney has also penned many defenses of domestic violence&#8212; including <a href="http://www.alternet.org/gender/look-inside-infamous-mens-rights-movement" type="external">one essay arguing that</a> &#8220;women should be terrorized by their men; it&#8217;s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps.&#8221;</p> <p>Comparing women to chimps is not just a rhetorical sleight of hand; a significant number of alt-right supporters believe that women are genetically inferior to men. They converge around a concept called &#8220;human biodiversity&#8221; (HBD). HBD is basically just repurposed scientific racism: Its adherents worship at the altar of IQ, and believe the measure is closely tied to race. Their view of race and intelligence is also intimately linked to their vision of the ideal form of government. A prominent strain of the alt-right identifies as &#8220; <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/" type="external">neo-reactionaries</a>&#8221; (NRX-ers). Steeped in the tech-bro elitism of Silicon Valley&#8212;the phrase was initially coined by computer scientist Curtis Yarvin&#8212;NRX-ers are skeptical of the common man and believe that democratic systems should be replaced with a genetically superior ruling class.</p> <p>Unsurprisingly, the white nationalists&#8217; plans for governance exclude women entirely. This is based not only on traditional gender roles, but also on essentialist views of women as too easily swayed by emotion to be fit to govern. Richard Spencer, head of the alt-right think tank National Policy Institute, tweeted after the first presidential debate, &#8220;Women should never be allowed to make foreign policy. It&#8217;s not that they&#8217;re &#8216;weak.&#8217; To the contrary, their vindictiveness knows no bounds.&#8221;</p> <p>Pseudohistory appears to be just as influential as pseudoscience in bolstering this argument. As <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-white-nationalists-hate-racism-power" type="external">Mother Jones has reported</a>, the widely discredited author Nicholas Wade has a large alt-right following. Wade argues in his book A Troublesome Inheritance that there is a genetic basis for the so-called &#8220;tribal behavior&#8221; of Middle Eastern countries and African Americans&#8217; rejection of modern economic institutions.</p> <p>Pseudoscience also found its way into one of the movement&#8217;s only female-run blogs, TheNewFem.com, where an interviewee explained that women tend to be liberals and embrace racial diversity because they have &#8220; <a href="http://thenewfem.com/interview-with-kristen-le-faye-from-the-2016-npi-conference/" type="external">evolved to have no real loyalty to a tribe</a>. If they are taken over they will continue to breed with their new tribe.&#8221; Men, then, are natural protectors of whiteness. Echoing the &#8220;tribal&#8221; theory of sexual difference, alt-right vlogger Colin Robertson put it simply: &#8220;Men form tribes. Women join them.&#8221;</p> <p>A December 14 podcast entitled <a href="https://radio.therightstuff.biz/2016/12/14/between-two-lampshades-enoch-spencer-and-anglin/" type="external">Between Two Lampshades</a>&amp;#160;(a revolting reference both to Zach Galifianakis&#8217; comedy show Between Two Ferns and the allegations that Nazis used Holocaust victims&#8217; skin for lampshades), featuring The Daily Stormer&#8217;s Andrew Anglin, The Right Stuff&#8217;s Mike Enoch, and the National Policy Institute&#8217;s Richard Spencer, exposed some of the tensions festering within their noxious ideology. (Since the airing of the show, Enoch quit his position at The Right Stuff when doxxers&amp;#160;revealed his marriage to a Jewish woman.)</p> <p>When the conversation turned to abortion, the two dominant strains of the alt-right &#8212; sexism and racism &#8212; seemed in competition. Spencer, a staunch scientific racist and the self-fashioned &#8220;intellectual&#8221; of the alt-right, opposed repealing Roe v. Wade on the grounds that abortion is &#8220;ultimately eugenic.&#8221; He also complained that if the Supreme Court decision were repealed and the legality of abortion left to the states, Southern states with high black populations would most certainly ban the practice. Anglin, on the other hand, favored repeal, on the grounds that it would weaken the feminist movement. &#8220;If you get rid of abortion &#8230; you would have a situation where feminism just couldn&#8217;t exist,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Anglin&#8217;s scenario is more likely under the new administration: Trump has vowed to ban abortion and his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, likely shares his anti-choice views. (Although Gorsuch has never had to rule on abortion, his opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide suggests a pro-life stance.) One Trump administration official whose views are not in question is Vice President Mike Pence, who favors criminalizing women who get an abortion. Under his watch as Indiana governor, low-income women of color <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/appeal-indiana-woman-convicted-having-abortion" type="external">Purvi Patel and Bei Bei Shuai</a> were charged with feticide for obtaining an illegal abortion. Even if Trump fails to overturn Roe v. Wade, his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act will have serious consequences for women&#8217;s health, including access to birth control and prenatal care.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s cozy relationship with the religious right also suggests that he will not be an advocate of LGBT rights&#8212;although it is politically expedient to say so when drawing a comparison between &#8220;radical Islam&#8221; and the West. Sarah Posner writes in the New Republic that the &#8220;religious right has effectively become a subsidiary of the alt right, yoked to Trump&#8217;s white nationalist agenda.&#8221; In return, Trump has floated a draft executive order that would drastically expand religious exemptions and repeal the Johnson amendment, the legislation that prohibits tax-exempt groups such as churches or charities from participating in political campaigns. The likely result? A far more politically potent religious right that will try to push its anti-LGBT, anti-woman policies onto a country that overwhelmingly disagrees with them.</p> <p>The Trump administration&#8217;s allegiance to voter suppression, law and order policing, and restrictive immigration policies reveal an executive branch fully committed to advancing the cause of alt-right white supremacy.</p> <p>There is no doubt that racism drives the far right resurgence in the U.S. and Europe. But to downplay the misogyny of these once fringe, now mainstream, movements represents a missed opportunity for the Left. At a time when conservatives seek to rehabilitate Bannon and distance Trump from any connection to the alt-right, the Left must be relentlessly committed to exposing the extremism of the far right on all fronts. Despite efforts to portray themselves as nobly shielding women and LGBT people from the depredations of &#8220;radical Islam,&#8221; one thing is certain:&amp;#160;The dark vision promoted by Trump and his alt-right influencers will only provide refuge for white men.</p> <p>Like what you&#8217;ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p> <p>Rachel Johnson is a writer based in Chicago. She holds a master's degree in U.S. history from Northwestern University.</p>

From the Alt-Right to the White House, White Nationalism and Misogyny Go Hand in Hand

http://inthesetimes.com/article/19985/alt-right-sexism-white-nationalism-trump-bannon-breitbart

2017-03-20

4left

Protecting what they imagine as the virtue of white women white men also assert their claim on the sexual lives of 8220their8221 women Addressing an audience at a rally in Florida on February 18 President Trump yet again used his bully pulpit for harebrained fear mongering 8220You look at what8217s happening last night in Sweden Sweden who would believe this8221 The comment gave the impression that a terrorist attack had occurred the night before in Sweden none had Trump later tweeted an explanation Apparently he had been watching Tucker Carlson Tonightamp160on Fox News and his comments referred to Carlson8217s interview with Ami Horowitz Horowitz is a rightwing documentarian whose short film 8220Stockholm Syndrome8221 covers the purported 8220migrant crisis8221 in Sweden Horowitz8217s journalistic methods have recently come under scrutiny after two Swedish police officers recanted the interviews aired during Carlson8217s segment which alleged a steep rise in the country8217s crime rates The officers told the Swedish publication Dagens Nyheter that they had responded to a question about a rise in crime generally not one attributed to migrants in particular The media has rightfully used the episode to highlight how nimbly Trump and co use imagined terrorist attacks8212224amp160la the Bowling Green Massacre8212to win public support for their xenophobic policies But largely left out of discussion of Horowitz8217s Fox interview indeed largely missing from the mainstream media narrative itself was an analysis of the gender politics behind the rightwing manufactured 8220migrant crisis8221 In a move that has become characteristic of the far Right Horowitz portrayed Middle Eastern and African migrants as intransigent rapists whose allegiance to sharia law and sex slavery wreaks havoc on innocent white European women Such rhetoric echoes the assertions made by white nationalists in the US led by Steve Bannon and his Breitbart surrogates as well as the altright 8220manosphere8221 of bloggers Breitbart routinely runs articles with headlines like 8220Europe8217s Rape Epidemic Western Women Will Be Sacrificed at the Altar of Mass Migration8221 retweeted by Donald Trump Jr during the election and 8220Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture8221 Milo Yiannopoulos the former Breitbart editor known in part for his role in Gamergate an Internet harassment campaign against female video game players has also fashioned himself a noble protectoramp160of women and gay people from Muslim rapists He has warned that Muslim immigrants will bring 8220lamb chops yoghurt and gangrape8221 to America Yiannopoulos who has urged gay men to return to the closet has also portrayed himself as a selective defender of gay rights against the perceived onslaught of Islam On speaking tours and in Breitbart think pieces Yiannopoulos has consistently portrayed the Orlando shootings which resulted in the deaths of 49 people last June as in the words of one headline an example of 8220the Left Choosing Islam Over Gays8221 Feminists and outlets such as The Guardian haveamp160 pointed out the racist underpinnings of the socalled migrant rape crisis arguing that the far Right is only interested in using the issue of rape to garner support for their antiimmigration agenda But there is more to the migrant rape bogeyman than its use as a tool to advance racism and xenophobia The Southern Poverty Law Center a leading hate group watchdog acknowledges that the altright consists of a diverse set of ideologies but sees racism as its single unifying featureamp160The ragtag altright according to a recent report by the Center converges around 8220white ethnonationalism as a fundamental value8221 Lacking from the report however was an analysis of how this white ethnonationalism interplays with the movement8217s equally virulent sexism Similarly the media often ignores the altright8217s misogyny or treats it as a footnote to scientific racism and the desire for a white ethnostate One of the relatively few mainstream news articles to focus on the sexism of the altright Vox8217s 8220How the AltRight8217s Sexism Lures Men into White Supremacy8221 described the altright8217s hatred of women as a 8220gateway drug8221 to racism rather than discussing it as a problem in its own right But misogyny and heteropatriarchy are as foundational to the altright as racism It would be more accurate to say that sexism and white supremacy are deeply intertwined and mutually reinforcing8212you can8217t understand one without the other When extremists like Bannon and Yiannopoulos position themselves as the sole protectors of white women they are in Emily Bazelon words 8220reasserting the country8217s European and Christian heritage8221 But that heritage is indelibly inscribed in patriarchal authority8212and the restoration of that authority is a central aspect of the farRight platform The movement8217s favorite term 8220cuckservative8221 or just 8220cuck8221 is a pejorative for establishment conservatives who have been so emasculated from a culture dominated by 8220social justice warriors8221 and 8220political correctness8221 that they have muzzled their own unpopular opinions At the most basic level the altright defines itself in highly gendered terms The movement sees itself as a force of detached masculine 8220reason8221 defending the honor of Western culture against the hysterical feminine excesses of liberalism But the cuck epithet also contains a racist subtext 8220Cuckold8221 has long been associated with white men who allow their wives to have sex with black men an entire offshoot of the porn industry is dedicated to it In cuckold porn the typically white husband is humiliated by his wife sleeping with a black man The cultural significance of interracial cuckolding is purportedly rooted in the additional shame of being replaced by a racially inferior black man The 8220cuck8221 term draws from a long American tradition Sex has been at the forefront of white supremacy since slavery and anxieties about interracial sex and rape fueled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s Historian Nancy MacLean who explores the KKK8217s gender politics in her book Behind the Mask of Chivalry notes that by the end of the nineteenth century 8220a large number of white Americans 8230 believed that black men had acquired an incorrigible desire to rape white women8221 Rape allegations against black men were the most common justification for lynchings and they still form a basis for racially motivated killingsamp160In the midst of his 2015 shooting rampage in Charleston Dylann Roof told his victims 8220You rape our women and you8217re taking over our country and you have to go8221 Beyond its obvious racism the notion that white men are charged with the 8220protection8221 of white women reveals the patriarchal values upon which white supremacy rests This is because allegations of rape against black men8212and the violence produced by these allegations8212also reinforceamp160white women8217s dependent and subordinate status Protecting what they imagine as the virtue of white women white men also assert their claim on the sexual lives of 8220their8221 women This brings us back to the symbol of the immigrant rapist which has seeped from the pages of Breitbartamp160to the electoral sphere This shadowy figure played a starring role in the election of Donald Trump who justified building a wall between the US and Mexico as a vital measure to keep Mexican rapists out of the country In Germany on New Year8217s Eve 2015 reports of mass sexual assaults perpetrated by refugees stirred talk of a nascent 8220migrant rape crisis8221 Since then the specter of foreign Muslim rapists pillaging 8220civilized8221 Europe has fueled the rise of a virulently antiimmigrant populist party in Germany Alternative f252r Deutschland AfDamp160 Scaremongering over sexual assault has helped Steve Bannon Trump8217s head strategist and one of the chief architects of the administration8217s Muslim ban advance the idea that Islam is fundamentally at odds with Western culture While Bannon himself does not claim the altright label he has conceded that the website he used to run Breitbart News is 8220the platform8221 for the movement The portrayal of Muslims as rapists should not be altogether surprising sex between white women and men of color is the strongest taboo in the white supremacist8217s code Since slavery rape allegations against black men received exclusive attention although rape by white men against black women was much more common As MacLean observes the discrepancy is largely because rape against black women confirmed white power over all black Americans And because racial affiliation is traced through the mother the rape of white women and the control of their sexual lives has always been an integral part of the racial purity myth Like their forebears today8217s white supremacists justify their actions in the name of protecting white women In a viral blog post entitled 8220 The Case Against Female Self Esteem8221 altright blogger Matt Forney who has also written charming posts on 8220How to Beat Your Girlfriend or Wife and Get Away With It8221 and 8220Why Fat Girls Don8217t Deserve to be Loved8221 warns that female empowerment won8217t keep women from being raped or murdered In the case of an apocalyptic civilizational collapse he says 8220all the Strong Independent Women8482 who read Jezebel and xoJane would last about five minutes8221 Protecting women from intraracial sexual violence seems to be a different issue however The movement8217s romance with pickup artist PUA culture and men8217s rightsstyle activism lends itself to a host of defenses for sexual assault Mike Cernovich an altright media personality and 8220men8217s empowerment8221 blogger regularly writes about the 8220myth8221 of date rape 8220Have you guys ever tried 8216raping8217 a girl without using force8221 he tweeted in 2012 8220Try it It8217s basically impossible Date rape does not exist8221 The New Yorker reports that Cernovich was himself accused of rape in 2003 Forney has also penned many defenses of domestic violence8212 including one essay arguing that 8220women should be terrorized by their men it8217s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps8221 Comparing women to chimps is not just a rhetorical sleight of hand a significant number of altright supporters believe that women are genetically inferior to men They converge around a concept called 8220human biodiversity8221 HBD HBD is basically just repurposed scientific racism Its adherents worship at the altar of IQ and believe the measure is closely tied to race Their view of race and intelligence is also intimately linked to their vision of the ideal form of government A prominent strain of the altright identifies as 8220 neoreactionaries8221 NRXers Steeped in the techbro elitism of Silicon Valley8212the phrase was initially coined by computer scientist Curtis Yarvin8212NRXers are skeptical of the common man and believe that democratic systems should be replaced with a genetically superior ruling class Unsurprisingly the white nationalists8217 plans for governance exclude women entirely This is based not only on traditional gender roles but also on essentialist views of women as too easily swayed by emotion to be fit to govern Richard Spencer head of the altright think tank National Policy Institute tweeted after the first presidential debate 8220Women should never be allowed to make foreign policy It8217s not that they8217re 8216weak8217 To the contrary their vindictiveness knows no bounds8221 Pseudohistory appears to be just as influential as pseudoscience in bolstering this argument As Mother Jones has reported the widely discredited author Nicholas Wade has a large altright following Wade argues in his book A Troublesome Inheritance that there is a genetic basis for the socalled 8220tribal behavior8221 of Middle Eastern countries and African Americans8217 rejection of modern economic institutions Pseudoscience also found its way into one of the movement8217s only femalerun blogs TheNewFemcom where an interviewee explained that women tend to be liberals and embrace racial diversity because they have 8220 evolved to have no real loyalty to a tribe If they are taken over they will continue to breed with their new tribe8221 Men then are natural protectors of whiteness Echoing the 8220tribal8221 theory of sexual difference altright vlogger Colin Robertson put it simply 8220Men form tribes Women join them8221 A December 14 podcast entitled Between Two Lampshadesamp160a revolting reference both to Zach Galifianakis8217 comedy show Between Two Ferns and the allegations that Nazis used Holocaust victims8217 skin for lampshades featuring The Daily Stormer8217s Andrew Anglin The Right Stuff8217s Mike Enoch and the National Policy Institute8217s Richard Spencer exposed some of the tensions festering within their noxious ideology Since the airing of the show Enoch quit his position at The Right Stuff when doxxersamp160revealed his marriage to a Jewish woman When the conversation turned to abortion the two dominant strains of the altright 8212 sexism and racism 8212 seemed in competition Spencer a staunch scientific racist and the selffashioned 8220intellectual8221 of the altright opposed repealing Roe v Wade on the grounds that abortion is 8220ultimately eugenic8221 He also complained that if the Supreme Court decision were repealed and the legality of abortion left to the states Southern states with high black populations would most certainly ban the practice Anglin on the other hand favored repeal on the grounds that it would weaken the feminist movement 8220If you get rid of abortion 8230 you would have a situation where feminism just couldn8217t exist8221 he said Anglin8217s scenario is more likely under the new administration Trump has vowed to ban abortion and his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch likely shares his antichoice views Although Gorsuch has never had to rule on abortion his opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide suggests a prolife stance One Trump administration official whose views are not in question is Vice President Mike Pence who favors criminalizing women who get an abortion Under his watch as Indiana governor lowincome women of color Purvi Patel and Bei Bei Shuai were charged with feticide for obtaining an illegal abortion Even if Trump fails to overturn Roe v Wade his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act will have serious consequences for women8217s health including access to birth control and prenatal care Trump8217s cozy relationship with the religious right also suggests that he will not be an advocate of LGBT rights8212although it is politically expedient to say so when drawing a comparison between 8220radical Islam8221 and the West Sarah Posner writes in the New Republic that the 8220religious right has effectively become a subsidiary of the alt right yoked to Trump8217s white nationalist agenda8221 In return Trump has floated a draft executive order that would drastically expand religious exemptions and repeal the Johnson amendment the legislation that prohibits taxexempt groups such as churches or charities from participating in political campaigns The likely result A far more politically potent religious right that will try to push its antiLGBT antiwoman policies onto a country that overwhelmingly disagrees with them The Trump administration8217s allegiance to voter suppression law and order policing and restrictive immigration policies reveal an executive branch fully committed to advancing the cause of altright white supremacy There is no doubt that racism drives the far right resurgence in the US and Europe But to downplay the misogyny of these once fringe now mainstream movements represents a missed opportunity for the Left At a time when conservatives seek to rehabilitate Bannon and distance Trump from any connection to the altright the Left must be relentlessly committed to exposing the extremism of the far right on all fronts Despite efforts to portray themselves as nobly shielding women and LGBT people from the depredations of 8220radical Islam8221 one thing is certainamp160The dark vision promoted by Trump and his altright influencers will only provide refuge for white men Like what you8217ve read Subscribe to In These Times magazine or make a taxdeductible donation to fund this reporting Rachel Johnson is a writer based in Chicago She holds a masters degree in US history from Northwestern University

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<p>AARP, the lobbying group for older Americans, has lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that it had improperly acted as an unlicensed insurance agent by soliciting purchases for a type of health insurance policy offered by UnitedHealth Group Inc.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson in Los Angeles on Tuesday rejected AARP and UnitedHealth&#8217;s arguments that California law barred the lawsuit because the state&#8217;s insurance regulator had, in reviewing the policy&#8217;s rates, known about the payments.</p> <p>To read the full story on WestlawNext Practitioner Insights, click here: <a href="http://bit.ly/2EW6kRR" type="external">bit.ly/2EW6kRR</a></p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - President Donald Trump and his national security aides on Thursday discussed U.S. options on Syria, where he has threatened missile strikes in response to a suspected poison gas attack, as a Russian envoy voiced fears of wider conflict between Washington and Moscow.</p> <p>Worries about a confrontation between Russia, Syria&#8217;s big ally, and the West have been running high since Trump said on Wednesday that missiles &#8220;will be coming&#8221; in response to the attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7, and lambasted Moscow for standing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.</p> <p>Trump tempered those remarks on Thursday and even as he consulted allies such and Britain and France, who could join in any U.S.-led strikes on Syria, there were signs of efforts to prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control.</p> <p>&#8220;Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!&#8221; Trump wrote on Twitter, raising the prospect that an attack might not be as imminent as he seemed to suggest the day before.</p> <p>Trump met his national security team on the situation in Syria later in the day and &#8220;no final decision has been made,&#8221; the White House said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies,&#8221; it said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-trump-syria/russia-deputy-pm-says-international-relations-should-not-depend-on-one-persons-mood-idUSKBN1HK0SR" type="external">Russia deputy PM says international relations should not depend on one person's mood</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-britain-corbyn/uk-should-press-for-u-n-led-investigation-in-syria-opposition-leader-corbyn-idUSKBN1HK0JN" type="external">UK should press for U.N.-led investigation in Syria: opposition leader Corbyn</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-allies-factbox/factbox-assads-foreign-backers-in-syrias-war-idUSKBN1HJ2DE" type="external">Factbox: Assad's foreign backers in Syria's war</a> <p>That did not necessarily signal, however, that Trump was cooling to the idea of military action, especially given the high stakes in Syria. U.S. officials noted that Washington was still assessing intelligence and coordinating allies.</p> <p>For graphic on overview of chemical warfare click: <a href="" type="internal">here</a></p> <p>Trump spoke to British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday and the two leaders talked about the &#8220;need for a joint response to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons,&#8221; the White House said.</p> <p>May&#8217;s office said they agreed on the need to deter Assad&#8217;s government from further such attacks.</p> <p>Trump was also due to speak with French President Emmanuel Macron, who said France had proof the Syrian government carried out the attack near Damascus, which aid groups have said killed dozens of people, and will decide whether to strike back when all the necessary information has been gathered.</p> <p>&#8220;We have proof that last week ... chemical weapons were used, at least with chlorine, and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad,&#8221; Macron said, without offering details of any evidence.</p> <p>Two U.S. officials familiar with an investigation of samples from Douma and the symptoms of victims said initial indications that a mix of weaponized chlorine gas and sarin were used in the attack appeared to be correct. But U.S. intelligence agencies have not completed their assessment or reached a final conclusion, the officials said.</p> <p>Russia, Syria and its other main backer, Iran, have said reports of the Douma attack were fabricated by rebels and rescue workers and have accused the United States of seeking to use it as a pretext to attack the Syrian government.</p> <p>Russia said it deployed military police in Douma on Thursday after the town was taken over by government forces.</p> <p>&#8220;They are the guarantors of law and order in the town,&#8221; RIA news agency quoted Russia&#8217;s defense ministry as saying.</p> <p>There were signs of a global effort to head off a direct confrontation between Russia and the West. The Kremlin said a crisis communications link with the United States, created to avoid an accidental clash over Syria, was in use.</p> FEARS OF WAR <p>Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow&#8217;s ambassador to the United Nations, said he &#8220;cannot exclude&#8221; war between the United States and Russia and urged Washington and its allies to refrain from military action against Syria.</p> <p>&#8220;The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war,&#8221; he told reporters. &#8220;We hope there will be no point of no return,&#8221; the envoy said.</p> <p>A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations on Saturday, the Netherlands-based agency said.</p> <p>It was not clear whether Trump and U.S. allies would wait for the results of the investigation before deciding on a strike.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with governors and members of Congress at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he believed there was a chemical attack in Syria, but added a short while later that the United States had not made any decision to launch military action. He also suggested he was examining ways to prevent any strikes from triggering a broader conflict.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to talk about a specific attack that is not yet in the offing ... This would be pre-decisional,&#8221; Mattis told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.</p> <p>Moscow is estimated to have dozens of aircraft at its Hmeymim air base in Syria including fighters and bombers, as well as 10 to 15 warships and support vessels in the Mediterranean.</p> <p>The Syrian government and Russian forces in Syria possess truck-mounted surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapons systems.</p> <p>Nervous world stock markets showed signs of recovery after Trump&#8217;s signal that military strikes might not be imminent.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s May won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>May had recalled the ministers from their Easter holiday for the meeting to discuss Britain&#8217;s response to what she has cast as a barbaric attack that cannot go unchallenged.</p> <p>Russian ships had left the Tartus naval base in Syria, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian lawmaker as saying. Vladimir Shamanov, who chairs the defense committee of the lower house, said the vessels had departed the base for their own safety, which was &#8220;normal practice&#8221; when there were threats of attack.</p> <p>Any U.S. strike would probably involve the Navy, given the risk to aircraft from Russian and Syrian air defenses. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, is in the Mediterranean. Last year, the United States carried out strikes from two Navy destroyers against a Syrian air base after another deadly toxic gas attack on a rebel-controlled area.</p> <p>Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut, William James, Guy Faulconbridge and David Milliken in London, Andrew Osborn, Maria Kiselyova and Jack Stubbs in Moscow, John Irish in Paris, Graham Fahy in Dublin and John Walcott, Phil Stewart, Matt Spetalnick and Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Alistair Bell and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines&#8217; privacy watchdog said on Friday it has started investigating Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) over a data breach involving British firm Cambridge Analytica that affected more than a million Filipino users of social media.</p> FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File photo <p>The move follows a decision by European Union privacy watchdogs to look deeper into the harvesting of personal data from social networks for economic or political purposes.</p> <p>Outside the United States, the Philippines had the largest amount of user data acquired by Cambridge Analytica, with 1.17 million accounts in the country affected, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) said last week.</p> <p>In a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, dated April 11, the NPC said it would look into how Facebook shares personal data of Filipino users with third parties, and demand concrete action to protect their data privacy rights.</p> <p>&#8220;We are launching an investigation into Facebook to determine whether there is unauthorized processing of personal data of Filipinos, and other possible violations of the Data Privacy Act,&#8221; it said in the letter, made available to the media on Friday.</p> <p>A Facebook spokesperson said the company is committed to protecting people&#8217;s information and is engaged with the Philippines&#8217; privacy watchdog.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve recently made significant updates to make our&amp;#160;privacy tools easier to find,&amp;#160;restrict data access on Facebook, and&amp;#160;make our terms and data policy clearer,&#8221; Facebook said.</p> <p>Recent research has shown Filipinos to be among the most active social media users in the world, spending on average more than four hours a day on platforms like Facebook.</p> <p>Facebook has admitted that personal data of nearly 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, which has counted U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s election campaign among its clients.</p> <p>A Hong Kong newspaper has said several people involved in President Rodrigo Duterte&#8217;s 2016 election campaign had met in 2015 with Alexander Nix, the now-suspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 163.87 FB.O Nasdaq -- (--%) FB.O <p>Those officials said the meeting with Nix was during a lunch break at an information technology seminar in Manila and there has been no contact since.</p> <p>The president&#8217;s spokesman said on Tuesday that Duterte&#8217;s election campaign did not rely on information bought from anybody, nor did it hire Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s services.</p> <p>Duterte, a former mayor from outside of the sphere of national politics, successfully tapped Filipinos&#8217; insatiable appetite for social media to help him win a 2016 election by a huge margin.</p> <p>His office uses social media with gusto, courting popular bloggers, in some cases hiring them, to promote Duterte and discredit his opponents, and amplifying the message through &#8220;shares&#8221; and &#8220;likes&#8221;.</p> <p>Duterte, however, has said he does not need social media, and on Friday denied any links to Cambridge Analytica.</p> <p>&#8220;Why will I pay those Cambridge fools to work on my campaign? I could have lost with that,&#8221; Duterte told reporters.</p> <p>Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty and Eric Meijer</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors are optimistic that a pickup in corporate acquisitions stands to support the volatile U.S. stock market, and does not represent a worrisome cyclical sign.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 5, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Global mergers and acquisitions have had their strongest start to a year ever, according to data from Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence. The $1.23 trillion in first-quarter global deal-making came in just shy of the $1.31 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2015, which on a quarterly basis marked a multi-year high.</p> <p>However, heightened deal-making could be an ominous signal, if it suggests companies are desperate to find growth as the economic expansion winds down, or if it indicates a euphoria echoed among stock investors. For example, global M&amp;amp;A on a quarterly basis hit multi-year peaks in 2000 and in 2007, preceding sustained stock market declines.</p> <p>But market watchers told Reuters they see other reasons for the latest rise in mergers and acquisitions &#8211; including incentives from U.S. tax reform and the desire to take advantage of still relatively low interest rates &#8211; and instead view the M&amp;amp;A pop as positive for stocks.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a sign we&#8217;re late in the cycle and it eventually gets worrisome,&#8221; said Jeffrey Kleintop, chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab in Boston. &#8220;But in the near term it&#8217;s probably a plus in that you get deal premiums and more money employed in taking equity out.&#8221;</p> <p>For an interactive graphic on global deal-making, click <a href="" type="internal">here</a></p> <p>At a time when some on Wall Street worry stocks are trading at expensive valuation levels, investors said the willingness by companies to make purchases is encouraging.</p> <p>&#8220;To the extent you can get cash deals done, it provides a lot of support for the market,&#8221; said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.</p> <p>&#8220;It takes out equities, where holders are likely to reinvest in other stocks, and helps re-establish that the prices that stocks are trading at are not too high.&#8221;</p> <p>Global quarterly deal-making hit a record $1.42 trillion in the second quarter of 2007. Several months later the S&amp;amp;P 500 began a decline that eventually cut the benchmark index by more than half as the U.S. economy sank into one of the worst recessions in decades.</p> <p>King Lip, chief investment strategist at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco, recalls that 2007 M&amp;amp;A spree as fueled by debt, and at the time, there were other signs the economic expansion cycle was ending, as opposed to now.</p> <p>&#8220;I just think we are not at that point in the cycle,&#8221; Lip said. &#8220;I still think we are mid-cycle in terms of this recovery.&#8221;</p> <p>Indeed, investors point to overall strength in the economy, including S&amp;amp;P 500 profits expected to rise about 20 percent this year.</p> <p>Another factor that separates the current climate is the recently enacted U.S. tax law, which cuts the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and includes a tax break for multi-national companies to bring back profits stored overseas.</p> <p>&#8220;I just view this increase in M&amp;amp;A more so related to the increased levels of cash that tax reform is producing,&#8221; said Lindsey Bell, investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York.</p> <p>While the spike in deal-making can indicate too much euphoria in the market, the lack of other indicators also pointing toward over-confidence suggests M&amp;amp;A could be an outlier in this respect, says Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco.</p> <p>M&amp;amp;A is &#8220;more positive than negative right now,&#8221; Massocca said. &#8220;If everything was over-euphoric, and people were more and more positive, then I would think it is a more dangerous indicator than it is today.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; editing by Diane Craft</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain should press for an independent U.N.-led investigation into the suspected chemical attack in Syria rather than wait for instructions from the U.S. President Donald Trump on how to proceed, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said.</p> Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain's Labour Party, speaks at the launch of their local election campaign, in London, April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <p>Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria. Corbyn has said parliament should be consulted before any military action.</p> <p>&#8220;The government appears to be waiting for instructions from President Donald Trump on how to proceed,&#8221; the Labour Party leader said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;Britain should press for an independent U.N.-led investigation of last weekend&#8217;s horrific chemical weapons attack so that those responsible can be held to account.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Alison Williams</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Judge won't toss suit over AARP's promotion of UnitedHealth insurance Trump weighs Syria options, Russia envoy says he 'cannot exclude' war Philippines' watchdog probes Facebook over Cambridge Analytica data breach Deal-making spike seen as positive sign for U.S. stock market, for now UK should press for U.N.-led investigation in Syria: opposition leader Corbyn

https://reuters.com/article/health-aarp/judge-wont-toss-suit-over-aarps-promotion-of-unitedhealth-insurance-idUSL1N1PD2C0

2018-01-18

2least

AARP the lobbying group for older Americans has lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that it had improperly acted as an unlicensed insurance agent by soliciting purchases for a type of health insurance policy offered by UnitedHealth Group Inc US District Judge Dean Pregerson in Los Angeles on Tuesday rejected AARP and UnitedHealth8217s arguments that California law barred the lawsuit because the state8217s insurance regulator had in reviewing the policy8217s rates known about the payments To read the full story on WestlawNext Practitioner Insights click here bitly2EW6kRR Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONUNITED NATIONS Reuters President Donald Trump and his national security aides on Thursday discussed US options on Syria where he has threatened missile strikes in response to a suspected poison gas attack as a Russian envoy voiced fears of wider conflict between Washington and Moscow Worries about a confrontation between Russia Syria8217s big ally and the West have been running high since Trump said on Wednesday that missiles 8220will be coming8221 in response to the attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7 and lambasted Moscow for standing by Syrian President Bashar alAssad Trump tempered those remarks on Thursday and even as he consulted allies such and Britain and France who could join in any USled strikes on Syria there were signs of efforts to prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control 8220Never said when an attack on Syria would take place Could be very soon or not so soon at all8221 Trump wrote on Twitter raising the prospect that an attack might not be as imminent as he seemed to suggest the day before Trump met his national security team on the situation in Syria later in the day and 8220no final decision has been made8221 the White House said in a statement 8220We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies8221 it said Related Coverage Russia deputy PM says international relations should not depend on one persons mood UK should press for UNled investigation in Syria opposition leader Corbyn Factbox Assads foreign backers in Syrias war That did not necessarily signal however that Trump was cooling to the idea of military action especially given the high stakes in Syria US officials noted that Washington was still assessing intelligence and coordinating allies For graphic on overview of chemical warfare click here Trump spoke to British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday and the two leaders talked about the 8220need for a joint response to Syria8217s use of chemical weapons8221 the White House said May8217s office said they agreed on the need to deter Assad8217s government from further such attacks Trump was also due to speak with French President Emmanuel Macron who said France had proof the Syrian government carried out the attack near Damascus which aid groups have said killed dozens of people and will decide whether to strike back when all the necessary information has been gathered 8220We have proof that last week chemical weapons were used at least with chlorine and that they were used by the regime of Bashar alAssad8221 Macron said without offering details of any evidence Two US officials familiar with an investigation of samples from Douma and the symptoms of victims said initial indications that a mix of weaponized chlorine gas and sarin were used in the attack appeared to be correct But US intelligence agencies have not completed their assessment or reached a final conclusion the officials said Russia Syria and its other main backer Iran have said reports of the Douma attack were fabricated by rebels and rescue workers and have accused the United States of seeking to use it as a pretext to attack the Syrian government Russia said it deployed military police in Douma on Thursday after the town was taken over by government forces 8220They are the guarantors of law and order in the town8221 RIA news agency quoted Russia8217s defense ministry as saying There were signs of a global effort to head off a direct confrontation between Russia and the West The Kremlin said a crisis communications link with the United States created to avoid an accidental clash over Syria was in use FEARS OF WAR Vassily Nebenzia Moscow8217s ambassador to the United Nations said he 8220cannot exclude8221 war between the United States and Russia and urged Washington and its allies to refrain from military action against Syria 8220The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war8221 he told reporters 8220We hope there will be no point of no return8221 the envoy said A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations on Saturday the Netherlandsbased agency said It was not clear whether Trump and US allies would wait for the results of the investigation before deciding on a strike US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with governors and members of Congress at the White House in Washington US April 12 2018 REUTERSKevin Lamarque US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he believed there was a chemical attack in Syria but added a short while later that the United States had not made any decision to launch military action He also suggested he was examining ways to prevent any strikes from triggering a broader conflict 8220I don8217t want to talk about a specific attack that is not yet in the offing This would be predecisional8221 Mattis told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee Moscow is estimated to have dozens of aircraft at its Hmeymim air base in Syria including fighters and bombers as well as 10 to 15 warships and support vessels in the Mediterranean The Syrian government and Russian forces in Syria possess truckmounted surfacetoair missile and antiaircraft artillery weapons systems Nervous world stock markets showed signs of recovery after Trump8217s signal that military strikes might not be imminent Britain8217s May won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria Slideshow 3 Images May had recalled the ministers from their Easter holiday for the meeting to discuss Britain8217s response to what she has cast as a barbaric attack that cannot go unchallenged Russian ships had left the Tartus naval base in Syria Interfax news agency quoted a Russian lawmaker as saying Vladimir Shamanov who chairs the defense committee of the lower house said the vessels had departed the base for their own safety which was 8220normal practice8221 when there were threats of attack Any US strike would probably involve the Navy given the risk to aircraft from Russian and Syrian air defenses A US guidedmissile destroyer the USS Donald Cook is in the Mediterranean Last year the United States carried out strikes from two Navy destroyers against a Syrian air base after another deadly toxic gas attack on a rebelcontrolled area Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut William James Guy Faulconbridge and David Milliken in London Andrew Osborn Maria Kiselyova and Jack Stubbs in Moscow John Irish in Paris Graham Fahy in Dublin and John Walcott Phil Stewart Matt Spetalnick and Idrees Ali in Washington Writing by Alistair Bell and Matt Spetalnick Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MANILA Reuters The Philippines8217 privacy watchdog said on Friday it has started investigating Facebook Inc FBO over a data breach involving British firm Cambridge Analytica that affected more than a million Filipino users of social media FILE PHOTO Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28 2018 REUTERSDado RuvicIllustrationFile photo The move follows a decision by European Union privacy watchdogs to look deeper into the harvesting of personal data from social networks for economic or political purposes Outside the United States the Philippines had the largest amount of user data acquired by Cambridge Analytica with 117 million accounts in the country affected the National Privacy Commission NPC said last week In a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dated April 11 the NPC said it would look into how Facebook shares personal data of Filipino users with third parties and demand concrete action to protect their data privacy rights 8220We are launching an investigation into Facebook to determine whether there is unauthorized processing of personal data of Filipinos and other possible violations of the Data Privacy Act8221 it said in the letter made available to the media on Friday A Facebook spokesperson said the company is committed to protecting people8217s information and is engaged with the Philippines8217 privacy watchdog 8220We8217ve recently made significant updates to make ouramp160privacy tools easier to findamp160restrict data access on Facebook andamp160make our terms and data policy clearer8221 Facebook said Recent research has shown Filipinos to be among the most active social media users in the world spending on average more than four hours a day on platforms like Facebook Facebook has admitted that personal data of nearly 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica which has counted US President Donald Trump8217s election campaign among its clients A Hong Kong newspaper has said several people involved in President Rodrigo Duterte8217s 2016 election campaign had met in 2015 with Alexander Nix the nowsuspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica Facebook Inc 16387 FBO Nasdaq FBO Those officials said the meeting with Nix was during a lunch break at an information technology seminar in Manila and there has been no contact since The president8217s spokesman said on Tuesday that Duterte8217s election campaign did not rely on information bought from anybody nor did it hire Cambridge Analytica8217s services Duterte a former mayor from outside of the sphere of national politics successfully tapped Filipinos8217 insatiable appetite for social media to help him win a 2016 election by a huge margin His office uses social media with gusto courting popular bloggers in some cases hiring them to promote Duterte and discredit his opponents and amplifying the message through 8220shares8221 and 8220likes8221 Duterte however has said he does not need social media and on Friday denied any links to Cambridge Analytica 8220Why will I pay those Cambridge fools to work on my campaign I could have lost with that8221 Duterte told reporters Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales Editing by Martin Petty and Eric Meijer Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Investors are optimistic that a pickup in corporate acquisitions stands to support the volatile US stock market and does not represent a worrisome cyclical sign Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 5 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Global mergers and acquisitions have had their strongest start to a year ever according to data from Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence The 123 trillion in firstquarter global dealmaking came in just shy of the 131 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2015 which on a quarterly basis marked a multiyear high However heightened dealmaking could be an ominous signal if it suggests companies are desperate to find growth as the economic expansion winds down or if it indicates a euphoria echoed among stock investors For example global MampampA on a quarterly basis hit multiyear peaks in 2000 and in 2007 preceding sustained stock market declines But market watchers told Reuters they see other reasons for the latest rise in mergers and acquisitions 8211 including incentives from US tax reform and the desire to take advantage of still relatively low interest rates 8211 and instead view the MampampA pop as positive for stocks 8220It8217s a sign we8217re late in the cycle and it eventually gets worrisome8221 said Jeffrey Kleintop chief global investment strategist at Charles Schwab in Boston 8220But in the near term it8217s probably a plus in that you get deal premiums and more money employed in taking equity out8221 For an interactive graphic on global dealmaking click here At a time when some on Wall Street worry stocks are trading at expensive valuation levels investors said the willingness by companies to make purchases is encouraging 8220To the extent you can get cash deals done it provides a lot of support for the market8221 said Rick Meckler president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City New Jersey 8220It takes out equities where holders are likely to reinvest in other stocks and helps reestablish that the prices that stocks are trading at are not too high8221 Global quarterly dealmaking hit a record 142 trillion in the second quarter of 2007 Several months later the SampampP 500 began a decline that eventually cut the benchmark index by more than half as the US economy sank into one of the worst recessions in decades King Lip chief investment strategist at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco recalls that 2007 MampampA spree as fueled by debt and at the time there were other signs the economic expansion cycle was ending as opposed to now 8220I just think we are not at that point in the cycle8221 Lip said 8220I still think we are midcycle in terms of this recovery8221 Indeed investors point to overall strength in the economy including SampampP 500 profits expected to rise about 20 percent this year Another factor that separates the current climate is the recently enacted US tax law which cuts the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and includes a tax break for multinational companies to bring back profits stored overseas 8220I just view this increase in MampampA more so related to the increased levels of cash that tax reform is producing8221 said Lindsey Bell investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York While the spike in dealmaking can indicate too much euphoria in the market the lack of other indicators also pointing toward overconfidence suggests MampampA could be an outlier in this respect says Stephen Massocca managing director at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco MampampA is 8220more positive than negative right now8221 Massocca said 8220If everything was overeuphoric and people were more and more positive then I would think it is a more dangerous indicator than it is today8221 Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf editing by Diane Craft Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain should press for an independent UNled investigation into the suspected chemical attack in Syria rather than wait for instructions from the US President Donald Trump on how to proceed opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britains Labour Party speaks at the launch of their local election campaign in London April 9 2018 REUTERSHannah McKay Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria Corbyn has said parliament should be consulted before any military action 8220The government appears to be waiting for instructions from President Donald Trump on how to proceed8221 the Labour Party leader said in a statement 8220Britain should press for an independent UNled investigation of last weekend8217s horrific chemical weapons attack so that those responsible can be held to account8221amp160 Reporting by Kate Holton Editing by Alison Williams Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Robert Pollin is Distinguished Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the <a href="http://www.peri.umass.edu" type="external">Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)</a> at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is also the founder and President of PEAR (Pollin Energy and Retrofits), an Amherst, MA-based green energy company operating throughout the United States. His books include The Living Wage: Building a Fair Economy (co-authored 1998); Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity (2003); An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for South Africa (co-authored 2007); A Measure of Fairness: The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States (co-authored 2008), Back to Full Employment (2012), Green Growth (2014), Global Green Growth (2015) and Greening the Global Economy (2015).</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. <p /> <p />As the 2012 elections draw ever nearer, the rhetoric about the cost of gasoline gets ever louder. In fact, it's emerging, apparently, as one of the major issues in the election campaign. The Republicans, led by Mr. Romney, are suggesting that if more oil was produced/drilled in the United States and more pipelines built, the cost of gas would come down. President Obama answers, well, we're already doing a lot of drilling and we are expanding the domestic supply. So what is the truth to all of this? What are the alternatives? And why is the cost of oil so high? <p /> <p />And joining us to talk about all this now is Bob Pollin. Bob is the cofounder/codirector of the PERI institute in Amherst, Massachusetts, and he joins us now from there. Thanks for joining us again, Bob. <p /> <p />ROBERT POLLIN, PROF. ECONOMICS, UMASS AMHERST: Thank you very much for having me, Paul. <p /> <p />JAY: So let's start first of all with this issue of if there was more domestic drilling and production and more pipelines, the price of gas would come down. Is there some truth to that? <p /> <p />POLLIN: No. The price of oil is spiking again, just like it spiked last summer and just like it spiked in 2008 right before the recession, and those spikes didn't have anything to do with supply and demand imbalances. The price spikes had to do with the role of speculation on the commodities futures market, which has expanded by about 400 percent relative to ten years ago. And because of the high level of speculation in the market, any small changes in supply and demand get hugely magnified. <p /> <p />So, yes, we do have right now a small-blip reduction in supply, less than 1 percent of total oil supply, due to the embargo with Iranian oil. But that less than 1 percent decrease in supply cannot itself explain this spike up in price, which is heading again towards $4 at the pump. So what happens is you have this tiny effect on supply, and then you have the oil traders trading on the expectation of the upward movement in supply, and that becomes an upward momentum that the speculators hope to see prices keeping going up, and then that feeds back in today's price. That's the same dynamic that we have experienced the last two months, that we experienced last spring, and then in 2008. <p /> <p />JAY: One thing I don't get why this isn't being more unpacked in the mainstream media is that if you increase the supply of oil production in the United States by more drilling and you get more of the Canadian tar sands oil down to American refineries and all the rest, I have not heard the Republicans suggest that they're going to have a special American price for American-produced oil. I mean, unless I'm missing something here, it's still all going to be at competitive world global prices. They're not going to create a special American market for American oil, are they? <p /> <p />POLLIN: No, of course not. So the American oil, if&#226;&#128;&#148;let's say it's roughly 10 percent of total global supply. So that means the other 90 percent is going to be set by everything else that goes on in the world, including especially the increasing significance of speculation on the commodities market, which overwhelms any small impacts relative to supply and demand adjustments. <p /> <p />JAY: Now, this whole thing, too, about supply and demand like there's some natural force at work here, we're talking about a faucet that the Saudis say over and over again they could easily make up for any loss of Iranian oil. I mean, all the OPEC producers and all the other oil producers on the whole could actually just increase their output if they wanted to. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Well, of course they could. I mean, the oil reserves now, at 42 years of proven reserves, are at its peak relative to the last 40 or 50 years. So the oil is there. <p /> <p />There are, you know, short-term issues, yes. If the Iranians say, we're going to block the Strait of Hormuz, okay, so that could create some disruption in the oil coming out of the Middle East. They have not done that, by the way. But nevertheless we've got a price spike. <p /> <p />And the price spike is based on what's going&#226;&#128;&#148;how this news gets digested via the speculation on the markets, which pushes up price. Okay. And then, when the price goes up, then speculators think the price is going to go up even further. That pushes up the futures price even more. And then today's price, the price in the market today, the spot price, follows the futures price. That's a pretty well-established pattern. <p /> <p />And this&#226;&#128;&#148;people have to understand that there has always been an oil futures market. It just that the size of this oil futures speculation is fourfold greater than it was just a decade ago. So these effects from the futures markets, the speculative market, the financialization of commodities, of oil in particular, is a new phenomenon. <p /> <p />JAY: And the other part of this supposed supply and demand&#226;&#128;&#148;I say supposed because of course it's real, but how manipulated it gets&#226;&#128;&#148;is that you have oil traders buying oil and then sticking it in oil tankers floating at sea, dozens, perhaps hundreds. I mean, I have yet to have been able to find an exact number, because I talked to a guy who ran this operation for Texaco, and it's a big secret how many oil tankers are at sea&#226;&#128;&#148;at least a secret from the general public. I suppose people in the business know how to find out about it. But they just let the oil sit in tankers waiting for future contract dates, and they know that these future contract dates are a higher price than today's spot market, and then they deliver the boats then. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Yeah. So, of course, I mean, why wouldn't you do that? If the price today is $100 a barrel and we already have futures contracts at $105, that's a 5 percent return just by letting the oil sit in the tanker for a month. So that's the kind of thing that's going on, and those are the things that are&#226;&#128;&#148;those effects are being pulled by the fact that we have this hyperspeculative oils futures market. <p /> <p />JAY: And what do you make of President Obama's response? Because I know he's mentioned speculation. He sort of had a few nods in the direction that it should be investigated even by Eric Holder, but nothing has happened. But on the whole he seems to kind of accept the logic, yes, we need to produce more domestic oil. He adds to that, and alternative energy sources, which the Republicans don't say much of. But he doesn't actually talk, really, about the issue of speculation, about position limits, the whole financialization, as you say. We don't hear much of any of that from him. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Well, the reason, of course, is because there's a lot of money being made on Wall Street doing the kind of oil speculation that we're talking about. So it is an extremely volatile political issue. It is being&#226;&#128;&#148;we've talked about it before&#226;&#128;&#148;it's been fought over. You know, the Dodd&#226;&#128;&#147;Frank financial regulatory law that was put in place in 2010 on paper has some fairly decent, strong regulations as regards the commodities futures market. <p /> <p />But what has been fought over ever since the thing got passed in June or July 2010 is how exactly we implement these laws. And that is still being fought over. And Wall Street, of course, is not going to go down without a big fight, because they don't want to have this extremely lucrative market regulated, and Obama is trying to stay out of that fight. And most people don't understand what's going on. That's why it's very important that you all have been covering this almost alone among independent journalistic outlets. So that's&#226;&#128;&#148;I mean, these are extremely important issues. <p /> <p />And the impact of the speculative market far swamps what could actually happen as result of drilling in Alaska for building the pipeline. The effects of those things, of course, in any case, are only going to occur over a matter of several years, and meanwhile we don't see any significant supply and demand imbalances. <p /> <p />And, also, the thing that we should be doing, if we really are concerned about disruptive oil supplies, is start thinking about building a more energy-efficient economy. That's the biggest source of control that we can develop over the problems with the oil market. <p /> <p />JAY: Well, that's another piece of this that rarely gets talked about, which is: what is the real cost of oil? I mean, we know there's this speculative influence, we know the manipulation of markets through supply and demand and manipulation of supply and demand, but there's a whole another piece to this, which is the cost of a carbon oil based economy that isn't taken into account, because the rest of society pays in many other ways, but not directly in how it affects the price of oil. So what is that all about? <p /> <p />POLLIN: Well, what it's really all about is&#226;&#128;&#148;obviously, this is extremely unpopular position, and Romney has already said he's going to pounce on Obama on this point, which is: the price of oil should be higher. The price of oil should be higher to reflect the social costs, the environmental costs of consuming oil and emitting greenhouse gas emissions and creating global warming. So that needs to happen. <p /> <p />Now, it is&#226;&#128;&#148;I mean, Romney has already said this is one of his top five issues running against Obama, that he's going to say that Obama wants the price of oil to be higher. <p /> <p />Now, I don't really know what Obama wants. I do know that over time the price of oil in the United States should be higher. But at the same time that the price of oil should be higher, it shouldn't be higher as a result of the power of Wall Street, of the financialization of the commodities market. It should be higher as a result of trying to control for greenhouse gas emissions, so at the same time that we are raising the price of oil and other fossil fuels, we also need to be much more aggressive in terms of building out much more energy efficiency measures that are easy to do, that are at our fingertips, and investing increasingly in renewable energy. <p /> <p />JAY: I mean, if you took out the superprofits being made through speculation and manipulation, maybe you don't even need a higher price of oil; you just need that difference to go into developing alternative energy sources, if you could eliminate this skinning the cat two and three times that takes place now. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Well, okay. We should eliminate the skinning the cat. But we also should have a price of oil&#226;&#128;&#148;. I mean, you know, in Europe and the rest of the world, people pay&#226;&#128;&#148;I mean, we're paying $4 a gallon now, and the rest of the world, it's probably in the range of $5 to $6, and most of that is the tax that reflects the fact that they&#226;&#128;&#148;countries, other countries, don't want to have people consuming so much petroleum. They're not suppliers themselves, and they recognize the social costs embedded in burning fossil fuels much more than we do. <p /> <p />JAY: But it's a fairly regressive tax, isn't it? I mean, ordinary people that have to get to work, in terms of the percentage of their income they spend on transportation&#226;&#128;&#148;. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Yes, obviously. So we would have to have some compensation. I mean, my colleague here at UMass, Jim Boyce, has actually developed agenda for having a tax on fossil fuels, and more generally on carbon emissions, but then having the money that is earned by the tax rebated back to people on a per capita basis, which would then make it actually very progressive, and it would not be very hard to implement. That's one idea. <p /> <p />The other idea, you know, when the price of oil goes up, you do get some adjustment in terms of efficiency. People do start using public transportation more. The trouble is that for the most part our public transportation systems aren't any good. And the argument about that is, oh, yes, yes, it'll take forever to build, you know, another great subway system like New York. Maybe. But, you know, buying buses and putting more buses on the road is actually something that we could do very quickly. And if you have decent bus lines, more people would use public transportation. <p /> <p />I mean, in Japan last year, as a result of the embargoing of Iranian oil, they actually cut oil consumption by about 20 percent, even though they had actually also had to cut their nuclear power because of the disaster there. <p /> <p />So there are a lot of opportunities for increasing energy efficiency in a pretty rapid way if we would just kind of get focused on it and see it as the first solution within the framework of problems that we have. <p /> <p />JAY: Of course, the fossil fuel industry ain't so keen on efforts in that direction, and they seem to have been quite successful up till now to slowing it down. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Yeah. Well, they're there. That's for sure. So that's&#226;&#128;&#148;we have to fight that. And, you know, I mean, they, obviously, the fossil fuel industry&#226;&#128;&#148;. The fossil fuel industry, by the way, the oil companies don't particularly like the Wall Street traders skimming off what they deem is their proper profits and them getting portrayed as the bad guys alone, the oil companies, when in fact some of it is coming out of the speculators. So there may be opportunities to find fractures between various segments of business on this point. After all, Ben Bernanke has said that, you know, he desperately doesn't want to see another oil spike. And neither does Obama. So maybe this is something that, you know, we can get focused on, at least for the short term, is recognizing the centrality of oil speculators in spiking the price of oil now. <p /> <p />JAY: Thanks for joining us, Bob. <p /> <p />POLLIN: Okay. Thank you very much, Paul. <p /> <p />JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. <p /> <p />End <p /> <p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Will Pumping More American Oil Lower Gas Price?

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D8153

2012-04-03

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Robert Pollin is Distinguished Professor of Economics and CoDirector of the Political Economy Research Institute PERI at the University of MassachusettsAmherst He is also the founder and President of PEAR Pollin Energy and Retrofits an Amherst MAbased green energy company operating throughout the United States His books include The Living Wage Building a Fair Economy coauthored 1998 Contours of Descent US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity 2003 An EmploymentTargeted Economic Program for South Africa coauthored 2007 A Measure of Fairness The Economics of Living Wages and Minimum Wages in the United States coauthored 2008 Back to Full Employment 2012 Green Growth 2014 Global Green Growth 2015 and Greening the Global Economy 2015 PAUL JAY SENIOR EDITOR TRNN Welcome to The Real News Network Im Paul Jay in Washington As the 2012 elections draw ever nearer the rhetoric about the cost of gasoline gets ever louder In fact its emerging apparently as one of the major issues in the election campaign The Republicans led by Mr Romney are suggesting that if more oil was produceddrilled in the United States and more pipelines built the cost of gas would come down President Obama answers well were already doing a lot of drilling and we are expanding the domestic supply So what is the truth to all of this What are the alternatives And why is the cost of oil so high And joining us to talk about all this now is Bob Pollin Bob is the cofoundercodirector of the PERI institute in Amherst Massachusetts and he joins us now from there Thanks for joining us again Bob ROBERT POLLIN PROF ECONOMICS UMASS AMHERST Thank you very much for having me Paul JAY So lets start first of all with this issue of if there was more domestic drilling and production and more pipelines the price of gas would come down Is there some truth to that POLLIN No The price of oil is spiking again just like it spiked last summer and just like it spiked in 2008 right before the recession and those spikes didnt have anything to do with supply and demand imbalances The price spikes had to do with the role of speculation on the commodities futures market which has expanded by about 400 percent relative to ten years ago And because of the high level of speculation in the market any small changes in supply and demand get hugely magnified So yes we do have right now a smallblip reduction in supply less than 1 percent of total oil supply due to the embargo with Iranian oil But that less than 1 percent decrease in supply cannot itself explain this spike up in price which is heading again towards 4 at the pump So what happens is you have this tiny effect on supply and then you have the oil traders trading on the expectation of the upward movement in supply and that becomes an upward momentum that the speculators hope to see prices keeping going up and then that feeds back in todays price Thats the same dynamic that we have experienced the last two months that we experienced last spring and then in 2008 JAY One thing I dont get why this isnt being more unpacked in the mainstream media is that if you increase the supply of oil production in the United States by more drilling and you get more of the Canadian tar sands oil down to American refineries and all the rest I have not heard the Republicans suggest that theyre going to have a special American price for Americanproduced oil I mean unless Im missing something here its still all going to be at competitive world global prices Theyre not going to create a special American market for American oil are they POLLIN No of course not So the American oil if226128148lets say its roughly 10 percent of total global supply So that means the other 90 percent is going to be set by everything else that goes on in the world including especially the increasing significance of speculation on the commodities market which overwhelms any small impacts relative to supply and demand adjustments JAY Now this whole thing too about supply and demand like theres some natural force at work here were talking about a faucet that the Saudis say over and over again they could easily make up for any loss of Iranian oil I mean all the OPEC producers and all the other oil producers on the whole could actually just increase their output if they wanted to POLLIN Well of course they could I mean the oil reserves now at 42 years of proven reserves are at its peak relative to the last 40 or 50 years So the oil is there There are you know shortterm issues yes If the Iranians say were going to block the Strait of Hormuz okay so that could create some disruption in the oil coming out of the Middle East They have not done that by the way But nevertheless weve got a price spike And the price spike is based on whats going226128148how this news gets digested via the speculation on the markets which pushes up price Okay And then when the price goes up then speculators think the price is going to go up even further That pushes up the futures price even more And then todays price the price in the market today the spot price follows the futures price Thats a pretty wellestablished pattern And this226128148people have to understand that there has always been an oil futures market It just that the size of this oil futures speculation is fourfold greater than it was just a decade ago So these effects from the futures markets the speculative market the financialization of commodities of oil in particular is a new phenomenon JAY And the other part of this supposed supply and demand226128148I say supposed because of course its real but how manipulated it gets226128148is that you have oil traders buying oil and then sticking it in oil tankers floating at sea dozens perhaps hundreds I mean I have yet to have been able to find an exact number because I talked to a guy who ran this operation for Texaco and its a big secret how many oil tankers are at sea226128148at least a secret from the general public I suppose people in the business know how to find out about it But they just let the oil sit in tankers waiting for future contract dates and they know that these future contract dates are a higher price than todays spot market and then they deliver the boats then POLLIN Yeah So of course I mean why wouldnt you do that If the price today is 100 a barrel and we already have futures contracts at 105 thats a 5 percent return just by letting the oil sit in the tanker for a month So thats the kind of thing thats going on and those are the things that are226128148those effects are being pulled by the fact that we have this hyperspeculative oils futures market JAY And what do you make of President Obamas response Because I know hes mentioned speculation He sort of had a few nods in the direction that it should be investigated even by Eric Holder but nothing has happened But on the whole he seems to kind of accept the logic yes we need to produce more domestic oil He adds to that and alternative energy sources which the Republicans dont say much of But he doesnt actually talk really about the issue of speculation about position limits the whole financialization as you say We dont hear much of any of that from him POLLIN Well the reason of course is because theres a lot of money being made on Wall Street doing the kind of oil speculation that were talking about So it is an extremely volatile political issue It is being226128148weve talked about it before226128148its been fought over You know the Dodd226128147Frank financial regulatory law that was put in place in 2010 on paper has some fairly decent strong regulations as regards the commodities futures market But what has been fought over ever since the thing got passed in June or July 2010 is how exactly we implement these laws And that is still being fought over And Wall Street of course is not going to go down without a big fight because they dont want to have this extremely lucrative market regulated and Obama is trying to stay out of that fight And most people dont understand whats going on Thats why its very important that you all have been covering this almost alone among independent journalistic outlets So thats226128148I mean these are extremely important issues And the impact of the speculative market far swamps what could actually happen as result of drilling in Alaska for building the pipeline The effects of those things of course in any case are only going to occur over a matter of several years and meanwhile we dont see any significant supply and demand imbalances And also the thing that we should be doing if we really are concerned about disruptive oil supplies is start thinking about building a more energyefficient economy Thats the biggest source of control that we can develop over the problems with the oil market JAY Well thats another piece of this that rarely gets talked about which is what is the real cost of oil I mean we know theres this speculative influence we know the manipulation of markets through supply and demand and manipulation of supply and demand but theres a whole another piece to this which is the cost of a carbon oil based economy that isnt taken into account because the rest of society pays in many other ways but not directly in how it affects the price of oil So what is that all about POLLIN Well what its really all about is226128148obviously this is extremely unpopular position and Romney has already said hes going to pounce on Obama on this point which is the price of oil should be higher The price of oil should be higher to reflect the social costs the environmental costs of consuming oil and emitting greenhouse gas emissions and creating global warming So that needs to happen Now it is226128148I mean Romney has already said this is one of his top five issues running against Obama that hes going to say that Obama wants the price of oil to be higher Now I dont really know what Obama wants I do know that over time the price of oil in the United States should be higher But at the same time that the price of oil should be higher it shouldnt be higher as a result of the power of Wall Street of the financialization of the commodities market It should be higher as a result of trying to control for greenhouse gas emissions so at the same time that we are raising the price of oil and other fossil fuels we also need to be much more aggressive in terms of building out much more energy efficiency measures that are easy to do that are at our fingertips and investing increasingly in renewable energy JAY I mean if you took out the superprofits being made through speculation and manipulation maybe you dont even need a higher price of oil you just need that difference to go into developing alternative energy sources if you could eliminate this skinning the cat two and three times that takes place now POLLIN Well okay We should eliminate the skinning the cat But we also should have a price of oil226128148 I mean you know in Europe and the rest of the world people pay226128148I mean were paying 4 a gallon now and the rest of the world its probably in the range of 5 to 6 and most of that is the tax that reflects the fact that they226128148countries other countries dont want to have people consuming so much petroleum Theyre not suppliers themselves and they recognize the social costs embedded in burning fossil fuels much more than we do JAY But its a fairly regressive tax isnt it I mean ordinary people that have to get to work in terms of the percentage of their income they spend on transportation226128148 POLLIN Yes obviously So we would have to have some compensation I mean my colleague here at UMass Jim Boyce has actually developed agenda for having a tax on fossil fuels and more generally on carbon emissions but then having the money that is earned by the tax rebated back to people on a per capita basis which would then make it actually very progressive and it would not be very hard to implement Thats one idea The other idea you know when the price of oil goes up you do get some adjustment in terms of efficiency People do start using public transportation more The trouble is that for the most part our public transportation systems arent any good And the argument about that is oh yes yes itll take forever to build you know another great subway system like New York Maybe But you know buying buses and putting more buses on the road is actually something that we could do very quickly And if you have decent bus lines more people would use public transportation I mean in Japan last year as a result of the embargoing of Iranian oil they actually cut oil consumption by about 20 percent even though they had actually also had to cut their nuclear power because of the disaster there So there are a lot of opportunities for increasing energy efficiency in a pretty rapid way if we would just kind of get focused on it and see it as the first solution within the framework of problems that we have JAY Of course the fossil fuel industry aint so keen on efforts in that direction and they seem to have been quite successful up till now to slowing it down POLLIN Yeah Well theyre there Thats for sure So thats226128148we have to fight that And you know I mean they obviously the fossil fuel industry226128148 The fossil fuel industry by the way the oil companies dont particularly like the Wall Street traders skimming off what they deem is their proper profits and them getting portrayed as the bad guys alone the oil companies when in fact some of it is coming out of the speculators So there may be opportunities to find fractures between various segments of business on this point After all Ben Bernanke has said that you know he desperately doesnt want to see another oil spike And neither does Obama So maybe this is something that you know we can get focused on at least for the short term is recognizing the centrality of oil speculators in spiking the price of oil now JAY Thanks for joining us Bob POLLIN Okay Thank you very much Paul JAY And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network End DISCLAIMER Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy

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<p /> <p /> <p /> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>&#8212; <a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&amp;amp;cid=514&amp;amp;e=1&amp;amp;u=/ap/20030802/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_1365" type="external">The Associated Press</a></p> <p>Of course, the view from Bremer&#8217;s heavily fortified office undoubtedly leaves something to be desired when it comes to assessing Iraqi public opinion. A better assessment might start with the blowing up of a key oil pipeline in Northern Iraq yesterday or the unexpected upsurge in attacks &#8212; at least 8 in less than 24 hours &#8212; in Western Iraq reported by <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13434-2003Aug1?language=printer" type="external">The Washington Post&#8216;s reliable Anthony Shadid</a>:</p> <p /> <p>Last night, I made it to the TV news for the first time in two weeks and there was Chairman Bremer swearing we were making &#8220;progress&#8221; in Iraq. I thought after two TV-less weeks that I had stumbled through a time warp or a worm hole directly into the late 1960s. Honestly, what this administration needs, minimally, is me. I could, at least, vet their spin dictionaries for them. Somebody certainly should. I could remind them that there&#8217;s nothing more dangerous than announcing &#8220;progress&#8221; when you face the unknown amid obvious catastrophe. That&#8217;s a Vietnam lesson simple enough even for these guys to grasp &#8212; or so you would think.</p> <p>Robert Fisk of The Independent manages to <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3515705&amp;amp;thesection=news&amp;amp;thesubsection=dialogue" type="external">dismantle several of the recent announcements of &#8220;progress&#8221;</a>. He deals, for instance, with the claims of a revived oil industry this way:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>&#8230;</p> <p>Take the oil production figures. Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, even chose to use these statistics in his &#8216;great day for Iraq&#8217; press conference last week, the one in which he announced that 200 soldiers in Mosul had killed the sons of Saddam rather than take them prisoner. But Sanchez was talking rubbish. Although oil production was indeed standing at 900,000 barrels per day in June (albeit 100,000bpd fewer than the Sanchez version), it fell last month to 750,000.</p> <p>&#8230;</p> <p>Why don&#8217;t the occupation authorities realise that Iraq cannot be &#8216;spun&#8217;? This country is living a tragedy of epic proportions, and now &#8211; after its descent into hell under Saddam &#8211; we are doomed to suffer its contagion. By our hubris and by our lies and our fantasies we are descending into the pit.&#8221;</p> <p>By the way, should you be interested in what could be done for the Iraqi oil industry, you might consider a piece in the Guardian by Ghazi Sabir-Ali, former chairman and managing director of the North Oil Company under Saddam. He describes how the looted and destroyed northern fields were rebuilt in the wake of the first Gulf War &#8212; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1010056,00.html" type="external">but of course by Iraqis</a>. His piece begins and ends this way:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>&#8230;</p> <p>Many of those men [who rebuilt oil production in the north], and many others like them, are still in Iraq. They remain capable, as they were in 1991, of planning and executing the necessary repairs to our battered country, if they are given a free hand. There is no need for foreign companies to take control. Iraqi oil revenue should go to Iraqis, who should then be left in peace to set their country to rights.&#8221;</p> <p>Here&#8217;s the problem: Once you start down the path of &#8220;progress,&#8221; when that progress is largely spin (even if in part you&#8217;re spinning yourself), every step is likely to involve unexpected and unintended complications and consequences. Let&#8217;s take, for instance, the &#8220;hunt&#8221; for Saddam Hussein. (&#8220;We&#8217;re on the hunt,&#8221; the president assured Americans at his press conference last week.) Just the other day American troops &#8220;bagged&#8221; his two sons thanks to enough fire power to wipe out a battalion. The death of the sons was supposed to lead to a triumphant lessening of attacks (though three Americans died in ambushes yesterday) and Saddam&#8217;s death would then more or less lead to their cessation &#8212; and, of course, the terrified people of Iraq would finally be free to praise us without fear.</p> <p>Admittedly, Saddam is not yet in our hands, or perhaps in the far more capable &#8220;hands&#8221; of a TOW missile, but we are assured, and then reassured, and then assured yet again that the &#8220;noose is tightening.&#8221; The only thing is it&#8217;s not only around Saddam that it&#8217;s tightening. The tighter this administration tries to pull that noose the tighter it also seems to gather around the administration. (Note, by the way, that in imagistic terms you have two good old western images fighting for metaphorical daylight: the hunt for dangerous wild animals and vigilante justice by means of a rope.)</p> <p>A recent piece in the Boston Globe <a href="http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/213/nation/US_debates_bid_to_kill_Hussein_and_avoid_trialP.shtml" type="external">reveals that a &#8220;fierce debate&#8221; is taking place</a> within the administration as the &#8220;noose&#8221; tightens. The piece reads in part:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>&#8230;</p> <p>Washington supported Hussein&#8217;s regime during Iraq&#8217;s war against Iran between 1980 and 1988 &#8212; including providing satellite images of Iranian military formations &#8212; at a time when Iraqi forces used chemical weapons against troops and civilians.&#8221;</p> <p>And the Teheran Times ( <a href="http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=7/30/03&amp;amp;Cat=2&amp;amp;Num=022" type="external">has this to add</a>:</p> <p /> <p>Call that a signal from the front lines in Washington, from those discussions that, not surprisingly, Dick and Don just happen to have taken part in. (&#8220;Look at Dick. Dick picks up a Tow missile. Look at Saddam. Look quickly. He may not be there long.&#8221;) Of course, if they don&#8217;t wipe the man off the face of the Earth, he could come back to haunt our leaders. Both the vice president and the secretary of defense were deeply involved in supporting the Great Satan back when he was the Great Bulwark against the Great Satan of Khomeini&#8217;s Iran, and that, of course, was after the Shah of Iran was the Great Bulwark against the Great Satan of&#8230; but never mind. Certainly, the great hypocrisy of this administration has not been the lies that got us into war, but the fact that everything that was meant to terrify us about Saddam&#8217;s regime, including the killing fields of &#8217;91, could in some way be traceable back to the very men (or their mentors) who led us into this war, a point that until now has gained less than zero traction in our media (but that is not exactly unknown to &#8220;grateful&#8221; Iraqis).</p> <p>If they do find him (after all, Iraq is not exactly China when it comes to size) and kill him to wipe out the living evidence, that will only create other problems &#8212; and other suspicions. In the meantime, we will undoubtedly continue to speak of Saddam as if he were &#8220;a prize elk,&#8221; in the words of Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun, whose Sunday column <a href="http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_aug3.html" type="external">sums up what we might be found culpable for</a> in any future trial of the Elk.</p> <p>I have no idea whether our men in Baghdad will bag the former ruler, who should indeed stand trial before the world as a human monster who committed both war crimes and crimes against humanity. What I do know is that that noose is slowly, ever so quietly tightening here at home. Iraq, I believe, is the fulcrum on which this administration&#8217;s imperial global (and domestic) policies are likely to founder. The problem, already quite clear, is that our men in Washington, who never imagined an &#8220;exit strategy&#8221; from Iraq, can&#8217;t imagine leaving but can&#8217;t afford to stay either. The citing of &#8220;progress&#8221; might buy time, measured perhaps in months, but time is only valuable if you can do something with it.</p> <p>We who oppose empire have to understand that, for reasons deeply entrenched in the situation in Iraq and in Washington, none of this is going away any time soon. We need to have patience. Who can really predict who will fall, or when, or how, but the pressure on this administration will surely become fiercer in time, and under inexorable pressure those easy lies that got us into war can only lead to further lies that pass briefly for explanations but in the end pull the noose tighter&#8230; and tighter&#8230; and so on until&#8230; well, just until&#8230;</p> <p>Already we have hilarious photos of what Saddam might look like today. Saddam in burnoose etc. I wish they had set me on this one too. There are a number of other Saddams I might have liked to create. And, of course, if they do find him and exterminate their brute, they will have their brief &#8220;day&#8221; of glorious spin and then they&#8217;ll look around from the windows of Bremer&#8217;s office, and find themselves hardly less trapped than before. If they can&#8217;t find Saddam, then all this bluster and all those silly photos will become so much black comedy &#8212; I can already see the political cartoons &#8212; and no administration can live with that for too long. Watching these guys trying to put the brakes on, while skidding near the edge on the far side of the mountain is a bit like watching the Gong Show as imperial policy &#8212; but here&#8217;s the problem: right now, there&#8217;s no giant hook to pull these guys off stage.</p> <p>And let&#8217;s face it, the assessments of this administration &#8212; and here I don&#8217;t mean the lies they put forward to scare the American people into war, but the ones they believed, that they convinced themselves of &#8212; have proved disastrously off the mark. They may in the end come a cropper for the lies they knowingly told, but at a deeper level what they will surely pay most for is the way they deluded themselves before even bothering with us. We now know, for instance, that this administration, which claimed it wasn&#8217;t willing to turn our best wmd intelligence over to the UN inspectors (for fear it would leak to the Iraqis), actually had none of any consequence to offer. They were simply betting on the assumption that Saddam must have WMD because he once did. As it turned out, he double-crossed them and so they&#8217;re already re-spinning this one &#8212; if he didn&#8217;t have the weapons, <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=430101" type="external">he at least must have had WMD &#8220;programs,&#8221;</a> as a piece in The Independent indicates.</p> <p>Just as disastrously, they believed the occupation of beaten Iraq would be a snap and that, with low levels of troops left in the country, they could float not just the occupation and reconstruction of the country, but possibly the rebuilding of the whole Middle East to their specifications, on Iraqi oil.</p> <p>With that in mind, when Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki said before the war that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for an occupation, the Pentagon neocons practically drummed him out of the service amid derisive hoots. Now&#8230; well, need I say more?</p> <p>No less strikingly, as Peter Spiegel of the British Financial Times wrote recently <a href="http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&amp;amp;c=StoryFT&amp;amp;cid=1059478627517&amp;amp;p=1012571727162" type="external">the war&#8217;s price tag keeps climbing</a>.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>&#8230;</p> <p>But people who have been briefed on the Pentagon&#8217;s budgeting process said that the Defense Department is burning through its funds so quickly &#8212; $3.9bn per month &#8212; that it will need a new supplemental appropriation as early as January. Indeed, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, Dov Zackheim, the Pentagon&#8217;s comptroller, said the US military was expected to have spent $58bn of the $62bn it received in the April spending bill by the end of the year.&#8221;</p> <p>Just the other day, Reuters reports, Bremer announced, that &#8220; <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_326173,001300180038.htm" type="external">rebuilding the country could require anywhere from $50 billion to $100 billion</a> of outside money over the next couple of years. Paul Bremer, in an interview with CNBC&#8217;s Capital Report, said that for at least the next few years &#8216;we&#8217;re going to have to spend a lot more money than we&#8217;re going to get revenues even once we get oil production back to pre-war levels.'&#8221;</p> <p>Those figures will undoubtedly prove low, but even they far exceed anything this administration is likely to get its hands on. What I wonder is this: Other than the relative speed of the war itself, what have they been right about? Think about that the next time you listen to some White House or Pentagon correspondent taking their words so desperately seriously and acting as if they knew what they were talking about.</p> <p>Perhaps no piece I&#8217;ve seen in recent weeks has skewered this administration&#8217;s dreamy imperial optimism more effectively than one by UPI&#8216;s Martin Sieff which <a href="http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030730-100003-2217r" type="external">simply dismembers neocon dreams</a> about the financing of our future in Iraq.</p> <p /> <p>Don&#8217;t miss it.</p> <p>On ABC TV news Saturday night, one of those stand-up correspondents reporting on the president&#8217;s staged withdrawal to Crawford quoted an unnamed official as saying something like &#8212; until things in Iraq stabilize in the fall the administration will have to &#8220;take its lumps.&#8221; As Sieff points out, among those lumps &#8212; the unintended consequences of gong-show policies &#8212; &#8220;the continuing effect of the war has been to strengthen the market position of the three leading global producers, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, while keeping global energy prices relatively high and thereby adding a further burden to the U.S. annual balance of trade deficit, already by far the largest of any country in world history.&#8221;</p> <p>So our boys need money and have no obvious way to get it in the quantities necessary. They need troops to relieve those now manning our overstretched imperium and even the ones that are coming will arrive, if they do, on terms that may prove complex indeed. The present Japanese administration, for instance, has been using a promise of 1,000 troops for Iraq to break their own &#8220;peace constitution&#8221; (though I wouldn&#8217;t hold my breath waiting for those troops to arrive in the fall to patrol only carefully assessed safe and peaceable areas of the country).</p> <p>Like the Poles, the Dutch, who have just sent 1,100 troops to another of those barely peaceable provinces of Iraq, evidently have oil deals on the brain. According to Gregory Crouch of The New York Times, theirs may be &#8220; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/02/international/worldspecial/02DUTC.html?ei=5062&amp;amp;en=fbbf3649978b5087&amp;amp;ex=1060401600&amp;amp;partner=GOOGLE&amp;amp;pagewanted=print&amp;amp;position=" type="external">a disguised bid for business contracts in Iraq&#8217;s reconstruction</a>&#8230; Royal Dutch/Shell Group, a leading oil company, is a Dutch-British consortium that could benefit from access to Iraq&#8217;s vast oil resources.&#8221; The troops themselves, in another testimonial to our popularity in Iraq, are, according to Crouch, doing their best not to be mistaken for Americans.</p> <p /> <p>And as for the Turks, a fierce debate is going on now in Turkey over whether its troops should be sent to &#8220;help&#8221; the desperate Americans. But sending thousands of Turkish troops into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq is likely to create a true tangle of bloody interests there. (If you want to get a sense what this may mean check out <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG29Ak03.html" type="external">Robert Cutler&#8217;s piece</a> in the Asia Times.</p> <p>And yet, as Vernon Loeb and Colum Lynch of The Washington Post tell us, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13521-2003Aug1?language=printer" type="external">the Busheviks can&#8217;t yet bear to give up their Iraqi dreams</a>.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>&#8230;</p> <p>Despite increasing pressure to &#8220;internationalize&#8221; the postwar reconstruction of Iraq, the Bush administration is not actively pursuing a new U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing broader international participation out of concern that greater U.N. involvement could reduce U.S. control.&#8221;</p> <p>To which Senator Joseph Biden replied: &#8220;What are we giving up? Are we giving up the right to get shot alone?&#8221;</p> <p>How wrong can they be? Just you wait. While Donald Rumsfeld continues to fetishize our high-tech war machine, a recent lead editorial by the editors of the Nation magazine comments, &#8220; <a href="http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030818&amp;amp;s=editors" type="external">You can knock down government ministries with precision-guided munitions; you can&#8217;t pick up garbage with them</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional contributions from Tom Engelhardt can be found throughout the week at <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>, a weblog of The Nation Institute.</p> <p /> <p /> <p />

Gong Show Imperialism

https://motherjones.com/politics/2003/08/gong-show-imperialism/

2003-08-04

4left

amp160 8212 The Associated Press Of course the view from Bremer8217s heavily fortified office undoubtedly leaves something to be desired when it comes to assessing Iraqi public opinion A better assessment might start with the blowing up of a key oil pipeline in Northern Iraq yesterday or the unexpected upsurge in attacks 8212 at least 8 in less than 24 hours 8212 in Western Iraq reported by The Washington Post8216s reliable Anthony Shadid Last night I made it to the TV news for the first time in two weeks and there was Chairman Bremer swearing we were making 8220progress8221 in Iraq I thought after two TVless weeks that I had stumbled through a time warp or a worm hole directly into the late 1960s Honestly what this administration needs minimally is me I could at least vet their spin dictionaries for them Somebody certainly should I could remind them that there8217s nothing more dangerous than announcing 8220progress8221 when you face the unknown amid obvious catastrophe That8217s a Vietnam lesson simple enough even for these guys to grasp 8212 or so you would think Robert Fisk of The Independent manages to dismantle several of the recent announcements of 8220progress8221 He deals for instance with the claims of a revived oil industry this way 8230 Take the oil production figures LieutenantGeneral Ricardo Sanchez the US commander in Iraq even chose to use these statistics in his 8216great day for Iraq8217 press conference last week the one in which he announced that 200 soldiers in Mosul had killed the sons of Saddam rather than take them prisoner But Sanchez was talking rubbish Although oil production was indeed standing at 900000 barrels per day in June albeit 100000bpd fewer than the Sanchez version it fell last month to 750000 8230 Why don8217t the occupation authorities realise that Iraq cannot be 8216spun8217 This country is living a tragedy of epic proportions and now 8211 after its descent into hell under Saddam 8211 we are doomed to suffer its contagion By our hubris and by our lies and our fantasies we are descending into the pit8221 By the way should you be interested in what could be done for the Iraqi oil industry you might consider a piece in the Guardian by Ghazi SabirAli former chairman and managing director of the North Oil Company under Saddam He describes how the looted and destroyed northern fields were rebuilt in the wake of the first Gulf War 8212 but of course by Iraqis His piece begins and ends this way 8230 Many of those men who rebuilt oil production in the north and many others like them are still in Iraq They remain capable as they were in 1991 of planning and executing the necessary repairs to our battered country if they are given a free hand There is no need for foreign companies to take control Iraqi oil revenue should go to Iraqis who should then be left in peace to set their country to rights8221 Here8217s the problem Once you start down the path of 8220progress8221 when that progress is largely spin even if in part you8217re spinning yourself every step is likely to involve unexpected and unintended complications and consequences Let8217s take for instance the 8220hunt8221 for Saddam Hussein 8220We8217re on the hunt8221 the president assured Americans at his press conference last week Just the other day American troops 8220bagged8221 his two sons thanks to enough fire power to wipe out a battalion The death of the sons was supposed to lead to a triumphant lessening of attacks though three Americans died in ambushes yesterday and Saddam8217s death would then more or less lead to their cessation 8212 and of course the terrified people of Iraq would finally be free to praise us without fear Admittedly Saddam is not yet in our hands or perhaps in the far more capable 8220hands8221 of a TOW missile but we are assured and then reassured and then assured yet again that the 8220noose is tightening8221 The only thing is it8217s not only around Saddam that it8217s tightening The tighter this administration tries to pull that noose the tighter it also seems to gather around the administration Note by the way that in imagistic terms you have two good old western images fighting for metaphorical daylight the hunt for dangerous wild animals and vigilante justice by means of a rope A recent piece in the Boston Globe reveals that a 8220fierce debate8221 is taking place within the administration as the 8220noose8221 tightens The piece reads in part 8230 Washington supported Hussein8217s regime during Iraq8217s war against Iran between 1980 and 1988 8212 including providing satellite images of Iranian military formations 8212 at a time when Iraqi forces used chemical weapons against troops and civilians8221 And the Teheran Times has this to add Call that a signal from the front lines in Washington from those discussions that not surprisingly Dick and Don just happen to have taken part in 8220Look at Dick Dick picks up a Tow missile Look at Saddam Look quickly He may not be there long8221 Of course if they don8217t wipe the man off the face of the Earth he could come back to haunt our leaders Both the vice president and the secretary of defense were deeply involved in supporting the Great Satan back when he was the Great Bulwark against the Great Satan of Khomeini8217s Iran and that of course was after the Shah of Iran was the Great Bulwark against the Great Satan of8230 but never mind Certainly the great hypocrisy of this administration has not been the lies that got us into war but the fact that everything that was meant to terrify us about Saddam8217s regime including the killing fields of 821791 could in some way be traceable back to the very men or their mentors who led us into this war a point that until now has gained less than zero traction in our media but that is not exactly unknown to 8220grateful8221 Iraqis If they do find him after all Iraq is not exactly China when it comes to size and kill him to wipe out the living evidence that will only create other problems 8212 and other suspicions In the meantime we will undoubtedly continue to speak of Saddam as if he were 8220a prize elk8221 in the words of Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun whose Sunday column sums up what we might be found culpable for in any future trial of the Elk I have no idea whether our men in Baghdad will bag the former ruler who should indeed stand trial before the world as a human monster who committed both war crimes and crimes against humanity What I do know is that that noose is slowly ever so quietly tightening here at home Iraq I believe is the fulcrum on which this administration8217s imperial global and domestic policies are likely to founder The problem already quite clear is that our men in Washington who never imagined an 8220exit strategy8221 from Iraq can8217t imagine leaving but can8217t afford to stay either The citing of 8220progress8221 might buy time measured perhaps in months but time is only valuable if you can do something with it We who oppose empire have to understand that for reasons deeply entrenched in the situation in Iraq and in Washington none of this is going away any time soon We need to have patience Who can really predict who will fall or when or how but the pressure on this administration will surely become fiercer in time and under inexorable pressure those easy lies that got us into war can only lead to further lies that pass briefly for explanations but in the end pull the noose tighter8230 and tighter8230 and so on until8230 well just until8230 Already we have hilarious photos of what Saddam might look like today Saddam in burnoose etc I wish they had set me on this one too There are a number of other Saddams I might have liked to create And of course if they do find him and exterminate their brute they will have their brief 8220day8221 of glorious spin and then they8217ll look around from the windows of Bremer8217s office and find themselves hardly less trapped than before If they can8217t find Saddam then all this bluster and all those silly photos will become so much black comedy 8212 I can already see the political cartoons 8212 and no administration can live with that for too long Watching these guys trying to put the brakes on while skidding near the edge on the far side of the mountain is a bit like watching the Gong Show as imperial policy 8212 but here8217s the problem right now there8217s no giant hook to pull these guys off stage And let8217s face it the assessments of this administration 8212 and here I don8217t mean the lies they put forward to scare the American people into war but the ones they believed that they convinced themselves of 8212 have proved disastrously off the mark They may in the end come a cropper for the lies they knowingly told but at a deeper level what they will surely pay most for is the way they deluded themselves before even bothering with us We now know for instance that this administration which claimed it wasn8217t willing to turn our best wmd intelligence over to the UN inspectors for fear it would leak to the Iraqis actually had none of any consequence to offer They were simply betting on the assumption that Saddam must have WMD because he once did As it turned out he doublecrossed them and so they8217re already respinning this one 8212 if he didn8217t have the weapons he at least must have had WMD 8220programs8221 as a piece in The Independent indicates Just as disastrously they believed the occupation of beaten Iraq would be a snap and that with low levels of troops left in the country they could float not just the occupation and reconstruction of the country but possibly the rebuilding of the whole Middle East to their specifications on Iraqi oil With that in mind when Army Chief of Staff Gen Eric Shinseki said before the war that several hundred thousand troops would be needed for an occupation the Pentagon neocons practically drummed him out of the service amid derisive hoots Now8230 well need I say more No less strikingly as Peter Spiegel of the British Financial Times wrote recently the war8217s price tag keeps climbing 8230 But people who have been briefed on the Pentagon8217s budgeting process said that the Defense Department is burning through its funds so quickly 8212 39bn per month 8212 that it will need a new supplemental appropriation as early as January Indeed in an interview with the Financial Times this week Dov Zackheim the Pentagon8217s comptroller said the US military was expected to have spent 58bn of the 62bn it received in the April spending bill by the end of the year8221 Just the other day Reuters reports Bremer announced that 8220 rebuilding the country could require anywhere from 50 billion to 100 billion of outside money over the next couple of years Paul Bremer in an interview with CNBC8217s Capital Report said that for at least the next few years 8216we8217re going to have to spend a lot more money than we8217re going to get revenues even once we get oil production back to prewar levels8221 Those figures will undoubtedly prove low but even they far exceed anything this administration is likely to get its hands on What I wonder is this Other than the relative speed of the war itself what have they been right about Think about that the next time you listen to some White House or Pentagon correspondent taking their words so desperately seriously and acting as if they knew what they were talking about Perhaps no piece I8217ve seen in recent weeks has skewered this administration8217s dreamy imperial optimism more effectively than one by UPI8216s Martin Sieff which simply dismembers neocon dreams about the financing of our future in Iraq Don8217t miss it On ABC TV news Saturday night one of those standup correspondents reporting on the president8217s staged withdrawal to Crawford quoted an unnamed official as saying something like 8212 until things in Iraq stabilize in the fall the administration will have to 8220take its lumps8221 As Sieff points out among those lumps 8212 the unintended consequences of gongshow policies 8212 8220the continuing effect of the war has been to strengthen the market position of the three leading global producers Saudi Arabia Russia and Iran while keeping global energy prices relatively high and thereby adding a further burden to the US annual balance of trade deficit already by far the largest of any country in world history8221 So our boys need money and have no obvious way to get it in the quantities necessary They need troops to relieve those now manning our overstretched imperium and even the ones that are coming will arrive if they do on terms that may prove complex indeed The present Japanese administration for instance has been using a promise of 1000 troops for Iraq to break their own 8220peace constitution8221 though I wouldn8217t hold my breath waiting for those troops to arrive in the fall to patrol only carefully assessed safe and peaceable areas of the country Like the Poles the Dutch who have just sent 1100 troops to another of those barely peaceable provinces of Iraq evidently have oil deals on the brain According to Gregory Crouch of The New York Times theirs may be 8220 a disguised bid for business contracts in Iraq8217s reconstruction8230 Royal DutchShell Group a leading oil company is a DutchBritish consortium that could benefit from access to Iraq8217s vast oil resources8221 The troops themselves in another testimonial to our popularity in Iraq are according to Crouch doing their best not to be mistaken for Americans And as for the Turks a fierce debate is going on now in Turkey over whether its troops should be sent to 8220help8221 the desperate Americans But sending thousands of Turkish troops into the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq is likely to create a true tangle of bloody interests there If you want to get a sense what this may mean check out Robert Cutler8217s piece in the Asia Times And yet as Vernon Loeb and Colum Lynch of The Washington Post tell us the Busheviks can8217t yet bear to give up their Iraqi dreams 8230 Despite increasing pressure to 8220internationalize8221 the postwar reconstruction of Iraq the Bush administration is not actively pursuing a new UN Security Council resolution authorizing broader international participation out of concern that greater UN involvement could reduce US control8221 To which Senator Joseph Biden replied 8220What are we giving up Are we giving up the right to get shot alone8221 How wrong can they be Just you wait While Donald Rumsfeld continues to fetishize our hightech war machine a recent lead editorial by the editors of the Nation magazine comments 8220 You can knock down government ministries with precisionguided munitions you can8217t pick up garbage with them8221 Additional contributions from Tom Engelhardt can be found throughout the week at TomDispatchcom a weblog of The Nation Institute

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<p>Recently, a memory of my son as a small boy came back to me. He was, in those days, terrified of clowns. Something about their strange, mask-like, painted faces unnerved him utterly, chilled him to the bone. To the rest of us, they were comic, but to him &#8212; or so I came to imagine anyway &#8212; they were emanations from hell.</p> <p>Those circus memories of long ago seem relevant to me today because, in November 2016, the American electorate, or a near majority of them anyway, chose to send in the clowns.&amp;#160; They voted willingly, knowingly, for the man with that strange orange thing on his head, the result &#8212; we now know, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/ivanka-reveals-the-truth-about-trumps-hairand-mocks-it-too" type="external">thanks to</a> his daughter &#8212; of voluntary &#8220;scalp reduction surgery.&#8221;&amp;#160; They voted for the man with the eerily red face, an unearthly shade seldom seen since the perfection of Technicolor.&amp;#160; They voted for the overweight man who reputedly ate little but Big Macs (for fear of being <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-eats-mcdonalds-because-afraid-poison-donald-fast-food-obsession-769796" type="external">poisoned</a>), while swinging one-handed from a political trapeze with fingers of a particularly <a href="" type="internal">contestable size</a>.&amp;#160; They voted for the man who never came across a superlative he couldn&#8217;t apply to himself.&amp;#160; Of his first presidential moment, he <a href="" type="internal">claimed</a> &#8220;the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe&#8221;; he declared himself &#8220;the <a href="" type="internal">greatest jobs</a> president that God ever created&#8221;; he swore to reporters that he was &#8220;the <a href="" type="internal">least racist</a> person you have ever interviewed&#8221;; he offered his version of modesty by <a href="" type="internal">insisting</a> that, &#8220;with the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that&#8217;s ever held this office&#8221;; and when his mental state was challenged, he responded that his &#8220;two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,&#8221; <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-really-smart-latest-twitter-greatest-assets-mental-stability-dementia-fire-and-fury-a8145326.html" type="external">adding</a>, &#8220;I think that [I] would qualify as not smart, but genius&#8230; and a very stable genius at that!&#8221;</p> <p>Of course, none of this is news to you, not if you have a screen in your life (or more likely your hand) &#8212; the very definition of twenty-first-century modernity.&amp;#160; In fact, by the time this piece comes out, you&#8217;ll undoubtedly have a new set of examples to cite.&amp;#160; After all, these days that essentially is the news: him and any outrageous thing he wants to say and not much else, which means that he is indisputably the greatest, possibly in the history of the universe, when it comes to yanking just about anybody&#8217;s chain.</p> <p>And you certainly don&#8217;t need me to go on about that strange skill of his, since every time he says or tweets anything over the top or grotesque beyond belief, the media&#8217;s all over it 24/7. No one, for instance, could doubt that never in our history has the word &#8220;shithole&#8221; (or, in some cases, &#8220; <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/368745-gop-senators-say-they-do-not-recall-trump-referring-to-shithole" type="external">s&#8211;hole</a>&#8221;) or even &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">shithouse</a>&#8221; been used more frequently than in the wake of the president&#8217;s recent wielding of it (or them or <a href="" type="internal">one or the other</a>) for unnamed African countries and Haiti in a White House meeting on immigration. That meeting proved an <a href="" type="internal">ambush</a> and a half, only spiraling further out of control when, in its wake, the president denied ever using the word &#8220;shithole&#8221; and was <a href="" type="internal">backed</a> by Republican attendees evidently so desperate to curry favor that they pretended they hadn&#8217;t heard the word, which, by now, just about everyone on Earth has heard or seen in English or some <a href="" type="internal">translation</a> thereof.</p> <p>Since he rode down that Trump Tower escalator into our political lives in June 2015, this sort of thing and more or less nothing else has largely been &#8220;the news.&#8221;&amp;#160; It goes without saying &#8212; which won&#8217;t stop me from saying it &#8212; that not since Nebuchadnezzar&#8217;s words were first scratched onto a cuneiform tablet has more focus been put on the passing words, gestures, and expressions of a single human being. And that&#8217;s the truest news about the news of this era.&amp;#160; It&#8217;s been consumed by a single news hog.&amp;#160; Which means that Donald Trump has already won, no matter what happens, since he continues to be treated as if he were the only three-ring circus in town, as if he were in himself that classic big-top Volkswagen <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_car" type="external">filled to the brim</a> with clowns.</p> <p>The Imperial Presidency Exposed</p> <p>Who could deny that much of the attention he&#8217;s received has been based on the absurdity, exaggeration, unsettling clownishness of it all, right down to the <a href="" type="internal">zany crew</a> of subsidiary clowns who have helped keep him pumped up and cable newsed in the Oval Office?</p> <p>In early October 2016, I <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176195/" type="external">suggested</a> that a certain segment of voters in the white heartland, feeling their backs against the economic wall and the nation in decline &#8212; Donald Trump being our first true <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176133/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_has_the_american_age_of_decline_begun/" type="external">declinist candidate</a> (hence that &#8220;again&#8221; in <a href="https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/products/official-donald-trump-make-america-great-again-cap-red" type="external">MAGA</a>) &#8212; was prepared to send a &#8220;suicide bomber&#8221; into the White House.&amp;#160; And I suggested as well that they were willing to do so even if the ceiling collapsed on them.&amp;#160; (Had I thought of it at the time, I would have added that much of the mainstream media also had its back to the wall with its status and finances in decline, staffs shrinking, and fears rising that it might be eaten alive by social media.&amp;#160; As a result, some of its <a href="" type="internal">key players</a> were similarly inclined to escort that suicide bomber Washington-wards, no matter what fell or whom it hit.)</p> <p>In retrospect, that has, I think, proven an accurate assessment, but like all authors I reserve the right to change my imagery in midstream, which brings me back to my son&#8217;s childhood fear of clowns.&amp;#160; At least for me, that now catches the most essential aspect of the age of Trump: its clownishness.&amp;#160; And despite the fact that The Donald is often treated by his opponents as a laughing matter, an absurdity, a jokester (and a joke) in the Oval Office, I don&#8217;t mean those clowns, the ones that leave you rolling in the aisles.&amp;#160; I mean my son&#8217;s clowns, the death&#8217;s-head ones whose absurd versions of the gestures of everyday life leave you chilled to the bone, genuinely afraid.</p> <p>Donald Trump fits that image exactly because &#8212; though you wouldn&#8217;t know it from the usual coverage of him &#8212; he isn&#8217;t at all unique (except in the details, except in the exaggeration of it all).&amp;#160; What makes him so clownish, in the sense I&#8217;m describing, is that he offers a chillingly exaggerated, wildly <a href="" type="internal">fiery-and-furious</a> version of the very imperial American presidency we&#8217;ve come to know over these last seven decades: the one that has long ridden herd on a nuclear apocalypse; that killed millions on its journey to nowhere in Southeast Asia in the previous century; that hasn&#8217;t been able to stop itself from overseeing more than a quarter-century of war-making &#8212; two wars, to be exact &#8212; in Afghanistan of all places; that, in its pursuit of its never-ending &#8220;war&#8221; on terror, has made war on so much else as well, turning significant parts of the planet into zones of <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176369/" type="external">increasing chaos</a>, <a href="" type="internal">failed states</a>, <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html" type="external">fleeing populations</a>, and wholesale destruction; the one whose &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">precision</a>&#8221; military &#8212; the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been <a href="" type="internal">termed</a> the &#8220;most precise campaign in history&#8221; &#8212; has helped transform cities from <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fallujah-in-ruins/" type="external">Ramadi</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Fallujah</a> to <a href="" type="internal">Mosul</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Raqqa</a> into landscapes that, in their indiscriminate wreckage, look like Stalingrad after the battle in World War II (and that now is threatening to develop a &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">precision</a>&#8221; version of nuclear war as well); and that has, in this century, overseen the creation of &#8220; <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21596553-benefits-shale-oil-are-bigger-many-americans-realise-policy-has-yet-catch" type="external">Saudi America</a>&#8221; on a planet in which it was already easy enough to grasp that fossil fuels were doing the kinds of damage to the human environment that nothing short of a giant asteroid or <a href="" type="internal">nuclear war</a> might otherwise do.</p> <p>From his <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176373/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_tweeting_while_rome_burns/" type="external">America First policies</a> to his <a href="" type="internal">reported desire</a> to see (and make use of) terrorist attacks on this country, the man who has declared climate change a <a href="" type="internal">Chinese hoax</a>, <a href="" type="internal">threatened</a> to loose &#8220;fire and fury like the world has never seen,&#8221; described other countries in language once considered unpresidential by presidents who nonetheless <a href="http://fpif.org/u-s-treated-poor-countries-like-shitholes-decades/" type="external">treated</a> the very same countries like &#8220;shitholes,&#8221; and given &#8220;his&#8221; generals a remarkably free hand to &#8220;win&#8221; the war on terror is but an eerily clownish version of all that has gone before.&amp;#160; He has, in a sense, ripped away the fa&#231;ade of dignity from the imperial presidency and let us glimpse just what is truly imperial (and imperious) about it.&amp;#160; He continues to show us in new ways quite an old reality: how terrifying a force for destruction, possibly even on a planetary level, U.S. power can be.</p> <p>And just in case you don&#8217;t think that Volkswagen of Trump&#8217;s (or maybe I mean that private plane with the <a href="" type="internal">golden bathroom fixtures</a>) is filled with other clowns whose acts should similarly chill you to the bone, let&#8217;s skip Scott Pruitt as he <a href="" type="internal">secretly</a> dismantles the Environmental Protection Agency and so many protections for our health, the Energy Department&#8217;s Rick Perry as he <a href="" type="internal">embraces</a> the CEOs of Big Energy, that <a href="" type="internal">future oil-spill</a> king, the Interior Department&#8217;s Ryan Zinke, and the rest of the domestic wrecking crew, and turn instead to &#8220;his&#8221; generals &#8212; the ones from America&#8217;s losing wars &#8212; that President Trump has made ascendant in Washington.</p> <p>And even then, let&#8217;s skip their urge to create smaller, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176353/" type="external">more &#8220;usable&#8221;</a> nuclear weapons (a process started in the Obama years), or <a href="" type="internal">hike</a> the nuclear budget, or redefine ever more situations, including <a href="" type="internal">cyber attacks</a> on the U.S., as potential nuclear ones; and let&#8217;s skip as well their eagerness, from <a href="" type="internal">Niger</a> to <a href="" type="internal">Yemen</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Libya</a> to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/trump-doubles-us-forces-somalia-fight-isis-and-al-shabab-most-black-hawk-down-716923" type="external">Somalia</a>, to expand and heighten the war on terror in an exaggerated version of exactly what we&#8217;ve been living through these past 16 years. Let&#8217;s concentrate instead on just one place, the ur-location for that war, the country about which those <a href="" type="internal">in the Pentagon</a> are no longer speaking of war at all but of &#8220; <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/petraeus-afghan-war-generational-struggle-will-not-end-soon" type="external">generational struggle</a>&#8221;: Afghanistan.</p> <p>The Graveyard of Empires</p> <p>Think of it: 28 years after the Soviet army limped out of that infamous &#8220;graveyard of empires&#8221; at the end of a decade-long struggle in which the U.S. had backed the most extreme groups of Islamic fundamentalists (including a rich young Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden), 16 years after the U.S. returned to invade and &#8220;liberate&#8221; Afghanistan, they&#8217;re still at it. In December, with Donald Trump <a href="https://swarajyamag.com/insta/aadhaar-hearings-begin-supreme-court-to-decide-if-unique-identifiers-are-legal" type="external">l</a> <a href="" type="internal">ifting</a> various constraints on U.S. military commanders there, the generals were, for instance, sending in the planes.&amp;#160; That month there were more U.S. air strikes &#8212; 455 in a winter period of minimal fighting &#8212; than not just the previous December (65) but December 2012 (about 200) when 100,000 U.S. troops were still in-country.&amp;#160; The phrase of this moment among U.S. military officers in Afghanistan, <a href="" type="internal">according to</a> Max Bearak of the Washington Post: &#8220;We&#8217;re at a turning point.&#8221;&amp;#160; Another: &#8220;The gloves are off.&#8221;&amp;#160; (Admittedly, no U.S. commander has as yet reported <a href="https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vietnam2-light-in-tunnel.htm" type="external">seeing</a> &#8220;the light at the end of the tunnel,&#8221; but don&#8217;t rule it out.)</p> <p>In the meantime, drones of both the armed and unarmed surveillance variety are being <a href="" type="internal">reassigned</a> to Afghanistan in rising numbers (as well as more helicopters, ground vehicles, and artillery). With the recent announcement that 1,000 more personnel will soon head for that country, U.S. troop strength continues to grow, bringing the numbers of American advisers, trainers, and Special Operations forces there up to perhaps 15,000 or more (as opposed to the <a href="" type="internal">11,000</a> or so when Donald Trump entered the Oval Office).</p> <p>In addition, the military has <a href="" type="internal">plans</a> to double the size of Afghanistan&#8217;s own special ops forces and triple the size of its air force, while the head of U.S. Central Command, General Joseph Votel, is <a href="" type="internal">calling for</a> far more aggressive actions by those American-advised Afghan security forces in the upcoming spring fighting season.&amp;#160; (To put this in perspective, a 2008 U.S. military <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176322/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_last_men_standing/" type="external">plan</a> to spend billions of dollars ensuring that the Afghan air force was fully staffed, supplied, trained, and &#8220;self-sufficient&#8221; by 2015 ended seven years later with it in a &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">woeful state</a>&#8221; of disrepair and near ruin.)&amp;#160; Meanwhile, as part of this ramp-up of operations, the Navy is planning to <a href="http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/17571/us-navy-wants-to-hire-contractors-to-fly-their-own-mq-9-reaper-drones-in-afghanistan" type="external">hire</a> drone-maker General Atomics to fly that company&#8217;s surveillance drones in Afghanistan in what&#8217;s being termed &#8220;a &#8216;surge&#8217; of intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance capabilities.&#8221;</p> <p>If all of this sounds faintly familiar to you, I&#8217;m not surprised. In fact, if you&#8217;ve already stopped paying attention &#8212; as most Americans on the nonexistent &#8220;home front&#8221; seem to have done when it comes to most of America&#8217;s wars of this era &#8212; I just want you to know that I completely understand.&amp;#160; Sixteen repetitive years later, with the Taliban again in control of something close to <a href="" type="internal">half</a> of Afghanistan, your response couldn&#8217;t be more all-American.&amp;#160; Surges, turning points, more aggressive actions, you&#8217;ve heard it all before &#8212; and when it comes to Afghanistan, the odds are that you&#8217;ll hear it all again.</p> <p>And don&#8217;t for a moment think that this doesn&#8217;t add up to another version of sending in the clowns.</p> <p>If you don&#8217;t believe that retired General James Mattis, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, and retired General James Kelly, aka the secretary of defense, the national security adviser, and the White House chief of staff, respectively, are clowns, if you&#8217;re still convinced that they&#8217;re the &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">adults</a>&#8221; in the Trumpian playroom, check out Afghanistan and think again.&amp;#160; But don&#8217;t blame them either.&amp;#160; What else can a clown do, once those giant floppy shoes are on their feet, their faces are painted, and the bulbous red nose is in place, but act the part?&amp;#160; So many years later, they simply can&#8217;t imagine another way to think about the world of American war.&amp;#160; They only know what they know.&amp;#160; Give them a horn and they&#8217;ll honk it; give them Hamlet&#8217;s &#8220;to be or not to be&#8221; soliloquy and they&#8217;ll still honk that horn.</p> <p>For the last decade and a half, through invasions and occupations, surges and counterinsurgency operations, bombing runs and drone strikes, commando raids and training missions, they and their colleagues in the U.S. high command have helped spread terror movements across <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176369/" type="external">significant parts of the planet</a>, while playing a major role in creating a series of failing or failed states across the Greater Middle East and Africa.&amp;#160; They&#8217;ve helped uproot whole populations and transform major cities into spectacles of ruin.&amp;#160; Think of this as their twenty-first-century destiny.&amp;#160; They&#8217;ve proven to be key actors in what has become an American <a href="" type="internal">empire of chaos</a> or perhaps simply an <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175787/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_washington%27s_wedding_album_from_hell/" type="external">empire</a> of <a href="" type="internal">graveyards</a>.</p> <p>They can&#8217;t help themselves.&amp;#160; Forgive them, Father, for they are clowns led by the greatest clownster-in-chief in the history of this country.&amp;#160; Yes, he makes even them uncomfortable because no one can pull the curtains back from the reality of the imperial presidency in quite the way he can.&amp;#160; No one can showcase our grim American world, tweet by outrageous tweet, in quite his fashion.</p> <p>And yes, it can all look ludicrous as hell, but don&#8217;t laugh.&amp;#160; Don&#8217;t even think about it.&amp;#160; Not now, not when we&#8217;re all at the circus watching those emanations from hell perform. Instead, be chilled &#8212; chilled to the bone.&amp;#160; Absurd as every pratfall may be, it&#8217;s distinctly a vision from hell, an all-American vision for the ages.</p> <p>This column originally appeared on <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176377/" type="external">TomDispatch</a>.</p>

Creating an Empire of Graveyards?

https://counterpunch.org/2018/01/26/creating-an-empire-of-graveyards/

2018-01-26

4left

Recently a memory of my son as a small boy came back to me He was in those days terrified of clowns Something about their strange masklike painted faces unnerved him utterly chilled him to the bone To the rest of us they were comic but to him 8212 or so I came to imagine anyway 8212 they were emanations from hell Those circus memories of long ago seem relevant to me today because in November 2016 the American electorate or a near majority of them anyway chose to send in the clownsamp160 They voted willingly knowingly for the man with that strange orange thing on his head the result 8212 we now know thanks to his daughter 8212 of voluntary 8220scalp reduction surgery8221amp160 They voted for the man with the eerily red face an unearthly shade seldom seen since the perfection of Technicoloramp160 They voted for the overweight man who reputedly ate little but Big Macs for fear of being poisoned while swinging onehanded from a political trapeze with fingers of a particularly contestable sizeamp160 They voted for the man who never came across a superlative he couldn8217t apply to himselfamp160 Of his first presidential moment he claimed 8220the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration period both in person and around the globe8221 he declared himself 8220the greatest jobs president that God ever created8221 he swore to reporters that he was 8220the least racist person you have ever interviewed8221 he offered his version of modesty by insisting that 8220with the exception of the late great Abraham Lincoln I can be more presidential than any president that8217s ever held this office8221 and when his mental state was challenged he responded that his 8220two greatest assets have been mental stability and being like really smart8221 adding 8220I think that I would qualify as not smart but genius8230 and a very stable genius at that8221 Of course none of this is news to you not if you have a screen in your life or more likely your hand 8212 the very definition of twentyfirstcentury modernityamp160 In fact by the time this piece comes out you8217ll undoubtedly have a new set of examples to citeamp160 After all these days that essentially is the news him and any outrageous thing he wants to say and not much else which means that he is indisputably the greatest possibly in the history of the universe when it comes to yanking just about anybody8217s chain And you certainly don8217t need me to go on about that strange skill of his since every time he says or tweets anything over the top or grotesque beyond belief the media8217s all over it 247 No one for instance could doubt that never in our history has the word 8220shithole8221 or in some cases 8220 s8211hole8221 or even 8220 shithouse8221 been used more frequently than in the wake of the president8217s recent wielding of it or them or one or the other for unnamed African countries and Haiti in a White House meeting on immigration That meeting proved an ambush and a half only spiraling further out of control when in its wake the president denied ever using the word 8220shithole8221 and was backed by Republican attendees evidently so desperate to curry favor that they pretended they hadn8217t heard the word which by now just about everyone on Earth has heard or seen in English or some translation thereof Since he rode down that Trump Tower escalator into our political lives in June 2015 this sort of thing and more or less nothing else has largely been 8220the news8221amp160 It goes without saying 8212 which won8217t stop me from saying it 8212 that not since Nebuchadnezzar8217s words were first scratched onto a cuneiform tablet has more focus been put on the passing words gestures and expressions of a single human being And that8217s the truest news about the news of this eraamp160 It8217s been consumed by a single news hogamp160 Which means that Donald Trump has already won no matter what happens since he continues to be treated as if he were the only threering circus in town as if he were in himself that classic bigtop Volkswagen filled to the brim with clowns The Imperial Presidency Exposed Who could deny that much of the attention he8217s received has been based on the absurdity exaggeration unsettling clownishness of it all right down to the zany crew of subsidiary clowns who have helped keep him pumped up and cable newsed in the Oval Office In early October 2016 I suggested that a certain segment of voters in the white heartland feeling their backs against the economic wall and the nation in decline 8212 Donald Trump being our first true declinist candidate hence that 8220again8221 in MAGA 8212 was prepared to send a 8220suicide bomber8221 into the White Houseamp160 And I suggested as well that they were willing to do so even if the ceiling collapsed on themamp160 Had I thought of it at the time I would have added that much of the mainstream media also had its back to the wall with its status and finances in decline staffs shrinking and fears rising that it might be eaten alive by social mediaamp160 As a result some of its key players were similarly inclined to escort that suicide bomber Washingtonwards no matter what fell or whom it hit In retrospect that has I think proven an accurate assessment but like all authors I reserve the right to change my imagery in midstream which brings me back to my son8217s childhood fear of clownsamp160 At least for me that now catches the most essential aspect of the age of Trump its clownishnessamp160 And despite the fact that The Donald is often treated by his opponents as a laughing matter an absurdity a jokester and a joke in the Oval Office I don8217t mean those clowns the ones that leave you rolling in the aislesamp160 I mean my son8217s clowns the death8217shead ones whose absurd versions of the gestures of everyday life leave you chilled to the bone genuinely afraid Donald Trump fits that image exactly because 8212 though you wouldn8217t know it from the usual coverage of him 8212 he isn8217t at all unique except in the details except in the exaggeration of it allamp160 What makes him so clownish in the sense I8217m describing is that he offers a chillingly exaggerated wildly fieryandfurious version of the very imperial American presidency we8217ve come to know over these last seven decades the one that has long ridden herd on a nuclear apocalypse that killed millions on its journey to nowhere in Southeast Asia in the previous century that hasn8217t been able to stop itself from overseeing more than a quartercentury of warmaking 8212 two wars to be exact 8212 in Afghanistan of all places that in its pursuit of its neverending 8220war8221 on terror has made war on so much else as well turning significant parts of the planet into zones of increasing chaos failed states fleeing populations and wholesale destruction the one whose 8220 precision8221 military 8212 the battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been termed the 8220most precise campaign in history8221 8212 has helped transform cities from Ramadi and Fallujah to Mosul and Raqqa into landscapes that in their indiscriminate wreckage look like Stalingrad after the battle in World War II and that now is threatening to develop a 8220 precision8221 version of nuclear war as well and that has in this century overseen the creation of 8220 Saudi America8221 on a planet in which it was already easy enough to grasp that fossil fuels were doing the kinds of damage to the human environment that nothing short of a giant asteroid or nuclear war might otherwise do From his America First policies to his reported desire to see and make use of terrorist attacks on this country the man who has declared climate change a Chinese hoax threatened to loose 8220fire and fury like the world has never seen8221 described other countries in language once considered unpresidential by presidents who nonetheless treated the very same countries like 8220shitholes8221 and given 8220his8221 generals a remarkably free hand to 8220win8221 the war on terror is but an eerily clownish version of all that has gone beforeamp160 He has in a sense ripped away the fa231ade of dignity from the imperial presidency and let us glimpse just what is truly imperial and imperious about itamp160 He continues to show us in new ways quite an old reality how terrifying a force for destruction possibly even on a planetary level US power can be And just in case you don8217t think that Volkswagen of Trump8217s or maybe I mean that private plane with the golden bathroom fixtures is filled with other clowns whose acts should similarly chill you to the bone let8217s skip Scott Pruitt as he secretly dismantles the Environmental Protection Agency and so many protections for our health the Energy Department8217s Rick Perry as he embraces the CEOs of Big Energy that future oilspill king the Interior Department8217s Ryan Zinke and the rest of the domestic wrecking crew and turn instead to 8220his8221 generals 8212 the ones from America8217s losing wars 8212 that President Trump has made ascendant in Washington And even then let8217s skip their urge to create smaller more 8220usable8221 nuclear weapons a process started in the Obama years or hike the nuclear budget or redefine ever more situations including cyber attacks on the US as potential nuclear ones and let8217s skip as well their eagerness from Niger to Yemen Libya to Somalia to expand and heighten the war on terror in an exaggerated version of exactly what we8217ve been living through these past 16 years Let8217s concentrate instead on just one place the urlocation for that war the country about which those in the Pentagon are no longer speaking of war at all but of 8220 generational struggle8221 Afghanistan The Graveyard of Empires Think of it 28 years after the Soviet army limped out of that infamous 8220graveyard of empires8221 at the end of a decadelong struggle in which the US had backed the most extreme groups of Islamic fundamentalists including a rich young Saudi by the name of Osama bin Laden 16 years after the US returned to invade and 8220liberate8221 Afghanistan they8217re still at it In December with Donald Trump l ifting various constraints on US military commanders there the generals were for instance sending in the planesamp160 That month there were more US air strikes 8212 455 in a winter period of minimal fighting 8212 than not just the previous December 65 but December 2012 about 200 when 100000 US troops were still incountryamp160 The phrase of this moment among US military officers in Afghanistan according to Max Bearak of the Washington Post 8220We8217re at a turning point8221amp160 Another 8220The gloves are off8221amp160 Admittedly no US commander has as yet reported seeing 8220the light at the end of the tunnel8221 but don8217t rule it out In the meantime drones of both the armed and unarmed surveillance variety are being reassigned to Afghanistan in rising numbers as well as more helicopters ground vehicles and artillery With the recent announcement that 1000 more personnel will soon head for that country US troop strength continues to grow bringing the numbers of American advisers trainers and Special Operations forces there up to perhaps 15000 or more as opposed to the 11000 or so when Donald Trump entered the Oval Office In addition the military has plans to double the size of Afghanistan8217s own special ops forces and triple the size of its air force while the head of US Central Command General Joseph Votel is calling for far more aggressive actions by those Americanadvised Afghan security forces in the upcoming spring fighting seasonamp160 To put this in perspective a 2008 US military plan to spend billions of dollars ensuring that the Afghan air force was fully staffed supplied trained and 8220selfsufficient8221 by 2015 ended seven years later with it in a 8220 woeful state8221 of disrepair and near ruinamp160 Meanwhile as part of this rampup of operations the Navy is planning to hire dronemaker General Atomics to fly that company8217s surveillance drones in Afghanistan in what8217s being termed 8220a 8216surge8217 of intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities8221 If all of this sounds faintly familiar to you I8217m not surprised In fact if you8217ve already stopped paying attention 8212 as most Americans on the nonexistent 8220home front8221 seem to have done when it comes to most of America8217s wars of this era 8212 I just want you to know that I completely understandamp160 Sixteen repetitive years later with the Taliban again in control of something close to half of Afghanistan your response couldn8217t be more allAmericanamp160 Surges turning points more aggressive actions you8217ve heard it all before 8212 and when it comes to Afghanistan the odds are that you8217ll hear it all again And don8217t for a moment think that this doesn8217t add up to another version of sending in the clowns If you don8217t believe that retired General James Mattis Lieutenant General HR McMaster and retired General James Kelly aka the secretary of defense the national security adviser and the White House chief of staff respectively are clowns if you8217re still convinced that they8217re the 8220 adults8221 in the Trumpian playroom check out Afghanistan and think againamp160 But don8217t blame them eitheramp160 What else can a clown do once those giant floppy shoes are on their feet their faces are painted and the bulbous red nose is in place but act the partamp160 So many years later they simply can8217t imagine another way to think about the world of American waramp160 They only know what they knowamp160 Give them a horn and they8217ll honk it give them Hamlet8217s 8220to be or not to be8221 soliloquy and they8217ll still honk that horn For the last decade and a half through invasions and occupations surges and counterinsurgency operations bombing runs and drone strikes commando raids and training missions they and their colleagues in the US high command have helped spread terror movements across significant parts of the planet while playing a major role in creating a series of failing or failed states across the Greater Middle East and Africaamp160 They8217ve helped uproot whole populations and transform major cities into spectacles of ruinamp160 Think of this as their twentyfirstcentury destinyamp160 They8217ve proven to be key actors in what has become an American empire of chaos or perhaps simply an empire of graveyards They can8217t help themselvesamp160 Forgive them Father for they are clowns led by the greatest clownsterinchief in the history of this countryamp160 Yes he makes even them uncomfortable because no one can pull the curtains back from the reality of the imperial presidency in quite the way he canamp160 No one can showcase our grim American world tweet by outrageous tweet in quite his fashion And yes it can all look ludicrous as hell but don8217t laughamp160 Don8217t even think about itamp160 Not now not when we8217re all at the circus watching those emanations from hell perform Instead be chilled 8212 chilled to the boneamp160 Absurd as every pratfall may be it8217s distinctly a vision from hell an allAmerican vision for the ages This column originally appeared on TomDispatch

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Tessco Technologies Inc:</p> <p>* TESSCO REPORTS THIRD-QUARTER 2018 FINANCIAL RESULTS</p> * Q3 EARNINGS PER SHARE $0.19 <p>* TESSCO TECHNOLOGIES - CO CURRENTLY ANTICIPATES DOUBLE-DIGIT YEAR-OVER-YEAR REVENUE GROWTH AND TO BE PROFITABLE IN ITS FISCAL 2018 Q4 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and South Korea could announce a trade deal next week that would cover an exemption from U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs and other trade issues, President Donald Trump and his commerce secretary said on Friday.</p> FILE PHOTO - Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stands behind U.S. President Donald Trump, who speaks at the Minority Enterprise Development Week White House awards ceremony, at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>Trump said the agreement &#8220;would be a wonderful deal with a wonderful ally. We&#8217;re getting very close to it.&#8221;</p> <p>It was not immediately clear whether the deal would encompass a revamp of the 2012 U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, known as KORUS, which has been under negotiation for several months.</p> <p>Spokesmen and spokeswomen for the U.S. Trade Representatives Office and the Commerce Department could not be immediately reached for more details on the announcement, which Trump made while speaking at an event to say he would sign a $1.3 trillion U.S. budget deal.</p> <p>Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, at Trump&#8217;s prompting, said: &#8220;We believe we are relatively close to a pretty comprehensive resolution with the South Korean government.&#8221;</p> <p>Ross said if the deal goes through, it would encompass exemptions under the U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs that went into effect on Friday, as well as &#8220;broader trade issues.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;And we hope by sometime next week to be able to have a real announcement,&#8221; Ross said.</p> <p>Trump late on Thursday issued a proclamation that South Korea, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and the European Union would get temporary exemptions from steel and aluminum tariffs, along with Canada and Mexico&#8217;s earlier exemptions. The exemptions run until May 1 while discussions over their metals exports continue.</p> <p>South Korea and the United States held a third round of negotiations last week on updating KORUS. Reducing South Korean non-tariff barriers to U.S. automotive exports has been a priority for the Trump administration in the talks.</p> <p>Reporting by David Lawder; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China urged the United States on Friday to &#8220;pull back from the brink&#8221; as President Donald Trump&#8217;s plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese goods moved the world&#8217;s two largest economies closer to a trade war.</p> <p>The escalating tensions sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.</p> <p>Trump is planning to impose the tariffs for what he says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property. A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.</p> <p>&#8220;China doesn&#8217;t hope to be in a trade war, but is not afraid of engaging in one,&#8221; the Chinese commerce ministry responded in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink, make prudent decisions, and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place.&#8221;</p> <p>In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday, there will be a 30-day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published. That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump&#8217;s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.</p> <p>Though the White House has said the planned tariffs were a response to China&#8217;s &#8220;economic aggression&#8221;, Trump said he views China as &#8220;a friend&#8221; and the two sides are in negotiations.</p> <p>A Chinese commerce ministry official said both sides were in touch.</p> <p>Still, it is unclear under what terms China and the U.S. are willing to talk, with Beijing adamant that the U.S. tariffs constitute a unilateral move that it rejects.</p> <p>China has always said it will not hold talks with the U.S. within the framework of the Section 301 probe, Chen Fuli, director-general of the commerce ministry&#8217;s department of treaty and law, told reporters.</p> <p>&#8220;Currently, we are not looking to get in a negotiation again,&#8221; a senior U.S. official told reporters in Beijing.</p> <p>If China wants to avoid U.S. tariffs, it needs to start taking concrete action, the official said, adding that Washington has not given Beijing any to-do list to remedy trade ties.</p> <p>(U.S. imports from China: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q</a>)</p> <p>(U.S. trade in goods with China: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH</a>)</p> READY TO RETALIATE <p>China showed readiness to retaliate by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports including fruit and wine in response to U.S. import tariffs on steel and aluminum, which were due to go into effect on Friday.</p> <p>The inevitable fall in demand from a full-blown trade war would spell trouble for all economies supplying the United States and China.</p> <p>Feeling the chill, MSCI&#8217;s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 2.5 percent, tracking heavy losses on Wall Street. China&#8217;s main indexes tumbled the most in six weeks, skidding up to 3.6 percent.</p> FILE PHOTO - A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian, Liaoning province, China May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer <p>&#8220;Today&#8217;s (U.S.) tariffs amount to no more than a slap on the wrist for China,&#8221; Mark Williams, Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note. &#8220;China won&#8217;t change its ways. Worries about escalation therefore won&#8217;t go away.&#8221;</p> <p>Williams estimated that the $506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 2.5 percent of its total gross domestic product, and the $50-60 billion targeted by the U.S. tariffs contributed just around 0.25 percent.</p> <p>Trump, however, appears intent on fulfilling election promises to reduce the record U.S. trade deficit with China. A commentary published by the official Xinhua news agency said the United States had adopted a &#8220;Cold War mentality&#8221;, and &#8220;panic&#8221; over China&#8217;s economic rise was driving Washington&#8217;s confrontational approach.</p> <p>U.S. multi-nationals at a business gathering in Shanghai were warned by Stephen Roach, a Yale University economist, &#8220;to prepare for the worst&#8221; and make contingency plans until calmer heads prevail.</p> <p>Roach said he could foresee &#8220;the Chinese government moving to restrict, in some form or another, the financial as well as the supply chain activities of American companies operating in this country.&#8221;</p> <p>Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China would not hold back in retaliating.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s impolite not to give as good as one gets,&#8221; Hua told reporters.</p> LOW HANGING FRUIT <p>Alarm over Trump&#8217;s protectionist leanings mounted earlier this month after he imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which allows safeguards based on &#8220;national security&#8221;.</p> <p>On Friday, Trump gave Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea and the European Union temporary exemptions. China was not exempted even though it was a far smaller supplier than Canada or South Korea.</p> <p>Also omitted from the exemption list was U.S. ally Japan, though a government spokesman said Tokyo would press to be included. And Finance Minister Taro Aso expressed empathy with Washington over protecting intellectual property.</p> <p>China&#8217;s retaliation against the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum appeared restrained.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-southkorea/u-s-south-korea-on-verge-of-trade-deal-trump-idUSKBN1GZ2P9" type="external">U.S., South Korea on verge of trade deal: Trump</a> <p>China has drawn a list of 128 U.S. products that could be hit with tariffs if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues, the ministry said.</p> <p>Without giving a timeframe, the commerce ministry said China was considering implementing measures in two stages: first a 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes, dried fruit and wine worth $977 million, and later, a 25 percent tariff on $1.99 billion of pork and recycled aluminum.</p> <p>U.S. wine exports to China last year were $79 million, according to the U.S. Wine Institute, which represents Californian wine makers.</p> <p>Fruit growers in California, Florida, Michigan and Washington all stood to lose as China&#8217;s list also included close to 80 fruit and nut products. The U.S. exported $669 million of fruit, frozen juice and nuts to China last year, and it was the top supplier of apples, cherries, walnuts and almonds.</p> <p>&#8220;With the restrained response, China hopes Trump can realize his errors and mend his ways,&#8221; said Xu Hongcai, deputy chief economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing think tank.</p> <p>&#8220;If we really want to counter, the strongest response would be to target soybean and automobiles. China is drawing its bow but not firing. We still have some cards to play.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by John Ruwitch, Elias Glenn, Dominique Patton, Josephine Mason, Ben Blanchard, Christian Shepherd, Meng Meng, Tom Daly, Wang Jing and Lusha Zhang; Editing By Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TREBES, France (Reuters) - A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car, fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket, screaming &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; before security forces stormed the building and he was killed, authorities said.</p> <p>Sixteen other people were wounded, including two seriously hurt, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of &#8220;Islamist terrorism&#8221;.</p> <p>The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron said security services were checking that claim.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight,&#8221; said Macron, who headed back from Brussels to Paris to chair a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker, identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, 26, from the city of Carcassonne, screamed &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; at the supermarket in the nearby small town of Trebes, where two of his victims were killed.</p> <p>Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room. A lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmes who swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages was fighting for his life in hospital, Macron said.</p> <p>Ladkim was known to authorities as a petty criminal but was not considered an Islamist threat and is believed to have acted alone, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at the scene.</p> <p>&#8220;Every day we detect facts and foil new attacks. Alas, this one struck without us being able to counter it,&#8221; Collomb said.</p> <p>Lakdim first killed one person with a bullet in the head while stealing a car in Carcassonne, a walled city with a medieval citadel that is one of France&#8217;s top tourist attractions.</p> <p>He pulled up in the car to four police officers who were jogging in the city, opened fire hitting one in the shoulder, then sped off to Trebes, about 8 km (5 miles) to the east, where he took the hostages in the supermarket.</p> <p>&#8220;We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalisation,&#8221; Collomb said. &#8220;He was known for possession of drugs. We couldn&#8217;t have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack.&#8221;</p> <p>Police were carrying out searches at his home, where he lived with his parents and siblings.</p> A general view shows police officers and investigators at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, France, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau ESCAPE <p>One supermarket worker said some shoppers had escaped from the building after the gunman burst in.</p> <p>&#8220;I was in my department when I heard gunshots. I went to the area of the gunshots and came face to face with the person,&#8221; said the employee, who gave his name only as Francois.</p> <p>&#8220;He raised his gun and fired, I ran away, he shouted &#8216;Allahu Akbar&#8217; and spoke about the Islamic State. I then evacuated the clients, about 20, who were in my area and we went quietly out of the back,&#8221; said Francois, who has been employed at the supermarket since last November.</p> <p>Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium, concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.</p> <p>Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, went on trial in Belgium last month. He is accused of &#8220;attempted murder in a terrorist context&#8221; over a Brussels shootout in March 2016, four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers.</p> Slideshow (16 Images) &#8220;THE THREAT IS EVERYWHERE&#8221; <p>France is part of a U.S.-led coalition fighting against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and also has thousands of soldiers in West Africa fighting al Qaeda-linked militants.</p> <p>In February, Collomb said French security forces had foiled two planned attacks so far this year as Islamic State militants set their sights on domestic targets in response to the group&#8217;s military setbacks in Iraq and Syria.</p> <p>Despite Collomb&#8217;s comments, Le Parisien newspaper wrote that Lakdim, a man of Moroccan descent, was known to French DGSI intelligence services. Without naming sources, it said he was active on Salafist social networks.</p> <p>He was also suspected, without any certainty, of having travelled to Syria, Le Parisien said, adding that the family flat, where he would have been living with his parents and three or four sisters, was raided by police on Friday afternoon.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-france-security-molins/prosecutor-says-one-person-arrested-after-southern-france-attack-idUSKBN1GZ2XN" type="external">Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack</a> <a href="/article/us-france-security-witness/french-supermarket-hostages-dodge-attacker-hide-in-cold-store-idUSKBN1GZ2T4" type="external">French supermarket hostages dodge attacker, hide in cold store</a> <a href="/article/us-france-security-islamic-state/islamic-state-claims-france-shooting-provides-no-evidence-statement-idUSKBN1GZ29M" type="external">Islamic State claims France shooting, provides no evidence: statement</a> <p>&#8220;This is a small, quiet, town. Unfortunately the threat is everywhere,&#8221; Collomb told reporters in Trebes.</p> <p>Medieval Carcassonne, a UNESCO heritage site, lies in the Languedoc region, known for its wine and picturesque countryside but also one of the poorest areas in France, with unemployment about three percentage points above the national average.</p> <p>Nearby Beziers is one of the biggest cities controlled by the far-right, while the smaller Languedoc town of Lunel further east became a breeding ground for many French jihadists who travelled to Syria to fight.</p> <p>Almost six years ago to the day, Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed seven people in the Toulouse region, about 90 km from Carcassonne. He was killed by security forces after a more than 30-hour stand-off.</p> <p>The last lethal Islamist attack in France was in October 2017 when a Tunisian-born man stabbed two young women to death in Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack.</p> <p>Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Sophie Louet, John Irish, Michel Rose, Leigh Thomas, Brian Love and Bate Felix in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Peter Graff</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - Police have arrested a woman connected to a gunman who killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car, fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket, a French prosecutor said.</p> <p>Francois Molins, who is heading up the investigation, said the attacker, Redouane Lakdim, 25, was known to security services for his links to radical Islam.</p> <p>&#8220;The monitoring ... in 2016/2017 did not reveal any apparent signs that could lead (us) to foresee he would act,&#8221; Molins said.</p> <p>Reporting by John Irish and Michel Rose</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Tessco Reports Q3 Earnings Per Share $0.19 U.S., South Korea on verge of trade deal: Trump China urges U.S. away from 'brink' as Trump picks trade weapons Gunman shoots three dead in France after 'Islamist terror' attack Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack

https://reuters.com/article/brief-tessco-reports-q3-earnings-per-sha/brief-tessco-reports-q3-earnings-per-share-019-idUSASB0C1Z1

2018-01-23

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Jan 23 Reuters Tessco Technologies Inc TESSCO REPORTS THIRDQUARTER 2018 FINANCIAL RESULTS Q3 EARNINGS PER SHARE 019 TESSCO TECHNOLOGIES CO CURRENTLY ANTICIPATES DOUBLEDIGIT YEAROVERYEAR REVENUE GROWTH AND TO BE PROFITABLE IN ITS FISCAL 2018 Q4 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The United States and South Korea could announce a trade deal next week that would cover an exemption from US steel and aluminum tariffs and other trade issues President Donald Trump and his commerce secretary said on Friday FILE PHOTO Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross stands behind US President Donald Trump who speaks at the Minority Enterprise Development Week White House awards ceremony at the White House in Washington US October 24 2017 REUTERSKevin Lamarque Trump said the agreement 8220would be a wonderful deal with a wonderful ally We8217re getting very close to it8221 It was not immediately clear whether the deal would encompass a revamp of the 2012 USSouth Korea Free Trade Agreement known as KORUS which has been under negotiation for several months Spokesmen and spokeswomen for the US Trade Representatives Office and the Commerce Department could not be immediately reached for more details on the announcement which Trump made while speaking at an event to say he would sign a 13 trillion US budget deal Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross at Trump8217s prompting said 8220We believe we are relatively close to a pretty comprehensive resolution with the South Korean government8221 Ross said if the deal goes through it would encompass exemptions under the US steel and aluminum tariffs that went into effect on Friday as well as 8220broader trade issues8221 8220And we hope by sometime next week to be able to have a real announcement8221 Ross said Trump late on Thursday issued a proclamation that South Korea Argentina Australia Brazil and the European Union would get temporary exemptions from steel and aluminum tariffs along with Canada and Mexico8217s earlier exemptions The exemptions run until May 1 while discussions over their metals exports continue South Korea and the United States held a third round of negotiations last week on updating KORUS Reducing South Korean nontariff barriers to US automotive exports has been a priority for the Trump administration in the talks Reporting by David Lawder Additional reporting by Susan Heavey editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSHANGHAI Reuters China urged the United States on Friday to 8220pull back from the brink8221 as President Donald Trump8217s plans for tariffs on up to 60 billion in Chinese goods moved the world8217s two largest economies closer to a trade war The escalating tensions sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up Trump is planning to impose the tariffs for what he says is misappropriation of US intellectual property A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act 8220China doesn8217t hope to be in a trade war but is not afraid of engaging in one8221 the Chinese commerce ministry responded in a statement 8220China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink make prudent decisions and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place8221 In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday there will be a 30day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump8217s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers Though the White House has said the planned tariffs were a response to China8217s 8220economic aggression8221 Trump said he views China as 8220a friend8221 and the two sides are in negotiations A Chinese commerce ministry official said both sides were in touch Still it is unclear under what terms China and the US are willing to talk with Beijing adamant that the US tariffs constitute a unilateral move that it rejects China has always said it will not hold talks with the US within the framework of the Section 301 probe Chen Fuli directorgeneral of the commerce ministry8217s department of treaty and law told reporters 8220Currently we are not looking to get in a negotiation again8221 a senior US official told reporters in Beijing If China wants to avoid US tariffs it needs to start taking concrete action the official said adding that Washington has not given Beijing any todo list to remedy trade ties US imports from China tmsnrtrs2FMsz1Q US trade in goods with China tmsnrtrs2GcOZIH READY TO RETALIATE China showed readiness to retaliate by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to 3 billion of US imports including fruit and wine in response to US import tariffs on steel and aluminum which were due to go into effect on Friday The inevitable fall in demand from a fullblown trade war would spell trouble for all economies supplying the United States and China Feeling the chill MSCI8217s broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan fell 25 percent tracking heavy losses on Wall Street China8217s main indexes tumbled the most in six weeks skidding up to 36 percent FILE PHOTO A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian Liaoning province China May 15 2017 REUTERSStringer 8220Today8217s US tariffs amount to no more than a slap on the wrist for China8221 Mark Williams Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note 8220China won8217t change its ways Worries about escalation therefore won8217t go away8221 Williams estimated that the 506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 25 percent of its total gross domestic product and the 5060 billion targeted by the US tariffs contributed just around 025 percent Trump however appears intent on fulfilling election promises to reduce the record US trade deficit with China A commentary published by the official Xinhua news agency said the United States had adopted a 8220Cold War mentality8221 and 8220panic8221 over China8217s economic rise was driving Washington8217s confrontational approach US multinationals at a business gathering in Shanghai were warned by Stephen Roach a Yale University economist 8220to prepare for the worst8221 and make contingency plans until calmer heads prevail Roach said he could foresee 8220the Chinese government moving to restrict in some form or another the financial as well as the supply chain activities of American companies operating in this country8221 Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China would not hold back in retaliating Slideshow 4 Images 8220It8217s impolite not to give as good as one gets8221 Hua told reporters LOW HANGING FRUIT Alarm over Trump8217s protectionist leanings mounted earlier this month after he imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 US Trade Expansion Act which allows safeguards based on 8220national security8221 On Friday Trump gave Canada Mexico Argentina Australia Brazil and South Korea and the European Union temporary exemptions China was not exempted even though it was a far smaller supplier than Canada or South Korea Also omitted from the exemption list was US ally Japan though a government spokesman said Tokyo would press to be included And Finance Minister Taro Aso expressed empathy with Washington over protecting intellectual property China8217s retaliation against the US tariffs on steel and aluminum appeared restrained Related Coverage US South Korea on verge of trade deal Trump China has drawn a list of 128 US products that could be hit with tariffs if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues the ministry said Without giving a timeframe the commerce ministry said China was considering implementing measures in two stages first a 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes dried fruit and wine worth 977 million and later a 25 percent tariff on 199 billion of pork and recycled aluminum US wine exports to China last year were 79 million according to the US Wine Institute which represents Californian wine makers Fruit growers in California Florida Michigan and Washington all stood to lose as China8217s list also included close to 80 fruit and nut products The US exported 669 million of fruit frozen juice and nuts to China last year and it was the top supplier of apples cherries walnuts and almonds 8220With the restrained response China hopes Trump can realize his errors and mend his ways8221 said Xu Hongcai deputy chief economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges a Beijing think tank 8220If we really want to counter the strongest response would be to target soybean and automobiles China is drawing its bow but not firing We still have some cards to play8221 Additional reporting by John Ruwitch Elias Glenn Dominique Patton Josephine Mason Ben Blanchard Christian Shepherd Meng Meng Tom Daly Wang Jing and Lusha Zhang Editing By Simon CameronMoore Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TREBES France Reuters A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket screaming 8220Allahu Akbar8221 before security forces stormed the building and he was killed authorities said Sixteen other people were wounded including two seriously hurt in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of 8220Islamist terrorism8221 The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack Macron said security services were checking that claim 8220I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight8221 said Macron who headed back from Brussels to Paris to chair a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group Friday8217s attacker identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim 26 from the city of Carcassonne screamed 8220Allahu Akbar8221 at the supermarket in the nearby small town of Trebes where two of his victims were killed Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room A lieutenantcolonel of the gendarmes who swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages was fighting for his life in hospital Macron said Ladkim was known to authorities as a petty criminal but was not considered an Islamist threat and is believed to have acted alone Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at the scene 8220Every day we detect facts and foil new attacks Alas this one struck without us being able to counter it8221 Collomb said Lakdim first killed one person with a bullet in the head while stealing a car in Carcassonne a walled city with a medieval citadel that is one of France8217s top tourist attractions He pulled up in the car to four police officers who were jogging in the city opened fire hitting one in the shoulder then sped off to Trebes about 8 km 5 miles to the east where he took the hostages in the supermarket 8220We had monitored him and thought there was no radicalisation8221 Collomb said 8220He was known for possession of drugs We couldn8217t have said that he was a radical that would carry out an attack8221 Police were carrying out searches at his home where he lived with his parents and siblings A general view shows police officers and investigators at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 23 2018 REUTERSRegis Duvignau ESCAPE One supermarket worker said some shoppers had escaped from the building after the gunman burst in 8220I was in my department when I heard gunshots I went to the area of the gunshots and came face to face with the person8221 said the employee who gave his name only as Francois 8220He raised his gun and fired I ran away he shouted 8216Allahu Akbar8217 and spoke about the Islamic State I then evacuated the clients about 20 who were in my area and we went quietly out of the back8221 said Francois who has been employed at the supermarket since last November Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015 Abdeslam a French citizen born and raised in Brussels went on trial in Belgium last month He is accused of 8220attempted murder in a terrorist context8221 over a Brussels shootout in March 2016 four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers Slideshow 16 Images 8220THE THREAT IS EVERYWHERE8221 France is part of a USled coalition fighting against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and also has thousands of soldiers in West Africa fighting al Qaedalinked militants In February Collomb said French security forces had foiled two planned attacks so far this year as Islamic State militants set their sights on domestic targets in response to the group8217s military setbacks in Iraq and Syria Despite Collomb8217s comments Le Parisien newspaper wrote that Lakdim a man of Moroccan descent was known to French DGSI intelligence services Without naming sources it said he was active on Salafist social networks He was also suspected without any certainty of having travelled to Syria Le Parisien said adding that the family flat where he would have been living with his parents and three or four sisters was raided by police on Friday afternoon Related Coverage Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack French supermarket hostages dodge attacker hide in cold store Islamic State claims France shooting provides no evidence statement 8220This is a small quiet town Unfortunately the threat is everywhere8221 Collomb told reporters in Trebes Medieval Carcassonne a UNESCO heritage site lies in the Languedoc region known for its wine and picturesque countryside but also one of the poorest areas in France with unemployment about three percentage points above the national average Nearby Beziers is one of the biggest cities controlled by the farright while the smaller Languedoc town of Lunel further east became a breeding ground for many French jihadists who travelled to Syria to fight Almost six years ago to the day Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed seven people in the Toulouse region about 90 km from Carcassonne He was killed by security forces after a more than 30hour standoff The last lethal Islamist attack in France was in October 2017 when a Tunisianborn man stabbed two young women to death in Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry Sophie Louet John Irish Michel Rose Leigh Thomas Brian Love and Bate Felix in Paris Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Peter Graff Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters Police have arrested a woman connected to a gunman who killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket a French prosecutor said Francois Molins who is heading up the investigation said the attacker Redouane Lakdim 25 was known to security services for his links to radical Islam 8220The monitoring in 20162017 did not reveal any apparent signs that could lead us to foresee he would act8221 Molins said Reporting by John Irish and Michel Rose Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>On the morning of March 11, 2008, shortly after the bus picked up his twin brothers for preschool, Emill Smith stopped by the house of his mother, Valerie Maxwell, in Chester, Pennsylvania. At 22, he was stocky and athletic, with dark eyes, faint facial hair, and a cursive tattoo on his right hand: &#8220;R.I.P. James,&#8221; in memory of his father, who died in his sleep when Emill was 12. They talked for a while, and he asked if he could pick the twins up from school that afternoon so they could spend time together.</p> <p>That afternoon, Emill took the four-year-olds to McDonald&#8217;s and his place before dropping them off at Valerie&#8217;s: &#8220;They almost set the apartment on fire,&#8221; he joked. &#8220;Here, you can have them.&#8221; As he walked out, he stopped.</p> <p>&#8220;Mom.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Yes?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I love you.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I love you more.&#8221;</p> <p>At 7:15 p.m. that night, Valerie dialed Emill&#8217;s number to make sure he was home in time for his 7:30 curfew, part of his probation for disorderly conduct in a domestic dispute. No answer. A few minutes later, one of Emill&#8217;s friends rushed in and collapsed.</p> <p>Valerie Maxwell&#8217;s son Emill Smith was shot to death in 2008 after spending the afternoon playing with his little brothers &#8220;I just put my hands over my ears,&#8221; she recalls, tears dripping down her cheek. &#8220;I felt it. I felt it. I felt it for a long time.&#8221;</p> <p>Emill had been to a neighborhood bar, where a security camera recorded him dancing, hanging out by the pool table, and kissing an old friend on the forehead before leaving. As he got into his car, someone walked up and shot him several times. No one was ever arrested in connection with the crime, and odds are no one will be. That&#8217;s because, while Chester has one of the nation&#8217;s <a href="http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/top-lists/highest-murder-rate-cities/" type="external">highest homicide rates</a>, it has a far <a href="http://www.statista.com/statistics/194213/crime-clearance-rate-by-type-in-the-us/" type="external">lower than average</a>&#8220;clearance rate.&#8221; Not even one-third of last year&#8217;s 30 homicides have been solved, a rate less than half the national average. Since 2005, 144 killings have gone unsolved.</p> <p>For generations, black frustration with policing has been best described in a two-part statement: Cops don&#8217;t care enough to solve crimes in our neighborhoods&#8212;they just come and harass our kids. Novelist <a href="http://www.waltermosley.com/books/" type="external">Walter Mosley</a> even built a best-selling detective series around a tough private investigator who does all the serving and protecting that cops won&#8217;t do on the black side of town.</p> <p>The bitter irony is that it was this same complaint that helped spawn the aggressive policing tactics now under attack from Ferguson to New York City. In the 1980s, when crack and heroin syndicates swept through black neighborhoods, black parents and pastors were <a href="http://prisontime.org/2013/08/12/timeline-black-support-for-the-war-on-drugs/" type="external">some of the first and loudest</a>voices to demand a war on drugs. What they got was &#8220;broken windows&#8221; policing&#8212;an emphasis on curbing petty offenses to prevent more serious crime.</p> <p>What they also got were mandatory minimum sentences for shoplifters, indiscriminate stop-and-frisk sweeps, and deadly choke holds on men selling loose cigarettes. There&#8217;s <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2014/12/%20broken_windows_policing_doesn_t_work_it_also_may_have_killed_eric_garner.html" type="external">little evidence</a> that these tactics contributed much to the national decline in crime. But they did erode trust in law enforcement across many communities&#8212;leaving places like Chester increasingly bereft of the protection they badly need. With residents both fearful of police and worried about being targeted for talking to them, detectives can&#8217;t find the witnesses they need to solve crimes, breeding further distrust and a vicious cycle of frustration. A 2014 New York Daily News <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/forgotten-record-murder-rate-cases-unsolved-article-1.1566572" type="external">investigation</a> found that in 2013, police solved about 86 percent of homicides in which the victim was white. For black victims, the number was just 45 percent. And in high-minority communities like Chester, says <a href="http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/profiles/criminal_justice.aspx?key=%5Bemail%5D=%27dakennedy@jjay.cuny.edu%27" type="external">David Kennedy</a>, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, clearance rates for murder&#8212;and even more so for nonfatal shootings&#8212;can get &#8220;pathetically low. They can easily fall down to single digits.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>Founded as the settlement of Upland in 1644, <a href="http://www.chestercity.com/index.php/about-chester/history-of-chester" type="external">Chester once thrived on industry</a>&#8212;its shipyard supplied Union soldiers, its steel mills sustained residents through both world wars, and factories, including a Ford plant, offered good jobs for black and white residents through the 1950s. Residents flocked to movie theaters and nightclubs, and legends like Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played streetball at &#8220; <a href="http://articles.philly.com/2012-01-22/news/30652968_1_rondae-jefferson-randy-legette-clippers" type="external">The Cage</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>But in the 1960s and &#8217;70s, <a href="http://www.chestercity.com/index.php/about-chester/history-of-chester" type="external">companies left Chester</a> for other parts of the county, and the city starved for jobs and tax revenue. Toxic-waste processing plants were <a href="http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412461-Revitalizing-Distressed-Suburbs.pdf" type="external">among the few businesses moving in</a> as middle-class families headed to the suburbs, leaving the city with <a href="http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/ChesterDigital/?page_id=626" type="external">nearly half</a> its postwar population. And in the &#8217;80s, Chester, like nearby Philadelphia, became a <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/133208NCJRS.pdf" type="external">hotbed</a> for organized crime and drug trafficking.</p> <p>Today, smoke still drifts from the stacks of the <a href="http://www.delcotimes.com/general-news/20110330/kimberly-clark-says-chester-plant-not-on-chopping-block" type="external">Kimberly-Clark plant</a> on the Delaware River, where workers make Scott tissue and paper towels. Up the hill are clusters of well-kept redbrick houses around Crozer Medical Center, the city&#8217;s <a href="http://www.crozerkeystone.org/careers/" type="external">largest employer</a>. Across Chester Creek are boarded-up homes and the city&#8217;s Ruth L. Bennett and William Penn housing projects. Some <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/4213208.html" type="external">75 percent</a> of Chester&#8217;s residents are African American, <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/4213208.html" type="external">a third</a> live below the federal poverty line, and unemployment is at <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=UNEMPLOYMENT%2C+CHESTER%2C+pa&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;channel=fflb#rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;channel=fflb&amp;amp;q=UNEMPLOYMENT+RATE%2C+CHESTER%2C+pa" type="external">7.5 percent,</a> nearly <a href="http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000" type="external">2 points higher</a> than the national average. In 2013, the homicide rate here was more than four times that of Philadelphia and Chicago. And in a city of a little more than 34,000, each death sends ripples throughout the community.</p> <p>There are at <a href="http://www.churchangel.com/WEBPA/chester.htm" type="external">least 120 churches</a> in Chester, including the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Temple-of-Brotherly-Love-Cc-Church/111835178853820" type="external">Temple of Brotherly Love</a>, presided over by the Reverend Calvin Williams. Williams lost a son and a nephew to gun violence, and over the last decade, he and his wife, Patricia, have been visiting crime scenes as often as possible, offering prayer and reflection behind the yellow caution tape. &#8220;When brothers and sisters can&#8217;t get jobs, or this little guy is trying to take care of his mother, he&#8217;s going to find a way,&#8221; Williams says. &#8220;So it becomes territorial. He&#8217;s trying to make a living, so he&#8217;s going to do whatever&#8217;s he&#8217;s gotta do.&#8221;</p> <p>When Williams heard that Emill Smith, whom he knew from <a href="http://articles.philly.com/1994-02-18/news/25860855_1_halls-gant-boy" type="external">volunteering at Chester High School</a>, had been killed, he headed to his mother&#8217;s house immediately. When she opened the door, Williams held her tight and said nothing. &#8220;He let me cry,&#8221; Valerie says. &#8220;Calvin knew, he just knew how I felt about my children. My children mean everything to me.&#8221;</p> <p>Just five months after Valerie buried Emill, police found her aunt Sherrice Alexander-Hill&#8217;s son Karim Alexander <a href="http://www.delcotimes.com/general-news/20120805/chester-residents-honor-neighborhoods-victims" type="external">dead in the street</a> behind her home&#8212;the first of what would be <a href="http://www.delcotimes.com/general-news/20081229/2008-year-end-review-extraordinary-times" type="external">six homicides that week</a>. Some of the killings seemed to involve retaliatory violence between warring neighborhood crews, according to local news reports. But that&#8217;s conjecture, because cops haven&#8217;t solved Karim&#8217;s murder either.</p> <p>What determines the likelihood of a murder case being solved? One factor appears to be police response in the hours and days after a killing: According to a study <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/jr000243b.pdf" type="external">published</a> in the National Institute of Justice Journal, the faster officers secure the scene, notify homicide detectives, and ID witnesses, the more likely it is the killer will be brought to justice.</p> <p>But that can be hard in a place like Chester, says Cory Long, a community leader who worked on the city&#8217;s anti-violence task force, because the relationship between police and community is so strained that residents are often reluctant to come forward. Witnesses not only fear police won&#8217;t protect them from retaliation, they simply don&#8217;t believe law enforcement will help them find justice.</p> <p>&#8220;Some of these issues have been going on with the same neighborhoods,&#8221; Long says. &#8220;You know, generations under them. One guy gets locked up. His younger brother or cousin or relative will take [the retaliation] on, as they get a little older. It just keeps recycling and recycling.&#8221; There was a time when homicides mostly resulted from turf wars between neighborhoods, but now, he says, &#8220;it has spiraled a little more out of control. It&#8217;s a free-for-all.&#8221;</p> <p>Homicide, at its core, is an intimate crime. In any given city, criminologist Kennedy points out, gun violence is concentrated among a small number of residents in struggling neighborhoods. When someone gets shot, the news travels quickly. &#8220;People know what happened,&#8221; Kennedy explains. &#8220;So if the criminal-justice system isn&#8217;t taking care of this, the likelihood that you&#8217;ll get your friends and a gun and take care of this goes up.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The person wanted for a homicide today has been shot three times by rivals over the past three years,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Many of these men are involved in violence because people are trying to hurt them. The moral territory is much murkier than we think it is from a distance.&#8221; When cops lack trust in the tiny geographic areas where most shootings occur&#8212;and where the penalties for talking to police are well understood&#8212;lots of shootings go unsolved, which leads to more shootings, and so on.</p> <p>But Kennedy points to cities that turned things around. &#8220;Paterson, New Jersey, is a very tough environment that nonetheless has managed to keep its clearance rate way above the norm,&#8221; he notes&#8212;partly thanks to a community-policing model in which law enforcement agencies prioritize building trust with neighborhood groups and residents.</p> <p>Chester has made its own efforts to turn things around. In 2010, <a href="http://www.delcotimes.com/general-news/20100619/chester-placed-under-a-state-of-emergency-with-video" type="external">after a string of homicides</a> left four people&#8212;including a two-year-old boy&#8212;dead in just eight days, then-Mayor Wendell Butler Jr. declared a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/us/28chester.html" type="external">state of emergency</a>, imposing a 9 p.m. curfew on five of the city&#8217;s most violent neighborhoods. Anyone who couldn&#8217;t give a good reason for being outside at night could be cited and charged.</p> <p>Community leaders also put together anti-violence rallies, where families and residents joined police officers and city officials in National Night Out-style parties. Long says he would take neighborhood guys out to dinner on Butler&#8217;s tab as a sign of good faith. But after a while, he says, the rallies stopped and the community&#8217;s trust in the police department waned.</p> <p>In his spacious office overlooking the industrial riverfront, Chester <a href="http://www.chestercity.com/index.php/city-council/city-council-officials/mayor-john-linder-director-of-public-affairs" type="external">Mayor John Linder</a> moves deliberately like the social-sciences professor he once was. As a black teenager in the 1960s, he hung out with friends at Bennett and William Penn and watched as tension between the two housing projects seeped into the schools. &#8220;I had friends on both sides,&#8221; Linder says, laughing. &#8220;I&#8217;ve always been a politician. Nah, man. It was rough. I had to fight my way out of the William Penn sometimes.&#8221;</p> <p>After working as a sheet metal mechanic at the nearby Boeing plant, Linder shifted to social services and academia, and since taking over as mayor in 2011 he has ramped up narcotics and gun enforcement as well as emergency response. But, he acknowledges, &#8220;it ain&#8217;t easy changing a culture. [People] want that crime solved, but there&#8217;s frustration. In an urban community, you get this cycle of social failure. Frustration leads to aggression. Then, if nothing&#8217;s done, there&#8217;s a stage of inaction. Then you have the explosion like in Ferguson.&#8221;</p> <p>Last May, Chester launched <a href="http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/25445929/operation-city-surge-hopes-to-crackdown-on-violence-in-chester" type="external">another crackdown on violence</a>, with its officers joining state and federal agencies to sweep the city for parole offenders. District Attorney Jack Whelan promised regular gun sweeps, and throughout the summer, officials went door to door and urged residents to file tips anonymously. In November, the city also <a href="http://www.widener.edu/news-events/news-archive/2014/security-cameras.aspx" type="external">received</a> $1.1 million to install surveillance cameras over the span of 25 high-crime blocks.</p> <p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t stop crimes with cameras,&#8221; Linder says. &#8220;But you can solve cases with it. People are intimidated to come to court. You have the cameras, and the camera becomes the witness.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet, 2014 had the highest number of homicides in Chester&#8217;s history, even as overall violent crime continued to fall. There were <a href="http://www.paucrs.pa.gov/UCR/Reporting/Query/Summary" type="external">nine homicides</a> in the first six months of 2015, and at press time, one of them had been cleared.</p> <p><a href="http://www.delcotimes.com/general-news/20120805/chester-residents-honor-neighborhoods-victims" type="external">Every August</a>, Sherrice Alexander-Hill holds a block party to mark her son&#8217;s death. She&#8217;s had a mural made for it&#8212;Karim wearing large sunglasses, a tight buzz cut, a cream jacket over an orange shirt&#8212;that hangs in her living room year-round. On summer nights, Hill can hear the gunshots ripping through the William Penn Homes nearby.</p> <p>People come to the block party from as far away as Washington, DC. The kids ride ponies and play on waterslides; the adults dance in the street. Many of them knew Karim, but the party has grown to encompass the families of other slain young men. &#8220;People say, &#8216;We having a block party this year?&#8217; And I say, &#8216;If you help me!'&#8221; Hill&#8217;s nine-year-old grandson takes particular ownership. &#8220;He used to say, &#8216;This is all about my daddy and I&#8217;m in charge!'&#8221;</p> <p>At first, Valerie Maxwell refused to go to the block party. She wasn&#8217;t ready for people to come up offering their sympathies. The following year, she relented. Her twins had heard about the waterslides and how fun it would be. &#8220;They were still young,&#8221; Valerie says. &#8220;I just had to bite down on my pride.&#8221;</p> <p>When she recounts the years since her son&#8217;s death, her voice still breaks. She left her job as a medical technician at Springfield Senior Commons to focus on taking care of her six other children and moved to a safer neighborhood. Her leopard-print robe covers the tattoos on her shoulders&#8212;one side bears Emill&#8217;s initials, the other a pair of hands folded in prayer. Three portraits of Emill watch over the living room that Valerie tidies meticulously each day after dropping the now 11-year-old twins at the bus stop. When the twins recently asked to spend time at their cousin&#8217;s house in the Bennett Homes, she warned them to not go outside. Later, one of the boys told her they&#8217;d seen someone get shot outside their cousin&#8217;s window.</p> <p>&#8220;This is me,&#8221; Valerie sighs. &#8220;That&#8217;s my life.&#8221; This spring, on the seventh anniversary of her son&#8217;s death, she went to his grave to lay down a fresh batch of flowers and just talk. It still feels like yesterday that Emill was alive and joking in her house. It feels like she&#8217;s in a dream, waiting to be jolted awake. Twice a year, on Emill&#8217;s birthday and on the day of his death, she calls the police department to ask for an update on the case. When she called in January, on what would&#8217;ve been his 29th birthday, she learned that the detective working the case had retired.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m just not giving up. I talk about it. I be about it. I just don&#8217;t skip a beat,&#8221; Valerie says. &#8220;I don&#8217;t never stop calling over to the police station, and I don&#8217;t ever stop talking about my son.&#8221;</p> <p>This story has been updated.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn&#8217;t fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.</p> <p>Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation so we can keep on doing the type of journalism that 2018 demands.</p> <p>This story was produced as part of the George Washington Williams Fellowship, a program sponsored by the Independent Press Association.</p> <p>Edwin Rios is a reporter at Mother Jones. Reach him at erios@motherjones.com.</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Jaeah Lee</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Mark Follman</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Julia Lurie</a></p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Mark Follman</a> and <a href="" type="internal">James West</a></p>

Black Deaths Matter

https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/chester-gun-violence-black-deaths-matter/

2018-05-01

4left

On the morning of March 11 2008 shortly after the bus picked up his twin brothers for preschool Emill Smith stopped by the house of his mother Valerie Maxwell in Chester Pennsylvania At 22 he was stocky and athletic with dark eyes faint facial hair and a cursive tattoo on his right hand 8220RIP James8221 in memory of his father who died in his sleep when Emill was 12 They talked for a while and he asked if he could pick the twins up from school that afternoon so they could spend time together That afternoon Emill took the fouryearolds to McDonald8217s and his place before dropping them off at Valerie8217s 8220They almost set the apartment on fire8221 he joked 8220Here you can have them8221 As he walked out he stopped 8220Mom8221 8220Yes8221 8220I love you8221 8220I love you more8221 At 715 pm that night Valerie dialed Emill8217s number to make sure he was home in time for his 730 curfew part of his probation for disorderly conduct in a domestic dispute No answer A few minutes later one of Emill8217s friends rushed in and collapsed Valerie Maxwell8217s son Emill Smith was shot to death in 2008 after spending the afternoon playing with his little brothers 8220I just put my hands over my ears8221 she recalls tears dripping down her cheek 8220I felt it I felt it I felt it for a long time8221 Emill had been to a neighborhood bar where a security camera recorded him dancing hanging out by the pool table and kissing an old friend on the forehead before leaving As he got into his car someone walked up and shot him several times No one was ever arrested in connection with the crime and odds are no one will be That8217s because while Chester has one of the nation8217s highest homicide rates it has a far lower than average8220clearance rate8221 Not even onethird of last year8217s 30 homicides have been solved a rate less than half the national average Since 2005 144 killings have gone unsolved For generations black frustration with policing has been best described in a twopart statement Cops don8217t care enough to solve crimes in our neighborhoods8212they just come and harass our kids Novelist Walter Mosley even built a bestselling detective series around a tough private investigator who does all the serving and protecting that cops won8217t do on the black side of town The bitter irony is that it was this same complaint that helped spawn the aggressive policing tactics now under attack from Ferguson to New York City In the 1980s when crack and heroin syndicates swept through black neighborhoods black parents and pastors were some of the first and loudestvoices to demand a war on drugs What they got was 8220broken windows8221 policing8212an emphasis on curbing petty offenses to prevent more serious crime What they also got were mandatory minimum sentences for shoplifters indiscriminate stopandfrisk sweeps and deadly choke holds on men selling loose cigarettes There8217s little evidence that these tactics contributed much to the national decline in crime But they did erode trust in law enforcement across many communities8212leaving places like Chester increasingly bereft of the protection they badly need With residents both fearful of police and worried about being targeted for talking to them detectives can8217t find the witnesses they need to solve crimes breeding further distrust and a vicious cycle of frustration A 2014 New York Daily News investigation found that in 2013 police solved about 86 percent of homicides in which the victim was white For black victims the number was just 45 percent And in highminority communities like Chester says David Kennedy a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice clearance rates for murder8212and even more so for nonfatal shootings8212can get 8220pathetically low They can easily fall down to single digits8221 amp160 Founded as the settlement of Upland in 1644 Chester once thrived on industry8212its shipyard supplied Union soldiers its steel mills sustained residents through both world wars and factories including a Ford plant offered good jobs for black and white residents through the 1950s Residents flocked to movie theaters and nightclubs and legends like Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem AbdulJabbar played streetball at 8220 The Cage8221 But in the 1960s and 821770s companies left Chester for other parts of the county and the city starved for jobs and tax revenue Toxicwaste processing plants were among the few businesses moving in as middleclass families headed to the suburbs leaving the city with nearly half its postwar population And in the 821780s Chester like nearby Philadelphia became a hotbed for organized crime and drug trafficking Today smoke still drifts from the stacks of the KimberlyClark plant on the Delaware River where workers make Scott tissue and paper towels Up the hill are clusters of wellkept redbrick houses around Crozer Medical Center the city8217s largest employer Across Chester Creek are boardedup homes and the city8217s Ruth L Bennett and William Penn housing projects Some 75 percent of Chester8217s residents are African American a third live below the federal poverty line and unemployment is at 75 percent nearly 2 points higher than the national average In 2013 the homicide rate here was more than four times that of Philadelphia and Chicago And in a city of a little more than 34000 each death sends ripples throughout the community There are at least 120 churches in Chester including the Temple of Brotherly Love presided over by the Reverend Calvin Williams Williams lost a son and a nephew to gun violence and over the last decade he and his wife Patricia have been visiting crime scenes as often as possible offering prayer and reflection behind the yellow caution tape 8220When brothers and sisters can8217t get jobs or this little guy is trying to take care of his mother he8217s going to find a way8221 Williams says 8220So it becomes territorial He8217s trying to make a living so he8217s going to do whatever8217s he8217s gotta do8221 When Williams heard that Emill Smith whom he knew from volunteering at Chester High School had been killed he headed to his mother8217s house immediately When she opened the door Williams held her tight and said nothing 8220He let me cry8221 Valerie says 8220Calvin knew he just knew how I felt about my children My children mean everything to me8221 Just five months after Valerie buried Emill police found her aunt Sherrice AlexanderHill8217s son Karim Alexander dead in the street behind her home8212the first of what would be six homicides that week Some of the killings seemed to involve retaliatory violence between warring neighborhood crews according to local news reports But that8217s conjecture because cops haven8217t solved Karim8217s murder either What determines the likelihood of a murder case being solved One factor appears to be police response in the hours and days after a killing According to a study published in the National Institute of Justice Journal the faster officers secure the scene notify homicide detectives and ID witnesses the more likely it is the killer will be brought to justice But that can be hard in a place like Chester says Cory Long a community leader who worked on the city8217s antiviolence task force because the relationship between police and community is so strained that residents are often reluctant to come forward Witnesses not only fear police won8217t protect them from retaliation they simply don8217t believe law enforcement will help them find justice 8220Some of these issues have been going on with the same neighborhoods8221 Long says 8220You know generations under them One guy gets locked up His younger brother or cousin or relative will take the retaliation on as they get a little older It just keeps recycling and recycling8221 There was a time when homicides mostly resulted from turf wars between neighborhoods but now he says 8220it has spiraled a little more out of control It8217s a freeforall8221 Homicide at its core is an intimate crime In any given city criminologist Kennedy points out gun violence is concentrated among a small number of residents in struggling neighborhoods When someone gets shot the news travels quickly 8220People know what happened8221 Kennedy explains 8220So if the criminaljustice system isn8217t taking care of this the likelihood that you8217ll get your friends and a gun and take care of this goes up8221 8220The person wanted for a homicide today has been shot three times by rivals over the past three years8221 he says 8220Many of these men are involved in violence because people are trying to hurt them The moral territory is much murkier than we think it is from a distance8221 When cops lack trust in the tiny geographic areas where most shootings occur8212and where the penalties for talking to police are well understood8212lots of shootings go unsolved which leads to more shootings and so on But Kennedy points to cities that turned things around 8220Paterson New Jersey is a very tough environment that nonetheless has managed to keep its clearance rate way above the norm8221 he notes8212partly thanks to a communitypolicing model in which law enforcement agencies prioritize building trust with neighborhood groups and residents Chester has made its own efforts to turn things around In 2010 after a string of homicides left four people8212including a twoyearold boy8212dead in just eight days thenMayor Wendell Butler Jr declared a state of emergency imposing a 9 pm curfew on five of the city8217s most violent neighborhoods Anyone who couldn8217t give a good reason for being outside at night could be cited and charged Community leaders also put together antiviolence rallies where families and residents joined police officers and city officials in National Night Outstyle parties Long says he would take neighborhood guys out to dinner on Butler8217s tab as a sign of good faith But after a while he says the rallies stopped and the community8217s trust in the police department waned In his spacious office overlooking the industrial riverfront Chester Mayor John Linder moves deliberately like the socialsciences professor he once was As a black teenager in the 1960s he hung out with friends at Bennett and William Penn and watched as tension between the two housing projects seeped into the schools 8220I had friends on both sides8221 Linder says laughing 8220I8217ve always been a politician Nah man It was rough I had to fight my way out of the William Penn sometimes8221 After working as a sheet metal mechanic at the nearby Boeing plant Linder shifted to social services and academia and since taking over as mayor in 2011 he has ramped up narcotics and gun enforcement as well as emergency response But he acknowledges 8220it ain8217t easy changing a culture People want that crime solved but there8217s frustration In an urban community you get this cycle of social failure Frustration leads to aggression Then if nothing8217s done there8217s a stage of inaction Then you have the explosion like in Ferguson8221 Last May Chester launched another crackdown on violence with its officers joining state and federal agencies to sweep the city for parole offenders District Attorney Jack Whelan promised regular gun sweeps and throughout the summer officials went door to door and urged residents to file tips anonymously In November the city also received 11 million to install surveillance cameras over the span of 25 highcrime blocks 8220You can8217t stop crimes with cameras8221 Linder says 8220But you can solve cases with it People are intimidated to come to court You have the cameras and the camera becomes the witness8221 And yet 2014 had the highest number of homicides in Chester8217s history even as overall violent crime continued to fall There were nine homicides in the first six months of 2015 and at press time one of them had been cleared Every August Sherrice AlexanderHill holds a block party to mark her son8217s death She8217s had a mural made for it8212Karim wearing large sunglasses a tight buzz cut a cream jacket over an orange shirt8212that hangs in her living room yearround On summer nights Hill can hear the gunshots ripping through the William Penn Homes nearby People come to the block party from as far away as Washington DC The kids ride ponies and play on waterslides the adults dance in the street Many of them knew Karim but the party has grown to encompass the families of other slain young men 8220People say 8216We having a block party this year8217 And I say 8216If you help me8221 Hill8217s nineyearold grandson takes particular ownership 8220He used to say 8216This is all about my daddy and I8217m in charge8221 At first Valerie Maxwell refused to go to the block party She wasn8217t ready for people to come up offering their sympathies The following year she relented Her twins had heard about the waterslides and how fun it would be 8220They were still young8221 Valerie says 8220I just had to bite down on my pride8221 When she recounts the years since her son8217s death her voice still breaks She left her job as a medical technician at Springfield Senior Commons to focus on taking care of her six other children and moved to a safer neighborhood Her leopardprint robe covers the tattoos on her shoulders8212one side bears Emill8217s initials the other a pair of hands folded in prayer Three portraits of Emill watch over the living room that Valerie tidies meticulously each day after dropping the now 11yearold twins at the bus stop When the twins recently asked to spend time at their cousin8217s house in the Bennett Homes she warned them to not go outside Later one of the boys told her they8217d seen someone get shot outside their cousin8217s window 8220This is me8221 Valerie sighs 8220That8217s my life8221 This spring on the seventh anniversary of her son8217s death she went to his grave to lay down a fresh batch of flowers and just talk It still feels like yesterday that Emill was alive and joking in her house It feels like she8217s in a dream waiting to be jolted awake Twice a year on Emill8217s birthday and on the day of his death she calls the police department to ask for an update on the case When she called in January on what would8217ve been his 29th birthday she learned that the detective working the case had retired 8220I8217m just not giving up I talk about it I be about it I just don8217t skip a beat8221 Valerie says 8220I don8217t never stop calling over to the police station and I don8217t ever stop talking about my son8221 This story has been updated amp160 Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn8217t fund the type of hardhitting journalism we set out to do Today reader support makes up about twothirds of our budget allows us to dig deep on stories that matter and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone If you value what you get from Mother Jones please join us with a taxdeductible donation so we can keep on doing the type of journalism that 2018 demands This story was produced as part of the George Washington Williams Fellowship a program sponsored by the Independent Press Association Edwin Rios is a reporter at Mother Jones Reach him at eriosmotherjonescom Jaeah Lee Mark Follman and Julia Lurie Mark Follman and James West

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<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(This version of the April 13th story corrects title of Scott Morris as senior fellow of Center for Global Development)</p> <p>By David Lawder</p> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is expected to support a $13 billion capital increase for the World Bank in a deal that will reform the development bank&#8217;s lending rules and increase China&#8217;s shareholding, three people close to the matter said on Friday.</p> <p>U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to lend his support for the plan at next week&#8217;s World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings, the sources said. But the deal will need an endorsement from the World Bank&#8217;s shareholders and approval from its board of directors.</p> <p>&#8220;Barring unforeseen challenges, there will be a capital increase,&#8221; one of the sources told Reuters.</p> <p>U.S. backing for the capital increase was first reported by the Financial Times.</p> <p>The Trump administration was initially skeptical of the World Bank&#8217;s long-running effort to boost its capital, proposing major cuts to multilateral development banks last year.</p> <p>U.S. Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass has long criticized multilateral development banks for contributing to the build-up of debt in poor countries, and has chided the World Bank&#8217;s lending to higher income countries such as China, saying they should &#8220;graduate&#8221; to non-concessional loans.</p> <p>&#8220;When the World Bank does not graduate these countries, less funding is available to reach countries with greater development needs and there is an excess burden placed on shareholder capital,&#8221; Malpass, who heads international affairs at the Treasury, said in congressional testimony last year.</p> <p>The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been formally announced, said it would include reforms that would raise financing costs for higher-income countries.</p> <p>Scott Morris, a former Treasury official who now is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said the capital increase deal is a victory for World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, an Obama administration nominee who has cultivated a relationship with the Trump administration, launching a women&#8217;s empowerment fund in cooperation with President Donald Trump&#8217;s daughter Ivanka.</p> <p>Morris said the increase in shareholding for China &#8220;reflects reality of the global economy&#8221; with China&#8217;s growing economic clout. But it is unclear how Mnuchin will characterize the shift given Trump&#8217;s threats to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods over China&#8217;s intellectual property practices, he added.</p> <p>Under terms of the deal, according to the sources familiar with it, China&#8217;s shareholding in the World Bank would rise to about six percent from 4.68 percent currently. China would still be in third place behind the United States and Japan.</p> <p>About $7.5 billion of the capital increase would go to the World Bank&#8217;s main concessional lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with $5.5 billion going to the International Finance Corp, the group&#8217;s private sector lending arm.</p> <p>A U.S. Treasury spokesman declined to comment, while a World Bank spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea&#8217;s March crude oil imports from Iran dropped 39.3 percent from a year earlier on slowing demand for Iranian oil, the country&#8217;s customs data showed on Sunday.</p> <p>In March, the world&#8217;s fifth-biggest crude oil importer, imported 1.37 million tonnes of Iranian crude, or 324,612 barrels per day (bpd), from 2.26 million tonnes from the previous year when the import volume hit a record high, according the customs data.</p> <p>South Korea, one of Asia&#8217;s major Iranian oil customers, mainly buys condensate, or an utlra-light oil, but its data does not provide a breakdown of imports by types.</p> <p>Seoul has reduced its purchases of Tehran&#8217;s oil in recent months compared to last year&#8217;s levels, despite the Middle Eastern country&#8217;s efforts to retain its Asian buyers by cutting official selling prices.</p> <p>That came as the National Iranian Oil Company had cut supplies to South Korea by 3 million barrels each month from the start of this month due to lower production and a start of a new splitter, according to three sources.</p> <p>South Korean condensate buyers were also seeking to diversify supplies should the United States impose new sanctions against Iran.</p> <p>For the first quarter of 2018, South Korea&#8217;s imports from Iran fell 39.4 percent to 3.45 million tonnes, or 280,736 bpd, versus 5.69 million tonnes over the same period last year, according to the data.</p> <p>Meanwhile, crude imports from Qatar in January-March of this year were 2.19 million tonnes, or 178,652 bpd, up 2.4 percent from 2.14 million tonnes during the same period last year. South Korea typically switches to Qatari condensate to replace Iranian one.</p> <p>Overall, South Korea&#8217;s March crude oil imports were 10.91 million tonnes, or 2.58 million bpd, down 14 percent from 12.68 million tonnes from last year, according to the data.</p> <p>In the first three months of this year, South Korea imported 36.70 million tonnes of crude, or nearly 3 million bpd, down 0.4 percent from 36.88 million tonnes from the previous year.</p> <p>The country&#8217;s final data for March crude imports data will be released by state-run Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) later this month.</p> <p>Reporting by Jane Chung; Editing by Sam Holmes</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SCHROBENHAUSEN, Germany (Reuters) - Bauer, a big producer of construction equipment, is better placed than many German companies that invested heavily in China over the past few decades.</p> Thomas Bauer, CEO of Bavaria-based construction equipment maker Bauer AG, talks during an interview with Reuters in Schrobenhausen, Germany April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Michael Dalder <p>The Bavaria-based firm, which traces its roots back to 1790, does not have to worry about keeping a Chinese joint venture partner happy because it is the sole owner of its two plants in Shanghai and Tianjin.</p> <p>And the specialist engineering machines Bauer produces there are sold in countries across Asia, shielding the group from swings in the volatile Chinese building market.</p> <p>Even so, CEO Thomas Bauer, the seventh generation in his family to run the firm, is worried about his company&#8217;s place in China and a broader economic relationship that until recently was seen by German corporations and politicians as a lucrative one-way bet.</p> <p>&#8220;Germany has put too many eggs into one basket, and that basket is China,&#8221; Bauer, a jovial 62-year-old with a thick Bavarian accent, told Reuters at the company&#8217;s headquarters in Schrobenhausen, an hour&#8217;s drive north of Munich.</p> <p>Bauer&#8217;s BSAG.DE concern points to a growing fear in Germany. For more than a decade, the country has been the growth locomotive of Europe, its economy weathering global financial turmoil, the euro zone debt crisis and a record influx of refugees.</p> <p>That resilience was based on two key drivers: Germany had innovative firms that produced high-end manufactured goods that fast-growing economies needed; and the country was better than others at profiting from an open, rules-based global trading system that rewarded competitiveness.</p> <p>China has been crucial on both fronts. Over the past decade it bought up German cars and machinery at an astonishing pace, as it gradually opened up to foreign firms. Last year alone, German manufacturers sold nearly 5 million cars in China, more than three times as many as in the United States.</p> <p>But even as the good times roll on, a radical shift is taking place in how Deutschland AG views the vast Chinese market.</p> <p>Not only has the opening of China shifted into reverse under President Xi Jinping, but Chinese firms have moved up the value chain far faster than many in Germany expected.</p> <p>Germany&#8217;s China conundrum is part of a broader challenge facing Europe: Years of inward-focused crisis fighting have left the bloc politically divided and ill-prepared to respond to looming geopolitical and economic challenges. Now the continent risks being squeezed between a more assertive Beijing and the &#8220;America First&#8221; policies of Donald Trump.</p> <p>In private, some executives liken the situation of German industry in China to the proverbial frog in a pot of slowly heating water which ends up boiling to death because it won&#8217;t or can&#8217;t jump out.</p> <p>Germany&#8217;s ambassador to China, Michael Clauss, warned at a meeting with industry chiefs in Berlin last month of &#8220;tectonic changes&#8221; in the relationship, according to participants.</p> <p>&#8220;We need to prepare people here for a new era in our partnership with China,&#8221; an official at Germany&#8217;s powerful BDI industry federation said. &#8220;These are still golden times. But there is a huge amount of concern about what lies ahead.&#8221;</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: Germany's China problem - <a href="https://tmsnrt.rs/2GUN6BK" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GUN6BK</a>)</p> ROLE OF THE STATE <p>German companies were among the first in the West to set up shop in China, giving Germany an advantage as the Chinese economy took off.</p> <p>Bilateral trade between the two countries hit a record 187 billion euros last year, dwarfing China&#8217;s trade with France and the UK, both around 70 billion. In 2017, Germany ran a trade deficit with China of 14 billion euros, tiny compared to the U.S. deficit of $375 billion, or about 346 billion euros.</p> <p>Bauer AG, which employs 11,000 workers in 70 countries, built its first production facilities in China in the mid-1990s. At the time, not a single Chinese firm could make the sophisticated drilling machines it produces &#8211; towering yellow structures used to build the foundations for skyscrapers, power stations and airports.</p> <p>By 2013 Bauer counted 36 Chinese competitors able to make such machines, a shift the CEO says was accelerated by European suppliers selling co-designed parts to the Chinese.</p> <p>A decade ago, the company&#8217;s Chinese plants generated revenues of 109 million euros. Sales slumped to less than half that amount in five of the nine years that followed.</p> <p>Today, what Bauer and other German firms say they are most worried about is the role of the Chinese state in the economy.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>Last year, China introduced a cyber security law which tightened state control over internet services, including secure VPN connections that are used by foreign firms to communicate confidentially with headquarters. More recently, some German companies have complained of pressure to accept Communist party officials on the boards of their joint ventures.</p> <p>The Bauer boss fears that Xi&#8217;s &#8220;Made in China 2025&#8221; strategy, which identifies 10 key sectors &#8211; including robotics, aerospace and clean-energy cars &#8211; where China wants to be a leader, represents a direct challenge to German manufacturing dominance.</p> <p>To keep its edge Bauer says his firm is focusing intensively on digitalization.</p> <p>&#8220;It will not be a contest against copiers. It will be one against innovative engineers who are intent on overtaking us,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If we don&#8217;t start finding answers soon, this can end very badly.&#8221;</p> TRUMP TARIFFS <p>The German angst over China mirrors that which has prompted Trump to threaten Beijing with tens of billions of dollars in trade tariffs.</p> <p>But because Germany&#8217;s top firms have become so dependent on the Chinese market, the government in Berlin has avoided confronting China head-on.</p> <p>Back in February, carmaker Daimler ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DAIGn.DE" type="external">DAIGn.DE</a>) showed just how skittish some companies are about upsetting Beijing.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DAIGn.DE" type="external">Daimler AG</a> 65.65 DAIGn.DE Xetra +0.18 (+0.27%) DAIGn.DE 000333.SZ KU2G.DE <p>After a backlash in China over a Mercedez-Benz ad on Instagram that quoted the Dalai Lama &#8211; the Tibetan spiritual leader seen by Beijing as a separatist &#8211; Daimler deleted the post and its CEO Dieter Zetsche wrote a letter expressing deep regret for the &#8220;hurt and grief&#8221; his company&#8217;s &#8220;negligent and insensitive mistake&#8221; had caused the Chinese people.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a huge gap between what people in Germany are saying about China and what they are really thinking,&#8221; said Bernhard Bartsch of the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German research group.</p> <p>Later this month, Bertelsmann and Berlin-based China think tank MERICS will host an Oxford Union-style debate on the motion: &#8220;In ten years&#8217; time, China will have substantially undermined Europe&#8217;s political and economic system&#8221;</p> <p>The mood among German firms operating in China is also souring.</p> <p>A survey late last year from the German Chamber of Commerce in China showed that for the first time in many years, more than half of its members were not planning investments in new locations in China. Nearly 13 percent of German firms operating in China said they could leave within the next two years.</p> <p>For decades, Germany&#8217;s approach to China could be summed up with the motto &#8220;Wandel durch Handel&#8221; (change through trade).</p> <p>Now that strategy is in tatters and government officials joke darkly that the &#8220;win-win&#8221; relationship has a new meaning: China wins twice.</p> <p>&#8220;The hope was that closer economic ties would lead to an opening. Today it is clear this was a false hope,&#8221; said a German government official. &#8220;They tell us what we want to hear and then do the opposite.&#8221;</p> <p>Berlin is starting to push back. Last year, after Chinese firm Midea&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=000333.SZ" type="external">000333.SZ</a>) takeover of robotics maker Kuka ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=KU2G.DE" type="external">KU2G.DE</a>) sparked an uproar, it tightened restrictions on foreign investments and launched a push for new Europe-wide rules for screening takeovers.</p> <p>In December, Germany&#8217;s domestic intelligence agency infuriated Beijing when it accused Chinese counterparts of using fake social media accounts to gather information on German politicians - a rare public rebuke that Berlin says was intended to send the Chinese a message.</p> <p>A summit between the German and Chinese governments later this year is likely to reveal a tougher line from Berlin, officials say.</p> <p>But they also concede that divisions within the EU and a wide gap between Europe and the go-it-alone Trump administration will make it more difficult to force change in Beijing.</p> <p>&#8220;What the Chinese are really worried about is Europe and the United States working together against them,&#8221; said the German official. &#8220;In that sense, Trump really is a gift to China.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Noah Barkin; Editing by Simon Robinson</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Two multi-billion dollar takeovers of semiconductor makers are being stalled by Chinese regulatory reviews amid rising U.S.-China trade tensions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter.</p> FILE PHOTO: A sign on the Qualcomm campus is seen in San Diego, California, U.S. November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo <p>Qualcomm Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">QCOM.O</a>) proposed $44 billion purchase of Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors NV ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NXPI.O" type="external">NXPI.O</a>) could be at risk due to the delayed review. China is the only country that has not yet signed off on the deal, or on Toshiba Corp&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=6502.T" type="external">6502.T</a>) planned $19 billion sale of its chip unit to a Bain Capital consortium, according to the newspaper.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Qualcomm&#8217;s merger agreement with NXP was extended for a second time in January, giving the two until to April 25, although the parties could decide to extend the deadline.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">Qualcomm Inc</a> 55.73 QCOM.O Nasdaq +0.53 (+0.96%) QCOM.O NXPI.O 6502.T <p>China&#8217;s Vice President, Wang Qishan, last month assured Qualcomm Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf that the review would not be affected by politics, the newspaper said.</p> <p>Qualcomm and Toshiba did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>In a move to force China to lower its $375 billion trade surplus with the U.S., the Trump administration this month unveiled tariffs representing about $50 billion on Chinese technology, transport and medical products, drawing an immediate threat of retaliatory action from Beijing.</p> <p>At the same time, China pledged to further open the country&#8217;s economy and lower import tariffs on certain products, moves it said were unrelated to the trade spat.</p> <p>Reporting by Gary McWilliams; editing by Diane Craft</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

CEE MARKETS-Hungarian bonds firmer, awaiting cbank IRS stimulus U.S. to back $13 billion World Bank capital increase: sources South Korea's March Iranian crude oil imports down 39.3 percent year-on-year 'Boiled frog syndrome': Germany's China problem China slows review of chip company mergers amid trade tensions: WSJ

https://reuters.com/article/easteurope-markets/cee-markets-hungarian-bonds-firmer-awaiting-cbank-irs-stimulus-idUSL8N1PD247

2018-01-18

2least

The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles This version of the April 13th story corrects title of Scott Morris as senior fellow of Center for Global Development By David Lawder WASHINGTON Reuters The Trump administration is expected to support a 13 billion capital increase for the World Bank in a deal that will reform the development bank8217s lending rules and increase China8217s shareholding three people close to the matter said on Friday US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to lend his support for the plan at next week8217s World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings the sources said But the deal will need an endorsement from the World Bank8217s shareholders and approval from its board of directors 8220Barring unforeseen challenges there will be a capital increase8221 one of the sources told Reuters US backing for the capital increase was first reported by the Financial Times The Trump administration was initially skeptical of the World Bank8217s longrunning effort to boost its capital proposing major cuts to multilateral development banks last year US Treasury Undersecretary David Malpass has long criticized multilateral development banks for contributing to the buildup of debt in poor countries and has chided the World Bank8217s lending to higher income countries such as China saying they should 8220graduate8221 to nonconcessional loans 8220When the World Bank does not graduate these countries less funding is available to reach countries with greater development needs and there is an excess burden placed on shareholder capital8221 Malpass who heads international affairs at the Treasury said in congressional testimony last year The sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been formally announced said it would include reforms that would raise financing costs for higherincome countries Scott Morris a former Treasury official who now is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development said the capital increase deal is a victory for World Bank President Jim Yong Kim an Obama administration nominee who has cultivated a relationship with the Trump administration launching a women8217s empowerment fund in cooperation with President Donald Trump8217s daughter Ivanka Morris said the increase in shareholding for China 8220reflects reality of the global economy8221 with China8217s growing economic clout But it is unclear how Mnuchin will characterize the shift given Trump8217s threats to impose steep tariffs on Chinese goods over China8217s intellectual property practices he added Under terms of the deal according to the sources familiar with it China8217s shareholding in the World Bank would rise to about six percent from 468 percent currently China would still be in third place behind the United States and Japan About 75 billion of the capital increase would go to the World Bank8217s main concessional lending arm the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development with 55 billion going to the International Finance Corp the group8217s private sector lending arm A US Treasury spokesman declined to comment while a World Bank spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani Editing by Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters South Korea8217s March crude oil imports from Iran dropped 393 percent from a year earlier on slowing demand for Iranian oil the country8217s customs data showed on Sunday In March the world8217s fifthbiggest crude oil importer imported 137 million tonnes of Iranian crude or 324612 barrels per day bpd from 226 million tonnes from the previous year when the import volume hit a record high according the customs data South Korea one of Asia8217s major Iranian oil customers mainly buys condensate or an utlralight oil but its data does not provide a breakdown of imports by types Seoul has reduced its purchases of Tehran8217s oil in recent months compared to last year8217s levels despite the Middle Eastern country8217s efforts to retain its Asian buyers by cutting official selling prices That came as the National Iranian Oil Company had cut supplies to South Korea by 3 million barrels each month from the start of this month due to lower production and a start of a new splitter according to three sources South Korean condensate buyers were also seeking to diversify supplies should the United States impose new sanctions against Iran For the first quarter of 2018 South Korea8217s imports from Iran fell 394 percent to 345 million tonnes or 280736 bpd versus 569 million tonnes over the same period last year according to the data Meanwhile crude imports from Qatar in JanuaryMarch of this year were 219 million tonnes or 178652 bpd up 24 percent from 214 million tonnes during the same period last year South Korea typically switches to Qatari condensate to replace Iranian one Overall South Korea8217s March crude oil imports were 1091 million tonnes or 258 million bpd down 14 percent from 1268 million tonnes from last year according to the data In the first three months of this year South Korea imported 3670 million tonnes of crude or nearly 3 million bpd down 04 percent from 3688 million tonnes from the previous year The country8217s final data for March crude imports data will be released by staterun Korea National Oil Corp KNOC later this month Reporting by Jane Chung Editing by Sam Holmes Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SCHROBENHAUSEN Germany Reuters Bauer a big producer of construction equipment is better placed than many German companies that invested heavily in China over the past few decades Thomas Bauer CEO of Bavariabased construction equipment maker Bauer AG talks during an interview with Reuters in Schrobenhausen Germany April 3 2018 REUTERSMichael Dalder The Bavariabased firm which traces its roots back to 1790 does not have to worry about keeping a Chinese joint venture partner happy because it is the sole owner of its two plants in Shanghai and Tianjin And the specialist engineering machines Bauer produces there are sold in countries across Asia shielding the group from swings in the volatile Chinese building market Even so CEO Thomas Bauer the seventh generation in his family to run the firm is worried about his company8217s place in China and a broader economic relationship that until recently was seen by German corporations and politicians as a lucrative oneway bet 8220Germany has put too many eggs into one basket and that basket is China8221 Bauer a jovial 62yearold with a thick Bavarian accent told Reuters at the company8217s headquarters in Schrobenhausen an hour8217s drive north of Munich Bauer8217s BSAGDE concern points to a growing fear in Germany For more than a decade the country has been the growth locomotive of Europe its economy weathering global financial turmoil the euro zone debt crisis and a record influx of refugees That resilience was based on two key drivers Germany had innovative firms that produced highend manufactured goods that fastgrowing economies needed and the country was better than others at profiting from an open rulesbased global trading system that rewarded competitiveness China has been crucial on both fronts Over the past decade it bought up German cars and machinery at an astonishing pace as it gradually opened up to foreign firms Last year alone German manufacturers sold nearly 5 million cars in China more than three times as many as in the United States But even as the good times roll on a radical shift is taking place in how Deutschland AG views the vast Chinese market Not only has the opening of China shifted into reverse under President Xi Jinping but Chinese firms have moved up the value chain far faster than many in Germany expected Germany8217s China conundrum is part of a broader challenge facing Europe Years of inwardfocused crisis fighting have left the bloc politically divided and illprepared to respond to looming geopolitical and economic challenges Now the continent risks being squeezed between a more assertive Beijing and the 8220America First8221 policies of Donald Trump In private some executives liken the situation of German industry in China to the proverbial frog in a pot of slowly heating water which ends up boiling to death because it won8217t or can8217t jump out Germany8217s ambassador to China Michael Clauss warned at a meeting with industry chiefs in Berlin last month of 8220tectonic changes8221 in the relationship according to participants 8220We need to prepare people here for a new era in our partnership with China8221 an official at Germany8217s powerful BDI industry federation said 8220These are still golden times But there is a huge amount of concern about what lies ahead8221 GRAPHIC Germanys China problem tmsnrtrs2GUN6BK ROLE OF THE STATE German companies were among the first in the West to set up shop in China giving Germany an advantage as the Chinese economy took off Bilateral trade between the two countries hit a record 187 billion euros last year dwarfing China8217s trade with France and the UK both around 70 billion In 2017 Germany ran a trade deficit with China of 14 billion euros tiny compared to the US deficit of 375 billion or about 346 billion euros Bauer AG which employs 11000 workers in 70 countries built its first production facilities in China in the mid1990s At the time not a single Chinese firm could make the sophisticated drilling machines it produces 8211 towering yellow structures used to build the foundations for skyscrapers power stations and airports By 2013 Bauer counted 36 Chinese competitors able to make such machines a shift the CEO says was accelerated by European suppliers selling codesigned parts to the Chinese A decade ago the company8217s Chinese plants generated revenues of 109 million euros Sales slumped to less than half that amount in five of the nine years that followed Today what Bauer and other German firms say they are most worried about is the role of the Chinese state in the economy Slideshow 7 Images Last year China introduced a cyber security law which tightened state control over internet services including secure VPN connections that are used by foreign firms to communicate confidentially with headquarters More recently some German companies have complained of pressure to accept Communist party officials on the boards of their joint ventures The Bauer boss fears that Xi8217s 8220Made in China 20258221 strategy which identifies 10 key sectors 8211 including robotics aerospace and cleanenergy cars 8211 where China wants to be a leader represents a direct challenge to German manufacturing dominance To keep its edge Bauer says his firm is focusing intensively on digitalization 8220It will not be a contest against copiers It will be one against innovative engineers who are intent on overtaking us8221 he said 8220If we don8217t start finding answers soon this can end very badly8221 TRUMP TARIFFS The German angst over China mirrors that which has prompted Trump to threaten Beijing with tens of billions of dollars in trade tariffs But because Germany8217s top firms have become so dependent on the Chinese market the government in Berlin has avoided confronting China headon Back in February carmaker Daimler DAIGnDE showed just how skittish some companies are about upsetting Beijing Daimler AG 6565 DAIGnDE Xetra 018 027 DAIGnDE 000333SZ KU2GDE After a backlash in China over a MercedezBenz ad on Instagram that quoted the Dalai Lama 8211 the Tibetan spiritual leader seen by Beijing as a separatist 8211 Daimler deleted the post and its CEO Dieter Zetsche wrote a letter expressing deep regret for the 8220hurt and grief8221 his company8217s 8220negligent and insensitive mistake8221 had caused the Chinese people 8220There is a huge gap between what people in Germany are saying about China and what they are really thinking8221 said Bernhard Bartsch of the Bertelsmann Foundation a German research group Later this month Bertelsmann and Berlinbased China think tank MERICS will host an Oxford Unionstyle debate on the motion 8220In ten years8217 time China will have substantially undermined Europe8217s political and economic system8221 The mood among German firms operating in China is also souring A survey late last year from the German Chamber of Commerce in China showed that for the first time in many years more than half of its members were not planning investments in new locations in China Nearly 13 percent of German firms operating in China said they could leave within the next two years For decades Germany8217s approach to China could be summed up with the motto 8220Wandel durch Handel8221 change through trade Now that strategy is in tatters and government officials joke darkly that the 8220winwin8221 relationship has a new meaning China wins twice 8220The hope was that closer economic ties would lead to an opening Today it is clear this was a false hope8221 said a German government official 8220They tell us what we want to hear and then do the opposite8221 Berlin is starting to push back Last year after Chinese firm Midea8217s 000333SZ takeover of robotics maker Kuka KU2GDE sparked an uproar it tightened restrictions on foreign investments and launched a push for new Europewide rules for screening takeovers In December Germany8217s domestic intelligence agency infuriated Beijing when it accused Chinese counterparts of using fake social media accounts to gather information on German politicians a rare public rebuke that Berlin says was intended to send the Chinese a message A summit between the German and Chinese governments later this year is likely to reveal a tougher line from Berlin officials say But they also concede that divisions within the EU and a wide gap between Europe and the goitalone Trump administration will make it more difficult to force change in Beijing 8220What the Chinese are really worried about is Europe and the United States working together against them8221 said the German official 8220In that sense Trump really is a gift to China8221 Reporting by Noah Barkin Editing by Simon Robinson Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Two multibillion dollar takeovers of semiconductor makers are being stalled by Chinese regulatory reviews amid rising USChina trade tensions the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday citing people familiar with the matter FILE PHOTO A sign on the Qualcomm campus is seen in San Diego California US November 6 2017 REUTERSMike BlakeFile Photo Qualcomm Inc8217s QCOMO proposed 44 billion purchase of Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors NV NXPIO could be at risk due to the delayed review China is the only country that has not yet signed off on the deal or on Toshiba Corp8217s 6502T planned 19 billion sale of its chip unit to a Bain Capital consortium according to the newspaper Slideshow 2 Images Qualcomm8217s merger agreement with NXP was extended for a second time in January giving the two until to April 25 although the parties could decide to extend the deadline Qualcomm Inc 5573 QCOMO Nasdaq 053 096 QCOMO NXPIO 6502T China8217s Vice President Wang Qishan last month assured Qualcomm Chief Executive Steve Mollenkopf that the review would not be affected by politics the newspaper said Qualcomm and Toshiba did not immediately respond to requests for comment In a move to force China to lower its 375 billion trade surplus with the US the Trump administration this month unveiled tariffs representing about 50 billion on Chinese technology transport and medical products drawing an immediate threat of retaliatory action from Beijing At the same time China pledged to further open the country8217s economy and lower import tariffs on certain products moves it said were unrelated to the trade spat Reporting by Gary McWilliams editing by Diane Craft Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia&#8217;s Sakhalin-1 oil project, led by ExxonMobil, has ditched plans to raise output by a quarter this year after it was ordered by the authorities to return to previous lower production limits, industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday.</p> <p>It was not immediately clear why the authorities blocked the rise, but higher output from the project might have jeopardized Russia&#8217;s pledge to curb national crude output in line with a deal agreed on with OPEC and other oil producers.</p> <p>Sakhalin-1 operates under a Production Sharing Agreement struck in the mid-1990s and all plans must be run by local government.</p> <p>ExxonMobil had received preliminary approval for a new quota in December and set output for January at 250,000 to 260,000 barrels per day (bpd), up from 200,000 bpd last year.</p> <p>But the firm was ordered by the authorities this month to return to the old quota of 200,000 bpd, three industry sources told Reuters.</p> <p>Sakhalin-1 was now operating under the production quota of 200,000 bpd, two sources familiar with the matter said.</p> <p>A source close to Russia&#8217;s Energy Ministry said Sakhalin-1 would continue to operate under previous quotas until the Natural Resources Ministry finished approving a new production scheme. He did not say when this new scheme would be approved.</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s Energy Ministry, the Natural Resources Ministry, Exxon and Russian oil major Rosneft, a minority shareholder in the Sakhalin-1 consortium, all declined immediate comment.</p> <p>&#8220;Everyone expected production to rise and Sokol supplies to increase, there was an understanding that everything&#8217;s approved, but then something went wrong,&#8221; said a source in a company which regularly buys the crude.</p> <p>Sokol is the grade of crude oil produced at Sakhalin-1.</p> CUT BACKS <p>&#8220;I think this is related to the agreement with OPEC to cut oil production,&#8221; said Andrey Polishchuk, an analyst from Raiffeisenbank in Moscow, commenting on the move to block an output rise from Sakhalin-1.</p> <p>He said the government had &#8220;limited production of all the large companies in Russia&#8221; in line with the deal on global supply curbs, which began in January 2017 and is due to run until the end of 2018.</p> <p>The withdrawal of approval for increased production meant Sakhalin-1 shareholders had to reduce their schedule for Sokol crude loadings for January-March, the industry sources said.</p> <p>Under the original schedule based on a production rise, 13 cargoes of 95,000 tonnes each were to be loaded from the De-Kastri terminal on Russia&#8217;s Pacific coast in January, compared to nine in December, traders said.</p> <p>In February and March, Sokol crude exports had been set at 11 and 12 cargoes, respectively, traders said.</p> <p>After ExxonMobil was instructed to cut production, loading plans were decreased to 11 cargoes in January, nine cargoes for February and 10 cargoes for March, traders said.</p> <p>Reporting by Olga Yagova and Oksana Kobzeva; Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore; Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Edmund Blair</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - The response by China&#8217;s commerce ministry to the latest U.S trade measures is too weak, and should target U.S. soybeans, former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei said on Saturday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Soybeans are seen in a field waiting to be harvested in Minooka, Illinois, September 24, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo <p>The commerce ministry on Friday unveiled a plan to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports including fruit and wine, in response to U.S. import tariffs on steel and aluminum.</p> <p>&#8220;I think the measures taken by China&#8217;s commerce ministry are relatively weak,&#8221; said Lou, currently chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF).</p> <p>&#8220;If I were in the government, I would probably hit soybeans first, then hit autos and airplanes. We cannot let other people profit at our expense.&#8221;</p> Lou Jiwei, chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF), speaks at the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Lou was speaking at the annual China Development Forum in Beijing.</p> <p>However, Lou also said a trade war is not good for either side.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s like killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred of our own people,&#8221; he told reporters separately on the sidelines of the forum.</p> <p>&#8220;We should try to resolve the problem.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Kevin Yao; writing by Ryan Woo; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders called on U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday to make permanent an EU exemption from U.S. metal import duties, saying they reserved the right to respond &#8220;in a proportionate manner&#8221; to protect the bloc&#8217;s interests.</p> <p>The 40-day reprieve granted by Washington was like U.S. President Donald Trump pointing a gun at Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a summit in Brussels.</p> <p>&#8220;We will talk about anything in principle with a country that respects WTO rules. We will not talk about anything when it is with a gun to our head,&#8221; he told a news conference.</p> <p>The EU&#8217;s trade chief demanded that the United States drop &#8220;artificial deadlines&#8221; and her boss, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said it was impossible to reach agreement by May 1.</p> <p>Trump said on Thursday he would suspend tariffs for the EU, the United States&#8217; biggest trading partner, as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. The tariffs are suspended until May 1 as discussions continue.</p> <p>EU heads of state and government said in a joint statement that the measures were regrettable, could not be justified on national security grounds which was the basis cited by Washington and the exemption should be permanent.</p> <p>&#8220;Sector-wide protection in the U.S. is an inappropriate remedy for the real problems of overcapacity,&#8221; they said.</p> <p>The leaders also said they supported steps taken by the European Commission to respond to the U.S. measures &#8220;as appropriate and in a proportionate manner&#8221;.</p> <p>Cecilia Malmstrom, the trade commissioner who negotiates on behalf of the 28 nations, said Europeans did not want to be penalised by actions prompted largely by accusations of Chinese dumping and said Washington and Brussels should be cooperating.</p> <p>She told Reuters it was still unclear what Trump wanted in return for granting a permanent waiver and said the EU could bring up a list of its own &#8220;trade irritants&#8221; if he insisted that EU car import duties be cut. [L8N1R55IY]</p> <p>Allies should not be subject to &#8220;artificial deadlines&#8221;, she said.</p> Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attend the European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, March 23, 2018. Olivier Hoslet/Pool via Reuters TEMPORARY EXEMPTION <p>German industry, aware that Trump has warned he could raise duties on EU cars, welcomed the reprieve but said the threat of a trade war had not disappeared.</p> <p>&#8220;We still have the threat of escalating global trade conflict. And U.S. President Donald Trump will demand a price for the tariff exclusion,&#8221; Thilo Brodtman, head of Germany&#8217;s VDMA engineering federation said in a statement.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe was trying to avoid a trade war in which everyone would lose.</p> <p>European steelmakers group Eurofer said the danger to the EU market had not disappeared, with the exemption only temporary, and the EU needed its own quotas or tariffs to stop steel otherwise bound for the United States from flooding into Europe.</p> <p>Europe says it wants to avert a trade war but the European Commission has proposed a series of measures if the White House hits EU producers.</p> <p>It would launch a challenge at the World Trade Organization, consider measures to prevent a surge of metal imports into Europe and impose import duties on U.S. products to &#8220;rebalance&#8221; EU-U.S. trade. Malmstrom said the EU was keeping its options open.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-eu-malmstrom/still-unclear-what-trump-wants-from-europe-eu-trade-chief-says-idUSKBN1GZ2GZ" type="external">Still unclear what Trump wants from Europe, EU trade chief says</a> <p>The counter-measures would include EU tariffs on U.S. orange juice, tobacco, bourbon and Harley-Davidson Inc motorbikes.</p> <p>Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel underlined the irritation among some EU leaders at Trump&#8217;s negotiating tactics.</p> <p>&#8220;I have the impression that the U.S. leader wants to negotiate with the European Union by putting a gun to our head,&#8221; Michel said, in an expression that was later echoed by Macron.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a strange way to negotiate with an ally.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt and Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Noah Barkin and Edmund Blair</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - Apple Inc&#8217;s Chief Executive Tim Cook on Saturday called for &#8220;calm heads&#8221; and more open trade, amid rising fears of a trade war between the United States and China.</p> Apple Inc's Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook speaks at the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Trade tension between China and the United States flared this week when President Donald Trump unveiled plans on Thursday to slap tariffs on potentially up to $60 billion in Chinese goods.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Commerce Ministry on Friday urged the United States to &#8220;pull back from the brink&#8221;, saying it was not afraid to engage in a trade war.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m cognizant that in both the U.S. and China, there have been cases where everyone hasn&#8217;t benefited, where the benefit hasn&#8217;t been balanced,&#8221; Cook said.</p> <p>Speaking at the annual China Development Forum in Beijing, Cook said he hoped &#8220;calm heads&#8221; would prevail.</p> <p>The sparring has cast a spotlight on hardware makers such as Apple, which assemble the majority of their products in China for export to other countries. Electrical goods and tech are the largest U.S. import item from China.</p> <p>In the past year, Apple and other foreign tech firms have grappled with a string of new regulatory requirements in China, including a controversial law requiring firms to house user data in data centers overseen by Chinese firms.</p> <p>Last month, Apple officially moved to store keys for its iCloud data in China, provoking intense criticism from rights groups who say the decision makes it easier for Chinese officials to tap and collect private data.</p> <p>Despite challenges, the company has sought to expand its services in China, its third-largest market, where roughly 1.8 million developers use its platform.</p> <p>&#8220;My belief is that businesses should be engaged with governments in countries where they are doing business, whether they agree or disagree,&#8221; Cook said.</p> <p>Cook has come to China several times in the past year, and was among executives who met Chinese President Xi Jinping last October.</p> Related Video <p>&#8220;My belief is that one plus one equals three. The pie gets larger, working together,&#8221; Cook said.</p> <p>Others attending the three-day forum include the chief executives of IBM Group , Google Inc and Qualcomm Inc.</p> <p>Cook, who this year co-chaired the event, also attended last year when he called for China to increase trade and continue opening itself up to the world.</p> <p>Reporting by Matthew Miller and Cate Cadell; editing by Richard Pullin and Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GSK.L</a>) has quit the race to buy Pfizer&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PFE.N" type="external">PFE.N</a>) consumer healthcare business, endangering an auction the U.S. drugmaker hoped would bring in as much as $20 billion.</p> <p>It was not immediately clear whether there were other offers for the business, which includes Advil painkillers and Centrum vitamins, following this week&#8217;s deadline for binding bids.</p> <p>GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which announced its withdrawal on Friday, was seen as the frontrunner to buy the assets after Reckitt Benckiser ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RB.L" type="external">RB.L</a>) left the race late on Wednesday. Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JNJ.N" type="external">JNJ.N</a>) stepped away from the auction in January.</p> <p>A source familiar with the matter said GSK declined to make a final bid for the assets in the end.</p> <p>&#8220;While we will continue to review opportunities that may accelerate our strategy, they must meet our criteria for returns and not compromise our priorities for capital allocation,&#8221; GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said in a statement.</p> <p>GSK shares rose nearly 4 percent, as investors&#8217; concerns about a potential dividend cut eased.</p> <p>Pfizer said on Friday it continued to evaluate potential alternatives for the business, which include a spin-off, sale or other transaction, as well as retaining it.</p> <p>&#8220;We have not yet made a decision, but continue to expect to make one in 2018,&#8221; a spokesman said.</p> <p>Sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday it was possible there were other bids. On Friday, a source said that if not, Pfizer could try to tap private equity funds.</p> <p>Pfizer is the world&#8217;s fifth-largest player in consumer health with 2.5 percent of a market bolstered by aging populations and growing interest in health and wellness.</p> <p>The business, which also includes Chapstick lip balm and Caltrate supplements, is seen as attractive but has come to market at a bad time. GSK and Reckitt are under shareholder pressure to exercise financial discipline, while other potential suitors, such as Bayer ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAYGn.DE" type="external">BAYGn.DE</a>) and Sanofi ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SASY.PA" type="external">SASY.PA</a>) are busy with other projects.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York, U.S., April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo <p>What is more, the global consumer health market has slowed, from 4-6 percent like-for-like sales growth to 0-3 percent growth, Morgan Stanley analysts said in December. Major players in the over-the-counter market have been grappling with pricing pressure stoked by online players such as Amazon ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) and private label competitors.</p> <p>Pfizer&#8217;s hope of fetching around $20 billion translated to a multiple of about 20 times the unit&#8217;s core earnings, according to Bernstein analysts, in line with past deals in the sector during faster growing times.</p> <p>Differences in price expectations also hobbled German drugmaker Merck KGaA&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MRCG.DE" type="external">MRCG.DE</a>) attempts to sell its consumer products unit, where a price tag of up to 4 billion euros ($5 billion) deterred initial suitors such as Nestle ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NESN.S" type="external">NESN.S</a>), Perrigo ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PRGO.N" type="external">PRGO.N</a>) and a private-equity consortium.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GlaxoSmithKline PLC</a> 1315.6 GSK.L London Stock Exchange +41.80 (+3.28%) GSK.L PFE.N RB.L JNJ.N BAYGn.DE <p>Reckitt&#8217;s early interest in the Merck assets also waned as the Pfizer auction gained momentum.</p> SPLIT OPINION <p>Buying the Pfizer business would have been the boldest move to date for Walmsley, who took over at GSK last April. But the wisdom of a deal split opinion among investors, with some worried about the risk to the company&#8217;s dividend.</p> <p>Acquiring additional consumer health assets at a reasonable price could have been a fairly safe way to boost earnings, since scale is key in over-the-counter remedies, but it could have distracted from fixing GSK&#8217;s core pharma division.</p> <p>That is a particular headache for Walmsley - a consumer products veteran who worked for 17 years at L&#8217;Oreal ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OREP.PA" type="external">OREP.PA</a>) - since she has her work cut out to persuade the market she is the right person to lead Britain&#8217;s top pharmaceuticals company.</p> <p>Last month, in a bid to reassure investors, she spelt out that her first priority was improving performance in prescription drugs, followed by dividend payments and only after that acquisitions.</p> <p>The overhaul of the drugs business, which has produced fewer blockbuster medicines than rivals in recent years, is underway in both the commercial and research fields.</p> <p>GSK runs its consumer healthcare business via a joint venture with Novartis ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NOVN.S" type="external">NOVN.S</a>), which complicates any acquisitions. Novartis has the right to sell down its 36.5 percent stake, valued at around $10 billion, from this month, although it has previously indicated it is in no rush to do so.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Ben Hirschler; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Exclusive: Russia's Exxon-led Sakhalin-1 rolls back plan for oil output hike - sources China should target U.S. soybeans, says former finance minister EU complains of Trump's 'gun to our head' over tariffs Apple's Tim Cook calls for calm heads on China, U.S. trade GSK pulls out of $20 billion race for Pfizer consumer assets

https://reuters.com/article/us-russia-sakhalin-oil-exclusive/exclusive-russias-exxon-led-sakhalin-1-rolls-back-plan-for-oil-output-hike-sources-idUSKBN1FC23C

2018-01-23

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MOSCOW Reuters Russia8217s Sakhalin1 oil project led by ExxonMobil has ditched plans to raise output by a quarter this year after it was ordered by the authorities to return to previous lower production limits industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday It was not immediately clear why the authorities blocked the rise but higher output from the project might have jeopardized Russia8217s pledge to curb national crude output in line with a deal agreed on with OPEC and other oil producers Sakhalin1 operates under a Production Sharing Agreement struck in the mid1990s and all plans must be run by local government ExxonMobil had received preliminary approval for a new quota in December and set output for January at 250000 to 260000 barrels per day bpd up from 200000 bpd last year But the firm was ordered by the authorities this month to return to the old quota of 200000 bpd three industry sources told Reuters Sakhalin1 was now operating under the production quota of 200000 bpd two sources familiar with the matter said A source close to Russia8217s Energy Ministry said Sakhalin1 would continue to operate under previous quotas until the Natural Resources Ministry finished approving a new production scheme He did not say when this new scheme would be approved Russia8217s Energy Ministry the Natural Resources Ministry Exxon and Russian oil major Rosneft a minority shareholder in the Sakhalin1 consortium all declined immediate comment 8220Everyone expected production to rise and Sokol supplies to increase there was an understanding that everything8217s approved but then something went wrong8221 said a source in a company which regularly buys the crude Sokol is the grade of crude oil produced at Sakhalin1 CUT BACKS 8220I think this is related to the agreement with OPEC to cut oil production8221 said Andrey Polishchuk an analyst from Raiffeisenbank in Moscow commenting on the move to block an output rise from Sakhalin1 He said the government had 8220limited production of all the large companies in Russia8221 in line with the deal on global supply curbs which began in January 2017 and is due to run until the end of 2018 The withdrawal of approval for increased production meant Sakhalin1 shareholders had to reduce their schedule for Sokol crude loadings for JanuaryMarch the industry sources said Under the original schedule based on a production rise 13 cargoes of 95000 tonnes each were to be loaded from the DeKastri terminal on Russia8217s Pacific coast in January compared to nine in December traders said In February and March Sokol crude exports had been set at 11 and 12 cargoes respectively traders said After ExxonMobil was instructed to cut production loading plans were decreased to 11 cargoes in January nine cargoes for February and 10 cargoes for March traders said Reporting by Olga Yagova and Oksana Kobzeva Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin Editing by Edmund Blair Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters The response by China8217s commerce ministry to the latest US trade measures is too weak and should target US soybeans former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei said on Saturday FILE PHOTO Soybeans are seen in a field waiting to be harvested in Minooka Illinois September 24 2014 REUTERSJim YoungFile Photo The commerce ministry on Friday unveiled a plan to levy additional duties on up to 3 billion of US imports including fruit and wine in response to US import tariffs on steel and aluminum 8220I think the measures taken by China8217s commerce ministry are relatively weak8221 said Lou currently chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund NCSSF 8220If I were in the government I would probably hit soybeans first then hit autos and airplanes We cannot let other people profit at our expense8221 Lou Jiwei chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund NCSSF speaks at the China Development Forum in Beijing China March 24 2018 REUTERSStringer Lou was speaking at the annual China Development Forum in Beijing However Lou also said a trade war is not good for either side 8220It8217s like killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred of our own people8221 he told reporters separately on the sidelines of the forum 8220We should try to resolve the problem8221 Reporting by Kevin Yao writing by Ryan Woo editing by Richard Pullin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELS Reuters European Union leaders called on US President Donald Trump on Friday to make permanent an EU exemption from US metal import duties saying they reserved the right to respond 8220in a proportionate manner8221 to protect the bloc8217s interests The 40day reprieve granted by Washington was like US President Donald Trump pointing a gun at Europe French President Emmanuel Macron said at a summit in Brussels 8220We will talk about anything in principle with a country that respects WTO rules We will not talk about anything when it is with a gun to our head8221 he told a news conference The EU8217s trade chief demanded that the United States drop 8220artificial deadlines8221 and her boss European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker said it was impossible to reach agreement by May 1 Trump said on Thursday he would suspend tariffs for the EU the United States8217 biggest trading partner as well as Argentina Australia Brazil Canada Mexico and South Korea The tariffs are suspended until May 1 as discussions continue EU heads of state and government said in a joint statement that the measures were regrettable could not be justified on national security grounds which was the basis cited by Washington and the exemption should be permanent 8220Sectorwide protection in the US is an inappropriate remedy for the real problems of overcapacity8221 they said The leaders also said they supported steps taken by the European Commission to respond to the US measures 8220as appropriate and in a proportionate manner8221 Cecilia Malmstrom the trade commissioner who negotiates on behalf of the 28 nations said Europeans did not want to be penalised by actions prompted largely by accusations of Chinese dumping and said Washington and Brussels should be cooperating She told Reuters it was still unclear what Trump wanted in return for granting a permanent waiver and said the EU could bring up a list of its own 8220trade irritants8221 if he insisted that EU car import duties be cut L8N1R55IY Allies should not be subject to 8220artificial deadlines8221 she said Belgiums Prime Minister Charles Michel and European Commission President JeanClaude Juncker attend the European Union leaders summit in Brussels Belgium March 23 2018 Olivier HosletPool via Reuters TEMPORARY EXEMPTION German industry aware that Trump has warned he could raise duties on EU cars welcomed the reprieve but said the threat of a trade war had not disappeared 8220We still have the threat of escalating global trade conflict And US President Donald Trump will demand a price for the tariff exclusion8221 Thilo Brodtman head of Germany8217s VDMA engineering federation said in a statement Slideshow 4 Images German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe was trying to avoid a trade war in which everyone would lose European steelmakers group Eurofer said the danger to the EU market had not disappeared with the exemption only temporary and the EU needed its own quotas or tariffs to stop steel otherwise bound for the United States from flooding into Europe Europe says it wants to avert a trade war but the European Commission has proposed a series of measures if the White House hits EU producers It would launch a challenge at the World Trade Organization consider measures to prevent a surge of metal imports into Europe and impose import duties on US products to 8220rebalance8221 EUUS trade Malmstrom said the EU was keeping its options open Related Coverage Still unclear what Trump wants from Europe EU trade chief says The countermeasures would include EU tariffs on US orange juice tobacco bourbon and HarleyDavidson Inc motorbikes Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel underlined the irritation among some EU leaders at Trump8217s negotiating tactics 8220I have the impression that the US leader wants to negotiate with the European Union by putting a gun to our head8221 Michel said in an expression that was later echoed by Macron 8220That8217s a strange way to negotiate with an ally8221 Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt and Paul Carrel in Berlin Writing by Richard Lough Editing by Noah Barkin and Edmund Blair Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters Apple Inc8217s Chief Executive Tim Cook on Saturday called for 8220calm heads8221 and more open trade amid rising fears of a trade war between the United States and China Apple Incs Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook speaks at the China Development Forum in Beijing China March 24 2018 REUTERSStringer Trade tension between China and the United States flared this week when President Donald Trump unveiled plans on Thursday to slap tariffs on potentially up to 60 billion in Chinese goods China8217s Commerce Ministry on Friday urged the United States to 8220pull back from the brink8221 saying it was not afraid to engage in a trade war 8220I8217m cognizant that in both the US and China there have been cases where everyone hasn8217t benefited where the benefit hasn8217t been balanced8221 Cook said Speaking at the annual China Development Forum in Beijing Cook said he hoped 8220calm heads8221 would prevail The sparring has cast a spotlight on hardware makers such as Apple which assemble the majority of their products in China for export to other countries Electrical goods and tech are the largest US import item from China In the past year Apple and other foreign tech firms have grappled with a string of new regulatory requirements in China including a controversial law requiring firms to house user data in data centers overseen by Chinese firms Last month Apple officially moved to store keys for its iCloud data in China provoking intense criticism from rights groups who say the decision makes it easier for Chinese officials to tap and collect private data Despite challenges the company has sought to expand its services in China its thirdlargest market where roughly 18 million developers use its platform 8220My belief is that businesses should be engaged with governments in countries where they are doing business whether they agree or disagree8221 Cook said Cook has come to China several times in the past year and was among executives who met Chinese President Xi Jinping last October Related Video 8220My belief is that one plus one equals three The pie gets larger working together8221 Cook said Others attending the threeday forum include the chief executives of IBM Group Google Inc and Qualcomm Inc Cook who this year cochaired the event also attended last year when he called for China to increase trade and continue opening itself up to the world Reporting by Matthew Miller and Cate Cadell editing by Richard Pullin and Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters GlaxoSmithKline GSKL has quit the race to buy Pfizer8217s PFEN consumer healthcare business endangering an auction the US drugmaker hoped would bring in as much as 20 billion It was not immediately clear whether there were other offers for the business which includes Advil painkillers and Centrum vitamins following this week8217s deadline for binding bids GlaxoSmithKline GSK which announced its withdrawal on Friday was seen as the frontrunner to buy the assets after Reckitt Benckiser RBL left the race late on Wednesday Johnson ampamp Johnson JNJN stepped away from the auction in January A source familiar with the matter said GSK declined to make a final bid for the assets in the end 8220While we will continue to review opportunities that may accelerate our strategy they must meet our criteria for returns and not compromise our priorities for capital allocation8221 GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said in a statement GSK shares rose nearly 4 percent as investors8217 concerns about a potential dividend cut eased Pfizer said on Friday it continued to evaluate potential alternatives for the business which include a spinoff sale or other transaction as well as retaining it 8220We have not yet made a decision but continue to expect to make one in 20188221 a spokesman said Sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday it was possible there were other bids On Friday a source said that if not Pfizer could try to tap private equity funds Pfizer is the world8217s fifthlargest player in consumer health with 25 percent of a market bolstered by aging populations and growing interest in health and wellness The business which also includes Chapstick lip balm and Caltrate supplements is seen as attractive but has come to market at a bad time GSK and Reckitt are under shareholder pressure to exercise financial discipline while other potential suitors such as Bayer BAYGnDE and Sanofi SASYPA are busy with other projects FILE PHOTO The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York US April 28 2014 REUTERSAndrew KellyFile Photo What is more the global consumer health market has slowed from 46 percent likeforlike sales growth to 03 percent growth Morgan Stanley analysts said in December Major players in the overthecounter market have been grappling with pricing pressure stoked by online players such as Amazon AMZNO and private label competitors Pfizer8217s hope of fetching around 20 billion translated to a multiple of about 20 times the unit8217s core earnings according to Bernstein analysts in line with past deals in the sector during faster growing times Differences in price expectations also hobbled German drugmaker Merck KGaA8217s MRCGDE attempts to sell its consumer products unit where a price tag of up to 4 billion euros 5 billion deterred initial suitors such as Nestle NESNS Perrigo PRGON and a privateequity consortium GlaxoSmithKline PLC 13156 GSKL London Stock Exchange 4180 328 GSKL PFEN RBL JNJN BAYGnDE Reckitt8217s early interest in the Merck assets also waned as the Pfizer auction gained momentum SPLIT OPINION Buying the Pfizer business would have been the boldest move to date for Walmsley who took over at GSK last April But the wisdom of a deal split opinion among investors with some worried about the risk to the company8217s dividend Acquiring additional consumer health assets at a reasonable price could have been a fairly safe way to boost earnings since scale is key in overthecounter remedies but it could have distracted from fixing GSK8217s core pharma division That is a particular headache for Walmsley a consumer products veteran who worked for 17 years at L8217Oreal OREPPA since she has her work cut out to persuade the market she is the right person to lead Britain8217s top pharmaceuticals company Last month in a bid to reassure investors she spelt out that her first priority was improving performance in prescription drugs followed by dividend payments and only after that acquisitions The overhaul of the drugs business which has produced fewer blockbuster medicines than rivals in recent years is underway in both the commercial and research fields GSK runs its consumer healthcare business via a joint venture with Novartis NOVNS which complicates any acquisitions Novartis has the right to sell down its 365 percent stake valued at around 10 billion from this month although it has previously indicated it is in no rush to do so Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Ben Hirschler Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/STERRY-RAF.jpg" type="external" />Peter Sterry <a href="http://wp.me/p3bwni-91f" type="external">21st Century Wire</a></p> <p>In America, Republicans are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution" type="external">celebrating like it&#8217;s 1994</a>, while Democrats are pretending like nothing has really happened.</p> <p>If you&#8217;re neither an Elephant, nor a Jackass, in other words, if you happen to one those street urchins called Independents or Libertarians, or worse, a Green &#8211; then no, nothing of significance really did happen this week for you. It&#8217;s business as usual, both parties pretending to occupy the middle, but smoking the same brand of &#8216;big gov/big bruv&#8217; cigarettes&#8230;</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1-Democrats-Republicans.jpg" type="external" /> Before Tuesday, it was the Democratic White House and the Harry Reid Senate strong-arming a Republican House into submission. After Tuesday, it&#8217;s the new GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, backed by a much fatter, redder House of Representatives &#8211; who will straddle the Democratic White House, demanding the defiant Obama cry uncle.</p> <p>The run-up to this year&#8217;s November US midterm elections was nothing short of epic. First they hit voters with ISIS in July, then moved on swiftly to Ebola in August, before finally rounding it all out in the climax to this week&#8217;s race to control the all important US Senate. While Michael Savage claimed his books were responsible for the &#8220;historic election sweep&#8221;, Republican party operatives in the US media, most notably Sean Hannity and &#8216;Pastor&#8217; Glenn Beck tried in vain to scare their hard core &#8216;conservative&#8217; audiences to near death by somehow linking ISIS-to-Ebola-to-Obama. It didn&#8217;t work &#8211; as was evidenced by this year&#8217;s top four Halloween costumes according to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-isla-vista-halloween-20141031-story.html" type="external">UC Santa Barbara&#8217;s Isla Vista 2014 Party</a> Costume Power Ranking:</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/sexy-ebola-nurse1.jpg" type="external" /> 1. Sarah Palin Ebola Nurse Fettish/Raver outfits (BSL-4 certified).</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ISIS-Halloween-COstumes.jpg" type="external" /> 2. ISIS/ISIL Terrorist garb (w/out white Air Jordans &#8211; Image Source: <a href="https://twitter.com/ForeignPussy/status/525879502539223040/photo/1" type="external">Twitter</a>).</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1-Alan-Combes-Facelift.jpg" type="external" /> 3. Alan Combes (post-second facelift).</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/First-Couple-Michelle-Obama-Man.jpg" type="external" /> 4. Michelle and Barack Gender-Flip (couples only).</p> <p>Once Americans put FOX&#8217;s fear behind them, it was down to the business of politics, and the numbers game&#8230;</p> <p>How the Right Won&#8230;</p> <p>This wasn&#8217;t a particularly hard one to call in advance. With any competitive contest, winning and losing ultimately comes down to energy (and money). The Right had the energy (and the money) and the Left did not.</p> <p>The Right were visibly confident in the run-up to November 4th, and were duly mobilised. The Democrats did not execute their &#8220;ground game&#8221;, nor did they &#8220;deliver voters to the polls&#8221;, but Republicans did. They pushed hard for two months to get their people to vote, running with a pretty simple, easy-to-read no-brainer platform which was basically, &#8220;Anti-Obama&#8221;. They had polling numbers to back that up too, with the Democratic President presently sporting some of the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html" type="external">lowest job approval ratings</a> of any two term President in recorded history &#8211; much lower than Nero&#8217;s during the great fire, and even lower still than Jimmy Carter&#8217;s.</p> <p>In fact, this week&#8217;s midterm flip &#8211; and POTUS dip, is being celebrated by the Carter camp who seem to be off the hook and no longer being unfairly singled out as &#8220;the worst US President in living memory&#8221;.</p> <p>Money talks. spent the money needed to increase their majority. <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php" type="external">Super PAC&#8217;s</a>poured more money into political ad campaigns for the Right, including millions that were spend at the last minute. The Democrats didn&#8217;t come near the amount of overall exposure that Republicans had through media buying, and pundits on both the left and the right were baffled as to why not. It&#8217;s almost as if the Democrats were planning to throw the midterms.</p> <p>Used Tea Bags</p> <p>If you&#8217;ve ever been to a Tea Party event the first thing you notice is that the average age of the people there is around&amp;#160;60 years old. No youth = politically irrelevant. The Stars and Stripes rallies, BBQ&#8217;s and bakes sales will still continue, but the Tea Party is basically over.</p> <p>Tuesday&#8217;s midterms proved what many with brains have suspected (and saying) for a long time &#8211; that the Tea Party is nothing more than a controlled opposition wing within the Republican Party establishment. After the sweaty excitement has evaporated from Tea Party dark horse David Brat, a college economics professor, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/tea-party-beats-cantor-primary-upset-no-one-saw-coming-254420" type="external">who beat Republican House No.2 guy Eric Cantor</a> for his Virginia seat during the summer primaries, the Tea Party are left with little get high on &#8211; so what did they go and do on Tuesday? On command by the Reverend Beck, like good little red robots, they slavishly bloc voted-in every Republican candidate &#8211; and incumbent. So much for Beck&#8217;s &#8216;Second American Revolution&#8217;. What a lark. Hey, but gas is below $3 bucks a gallon!</p> <p>The writing is on the wall. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has already thrown his box of Tea overboard, opting for a seat with Bilderberg instead, and the constant whining by Ted Cruz (still pretending to be &#8216;presidential&#8217;) is no longer interesting, bordering on tragic already. The novelty of the &#8216;Not-a-Party&#8217; party gimmick is way past its sell-by date.</p> <p>How the Left Lost&#8230;</p> <p>Hubris. As the old liberal adage goes, &#8220;If you&#8217;re number #1, why try harder?&#8221;.</p> <p>Comedy Central: Obama brushes of his party&#8217;s meltdown in the midterms, tells more jokes to impress the media.</p> <p>If one single word survives in the Obama legacy, it&#8217;s &#8216;winning&#8217;. The Democrats have had a near obsession with forcing a win on every major issue, or bill. When you control the White House and the Senate, you&#8217;ve effectively gamed the system, and any gridlock means you can simply blame the House. This more or less sums up the current state of the Democratic Party in the US.</p> <p>Yes, it&#8217;s true &#8211; the Left gets as drunk on power as the Right does. Still hungover from 2012, the midterm defeat hasn&#8217;t yet registered with Obama, or Obama&#8217;s brain (his speech writers)&#8230;</p> <p>His reaction to the electoral slaughter was that of indifference &#8211; acting cool and coy, as usual. Obama couldn&#8217;t resist his mandatory peacock moment through, like a mob boss laying down an opaque, sideways challenge, essentially <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/05/obama-immigration-executive-action_n_6109848.html" type="external">threatening to bypass the democratic process by ramming through his own personal &#8216;immigration reform&#8217; bill</a> (more on that later) via a presidential executive order before the lame duck Congress gets thrown out like last year&#8217;s frozen fruit cake at Christmas.</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1-Alison-Lundergen-Grimes.jpg" type="external" />Obama got the cold shoulder simply because of the fear of being pulled down by his current unpopularity. With a blue state candidates telling the Dear Leader to &#8220;stay away&#8221;, they were also courting campaign support from the Clintons. That didn&#8217;t seem to work very well either. Kentucky Senate loser, Alison Lundergen Grimes (Photo, left)&amp;#160; tried to distance herself from Obama, opting instead for a girl-power, Hillary-backed &#8216;Clinton Democrat&#8217; (whatever that actually means) veneer. A bit long in the tooth. It got her nowhere. Her only USP for a conservative Kentucky campaign seemed to, &#8220;Hey, over here &#8211; look! Not all liberals are afraid of guns&#8221;. Right message, wrong party.</p> <p>In Bill&#8217;s home state of Arkansas, Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor was sent packing by Tom Cotton (R), an Iraq combat veteran and Harvard Law School graduate, leaving draft-dodging dodgy lawyer Bill way out of his depth.</p> <p>Beyond the midterms, the results signaled a clear dynastic defeat for &#8216;Brand Clinton&#8217;. The concept of a &#8216;Clinton Democrat&#8217; is fading almost as fast as Bill&#8217;s star power, but not as fast as the stain on a certain intern&#8217;s dress. Being <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/221244-monica-lewinsky-joins-twitter" type="external">upstaged by Monica Lewinsky</a> this fall hasn&#8217;t helped the Clinton 2016 media machine either. American&#8217;s are tired of 20th century political dynasties, and Hillary will have to work a lot harder for her poll position than previously thought.</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1-Harris-Faulkner-Hamster.jpg" type="external" /> NIP AND TUCK: Harris Faulkner makes Michelle Obama look like a feline kitten.</p> <p>Media Horror Show</p> <p>FOX&#8217;s &#8216;Outnumbered&#8217;, essentially, four infomercial spokesmodels, led by 50-something masculine femme-bot, Harris Faulkner, all masquerading as Roger Ailes&#8217;s Palm Springs version of a right-wing minority rainbow &#8211; one black, one white, one Latino, and one Italian/Greek &#8211; with 3 out of the four having either their eyes pinned-back, a nose job, or filed down chin/jaw. Sitting in the middle is always an effeminate male, in this case, Tucker Carlson, and together, they all basked in glory by getting overly caddy about their midterm romp. &#8220;Our team won! Oh, and I love your nails!&#8221;</p> <p>There is something oddly eery about FOX&#8217;s fatal femmes these days. <a href="http://reelgirl.com/2010/04/when-women-join-the-fair-and-balanced-network-they-get-foxified/" type="external">Reel Girl</a> explains, &#8220;Fox News is a modern day Stepford factory for accomplished women. By turning professors and authors into porn star doppelgangers, the network effectively communicates what women say is not as important how they appear.&#8221;</p> <p>When the Right Gets Nasty</p> <p>There is a level of divisiveness in American politics today, one which we&#8217;ve never seen before. Some of us have a long memory however. I remember being shouted-down and accused of being unpatriotic by Bush&#8217;s faithful in 2003 for opposing the WMD war in Iraq, much the same as being accused of being a &#8216;racist&#8217; if one dared oppose the will or policy of Obama from 2008. What it proves&amp;#160; is that both parties and their media hooligans, become very nasty when they feel they have a lock on power. Looking at the FOX faithful should give you a clue as to what&#8217;s in store.</p> <p>If the Republicans win the White House in 2016, and keep the House, then the default position will be a hard right turn, in other words, political fascism will become fashionable &#8211; a fitting complement to economic fascism put into place by successive Repub and Demo&#8217;s governments.</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/1-MSNBC-Chris-Hayes.jpg" type="external" /> MSNBC&#8217;s &#8216;CHRIS MADDOW&#8217;: Are Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow the same person?</p> <p>MSNBC: fading Fast</p> <p>Equally disturbing &#8211; for it&#8217;s unimpressive and their invisible Nielsen audience, was the MSNBC election coverage. Like Obama, MSNBC was mostly in denial, pretending that nothing has happened and that MSNBC was still relevant in terms of its political influence in America.</p> <p>If the midterms were anything, they were proof that MSNBC &#8211; the White House&#8217;s own private network, is officially <a href="" type="internal">the toilet bowl of broadcast journalism</a>.</p> <p>What&#8217;s to Expect Towards 2016?</p> <p>Obama the tired old adage, extolling the virtues of crazy McCain&#8217;s alleged old forte, &#8220;reaching across the aisle&#8230;&#8221;. Hardly.</p> <p>Obama, like any two term lame duck, will become increasingly obsessed with his legacy. In the context of traditional American politics, such a direct threat makes a National Socialist Hitler seem like a flaky hippie. Obama wants to push through &#8216;Universal Amnesty&#8217; for all illegal (or undocumented) Latinos in the US, just in time for Christmas, canonising him St. Barack of Chicago &#8211; the man who created 20 million new Democratic voters with the stroke of a pen. A true miracle. But it will also trigger a PR backlash like the country has never seen, making the next two years a brutal partisan gang war. Let&#8217;s hope it doesn&#8217;t spill into the streets. With no spare money for tattoos and Starbucks, you can expect the Left to unleash their under-employed <a href="" type="internal">Occupy</a> flash mobs by Fall of 2015.</p> <p>The &#8220;Secure Our Borders&#8221; issue is still a dead end. The US has always been built on immigration, and always will be. It&#8217;s a comic book creation driven by FOX, Savage and others, because you cannot hermetically seal the USA. The problem is overwhelmingly one of Mexico&#8217;s doing, and not America&#8217;s. Don&#8217;t tell that to the rank-and-file Tea Partiers. You can hear the tragic battle cry, &#8220;Send the National Guard to the border and shoot anyone who comes across &#8211; they could be ISIS carrying Ebola!&#8221;. Wonderful.</p> <p>Ditto with the tired old cry for a &#8220;Keystone Pipeline!&#8221; (nearly as shallow as &#8220;drill baby drill!&#8221;). Again, another issue that has more to do with another country than it does the US. Republicans fail to realise that the Keystone project is for Canadian Tar Sands Oil which come from Canada, as opposed to US oil which is from&#8230; the US. &#8220;But it will create jobs!&#8221; they still say. Maybe a few jobs for a year or two. Either way &#8211; it&#8217;s a non-issue reserved for political dummies who have run out of sound bites.</p> <p>Obamacare was another killer. No matter how much the President talks it up, and claims that, &#8220;Millions of more Americans are registered with healthcare as a result of my bill&#8221;, the reality is much different &#8211; and Americans know it. Out-of-pocket deductibles are more expensive now, overall premiums are way up and the truth &#8211; less people have health insurance than ever before. Last year&#8217;s Republican House could have killed it by defunding it, but Speaker Boehner bottled it (no pun intended) because The Right are also dancing the same shameless corporate jig. All Obamacare did was prove the political and economic postulate that whenever government imposes itself on any market, it creates an artificial inflation in that market. The only beneficiaries are the cartel of insurance companies who now have the government enforcement behind them to make sure that everyone buys their product &#8211; or else. No wonder then that it was the health insurers who actually wrote the Obamacare bill.</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1-McCain-video-Poker.jpg" type="external" /> MCCAIN: Permanently out to lunch, but less time to play video poker on his iPhone.. More Wars. With <a href="" type="internal">his mental stability still in question</a>, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has been given the war reins, now head of Senate Arms Services Committee, an upgrade to his present role as an embed for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex" type="external">Military industrial Complex</a> inside Congress &#8211; a sales reps for arms defense contractors. As committee chairman, crazy McCain would have less time to play video poker (image, above) an influential role in spearheading defense policy from Capitol Hill. The <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/john-mccain-poised-to-control-senate-s-defense-policy-20141105" type="external">National Journal</a> adds here, &#8220;That includes the Senate&#8217;s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual bill that outlines defense policy and tells the Pentagon what it can and can&#8217;t spend money on. He&#8217;ll also gain a megaphone to voice his frequent opposition to the Obama administration on military and national security issues&#8221;.</p> <p>By spring, McCain will certainly be calling for $1 billion more in aid and more US boots on the ground to help his imaginary &#8220;moderate rebels&#8221; in Syria, and will call for more tough NATO posturing and sanctions against Russia, as well as an opening salvo against Iran. Plenty of war options there.</p> <p>You can hear the clinging of Kosher wine glasses in Tel Aviv, and K Street. The War Hawks are in again, and the Israelis&amp;#160; happy. They&#8217;ll be even happier if Jeb Bush manages to repeat his older brother&#8217;s performance in 2000 &#8211; that is, win his home state/swing state (aka &#8216;God&#8217;s Waiting Room&#8217;) in Florida, and grab control of the White House and the world again.</p> <p>What&#8217;s more frustrating is that on issues that really mean something to Americans &#8211; like NSA spying and gov&#8217;t theft of data &#8211; both parties Democrat and Republic, share exactly the same closed stance: less privacy rights, more spying and absolutely no apologies from the federal government. Another perfect example of one party: The Federal Government.</p> <p><a href="http://36s81n24kn0c1i9se62v6acw.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1-Mitch-McConnell-Wife-plastic-surgery.jpg" type="external" /> THE $30K SMILE: McConnell&#8217;s wife could land a job on FOX.</p> <p>But Can They Govern?</p> <p>GOP leaders are said to be crafting a new agenda to show that their party can actually govern. Mitch McConnell and still speaker, John A. Boehner (R-OH) are claiming to have locked themselves in a fully stocked bar somewhere in DC, where they are quietly laying plans for a series of &#8220;quick votes&#8221; sometime in January, designed to pass some &#8220;stalled legislation&#8221;&#8230;</p> <p>No one is holding their breath, not even Mxxxxx.</p> <p>READ MORE OBAMA NEWS AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Obama Files</a></p>

CIRCUS CIRCUS: US Senate Flips to Elephants, Jackasses Yield in Midterms

http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/11/06/political-circus-us-senate-flips-to-elephants-as-jackasses-yield-in-midterms

2014-11-06

4left

Peter Sterry 21st Century Wire In America Republicans are celebrating like it8217s 1994 while Democrats are pretending like nothing has really happened If you8217re neither an Elephant nor a Jackass in other words if you happen to one those street urchins called Independents or Libertarians or worse a Green 8211 then no nothing of significance really did happen this week for you It8217s business as usual both parties pretending to occupy the middle but smoking the same brand of 8216big govbig bruv8217 cigarettes8230 Before Tuesday it was the Democratic White House and the Harry Reid Senate strongarming a Republican House into submission After Tuesday it8217s the new GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell backed by a much fatter redder House of Representatives 8211 who will straddle the Democratic White House demanding the defiant Obama cry uncle The runup to this year8217s November US midterm elections was nothing short of epic First they hit voters with ISIS in July then moved on swiftly to Ebola in August before finally rounding it all out in the climax to this week8217s race to control the all important US Senate While Michael Savage claimed his books were responsible for the 8220historic election sweep8221 Republican party operatives in the US media most notably Sean Hannity and 8216Pastor8217 Glenn Beck tried in vain to scare their hard core 8216conservative8217 audiences to near death by somehow linking ISIStoEbolatoObama It didn8217t work 8211 as was evidenced by this year8217s top four Halloween costumes according to UC Santa Barbara8217s Isla Vista 2014 Party Costume Power Ranking 1 Sarah Palin Ebola Nurse FettishRaver outfits BSL4 certified 2 ISISISIL Terrorist garb wout white Air Jordans 8211 Image Source Twitter 3 Alan Combes postsecond facelift 4 Michelle and Barack GenderFlip couples only Once Americans put FOX8217s fear behind them it was down to the business of politics and the numbers game8230 How the Right Won8230 This wasn8217t a particularly hard one to call in advance With any competitive contest winning and losing ultimately comes down to energy and money The Right had the energy and the money and the Left did not The Right were visibly confident in the runup to November 4th and were duly mobilised The Democrats did not execute their 8220ground game8221 nor did they 8220deliver voters to the polls8221 but Republicans did They pushed hard for two months to get their people to vote running with a pretty simple easytoread nobrainer platform which was basically 8220AntiObama8221 They had polling numbers to back that up too with the Democratic President presently sporting some of the lowest job approval ratings of any two term President in recorded history 8211 much lower than Nero8217s during the great fire and even lower still than Jimmy Carter8217s In fact this week8217s midterm flip 8211 and POTUS dip is being celebrated by the Carter camp who seem to be off the hook and no longer being unfairly singled out as 8220the worst US President in living memory8221 Money talks spent the money needed to increase their majority Super PAC8217spoured more money into political ad campaigns for the Right including millions that were spend at the last minute The Democrats didn8217t come near the amount of overall exposure that Republicans had through media buying and pundits on both the left and the right were baffled as to why not It8217s almost as if the Democrats were planning to throw the midterms Used Tea Bags If you8217ve ever been to a Tea Party event the first thing you notice is that the average age of the people there is aroundamp16060 years old No youth politically irrelevant The Stars and Stripes rallies BBQ8217s and bakes sales will still continue but the Tea Party is basically over Tuesday8217s midterms proved what many with brains have suspected and saying for a long time 8211 that the Tea Party is nothing more than a controlled opposition wing within the Republican Party establishment After the sweaty excitement has evaporated from Tea Party dark horse David Brat a college economics professor who beat Republican House No2 guy Eric Cantor for his Virginia seat during the summer primaries the Tea Party are left with little get high on 8211 so what did they go and do on Tuesday On command by the Reverend Beck like good little red robots they slavishly bloc votedin every Republican candidate 8211 and incumbent So much for Beck8217s 8216Second American Revolution8217 What a lark Hey but gas is below 3 bucks a gallon The writing is on the wall Senator Rand Paul RKY has already thrown his box of Tea overboard opting for a seat with Bilderberg instead and the constant whining by Ted Cruz still pretending to be 8216presidential8217 is no longer interesting bordering on tragic already The novelty of the 8216NotaParty8217 party gimmick is way past its sellby date How the Left Lost8230 Hubris As the old liberal adage goes 8220If you8217re number 1 why try harder8221 Comedy Central Obama brushes of his party8217s meltdown in the midterms tells more jokes to impress the media If one single word survives in the Obama legacy it8217s 8216winning8217 The Democrats have had a near obsession with forcing a win on every major issue or bill When you control the White House and the Senate you8217ve effectively gamed the system and any gridlock means you can simply blame the House This more or less sums up the current state of the Democratic Party in the US Yes it8217s true 8211 the Left gets as drunk on power as the Right does Still hungover from 2012 the midterm defeat hasn8217t yet registered with Obama or Obama8217s brain his speech writers8230 His reaction to the electoral slaughter was that of indifference 8211 acting cool and coy as usual Obama couldn8217t resist his mandatory peacock moment through like a mob boss laying down an opaque sideways challenge essentially threatening to bypass the democratic process by ramming through his own personal 8216immigration reform8217 bill more on that later via a presidential executive order before the lame duck Congress gets thrown out like last year8217s frozen fruit cake at Christmas Obama got the cold shoulder simply because of the fear of being pulled down by his current unpopularity With a blue state candidates telling the Dear Leader to 8220stay away8221 they were also courting campaign support from the Clintons That didn8217t seem to work very well either Kentucky Senate loser Alison Lundergen Grimes Photo leftamp160 tried to distance herself from Obama opting instead for a girlpower Hillarybacked 8216Clinton Democrat8217 whatever that actually means veneer A bit long in the tooth It got her nowhere Her only USP for a conservative Kentucky campaign seemed to 8220Hey over here 8211 look Not all liberals are afraid of guns8221 Right message wrong party In Bill8217s home state of Arkansas Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor was sent packing by Tom Cotton R an Iraq combat veteran and Harvard Law School graduate leaving draftdodging dodgy lawyer Bill way out of his depth Beyond the midterms the results signaled a clear dynastic defeat for 8216Brand Clinton8217 The concept of a 8216Clinton Democrat8217 is fading almost as fast as Bill8217s star power but not as fast as the stain on a certain intern8217s dress Being upstaged by Monica Lewinsky this fall hasn8217t helped the Clinton 2016 media machine either American8217s are tired of 20th century political dynasties and Hillary will have to work a lot harder for her poll position than previously thought NIP AND TUCK Harris Faulkner makes Michelle Obama look like a feline kitten Media Horror Show FOX8217s 8216Outnumbered8217 essentially four infomercial spokesmodels led by 50something masculine femmebot Harris Faulkner all masquerading as Roger Ailes8217s Palm Springs version of a rightwing minority rainbow 8211 one black one white one Latino and one ItalianGreek 8211 with 3 out of the four having either their eyes pinnedback a nose job or filed down chinjaw Sitting in the middle is always an effeminate male in this case Tucker Carlson and together they all basked in glory by getting overly caddy about their midterm romp 8220Our team won Oh and I love your nails8221 There is something oddly eery about FOX8217s fatal femmes these days Reel Girl explains 8220Fox News is a modern day Stepford factory for accomplished women By turning professors and authors into porn star doppelgangers the network effectively communicates what women say is not as important how they appear8221 When the Right Gets Nasty There is a level of divisiveness in American politics today one which we8217ve never seen before Some of us have a long memory however I remember being shouteddown and accused of being unpatriotic by Bush8217s faithful in 2003 for opposing the WMD war in Iraq much the same as being accused of being a 8216racist8217 if one dared oppose the will or policy of Obama from 2008 What it provesamp160 is that both parties and their media hooligans become very nasty when they feel they have a lock on power Looking at the FOX faithful should give you a clue as to what8217s in store If the Republicans win the White House in 2016 and keep the House then the default position will be a hard right turn in other words political fascism will become fashionable 8211 a fitting complement to economic fascism put into place by successive Repub and Demo8217s governments MSNBC8217s 8216CHRIS MADDOW8217 Are Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow the same person MSNBC fading Fast Equally disturbing 8211 for it8217s unimpressive and their invisible Nielsen audience was the MSNBC election coverage Like Obama MSNBC was mostly in denial pretending that nothing has happened and that MSNBC was still relevant in terms of its political influence in America If the midterms were anything they were proof that MSNBC 8211 the White House8217s own private network is officially the toilet bowl of broadcast journalism What8217s to Expect Towards 2016 Obama the tired old adage extolling the virtues of crazy McCain8217s alleged old forte 8220reaching across the aisle82308221 Hardly Obama like any two term lame duck will become increasingly obsessed with his legacy In the context of traditional American politics such a direct threat makes a National Socialist Hitler seem like a flaky hippie Obama wants to push through 8216Universal Amnesty8217 for all illegal or undocumented Latinos in the US just in time for Christmas canonising him St Barack of Chicago 8211 the man who created 20 million new Democratic voters with the stroke of a pen A true miracle But it will also trigger a PR backlash like the country has never seen making the next two years a brutal partisan gang war Let8217s hope it doesn8217t spill into the streets With no spare money for tattoos and Starbucks you can expect the Left to unleash their underemployed Occupy flash mobs by Fall of 2015 The 8220Secure Our Borders8221 issue is still a dead end The US has always been built on immigration and always will be It8217s a comic book creation driven by FOX Savage and others because you cannot hermetically seal the USA The problem is overwhelmingly one of Mexico8217s doing and not America8217s Don8217t tell that to the rankandfile Tea Partiers You can hear the tragic battle cry 8220Send the National Guard to the border and shoot anyone who comes across 8211 they could be ISIS carrying Ebola8221 Wonderful Ditto with the tired old cry for a 8220Keystone Pipeline8221 nearly as shallow as 8220drill baby drill8221 Again another issue that has more to do with another country than it does the US Republicans fail to realise that the Keystone project is for Canadian Tar Sands Oil which come from Canada as opposed to US oil which is from8230 the US 8220But it will create jobs8221 they still say Maybe a few jobs for a year or two Either way 8211 it8217s a nonissue reserved for political dummies who have run out of sound bites Obamacare was another killer No matter how much the President talks it up and claims that 8220Millions of more Americans are registered with healthcare as a result of my bill8221 the reality is much different 8211 and Americans know it Outofpocket deductibles are more expensive now overall premiums are way up and the truth 8211 less people have health insurance than ever before Last year8217s Republican House could have killed it by defunding it but Speaker Boehner bottled it no pun intended because The Right are also dancing the same shameless corporate jig All Obamacare did was prove the political and economic postulate that whenever government imposes itself on any market it creates an artificial inflation in that market The only beneficiaries are the cartel of insurance companies who now have the government enforcement behind them to make sure that everyone buys their product 8211 or else No wonder then that it was the health insurers who actually wrote the Obamacare bill MCCAIN Permanently out to lunch but less time to play video poker on his iPhone More Wars With his mental stability still in question Senator John McCain RAZ has been given the war reins now head of Senate Arms Services Committee an upgrade to his present role as an embed for the Military industrial Complex inside Congress 8211 a sales reps for arms defense contractors As committee chairman crazy McCain would have less time to play video poker image above an influential role in spearheading defense policy from Capitol Hill The National Journal adds here 8220That includes the Senate8217s version of the National Defense Authorization Act NDAA an annual bill that outlines defense policy and tells the Pentagon what it can and can8217t spend money on He8217ll also gain a megaphone to voice his frequent opposition to the Obama administration on military and national security issues8221 By spring McCain will certainly be calling for 1 billion more in aid and more US boots on the ground to help his imaginary 8220moderate rebels8221 in Syria and will call for more tough NATO posturing and sanctions against Russia as well as an opening salvo against Iran Plenty of war options there You can hear the clinging of Kosher wine glasses in Tel Aviv and K Street The War Hawks are in again and the Israelisamp160 happy They8217ll be even happier if Jeb Bush manages to repeat his older brother8217s performance in 2000 8211 that is win his home stateswing state aka 8216God8217s Waiting Room8217 in Florida and grab control of the White House and the world again What8217s more frustrating is that on issues that really mean something to Americans 8211 like NSA spying and gov8217t theft of data 8211 both parties Democrat and Republic share exactly the same closed stance less privacy rights more spying and absolutely no apologies from the federal government Another perfect example of one party The Federal Government THE 30K SMILE McConnell8217s wife could land a job on FOX But Can They Govern GOP leaders are said to be crafting a new agenda to show that their party can actually govern Mitch McConnell and still speaker John A Boehner ROH are claiming to have locked themselves in a fully stocked bar somewhere in DC where they are quietly laying plans for a series of 8220quick votes8221 sometime in January designed to pass some 8220stalled legislation82218230 No one is holding their breath not even Mxxxxx READ MORE OBAMA NEWS AT 21st Century Wire Obama Files

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<p>TriggerPhoto/Thinkstock</p> <p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175473/tomgram%3A_steve_fraser%2C_%22de-fault_is_ours%22/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>Terrorism (ter-ror-ism; see also terror) n. 1. When a foreign organization kills an American for political reasons.</p> <p>Justice (jus-tice) n. 1. When the United States Government uses a drone to kill an American for political reasons.</p> <p>How&#8217;s that morning coffee treating you? Nice and warming? Mmmm.</p> <p>While you&#8217;re savoring your cup o&#8217; joe, imagine the president of the United States hunched over his own coffee, considering the murder of another American citizen. Now, if you were plotting to kill an American over coffee, you could end up in jail on a whole range of charges including&#8212;depending on the situation&#8212;terrorism. However, if the president&#8217;s doing the killing, it&#8217;s all nice and&#8212;let&#8217;s put those quote marks around it&#8212;&#8221;legal.&#8221; How do we know? We&#8217;re assured that the Justice Department tells him so. And that&#8217;s justice enough in <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175792/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_we_have_to_destroy_our_constitution_to_save_it/" type="external">post-Constitutional America</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" />Through what seems to have been an Obama administration leak to the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/us-suspect-possibly-targeted-drone-attack-091333349--politics.html" type="external">Associated Press</a>, we recently learned that the president and his top officials believe a US citizen&#8212;name unknown to us out here&#8212;probably somewhere in the tribal backlands of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/world/asia/us-debates-drone-strike-on-american-terror-suspect-in-pakistan.html?hpw&amp;amp;rref=world&amp;amp;_r=0" type="external">Pakistan</a>, is reputedly planning attacks against Americans abroad. As a result, the White House has, for the last several months, been considering whether or not to assassinate him by drone without trial or due process.</p> <p>Supposedly, the one thing that&#8217;s held up sending in the drones is the administration&#8217;s desire to make sure the kill is &#8220;legal.&#8221; (Those quotes again.)</p> <p>Last May, Obama gave a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-may-23-speech-on-national-security-as-prepared-for-delivery/2013/05/23/02c35e30-c3b8-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html" type="external">speech</a> on the subject. It was, in part, a response to growing anger in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere over the CIA&#8217;s ongoing drone assassination campaigns with all their &#8220;collateral damage,&#8221; and to the White House&#8217;s reported &#8220; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html" type="external">kill list</a>.&#8221; In it, he insisted that any target of the drones must pose &#8220;a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.&#8221; At the time, the White House also issued a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/fact-sheet-us-policy-standards-and-procedures-use-force-counterterrorism" type="external">fact sheet</a> that stated: &#8220;Lethal force must only be used to prevent or stop attacks against US persons, and even then, only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively.&#8221; While that sounds like a pretty imposing set of hurdles to leap, all of the &#8220;legal&#8221; criteria are determined in secret by the White House with advice from the Justice Department, but with no oversight or accountability.</p> <p>Even then, it turns out that the supposedly tortured deliberations of the administration are not really necessary. Despite the president&#8217;s criteria, <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/us-suspect-possibly-targeted-drone-attack-091333349--politics.html" type="external">according to</a> an unnamed administration official quoted by the Associated Press, Obama could make an exception to his policy and authorize the CIA to strike on a one-time basis, no matter what the circumstances. One way or another, it is Obama who decides who to kill and when.</p> <p>Short-Term Questions</p> <p>At this point, it&#8217;s unclear just why the Obama administration leaked its plans in reference to this errant American abroad. After all, official after official has insisted that Edward Snowden&#8217;s revelations of secret NSA documents have caused terrorists to <a href="http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/25/terrorists-try-changes-after-snowden-leaks-official-says/" type="external">change their communication tactics</a>, yet the one American up to no good somewhere in the terrorist world apparently has not done so in response to the leak about his potential fate, and will remain locatable whenever needed as a target. And yet giving notice of a possible attack in advance in the media would, on the face of it, seem both counterproductive and an invitation to the very barrage of criticisms leveled by key officials at Snowden. After all, under the circumstances, an American connected with al-Qaeda wouldn&#8217;t exactly have to be a Bond villain to decide to change his behavior and his location, stay indoors or outdoors more, keep off his phone for a while or trade it in for another.</p> <p>Could the administration leak have been a trick to flush the bad guy out, causing him to panic and run? Was it an elaborate ruse designed to induce widespread concern in al-Qaeda about the liabilities of having American compatriots? Was it a bone thrown to Republicans otherwise <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/10/obama-pressure-disclose-drone-details-citizen-targeted" type="external">eager</a> to paint the president as weak? Could it have been some kind of geopolitical muscle tussle with once compliant but now more assertively anti-drone Pakistan? Or could the leak have been a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Operations_(United_States)" type="external">PSYOP</a> on the American people, an attempt to manipulate us into feeling better about government decisions to kill American citizens by revealing the deliberative and <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/brennan-agony/" type="external">heart-wrenching process</a> Obama goes through? Or could it simply have been an attempt to normalize such acts for us, to make them part of the understandable everyday background noise of a dangerous world?</p> <p>The answer is: we don&#8217;t know. Not yet anyway.</p> <p>Not the First Time</p> <p>The Obama administration admits to killing <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-the-4-us-citizens-killed-in-drone-strikes/" type="external">four Americans</a> as part of its war on (or is it &#8220;war of&#8221;?) terror. We&#8217;ll pause here a moment for you to contemplate whether there could have been other, undocumented killings of the same sort awaiting the revelations of some future Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning.</p> <p>On May 7, 2011, a US drone fired a missile in Yemen aimed at American citizen and key terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaki. The missile blew up a car with two other people in it, quickly labeled &#8220;al-Qaeda operatives&#8221; after we killed them.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805096817/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Such collateral killings should be no surprise. The <a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/" type="external">inaugural article</a> by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill at their new media venture notes that the National Security Agency regularly identifies targets for CIA assassinations based on metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking. Rather than confirming that target&#8217;s identity, the CIA is evidently ready and willing to blow a suspect away based on the location of a mobile phone he assumedly is using. In other words, people can be killed because they borrowed the wrong cell phone. (So much for a deliberative process.)</p> <p>The US had tried to kill al-Awlaki before, including in the Bush years&#8212;and missed. In justifying one of these assassination attempts, Obama&#8217;s counterterrorism chief, Michael Leiter, <a href="http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/yemeni-cleric-al-awlaki-greatest-threat-us" type="external">claimed</a> that al-Awlaki actually posed a bigger threat to the US &#8220;homeland&#8221; than Osama bin Laden, albeit without explanation. No matter, they finally got their man. A follow-up strike killed al-Awlaki, and another soon after obliterated his teenage son, also in Yemen. Though no one argues that the boy was in any way linked to terrorism and no administration official has bothered to explain just why he was targeted, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs did comment that the killing was <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-the-4-us-citizens-killed-in-drone-strikes/" type="external">justified</a> as he &#8220;should have had a more responsible father.&#8221;</p> <p>Couldn&#8217;t Happen Here?</p> <p>Though the president and his officials go to great pains to indicate that such assassinations are only going to happen abroad, there is nothing in the carefully worded distinctions made by the White House to preclude them at home. As a start, in his criteria for killing someone extrajudicially, the president claims there is no difference between an American citizen terrorist and a foreign terrorist. A careful look back at the statements of two government officials makes it clear that thought has already gone into the question of bringing the killings home.</p> <p>Remember the <a href="http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/08/mueller-i-am-not-sure-whether-i-now-can-kill-citizens-in-the-united-states-under-obamas-kill-doctrine/" type="external">testimony</a> then-FBI Director Robert Mueller gave before a House subcommittee in 2012? When asked point-blank if the president could order the killing of an American in the United States, he replied &#8220;Uh, I&#8217;m not certain whether that was addressed or not&#8230;I&#8217;m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice.&#8221; Mueller, of course, had the option of saying flat-out, &#8220;No, no, of course the president can&#8217;t order a hit on an American here in the US where the full judicial system, Constitution, and due process protections exist! Are you mad?&#8221;</p> <p>The truth emerged only in 2013 when Senator Rand Paul <a href="http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/BrennanHolderResponse.pdf" type="external">asked point-blank</a> whether the president could authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against an American citizen in the United States. Attorney General Eric Holder fired back that while the question was &#8220;hypothetical,&#8221; the real-world answer was yes. Holder said he could imagine &#8220;an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.&#8221;</p> <p>It&#8217;s easy enough, in fact, to imagine the sort of scenarios that might lend themselves to such an act: a ticking time bomb, a killer believed to have anthrax and on the loose, a suspected dirty-bomb maker in a desolate location, terrorists with a bus full of children on a mountain top. Imagine a slippery slope and&#8230;presto! You&#8217;re there.</p> <p>They&#8217;ve thought about it. They&#8217;ve set up the legal manipulations necessary to justify it. The broad, open-ended criteria the president laid out for killing suspected terrorists exposes the post-Constitutional stance our government has already prepared for. All that&#8217;s left to do is pull the trigger.</p> <p>Nostalgia for the Fifth Amendment</p> <p>It&#8217;s still possible to remember, almost nostalgically, how the <a href="http://civilliberty.about.com/od/lawenforcementterrorism/p/5th_amendment.htm" type="external">Fifth Amendment</a> used to guarantee Americans due process. The key phrase was indeed that &#8220;due process.&#8221; It meant the government could not take away your property or imprison or execute you without first allowing you a chance to defend yourself. You would have your day in court with a lawyer and a jury of your peers to make the final decision. This would all be quite public and the people involved would be held accountable for their actions. The Fifth was meant by those who wrote it as a check on the ultimate in government excess: the purposeful taking of citizens&#8217; lives. Today, it increasingly seems an artifact of a quaint past, as seemingly lost to history as the corded phone or manual typewriter.</p> <p>Attorney General Eric Holder publicly <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/holder-us-can-lawfully-target-american-citizens/2012/03/05/gIQANknFtR_story.html" type="external">rewrote</a> the Fifth Amendment in 2012, declaring, in a veiled reference to al-Awlaki, &#8220;that a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to &#8216;due process&#8217; and that the Constitution&#8217;s Fifth Amendment protection against depriving a citizen of his or her life without due process of law does not mandate a &#8216;judicial process.'&#8221; In other words, in a pinch, skip the courts. In this way, Holder gave us a peak behind the White House curtain, making clear that the president&#8217;s personal and secret decision to kill an American, perhaps made over morning coffee, was, in his opinion, good enough to make everything legal.</p> <p>The due process question Holder dismissed so casually still looms large over al-Awlaki&#8217;s murder. Prior to the killing, attorneys for his father tried to persuade a US District Court to issue an injunction preventing the government from killing him in Yemen. A judge <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/12/07/lawsuit.al.awlaki/index.html" type="external">dismissed</a> the case, ruling that the father did not have &#8220;standing&#8221; to sue and that government officials themselves were immune from lawsuits for actions carried out as part of their official duties.</p> <p>This was the first time a father had sought to sue the US government to prevent it from killing a son without trial. The judge did call the suit &#8220;unique and extraordinary,&#8221; but ultimately passed on getting involved. He wrote instead that it was up to the elected branches of government, not the courts, to determine if the United States has the authority to extrajudicially murder its own citizens.</p> <p>The judge&#8217;s position was revealing of our moment. The extrajudicial killing of an American citizen seemed to him to be nothing but a political question to be argued out in Congress and the White House, not something intimately woven into the founding documents of our nation. The judge was not alone in his characterization of the problem. Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-weighs-lethal-strike-against-american-citizen/2014/02/10/24bc47ac-9268-11e3-b46a-5a3d0d2130da_story.html" type="external">complained</a> that the killing of more terror suspects in a similar manner has been held back by &#8220;self-imposed red tape.&#8221;</p> <p>There are, however, no footnotes in the Fifth Amendment, no caveats, no secret memos, no exceptions for terrorism, mass rape, child torture, or any other horror the US has confronted in its 238 years of existence. Such addendums to the Fifth were unnecessary, because in the beautiful preciseness of Lincoln&#8217;s <a href="http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/lincoln-gettysburg-address-speech-text/" type="external">phrasing</a> at Gettysburg, ours is &#8220;a government of the people, by the people, for the people,&#8221; one made up of us, beholden to us, and whose purpose is to serve us.</p> <p>Such a government would be incapable of killing its own citizens without due care, debate, and open trial. Those actions would violate the sacred convent of trust between a people and their government in a democracy, the &#8220; <a href="http://www.ask.com/question/define-consent-of-the-governed-as-jefferson-used-it" type="external">consent of the governed</a>,&#8221; and delegitimize the government itself.</p> <p>That last point is worth a closer look, because it makes clear what murder-by-decree really represents in post-Constitutional America. The phrase &#8220;consent of the governed&#8221; first appears in the Declaration of Independence, the document by which the United States declared itself no longer under the governance of the British king. The Declaration makes clear that a government&#8217;s moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people over which that power is exercised. Such consent is the opposite of the <a href="http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/367/367-04.htm" type="external">divine right of kings</a>, the philosophy under which the British ruled colonial Americans. Its foundational principle was obedience to government and its edicts and decisions, even on issues of life and death, as a religious and moral obligation.</p> <p>Following the more philosophical Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights was a practical exercise written to address directly the specific injustices of rule by royal decree. By turning its back on key elements of our founding, Washington, it seems, has brought us full circle.</p> <p>Life in Post-Constitutional America</p> <p>These days in the pseudo-debates about drone killings in the mainstream media, such changes are treated as matters of no great significance. On the day that the president&#8217;s latest plans for the murder of a fellow citizen in the distant tribal backlands of Pakistan first appeared, they caused little stir. The headlines were instead dominated by Olympic gossip and an impending ice storm in Atlanta. Killings extrajudicially mandated by the White House? The Fifth Amendment? Maybe if the target were Shaun White in Sochi, more people would have cared.</p> <p>At the moment, we are threatened with a return to a pre-Constitutional situation that Americans would once have dismissed out of hand, a society in which the head of state can take a citizen&#8217;s life on his own say-so. If it&#8217;s the model for the building of post-Constitutional America, we&#8217;re in trouble. Indeed the stakes are high, whether we notice or not.</p> <p>The question is: How far will post-Constitutional America stray from the nation so conceived in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights? Because in the twenty-first century, the midnight knock on the door may come not from the King&#8217;s men, but from the sky.</p> <p>Peter Van Buren, a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175792/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_we_have_to_destroy_our_constitution_to_save_it/" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>, blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805096817/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People</a>. A <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175792/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_we_have_to_destroy_our_constitution_to_save_it/" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>, he writes about current events at his blog, <a href="http://www.wemeantwell.com" type="external">We Meant Well</a>. His next book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935462911/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent</a>. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&amp;amp;id=1e41682ade" type="external">here</a>.</p> <p>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" type="external">Facebook</a> or <a href="http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/" type="external">Tumblr</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Ann Jones&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America&#8217;s Wars&#8212;The Untold Story</a>.</p>

Are We Living in a Post-Constitutional America?

https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/obama-drone-pakistan-us-citizen-leak-killing/

2014-02-18

4left

TriggerPhotoThinkstock This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website Terrorism terrorism see also terror n 1 When a foreign organization kills an American for political reasons Justice justice n 1 When the United States Government uses a drone to kill an American for political reasons How8217s that morning coffee treating you Nice and warming Mmmm While you8217re savoring your cup o8217 joe imagine the president of the United States hunched over his own coffee considering the murder of another American citizen Now if you were plotting to kill an American over coffee you could end up in jail on a whole range of charges including8212depending on the situation8212terrorism However if the president8217s doing the killing it8217s all nice and8212let8217s put those quote marks around it82128221legal8221 How do we know We8217re assured that the Justice Department tells him so And that8217s justice enough in postConstitutional America Through what seems to have been an Obama administration leak to the Associated Press we recently learned that the president and his top officials believe a US citizen8212name unknown to us out here8212probably somewhere in the tribal backlands of Pakistan is reputedly planning attacks against Americans abroad As a result the White House has for the last several months been considering whether or not to assassinate him by drone without trial or due process Supposedly the one thing that8217s held up sending in the drones is the administration8217s desire to make sure the kill is 8220legal8221 Those quotes again Last May Obama gave a speech on the subject It was in part a response to growing anger in Pakistan Yemen and elsewhere over the CIA8217s ongoing drone assassination campaigns with all their 8220collateral damage8221 and to the White House8217s reported 8220 kill list8221 In it he insisted that any target of the drones must pose 8220a continuing and imminent threat to the American people8221 At the time the White House also issued a fact sheet that stated 8220Lethal force must only be used to prevent or stop attacks against US persons and even then only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively8221 While that sounds like a pretty imposing set of hurdles to leap all of the 8220legal8221 criteria are determined in secret by the White House with advice from the Justice Department but with no oversight or accountability Even then it turns out that the supposedly tortured deliberations of the administration are not really necessary Despite the president8217s criteria according to an unnamed administration official quoted by the Associated Press Obama could make an exception to his policy and authorize the CIA to strike on a onetime basis no matter what the circumstances One way or another it is Obama who decides who to kill and when ShortTerm Questions At this point it8217s unclear just why the Obama administration leaked its plans in reference to this errant American abroad After all official after official has insisted that Edward Snowden8217s revelations of secret NSA documents have caused terrorists to change their communication tactics yet the one American up to no good somewhere in the terrorist world apparently has not done so in response to the leak about his potential fate and will remain locatable whenever needed as a target And yet giving notice of a possible attack in advance in the media would on the face of it seem both counterproductive and an invitation to the very barrage of criticisms leveled by key officials at Snowden After all under the circumstances an American connected with alQaeda wouldn8217t exactly have to be a Bond villain to decide to change his behavior and his location stay indoors or outdoors more keep off his phone for a while or trade it in for another Could the administration leak have been a trick to flush the bad guy out causing him to panic and run Was it an elaborate ruse designed to induce widespread concern in alQaeda about the liabilities of having American compatriots Was it a bone thrown to Republicans otherwise eager to paint the president as weak Could it have been some kind of geopolitical muscle tussle with once compliant but now more assertively antidrone Pakistan Or could the leak have been a PSYOP on the American people an attempt to manipulate us into feeling better about government decisions to kill American citizens by revealing the deliberative and heartwrenching process Obama goes through Or could it simply have been an attempt to normalize such acts for us to make them part of the understandable everyday background noise of a dangerous world The answer is we don8217t know Not yet anyway Not the First Time The Obama administration admits to killing four Americans as part of its war on or is it 8220war of8221 terror We8217ll pause here a moment for you to contemplate whether there could have been other undocumented killings of the same sort awaiting the revelations of some future Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning On May 7 2011 a US drone fired a missile in Yemen aimed at American citizen and key terror suspect Anwar alAwlaki The missile blew up a car with two other people in it quickly labeled 8220alQaeda operatives8221 after we killed them Such collateral killings should be no surprise The inaugural article by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill at their new media venture notes that the National Security Agency regularly identifies targets for CIA assassinations based on metadata analysis and cellphone tracking Rather than confirming that target8217s identity the CIA is evidently ready and willing to blow a suspect away based on the location of a mobile phone he assumedly is using In other words people can be killed because they borrowed the wrong cell phone So much for a deliberative process The US had tried to kill alAwlaki before including in the Bush years8212and missed In justifying one of these assassination attempts Obama8217s counterterrorism chief Michael Leiter claimed that alAwlaki actually posed a bigger threat to the US 8220homeland8221 than Osama bin Laden albeit without explanation No matter they finally got their man A followup strike killed alAwlaki and another soon after obliterated his teenage son also in Yemen Though no one argues that the boy was in any way linked to terrorism and no administration official has bothered to explain just why he was targeted former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs did comment that the killing was justified as he 8220should have had a more responsible father8221 Couldn8217t Happen Here Though the president and his officials go to great pains to indicate that such assassinations are only going to happen abroad there is nothing in the carefully worded distinctions made by the White House to preclude them at home As a start in his criteria for killing someone extrajudicially the president claims there is no difference between an American citizen terrorist and a foreign terrorist A careful look back at the statements of two government officials makes it clear that thought has already gone into the question of bringing the killings home Remember the testimony thenFBI Director Robert Mueller gave before a House subcommittee in 2012 When asked pointblank if the president could order the killing of an American in the United States he replied 8220Uh I8217m not certain whether that was addressed or not8230I8217m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice8221 Mueller of course had the option of saying flatout 8220No no of course the president can8217t order a hit on an American here in the US where the full judicial system Constitution and due process protections exist Are you mad8221 The truth emerged only in 2013 when Senator Rand Paul asked pointblank whether the president could authorize lethal force such as a drone strike against an American citizen in the United States Attorney General Eric Holder fired back that while the question was 8220hypothetical8221 the realworld answer was yes Holder said he could imagine 8220an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States8221 It8217s easy enough in fact to imagine the sort of scenarios that might lend themselves to such an act a ticking time bomb a killer believed to have anthrax and on the loose a suspected dirtybomb maker in a desolate location terrorists with a bus full of children on a mountain top Imagine a slippery slope and8230presto You8217re there They8217ve thought about it They8217ve set up the legal manipulations necessary to justify it The broad openended criteria the president laid out for killing suspected terrorists exposes the postConstitutional stance our government has already prepared for All that8217s left to do is pull the trigger Nostalgia for the Fifth Amendment It8217s still possible to remember almost nostalgically how the Fifth Amendment used to guarantee Americans due process The key phrase was indeed that 8220due process8221 It meant the government could not take away your property or imprison or execute you without first allowing you a chance to defend yourself You would have your day in court with a lawyer and a jury of your peers to make the final decision This would all be quite public and the people involved would be held accountable for their actions The Fifth was meant by those who wrote it as a check on the ultimate in government excess the purposeful taking of citizens8217 lives Today it increasingly seems an artifact of a quaint past as seemingly lost to history as the corded phone or manual typewriter Attorney General Eric Holder publicly rewrote the Fifth Amendment in 2012 declaring in a veiled reference to alAwlaki 8220that a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to 8216due process8217 and that the Constitution8217s Fifth Amendment protection against depriving a citizen of his or her life without due process of law does not mandate a 8216judicial process8221 In other words in a pinch skip the courts In this way Holder gave us a peak behind the White House curtain making clear that the president8217s personal and secret decision to kill an American perhaps made over morning coffee was in his opinion good enough to make everything legal The due process question Holder dismissed so casually still looms large over alAwlaki8217s murder Prior to the killing attorneys for his father tried to persuade a US District Court to issue an injunction preventing the government from killing him in Yemen A judge dismissed the case ruling that the father did not have 8220standing8221 to sue and that government officials themselves were immune from lawsuits for actions carried out as part of their official duties This was the first time a father had sought to sue the US government to prevent it from killing a son without trial The judge did call the suit 8220unique and extraordinary8221 but ultimately passed on getting involved He wrote instead that it was up to the elected branches of government not the courts to determine if the United States has the authority to extrajudicially murder its own citizens The judge8217s position was revealing of our moment The extrajudicial killing of an American citizen seemed to him to be nothing but a political question to be argued out in Congress and the White House not something intimately woven into the founding documents of our nation The judge was not alone in his characterization of the problem Mike Rogers chair of the House Intelligence Committee complained that the killing of more terror suspects in a similar manner has been held back by 8220selfimposed red tape8221 There are however no footnotes in the Fifth Amendment no caveats no secret memos no exceptions for terrorism mass rape child torture or any other horror the US has confronted in its 238 years of existence Such addendums to the Fifth were unnecessary because in the beautiful preciseness of Lincoln8217s phrasing at Gettysburg ours is 8220a government of the people by the people for the people8221 one made up of us beholden to us and whose purpose is to serve us Such a government would be incapable of killing its own citizens without due care debate and open trial Those actions would violate the sacred convent of trust between a people and their government in a democracy the 8220 consent of the governed8221 and delegitimize the government itself That last point is worth a closer look because it makes clear what murderbydecree really represents in postConstitutional America The phrase 8220consent of the governed8221 first appears in the Declaration of Independence the document by which the United States declared itself no longer under the governance of the British king The Declaration makes clear that a government8217s moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people over which that power is exercised Such consent is the opposite of the divine right of kings the philosophy under which the British ruled colonial Americans Its foundational principle was obedience to government and its edicts and decisions even on issues of life and death as a religious and moral obligation Following the more philosophical Declaration of Independence the Bill of Rights was a practical exercise written to address directly the specific injustices of rule by royal decree By turning its back on key elements of our founding Washington it seems has brought us full circle Life in PostConstitutional America These days in the pseudodebates about drone killings in the mainstream media such changes are treated as matters of no great significance On the day that the president8217s latest plans for the murder of a fellow citizen in the distant tribal backlands of Pakistan first appeared they caused little stir The headlines were instead dominated by Olympic gossip and an impending ice storm in Atlanta Killings extrajudicially mandated by the White House The Fifth Amendment Maybe if the target were Shaun White in Sochi more people would have cared At the moment we are threatened with a return to a preConstitutional situation that Americans would once have dismissed out of hand a society in which the head of state can take a citizen8217s life on his own sayso If it8217s the model for the building of postConstitutional America we8217re in trouble Indeed the stakes are high whether we notice or not The question is How far will postConstitutional America stray from the nation so conceived in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights Because in the twentyfirst century the midnight knock on the door may come not from the King8217s men but from the sky Peter Van Buren a TomDispatch regular blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book We Meant Well How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People A TomDispatch regular he writes about current events at his blog We Meant Well His next book is Ghosts of Tom Joad A Story of the 99Percent To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom here Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr Check out the newest Dispatch Book Ann Jones8217s They Were Soldiers How the Wounded Return From America8217s Wars8212The Untold Story

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<p>(Reuters) - U.S. girls&#8217; accessories retailer Claire&#8217;s Stores Inc has hired investment bank Lazard Ltd ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=LAZ.N" type="external">LAZ.N</a>) to advise it on ways to address its debt burden, it told Reuters on Monday, as several brick-and-mortar store operators suffer from a drop in mall traffic.</p> <p>Claire&#8217;s has been seeking to address its $2.2 billion debt load, which starts coming due next year. It comes two years after the retailer, which is famous for having pierced the ears of millions of American girls, completed an out-of-court debt restructuring and refinanced some of its debt.</p> <p>&#8220;We believe this is the right time to undertake this initiative and we want to assure our vendors, employees and stakeholders that we believe we have ample liquidity to honor our commitments through the completion of this process,&#8221; Claire&#8217;s Chief Executive Ron Marshall said in a statement.</p> <p>The company also said that its operations remain strong. It recorded same-store consolidated sales growth of 2.7 percent for the first three quarters of 2017.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=LAZ.N" type="external">Lazard Ltd</a> 51.53 LAZ.N New York Stock Exchange -0.24 (-0.46%) LAZ.N APO.N <p>More than 15 brick-and-mortar retailers including Toys &#8220;R&#8221; Us Inc, The Limited and Gymboree Corp filed for bankruptcy in 2017, as consumers turned more frequently to online shopping. Several that were owned by private equity firms were able to reorganize rather than wind down, bucking a trend in retail.</p> <p>Claire&#8217;s sells its products in 4,220 locations in 45 countries, through company-owned stores, concessions and franchise locations. It is owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=APO.N" type="external">APO.N</a>), which acquired it in 2007 for $3.1 billion.</p> <p>(This version of the story corrects debt maturity coming due next year, not this year, in paragraph 2)</p> <p>Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - To Wall Street money managers who make bets for a living, U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s aggressive stance against China on trade looks like a high-stakes poker hand - but they believe they can play it for all it&#8217;s worth.</p> FILE PHOTO: A labourer works on coils of steel wire at a steel wholesale market in Beijing, China, January 17, 2012. REUTERS/Soo Hoo Zheyang/File Photo <p>Fears that Trump could set off a trade conflict have roiled Wall Street since March 1, when the president announced plans to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, risking retaliation from major trade partners like China, Europe and neighboring Canada.</p> <p>It&#8217;s been a roller coaster ride, with markets slumping after Trump last Friday moved to impose up to $60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports and China declared plans to retaliate with duties of up to $3 billion of U.S. imports even as it urged the United States to &#8220;pull back from the brink.&#8221;</p> <p>China&#8217;s willingness to negotiate spurred a rebound on Monday, though jitters in the tech sector drove markets back down on Tuesday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Investors remain concerned about a trade war between the world&#8217;s two largest economies, but some big players are sanguine about their prospects to make money even as they try and dissect Trump&#8217;s strategy on trade.</p> <p>The former celebrity businessman on March 2 tweeted, &#8220;trade wars are good, and easy to win,&#8221; shocking economists who cite evidence that trade wars in the past have been destructive to economies involved.</p> <p>&#8220;Other administrations have gone to trading partners like China and asked for a fairer deal, only to get a cigar put out on their forehead,&#8221; said Steve Chiavarone, a portfolio manager at Federated Investors. &#8220;I suspect Trump&#8217;s bucking of norms is absolutely part of his negotiating tactics.&#8221;</p> <p>Chiavarone and others said they remain confident the S&amp;amp;P 500 will rise significantly this year.</p> <p>&#8220;So far you are talking about small amounts of tariffs in niche sectors,&#8221; said Phil Blancato, head of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management in New York. &#8220;For anyone who is looking for an opportunity to enter the market here at better valuations, this is it.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump, surrounded by business leaders and administration officials, prepares to sign a memorandum on intellectual property tariffs on high-tech goods from China, at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst THE ART OF THE DEAL <p>&#8220;He has shown himself to act aggressively, quickly and unilaterally, and that&#8217;s brought China to the negotiating table,&#8221; said Ben Phillips, chief investment officer of EventShares exchange traded funds. &#8220;I truly think they are worried about him taking unilateral action and harming China&#8217;s economy.&#8221;</p> <p>Fears of a trade war, which could hurt U.S. multinationals and dull the benefits of deep corporate tax cuts enacted this year, have helped push the S&amp;amp;P 500 down nearly 4 percent since the end of February.</p> <p>The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its $375 billion trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion, a position seen by some as an opening tactic in a long negotiation.</p> <p>China could respond to U.S. measures with a range of tariffs aimed at U.S. multinationals, or even farmers in rural regions who helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s bellicose stance with U.S. trade partners reflects a negotiating style outlined in his 1987 book, &#8220;Trump: The Art of the Deal,&#8221; said Oliver Pursche, chief market strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York.</p> <p>&#8220;You propose something horrific, and then when you pull back what you want is not as painful as feared,&#8221; Pursche said. &#8220;The problem is the other side isn&#8217;t dumb. Eventually, they&#8217;re going to figure that out.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Noel Randewich, additional reporting by April Joyner and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York; Editing by Alden Bentley</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tesla Inc shares fell sharply again on Wednesday, reeling from a credit downgrade of the electric car maker by Moody&#8217;s Investors Service, federal probes of a fatal crash and concerns about Model 3 production.</p> <p>Shares tumbled 9 percent, then bounced off the session low to trade at $260.80, down about 6.5 percent. On Tuesday, Tesla tumbled 8.2 percent to its lowest close in almost a year after the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) opened a field investigation into a fatal crash and vehicle fire in California on March 23.</p> <p>On Wednesday, a second federal regulator, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), said it was sending a team to California to investigate the crash.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-tesla-stock-options/extreme-bearish-options-on-tesla-making-money-as-stock-dives-idUSKBN1H434B" type="external">Extreme bearish options on Tesla making money as stock dives</a> <a href="/article/us-tesla-crash/u-s-auto-safety-agency-to-probe-fatal-tesla-california-crash-idUSKBN1H42X1" type="external">U.S. auto safety agency to probe fatal Tesla California crash</a> <p>Late on Tuesday, Moody&#8217;s Investors Service downgraded Tesla&#8217;s credit rating to B3 from B2, citing &#8220;the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company&#8217;s Model 3 electric vehicle.&#8221; It also noted &#8220;liquidity pressures due to its large negative free cash flow and the pending maturities of convertible bonds.&#8221;</p> <p>Tesla has $230 million in convertible bonds maturing in November 2018 and $920 million in March 2019.</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s said its negative outlook &#8220;reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large, near-term capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall.&#8221;</p> <p>It said Tesla&#8217;s weekly production target is now 2,500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of March, down sharply from its year-earlier target of 5,000 per week by the end of 2017. Tesla&#8217;s weekly target for the end of June is 5,000.</p> <p>Tesla declined to comment on the downgrade. The company plans to provide an update on Model 3 production next week.</p> <p>Tesla shares have experienced big swings in the past, as worries about losses have vied with enthusiasm for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk&#8217;s ambitious plans.</p> <p>The selloff has left Tesla&#8217;s stock market value at $44 billion, below General Motors Co&#8217;s $49 billion. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla has at times had a larger market value than GM, the largest U.S. automaker by vehicle sales.</p> A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton, just outside London, Britain, February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <p>Since the end of February, the median analyst price target for Tesla has dipped by $10 to $356, about 37 percent higher than Wednesday&#8217;s price, according to Thomson Reuters data. Nomura Securities analyst Romit Shah has the highest Tesla price target, $500, or nearly double the current price. All the targets were set before the March 23 crash.</p> <p>In last week&#8217;s accident in which the Tesla struck a highway median, it was unclear if the vehicle&#8217;s automated control system called Autopilot was driving, the NTSB and police said.</p> <p>The 38-year-old driver of the Tesla died at a nearby hospital shortly after the crash.</p> <p>Late Tuesday, Tesla said in a blog post it does &#8220;not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the crash,&#8221; but added that data shows Tesla owners have driven the same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged &#8220;roughly 85,000 times... and there has never been an accident that we know of.&#8221; The statement did not say if the crashed vehicle was in Autopilot mode.</p> <p>Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Alexandria Sage and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell about 1 percent on Wednesday after data showed U.S. crude inventories unexpectedly rose 1.6 million barrels last week, weighing on market sentiment.</p> FILE PHOTO: An oil well pump jack is seen at an oil field supply yard near Denver, Colorado, U.S., February 2, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo <p>Brent June crude futures LCOc2 settled 70 cents lower at $68.76 per barrel, while the front month May contract LCOc1, which expires on Thursday, fell 58 cents, or 0.8 percent, to settle at $69.53 a barrel.</p> <p>West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures for May delivery fell 87 cents to $64.38 a barrel, a 1.3-percent loss.</p> <p>U.S. crude stockpiles USOILC=ECI rose as net imports USOICI=ECI soared by 1.1 million barrels per day, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.</p> <p>Stocks at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for U.S crude futures USOICC=ECI also rose 1.8 million barrels, EIA said.</p> <p>&#8220;Oil supplies at Cushing, Oklahoma are starting to replenish, which is bearish for prices, but they have a long way to go to near normal levels of supply,&#8221; said John Kilduff, partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York.</p> <p>U.S. crude production also inched up last week to fresh record high at 10.433 million bpd. Output has risen by nearly 25 percent in the last two years to over 10 million bpd C-OUT-T-EIA, taking it past top exporter Saudi Arabia and within reach of the biggest producer, Russia, which pumps around 11 million bpd.</p> <p>U.S. crude&#8217;s discount to Brent WTCLc1-LCOc1 widened to as much as $5.22, the biggest since Jan. 24.</p> <p>&#8220;Costs in the U.S. are getting to be a little bit less expensive to drill and that&#8217;s one of the aspects that is potentially driving the spread between Brent and WTI,&#8221; Mark Watkins, a regional investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management said from Salt Lake City, Utah.</p> <p>Average breakeven prices to drill a new well in the U.S. range from $47 to $55 per barrel depending on the region, according to a Wednesday survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.</p> <p>Brent prices have risen in seven out of the last nine months and have increased by more than 4 percent so far this year. Prices have also had three consecutive quarters of gains, the longest stretch since late 2010 and early 2011, after production curbs led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries since last year.</p> <p>Wednesday&#8217;s price falls came despite Saudi Arabia saying it was working with Russia on a long-term pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years.</p> <p>Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Reuters on Tuesday that Riyadh and Moscow were considering greatly extending the short-term alliance on oil curbs that began in January 2017 after a crash in crude prices, with a partnership to manage supplies potentially growing &#8220;to a 10-to-20-year agreement.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; editing by Marguerita Choy</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) shares fell almost 5 percent on Wednesday, wiping more than $30 billion off its market value, after news website Axios reported that U.S. President Donald Trump is obsessed with the world&#8217;s largest online retailer and wants to rein in its growing power.</p> The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol <p>Trump has talked about using antitrust law to &#8220;go after&#8221; the company because he is worried about mom-and-pop retailers being put out of business by Amazon, Axios reported, citing five sources it said had discussed the issue with him.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-amazon-com-trump/no-u-s-policy-changes-on-amazon-at-the-moment-white-house-official-idUSKBN1H42IY" type="external">No U.S. policy changes on Amazon at the moment: White House official</a> <p>Trump also wants to change Amazon&#8217;s tax treatment, the Axios report said, an issue the president raised publicly last year when he called for an internet tax for online retailers, even though Amazon already collects sales tax on items it sells direct to customers.</p> <p>&#8220;The president has said many times before he&#8217;s always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses and this is no different,&#8221; said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, when asked about the Axios report. &#8220;He&#8217;s always going to look at different ways, but there aren&#8217;t any specific policies on the table at this time.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has been complaining about Amazon in private, believing the company has become too powerful, another administration official confirmed to Reuters.</p> <p>The official said Trump links this to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos&#8217; private ownership of the Washington Post, which he has called &#8220;fake news&#8221; for its critical coverage of his administration. Trump regards the newspaper as a mouthpiece for Bezos&#8217; business interests, calling it #AmazonWashingtonPost on Twitter.</p> The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration <p>Amazon did not reply to a request for comment on the Axios report.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">Amazon.com Inc</a> 1431.42 AMZN.O Nasdaq -65.63 (-4.38%) AMZN.O FB.O FAVORITE TARGET <p>Trump has criticized Amazon over taxes and jobs in the past, without offering evidence. The president urging the use of antitrust law to selectively thwart a company would be unprecedented, according to Jeffrey Jacobovitz of the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP.</p> <p>Amazon&#8217;s stock, which fell as low as $1,386.17 on Wednesday, was last down 4.6 percent at $1,427.83. The shares have nearly quadrupled over the last three years.</p> <p>Tech stocks have been under pressure after Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) acknowledged this month that user data had been improperly harvested by a consultancy.</p> <p>&#8220;With Facebook and regulatory worries, the last thing nervous tech investors wanted to see was news that Trump is targeting Bezos and Amazon over the coming months as this remains a lingering cloud over the stock and heightens the risk profile in the eyes of the Street,&#8221; GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Diane Bartz and Amanda Becker in Washington; Sinead Carew in New York; writing by Chris Sanders; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Exclusive: Claire's Stores hires Lazard to address debt issues On China trade clash, Wall Street embraces Trump's poker face Tesla shares dive again, stung by fatal crash, credit downgrade Oil falls about 1 percent after surprise U.S. crude build Amazon shares fall after report Trump wants to curb its power

https://reuters.com/article/us-clairesstores-lazard-exclusive/exclusive-claires-stores-hires-lazard-to-address-debt-issues-idUSKBN1FB322

2018-01-22

2least

Reuters US girls8217 accessories retailer Claire8217s Stores Inc has hired investment bank Lazard Ltd LAZN to advise it on ways to address its debt burden it told Reuters on Monday as several brickandmortar store operators suffer from a drop in mall traffic Claire8217s has been seeking to address its 22 billion debt load which starts coming due next year It comes two years after the retailer which is famous for having pierced the ears of millions of American girls completed an outofcourt debt restructuring and refinanced some of its debt 8220We believe this is the right time to undertake this initiative and we want to assure our vendors employees and stakeholders that we believe we have ample liquidity to honor our commitments through the completion of this process8221 Claire8217s Chief Executive Ron Marshall said in a statement The company also said that its operations remain strong It recorded samestore consolidated sales growth of 27 percent for the first three quarters of 2017 Lazard Ltd 5153 LAZN New York Stock Exchange 024 046 LAZN APON More than 15 brickandmortar retailers including Toys 8220R8221 Us Inc The Limited and Gymboree Corp filed for bankruptcy in 2017 as consumers turned more frequently to online shopping Several that were owned by private equity firms were able to reorganize rather than wind down bucking a trend in retail Claire8217s sells its products in 4220 locations in 45 countries through companyowned stores concessions and franchise locations It is owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC APON which acquired it in 2007 for 31 billion This version of the story corrects debt maturity coming due next year not this year in paragraph 2 Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Greg Roumeliotis in New York Editing by Susan Thomas Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters To Wall Street money managers who make bets for a living US President Donald Trump8217s aggressive stance against China on trade looks like a highstakes poker hand but they believe they can play it for all it8217s worth FILE PHOTO A labourer works on coils of steel wire at a steel wholesale market in Beijing China January 17 2012 REUTERSSoo Hoo ZheyangFile Photo Fears that Trump could set off a trade conflict have roiled Wall Street since March 1 when the president announced plans to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum risking retaliation from major trade partners like China Europe and neighboring Canada It8217s been a roller coaster ride with markets slumping after Trump last Friday moved to impose up to 60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports and China declared plans to retaliate with duties of up to 3 billion of US imports even as it urged the United States to 8220pull back from the brink8221 China8217s willingness to negotiate spurred a rebound on Monday though jitters in the tech sector drove markets back down on Tuesday FILE PHOTO Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 26 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Investors remain concerned about a trade war between the world8217s two largest economies but some big players are sanguine about their prospects to make money even as they try and dissect Trump8217s strategy on trade The former celebrity businessman on March 2 tweeted 8220trade wars are good and easy to win8221 shocking economists who cite evidence that trade wars in the past have been destructive to economies involved 8220Other administrations have gone to trading partners like China and asked for a fairer deal only to get a cigar put out on their forehead8221 said Steve Chiavarone a portfolio manager at Federated Investors 8220I suspect Trump8217s bucking of norms is absolutely part of his negotiating tactics8221 Chiavarone and others said they remain confident the SampampP 500 will rise significantly this year 8220So far you are talking about small amounts of tariffs in niche sectors8221 said Phil Blancato head of Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management in New York 8220For anyone who is looking for an opportunity to enter the market here at better valuations this is it8221 FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump surrounded by business leaders and administration officials prepares to sign a memorandum on intellectual property tariffs on hightech goods from China at the White House in Washington US March 22 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst THE ART OF THE DEAL 8220He has shown himself to act aggressively quickly and unilaterally and that8217s brought China to the negotiating table8221 said Ben Phillips chief investment officer of EventShares exchange traded funds 8220I truly think they are worried about him taking unilateral action and harming China8217s economy8221 Fears of a trade war which could hurt US multinationals and dull the benefits of deep corporate tax cuts enacted this year have helped push the SampampP 500 down nearly 4 percent since the end of February The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its 375 billion trade surplus with the United States by 100 billion a position seen by some as an opening tactic in a long negotiation China could respond to US measures with a range of tariffs aimed at US multinationals or even farmers in rural regions who helped Trump win the 2016 presidential election Trump8217s bellicose stance with US trade partners reflects a negotiating style outlined in his 1987 book 8220Trump The Art of the Deal8221 said Oliver Pursche chief market strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York 8220You propose something horrific and then when you pull back what you want is not as painful as feared8221 Pursche said 8220The problem is the other side isn8217t dumb Eventually they8217re going to figure that out8221 Reporting by Noel Randewich additional reporting by April Joyner and Trevor Hunnicutt in New York Editing by Alden Bentley Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Tesla Inc shares fell sharply again on Wednesday reeling from a credit downgrade of the electric car maker by Moody8217s Investors Service federal probes of a fatal crash and concerns about Model 3 production Shares tumbled 9 percent then bounced off the session low to trade at 26080 down about 65 percent On Tuesday Tesla tumbled 82 percent to its lowest close in almost a year after the US National Transportation Safety Board NTSB opened a field investigation into a fatal crash and vehicle fire in California on March 23 On Wednesday a second federal regulator the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration NHTSA said it was sending a team to California to investigate the crash Related Coverage Extreme bearish options on Tesla making money as stock dives US auto safety agency to probe fatal Tesla California crash Late on Tuesday Moody8217s Investors Service downgraded Tesla8217s credit rating to B3 from B2 citing 8220the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company8217s Model 3 electric vehicle8221 It also noted 8220liquidity pressures due to its large negative free cash flow and the pending maturities of convertible bonds8221 Tesla has 230 million in convertible bonds maturing in November 2018 and 920 million in March 2019 Moody8217s said its negative outlook 8220reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large nearterm capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall8221 It said Tesla8217s weekly production target is now 2500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of March down sharply from its yearearlier target of 5000 per week by the end of 2017 Tesla8217s weekly target for the end of June is 5000 Tesla declined to comment on the downgrade The company plans to provide an update on Model 3 production next week Tesla shares have experienced big swings in the past as worries about losses have vied with enthusiasm for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk8217s ambitious plans The selloff has left Tesla8217s stock market value at 44 billion below General Motors Co8217s 49 billion Palo Alto Californiabased Tesla has at times had a larger market value than GM the largest US automaker by vehicle sales A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton just outside London Britain February 7 2018 REUTERSHannah McKay Since the end of February the median analyst price target for Tesla has dipped by 10 to 356 about 37 percent higher than Wednesday8217s price according to Thomson Reuters data Nomura Securities analyst Romit Shah has the highest Tesla price target 500 or nearly double the current price All the targets were set before the March 23 crash In last week8217s accident in which the Tesla struck a highway median it was unclear if the vehicle8217s automated control system called Autopilot was driving the NTSB and police said The 38yearold driver of the Tesla died at a nearby hospital shortly after the crash Late Tuesday Tesla said in a blog post it does 8220not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the crash8221 but added that data shows Tesla owners have driven the same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged 8220roughly 85000 times and there has never been an accident that we know of8221 The statement did not say if the crashed vehicle was in Autopilot mode Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Alexandria Sage and Noel Randewich in San Francisco Editing by Dan Grebler and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Oil prices fell about 1 percent on Wednesday after data showed US crude inventories unexpectedly rose 16 million barrels last week weighing on market sentiment FILE PHOTO An oil well pump jack is seen at an oil field supply yard near Denver Colorado US February 2 2015 REUTERSRick WilkingFile Photo Brent June crude futures LCOc2 settled 70 cents lower at 6876 per barrel while the front month May contract LCOc1 which expires on Thursday fell 58 cents or 08 percent to settle at 6953 a barrel West Texas Intermediate WTI crude CLc1 futures for May delivery fell 87 cents to 6438 a barrel a 13percent loss US crude stockpiles USOILCECI rose as net imports USOICIECI soared by 11 million barrels per day according to data from the US Energy Information Administration Stocks at the Cushing Oklahoma delivery hub for US crude futures USOICCECI also rose 18 million barrels EIA said 8220Oil supplies at Cushing Oklahoma are starting to replenish which is bearish for prices but they have a long way to go to near normal levels of supply8221 said John Kilduff partner at energy hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York US crude production also inched up last week to fresh record high at 10433 million bpd Output has risen by nearly 25 percent in the last two years to over 10 million bpd COUTTEIA taking it past top exporter Saudi Arabia and within reach of the biggest producer Russia which pumps around 11 million bpd US crude8217s discount to Brent WTCLc1LCOc1 widened to as much as 522 the biggest since Jan 24 8220Costs in the US are getting to be a little bit less expensive to drill and that8217s one of the aspects that is potentially driving the spread between Brent and WTI8221 Mark Watkins a regional investment strategist at US Bank Wealth Management said from Salt Lake City Utah Average breakeven prices to drill a new well in the US range from 47 to 55 per barrel depending on the region according to a Wednesday survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Brent prices have risen in seven out of the last nine months and have increased by more than 4 percent so far this year Prices have also had three consecutive quarters of gains the longest stretch since late 2010 and early 2011 after production curbs led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries since last year Wednesday8217s price falls came despite Saudi Arabia saying it was working with Russia on a longterm pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Reuters on Tuesday that Riyadh and Moscow were considering greatly extending the shortterm alliance on oil curbs that began in January 2017 after a crash in crude prices with a partnership to manage supplies potentially growing 8220to a 10to20year agreement8221 Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore editing by Marguerita Choy Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Amazoncom Inc AMZNO shares fell almost 5 percent on Wednesday wiping more than 30 billion off its market value after news website Axios reported that US President Donald Trump is obsessed with the world8217s largest online retailer and wants to rein in its growing power The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in LauwinPlanque northern France February 20 2017 REUTERSPascal Rossignol Trump has talked about using antitrust law to 8220go after8221 the company because he is worried about momandpop retailers being put out of business by Amazon Axios reported citing five sources it said had discussed the issue with him Related Coverage No US policy changes on Amazon at the moment White House official Trump also wants to change Amazon8217s tax treatment the Axios report said an issue the president raised publicly last year when he called for an internet tax for online retailers even though Amazon already collects sales tax on items it sells direct to customers 8220The president has said many times before he8217s always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses and this is no different8221 said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders when asked about the Axios report 8220He8217s always going to look at different ways but there aren8217t any specific policies on the table at this time8221 Trump has been complaining about Amazon in private believing the company has become too powerful another administration official confirmed to Reuters The official said Trump links this to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos8217 private ownership of the Washington Post which he has called 8220fake news8221 for its critical coverage of his administration Trump regards the newspaper as a mouthpiece for Bezos8217 business interests calling it AmazonWashingtonPost on Twitter The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8 2017 illustration photo REUTERSCarlos JassoIllustration Amazon did not reply to a request for comment on the Axios report Amazoncom Inc 143142 AMZNO Nasdaq 6563 438 AMZNO FBO FAVORITE TARGET Trump has criticized Amazon over taxes and jobs in the past without offering evidence The president urging the use of antitrust law to selectively thwart a company would be unprecedented according to Jeffrey Jacobovitz of the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP Amazon8217s stock which fell as low as 138617 on Wednesday was last down 46 percent at 142783 The shares have nearly quadrupled over the last three years Tech stocks have been under pressure after Facebook Inc FBO acknowledged this month that user data had been improperly harvested by a consultancy 8220With Facebook and regulatory worries the last thing nervous tech investors wanted to see was news that Trump is targeting Bezos and Amazon over the coming months as this remains a lingering cloud over the stock and heightens the risk profile in the eyes of the Street8221 GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives said Additional reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru Diane Bartz and Amanda Becker in Washington Sinead Carew in New York writing by Chris Sanders editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>For the better part of a week, conservatives in the media have been on a <a href="/research/2009/09/24/more-witch-hunting-fox-news-targets-safe-school/155008" type="external">witch hunt for Kevin Jennings</a>, the director of the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Led by Fox News, the right-wing media have <a href="/research/2009/09/30/despite-evidence-to-contrary-fox-news-machine-c/155234" type="external">claimed</a> that 21 years ago, when Jennings was a 24-year-old teacher at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, he "cover[ed] up statutory rape" by not reporting to authorities a conversation he had with a student who told him about being involved with an "older man."</p> <p>The attacks on Jennings, the latest Obama administration official in the right's crosshairs, have been disgusting, misleading, baseless, and at times pointedly <a href="/research/2009/10/01/conservative-media-unleash-anti-gay-rhetoric-in/155241" type="external">anti-gay</a>.</p> <p>WorldNetDaily's Erik Rush called Jennings a "radical homosexual druggie." The conservative Washington Times contended in an editorial that "Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools." Right-wing radio's big kahuna, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News' Sean Hannity both claimed that Jennings supported promoting homosexuality in the schools, while conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote that Jennings was a "controversial homosexual rights' advocate" who founded a "controversial" organization that "aggressively pushes sexually explicit" books.</p> <p>The controversial organization of which Malkin speaks? GLSEN -- the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network -- which, <a href="http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/about/index.html" type="external">according to the organization's website</a>, is "the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students. ... GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression."</p> <p>In addition to the right's attacks aimed at Jennings' sexual orientation, conservative media outlets sought to paint Jennings as complicit in covering up a crime -- specifically "statutory rape." A Washington Times editorial <a href="/research/2009/09/28/after-foxnewscom-truncated-jennings-quote-wash/155098" type="external">accused</a> Jennings of "encourag[ing]" a relationship that amounted to "statutory rape." Led by Hannity, Fox News also baselessly <a href="/research/2009/09/30/despite-evidence-to-contrary-fox-news-machine-c/155234" type="external">claimed</a> that Jennings "cover[ed] up statutory rape" and violated Massachusetts law by not reporting to authorities his 1988 conversation with the student. Limbaugh took things a step further, <a href="/research/2009/10/01/limbaugh-baselessly-accused-jennings-of-encoura/155248" type="external">claiming</a> that Jennings had "encouraged" and "facilitated" a sexual relationship between the student and an adult. Fox News' Bill Hemmer continued the conservative network's <a href="/research/2009/10/01/fox-news-hemmer-latest-to-advance-made-up-charg/155256" type="external">attacks</a> on Jennings by claiming that Jennings knew of a "statutory rape" case involving a student but "never reported it." MSNBC's Pat Buchanan went even further, <a href="/video/2009/10/01/buchanan-asks-if-jennings-had-a-sense-of-solida/155242" type="external">asking</a> if Jennings had "a sense of solidarity with the man, rather than with the kid." Seriously.</p> <p>The conservative media made it abundantly clear that facts wouldn't get in the way of their latest line of attack on the Obama administration. In a 2004 letter, Jennings' attorney wrote that the student was 16 years old at the time of the incident, which is, and was at the time, the <a href="/research/2009/09/30/despite-evidence-to-contrary-fox-news-machine-c/155234#consent" type="external">legal age of consent</a> in Massachusetts.</p> <p>Additionally, Media Matters exclusively confirmed the former student's age was 16 at the time of his conversation with Jennings, posting a redacted copy of his <a href="/blog/2009/10/02/exclusive-media-matters-confirms-student-at-cen/155306" type="external">current driver's license</a>, his Facebook <a href="/blog/2009/10/02/exclusive-fox-news-seeks-to-confirm-wildly-inac/155312" type="external">message exchange</a> with a FoxNews.com writer in which he said as much, and his <a href="/blog/2009/10/02/exclusive-statement-from-former-student-at-cent/155314" type="external">statement</a> on the matter.</p> <p>If you've ever wondered what kind of folks regularly participate in polls sponsored by FoxNews.com, the answer is here. It's <a href="/blog/2009/10/01/foxnewscom-poll-asks-if-fox-news-target-jenning/155243" type="external">two kinds of people</a>: those who are comfortable forming a strong opinion on a subject before the facts are in, and people who get all of their news from Fox News. Ninety-eight percent of respondents to a FoxNews.com poll this week said that Jennings should resign due to his "actions" and "questionable past and experience." I wonder where they could have gotten <a href="/video/2009/09/30/hannity-hunting-for-jennings-scalp-i-want-him-f/155231" type="external">that idea</a>. (After all, self-righteous indignation is what Sean Hannity does best.)</p> <p>But don't hold your breath hoping for any consistency from Hannity. After The Washington Times established a completely false equivalency between Jennings and former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) (who, if you'll recall, personally pursued young congressional pages), Media Matters went back and checked the record. It turns out that in 2006, while Dennis Hastert was on his way to being <a href="http://ethics.house.gov/Media/PDF/Page_Report.pdf#page=88" type="external">criticized by the House Ethics Committee</a> for his failure to stop Foley's actions, <a href="/research/2009/10/01/hannity-and-fox-news-defended-hastert-during-fo/155235" type="external">Hannity and his Fox News cohorts</a> were among the then-speaker's staunchest defenders. "The only thing that Hastert knew about was that there was an e-mail," Hannity said at the time. "[I]'s always easy to say what [Hastert] should've done," Brit Hume said, "but when you start thinking about the things he could've done, there's not much there." "I think there's no evidence that Hastert did anything wrong, in my view," said Bill Kristol. "Hastert's position is completely defensible," said Mort Kondracke. "Hastert's you know, being witch hunted down," stated Bill O'Reilly.</p> <p>When it comes to media conservatives, integrity may be dead, but irony certainly is not.</p> <p>Lost in these right-wing caricatures of Jennings is the <a href="/research/2009/10/01/right-wing-caricatures-of-jennings-undercut-by/155264" type="external">simple fact</a> that education officials and others have spoken highly of the Obama administration official, who has received numerous awards and was an appointee of former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican.</p> <p>With this, the latest conservative media witch hunt debunked and put to bed, the timer starts anew. When will the next witch hunt begin? Who's next on the list?</p> <p>A gold medal for Obamalympic-hating media conservatives</p> <p>It isn't every day that the conservative media -- America's self-appointed protectors of patriotism -- illustrate their true priorities so clearly. But on Friday, they did just that. Here it is, in a nutshell: America lost, and the right-wing noise machine cheered.</p> <p>The announcement that President Obama planned to fly to Copenhagen to support Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics was immediately denounced by the conservative media. After months of <a href="/research/2009/06/03/fox-hosts-revive-fox-manufactured-obama-apology/150824" type="external">falsely</a> <a href="/research/2009/07/21/echoing-drudge-fox-promotes-another-apology-tou/152287" type="external">accusing</a> Obama of <a href="/video/2009/09/24/fox-amp-friends-return-again-of-the-apology-tou/154970" type="external">apologizing</a> for America on the world stage -- even blatantly <a href="" type="internal">cropping the president's words</a> to make the point -- you would think that right-wing media figures would have applauded a voyage with the explicit goal of praising the United States. Think again -- not when there are political points to score.</p> <p>"Chicago is good at ... organized Mafi-- oops, did I say that out loud?" Fox News' Glenn Beck <a href="/video/2009/10/01/discussing-olympic-bid-beck-trashes-chicago-chi/155275" type="external">quipped</a> on Thursday. Malkin was even more vitriolic, <a href="http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/28/gibbs-on-chicago-olympics-crony-bid-tangible-economic-benefits-jarrett-seeking-federal-hud-funds/" type="external">stating</a> Obama's trip was nothing more than a taxpayer-funded junket designed to secure paybacks for Obama's hometown "cronies."</p> <p>And that was <a href="/research/2009/09/29/fox-news-attacks-obamas-efforts-to-promote-us-o/155160" type="external">just the beginning</a>. Hannity claimed that Obama was "more concerned about bringing the Olympics to Chicago than winning the war in Afghanistan." The Washington Examiner's Byron York and The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes attacked Obama's priorities, with Hayes adding, "the optics of it at the very least are terrible." Fox News' Bret Baier brought up the "carbon footprint" of the Air Force One trip, and the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell claimed that Obama's venture was "evidence that [Obama] just cannot stay away from the klieg lights." Fox News' Gretchen Carlson suggested the trip was inappropriate, and both she and her colleague Steve Doocy said that it was against U.S. tradition to "send our president out as a salesman like this." "Have you been to Rio?" <a href="/research/2009/10/02/fox-news-attack-machine-smears-chicago-as-a-vio/155291" type="external">asked</a> columnist S.E. Cupp on Fox News, swelling with national pride. "I have. It's awesome."</p> <p>Even more abysmal was the right's exploitation of a recently released video depicting the brutal murder of a teenage Chicagoan at the hands of gang members. "Is this a city where we want the Olympics taking place?" Hannity <a href="/research/2009/10/02/fox-news-attack-machine-smears-chicago-as-a-vio/155291" type="external">asked</a>. "OLYMPIC SPIRIT: VIDEO SHOWS BRUTAL GANG MURDER IN CHICAGO" the Drudge Report <a href="/blog/2009/09/29/drudge-links-to-report-on-murder-in-chicago-wit/155142" type="external">blared</a>. "Community organizing has not stopped Chicago's teen violence epidemic," Malkin <a href="/research/2009/10/02/fox-news-attack-machine-smears-chicago-as-a-vio/155291" type="external">added</a>.</p> <p>Then on Friday, the International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago from the running -- and <a href="/press/releases/200910020024" type="external">the rejoicing began</a>.</p> <p>"Oh, it's so sweet," <a href="/video/2009/10/02/beck-rejoices-with-sweet-news-that-chicago-lost/155302" type="external">said</a> Beck live on the radio. "Enjoy this -- savor this moment." "[T]he IOC just says 'no' to Chicago!" <a href="/research/2009/10/02/rooting-against-america-beck-other-conservative/155310" type="external">cheered</a> Lou Dobbs' webpage, reprinting the latest <a href="http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2009/10/02/20091002_165824.htm" type="external">headline</a> topping Drudge: "The Ego Has Landed." "I don't deny it," <a href="/video/2009/10/02/limbaugh-on-chicago-olympic-elimination-for-tho/155307" type="external">said</a> Limbaugh, "I'm happy." Erick Erickson, managing editor of the conservative blog RedState.com, was perhaps the most mature of the conservative revelers, summing up his feelings by <a href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/10/02/breaking-world-rejects-barack-obama-no-chicago-olympics/" type="external">writing</a>, "Hahahahaha."</p> <p>No, it's not every week that we get such a clear indication of just what "patriotism" really means to those in the conservative media -- and it doesn't have anything to do with putting country first.</p> <p>Drama still besting substance in coverage of health care</p> <p>This week, the Senate Finance Committee passed Sen. Max Baucus' health care plan, <a href="http://blog.healthcareforamericanow.org/2009/09/29/what-todays-vote-on-the-public-option-in-the-senate-finance-committee-means/" type="external">voting down</a> two amendments in the process that would have included a public option in the legislation. That was the week's substantive development affecting health care reform. The rest was the conservative noise machine's usual drone.</p> <p>Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) made headlines by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-usmvYOPfco" type="external">bluntly attacking conservatives</a> for lacking a systematic health insurance reform plan. The following day, he returned to the House floor and called for an end to what he termed a " <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0909/Grayson_calls_health_care_crisis_holocaust.html?showall" type="external">holocaust</a>" caused by the failings of America's health care system.</p> <p>While his language was indeed blunt, his passion was understandable. A <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917" type="external">new study</a> conducted by the Harvard Medical School estimates that 45,000 Americans die every year because of our system's flaws. Despite such realities, RedState's Erickson was incensed not by the death toll but by Grayson's statement. "The holocaust was real with a real meaning," he <a href="http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/09/30/alan-grayson-calls-health-care-situation-a-holocaust-and-thinks-the-anti-defamation-league-is-a-crazy-racist-institution/" type="external">wrote on Wednesday</a>. "Roping it into the health care debate cheapens what it was all about." We're still waiting for Erickson to denounce the <a href="/blog/2009/10/01/holocaust-hypocrisy-from-redstates-erickson/155249" type="external">numerous</a> conservative media figures who have linked progressive politicians and health care plans to the Nazis.</p> <p>Limbaugh was more blunt. "I don't believe anybody in this country is dying because of a lack of health insurance," he <a href="/video/2009/09/30/limbaugh-i-dont-believe-anybody-in-this-country/155204" type="external">said</a>, <a href="/video/2009/10/01/limbaugh-if-there-is-a-holocaust-in-this-countr/155257" type="external">adding</a>, "If there is a holocaust in this country, it is abortion." He again <a href="/video/2009/09/30/limbaugh-democratic-party-obsessed-with-your-de/155202" type="external">reminded the nation</a> that the Democratic Party is "obsessed with your death" as well as being the "party of abortion and euthanasia, slavery and not liberty." By the end of the week, <a href="/video/2009/10/01/limbaugh-compares-obama-health-care-plan-to-naz/155258" type="external">more Nazi comparisons</a> hardly came as a surprise.</p> <p>Far more intriguing was the new light shed on serial health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey. A new Rolling Stone <a href="/blog/2009/09/28/betsy-mccaughey-big-tobacco-and-the-campaign-to/155086" type="external">article</a> revealed that her 1994 opposition to Bill Clinton's reform legislation <a href="/research/2009/09/28/serial-misinformer-mccaughey-exposed-as-big-tob/155119" type="external">had been greased</a> with money from Big Tobacco. CNN political analyst James Carville put the revelations in proper context, <a href="/video/2009/09/27/carville-hits-reported-phillip-morris-influence/155067" type="external">calling it</a> "breathtaking proof" of the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that has plagued progressives for decades -- especially when it comes to health care reform.</p> <p>Yet another example of principled conservative opposition was provided by Fox News' Dick Morris, who is <a href="/video/2009/09/28/again-shilling-for-anti-health-reform-ads-he-cr/155122" type="external">still using</a> his time on the conservative network to fund-raise for an anti-reform group that is also <a href="/research/2009/09/22/dick-morris-again-using-fox-news-to-fundraise-f/154890" type="external">employing him</a>. Fox News has <a href="/video/2009/09/30/fox-still-allowing-morris-to-use-his-appearance/155185" type="external">yet to see</a> how this might be a conflict of interest.</p> <p>It's clear that when it comes to issues like health care, progressives have few honest brokers to deal with on the right. As MSNBC's Chris Matthews <a href="/video/2009/09/29/matthews-grills-hatch-if-no-republicans-will-jo/155166" type="external">asked</a> Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) on Tuesday, "If no Republicans will join, why should [Democrats] compromise with nobody?"</p> <p>An intriguing question indeed.</p> <p>Slavery, coups, and kids, oh my!</p> <p>The problem with becoming <a href="/video/2009/09/27/acorn-videographer-okeefe-out-to-really-destroy/155063" type="external">obsessed with destroying your opponent</a> is that you tend to lose touch with reality.</p> <p>There were numerous examples of that outcome this week. The Drudge Report, Andrew Breitbart, and Fox News ran with <a href="/blog/2009/09/23/drudge-right-wing-media-invade-childrens-privac/154967" type="external">yet another video</a> showing schoolchildren singing Obama's praises. The children, who were performing in front of the PTA (nobody objected) were <a href="http://www.breitbart.tv/change-has-come-new-video-shows-obama-themed-chant-at-nc-school/" type="external">also singing</a> dangerous slogans like, "Can we make America better? Yes we can!" Scary stuff!</p> <p>Immediately, numerous media figures, including Fox News' <a href="/video/2009/09/28/foxs-crowley-claims-school-kids-video-shows-ind/155079" type="external">Monica Crowley</a>, <a href="/video/2009/09/28/oreilly-still-outraged-over-school-kids-shock-v/155117" type="external">O'Reilly</a>, and <a href="/video/2009/09/24/promoting-newest-conspiracy-theory-beck-claims/154982" type="external">Beck</a>, as well as CNN's <a href="/video/2009/09/24/dobbs-on-school-kids-video-is-this-evidence-of/155007" type="external">Dobbs</a>, claimed the video was evidence of "indoctrination." (Never mind the choir of Louisiana schoolchildren that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/25/flashback-students-sang-b_n_300372.html" type="external">sang to President Bush</a> after Hurricane Katrina.) They should really wait a bit before reacting to these tapes. After all, Beck, Dobbs, and others were burned badly this week after they ran with a <a href="/research/2009/09/29/breitbart-burns-beck-dobbs-right-wing-media-wit/155180" type="external">false lead</a> from Breitbart, who claimed he had a video showing community organizers praying to Obama. It turns out that they were actually praying to God. Breitbart was forced to <a href="http://www.breitbart.tv/shock-discovery-community-organizers-pray-to-president-elect-obama/" type="external">update his story</a>, adding that "there is a debate over what is actually being said." Only in your mind, Andrew.</p> <p>The real brainwashing was being attempted by syndicated conservative columnist George Will, who wrote <a href="/research/2009/10/01/at-it-again-george-will-claims-evidence-of-warm/155262" type="external">yet another column</a> claiming that "evidence" of climate change is "elusive." More troubling still was the work of Newsmax.com's John Perry, who <a href="/research/2009/09/30/military-coup-fantasy-is-latest-in-trend-of-ext/155182" type="external">penned a column</a> that even Newsmax soon felt compelled to remove. "There is a remote, although gaining, possibility," he wrote, "America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the 'Obama problem.' Don't dismiss it as unrealistic." How about it we dismiss it as paranoid and delusional?</p> <p>It was, however, W. Cleon Skousen who won the week's award for "Most Crazy" -- and he's been dead for years. It turns out that in one of his controversial books, Skousen, whose work still holds a <a href="/blog/2009/09/22/the-skeletons-in-glenn-becks-closet/154907" type="external">powerful influence</a> over Glenn Beck, <a href="/research/2009/09/30/beck-guru-skousens-story-of-slavery-suggests-sl/155203" type="external">presented</a> as "the story of slavery in America" a passage from a book by historian Fred Albert Shannon that attacked abolitionists for delaying emancipation, cast slave owners as "the worst victims of the system," claimed white schoolchildren "were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates," and stated that "[s]lavery did not make white labor unrespectable, but merely inefficient," because "the slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken." Why would Skousen think that comments like those told the "story of slavery in America"? It does make you wonder -- especially after reading some of the things that <a href="/research/2009/09/23/does-glenn-beck-support-the-slave-trade-or-is-h/154963" type="external">Glenn has written</a>.</p> <p>When everything becomes just another political football, it makes the serious discussion of serious topics impossible. That's what happened this week with Afghanistan policy, as Fox News <a href="/research/2009/09/27/fox-news-sunday-falsely-portrays-military-as-un/155072" type="external">tried to spin</a> Gen. Stanley McChrystal's recently leaked memo into a story about how Obama was ignoring his military brass. Not surprisingly, the network <a href="/research/2009/09/29/fox-news-heavily-covers-mcchrystals-troop-incre/155170" type="external">largely ignored</a> Gen. Eric Shinseki's February 2003 recommendation that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed to successfully occupy Iraq.</p> <p>Media Matters president Eric Burns <a href="/video/2009/09/29/on-countdown-media-matters-burns-says-fox-news/155175" type="external">summed things up clearly</a> as a guest on MSNBC's Countdown this week. Fox News, he said, "is no longer a news organization. This is a political organization, and their aim is to destroy a progressive policy agenda."</p> <p>The American people are paying the price every day.</p> <p>This week's media columns</p> <p>This week's media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows: Eric Boehlert shows <a href="/research/2009/09/29/wash-times-and-fox-news-now-unleashing-mobs-on/155125" type="external">how The Washington Times and Fox News are now unleashing mobs on private citizens (including kids)</a>, and Jamison Foser says <a href="/research/2009/10/01/a-chance-for-big-media-to-show-their-worth/155283" type="external">big media have a chance to show their worth on health care</a>.</p> <p>Greg Lewis notes that <a href="/research/2009/10/02/the-friday-rush-logic-a-grasp-of-the-issues-you/155328" type="external">you won't find logic or a grasp of the issues on The Rush Limbaugh Show</a> in The Friday Rush, a review of Limbaugh's radio shows over the past week.</p> <p>Do you listen to podcasts? Try the Media Matters Minute</p> <p>For months now, radio shows and stations throughout the country have been carrying the Media Matters Minute, a daily minute-long recap of our work topped off with the "most outrageous comment" of the day. We encourage you to subscribe ( <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=288753829" type="external">iTunes</a>/ <a href="/tools/syndication/m3.rss" type="external">RSS</a>) to the Minute podcast, hosted by Media Matters' Ben Fishel.</p> <p>Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg</p> <p>Media Matters maintains active online communities on the leading social networking sites. Be sure to join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Mediamatters" type="external">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/mmfa" type="external">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/mediamatters4america" type="external">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://myspace.com/mediamattersforamerica" type="external">MySpace</a>, and <a href="http://digg.com/search?s=mediamatters&amp;amp;submit=Search&amp;amp;section=news&amp;amp;search-buried=1&amp;amp;type=all&amp;amp;area=all&amp;amp;sort=new" type="external">Digg</a> and join in on the discussion.</p> <p>This weekly wrap-up was compiled by Karl Frisch, a senior fellow at <a href="" type="internal">Media Matters for America</a>. Frisch also contributes to <a href="/countyfair/" type="external">County Fair</a>, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on <a href="http://twitter.com/karlfrisch" type="external">Twitter</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/karl.v.frisch" type="external">Facebook</a>, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/karlfrisch" type="external">YouTube</a>, or <a href="/u/login" type="external">sign up</a> to receive his columns by email.</p>

Media Matters: Right-wing media lynch mob gay-baits White House, facts be damned

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200910020048

2009-10-03

4left

For the better part of a week conservatives in the media have been on a witch hunt for Kevin Jennings the director of the Department of Educations Office of Safe and DrugFree Schools Led by Fox News the rightwing media have claimed that 21 years ago when Jennings was a 24yearold teacher at Concord Academy in Massachusetts he covered up statutory rape by not reporting to authorities a conversation he had with a student who told him about being involved with an older man The attacks on Jennings the latest Obama administration official in the rights crosshairs have been disgusting misleading baseless and at times pointedly antigay WorldNetDailys Erik Rush called Jennings a radical homosexual druggie The conservative Washington Times contended in an editorial that Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools Rightwing radios big kahuna Rush Limbaugh and Fox News Sean Hannity both claimed that Jennings supported promoting homosexuality in the schools while conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wrote that Jennings was a controversial homosexual rights advocate who founded a controversial organization that aggressively pushes sexually explicit books The controversial organization of which Malkin speaks GLSEN the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network which according to the organizations website is the leading national education organization focused on ensuring safe schools for all students GLSEN envisions a world in which every child learns to respect and accept all people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identityexpression In addition to the rights attacks aimed at Jennings sexual orientation conservative media outlets sought to paint Jennings as complicit in covering up a crime specifically statutory rape A Washington Times editorial accused Jennings of encouraging a relationship that amounted to statutory rape Led by Hannity Fox News also baselessly claimed that Jennings covered up statutory rape and violated Massachusetts law by not reporting to authorities his 1988 conversation with the student Limbaugh took things a step further claiming that Jennings had encouraged and facilitated a sexual relationship between the student and an adult Fox News Bill Hemmer continued the conservative networks attacks on Jennings by claiming that Jennings knew of a statutory rape case involving a student but never reported it MSNBCs Pat Buchanan went even further asking if Jennings had a sense of solidarity with the man rather than with the kid Seriously The conservative media made it abundantly clear that facts wouldnt get in the way of their latest line of attack on the Obama administration In a 2004 letter Jennings attorney wrote that the student was 16 years old at the time of the incident which is and was at the time the legal age of consent in Massachusetts Additionally Media Matters exclusively confirmed the former students age was 16 at the time of his conversation with Jennings posting a redacted copy of his current drivers license his Facebook message exchange with a FoxNewscom writer in which he said as much and his statement on the matter If youve ever wondered what kind of folks regularly participate in polls sponsored by FoxNewscom the answer is here Its two kinds of people those who are comfortable forming a strong opinion on a subject before the facts are in and people who get all of their news from Fox News Ninetyeight percent of respondents to a FoxNewscom poll this week said that Jennings should resign due to his actions and questionable past and experience I wonder where they could have gotten that idea After all selfrighteous indignation is what Sean Hannity does best But dont hold your breath hoping for any consistency from Hannity After The Washington Times established a completely false equivalency between Jennings and former Rep Mark Foley RFL who if youll recall personally pursued young congressional pages Media Matters went back and checked the record It turns out that in 2006 while Dennis Hastert was on his way to being criticized by the House Ethics Committee for his failure to stop Foleys actions Hannity and his Fox News cohorts were among the thenspeakers staunchest defenders The only thing that Hastert knew about was that there was an email Hannity said at the time Is always easy to say what Hastert shouldve done Brit Hume said but when you start thinking about the things he couldve done theres not much there I think theres no evidence that Hastert did anything wrong in my view said Bill Kristol Hasterts position is completely defensible said Mort Kondracke Hasterts you know being witch hunted down stated Bill OReilly When it comes to media conservatives integrity may be dead but irony certainly is not Lost in these rightwing caricatures of Jennings is the simple fact that education officials and others have spoken highly of the Obama administration official who has received numerous awards and was an appointee of former Massachusetts Gov William Weld a Republican With this the latest conservative media witch hunt debunked and put to bed the timer starts anew When will the next witch hunt begin Whos next on the list A gold medal for Obamalympichating media conservatives It isnt every day that the conservative media Americas selfappointed protectors of patriotism illustrate their true priorities so clearly But on Friday they did just that Here it is in a nutshell America lost and the rightwing noise machine cheered The announcement that President Obama planned to fly to Copenhagen to support Chicagos bid for the 2016 Olympics was immediately denounced by the conservative media After months of falsely accusing Obama of apologizing for America on the world stage even blatantly cropping the presidents words to make the point you would think that rightwing media figures would have applauded a voyage with the explicit goal of praising the United States Think again not when there are political points to score Chicago is good at organized Mafi oops did I say that out loud Fox News Glenn Beck quipped on Thursday Malkin was even more vitriolic stating Obamas trip was nothing more than a taxpayerfunded junket designed to secure paybacks for Obamas hometown cronies And that was just the beginning Hannity claimed that Obama was more concerned about bringing the Olympics to Chicago than winning the war in Afghanistan The Washington Examiners Byron York and The Weekly Standards Stephen Hayes attacked Obamas priorities with Hayes adding the optics of it at the very least are terrible Fox News Bret Baier brought up the carbon footprint of the Air Force One trip and the Media Research Centers Brent Bozell claimed that Obamas venture was evidence that Obama just cannot stay away from the klieg lights Fox News Gretchen Carlson suggested the trip was inappropriate and both she and her colleague Steve Doocy said that it was against US tradition to send our president out as a salesman like this Have you been to Rio asked columnist SE Cupp on Fox News swelling with national pride I have Its awesome Even more abysmal was the rights exploitation of a recently released video depicting the brutal murder of a teenage Chicagoan at the hands of gang members Is this a city where we want the Olympics taking place Hannity asked OLYMPIC SPIRIT VIDEO SHOWS BRUTAL GANG MURDER IN CHICAGO the Drudge Report blared Community organizing has not stopped Chicagos teen violence epidemic Malkin added Then on Friday the International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago from the running and the rejoicing began Oh its so sweet said Beck live on the radio Enjoy this savor this moment The IOC just says no to Chicago cheered Lou Dobbs webpage reprinting the latest headline topping Drudge The Ego Has Landed I dont deny it said Limbaugh Im happy Erick Erickson managing editor of the conservative blog RedStatecom was perhaps the most mature of the conservative revelers summing up his feelings by writing Hahahahaha No its not every week that we get such a clear indication of just what patriotism really means to those in the conservative media and it doesnt have anything to do with putting country first Drama still besting substance in coverage of health care This week the Senate Finance Committee passed Sen Max Baucus health care plan voting down two amendments in the process that would have included a public option in the legislation That was the weeks substantive development affecting health care reform The rest was the conservative noise machines usual drone Rep Alan Grayson DFL made headlines by bluntly attacking conservatives for lacking a systematic health insurance reform plan The following day he returned to the House floor and called for an end to what he termed a holocaust caused by the failings of Americas health care system While his language was indeed blunt his passion was understandable A new study conducted by the Harvard Medical School estimates that 45000 Americans die every year because of our systems flaws Despite such realities RedStates Erickson was incensed not by the death toll but by Graysons statement The holocaust was real with a real meaning he wrote on Wednesday Roping it into the health care debate cheapens what it was all about Were still waiting for Erickson to denounce the numerous conservative media figures who have linked progressive politicians and health care plans to the Nazis Limbaugh was more blunt I dont believe anybody in this country is dying because of a lack of health insurance he said adding If there is a holocaust in this country it is abortion He again reminded the nation that the Democratic Party is obsessed with your death as well as being the party of abortion and euthanasia slavery and not liberty By the end of the week more Nazi comparisons hardly came as a surprise Far more intriguing was the new light shed on serial health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey A new Rolling Stone article revealed that her 1994 opposition to Bill Clintons reform legislation had been greased with money from Big Tobacco CNN political analyst James Carville put the revelations in proper context calling it breathtaking proof of the vast rightwing conspiracy that has plagued progressives for decades especially when it comes to health care reform Yet another example of principled conservative opposition was provided by Fox News Dick Morris who is still using his time on the conservative network to fundraise for an antireform group that is also employing him Fox News has yet to see how this might be a conflict of interest Its clear that when it comes to issues like health care progressives have few honest brokers to deal with on the right As MSNBCs Chris Matthews asked Sen Orrin Hatch RUT on Tuesday If no Republicans will join why should Democrats compromise with nobody An intriguing question indeed Slavery coups and kids oh my The problem with becoming obsessed with destroying your opponent is that you tend to lose touch with reality There were numerous examples of that outcome this week The Drudge Report Andrew Breitbart and Fox News ran with yet another video showing schoolchildren singing Obamas praises The children who were performing in front of the PTA nobody objected were also singing dangerous slogans like Can we make America better Yes we can Scary stuff Immediately numerous media figures including Fox News Monica Crowley OReilly and Beck as well as CNNs Dobbs claimed the video was evidence of indoctrination Never mind the choir of Louisiana schoolchildren that sang to President Bush after Hurricane Katrina They should really wait a bit before reacting to these tapes After all Beck Dobbs and others were burned badly this week after they ran with a false lead from Breitbart who claimed he had a video showing community organizers praying to Obama It turns out that they were actually praying to God Breitbart was forced to update his story adding that there is a debate over what is actually being said Only in your mind Andrew The real brainwashing was being attempted by syndicated conservative columnist George Will who wrote yet another column claiming that evidence of climate change is elusive More troubling still was the work of Newsmaxcoms John Perry who penned a column that even Newsmax soon felt compelled to remove There is a remote although gaining possibility he wrote Americas military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the Obama problem Dont dismiss it as unrealistic How about it we dismiss it as paranoid and delusional It was however W Cleon Skousen who won the weeks award for Most Crazy and hes been dead for years It turns out that in one of his controversial books Skousen whose work still holds a powerful influence over Glenn Beck presented as the story of slavery in America a passage from a book by historian Fred Albert Shannon that attacked abolitionists for delaying emancipation cast slave owners as the worst victims of the system claimed white schoolchildren were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates and stated that slavery did not make white labor unrespectable but merely inefficient because the slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken Why would Skousen think that comments like those told the story of slavery in America It does make you wonder especially after reading some of the things that Glenn has written When everything becomes just another political football it makes the serious discussion of serious topics impossible Thats what happened this week with Afghanistan policy as Fox News tried to spin Gen Stanley McChrystals recently leaked memo into a story about how Obama was ignoring his military brass Not surprisingly the network largely ignored Gen Eric Shinsekis February 2003 recommendation that several hundred thousand soldiers would be needed to successfully occupy Iraq Media Matters president Eric Burns summed things up clearly as a guest on MSNBCs Countdown this week Fox News he said is no longer a news organization This is a political organization and their aim is to destroy a progressive policy agenda The American people are paying the price every day This weeks media columns This weeks media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows Eric Boehlert shows how The Washington Times and Fox News are now unleashing mobs on private citizens including kids and Jamison Foser says big media have a chance to show their worth on health care Greg Lewis notes that you wont find logic or a grasp of the issues on The Rush Limbaugh Show in The Friday Rush a review of Limbaughs radio shows over the past week Do you listen to podcasts Try the Media Matters Minute For months now radio shows and stations throughout the country have been carrying the Media Matters Minute a daily minutelong recap of our work topped off with the most outrageous comment of the day We encourage you to subscribe iTunes RSS to the Minute podcast hosted by Media Matters Ben Fishel Facebook Twitter YouTube MySpace and Digg Media Matters maintains active online communities on the leading social networking sites Be sure to join us on Facebook Twitter YouTube MySpace and Digg and join in on the discussion This weekly wrapup was compiled by Karl Frisch a senior fellow at Media Matters for America Frisch also contributes to County Fair a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web as well as original commentary You can follow him on Twitter Facebook and YouTube or sign up to receive his columns by email

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<p>Jan 23(Reuters) - Chongqing Taiji Industry Group Co Ltd</p> <p>* Says it issues 130 million shares at 15.36 yuan per share and raised 2 billion yuan in total via private placement</p> <p>Source text in Chinese: <a href="https://goo.gl/19CoJ8" type="external">goo.gl/19CoJ8</a></p> <p>Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian share markets rallied on Tuesday as reports of behind-the-scenes talks between the United States and China rekindled hopes a damaging trade war could be averted, in turn sapping the strength of the dollar and yen.</p> FILE PHOTO - A woman walks past an electronic board showing the graphs of the recent movements of Japan's Nikkei average outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato <p>Taking its cue from a surge on Wall Street, Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> climbed 1.1 percent in early trade.</p> <p>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS firmed 0.4 percent. South Korea's KOSPI <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.KS11" type="external">.KS11</a> rose 0.7 percent, adding to gains made after the U.S. exempted the country's steel from import tariffs.</p> <p>The abrupt mood swing came amid reports Chinese and U.S. officials were busy negotiating to avert an all-out trade war.</p> <p>White House officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars, allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more U.S.-made semiconductors, said a person familiar with the discussions.</p> <p>Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday pledged to maintain trade negotiations and ease access to American businesses.</p> <p>Even a whiff of a compromise was enough to propel Wall Street to its best day in 2-1/2 years and deliver the Dow its third-biggest point gain ever.</p> <p>The Dow <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> jumped 2.84 percent, while the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> climbed 2.72 percent and the Nasdaq <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> 3.26 percent. All 11 major sectors of the S&amp;amp;P 500 gained, with technology .SPLRCT up 4.0 percent and finance .SPSY 3.2 percent.</p> <p>The sudden bout of optimism on trade helped offset news the United States and many of its Allies were expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats in retaliation for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain.</p> <p>The surge in stocks weighed on the Treasury market, which faces a record $294 billion of new supply this week.</p> <p>Yields on 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR inched up to 2.856 percent, but remained short of last week&#8217;s top above 2.90 percent.</p> <p>In currency markets the reaction was to offload both the yen and the U.S. dollar.</p> <p>&#8220;The yen is being quietly sold as risk hedges are unwound and looks particularly vulnerable on the crosses,&#8221; Citi analysts said in a note.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">Nikkei Inc</a> 21049.07 .N225 Nikkei Index +282.97 (+1.36%) .N225 .KS11 .DJI .SPX .IXIC <p>Short-covering against the euro was especially sharp as the common currency jumped 1.4 percent overnight EURJPY= to stand at 131.32 yen.</p> <p>That allowed the U.S. dollar to bounce a little to 105.51 yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a>, having been at its lowest since late 2016 at one point. Yet the U.S. currency ran into selling against almost everything else, with notable breaks by the euro and sterling.</p> <p>The euro was up at $1.2453 <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a>, after cracking the March top at $1.2446, and bulls were eyeing the peak for the year so far at $1.2556.</p> <p>The broad-based weakness saw the dollar drop to a five-week trough on a basket of currencies at 88.979 .DXY.</p> <p>The decline offered some support to commodities priced in the dollar and spot gold XAU= edged up to $1,353.60 an ounce.</p> <p>In oil markets, U.S. crude futures CLc1 put on 8 cents to $65.63 a barrel, while Brent crude LCOc1 added 6 cents to $70.16 a barrel.</p> <p>Last week, Brent gained 6.4 percent and WTI rose 5.7 percent for the strongest gains since July.</p> <p>Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Eric Meijer</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - Top Trump administration officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars, allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more U.S.-made semiconductors in negotiations to avoid plans to slap tariffs on a host of Chinese goods and a potential trade war.</p> FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, November 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo <p>A person familiar with the discussions said these were among the asks from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as they pursue talks with Beijing.</p> <p>The Wall Street Journal first reported the demands from U.S. officials, saying they came in a letter sent to Beijing last week.</p> <p>White House trade adviser Peter Navarro confirmed that President Donald Trump asked Mnuchin and Lighthizer to try to resolve trade differences with China.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re hopeful there that China will work with us to basically address some of these practices,&#8221; Navarro told CNBC television.</p> <p>U.S. stocks surged on Monday on the news that the two sides were talking, after a massive rout last week when Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports over alleged misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> posted its third biggest point gain ever, rising 669.4 points, or 2.8 percent, to close at 24,202.6 while the broader S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> rose 2.7 percent after a nearly 6 percent drop last week.</p> <p>Chinese Premier Li Keqiang earlier on Monday said that China and the United States should maintain negotiations and repeated pledges to ease access for American businesses to China&#8217;s markets.</p> <p>Li told a conference that included global chief executives that China would treat foreign and domestic firms equally, would not force foreign firms to transfer technology and would strengthen intellectual property rights, repeating promises that have failed to placate Washington.</p> <p>Despite a steady stream of fierce rhetoric from Chinese state media lambasting the United States for being a &#8220;bully&#8221; and warning of retaliation, Chinese and U.S. officials are busy negotiating behind the scenes.</p> TARIFFS TO PROCEED WITHOUT AGREEMENT <p>In an interview aired on Sunday, Mnuchin told Fox News that he was pursuing an agreement with the Chinese &#8220;for them to open up their markets, reduce their tariffs, stop forced technology transfer. These are all the things we want to do.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We are proceeding with these tariffs, we&#8217;re not putting them on hold unless we have an acceptable agreement that the president signs off on,&#8221; Mnuchin added.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>China has offered to buy more U.S. semiconductors by diverting some purchases from South Korea and Taiwan, the Financial Times reported, citing people briefed on the negotiations. China imported $2.6 billion of semiconductors from the United States last year.</p> <p>Chinese officials are also working to finalize rules by May - instead of the end of June - to allow foreign financial groups to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms, the Financial Times said.</p> <p>&#8220;I anticipate that for political reasons it would be logical for China to respond, because countries do,&#8221; Blackstone Group ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BX.N" type="external">BX.N</a>) Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman told Reuters on Monday on the sidelines of the Beijing conference where Li spoke.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s why I view this more as a skirmish, and I think the interests of both countries are served by resolving some of these matters.&#8221;</p> <p>China called on World Trade Organization members on Monday to unite to oppose Trump&#8217;s proposed tariffs targeting alleged intellectual property theft, saying they should &#8220;lock this beast back into the cage of WTO rules.&#8221;</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24202.6 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes +669.40 (+2.84%) .DJI .SPX BX.N AAPL.O MSFT.O <p>On Friday, China responded to the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports, including fruit, nuts and wine.</p> <p>China could also inflict pain on U.S. multinationals that rely on China for a substantial - and growing - portion of their total revenues, said Alex Wolf, senior emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments.</p> <p>&#8220;This could put U.S. companies such as Apple ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>), Microsoft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MSFT.O" type="external">MSFT.O</a>), Starbucks ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>), GM ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GM.N" type="external">GM.N</a>), Nike ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NKE.N" type="external">NKE.N</a>), etc in the firing line,&#8221; Wolf said in a note.</p> <p>China can increase the regulatory burden on U.S companies through new inspections and rules; ban travel; stop providing export licenses of key intermediate goods; raise the tax burden on U.S. multinationals in China; or block U.S. companies from the government procurement market, he said.</p> CAR TARIFF DIFFERENTIAL <p>The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its $375 billion trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion.</p> <p>China has a 25 percent tariff on U.S. cars and has talked recently of lowering it, while Trump has often complained that the U.S. import tariff on passenger vehicles is only 2.5 percent. China&#8217;s imports of U.S.-built motor vehicles totaled $10.6 billion in 2017, about 8 percent of the country&#8217;s overall U.S. imports by value, according to U.S. government data.</p> <p>On the reported offer to increase U.S. semiconductor imports, it is unclear how U.S. chips would replace South Korean and Taiwanese chips, since there is minimal overlap between U.S. chips and those of the two Asian producers.</p> <p>China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors, one of its biggest import categories by value. That said, the United States accounted for just 1 percent of China&#8217;s total semiconductor imports last year by value, according to Reuters calculations based on Chinese customs data.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Matthew Miller, Ben Blanchard, Elias Glenn and Stella Qiu in Beijing and Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - General Motors said its loss-making South Korean operations would file for bankruptcy if its union did not make concessions by April 20, the union said on Tuesday.</p> The logo of GM Korea is seen at its Bupyeong plant in Incheon, South Korea March 12, 2018. Picture taken March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji <p>The comments were made by Barry Engle, President of GM International, during a meeting with GM Korea&#8217;s union leader on Monday, the union said in a document reviewed by Reuters.</p> <p>The U.S. automaker announced in February it would shut down a factory in Gunsan, southwest of Seoul, and that it was mulling the fate of its three remaining plants in South Korea.</p> <p>Engle said the South Korean government should also promise to provide support for GM Korea by April 20.</p> <p>GM Korea, which needs $600 million in operational funds by the end of April, may consider more voluntary redundancies for the remaining 680 workers at the Gunsan factory, Engle said according to the union, adding that layoffs were the last option.</p> <p>A GM Korea spokesman was not immediately available for comment.</p> <p>The union said earlier this month that it will not demand a pay rise and bonuses this year, but instead wants the U.S. automaker to provide a future production plan and job security.</p> <p>GM Korea still wants the union to agree to cut benefits, a union official said.</p> <p>Earlier this month, GM Korea&#8217;s second-largest shareholder, state-funded South Korean Development Bank ,began a due-diligence review of GM&#8217;s South Korean unit as part of its decision whether to inject more capital into the money-losing operation.</p> <p>GM Korea, which employs nearly 16,000 people, has previously said that without new funding from its major shareholders it would have a first-quarter &#8220;cash crisis&#8221;.</p> <p>Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Lincoln Feast</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump&#8217;s lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday for defamation, according to court documents, escalating a legal battle between the American president and the porn star that the White House was struggling to contain.</p> <p>Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, made the claim a day after her widely watched TV interview on &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; on CBS. Daniels said she was threatened with violence to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump.</p> <p>At the White House, a spokesman in a briefing with reporters cast aspersions on her account. The White House has denied allegations that Trump had a sexual relationship with Daniels.</p> <p>CBS Corp said the show drew its biggest audience in more than eight years, with 21.3 million Americans tuning in, more than double the previous week&#8217;s edition of &#8220;60 Minutes.&#8221;</p> <p>Presidential spokesman Raj Shah told the briefing, &#8220;The president doesn&#8217;t believe any of the claims Ms. Daniels made in the interview last night were accurate.&#8221;</p> <p>Asked if Trump believed Daniels was threatened, Shah said, &#8220;No, he does not. ... There&#8217;s nothing to corroborate her claim.&#8221;</p> <p>Daniels&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; appearance also drew a denial from the president&#8217;s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that he was involved in the alleged threat of violence against her.</p> <p>Daniels originally sued Trump on March 6, saying he never signed an agreement for her to stay silent about what she called their &#8220;intimate&#8221; relationship. Monday&#8217;s filing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles amended the original lawsuit to say Daniels was defamed.</p> <p>Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, said Cohen &#8220;meant to convey that Ms. Clifford is a liar, someone who should not be trusted, and that her claims about her relationship with Mr. Trump&#8221; were not true.</p> <p>Daniels&#8217; defamation allegation was based on a Feb. 13 statement by Cohen that she said hurt her reputation.</p> Stormy Daniels is interviewed by Anderson Cooper. CBSNews/60 MINUTES/via REUTERS <p>The latest filing also said $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016 just before the presidential election to secure her silence amounted to an illegal campaign contribution, and that the agreement should be declared void.</p> <p>Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket, but has not explained why or if Trump was aware of the payment.</p> <p>In filings with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission, watchdog groups have said the $130,000 may have exceeded campaign contribution limits, violating U.S. law. Cohen has denied this.</p> <p>California attorney Michael Overing, who specializes in defamation law, said it would be difficult for Daniels to prevail on her defamation claim because she is a public figure.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>To prove libel, she would have to show that a false statement was made with either reckless or purposeful disregard for the truth, Overing said.</p> <p>Trump attorney Cohen&#8217;s denial of involvement in the alleged threat against Daniels came in a &#8220;cease-and-desist&#8221; letter sent to Avenatti shortly after &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; aired that demanded a retraction and an apology. A copy of the letter was seen by Reuters on Monday.</p> <p>The letter said, &#8220;Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred.&#8221;</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trump-daniels-defamation/stormy-daniels-suing-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-for-defamation-idUSKBN1H22QN" type="external">Stormy Daniels suing Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for defamation</a> <p>Daniels said the threat of harm was made by a stranger in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011.</p> <p>Avenatti said on NBC on Monday that the man who threatened her while she was with her infant daughter was not Cohen, but &#8220;had to be someone that is related to Mr. Trump or Mr. Cohen.&#8221;</p> <p>Last week CNN interviewed former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who described a 10-month affair with Trump starting in 2006.</p> <p>Trump was married to his wife, Melania, during both alleged relationships. In addition to denying Trump had sex with Daniels, the White House has said he denies having an affair with McDougal.</p> <p>Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Makini Brice; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Chongqing Taiji Industry Group raises 2 bln yuan via private placement Asia shares cheered by trade hopes, dollar downcast U.S. seeks China trade moves on autos, financials, chips: source GM says South Korean unit will file for bankruptcy if no union concessions by April 20: union Porn star sues Trump's personal lawyer for defamation

https://reuters.com/article/brief-chongqing-taiji-industry-group-rai/brief-chongqing-taiji-industry-group-raises-2-bln-yuan-via-private-placement-idUSL4N1PI3JK

2018-01-23

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Jan 23Reuters Chongqing Taiji Industry Group Co Ltd Says it issues 130 million shares at 1536 yuan per share and raised 2 billion yuan in total via private placement Source text in Chinese googl19CoJ8 Further company coverage Beijing Headline News Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SYDNEY Reuters Asian share markets rallied on Tuesday as reports of behindthescenes talks between the United States and China rekindled hopes a damaging trade war could be averted in turn sapping the strength of the dollar and yen FILE PHOTO A woman walks past an electronic board showing the graphs of the recent movements of Japans Nikkei average outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan October 23 2017 REUTERSIssei Kato Taking its cue from a surge on Wall Street Japans Nikkei N225 climbed 11 percent in early trade MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS firmed 04 percent South Koreas KOSPI KS11 rose 07 percent adding to gains made after the US exempted the countrys steel from import tariffs The abrupt mood swing came amid reports Chinese and US officials were busy negotiating to avert an allout trade war White House officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more USmade semiconductors said a person familiar with the discussions Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday pledged to maintain trade negotiations and ease access to American businesses Even a whiff of a compromise was enough to propel Wall Street to its best day in 212 years and deliver the Dow its thirdbiggest point gain ever The Dow DJI jumped 284 percent while the SampampP 500 SPX climbed 272 percent and the Nasdaq IXIC 326 percent All 11 major sectors of the SampampP 500 gained with technology SPLRCT up 40 percent and finance SPSY 32 percent The sudden bout of optimism on trade helped offset news the United States and many of its Allies were expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats in retaliation for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain The surge in stocks weighed on the Treasury market which faces a record 294 billion of new supply this week Yields on 10year Treasury notes US10YTRR inched up to 2856 percent but remained short of last week8217s top above 290 percent In currency markets the reaction was to offload both the yen and the US dollar 8220The yen is being quietly sold as risk hedges are unwound and looks particularly vulnerable on the crosses8221 Citi analysts said in a note Nikkei Inc 2104907 N225 Nikkei Index 28297 136 N225 KS11 DJI SPX IXIC Shortcovering against the euro was especially sharp as the common currency jumped 14 percent overnight EURJPY to stand at 13132 yen That allowed the US dollar to bounce a little to 10551 yen JPY having been at its lowest since late 2016 at one point Yet the US currency ran into selling against almost everything else with notable breaks by the euro and sterling The euro was up at 12453 EUR after cracking the March top at 12446 and bulls were eyeing the peak for the year so far at 12556 The broadbased weakness saw the dollar drop to a fiveweek trough on a basket of currencies at 88979 DXY The decline offered some support to commodities priced in the dollar and spot gold XAU edged up to 135360 an ounce In oil markets US crude futures CLc1 put on 8 cents to 6563 a barrel while Brent crude LCOc1 added 6 cents to 7016 a barrel Last week Brent gained 64 percent and WTI rose 57 percent for the strongest gains since July Reporting by Wayne Cole Editing by Eric Meijer Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIJING Reuters Top Trump administration officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more USmade semiconductors in negotiations to avoid plans to slap tariffs on a host of Chinese goods and a potential trade war FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump and Chinas President Xi Jinping shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing China November 9 2017 REUTERSDamir SagoljFile Photo A person familiar with the discussions said these were among the asks from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as they pursue talks with Beijing The Wall Street Journal first reported the demands from US officials saying they came in a letter sent to Beijing last week White House trade adviser Peter Navarro confirmed that President Donald Trump asked Mnuchin and Lighthizer to try to resolve trade differences with China 8220We8217re hopeful there that China will work with us to basically address some of these practices8221 Navarro told CNBC television US stocks surged on Monday on the news that the two sides were talking after a massive rout last week when Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese imports over alleged misappropriation of US intellectual property The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI posted its third biggest point gain ever rising 6694 points or 28 percent to close at 242026 while the broader SampampP 500 SPX rose 27 percent after a nearly 6 percent drop last week Chinese Premier Li Keqiang earlier on Monday said that China and the United States should maintain negotiations and repeated pledges to ease access for American businesses to China8217s markets Li told a conference that included global chief executives that China would treat foreign and domestic firms equally would not force foreign firms to transfer technology and would strengthen intellectual property rights repeating promises that have failed to placate Washington Despite a steady stream of fierce rhetoric from Chinese state media lambasting the United States for being a 8220bully8221 and warning of retaliation Chinese and US officials are busy negotiating behind the scenes TARIFFS TO PROCEED WITHOUT AGREEMENT In an interview aired on Sunday Mnuchin told Fox News that he was pursuing an agreement with the Chinese 8220for them to open up their markets reduce their tariffs stop forced technology transfer These are all the things we want to do8221 8220We are proceeding with these tariffs we8217re not putting them on hold unless we have an acceptable agreement that the president signs off on8221 Mnuchin added Slideshow 2 Images China has offered to buy more US semiconductors by diverting some purchases from South Korea and Taiwan the Financial Times reported citing people briefed on the negotiations China imported 26 billion of semiconductors from the United States last year Chinese officials are also working to finalize rules by May instead of the end of June to allow foreign financial groups to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms the Financial Times said 8220I anticipate that for political reasons it would be logical for China to respond because countries do8221 Blackstone Group BXN Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman told Reuters on Monday on the sidelines of the Beijing conference where Li spoke 8220That8217s why I view this more as a skirmish and I think the interests of both countries are served by resolving some of these matters8221 China called on World Trade Organization members on Monday to unite to oppose Trump8217s proposed tariffs targeting alleged intellectual property theft saying they should 8220lock this beast back into the cage of WTO rules8221 Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 242026 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 66940 284 DJI SPX BXN AAPLO MSFTO On Friday China responded to the US tariffs on steel and aluminum by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to 3 billion of US imports including fruit nuts and wine China could also inflict pain on US multinationals that rely on China for a substantial and growing portion of their total revenues said Alex Wolf senior emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments 8220This could put US companies such as Apple AAPLO Microsoft MSFTO Starbucks SBUXO GM GMN Nike NKEN etc in the firing line8221 Wolf said in a note China can increase the regulatory burden on US companies through new inspections and rules ban travel stop providing export licenses of key intermediate goods raise the tax burden on US multinationals in China or block US companies from the government procurement market he said CAR TARIFF DIFFERENTIAL The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its 375 billion trade surplus with the United States by 100 billion China has a 25 percent tariff on US cars and has talked recently of lowering it while Trump has often complained that the US import tariff on passenger vehicles is only 25 percent China8217s imports of USbuilt motor vehicles totaled 106 billion in 2017 about 8 percent of the country8217s overall US imports by value according to US government data On the reported offer to increase US semiconductor imports it is unclear how US chips would replace South Korean and Taiwanese chips since there is minimal overlap between US chips and those of the two Asian producers China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors one of its biggest import categories by value That said the United States accounted for just 1 percent of China8217s total semiconductor imports last year by value according to Reuters calculations based on Chinese customs data Additional reporting by Matthew Miller Ben Blanchard Elias Glenn and Stella Qiu in Beijing and Eric Beech in Washington Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters General Motors said its lossmaking South Korean operations would file for bankruptcy if its union did not make concessions by April 20 the union said on Tuesday The logo of GM Korea is seen at its Bupyeong plant in Incheon South Korea March 12 2018 Picture taken March 12 2018 REUTERSKim HongJi The comments were made by Barry Engle President of GM International during a meeting with GM Korea8217s union leader on Monday the union said in a document reviewed by Reuters The US automaker announced in February it would shut down a factory in Gunsan southwest of Seoul and that it was mulling the fate of its three remaining plants in South Korea Engle said the South Korean government should also promise to provide support for GM Korea by April 20 GM Korea which needs 600 million in operational funds by the end of April may consider more voluntary redundancies for the remaining 680 workers at the Gunsan factory Engle said according to the union adding that layoffs were the last option A GM Korea spokesman was not immediately available for comment The union said earlier this month that it will not demand a pay rise and bonuses this year but instead wants the US automaker to provide a future production plan and job security GM Korea still wants the union to agree to cut benefits a union official said Earlier this month GM Korea8217s secondlargest shareholder statefunded South Korean Development Bank began a duediligence review of GM8217s South Korean unit as part of its decision whether to inject more capital into the moneylosing operation GM Korea which employs nearly 16000 people has previously said that without new funding from its major shareholders it would have a firstquarter 8220cash crisis8221 Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin Editing by Lincoln Feast Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump8217s lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday for defamation according to court documents escalating a legal battle between the American president and the porn star that the White House was struggling to contain Daniels whose real name is Stephanie Clifford made the claim a day after her widely watched TV interview on 822060 Minutes8221 on CBS Daniels said she was threatened with violence to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump At the White House a spokesman in a briefing with reporters cast aspersions on her account The White House has denied allegations that Trump had a sexual relationship with Daniels CBS Corp said the show drew its biggest audience in more than eight years with 213 million Americans tuning in more than double the previous week8217s edition of 822060 Minutes8221 Presidential spokesman Raj Shah told the briefing 8220The president doesn8217t believe any of the claims Ms Daniels made in the interview last night were accurate8221 Asked if Trump believed Daniels was threatened Shah said 8220No he does not There8217s nothing to corroborate her claim8221 Daniels8217 822060 Minutes8221 appearance also drew a denial from the president8217s personal lawyer Michael Cohen that he was involved in the alleged threat of violence against her Daniels originally sued Trump on March 6 saying he never signed an agreement for her to stay silent about what she called their 8220intimate8221 relationship Monday8217s filing in US District Court in Los Angeles amended the original lawsuit to say Daniels was defamed Her attorney Michael Avenatti said Cohen 8220meant to convey that Ms Clifford is a liar someone who should not be trusted and that her claims about her relationship with Mr Trump8221 were not true Daniels8217 defamation allegation was based on a Feb 13 statement by Cohen that she said hurt her reputation Stormy Daniels is interviewed by Anderson Cooper CBSNews60 MINUTESvia REUTERS The latest filing also said 130000 Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016 just before the presidential election to secure her silence amounted to an illegal campaign contribution and that the agreement should be declared void Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket but has not explained why or if Trump was aware of the payment In filings with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission watchdog groups have said the 130000 may have exceeded campaign contribution limits violating US law Cohen has denied this California attorney Michael Overing who specializes in defamation law said it would be difficult for Daniels to prevail on her defamation claim because she is a public figure Slideshow 2 Images To prove libel she would have to show that a false statement was made with either reckless or purposeful disregard for the truth Overing said Trump attorney Cohen8217s denial of involvement in the alleged threat against Daniels came in a 8220ceaseanddesist8221 letter sent to Avenatti shortly after 822060 Minutes8221 aired that demanded a retraction and an apology A copy of the letter was seen by Reuters on Monday The letter said 8220Mr Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident and does not even believe that any such person exists or that such incident ever occurred8221 Related Coverage Stormy Daniels suing Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for defamation Daniels said the threat of harm was made by a stranger in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 Avenatti said on NBC on Monday that the man who threatened her while she was with her infant daughter was not Cohen but 8220had to be someone that is related to Mr Trump or Mr Cohen8221 Last week CNN interviewed former Playboy model Karen McDougal who described a 10month affair with Trump starting in 2006 Trump was married to his wife Melania during both alleged relationships In addition to denying Trump had sex with Daniels the White House has said he denies having an affair with McDougal Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Makini Brice Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe Editing by Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>(Refiles with correct link)</p> <p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Zhongtong Bus Holding Co Ltd:</p> <p>* SAYS IT EXPECTS 2017 NET PROFIT TO FALL 60.8-71.0 PERCENT Y/Y FROM 585.8 MILLION YUAN ($91.50 million) YEAR AGO Source text in Chinese: <a href="http://bit.ly/2n2Bn86" type="external">bit.ly/2n2Bn86</a> Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.4021 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Crude oil futures slipped on Monday as investors cashed in some profits from last week&#8217;s rally but concerns about Saudi-Iran tensions kept losses in check.</p> FILE PHOTO: An oil pump is seen operating in the Permian Basin near Midland, Texas, U.S., May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Ernest Scheyder/File Photo <p>Brent crude futures LCOc1 slipped 33 cents, or 0.5 percent, to settle at $70.12 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 also lost half a percent, or 33 cents, to end at $65.55.</p> <p>Last week, Brent gained 6.4 percent and WTI rose 5.7 percent, the strongest weekly gains since July.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see anything extraordinarily bearish in the market today. I think some folks here are just ... happy to take profits,&#8221; said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York.</p> <p>Although crude and product futures slipped on Monday, most share prices for energy companies, especially refiners, were up, Yawger said. The S&amp;amp;P Energy Index .SPNY was up more than 1 percent.</p> <p>Global stocks came off six-week lows on reports that the United States and China would begin trade talks, easing fears of a trade war. Analysts had been concerned that a trade war could hurt oil demand.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump last week signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China.</p> <p>&#8220;The (oil) market is pulling back after pushing strongly high last week. I think the $70 level in Brent, $67 for WTI ... start to trigger worries of increased U.S. production levels,&#8221; said Gene McGillian, manager of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut.</p> <p>The number of active U.S. oil rigs rose to a three-year high of 804 last week, implying further rises in future production. C-OUT-T-EIA</p> <p>&#8220;With U.S. crude production likely to be close to 10.5 million barrels per day by now and NGL (natural gas liquids) output also increasing strongly, there is a clear chance that year-on-year supply growth in the U.S. could at least temporarily hit 2 million bpd over the summer months,&#8221; JBC analysts wrote.</p> <p>The market found support from rising Middle East tensions.</p> <p>Saudi air defenses shot down ballistic missiles fired by Yemen&#8217;s Iran-aligned Houthi militia on Sunday, some of which targeted Saudi capital Riyadh.</p> <p>In Asia, Shanghai crude oil futures made a strong debut in terms of volume as investors and commodity merchants bought into the world&#8217;s newest financial oil trading instrument.</p> <p>Hedge funds and other money managers raised their net long U.S. crude futures and options positions in the week to March 20 after two weeks of cutting bullish bets, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - U.S. gunmaker Remington Outdoor Co has obtained commitments for nearly $300 million from its existing lenders, including some of the biggest U.S. banks, after new sources of funding dried up in the months leading up to its filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.</p> <p>During that time, the company&#8217;s investment bank, Lazard Ltd ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=LAZ.N" type="external">LAZ.N</a>), approached more than 30 possible lenders, according to court documents.</p> <p>&#8220;The vast majority of lenders contacted, however, indicated they were reluctant to provide financing to firearms manufacturers,&#8221; said Lazard banker Ari Lefkovits in the papers.</p> <p>Most of the banks providing the bankruptcy funding were lenders to Remington before its current financial problems, according to court records. Without the funds, Remington may have been forced to go out of business and the banks could have seen their investment crash in value.</p> <p>The company and its investors have been under heightened scrutiny after 17 were killed in a school shooting in Parkland, Florida in February.</p> <p>Remington filed for bankruptcy one day after hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets to demand tighter gun control measures.</p> <p>Banks often sell troubled loans to hedge funds when a borrower is heading into bankruptcy, but one source told Reuters that even as the Remington loans were heavily discounted, buyers were scarce.</p> <p>The company&#8217;s bankruptcy lenders include Bank of America Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAC.N" type="external">BAC.N</a>), Wells Fargo &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>), JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>) and Deutsche Bank AG ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DBKGn.DE" type="external">DBKGn.DE</a>), according to court documents.</p> <p>Remington disclosed the loan details in its Sunday bankruptcy filing, which the company said will allow it to cancel $775 million of debt and bring it out of Chapter 11 as soon as May.</p> <p>Smaller banks Regions Financial Corporation ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RF.N" type="external">RF.N</a>), BB&amp;amp;T Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BBT.N" type="external">BBT.N</a>), Synovus Financial Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SNV.N" type="external">SNV.N</a>) and Fifth Third Bancorp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FITB.O" type="external">FITB.O</a>) have also committed to help fund Remington&#8217;s bankruptcy loans, court documents show. An affiliate of investment manager Franklin Templeton Investments, another lender, is also providing funds.</p> <p>Bank of America, Regions, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and Synovus declined to comment.</p> <p>BB&amp;amp;T declined to comment on its lending relationships. The bank said part of its consideration is to listen to its clients and stakeholders, who have a wide range of opinions.</p> FILE PHOTO: A man walks with his Remington 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun during a pro-gun and Second Amendment protest outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., January 19, 2013. REUTERS/Joshua Lott/File Photo <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re deeply concerned with the increasing amount of gun violence in our schools and communities,&#8221; the bank said.</p> <p>The others, along with Remington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>The company ran into trouble after borrowing to ramp up production in 2016 in anticipation of greater industry demand, according to court filings.</p> <p>The expectation of higher sales was in part driven by fears of a Hillary Clinton presidency and tighter gun controls. With the election of Donald Trump, who has said he strongly supports gun ownership, the firearms industry was stuck with a glut of weapons and higher levels of debt.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=LAZ.N" type="external">Lazard Ltd</a> 52.54 LAZ.N New York Stock Exchange +1.77 (+3.49%) LAZ.N BAC.N WFC.N JPM.N DBKGn.DE <p>Remington, which said in January it was nearly out of cash, plans to tap the loans from the banks to help pay corporate expenses, including payroll, during its bankruptcy filing.</p> <p>Remington&#8217;s bondholders are also providing some of the bankruptcy loan and will receive a stake in the company when it exits bankruptcy.</p> <p>Their identities were redacted in court documents.</p> <p>The company also asked the court to seal the letters detailing the fees the lenders will earn from the loans, saying that the sums are commercially sensitive, according to filings in the bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Delaware.</p> <p>The court records also showed that Remington&#8217;s business faces new hurdles in the wake of the Florida shooting.</p> <p>The company cited a risk to its business from restrictions placed on gun sales by retailers such Walmart Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">WMT.N</a>), Dick&#8217;s Sporting Goods Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DKS.N" type="external">DKS.N</a>) and Kroger Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=KR.N" type="external">KR.N</a>).</p> <p>Walmart accounted for 11 percent of Remington sales in 2017, according to court documents.</p> <p>Remington also said sales could be hurt by more government regulation, including enhanced background checks and a broader definition of &#8220;dealer&#8221; under current gun laws. Remington said if the 1994 federal assault weapons ban were re-enacted it would have an adverse effect on the business.</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Jessica DiNapoli in New York</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A grocery industry veteran who led U.K. retailer Tesco Plc&#8217;s online operation was named president of Walmart&#8217;s Jet.com e-commerce business in the retail behemoth&#8217;s latest move to grab a bigger piece of the intensely competitive sector.</p> A logo of Walmart is seen in one of the stores in Monterrey, Mexico November 28, 2016. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/File Photo <p>Simon Belsham will oversee all operations including grocery and general merchandise and join Walmart&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">WMT.N</a>) U.S. e-commerce leadership team, according to an internal email sent on Monday by Marc Lore, the head of Walmart&#8217;s e-commerce business, to Jet employees and seen by Reuters.</p> <p>Walmart acquired Jet for $3.3 billion in August 2016, a deal that was widely considered a watershed moment for its then-struggling e-commerce operation as it got access to both technology and talent through Jet founder Lore and his team.</p> <p>Walmart&#8217;s e-commerce success has been erratic. Online sales increased 23 percent in the most recent quarter, less than half the rate of growth in each of the previous three quarters. Walmart&#8217;s stock got walloped after the news.</p> <p>Belsham&#8217;s hiring comes amid fierce competition in the grocery sector. Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) purchased Whole Foods Market for $13.4 billion last year, and rivals like Target Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TGT.N" type="external">TGT.N</a>), Costco Wholesale Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=COST.O" type="external">COST.O</a>) and Kroger Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=KR.N" type="external">KR.N</a>) are joining the costly battle for customers who want groceries without leaving their couches.</p> <p>Walmart is aggressively ramping up its online grocery business. It has said it will expand home delivery service to more than 100 U.S. cities and offer curbside grocery pickup at 2,200 stores by the end of the year.</p> <p>Jet&#8217;s focus on groceries is likely to help Walmart win with urban millennial customers - Jet&#8217;s key demographic.</p> <p>&#8220;With Jet grocery being an integral part of the strategy, Simon brings incredible experience in scaling grocery delivery and his unique background in converging technology and retail,&#8221; Lore said in the email.</p> <p>Belsham spent seven years at Tesco ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSCO.L" type="external">TSCO.L</a>), building up its online grocery operation for Britain and 10 markets across central Europe and Asia. He also developed a general merchandise platform for Ocado, a UK-based web retailer that sells groceries.</p> <p>Most recently, Belsham worked as chief executive officer of venture-backed Notonthehighstreet.com, according to the email.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">Walmart Inc</a> 87.5 WMT.N New York Stock Exchange +2.08 (+2.44%) WMT.N AMZN.O TGT.N COST.O KR.N <p>He will succeed Liza Landsman, who left the company in March, a little more than a year after she was promoted to the job. Belsham will start on March 26, report to Lore and be based at Jet&#8217;s New Jersey headquarters, according to the email.</p> <p>Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on a Feb. 20 earnings conference call the online retailer will not grow as quickly as it did in the early days but will be well-positioned in select markets.</p> <p>Belsham will also need to ensure that Jet is differentiated from the parent brand and offer shoppers specialty goods that cannot be bought elsewhere - a strategy on which Lore has focused in the past year.</p> <p>Belsham said in a statement he has long admired the founders of both Walmart and Jet.</p> <p>&#8220;In my view, there is no business better positioned to take advantage of the opportunity ahead than the combination of Walmart and Jet,&#8221; Belsham said.</p> <p>Reporting by Nandita Bose in New York; Editing by Vanessa O'Connell and Jeffrey Benkoe</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SINGAPORE/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc has agreed to sell its Southeast Asian business to bigger regional rival Grab, the ride-hailing firms said on Monday, marking the U.S. company&#8217;s second retreat from an Asian market.</p> <p>The industry&#8217;s first big consolidation in Southeast Asia, home to about 640 million people, puts pressure on Indonesia&#8217;s Go-Jek, which is backed by Alphabet Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) Google and China&#8217;s Tencent Holdings Ltd ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=0700.HK" type="external">0700.HK</a>).</p> <p>A shake-up in Asia&#8217;s fiercely competitive ride-hailing industry became likely earlier this year when Japan-based SoftBank Group Corp&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=9984.T" type="external">9984.T</a>) Vision Fund made a multi-billion dollar investment in Uber. SoftBank owns stakes in most major global ride services companies, and executives have indicated they favored consolidation.</p> <p>SoftBank already had investments in Grab and India&#8217;s Ola, and Vision Fund Chief Executive Rajeev Misra had urged Uber to focus less on Asia and more on profitable markets such as Latin America, a person familiar with the matter said.</p> <p>Grab President Ming Maa told Reuters that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son was &#8220;highly supportive&#8221; of the deal, which he called &#8220;a very independent decision by both&#8221; Grab and Uber.</p> <p>Uber will take a 27.5 percent stake in Singapore-based Grab and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will join Grab&#8217;s board. Grab was last valued at $6 billion after a financing round in July.</p> <p>&#8220;It will help us double down on our plans for growth as we invest heavily in our products and technology,&#8221; Khosrowshahi said in a statement.</p> <p>The Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) said it has the mandate to review whether any mergers will result in a &#8220;substantial lessening of competition&#8221; and take any action to intervene in the deal, but it has yet to receive notice from the companies.</p> <p>The deal will help bolster Grab&#8217;s meal-delivery service, which will merge with Uber Eats, compete with Go-Jek. Go-Jek has become a dominant player and powerful rival in Indonesia, the region&#8217;s biggest economy, and it has rapidly expanded beyond ride hailing to digital payments, food delivery and on-demand cleaning and massage.</p> <p>Ride-hailing companies throughout Asia have relied heavily on discounts and promotions, driving down profit margins and increasing pressure for consolidation.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Uber, which is preparing for a potential initial public offering in 2019, lost $4.5 billion last year and is facing fierce competition at home in the United States and across Asia, as well as a regulatory crackdown in Europe.</p> <p>Uber invested $700 million in its Southeast Asia business.</p> <p>Uber previously sold operations in China and Russia to local rivals under former CEO Travis Kalanick. The deal with Grab is the first operations sale by Khosrowshahi, who started in September.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">Alphabet Inc</a> 1054.09 GOOGL.O Nasdaq +27.54 (+2.68%) GOOGL.O 0700.HK 9984.T MORE CONSOLIDATION <p>But Uber&#8217;s CEO does not want to make these mergers a pattern, and said he has no plans to do another sale in which it consolidates its operations in exchange for a minority stake in a rival.</p> <p>&#8220;It is fair to ask whether consolidation is now the strategy of the day, given this is the third deal of its kind ... The answer is no,&#8221; Khosrowshahi said in a note to employees that was shared with Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;One of the potential dangers of our global strategy is that we take on too many battles across too many fronts and with too many competitors.&#8221;</p> <p>SoftBank is also an investor in India&#8217;s Ola, another competitive and costly market where rivals have heavily subsidized rides in an effort to gain market share. But a source familiar with Uber&#8217;s strategy said the company was going to step up its battle with Ola in India, where Uber has close to 60 percent of the market, by some estimates, but is losing money.</p> <p>SoftBank&#8217;s Misra sees opportunities for mergers and joint ventures between SoftBank-backed ride-hailing companies, particularly for collaborating on research and development, but the investor would never get actively involved with management decisions, the person familiar with the matter said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-uber-grab-reaction/as-uber-bows-out-to-grab-drivers-and-riders-bemoan-loss-of-choice-idUSKBN1H21KP" type="external">As Uber bows out to Grab, drivers and riders bemoan loss of choice</a> <a href="/article/us-uber-grab-strategy/grab-says-uber-deal-driven-independently-by-firms-has-softbank-support-idUSKBN1H20A8" type="external">Grab says Uber deal driven independently by firms, has SoftBank support</a> <p>Uber includes the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America among its core markets &#8211; regions where it has more than 50 percent market share and is profitable or sees a path to profitability.</p> <p>Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore and Heather Somerville in San Francisco; writing by Miyoung Kim; editing by Peter Henderson, Stephen Coates and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

REFILE-BRIEF-Zhongtong Bus Holding Expects 2017 Net Profit To Fall 60.8-71.0 Percent Y/Y Oil prices dip on profit taking after last week's rally U.S. banks provide rescue financing for gunmaker Remington Exclusive: Tesco veteran to head Walmart's Jet.com as U.S. grocery wars flare Uber sells Southeast Asia business to Grab after costly battle

https://reuters.com/article/idUSH9N1PE00G

2018-01-23

2least

Refiles with correct link Jan 23 Reuters Zhongtong Bus Holding Co Ltd SAYS IT EXPECTS 2017 NET PROFIT TO FALL 608710 PERCENT YY FROM 5858 MILLION YUAN 9150 million YEAR AGO Source text in Chinese bitly2n2Bn86 Further company coverage 1 64021 Chinese yuan renminbi Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Crude oil futures slipped on Monday as investors cashed in some profits from last week8217s rally but concerns about SaudiIran tensions kept losses in check FILE PHOTO An oil pump is seen operating in the Permian Basin near Midland Texas US May 3 2017 REUTERSErnest ScheyderFile Photo Brent crude futures LCOc1 slipped 33 cents or 05 percent to settle at 7012 a barrel US West Texas Intermediate WTI crude futures CLc1 also lost half a percent or 33 cents to end at 6555 Last week Brent gained 64 percent and WTI rose 57 percent the strongest weekly gains since July 8220I don8217t see anything extraordinarily bearish in the market today I think some folks here are just happy to take profits8221 said Bob Yawger director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York Although crude and product futures slipped on Monday most share prices for energy companies especially refiners were up Yawger said The SampampP Energy Index SPNY was up more than 1 percent Global stocks came off sixweek lows on reports that the United States and China would begin trade talks easing fears of a trade war Analysts had been concerned that a trade war could hurt oil demand US President Donald Trump last week signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion of imports from China 8220The oil market is pulling back after pushing strongly high last week I think the 70 level in Brent 67 for WTI start to trigger worries of increased US production levels8221 said Gene McGillian manager of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford Connecticut The number of active US oil rigs rose to a threeyear high of 804 last week implying further rises in future production COUTTEIA 8220With US crude production likely to be close to 105 million barrels per day by now and NGL natural gas liquids output also increasing strongly there is a clear chance that yearonyear supply growth in the US could at least temporarily hit 2 million bpd over the summer months8221 JBC analysts wrote The market found support from rising Middle East tensions Saudi air defenses shot down ballistic missiles fired by Yemen8217s Iranaligned Houthi militia on Sunday some of which targeted Saudi capital Riyadh In Asia Shanghai crude oil futures made a strong debut in terms of volume as investors and commodity merchants bought into the world8217s newest financial oil trading instrument Hedge funds and other money managers raised their net long US crude futures and options positions in the week to March 20 after two weeks of cutting bullish bets the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission CFTC said on Friday Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore Editing by Marguerita Choy and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters US gunmaker Remington Outdoor Co has obtained commitments for nearly 300 million from its existing lenders including some of the biggest US banks after new sources of funding dried up in the months leading up to its filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy During that time the company8217s investment bank Lazard Ltd LAZN approached more than 30 possible lenders according to court documents 8220The vast majority of lenders contacted however indicated they were reluctant to provide financing to firearms manufacturers8221 said Lazard banker Ari Lefkovits in the papers Most of the banks providing the bankruptcy funding were lenders to Remington before its current financial problems according to court records Without the funds Remington may have been forced to go out of business and the banks could have seen their investment crash in value The company and its investors have been under heightened scrutiny after 17 were killed in a school shooting in Parkland Florida in February Remington filed for bankruptcy one day after hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets to demand tighter gun control measures Banks often sell troubled loans to hedge funds when a borrower is heading into bankruptcy but one source told Reuters that even as the Remington loans were heavily discounted buyers were scarce The company8217s bankruptcy lenders include Bank of America Corp BACN Wells Fargo ampamp Co WFCN JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co JPMN and Deutsche Bank AG DBKGnDE according to court documents Remington disclosed the loan details in its Sunday bankruptcy filing which the company said will allow it to cancel 775 million of debt and bring it out of Chapter 11 as soon as May Smaller banks Regions Financial Corporation RFN BBampampT Corp BBTN Synovus Financial Corp SNVN and Fifth Third Bancorp FITBO have also committed to help fund Remington8217s bankruptcy loans court documents show An affiliate of investment manager Franklin Templeton Investments another lender is also providing funds Bank of America Regions Deutsche Bank JPMorgan and Synovus declined to comment BBampampT declined to comment on its lending relationships The bank said part of its consideration is to listen to its clients and stakeholders who have a wide range of opinions FILE PHOTO A man walks with his Remington 870 Express 12 gauge shotgun during a progun and Second Amendment protest outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix Arizona US January 19 2013 REUTERSJoshua LottFile Photo 8220We8217re deeply concerned with the increasing amount of gun violence in our schools and communities8221 the bank said The others along with Remington did not immediately respond to a request for comment The company ran into trouble after borrowing to ramp up production in 2016 in anticipation of greater industry demand according to court filings The expectation of higher sales was in part driven by fears of a Hillary Clinton presidency and tighter gun controls With the election of Donald Trump who has said he strongly supports gun ownership the firearms industry was stuck with a glut of weapons and higher levels of debt Lazard Ltd 5254 LAZN New York Stock Exchange 177 349 LAZN BACN WFCN JPMN DBKGnDE Remington which said in January it was nearly out of cash plans to tap the loans from the banks to help pay corporate expenses including payroll during its bankruptcy filing Remington8217s bondholders are also providing some of the bankruptcy loan and will receive a stake in the company when it exits bankruptcy Their identities were redacted in court documents The company also asked the court to seal the letters detailing the fees the lenders will earn from the loans saying that the sums are commercially sensitive according to filings in the bankruptcy court in Wilmington Delaware The court records also showed that Remington8217s business faces new hurdles in the wake of the Florida shooting The company cited a risk to its business from restrictions placed on gun sales by retailers such Walmart Inc WMTN Dick8217s Sporting Goods Inc DKSN and Kroger Co KRN Walmart accounted for 11 percent of Remington sales in 2017 according to court documents Remington also said sales could be hurt by more government regulation including enhanced background checks and a broader definition of 8220dealer8221 under current gun laws Remington said if the 1994 federal assault weapons ban were reenacted it would have an adverse effect on the business Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington Delaware and Jessica DiNapoli in New York Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A grocery industry veteran who led UK retailer Tesco Plc8217s online operation was named president of Walmart8217s Jetcom ecommerce business in the retail behemoth8217s latest move to grab a bigger piece of the intensely competitive sector A logo of Walmart is seen in one of the stores in Monterrey Mexico November 28 2016 REUTERSDaniel BecerrilFile Photo Simon Belsham will oversee all operations including grocery and general merchandise and join Walmart8217s WMTN US ecommerce leadership team according to an internal email sent on Monday by Marc Lore the head of Walmart8217s ecommerce business to Jet employees and seen by Reuters Walmart acquired Jet for 33 billion in August 2016 a deal that was widely considered a watershed moment for its thenstruggling ecommerce operation as it got access to both technology and talent through Jet founder Lore and his team Walmart8217s ecommerce success has been erratic Online sales increased 23 percent in the most recent quarter less than half the rate of growth in each of the previous three quarters Walmart8217s stock got walloped after the news Belsham8217s hiring comes amid fierce competition in the grocery sector Amazoncom Inc AMZNO purchased Whole Foods Market for 134 billion last year and rivals like Target Corp TGTN Costco Wholesale Corp COSTO and Kroger Co KRN are joining the costly battle for customers who want groceries without leaving their couches Walmart is aggressively ramping up its online grocery business It has said it will expand home delivery service to more than 100 US cities and offer curbside grocery pickup at 2200 stores by the end of the year Jet8217s focus on groceries is likely to help Walmart win with urban millennial customers Jet8217s key demographic 8220With Jet grocery being an integral part of the strategy Simon brings incredible experience in scaling grocery delivery and his unique background in converging technology and retail8221 Lore said in the email Belsham spent seven years at Tesco TSCOL building up its online grocery operation for Britain and 10 markets across central Europe and Asia He also developed a general merchandise platform for Ocado a UKbased web retailer that sells groceries Most recently Belsham worked as chief executive officer of venturebacked Notonthehighstreetcom according to the email Walmart Inc 875 WMTN New York Stock Exchange 208 244 WMTN AMZNO TGTN COSTO KRN He will succeed Liza Landsman who left the company in March a little more than a year after she was promoted to the job Belsham will start on March 26 report to Lore and be based at Jet8217s New Jersey headquarters according to the email Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on a Feb 20 earnings conference call the online retailer will not grow as quickly as it did in the early days but will be wellpositioned in select markets Belsham will also need to ensure that Jet is differentiated from the parent brand and offer shoppers specialty goods that cannot be bought elsewhere a strategy on which Lore has focused in the past year Belsham said in a statement he has long admired the founders of both Walmart and Jet 8220In my view there is no business better positioned to take advantage of the opportunity ahead than the combination of Walmart and Jet8221 Belsham said Reporting by Nandita Bose in New York Editing by Vanessa OConnell and Jeffrey Benkoe Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SINGAPORESAN FRANCISCO Reuters Uber Technologies Inc has agreed to sell its Southeast Asian business to bigger regional rival Grab the ridehailing firms said on Monday marking the US company8217s second retreat from an Asian market The industry8217s first big consolidation in Southeast Asia home to about 640 million people puts pressure on Indonesia8217s GoJek which is backed by Alphabet Inc8217s GOOGLO Google and China8217s Tencent Holdings Ltd 0700HK A shakeup in Asia8217s fiercely competitive ridehailing industry became likely earlier this year when Japanbased SoftBank Group Corp8217s 9984T Vision Fund made a multibillion dollar investment in Uber SoftBank owns stakes in most major global ride services companies and executives have indicated they favored consolidation SoftBank already had investments in Grab and India8217s Ola and Vision Fund Chief Executive Rajeev Misra had urged Uber to focus less on Asia and more on profitable markets such as Latin America a person familiar with the matter said Grab President Ming Maa told Reuters that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son was 8220highly supportive8221 of the deal which he called 8220a very independent decision by both8221 Grab and Uber Uber will take a 275 percent stake in Singaporebased Grab and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will join Grab8217s board Grab was last valued at 6 billion after a financing round in July 8220It will help us double down on our plans for growth as we invest heavily in our products and technology8221 Khosrowshahi said in a statement The Competition Commission of Singapore CCS said it has the mandate to review whether any mergers will result in a 8220substantial lessening of competition8221 and take any action to intervene in the deal but it has yet to receive notice from the companies The deal will help bolster Grab8217s mealdelivery service which will merge with Uber Eats compete with GoJek GoJek has become a dominant player and powerful rival in Indonesia the region8217s biggest economy and it has rapidly expanded beyond ride hailing to digital payments food delivery and ondemand cleaning and massage Ridehailing companies throughout Asia have relied heavily on discounts and promotions driving down profit margins and increasing pressure for consolidation Slideshow 6 Images Uber which is preparing for a potential initial public offering in 2019 lost 45 billion last year and is facing fierce competition at home in the United States and across Asia as well as a regulatory crackdown in Europe Uber invested 700 million in its Southeast Asia business Uber previously sold operations in China and Russia to local rivals under former CEO Travis Kalanick The deal with Grab is the first operations sale by Khosrowshahi who started in September Alphabet Inc 105409 GOOGLO Nasdaq 2754 268 GOOGLO 0700HK 9984T MORE CONSOLIDATION But Uber8217s CEO does not want to make these mergers a pattern and said he has no plans to do another sale in which it consolidates its operations in exchange for a minority stake in a rival 8220It is fair to ask whether consolidation is now the strategy of the day given this is the third deal of its kind The answer is no8221 Khosrowshahi said in a note to employees that was shared with Reuters 8220One of the potential dangers of our global strategy is that we take on too many battles across too many fronts and with too many competitors8221 SoftBank is also an investor in India8217s Ola another competitive and costly market where rivals have heavily subsidized rides in an effort to gain market share But a source familiar with Uber8217s strategy said the company was going to step up its battle with Ola in India where Uber has close to 60 percent of the market by some estimates but is losing money SoftBank8217s Misra sees opportunities for mergers and joint ventures between SoftBankbacked ridehailing companies particularly for collaborating on research and development but the investor would never get actively involved with management decisions the person familiar with the matter said Related Coverage As Uber bows out to Grab drivers and riders bemoan loss of choice Grab says Uber deal driven independently by firms has SoftBank support Uber includes the United States Australia New Zealand and Latin America among its core markets 8211 regions where it has more than 50 percent market share and is profitable or sees a path to profitability Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore and Heather Somerville in San Francisco writing by Miyoung Kim editing by Peter Henderson Stephen Coates and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>BEIJING/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Brazil&#8217;s share of soybean exports to China, the world&#8217;s top buyer of the commodity, grew to the largest on record in 2017 and looks set to expand again this year, helped by competitive prices and the high protein content of its crops.</p> FILE PHOTO: A Chinese ship is loaded with soybeans at Port of Santos May 19, 2015. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo <p>That&#8217;s another potential blow to rival exporter the United States as it grapples with tougher quality rules on its shipments to China from 2018, as well as with global markets flooded over the last few years by bumper supply of the oilseed.</p> <p>China, which imports 60 percent of the soybeans traded worldwide, bought 50.93 million tonnes from Brazil in 2017, accounting for 53.3 percent of total purchases, according to customs data released on Thursday. Chinese buyers mainly use soy to churn out cooking oil and ingredients for animal feed.</p> <p>U.S. sales came in at 32.9 million tonnes, or 34.4 percent of China&#8217;s imports, the exporter&#8217;s lowest share since at least 2006.</p> <p>&#8220;Soybean imports from Brazil to China are expected to keep growing in the new year ... Brazilian beans will have an advantage in prices and protein (content),&#8221; said Tian Hao, senior analyst with First Futures in the Chinese city of Tianjin.</p> <p>Brazil took over from the United States in 2012 as the top supplier to China, with its exports often attractively priced as it relies on overseas markets for sales due to limited domestic demand and storage. Brazilian beans also boast higher protein levels than U.S. supplies, making them more attractive for animal feed producers.</p> <p>A weaker real also helped lure buyers in 2017.</p> <p>Brazilian soybeans for March, including freight to China, are currently around $428 a tonne, compared to $433 a tonne for U.S. supply, according to trader data.</p> <p>&#8220;From early May, we were mostly crushing Brazilian soybeans,&#8221; said a manager at a crushing plant in southern China, declining to be identified as he was not authorized to speak with media.</p> <p>&#8220;Last year, about 65-70 percent of the beans we crushed were from Brazil.&#8221;</p> <p>The United States is the world&#8217;s biggest soybean exporter after Brazil, with the two countries accounting for roughly 80 percent of global shipments, which are valued at around $50 billion annually.</p> HISTORY REPEATING <p>Brazil&#8217;s share of the export market is on track to keep growing in 2018 as it gears up for a crop of around 114 million tonnes, matching last year&#8217;s all-time high production.</p> <p>Larger harvests mean Brazil&#8217;s marketing season, which begins in May, has started to extend into October-November rather than ending around September as is traditional. That has eaten into the period when U.S. supply has typically dominated markets.</p> <p>&#8220;Soybean inventories everywhere are so large that there is nothing like U.S. marketing season or South American marketing season (any more),&#8221; said a veteran soybean trader at one of China&#8217;s state-run trading companies.</p> <p>&#8220;Brazil has started harvesting new-crop beans while it is still not done selling last year&#8217;s crop.&#8221;</p> <p>And Brazil&#8217;s slice of the Chinese market will likely get another boost in 2018 as restrictions imposed by Beijing on U.S. shipments from Jan. 1 bite.</p> <p>China introduced the stricter import standards, which have reduced the amount of foreign matter allowed in the most widely-traded soybean variety to 1 percent from 2 percent previously, after raising concerns about weed seeds.</p> <p>&#8220;They are penalizing U.S. beans,&#8221; said Roy Huckabay, an analyst with Linn &amp;amp; Associates, a futures brokerage in Chicago.</p> <p>Meanwhile, China&#8217;s overall soy imports are seen climbing in 2018, boosted by growing demand from the nation&#8217;s massive livestock herds.</p> <p>With supplies bulging in key exporting countries, benchmark soy prices traded in Chicago averaged $9.75 a bushel in 2017 ($358 a tonne), compared to the $12 a bushel ($441 a tonne) average from 2010 to 2016.</p> <p>&#8220;Chinese importers have been very savvy, the way they have been buying, getting the best quality at the right price,&#8221; said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank.</p> <p>Reporting by Hallie Gu, Naveen Tukral and Gavin Maguire; Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Joseph Radford</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC on Wednesday raised&amp;#160;its&amp;#160;forecast&amp;#160;for non-member oil&amp;#160;supply&amp;#160;this year to almost double the growth predicted four months ago as higher prices spur U.S. shale drilling, offsetting OPEC-led output cuts and a collapse in Venezuelan production.</p> The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is pictured at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said non-OPEC producers would boost supply by 1.66 million barrels per day in 2018. That was the fourth straight rise from 870,000 bpd forecast in November.</p> <p>&#8220;For 2018, higher growth is expected on the back of the projected increase in U.S. shale production following a better price environment not only for shale producers, but also for other countries such as Canada, the UK, Brazil and China,&#8221; OPEC said of the outlook for non-OPEC supply.</p> <p>This would lead to &#8220;a higher quarterly distribution throughout the year with a record-high level projected for the fourth quarter&#8221;, OPEC said.</p> <p>OPEC, Russia and several other non-OPEC producers, but not the United States, began to cut supply in January 2017 in an effort to erase a global glut of crude that had built up since 2014. They have extended the pact until the end of 2018.</p> <p>The deal has helped boost oil prices LCOc1, which topped $71 a barrel this year for the first time since 2014 and were near $65 on Wednesday. But it has also encouraged a flood of shale, fuelling a debate about the curbs&#8217; effectiveness.</p> <p>Oil pared much of an earlier gain on Wednesday after the release of the OPEC report.</p> <p>The Iranian oil minister said OPEC could agree at its next meeting in June to start easing the curbs in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported. He also said OPEC should aim for oil around $60 to contain shale growth.</p> <p>Top exporter Saudi Arabia, however, said in February it was premature to discuss an exit strategy.</p> <p>Faster-than-expected growth in demand due to a robust world economy has added a tailwind to the OPEC supply effort.</p> <p>Although OPEC in the report slightly raised its estimate of growth in world demand to 1.6 million bpd, it now projects the expansion in supply outside the group will exceed gains in demand.</p> <p>This brings OPEC&#8217;s view closer to that of the International Energy Agency, which expects a less rosy 2018 supply/demand balance.</p> VENEZUELAN PLUNGE <p>While rivals are pumping more, OPEC&#8217;s production in February fell, according to the report.</p> <p>Total output dropped by 77,000 bpd to 32.186 million bpd, led by declines in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, according to figures OPEC collects from secondary sources.</p> <p>Adherence by the 12 OPEC members with output targets rose to 147 percent, according to a Reuters calculation based on the OPEC figures, higher than 137 percent in January based on last month&#8217;s report.</p> <p>The figures that OPEC members reported themselves showed some deeper declines in production.</p> <p>Venezuela, whose output is dropping amid an economic crisis, told OPEC its production sank by about 183,000 bpd to 1.586 million bpd in February. The number is believed to be the lowest in decades.</p> <p>With outside producers expected to increase supply by more than demand, OPEC cut its estimate of the global requirement for its crude in 2018 by 250,000 bpd to 32.61 million bpd.</p> <p>Should OPEC keep pumping at February&#8217;s level and other things remain equal, the market could move into a deficit of about 420,000 bpd, suggesting inventories will be drawn down. This is less than the deficit of about 560,000 bpd implied last month.</p> <p>The supply cut&#8217;s original aim was to shrink oil inventories in developed economies to their five-year average. The latest figures gave a mixed picture on stock movements.</p> <p>Stocks rose by 13.7 million barrels in January to 2.865 billion barrels, although this was only 50 million above the five-year average, the closest yet OPEC has come to the original target.</p> <p>OPEC is now talking of looking at other metrics to assess the market&#8217;s rate of return to balance.</p> <p>Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday after President Donald Trump sought to impose fresh tariffs on China, intensifying fears of a trade war that could raise costs and hurt overseas sales for U.S. companies.</p> <p>The Trump administration is pressing China to cut its trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion, the White House said Wednesday.</p> <p>Trump is looking to levy tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports, targeting the technology, telecom and apparel sectors, sources told Reuters on Tuesday.</p> <p>As earnings season has ended, the latest developments in Washington are even more prominent for investors, said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham, Massachusetts.</p> <p>&#8220;Certainly, from an economic standpoint, the potential effect of tariffs continues to rattle through the markets,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re in a wallowing period where there&#8217;s not as much good news coming out.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as well as on solar panels and washing machines, sparking threats of retaliation from some trade partners.</p> <p>Boeing Co, which investors say may be particularly vulnerable to retaliation, tumbled 2.5 percent, leading the losers on the Dow.</p> <p>Stocks briefly pared losses after economic analyst and commentator Larry Kudlow, who has supported free trade measures in the past, said on Wednesday he had accepted an offer to replace Gary Cohn as the White House&#8217;s top economic adviser.</p> A trader works on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly <p>In an interview with CNBC just before the market close, Kudlow said he believed tougher trade measures against China were warranted.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 248.91 points, or 1 percent, to end at 24,758.12, the S&amp;amp;P 500 lost 15.83 points, or 0.57 percent, to 2,749.48 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 14.20 points, or 0.19 percent, to 7,496.81.</p> <p>Also weighing on investor sentiment was data that showed U.S. retail sales fell for a third straight month in February, pointing to a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Financial stocks fell 1.2 percent, tracking a decline in U.S. bond yields.</p> <p>Signet Jewelers fell 20.2 percent after the company gave a disappointing full-year earnings forecast.</p> <p>Ford rose 2.2 percent after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to &#8220;overweight&#8221; from &#8220;underweight&#8221; and raised its earnings estimate on the automaker.</p> <p>Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.35-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.53-to-1 ratio favored decliners.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 posted 12 new 52-week highs and five new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 96 new highs and 41 new lows.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.53 billion shares, compared to the 7.14 billion average over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DIS.N" type="external">DIS.N</a>) said on Wednesday it had created a new unit for its streaming video and international businesses as the company retools its traditional media operation for a world rapidly embracing online video.</p> A screen shows the logo and a ticker symbol for The Walt Disney Company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 14, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Kevin Mayer, the company&#8217;s chief strategy officer, was named chairman of the new division, which will oversee the upcoming ESPN+ digital offering and the launch of a family-oriented streaming service in late 2019, Disney said in a statement.</p> <p>The move, effective immediately, comes as Disney is in the process of purchasing film, TV and international businesses from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FOXA.O" type="external">FOXA.O</a>).</p> <p>Regulators are reviewing the deal, which has been complicated by Comcast Corp&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CMCSA.O" type="external">CMCSA.O</a>) offer for one of the assets, Britain&#8217;s Sky Plc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SKYB.L" type="external">SKYB.L</a>).</p> <p>Disney also combined its theme parks business with the consumer products unit that licenses characters for toys, apparel and other merchandise. Bob Chapek, who heads the parks division, will lead the combined unit.</p> <p>Media networks and the movie studio will remain separate units, Disney said.</p> <p>&#8220;We are strategically positioning our businesses for the future, creating a more effective, global framework to serve consumers worldwide, increase growth, and maximize shareholder value,&#8221; Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said in a statement.</p> <p>Disney&#8217;s largest TV network, ESPN, has been losing subscribers as customers drop pay television subscriptions in favor of streaming services such as Netflix Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NFLX.O" type="external">NFLX.O</a>).</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DIS.N" type="external">Walt Disney Co</a> 103.9 DIS.N New York Stock Exchange +0.17 (+0.16%) DIS.N FOXA.O CMCSA.O SKYB.L NFLX.O <p>The company is responding with its own digital push. It is pulling its first-run movies from Netflix in 2019 to offer them on the Disney-branded service.</p> <p>If the Fox deal wins approval, Disney also will expand its programming portfolio and international reach, plus own a majority stake in the Hulu streaming service.</p> <p>Disney expects to switch its financial reporting to reflect the new structure by the beginning of fiscal 2019, the company said.</p> <p>Shares of Disney rose 0.5 percent to $104.33 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.</p> <p>Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Bernadette Baum</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Iconic toy store chain Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us Inc will sell or close all its U.S. stores in the coming months, risking up to 33,000 jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.</p> People pass by the Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York, U.S., March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz <p>The announcement was made to workers by Chief Executive David Brandon at the toy-store chain's Wayne, New Jersey headquarters, the Journal said <a href="http://on.wsj.com/2tPultm." type="external">on.wsj.com/2tPultm.</a></p> <p>The closure of Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us is a blow to generations of consumers and hundreds of toy makers that sold their products at the chain&#8217;s 885 U.S. locations, including Barbie maker Mattel Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">MAT.O</a>), board game company Hasbro Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=HAS.O" type="external">HAS.O</a>) and other large vendors such as Lego.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us, which has roughly 33,000 full- and part-time U.S. employees, was already in the process of closing one fifth of its stores as part of efforts to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer.</p> <p>Efforts collapsed this month after lenders decided, absent a clear reorganization plan, they could recover more in a liquidation, closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales, sources with knowledge of the matter said.</p> <p>&#8220;I have always believed that this brand and this business should exist in the U.S.,&#8221; Brandon said on a conference call with staff, the Wall Street Journal said.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">Mattel Inc</a> 14.18 MAT.O Nasdaq -0.29 (-2.00%) MAT.O HAS.O <p>The retailer is likely to liquidate in France, Spain, Poland and Australia, Brandon said, according the newspaper. He added that Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us also planned to sell operations in Canada, Central Europe and Asia.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us is trying to package its Canadian business with 200 U.S. stores and find a buyer, the CEO said, according to the Journal.</p> <p>Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru and Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Soy source: Brazil's share of soybean exports to China hits record OPEC sees oil supply surge from rivals, countering its cuts Wall Street falls amid fears of trade war with China Disney creates streaming video unit for digital future Toys 'R' Us will likely shut all U.S. stores, risking 33,000 jobs: WSJ

https://reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-trade-soybeans/soy-source-brazils-share-of-soybean-exports-to-china-hits-record-idUSKBN1FE111

2018-01-25

2least

BEIJINGSINGAPORE Reuters Brazil8217s share of soybean exports to China the world8217s top buyer of the commodity grew to the largest on record in 2017 and looks set to expand again this year helped by competitive prices and the high protein content of its crops FILE PHOTO A Chinese ship is loaded with soybeans at Port of Santos May 19 2015 REUTERSPaulo WhitakerFile Photo That8217s another potential blow to rival exporter the United States as it grapples with tougher quality rules on its shipments to China from 2018 as well as with global markets flooded over the last few years by bumper supply of the oilseed China which imports 60 percent of the soybeans traded worldwide bought 5093 million tonnes from Brazil in 2017 accounting for 533 percent of total purchases according to customs data released on Thursday Chinese buyers mainly use soy to churn out cooking oil and ingredients for animal feed US sales came in at 329 million tonnes or 344 percent of China8217s imports the exporter8217s lowest share since at least 2006 8220Soybean imports from Brazil to China are expected to keep growing in the new year Brazilian beans will have an advantage in prices and protein content8221 said Tian Hao senior analyst with First Futures in the Chinese city of Tianjin Brazil took over from the United States in 2012 as the top supplier to China with its exports often attractively priced as it relies on overseas markets for sales due to limited domestic demand and storage Brazilian beans also boast higher protein levels than US supplies making them more attractive for animal feed producers A weaker real also helped lure buyers in 2017 Brazilian soybeans for March including freight to China are currently around 428 a tonne compared to 433 a tonne for US supply according to trader data 8220From early May we were mostly crushing Brazilian soybeans8221 said a manager at a crushing plant in southern China declining to be identified as he was not authorized to speak with media 8220Last year about 6570 percent of the beans we crushed were from Brazil8221 The United States is the world8217s biggest soybean exporter after Brazil with the two countries accounting for roughly 80 percent of global shipments which are valued at around 50 billion annually HISTORY REPEATING Brazil8217s share of the export market is on track to keep growing in 2018 as it gears up for a crop of around 114 million tonnes matching last year8217s alltime high production Larger harvests mean Brazil8217s marketing season which begins in May has started to extend into OctoberNovember rather than ending around September as is traditional That has eaten into the period when US supply has typically dominated markets 8220Soybean inventories everywhere are so large that there is nothing like US marketing season or South American marketing season any more8221 said a veteran soybean trader at one of China8217s staterun trading companies 8220Brazil has started harvesting newcrop beans while it is still not done selling last year8217s crop8221 And Brazil8217s slice of the Chinese market will likely get another boost in 2018 as restrictions imposed by Beijing on US shipments from Jan 1 bite China introduced the stricter import standards which have reduced the amount of foreign matter allowed in the most widelytraded soybean variety to 1 percent from 2 percent previously after raising concerns about weed seeds 8220They are penalizing US beans8221 said Roy Huckabay an analyst with Linn ampamp Associates a futures brokerage in Chicago Meanwhile China8217s overall soy imports are seen climbing in 2018 boosted by growing demand from the nation8217s massive livestock herds With supplies bulging in key exporting countries benchmark soy prices traded in Chicago averaged 975 a bushel in 2017 358 a tonne compared to the 12 a bushel 441 a tonne average from 2010 to 2016 8220Chinese importers have been very savvy the way they have been buying getting the best quality at the right price8221 said Phin Ziebell agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank Reporting by Hallie Gu Naveen Tukral and Gavin Maguire Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago Editing by Joseph Radford Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters OPEC on Wednesday raisedamp160itsamp160forecastamp160for nonmember oilamp160supplyamp160this year to almost double the growth predicted four months ago as higher prices spur US shale drilling offsetting OPECled output cuts and a collapse in Venezuelan production The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC is pictured at its headquarters in Vienna Austria September 21 2017 REUTERSLeonhard Foeger In a monthly report the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said nonOPEC producers would boost supply by 166 million barrels per day in 2018 That was the fourth straight rise from 870000 bpd forecast in November 8220For 2018 higher growth is expected on the back of the projected increase in US shale production following a better price environment not only for shale producers but also for other countries such as Canada the UK Brazil and China8221 OPEC said of the outlook for nonOPEC supply This would lead to 8220a higher quarterly distribution throughout the year with a recordhigh level projected for the fourth quarter8221 OPEC said OPEC Russia and several other nonOPEC producers but not the United States began to cut supply in January 2017 in an effort to erase a global glut of crude that had built up since 2014 They have extended the pact until the end of 2018 The deal has helped boost oil prices LCOc1 which topped 71 a barrel this year for the first time since 2014 and were near 65 on Wednesday But it has also encouraged a flood of shale fuelling a debate about the curbs8217 effectiveness Oil pared much of an earlier gain on Wednesday after the release of the OPEC report The Iranian oil minister said OPEC could agree at its next meeting in June to start easing the curbs in 2019 the Wall Street Journal reported He also said OPEC should aim for oil around 60 to contain shale growth Top exporter Saudi Arabia however said in February it was premature to discuss an exit strategy Fasterthanexpected growth in demand due to a robust world economy has added a tailwind to the OPEC supply effort Although OPEC in the report slightly raised its estimate of growth in world demand to 16 million bpd it now projects the expansion in supply outside the group will exceed gains in demand This brings OPEC8217s view closer to that of the International Energy Agency which expects a less rosy 2018 supplydemand balance VENEZUELAN PLUNGE While rivals are pumping more OPEC8217s production in February fell according to the report Total output dropped by 77000 bpd to 32186 million bpd led by declines in Iraq the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela according to figures OPEC collects from secondary sources Adherence by the 12 OPEC members with output targets rose to 147 percent according to a Reuters calculation based on the OPEC figures higher than 137 percent in January based on last month8217s report The figures that OPEC members reported themselves showed some deeper declines in production Venezuela whose output is dropping amid an economic crisis told OPEC its production sank by about 183000 bpd to 1586 million bpd in February The number is believed to be the lowest in decades With outside producers expected to increase supply by more than demand OPEC cut its estimate of the global requirement for its crude in 2018 by 250000 bpd to 3261 million bpd Should OPEC keep pumping at February8217s level and other things remain equal the market could move into a deficit of about 420000 bpd suggesting inventories will be drawn down This is less than the deficit of about 560000 bpd implied last month The supply cut8217s original aim was to shrink oil inventories in developed economies to their fiveyear average The latest figures gave a mixed picture on stock movements Stocks rose by 137 million barrels in January to 2865 billion barrels although this was only 50 million above the fiveyear average the closest yet OPEC has come to the original target OPEC is now talking of looking at other metrics to assess the market8217s rate of return to balance Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters US stocks fell on Wednesday after President Donald Trump sought to impose fresh tariffs on China intensifying fears of a trade war that could raise costs and hurt overseas sales for US companies The Trump administration is pressing China to cut its trade surplus with the United States by 100 billion the White House said Wednesday Trump is looking to levy tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese imports targeting the technology telecom and apparel sectors sources told Reuters on Tuesday As earnings season has ended the latest developments in Washington are even more prominent for investors said Brad McMillan chief investment officer at Commonwealth Financial Network in Waltham Massachusetts 8220Certainly from an economic standpoint the potential effect of tariffs continues to rattle through the markets8221 he said 8220We8217re in a wallowing period where there8217s not as much good news coming out8221 Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports as well as on solar panels and washing machines sparking threats of retaliation from some trade partners Boeing Co which investors say may be particularly vulnerable to retaliation tumbled 25 percent leading the losers on the Dow Stocks briefly pared losses after economic analyst and commentator Larry Kudlow who has supported free trade measures in the past said on Wednesday he had accepted an offer to replace Gary Cohn as the White House8217s top economic adviser A trader works on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in Manhattan New York City US March 14 2018 REUTERSAndrew Kelly In an interview with CNBC just before the market close Kudlow said he believed tougher trade measures against China were warranted The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 24891 points or 1 percent to end at 2475812 the SampampP 500 lost 1583 points or 057 percent to 274948 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1420 points or 019 percent to 749681 Also weighing on investor sentiment was data that showed US retail sales fell for a third straight month in February pointing to a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter Slideshow 3 Images Financial stocks fell 12 percent tracking a decline in US bond yields Signet Jewelers fell 202 percent after the company gave a disappointing fullyear earnings forecast Ford rose 22 percent after Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to 8220overweight8221 from 8220underweight8221 and raised its earnings estimate on the automaker Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 135to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 153to1 ratio favored decliners The SampampP 500 posted 12 new 52week highs and five new lows the Nasdaq Composite recorded 96 new highs and 41 new lows Volume on US exchanges was 653 billion shares compared to the 714 billion average over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Arun Koyyur and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LOS ANGELES Reuters Walt Disney Co DISN said on Wednesday it had created a new unit for its streaming video and international businesses as the company retools its traditional media operation for a world rapidly embracing online video A screen shows the logo and a ticker symbol for The Walt Disney Company on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US December 14 2017 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Kevin Mayer the company8217s chief strategy officer was named chairman of the new division which will oversee the upcoming ESPN digital offering and the launch of a familyoriented streaming service in late 2019 Disney said in a statement The move effective immediately comes as Disney is in the process of purchasing film TV and international businesses from TwentyFirst Century Fox Inc FOXAO Regulators are reviewing the deal which has been complicated by Comcast Corp8217s CMCSAO offer for one of the assets Britain8217s Sky Plc SKYBL Disney also combined its theme parks business with the consumer products unit that licenses characters for toys apparel and other merchandise Bob Chapek who heads the parks division will lead the combined unit Media networks and the movie studio will remain separate units Disney said 8220We are strategically positioning our businesses for the future creating a more effective global framework to serve consumers worldwide increase growth and maximize shareholder value8221 Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said in a statement Disney8217s largest TV network ESPN has been losing subscribers as customers drop pay television subscriptions in favor of streaming services such as Netflix Inc NFLXO Walt Disney Co 1039 DISN New York Stock Exchange 017 016 DISN FOXAO CMCSAO SKYBL NFLXO The company is responding with its own digital push It is pulling its firstrun movies from Netflix in 2019 to offer them on the Disneybranded service If the Fox deal wins approval Disney also will expand its programming portfolio and international reach plus own a majority stake in the Hulu streaming service Disney expects to switch its financial reporting to reflect the new structure by the beginning of fiscal 2019 the company said Shares of Disney rose 05 percent to 10433 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange Reporting by Lisa Richwine Editing by Bernadette Baum Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Iconic toy store chain Toys 8216R8217 Us Inc will sell or close all its US stores in the coming months risking up to 33000 jobs the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday People pass by the Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York US March 9 2018 REUTERSEduardo Munoz The announcement was made to workers by Chief Executive David Brandon at the toystore chains Wayne New Jersey headquarters the Journal said onwsjcom2tPultm The closure of Toys 8216R8217 Us is a blow to generations of consumers and hundreds of toy makers that sold their products at the chain8217s 885 US locations including Barbie maker Mattel Inc MATO board game company Hasbro Inc HASO and other large vendors such as Lego Toys 8216R8217 Us which has roughly 33000 full and parttime US employees was already in the process of closing one fifth of its stores as part of efforts to emerge from one of the largest ever bankruptcies by a specialty retailer Efforts collapsed this month after lenders decided absent a clear reorganization plan they could recover more in a liquidation closing stores and raising money from merchandise sales sources with knowledge of the matter said 8220I have always believed that this brand and this business should exist in the US8221 Brandon said on a conference call with staff the Wall Street Journal said Mattel Inc 1418 MATO Nasdaq 029 200 MATO HASO The retailer is likely to liquidate in France Spain Poland and Australia Brandon said according the newspaper He added that Toys 8216R8217 Us also planned to sell operations in Canada Central Europe and Asia Toys 8216R8217 Us is trying to package its Canadian business with 200 US stores and find a buyer the CEO said according to the Journal Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru and Tracy Rucinski in Chicago Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>California has been the source of much innovation, from agribusiness and oil to fashion and the digital world. Historically much richer than the rest of the country, it was also the birthplace, along with Levittown, of the mass-produced suburb, freeways, much of our modern entrepreneurial culture, and of course mass entertainment. For most of a century, for both better and worse, California has defined progress, not only for America but for the world.</p> <p>As late as the 80s, California was democratic in a fundamental sense, a place for outsiders and, increasingly, immigrants&#8212;roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class. Now, instead of a land of opportunity, California has become increasingly feudal. According to recent census estimates, the state suffers some of the highest levels of <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/003912-the-emerging-geography-inequality" type="external">inequality</a> in the country. By some estimates, the state&#8217;s level of inequality compares with that of such <a href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/01/08/cali-j08.html" type="external">global models</a> as the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and the Republic of the Congo.</p> <p>At the same time, the Golden State now suffers the highest level of poverty in the country&#8212;23.5 percent compared to 16 percent nationally&#8212;worse than long-term hard luck cases like Mississippi. It is also now home to roughly <a href="http://www.appeal-democrat.com/articles/california-112566-nation-welfare.html" type="external">one-third</a> of the nation&#8217;s welfare recipients, almost three times its proportion of the nation&#8217;s population.</p> <p>Like medieval serfs, increasing numbers of Californians are downwardly mobile, and doing worse than their parents: native born Latinos actually have shorter lifespans than their parents, according to one recent <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-usa-economy-california-idUSTRE74I88V20110519" type="external">report</a>. Nor are things expected to get better any time soon. According to a recent Hoover Institution <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/09/26/what_california_comeback_120105.html#ixzz2g6CUW5VE" type="external">survey</a>, most Californians expect their incomes to stagnate in the coming six months, a sense widely shared among the young, whites, Latinos, females, and the less educated.</p> <p>Some of these trends can be found nationwide, but they have become pronounced and are metastasizing more quickly in the Golden State. As late as the 80s, the state was about as egalitarian as the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/19/watch-the-growth-of-u-s-income-inequality-with-this-animated-map/" type="external">rest of the country</a>. Now, for the first time in decades, the middle class is a minority, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.</p> <p>The Role of the tech oligarchs.</p> <p>California produces more new billionaires than any place this side of oligarchic Russia or crony capitalist China. By some estimates the Golden State is <a href="http://www.californiality.com/2011/10/california-billionaires.html" type="external">home</a> to one out of every nine of the world&#8217;s billionaires. In 2011 the state was home to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tough-times-meet-americas-cities-with-the-highest-unemployment-rate-2010-5?op=1" type="external">90 billionaires</a>, 20 more than second place New York and more than twice as many as booming Texas.</p> <p>The state&#8217;s digital oligarchy, surely without intention, is increasingly driving the state&#8217;s lurch towards feudalism. Silicon Valley&#8217;s wealth reflects the fortunes of a handful of companies that dominate an information economy that itself is increasingly oligopolistic. In contrast to the traditionally conservative or libertarian ethos of <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2013/07/30/hot-u-s-cities-that-offer-both-jobs-and-culture-are-mostly-southern-and-modest-sized.html" type="external">the entrepreneurial class</a>, the oligarchy is increasingly allied with the nominally <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114329/republican-budget-cut-would-crush-silicon-valley" type="external">populist</a> Democratic Party and its regulatory agenda. Along with the public sector, Hollywood, and their media claque, they present California as &#8220; <a href="http://freebeacon.com/the-california-captivity-of-the-democratic-party/" type="external">the spiritual inspiration</a>&#8221; for modern &#8220;progressives&#8221; across the country.</p> <p>Through their embrace of and financial support for the state&#8217;s regulatory regime, the oligarchs have made job creation in non tech-businesses&#8212;manufacturing, energy, agriculture&#8212;increasingly difficult through &#8220;green energy&#8221; initiatives that are also sure to boost <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/24/report-costly-state-energy-policies-to-raise-california-power-costs-by-33-percent/" type="external">already high utility costs</a>. One critic, state Democratic Senator Roderick Wright from heavily minority Inglewood, compares the state&#8217;s regulatory regime to the &#8220;vig&#8221; or high interest charged by the Mafia, calling it a major reason for disinvestment in many industries.</p> <p>Yet even in Silicon Valley, the expansion of prosperity has been extraordinarily limited. Due to enormous losses suffered in the current tech bubble, tech job creation in Silicon Valley has barely reached its 2000 level. In contrast, previous tech booms, such as the one in the 90s, doubled the ranks of the tech community. Some, like UC Berkeley economist <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324576304579072773954985630.html" type="external">Enrico Moretti</a>, advance the dubious claim that those jobs are more stable than those created in Texas. But even if we concede that point for the moment, the Valley&#8217;s growth primarily benefits its denizens but not most Californians. Since the recession, California remains down something like 500,000 jobs, a 3.5 percent loss, while its Lone Star rival has boosted its employment by a remarkable 931,000, a gain of more than 9 percent.</p> <p>Much of this has to do with the changing nature of California&#8217;s increasingly elite&#8212;driven economy. Back in the 80s and even the 90s, the state&#8217;s tech sector produced industrial jobs that sparked prosperity not only in places like Palo Alto, but also in the more hardscrabble areas in San Jose and even inland cities such as Sacramento. The once huge California aerospace industry, centered in Los Angeles, employed hundreds of thousands, not only engineers but skilled technicians, assemblers, and administrators.</p> <p>This picture has changed over the past decade. California&#8217;s tech manufacturing sector has shrunk, and those employed in Silicon Valley are increasingly well-compensated programmers, engineers and marketers. There has been little growth in good-paying blue collar or even middle management jobs. Since 2001 state production of &#8220;middle skill&#8221; jobs&#8212;those that generally require two years of training after high-school&#8212;have grown roughly half as quickly as the national average and one-tenth as fast as similar jobs in arch-rival Texas.</p> <p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p> <p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p> <p>&#8220;The job creation has changed,&#8221; says Leslie Parks, a long-time San Jose economic development official. &#8220;We used to be the whole food chain and create all sorts of middle class jobs. Now, increasingly, we don&#8217;t design the future&#8212;we just think about it. That makes some people rich, but not many.&#8221;</p> <p>In the midst of the current Silicon Valley boom, incomes for local Hispanics and African-Americans, who together account for one third of the population, have actually declined&#8212;18 percent for blacks and 5 percent for Latinos between 2009 and 2011, prompting one local <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22524360/silicon-valley-job-growth-prodigious-returned-dot-com-boom-levels" type="external">booster</a> to admit that &#8220;Silicon Valley is two valleys. There is a valley of haves, and a valley of have-nots.&#8221;</p> <p>The Geography of Inequality</p> <p>Geography, caste, and land ownership increasingly distinguish California&#8217;s classes from one another. As Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and the wealthier suburbs in the Bay Area have enjoyed steady income growth during the current bubble, much of the state, notes economist Bill Watkins, endures Depression-like conditions, with stretches of poverty more reminiscent of a developing country than the epicenter of advanced capitalism.</p> <p>Once you get outside the Bay Area, unemployment in many of the state&#8217;s largest counties&#8212;Sacramento, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Fresno, and Oakland&#8212;soars into the double digits. Indeed, among the 20 American cities with the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tough-times-meet-americas-cities-with-the-highest-unemployment-rate-2010-5?op=1" type="external">highest unemployment rates</a>, a remarkable 11 are in California, led by Merced&#8217;s mind-boggling 22 percent rate.</p> <p>This amounts to what conservative commentator <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/07/08/liberal_apartheid_119115.html" type="external">Victor Davis Hanson</a> has labeled &#8220;liberal apartheid,&#8221; a sharp divide between a well-heeled, mostly white and Asian population located along the California coast, and a largely poor, heavily Latino working class in the interior. But the class divide is also evident within the large metro areas, despite their huge concentrations of affluent individuals. Los Angeles, for example, has the third highest rate of inequality of the nation&#8217;s 51 largest metropolitan areas, and the Bay Area ranks seventh.</p> <p>The current surge of California triumphalism, trumpeted mostly by the ruling Democrats and their eastern media allies, seems to ignore the reality faced by residents in many parts of the state. The current surge of wealth among the coastal elites, boosted by rises in property, stock, and other assets, has staved off a much feared state bankruptcy. Yet the the state&#8217;s more intractible problems cannot be addressed if growth remains restricted to a handful of favored areas and industries. This will become increasingly clear when, as is inevitable, the current tech and property boom fades, depriving the state of the taxes paid by high income individuals.</p> <p>The gap between the oligarchic class and everyone else seems increasingly permanent. A critical component of assuring class mobility, California&#8217;s once widely admired public schools were recently <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/08/local/la-me-calif-schools-20130108" type="external">ranked</a> near the absolute bottom in the country. Think about this: despite the state&#8217;s huge tech sector, California eighth graders scored 47th out of the 51 states in science testing. No wonder Mark Zuckerberg and other oligarchs are so anxious to import &#8220;techno coolies&#8221; from abroad.</p> <p>As in medieval times, land ownership, particularly along the coast, has become increasingly difficult for those not in the upper class. In 2012, four California markets&#8212;San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles&#8212;ranked as the most unaffordable relative to income in the nation. The impact of these prices falls particularly on the poor. According to the Center for Housing Policy and National Housing Conference, 39 percent of working households in the Los Angeles metropolitan area spend more than half their income on housing, as do 35 percent in the San Francisco metro area&#8212;both higher than 31 percent in the New York area and well above the national rate of 24 percent. This is likely to get much worse given that California median housing prices rose 31 percent in the year ending May 2013. In the Bay Area the increase was <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/bay-area-housing-prices-jump-43.html" type="external">an amazing 43 percent</a>.</p> <p>Even skilled workers are affected by these prices. An analysis done for National Core, a major developer of low income housing, found that prices in such areas as Orange County are so high that even a biomedical engineer earning more than $100,000 a year could not afford to buy a home there. This, as well as the unbalanced economy, has weakened California&#8217;s hold on aspirational families, something that threatens the very dream that has attracted millions to the state.</p> <p>This is a far cry from the 50s and 60s, when California abounded in new owner-occupied single family homes. Historian Sam Bass Warner suggested that this constituted &#8220;the glory of Los Angeles and an expression of its design for living.&#8221; Yet today the L.A. home ownership rate, like that of New York, stands at about half the national average of 65 percent. This is particularly true among working class and minority households. Atlanta&#8217;s African-American home ownership rate is approximately 40 percent above that of San Jose or Los Angeles, and approximately 50 percent higher than San Francisco.</p> <p>This feudalizing trend is likely to worsen due to <a href="http://www.newgeography.com/content/002781-california-declares-war-suburbia-ii-the-cost-radical-densification" type="external">draconian land regulations</a> that will put the remaining stock of single family houses ever further out of reach, something that seems related to a reduction in <a href="" type="external">child-bearing</a> in the state. As the &#8220;Ozzie and Harriet&#8221; model erodes, many Californians end up as modern day land serfs, renting and paying someone else&#8217;s mortgage. If they seek to start a family, their tendency is to look elsewhere, ironically even in places such as Oklahoma and Texas, places that once sent eager migrants to the Golden State.</p> <p>Breaking Down the New Feudalism: The Emerging Class Structure</p> <p>The emerging class structure of neo-feudalism, like its European and Asian antecedents, is far more complex than simply a matter of the gilded &#8220;them&#8221; and the broad &#8220;us.&#8221; To work as a system, as we can now see in California, we need to understand the broader, more divergent class structure that is emerging.</p> <p>The Oligarchs: The swelling number of billionaires in the state, particularly in Silicon Valley, has enhanced power that is emerging into something like the old aristocratic French second estate. Through public advocacy and philanthropy, the oligarchs have tended to embrace California&#8217;s &#8220;green&#8221; agenda, with a very negative impact on traditional industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and construction. Like the aristocrats who saw all value in land, and dismissed other commerce as unworthy, they believe all value belongs to those who own the increasingly abstracted information revolution than has made them so fabulously rich.</p> <p>The Clerisy: The Oligarchs may have the money, but by themselves they cannot control a huge state like California, much less America. Gentry domination requires allies with a broader social base and their own political power. In the Middle Ages, this role was played largely by the church; in today&#8217;s hyper-secular America, the job of shaping the masses has fallen to the government apparat, the professoriat, and the media, which together constitute our new Clerisy. The Clerisy generally defines societal priorities, defends &#8220;right-thinking&#8221; oligarchs, and chastises those, like traditional energy companies, that deviate from their theology.</p> <p>The New Serfs: If current trends continue, the fastest growing class will be the permanently property-less. This group includes welfare recipients and other government dependents but also the far more numerous working poor. In the past, the working poor had reasonable aspirations for a better life, epitomized by property ownership or better prospects for their children. Now, with increasingly little prospect of advancement, California&#8217;s serfs depend on the Clerisy to produce benefits making their permanent impoverishment less gruesome. This sad result remains inevitable as long as the state&#8217;s economy bifurcates between a small high-wage, tech-oriented sector, and an expanding number of lower wage jobs in hospitality, health services, and personal service jobs. As a result, the working class, stunted in their drive to achieve the California dream, now represents the largest portion of domestic migrants <a href="http://trends.truliablog.com/2013/02/why-do-people-leave-california/" type="external">out of the state</a>.</p> <p>The Yeomanry: In neo-feudalist California, the biggest losers tend to be the old private sector middle class. This includes largely small business owners, professionals, and skilled workers in traditional industries most targeted by regulatory shifts and higher taxes. Once catered to by both parties, the yeomanry have become increasingly irrelevant as California has evolved into a one-party state where the ruling Democrats have achieved a potentially permanent, sizable majority consisting largely of the clerisy and the serf class, and funded by the oligarchs. Unable to influence government and largely disdained by the clerisy, these middle income Californians are becoming a permanent outsider group, much like the old Third Estate in early medieval times, forced to pay ever higher taxes as well as soaring utility bills and required to follow regulations imposed by people who often have little use for their &#8220;middle class&#8221; suburban values.</p> <p>The Political Implications of Neo-Feudalism</p> <p>As Marx, among others, has suggested, class structures contain within them the seeds of their dissolution. In New York, a city that is arguably as feudal as anything in California, the emergence of mayoral candidate <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114509/bill-de-blasio-and-twilight-bloomberg-era" type="external">Bill de Blasio</a> reflected growing antagonism&#8212;particularly among the remaining yeoman and serf class&#8212; towards the gentry urbanism epitomized by Mayor Michael &#8220;Luxury City&#8221; Bloomberg.</p> <p>Yet except for occasional rumbling from the left, neo-feudalism likely represents the future. Certainly in California, Gov. Jerry Brown, a former Jesuit with the intellectual and political skills needed to oversee a neo-feudal society, remains all but unassailable politically. If Brown, or his policies, are to be contested, the challenge will likely come from left-wing activists who find his policies insufficiently supportive of the spending demanded by the clerisy and the serfs or insufficiently zealous in their pursuit of environmental purity.</p> <p>The economy in California and elsewhere likely will determine the viability of neo-feudalism. If a weaker economy forces state and local government budget cutbacks, there could be a bruising conflict as the various classes fight over diminishing spoils. But it&#8217;s perhaps more likely that we will see enough slow growth so that Brown will be able to keep both the clerisy and the serfs sufficiently satisfied. If that is the case, the new feudal system could shape the evolution of the American class structure for decades to come.</p>

California’s New Feudalism Benefits a Few at the Expense of the Multitude

https://thedailybeast.com/californias-new-feudalism-benefits-a-few-at-the-expense-of-the-multitude

2018-10-06

4left

California has been the source of much innovation from agribusiness and oil to fashion and the digital world Historically much richer than the rest of the country it was also the birthplace along with Levittown of the massproduced suburb freeways much of our modern entrepreneurial culture and of course mass entertainment For most of a century for both better and worse California has defined progress not only for America but for the world As late as the 80s California was democratic in a fundamental sense a place for outsiders and increasingly immigrants8212roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class Now instead of a land of opportunity California has become increasingly feudal According to recent census estimates the state suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the country By some estimates the state8217s level of inequality compares with that of such global models as the Dominican Republic Gambia and the Republic of the Congo At the same time the Golden State now suffers the highest level of poverty in the country8212235 percent compared to 16 percent nationally8212worse than longterm hard luck cases like Mississippi It is also now home to roughly onethird of the nation8217s welfare recipients almost three times its proportion of the nation8217s population Like medieval serfs increasing numbers of Californians are downwardly mobile and doing worse than their parents native born Latinos actually have shorter lifespans than their parents according to one recent report Nor are things expected to get better any time soon According to a recent Hoover Institution survey most Californians expect their incomes to stagnate in the coming six months a sense widely shared among the young whites Latinos females and the less educated Some of these trends can be found nationwide but they have become pronounced and are metastasizing more quickly in the Golden State As late as the 80s the state was about as egalitarian as the rest of the country Now for the first time in decades the middle class is a minority according to the Public Policy Institute of California The Role of the tech oligarchs California produces more new billionaires than any place this side of oligarchic Russia or crony capitalist China By some estimates the Golden State is home to one out of every nine of the world8217s billionaires In 2011 the state was home to 90 billionaires 20 more than second place New York and more than twice as many as booming Texas The state8217s digital oligarchy surely without intention is increasingly driving the state8217s lurch towards feudalism Silicon Valley8217s wealth reflects the fortunes of a handful of companies that dominate an information economy that itself is increasingly oligopolistic In contrast to the traditionally conservative or libertarian ethos of the entrepreneurial class the oligarchy is increasingly allied with the nominally populist Democratic Party and its regulatory agenda Along with the public sector Hollywood and their media claque they present California as 8220 the spiritual inspiration8221 for modern 8220progressives8221 across the country Through their embrace of and financial support for the state8217s regulatory regime the oligarchs have made job creation in non techbusinesses8212manufacturing energy agriculture8212increasingly difficult through 8220green energy8221 initiatives that are also sure to boost already high utility costs One critic state Democratic Senator Roderick Wright from heavily minority Inglewood compares the state8217s regulatory regime to the 8220vig8221 or high interest charged by the Mafia calling it a major reason for disinvestment in many industries Yet even in Silicon Valley the expansion of prosperity has been extraordinarily limited Due to enormous losses suffered in the current tech bubble tech job creation in Silicon Valley has barely reached its 2000 level In contrast previous tech booms such as the one in the 90s doubled the ranks of the tech community Some like UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti advance the dubious claim that those jobs are more stable than those created in Texas But even if we concede that point for the moment the Valley8217s growth primarily benefits its denizens but not most Californians Since the recession California remains down something like 500000 jobs a 35 percent loss while its Lone Star rival has boosted its employment by a remarkable 931000 a gain of more than 9 percent Much of this has to do with the changing nature of California8217s increasingly elite8212driven economy Back in the 80s and even the 90s the state8217s tech sector produced industrial jobs that sparked prosperity not only in places like Palo Alto but also in the more hardscrabble areas in San Jose and even inland cities such as Sacramento The once huge California aerospace industry centered in Los Angeles employed hundreds of thousands not only engineers but skilled technicians assemblers and administrators This picture has changed over the past decade California8217s tech manufacturing sector has shrunk and those employed in Silicon Valley are increasingly wellcompensated programmers engineers and marketers There has been little growth in goodpaying blue collar or even middle management jobs Since 2001 state production of 8220middle skill8221 jobs8212those that generally require two years of training after highschool8212have grown roughly half as quickly as the national average and onetenth as fast as similar jobs in archrival Texas Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast A speedy smart summary of all the news you need to know and nothing you dont 8220The job creation has changed8221 says Leslie Parks a longtime San Jose economic development official 8220We used to be the whole food chain and create all sorts of middle class jobs Now increasingly we don8217t design the future8212we just think about it That makes some people rich but not many8221 In the midst of the current Silicon Valley boom incomes for local Hispanics and AfricanAmericans who together account for one third of the population have actually declined821218 percent for blacks and 5 percent for Latinos between 2009 and 2011 prompting one local booster to admit that 8220Silicon Valley is two valleys There is a valley of haves and a valley of havenots8221 The Geography of Inequality Geography caste and land ownership increasingly distinguish California8217s classes from one another As Silicon Valley San Francisco and the wealthier suburbs in the Bay Area have enjoyed steady income growth during the current bubble much of the state notes economist Bill Watkins endures Depressionlike conditions with stretches of poverty more reminiscent of a developing country than the epicenter of advanced capitalism Once you get outside the Bay Area unemployment in many of the state8217s largest counties8212Sacramento Los Angeles Riverside San Bernardino Fresno and Oakland8212soars into the double digits Indeed among the 20 American cities with the highest unemployment rates a remarkable 11 are in California led by Merced8217s mindboggling 22 percent rate This amounts to what conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson has labeled 8220liberal apartheid8221 a sharp divide between a wellheeled mostly white and Asian population located along the California coast and a largely poor heavily Latino working class in the interior But the class divide is also evident within the large metro areas despite their huge concentrations of affluent individuals Los Angeles for example has the third highest rate of inequality of the nation8217s 51 largest metropolitan areas and the Bay Area ranks seventh The current surge of California triumphalism trumpeted mostly by the ruling Democrats and their eastern media allies seems to ignore the reality faced by residents in many parts of the state The current surge of wealth among the coastal elites boosted by rises in property stock and other assets has staved off a much feared state bankruptcy Yet the the state8217s more intractible problems cannot be addressed if growth remains restricted to a handful of favored areas and industries This will become increasingly clear when as is inevitable the current tech and property boom fades depriving the state of the taxes paid by high income individuals The gap between the oligarchic class and everyone else seems increasingly permanent A critical component of assuring class mobility California8217s once widely admired public schools were recently ranked near the absolute bottom in the country Think about this despite the state8217s huge tech sector California eighth graders scored 47th out of the 51 states in science testing No wonder Mark Zuckerberg and other oligarchs are so anxious to import 8220techno coolies8221 from abroad As in medieval times land ownership particularly along the coast has become increasingly difficult for those not in the upper class In 2012 four California markets8212San Jose San Francisco San Diego and Los Angeles8212ranked as the most unaffordable relative to income in the nation The impact of these prices falls particularly on the poor According to the Center for Housing Policy and National Housing Conference 39 percent of working households in the Los Angeles metropolitan area spend more than half their income on housing as do 35 percent in the San Francisco metro area8212both higher than 31 percent in the New York area and well above the national rate of 24 percent This is likely to get much worse given that California median housing prices rose 31 percent in the year ending May 2013 In the Bay Area the increase was an amazing 43 percent Even skilled workers are affected by these prices An analysis done for National Core a major developer of low income housing found that prices in such areas as Orange County are so high that even a biomedical engineer earning more than 100000 a year could not afford to buy a home there This as well as the unbalanced economy has weakened California8217s hold on aspirational families something that threatens the very dream that has attracted millions to the state This is a far cry from the 50s and 60s when California abounded in new owneroccupied single family homes Historian Sam Bass Warner suggested that this constituted 8220the glory of Los Angeles and an expression of its design for living8221 Yet today the LA home ownership rate like that of New York stands at about half the national average of 65 percent This is particularly true among working class and minority households Atlanta8217s AfricanAmerican home ownership rate is approximately 40 percent above that of San Jose or Los Angeles and approximately 50 percent higher than San Francisco This feudalizing trend is likely to worsen due to draconian land regulations that will put the remaining stock of single family houses ever further out of reach something that seems related to a reduction in childbearing in the state As the 8220Ozzie and Harriet8221 model erodes many Californians end up as modern day land serfs renting and paying someone else8217s mortgage If they seek to start a family their tendency is to look elsewhere ironically even in places such as Oklahoma and Texas places that once sent eager migrants to the Golden State Breaking Down the New Feudalism The Emerging Class Structure The emerging class structure of neofeudalism like its European and Asian antecedents is far more complex than simply a matter of the gilded 8220them8221 and the broad 8220us8221 To work as a system as we can now see in California we need to understand the broader more divergent class structure that is emerging The Oligarchs The swelling number of billionaires in the state particularly in Silicon Valley has enhanced power that is emerging into something like the old aristocratic French second estate Through public advocacy and philanthropy the oligarchs have tended to embrace California8217s 8220green8221 agenda with a very negative impact on traditional industries such as manufacturing agriculture energy and construction Like the aristocrats who saw all value in land and dismissed other commerce as unworthy they believe all value belongs to those who own the increasingly abstracted information revolution than has made them so fabulously rich The Clerisy The Oligarchs may have the money but by themselves they cannot control a huge state like California much less America Gentry domination requires allies with a broader social base and their own political power In the Middle Ages this role was played largely by the church in today8217s hypersecular America the job of shaping the masses has fallen to the government apparat the professoriat and the media which together constitute our new Clerisy The Clerisy generally defines societal priorities defends 8220rightthinking8221 oligarchs and chastises those like traditional energy companies that deviate from their theology The New Serfs If current trends continue the fastest growing class will be the permanently propertyless This group includes welfare recipients and other government dependents but also the far more numerous working poor In the past the working poor had reasonable aspirations for a better life epitomized by property ownership or better prospects for their children Now with increasingly little prospect of advancement California8217s serfs depend on the Clerisy to produce benefits making their permanent impoverishment less gruesome This sad result remains inevitable as long as the state8217s economy bifurcates between a small highwage techoriented sector and an expanding number of lower wage jobs in hospitality health services and personal service jobs As a result the working class stunted in their drive to achieve the California dream now represents the largest portion of domestic migrants out of the state The Yeomanry In neofeudalist California the biggest losers tend to be the old private sector middle class This includes largely small business owners professionals and skilled workers in traditional industries most targeted by regulatory shifts and higher taxes Once catered to by both parties the yeomanry have become increasingly irrelevant as California has evolved into a oneparty state where the ruling Democrats have achieved a potentially permanent sizable majority consisting largely of the clerisy and the serf class and funded by the oligarchs Unable to influence government and largely disdained by the clerisy these middle income Californians are becoming a permanent outsider group much like the old Third Estate in early medieval times forced to pay ever higher taxes as well as soaring utility bills and required to follow regulations imposed by people who often have little use for their 8220middle class8221 suburban values The Political Implications of NeoFeudalism As Marx among others has suggested class structures contain within them the seeds of their dissolution In New York a city that is arguably as feudal as anything in California the emergence of mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio reflected growing antagonism8212particularly among the remaining yeoman and serf class8212 towards the gentry urbanism epitomized by Mayor Michael 8220Luxury City8221 Bloomberg Yet except for occasional rumbling from the left neofeudalism likely represents the future Certainly in California Gov Jerry Brown a former Jesuit with the intellectual and political skills needed to oversee a neofeudal society remains all but unassailable politically If Brown or his policies are to be contested the challenge will likely come from leftwing activists who find his policies insufficiently supportive of the spending demanded by the clerisy and the serfs or insufficiently zealous in their pursuit of environmental purity The economy in California and elsewhere likely will determine the viability of neofeudalism If a weaker economy forces state and local government budget cutbacks there could be a bruising conflict as the various classes fight over diminishing spoils But it8217s perhaps more likely that we will see enough slow growth so that Brown will be able to keep both the clerisy and the serfs sufficiently satisfied If that is the case the new feudal system could shape the evolution of the American class structure for decades to come

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<p>Jan 24 (Reuters) - Continental Holdings Ltd:</p> <p>* APPLICATION MADE TO STOCK EXCHANGE FOR RESUMPTION OF TRADING IN SHARES OF CO ON STOCK EXCHANGE FROM 9:00 A.M. ON 25 JAN</p> <p>* UNIT TO SELL 50 PCT OF ISSUED SHARES OF WEALTH PLUS AND 50 PCT OF SHAREHOLDER LOANS OWING BY WEALTH PLUS&#8203;</p> <p>* CONSIDERATION FOR DEAL IS EXPECTED TO BE ABOUT HK$1,308 MILLION</p> <p>* GROUP EXPECTS TO RECORD GAIN FROM DISPOSAL (BEFORE TAX AND EXPENSES) OF ABOUT HK$439 MILLION</p> <p>* &#8205;CONSIDERATION SHALL BE SETTLED IN CASH Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Weinstein Company&#8217;s bankruptcy filing will not protect ex-Chairman Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault, an attorney for the studio told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Mary Walrath on Tuesday.</p> <p>&#8220;We are not here to protect Harvey Weinstein,&#8221; attorney Paul Zumbro said. &#8220;(The Weinstein Company) filing for bankruptcy relief in no way affects anyone&#8217;s ability to pursue civil or criminal claims against Harvey Weinstein.&#8221;</p> <p>Weinstein, who co-founded the company with his brother Bob and once was one of Hollywood&#8217;s most influential men, has been accused of sexual misconduct including rape by more than 70 women. He has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone. It has been unclear how his alleged victims would be treated in a potential bankruptcy filing.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy late Monday after it spent months looking for a buyer or investor. Texas private equity firm Lantern Capital agreed to buy the Company out of bankruptcy for $310 million, setting the floor for other bidders in a court-supervised auction scheduled for later this spring.</p> <p>The bankruptcy will halt victim&#8217;s lawsuits against the company and any sexual misconduct claims would likely be compensated only after secured creditors are paid in full. A failed offer for the studio from former Obama administration official Maria Contreras-Sweet included an $80 million to $90 million compensation fund that would supplement any insurance payouts victims would receive.</p> <p>As part of the bankruptcy filing, the Weinstein Company said it released anyone &#8220;who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein&#8221; from nondisclosure agreements.</p> <p>&#8220;Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers. Effective immediately, those &#8216;agreements&#8217; end,&#8221; the company said in an emailed statement.</p> FILE PHOTO - Harvey Weinstein speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri <p>In court Tuesday, the film studio also received approval to tap some of its bankruptcy loan to make payroll for its remaining employees.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company, which has won 28 Academy Awards, owns a film library of 277 feature films that have generated over $2 billion in aggregate box office receipts worldwide.</p> <p>Yet the company said in court papers it has lost about 25 percent of its workforce and many of its longtime business partners since October 2017, when accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public.</p> <p>&#8220;It is an understatement to say that the last six months have been trying for the company,&#8221; Chief Restructuring Officer Robert Del Genio said in court papers.</p> <p>The studio has spent months looking for a buyer or investor. Before the deal with Contreras-Sweet failed, the company had tried securing rescue financing from other investors.</p> <p>Lions Gate Entertainment Corp had made an earlier offer for some of the company&#8217;s assets, as had Qatar-owned film company Miramax, which was founded by Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein. Both could be among potential bidders in the auction.</p> <p>Movie producer Killer Content also said bankruptcy would be the best option for the company and that it may be interested in the studio&#8217;s assets in a bankruptcy auction.</p> <p>Launched in October 2005, the studio produced and distributed critically acclaimed hits including &#8220;The King&#8217;s Speech&#8221; and &#8220;Silver Linings Playbook,&#8221; as well as TV series such as long-running fashion reality competition &#8220;Project Runway.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - As a senior vice president at Wachovia and then Morgan Stanley during the dark months of the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis, Derek Peterson watched as colleagues lost their jobs and life savings and wondered if he was next.</p> <p>At the time, he was managing approximately $120 million in client assets, but was growing disenchanted with what he saw as a U.S. stock market driven by high-frequency trading and algorithms rather than fundamentals. He started looking for other opportunities, and soon stumbled on some of the first legal medical marijuana dispensaries that had opened in the San Francisco Bay Area.</p> <p>&#8220;I started looking at this through a finance guy&#8217;s eyes and saw that maybe there was something going on here,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>He soon discovered that dispensaries were bringing in sales of more than $4,000 per square foot, a rate higher than any U.S. retailer but Apple Inc , and more than 12 times the average $325 per square foot among all companies in the sector.</p> <p>&#8220;You had places the size of Starbucks bringing in $15 million a year, which is absurd,&#8221; Peterson said.</p> <p>He quit his day job at Morgan Stanley in late 2010, and in 2012 became chief executive officer and president of Terra Tech Corp, which is now a $247 million company that cultivates medical marijuana and whose shares trade on the over-the-counter market, making it one of the few publicly traded pot stocks.</p> <p>Peterson is not alone in the jump from Wall Street to weed.</p> <p>Ten years after the start of the financial crisis, what was once the province of shady stoners and drug cartels is now a thriving industry, with recreational marijuana legal in states ranging from California to Massachusetts. (Map: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2AFalvZ" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2AFalvZ</a>)</p> <p>Powering the expansion of the industry are former Wall Street executives like Peterson that hail from such staid firms as BlackRock Inc , Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Prudential Financial Inc, all of whom say that they might not have ever left traditional finance if not for the lingering damage of the 2008 crisis.</p> <p>There are few reliable numbers on how many former Wall Street professionals who now work in the cannabis industry, though those in the sector say that they expect the migration to accelerate as revenue growth continues to attract talent.</p> <p>Companies in the U.S. marijuana market posted revenues of approximately $6 billion in 2017, a 500 percent increase from the roughly $1 billion in 2011, according to estimates from Marijuana Business Daily, a trade publication.</p> FILE PHOTO: A billboard advertising marijuana in advance of the upcoming legalization of recreational marijuana in San Francisco, California, U.S., December 29, 2017. REUTERS/Jim Christie/File Photo <p>Approximately 250,000 people work in the sector, and both jobs and revenues are expected to double or triple over the next four years, the publication estimates.</p> <p>&#8220;The financial crisis and the stagnation of many industries in the U.S. in its aftermath have led many people to consider this a viable career,&#8221; said Chris Walsh, editorial vice president at Marijuana Business Daily.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) LINGERING FEARS OF WASHINGTON <p>Despite the growth prospects, many financial professionals are still too leery of federal law, which considers marijuana an illegal drug, to take a job in the industry until there are clear signals from Washington or a change in the makeup of government, said Ruth Epstein, a partner at San Francisco-based BGP Advisors, a business advisory firm that focuses on companies in the cannabis sector.</p> <p>In January, the Justice Department reversed a policy from the Obama administration which allowed states to legalize marijuana without fears of a federal crackdown. That has had a &#8220;chilling effect&#8221; on recruiting within the industry, Epstein said.</p> <p>&#8220;People have really been scared away from investing and to a large extent that same mentality is keeping the talent away,&#8221; said Epstein, a Harvard Business School graduate who spent nearly 10 years on the corporate finance desk at Goldman Sachs. That, in turn, has &#8220;created a massive opportunity for someone who understands finance and is willing to be out on the vanguard,&#8221; she added.</p> <p>Morgan Paxhia, co-founder of San Francisco-based Poseidon Asset Management, a $25 million hedge fund that focuses exclusively on the marijuana sector, was a trader on the municipal debt desk at UBS in New York during the financial crisis. He would pass by the Lehman Brothers building each day on the way to work, and it felt as if &#8220;the building were just cratering around you,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>He was laid off on March 9, 2009, the day that the U.S. stock market finally bottomed out. He spent a few years at a registered investment adviser before starting Poseidon with his sister, Emily, in 2013, attracted by the possibility of growth at a time when financial companies seemed to be overly cautious, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;If the financial crisis never happened we would have banks in this industry already, but they won&#8217;t push this industry forward because they&#8217;re too afraid,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s opened up huge opportunities for those who are willing to come in and capitalize it.&#8221;</p> <p>Peterson, the Terra Tech CEO, said that he now routinely fields calls from employees of large banks and investment firms who are looking to enter the industry. That is a steep change from his first few years in the pot sector, when it was still largely ruled by black-market growers and questionable outfits.</p> <p>&#8220;When I first started out, the fact that I had worked on Wall Street made me seem like a real outsider, to the point where people would ask, &#8220;Are you a narc?&#8217;&#8221; he said, referring to a federal narcotics officer. &#8220;It&#8217;s in the last two years that we&#8217;ve seen a tremendous influx of people from traditional business backgrounds.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us said at a bankruptcy court hearing on Tuesday that it was working hard to maximize payments to suppliers and lenders, as it starts to shutter 735 big-box toy stores across the United States.</p> FILE PHOTO - People pass by Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York, U.S., March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo <p>More than 50 suppliers, including Barbie maker Mattel ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">MAT.O</a>) and Lego, have objected in some form to the proceedings by the storied toy retailer to liquidate its U.S. business, putting 30,000 jobs at risk.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us had been trying to reorganize under U.S. Chapter 11 but last week said those efforts had failed and it was quickly running out of cash. It is also winding down its U.K business, but is looking for a buyer for operations in Canada, Europe and Asia.</p> <p>Some trade vendors are demanding the company return any unpaid inventory rather than selling it and using going out of business sales to pay secured lenders and bankruptcy lawyers, at their cost, court papers showed.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re making every effort to make sure (trade vendors) will be paid in full,&#8221; Lazard&#8217;s David Kurtz, who is advising Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us, testified at a hearing at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Virginia.</p> <p>The company is seeking approval for a March 26 deadline for bids for each of its foreign businesses, minus U.K., followed by an auction on March 29.</p> <p>It is also seeking approval for a series of U.S. liquidation procedures including a halt to more than $450 million in supplier payments as part of a plan that experts told Reuters could cause many small toy makers to disappear.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us was the last remaining specialty toy retailer in the United States. Hundreds of companies relied on its big-box stores as a showcase for both innovative toys as well as classics.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">Mattel Inc</a> 12.97 MAT.O Nasdaq -- (--%) MAT.O <p>Under trade agreements, vendors were required to ship goods to Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us on unsecured trade credit.</p> <p>In a court filing, Lego said any &#8220;wind-down must be implemented in a manner that is fair and equitable to all&#8221; of the company&#8217;s creditors.</p> <p>The U.S. Trustee, a bankruptcy watchdog, has also objected, saying that while it is &#8220;resigned&#8221; to the company&#8217;s future, it is concerned about certain of the procedures and relief proposed as part of the liquidation.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us financial advisor Bill Kosturos of Alvarez &amp;amp; Marsal was also testifying at the hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips, which could run into Wednesday.</p> <p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Wednesday, lifted by tensions in the Middle East and healthy demand, although rising U.S. output continued to weigh on markets.</p> FILE PHOTO: An oil well pump jack is seen at an oil field supply yard near Denver, Colorado, U.S., February 2, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo <p>U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 were at $63.69 a barrel at 0744 GMT, up 15 cents, or 0.2 percent, from their previous close.</p> <p>Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at $67.56 per barrel, up 14 cents, or 0.2 percent.</p> <p>Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday arrived in Washington for a state visit, raising speculation the United States could reimpose sanctions on Iran, following renewed criticism of the 2015 nuclear deal.</p> <p>&#8220;The presence of the Saudi Crown Prince...in Washington and his clear agenda to ramp up pressure on Iran, has for me, been the key driver...of oil, which rose strongly,&#8221; said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader.</p> <p>Analysts also pointed to the nomination of Mike Pompeo as new U.S. Secretary of State as a risk to oil markets, given he fiercely opposed the 2015 pact as a member of Congress.</p> <p>&#8220;The nomination of Mike Pompeo for U.S. Secretary of State...raises the likelihood of oil trade disruptions,&#8221; U.S. bank Citi said in a note.</p> <p>Should the United States reimpose sanctions against Iran, energy consultancy FGE said that would likely result in a 250,000 to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) drop in its exports by year-end.</p> <p>Analysts also pointed to healthy economic growth and a weak dollar as oil price drivers.</p> <p>In a sign of healthy demand, U.S. crude stocks fell by 2.7 million barrels in the week ended March 16 to 425.3 million, the American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday.</p> <p>Official U.S. production and inventory data will be released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) later on Wednesday.</p> <p>&#8220;The global economy is humming, and robust demand solidly underpins commodity prices,&#8221; said Norbert Ruecker, head of macro and commodity Research at Swiss bank Julius Baer.</p> <p>Despite this, he said seasonally low demand at the end of the northern hemisphere winter season meant he had &#8220;a rather cautious near-term outlook on commodities.&#8221;</p> <p>Looming over oil markets has been surging U.S. crude production C-OUT-T-EIA, which has risen by more than a fifth since mid-2016, to 10.38 million bpd, overtaking top exporter Saudi Arabia and putting the United States within reach of Russia&#8217;s 11 million bpd.</p> <p>&#8220;U.S. shale will continue to weigh on prices,&#8221; Singapore-based Phillip Futures said in a note.</p> <p>Still, some U.S. producers are holding back expansion in order to prevent a price crash.</p> <p>&#8220;Larger players are holding back capital expenditures in an attempt to avoid past mistakes,&#8221; said consultancy FGE.</p> <p>Reporting by Henning Gloystein; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Continental Holdings Says Unit To Sell 50% Of Wealth Plus Weinstein Co says its bankruptcy filing won't protect ex-chairman From Wall Street to weed: How the financial crisis lit up the pot industry Toys 'R' Us says 'making every effort' to pay vendors Oil edges up on Middle East tensions, but soaring U.S. output still weighs

https://reuters.com/article/brief-continental-holdings-says-unit-to/brief-continental-holdings-says-unit-to-sell-50-of-wealth-plus-idUSFWN1PJ0WQ

2018-01-24

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Jan 24 Reuters Continental Holdings Ltd APPLICATION MADE TO STOCK EXCHANGE FOR RESUMPTION OF TRADING IN SHARES OF CO ON STOCK EXCHANGE FROM 900 AM ON 25 JAN UNIT TO SELL 50 PCT OF ISSUED SHARES OF WEALTH PLUS AND 50 PCT OF SHAREHOLDER LOANS OWING BY WEALTH PLUS8203 CONSIDERATION FOR DEAL IS EXPECTED TO BE ABOUT HK1308 MILLION GROUP EXPECTS TO RECORD GAIN FROM DISPOSAL BEFORE TAX AND EXPENSES OF ABOUT HK439 MILLION 8205CONSIDERATION SHALL BE SETTLED IN CASH Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORKCHICAGO Reuters The Weinstein Company8217s bankruptcy filing will not protect exChairman Harvey Weinstein who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault an attorney for the studio told US Bankruptcy Court Judge Mary Walrath on Tuesday 8220We are not here to protect Harvey Weinstein8221 attorney Paul Zumbro said 8220The Weinstein Company filing for bankruptcy relief in no way affects anyone8217s ability to pursue civil or criminal claims against Harvey Weinstein8221 Weinstein who cofounded the company with his brother Bob and once was one of Hollywood8217s most influential men has been accused of sexual misconduct including rape by more than 70 women He has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone It has been unclear how his alleged victims would be treated in a potential bankruptcy filing The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy late Monday after it spent months looking for a buyer or investor Texas private equity firm Lantern Capital agreed to buy the Company out of bankruptcy for 310 million setting the floor for other bidders in a courtsupervised auction scheduled for later this spring The bankruptcy will halt victim8217s lawsuits against the company and any sexual misconduct claims would likely be compensated only after secured creditors are paid in full A failed offer for the studio from former Obama administration official Maria ContrerasSweet included an 80 million to 90 million compensation fund that would supplement any insurance payouts victims would receive As part of the bankruptcy filing the Weinstein Company said it released anyone 8220who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein8221 from nondisclosure agreements 8220Since October it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers Effective immediately those 8216agreements8217 end8221 the company said in an emailed statement FILE PHOTO Harvey Weinstein speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York December 5 2012 REUTERSCarlo Allegri In court Tuesday the film studio also received approval to tap some of its bankruptcy loan to make payroll for its remaining employees The Weinstein Company which has won 28 Academy Awards owns a film library of 277 feature films that have generated over 2 billion in aggregate box office receipts worldwide Yet the company said in court papers it has lost about 25 percent of its workforce and many of its longtime business partners since October 2017 when accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public 8220It is an understatement to say that the last six months have been trying for the company8221 Chief Restructuring Officer Robert Del Genio said in court papers The studio has spent months looking for a buyer or investor Before the deal with ContrerasSweet failed the company had tried securing rescue financing from other investors Lions Gate Entertainment Corp had made an earlier offer for some of the company8217s assets as had Qatarowned film company Miramax which was founded by Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein Both could be among potential bidders in the auction Movie producer Killer Content also said bankruptcy would be the best option for the company and that it may be interested in the studio8217s assets in a bankruptcy auction Launched in October 2005 the studio produced and distributed critically acclaimed hits including 8220The King8217s Speech8221 and 8220Silver Linings Playbook8221 as well as TV series such as longrunning fashion reality competition 8220Project Runway8221 Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters As a senior vice president at Wachovia and then Morgan Stanley during the dark months of the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis Derek Peterson watched as colleagues lost their jobs and life savings and wondered if he was next At the time he was managing approximately 120 million in client assets but was growing disenchanted with what he saw as a US stock market driven by highfrequency trading and algorithms rather than fundamentals He started looking for other opportunities and soon stumbled on some of the first legal medical marijuana dispensaries that had opened in the San Francisco Bay Area 8220I started looking at this through a finance guy8217s eyes and saw that maybe there was something going on here8221 he said He soon discovered that dispensaries were bringing in sales of more than 4000 per square foot a rate higher than any US retailer but Apple Inc and more than 12 times the average 325 per square foot among all companies in the sector 8220You had places the size of Starbucks bringing in 15 million a year which is absurd8221 Peterson said He quit his day job at Morgan Stanley in late 2010 and in 2012 became chief executive officer and president of Terra Tech Corp which is now a 247 million company that cultivates medical marijuana and whose shares trade on the overthecounter market making it one of the few publicly traded pot stocks Peterson is not alone in the jump from Wall Street to weed Ten years after the start of the financial crisis what was once the province of shady stoners and drug cartels is now a thriving industry with recreational marijuana legal in states ranging from California to Massachusetts Map tmsnrtrs2AFalvZ Powering the expansion of the industry are former Wall Street executives like Peterson that hail from such staid firms as BlackRock Inc Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Prudential Financial Inc all of whom say that they might not have ever left traditional finance if not for the lingering damage of the 2008 crisis There are few reliable numbers on how many former Wall Street professionals who now work in the cannabis industry though those in the sector say that they expect the migration to accelerate as revenue growth continues to attract talent Companies in the US marijuana market posted revenues of approximately 6 billion in 2017 a 500 percent increase from the roughly 1 billion in 2011 according to estimates from Marijuana Business Daily a trade publication FILE PHOTO A billboard advertising marijuana in advance of the upcoming legalization of recreational marijuana in San Francisco California US December 29 2017 REUTERSJim ChristieFile Photo Approximately 250000 people work in the sector and both jobs and revenues are expected to double or triple over the next four years the publication estimates 8220The financial crisis and the stagnation of many industries in the US in its aftermath have led many people to consider this a viable career8221 said Chris Walsh editorial vice president at Marijuana Business Daily Slideshow 2 Images LINGERING FEARS OF WASHINGTON Despite the growth prospects many financial professionals are still too leery of federal law which considers marijuana an illegal drug to take a job in the industry until there are clear signals from Washington or a change in the makeup of government said Ruth Epstein a partner at San Franciscobased BGP Advisors a business advisory firm that focuses on companies in the cannabis sector In January the Justice Department reversed a policy from the Obama administration which allowed states to legalize marijuana without fears of a federal crackdown That has had a 8220chilling effect8221 on recruiting within the industry Epstein said 8220People have really been scared away from investing and to a large extent that same mentality is keeping the talent away8221 said Epstein a Harvard Business School graduate who spent nearly 10 years on the corporate finance desk at Goldman Sachs That in turn has 8220created a massive opportunity for someone who understands finance and is willing to be out on the vanguard8221 she added Morgan Paxhia cofounder of San Franciscobased Poseidon Asset Management a 25 million hedge fund that focuses exclusively on the marijuana sector was a trader on the municipal debt desk at UBS in New York during the financial crisis He would pass by the Lehman Brothers building each day on the way to work and it felt as if 8220the building were just cratering around you8221 he said He was laid off on March 9 2009 the day that the US stock market finally bottomed out He spent a few years at a registered investment adviser before starting Poseidon with his sister Emily in 2013 attracted by the possibility of growth at a time when financial companies seemed to be overly cautious he said 8220If the financial crisis never happened we would have banks in this industry already but they won8217t push this industry forward because they8217re too afraid8221 he said 8220It8217s opened up huge opportunities for those who are willing to come in and capitalize it8221 Peterson the Terra Tech CEO said that he now routinely fields calls from employees of large banks and investment firms who are looking to enter the industry That is a steep change from his first few years in the pot sector when it was still largely ruled by blackmarket growers and questionable outfits 8220When I first started out the fact that I had worked on Wall Street made me seem like a real outsider to the point where people would ask 8220Are you a narc82178221 he said referring to a federal narcotics officer 8220It8217s in the last two years that we8217ve seen a tremendous influx of people from traditional business backgrounds8221 Reporting by David Randall Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Toys 8216R8217 Us said at a bankruptcy court hearing on Tuesday that it was working hard to maximize payments to suppliers and lenders as it starts to shutter 735 bigbox toy stores across the United States FILE PHOTO People pass by Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York US March 9 2018 REUTERSEduardo MunozFile Photo More than 50 suppliers including Barbie maker Mattel MATO and Lego have objected in some form to the proceedings by the storied toy retailer to liquidate its US business putting 30000 jobs at risk Toys 8216R8217 Us had been trying to reorganize under US Chapter 11 but last week said those efforts had failed and it was quickly running out of cash It is also winding down its UK business but is looking for a buyer for operations in Canada Europe and Asia Some trade vendors are demanding the company return any unpaid inventory rather than selling it and using going out of business sales to pay secured lenders and bankruptcy lawyers at their cost court papers showed 8220We8217re making every effort to make sure trade vendors will be paid in full8221 Lazard8217s David Kurtz who is advising Toys 8216R8217 Us testified at a hearing at US Bankruptcy Court in Richmond Virginia The company is seeking approval for a March 26 deadline for bids for each of its foreign businesses minus UK followed by an auction on March 29 It is also seeking approval for a series of US liquidation procedures including a halt to more than 450 million in supplier payments as part of a plan that experts told Reuters could cause many small toy makers to disappear Toys 8216R8217 Us was the last remaining specialty toy retailer in the United States Hundreds of companies relied on its bigbox stores as a showcase for both innovative toys as well as classics Mattel Inc 1297 MATO Nasdaq MATO Under trade agreements vendors were required to ship goods to Toys 8216R8217 Us on unsecured trade credit In a court filing Lego said any 8220winddown must be implemented in a manner that is fair and equitable to all8221 of the company8217s creditors The US Trustee a bankruptcy watchdog has also objected saying that while it is 8220resigned8221 to the company8217s future it is concerned about certain of the procedures and relief proposed as part of the liquidation Toys 8216R8217 Us financial advisor Bill Kosturos of Alvarez ampamp Marsal was also testifying at the hearing before US Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips which could run into Wednesday Reporting by Tracy Rucinski Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SINGAPORE Reuters Oil prices edged up on Wednesday lifted by tensions in the Middle East and healthy demand although rising US output continued to weigh on markets FILE PHOTO An oil well pump jack is seen at an oil field supply yard near Denver Colorado US February 2 2015 REUTERSRick WilkingFile Photo US West Texas Intermediate WTI crude futures CLc1 were at 6369 a barrel at 0744 GMT up 15 cents or 02 percent from their previous close Brent crude futures LCOc1 were at 6756 per barrel up 14 cents or 02 percent Saudi Arabia8217s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday arrived in Washington for a state visit raising speculation the United States could reimpose sanctions on Iran following renewed criticism of the 2015 nuclear deal 8220The presence of the Saudi Crown Princein Washington and his clear agenda to ramp up pressure on Iran has for me been the key driverof oil which rose strongly8221 said Greg McKenna chief market strategist at futures brokerage AxiTrader Analysts also pointed to the nomination of Mike Pompeo as new US Secretary of State as a risk to oil markets given he fiercely opposed the 2015 pact as a member of Congress 8220The nomination of Mike Pompeo for US Secretary of Stateraises the likelihood of oil trade disruptions8221 US bank Citi said in a note Should the United States reimpose sanctions against Iran energy consultancy FGE said that would likely result in a 250000 to 500000 barrels per day bpd drop in its exports by yearend Analysts also pointed to healthy economic growth and a weak dollar as oil price drivers In a sign of healthy demand US crude stocks fell by 27 million barrels in the week ended March 16 to 4253 million the American Petroleum Institute said on Tuesday Official US production and inventory data will be released by the Energy Information Administration EIA later on Wednesday 8220The global economy is humming and robust demand solidly underpins commodity prices8221 said Norbert Ruecker head of macro and commodity Research at Swiss bank Julius Baer Despite this he said seasonally low demand at the end of the northern hemisphere winter season meant he had 8220a rather cautious nearterm outlook on commodities8221 Looming over oil markets has been surging US crude production COUTTEIA which has risen by more than a fifth since mid2016 to 1038 million bpd overtaking top exporter Saudi Arabia and putting the United States within reach of Russia8217s 11 million bpd 8220US shale will continue to weigh on prices8221 Singaporebased Phillip Futures said in a note Still some US producers are holding back expansion in order to prevent a price crash 8220Larger players are holding back capital expenditures in an attempt to avoid past mistakes8221 said consultancy FGE Reporting by Henning Gloystein editing by Richard Pullin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Brazil&#8217;s Congress will finalize as soon as February legislation opening the way for deregulation of flights to and from the United States, Minister of Tourism Marx Beltrao said on Wednesday.</p> <p>Beltrao said he also expects legislators to approve a plan to allow foreign carriers a bigger chunk of Brazilian airlines. Both measures are part of a government drive to push down fares and boost tourism, which accounts for an estimated 3.7 percent of gross domestic product.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s already on the agenda as an urgent matter to be voted,&#8221; Beltrao said in an interview on a visit to New York, referring to the foreign ownership cap issue in particular.</p> <p>The minister said that the so-called Open Skies treaty with the United States would also be taken up at the beginning of the Brazilian legislative year in February. Beltrao said he did not expect major opposition to the agreement.</p> <p>The deal would clear the way for a partnership between American Airlines Group Inc and LATAM Airlines Group SA , allowing them to coordinate schedules and offer more connections.</p> <p>Flights between Brazil and the United States are expected to surge by 30 percent as a result of the treaty, said Vinicius Lummertz, president of Brazilian tourism board Embratur, citing American Airlines.</p> <p>Beltrao acknowledged that lifting Brazil&#8217;s 20 percent ceiling on foreign airline ownership is more controversial. Still, he said Azul SA, Brazil&#8217;s third-largest airline after Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA and LATAM&#8217;s local unit, is the only one opposed to the plan.</p> <p>He said that if ownership was opened 100 percent, &#8220;airlines from other countries will be able to enter the Brazilian market and fly domestically, so given that boosts competition for the existing players, that can hurt them financially,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But the others are against Azul&#8217;s position, they want to open the market.&#8221;</p> <p>Brazil&#8217;s government is open to lifting the ownership ceiling to somewhere between 50 and 100 percent initially, Beltrao said.</p> <p>The bill would allow foreign carriers such as Delta Air Lines Inc, which already has a 12 percent stake in Gol, to boost their holdings.</p> <p>Both measures are part of an effort to bring more visitors to Brazil, where tourism has grown more slowly than in neighboring Argentina and Colombia.</p> <p>Beltrao is promoting a new electronic visa for North Americans visiting Brazil and predicted that it would boost visits from the United States by at least 25 percent. (Reporting By Christian Plumb; editing by Grant McCool)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. film and TV studio The Weinstein Company, whose ex-Chairman Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault, filed for bankruptcy on Monday and said it was ending all non-disclosure agreements that may have silenced some women.</p> <p>The filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware follows accusations by more than 70 women against the company&#8217;s co-founder, Harvey Weinstein, who was one of Hollywood&#8217;s most influential men, of sexual misconduct, including rape. Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.</p> <p>The women who spoke out against Weinstein spurred a national movement against sexual harassment, with victims sharing their stories on social media and labeling them under the hashtag #MeToo.</p> <p>Texas private equity firm Lantern Capital agreed to buy Weinstein Company out of bankruptcy for $310 million. The firm's offer, saving the studio from winding down its business, will be subject to higher and better bids in a court-supervised auction scheduled for May 2. <a href="http://bit.ly/2prGdNm" type="external">bit.ly/2prGdNm</a></p> <p>The deadline for other bids is April 30.</p> <p>Lantern had been a potential investor in former Obama administration official Maria Contreras-Sweet&#8217;s bid for the studio, which was ultimately terminated.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company&#8217;s bankruptcy will halt victim&#8217;s lawsuits against the company and any sexual misconduct claims would likely only be compensated after secured creditors are paid in full. Maria Contreras-Sweet&#8217;s bid for the studio included a $80-90 million compensation fund that would supplement any insurance payouts victims would receive.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company, which has won 28 Academy Awards, owns a film library of 277 feature films that have generated over $2 billion in aggregate box office receipts worldwide.</p> <p>Yet the company said in court papers it has lost about 25 percent of its workforce and many of its long time business partners since October 2017, when accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public.</p> <p>&#8220;It is an understatement to say that the last six months have been trying for the company,&#8221; Chief Restructuring Officer Robert Del Genio said in court papers.</p> FILE PHOTO - Harvey Weinstein speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri <p>As part of the bankruptcy filing, the Weinstein Company said it released anyone &#8220;who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein&#8221; from nondisclosure agreements.</p> <p>&#8220;Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers. Effective immediately, those &#8216;agreements&#8217; end,&#8221; the company said in an emailed statement.</p> <p>In February, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein, alleging that Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed employees and the company failed to respond. Bob Weinstein co-founded the company and is the co-chairman.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace,&#8221; Schneiderman said in a statement after the company&#8217;s announcement on Monday.</p> <p>In its filing, the Weinstein Company listed $500 million to $1 billion in both liabilities and assets.</p> <p>The studio has spent months looking for a buyer or investor. Before the deal with Contreras-Sweet&#8217;s group failed, The Weinstein Company had tried securing rescue financing from other investors.</p> <p>Lions Gate Entertainment Corp had made an earlier offer for some of the company&#8217;s assets, as had Qatar-owned film company Miramax, which was founded by Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein. Both could be among potential bidders in the auction.</p> <p>Movie producer Killer Content also said bankruptcy would be the best option for the company, and that it may be interested in the studio&#8217;s assets in a bankruptcy auction.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company also won commitments from its bank lenders for a $25 million bankruptcy loan.</p> <p>Launched in October 2005, the studio produced and distributed critically acclaimed hits including &#8220;The King&#8217;s Speech&#8221; and &#8220;Silver Linings Playbook,&#8221; as well as TV series such as long-running fashion reality competition &#8220;Project Runway.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Marguerita Choy</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us said at a bankruptcy court hearing on Tuesday that it was working hard to maximize payments to suppliers and lenders, as it starts to shutter 735 big-box toy stores across the United States.</p> FILE PHOTO - People pass by Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York, U.S., March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo <p>More than 50 suppliers, including Barbie maker Mattel ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">MAT.O</a>) and Lego, have objected in some form to the proceedings by the storied toy retailer to liquidate its U.S. business, putting 30,000 jobs at risk.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us had been trying to reorganize under U.S. Chapter 11 but last week said those efforts had failed and it was quickly running out of cash. It is also winding down its U.K business, but is looking for a buyer for operations in Canada, Europe and Asia.</p> <p>Some trade vendors are demanding the company return any unpaid inventory rather than selling it and using going out of business sales to pay secured lenders and bankruptcy lawyers, at their cost, court papers showed.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re making every effort to make sure (trade vendors) will be paid in full,&#8221; Lazard&#8217;s David Kurtz, who is advising Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us, testified at a hearing at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Virginia.</p> <p>The company is seeking approval for a March 26 deadline for bids for each of its foreign businesses, minus U.K., followed by an auction on March 29.</p> <p>It is also seeking approval for a series of U.S. liquidation procedures including a halt to more than $450 million in supplier payments as part of a plan that experts told Reuters could cause many small toy makers to disappear.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us was the last remaining specialty toy retailer in the United States. Hundreds of companies relied on its big-box stores as a showcase for both innovative toys as well as classics.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">Mattel Inc</a> 12.97 MAT.O Nasdaq -0.25 (-1.89%) MAT.O <p>Under trade agreements, vendors were required to ship goods to Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us on unsecured trade credit.</p> <p>In a court filing, Lego said any &#8220;wind-down must be implemented in a manner that is fair and equitable to all&#8221; of the company&#8217;s creditors.</p> <p>The U.S. Trustee, a bankruptcy watchdog, has also objected, saying that while it is &#8220;resigned&#8221; to the company&#8217;s future, it is concerned about certain of the procedures and relief proposed as part of the liquidation.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us financial advisor Bill Kosturos of Alvarez &amp;amp; Marsal was also testifying at the hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips, which could run into Wednesday.</p> <p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CRM.N" type="external">CRM.N</a>) is in advanced discussions to acquire U.S. software maker MuleSoft Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MULE.N" type="external">MULE.N</a>), people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday, as it looks to expand its offerings beyond customer relationship management software.</p> FILE PHOTO - The Salesforce logo is pictured on a building in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Lily Jamali/File Photo <p>The acquisition, which the sources said could be worth more than $6 billion, would be Salesforce&#8217;s biggest ever deal, illustrating Chief Executive Marc Benioff&#8217;s push to supplement the company&#8217;s cloud-based portfolio with new technology.</p> <p>A deal could be announced as soon as this week, the sources said, cautioning that negotiations had not been finalized and that an agreement was not certain.</p> <p>The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Salesforce and MuleSoft declined to comment.</p> <p>MuleSoft shares jumped more than 20 percent to $39.88 after Reuters reported the talks, giving the company a market value of $5.3 billion. Salesforce shares were up 0.3 percent at $125.31.</p> <p>Based in San Francisco, MuleSoft makes software that automatically integrates disparate data, devices and applications to help companies&#8217; networks run faster. It could help Salesforce win business from customers which are not yet ready to transition their systems to the cloud.</p> <p>Buying MuleSoft would help Salesforce build a larger enterprise apps ecosystem around its own products, Barclays Plc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BARC.L" type="external">BARC.L</a>) analysts wrote in a research note, adding that MuleSoft could command a premium given its rapid growth and good fit.</p> <p>Salesforce Ventures, the company&#8217;s venture capital arm, led a $128 million funding round in MuleSoft in 2015.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CRM.N" type="external">Salesforce.com Inc</a> 125.12 CRM.N New York Stock Exchange +0.14 (+0.11%) CRM.N MULE.N BARC.L KO.N MCD.N <p>MuleSoft has more than 1,000 customers, including Coca-Cola Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=KO.N" type="external">KO.N</a>), McDonald&#8217;s Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MCD.N" type="external">MCD.N</a>), Spotify and Unilever ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ULVR.L" type="external">ULVR.L</a>). It went public about a year ago.</p> <p>Salesforce holds more than 18 percent of the global customer relationship management software market, followed by Oracle Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ORCL.N" type="external">ORCL.N</a>) with 9.4 percent, according to 2016 figures provided by research firm IDC.</p> <p>Alphabet Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) Google acquired a competitor of MuleSoft called Apigee Corp in a $625 million deal in 2016.</p> <p>Salesforce has benefited from companies switching to cloud-based services due to the lower costs and high level of scalability. Last month, it posted a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street targets, fueled by growth in its cloud-based sales and marketing software.</p> <p>Reporting by Liana B. Baker and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Rigby and Meredith Mazzilli</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices climbed to their highest level in three weeks on Tuesday as tension in the Middle East and the possibility of further falls in Venezuelan output helped offset the impact of growing U.S. crude production.</p> FILE PHOTO: A motorist holds a fuel pump at a Gulf petrol station in London April 18, 2006. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor/File Photo <p>Brent crude LCOc1 futures for May delivery rose $1.37 to $67.42 a barrel, a 2.07 percent gain. The global benchmark rose to $67.88 during the session, its highest level since late February.</p> <p>U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 futures for April delivery rose $1.34 to settle at $63.40 a barrel, a 2.2 percent gain. WTI traded between $62.08 and $63.81.</p> <p>The more active May U.S. crude futures CLc2 rose $1.41 to settle at $63.54 a barrel.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: Russia vs Saudi vs U.S. oil production - <a href="http://reut.rs/2G7AK80" type="external">reut.rs/2G7AK80</a>)</p> <p>Prices extended gains in post-settlement trading after data from the American Petroleum Institute showed a surprise draw in U.S. crude inventories.</p> <p>Stocks fell 2.7 million barrels in the week ended March 16 to 425.3 million barrels, according to the API, compared with analysts&#8217; expectations for an increase of 2.6 million barrels. Government inventory data is due on Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT).</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: World oil supply and demand balance - <a href="http://reut.rs/2FIxGvP" type="external">reut.rs/2FIxGvP</a>)</p> <p>Geopolitical risks were top of mind on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia called the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers a &#8220;flawed agreement&#8221; on Monday, on the eve of a meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> <p>Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from the accord between Tehran and six world powers, raising the prospect of new sanctions that could hurt Iran&#8217;s oil industry.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s an expectation that (Trump and Prince Mohammed) are going to take a harder line on Iran, and that&#8217;s bringing prices up,&#8221; said Phil Flynn, a senior energy analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago.</p> <p>Worries about falling production in Venezuela, whose output has been halved since 2005 to below 2 million barrels per day (bpd) PRODN-VE due to the country&#8217;s economic crisis, also supported oil markets.</p> <p>The International Energy Agency said last week Venezuela was &#8220;vulnerable to an accelerated decline&#8221; and that the Latin American country could trigger a renewed drawdown in stocks.</p> <p>However, increased output in the United States, Canada and Brazil has capped oil price gains. U.S. crude oil production C-OUT-T-EIA has risen more than a fifth since mid-2016, to 10.38 million bpd.</p> <p>The ramped-up production threatens to undermine cuts made by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in an effort to draw down a global supply glut.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: U.S. vs Venezuela oil production since 2005 - <a href="http://reut.rs/2FWXdBH" type="external">reut.rs/2FWXdBH</a>)</p> <p>Appetite for U.S. crude is adding to the headache facing OPEC. A widening discount of WTI to Brent crude makes it more attractive for foreign refiners to process U.S. oil. Brent is the benchmark for several Middle East and other global crudes.</p> <p>The premium of Brent crude to WTI WTCLc1-LCOc1 rose above $4 a barrel on Tuesday.</p> <p>Gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange RBc1 rose 2.1 percent on Tuesday to settle at $1.9659 a gallon, the highest level since August 2017.</p> <p>Data from market intelligence firm Genscape showed gasoline inventories in the New York Harbor region fell by about 1.1 million barrels last week, traders who saw the data said.</p> <p>Heating oil futures HOc1 rose 2.2 percent to finish at $1.9495 a gallon, their highest settle since late February.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Brazil seen clearing 'Open Skies,' lifting airline ownership cap -minister Weinstein Co files for bankruptcy, ends all non-disclosure agreements Toys 'R' Us says 'making every effort' to pay vendors Exclusive: Salesforce in advanced talks to buy MuleSoft - sources Oil rises to three-week high on Mideast tensions, Venezuela concerns

https://reuters.com/article/brazil-tourism/brazil-seen-clearing-open-skies-lifting-airline-ownership-cap-minister-idUSL2N1PJ1TE

2018-01-24

2least

NEW YORK Jan 24 Reuters Brazil8217s Congress will finalize as soon as February legislation opening the way for deregulation of flights to and from the United States Minister of Tourism Marx Beltrao said on Wednesday Beltrao said he also expects legislators to approve a plan to allow foreign carriers a bigger chunk of Brazilian airlines Both measures are part of a government drive to push down fares and boost tourism which accounts for an estimated 37 percent of gross domestic product 8220It8217s already on the agenda as an urgent matter to be voted8221 Beltrao said in an interview on a visit to New York referring to the foreign ownership cap issue in particular The minister said that the socalled Open Skies treaty with the United States would also be taken up at the beginning of the Brazilian legislative year in February Beltrao said he did not expect major opposition to the agreement The deal would clear the way for a partnership between American Airlines Group Inc and LATAM Airlines Group SA allowing them to coordinate schedules and offer more connections Flights between Brazil and the United States are expected to surge by 30 percent as a result of the treaty said Vinicius Lummertz president of Brazilian tourism board Embratur citing American Airlines Beltrao acknowledged that lifting Brazil8217s 20 percent ceiling on foreign airline ownership is more controversial Still he said Azul SA Brazil8217s thirdlargest airline after Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA and LATAM8217s local unit is the only one opposed to the plan He said that if ownership was opened 100 percent 8220airlines from other countries will be able to enter the Brazilian market and fly domestically so given that boosts competition for the existing players that can hurt them financially8221 he said 8220But the others are against Azul8217s position they want to open the market8221 Brazil8217s government is open to lifting the ownership ceiling to somewhere between 50 and 100 percent initially Beltrao said The bill would allow foreign carriers such as Delta Air Lines Inc which already has a 12 percent stake in Gol to boost their holdings Both measures are part of an effort to bring more visitors to Brazil where tourism has grown more slowly than in neighboring Argentina and Colombia Beltrao is promoting a new electronic visa for North Americans visiting Brazil and predicted that it would boost visits from the United States by at least 25 percent Reporting By Christian Plumb editing by Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORKCHICAGO Reuters US film and TV studio The Weinstein Company whose exChairman Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault filed for bankruptcy on Monday and said it was ending all nondisclosure agreements that may have silenced some women The filing in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware follows accusations by more than 70 women against the company8217s cofounder Harvey Weinstein who was one of Hollywood8217s most influential men of sexual misconduct including rape Weinstein has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone The women who spoke out against Weinstein spurred a national movement against sexual harassment with victims sharing their stories on social media and labeling them under the hashtag MeToo Texas private equity firm Lantern Capital agreed to buy Weinstein Company out of bankruptcy for 310 million The firms offer saving the studio from winding down its business will be subject to higher and better bids in a courtsupervised auction scheduled for May 2 bitly2prGdNm The deadline for other bids is April 30 Lantern had been a potential investor in former Obama administration official Maria ContrerasSweet8217s bid for the studio which was ultimately terminated The Weinstein Company8217s bankruptcy will halt victim8217s lawsuits against the company and any sexual misconduct claims would likely only be compensated after secured creditors are paid in full Maria ContrerasSweet8217s bid for the studio included a 8090 million compensation fund that would supplement any insurance payouts victims would receive The Weinstein Company which has won 28 Academy Awards owns a film library of 277 feature films that have generated over 2 billion in aggregate box office receipts worldwide Yet the company said in court papers it has lost about 25 percent of its workforce and many of its long time business partners since October 2017 when accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public 8220It is an understatement to say that the last six months have been trying for the company8221 Chief Restructuring Officer Robert Del Genio said in court papers FILE PHOTO Harvey Weinstein speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York December 5 2012 REUTERSCarlo Allegri As part of the bankruptcy filing the Weinstein Company said it released anyone 8220who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein8221 from nondisclosure agreements 8220Since October it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers Effective immediately those 8216agreements8217 end8221 the company said in an emailed statement In February New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued The Weinstein Company Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein alleging that Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed employees and the company failed to respond Bob Weinstein cofounded the company and is the cochairman 8220This is a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace8221 Schneiderman said in a statement after the company8217s announcement on Monday In its filing the Weinstein Company listed 500 million to 1 billion in both liabilities and assets The studio has spent months looking for a buyer or investor Before the deal with ContrerasSweet8217s group failed The Weinstein Company had tried securing rescue financing from other investors Lions Gate Entertainment Corp had made an earlier offer for some of the company8217s assets as had Qatarowned film company Miramax which was founded by Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein Both could be among potential bidders in the auction Movie producer Killer Content also said bankruptcy would be the best option for the company and that it may be interested in the studio8217s assets in a bankruptcy auction The Weinstein Company also won commitments from its bank lenders for a 25 million bankruptcy loan Launched in October 2005 the studio produced and distributed critically acclaimed hits including 8220The King8217s Speech8221 and 8220Silver Linings Playbook8221 as well as TV series such as longrunning fashion reality competition 8220Project Runway8221 Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Toys 8216R8217 Us said at a bankruptcy court hearing on Tuesday that it was working hard to maximize payments to suppliers and lenders as it starts to shutter 735 bigbox toy stores across the United States FILE PHOTO People pass by Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York US March 9 2018 REUTERSEduardo MunozFile Photo More than 50 suppliers including Barbie maker Mattel MATO and Lego have objected in some form to the proceedings by the storied toy retailer to liquidate its US business putting 30000 jobs at risk Toys 8216R8217 Us had been trying to reorganize under US Chapter 11 but last week said those efforts had failed and it was quickly running out of cash It is also winding down its UK business but is looking for a buyer for operations in Canada Europe and Asia Some trade vendors are demanding the company return any unpaid inventory rather than selling it and using going out of business sales to pay secured lenders and bankruptcy lawyers at their cost court papers showed 8220We8217re making every effort to make sure trade vendors will be paid in full8221 Lazard8217s David Kurtz who is advising Toys 8216R8217 Us testified at a hearing at US Bankruptcy Court in Richmond Virginia The company is seeking approval for a March 26 deadline for bids for each of its foreign businesses minus UK followed by an auction on March 29 It is also seeking approval for a series of US liquidation procedures including a halt to more than 450 million in supplier payments as part of a plan that experts told Reuters could cause many small toy makers to disappear Toys 8216R8217 Us was the last remaining specialty toy retailer in the United States Hundreds of companies relied on its bigbox stores as a showcase for both innovative toys as well as classics Mattel Inc 1297 MATO Nasdaq 025 189 MATO Under trade agreements vendors were required to ship goods to Toys 8216R8217 Us on unsecured trade credit In a court filing Lego said any 8220winddown must be implemented in a manner that is fair and equitable to all8221 of the company8217s creditors The US Trustee a bankruptcy watchdog has also objected saying that while it is 8220resigned8221 to the company8217s future it is concerned about certain of the procedures and relief proposed as part of the liquidation Toys 8216R8217 Us financial advisor Bill Kosturos of Alvarez ampamp Marsal was also testifying at the hearing before US Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips which could run into Wednesday Reporting by Tracy Rucinski Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Salesforcecom Inc CRMN is in advanced discussions to acquire US software maker MuleSoft Inc MULEN people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday as it looks to expand its offerings beyond customer relationship management software FILE PHOTO The Salesforce logo is pictured on a building in San Francisco California US October 12 2016 REUTERSLily JamaliFile Photo The acquisition which the sources said could be worth more than 6 billion would be Salesforce8217s biggest ever deal illustrating Chief Executive Marc Benioff8217s push to supplement the company8217s cloudbased portfolio with new technology A deal could be announced as soon as this week the sources said cautioning that negotiations had not been finalized and that an agreement was not certain The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential Salesforce and MuleSoft declined to comment MuleSoft shares jumped more than 20 percent to 3988 after Reuters reported the talks giving the company a market value of 53 billion Salesforce shares were up 03 percent at 12531 Based in San Francisco MuleSoft makes software that automatically integrates disparate data devices and applications to help companies8217 networks run faster It could help Salesforce win business from customers which are not yet ready to transition their systems to the cloud Buying MuleSoft would help Salesforce build a larger enterprise apps ecosystem around its own products Barclays Plc BARCL analysts wrote in a research note adding that MuleSoft could command a premium given its rapid growth and good fit Salesforce Ventures the company8217s venture capital arm led a 128 million funding round in MuleSoft in 2015 Salesforcecom Inc 12512 CRMN New York Stock Exchange 014 011 CRMN MULEN BARCL KON MCDN MuleSoft has more than 1000 customers including CocaCola Co KON McDonald8217s Corp MCDN Spotify and Unilever ULVRL It went public about a year ago Salesforce holds more than 18 percent of the global customer relationship management software market followed by Oracle Corp ORCLN with 94 percent according to 2016 figures provided by research firm IDC Alphabet Inc8217s GOOGLO Google acquired a competitor of MuleSoft called Apigee Corp in a 625 million deal in 2016 Salesforce has benefited from companies switching to cloudbased services due to the lower costs and high level of scalability Last month it posted a quarterly profit that topped Wall Street targets fueled by growth in its cloudbased sales and marketing software Reporting by Liana B Baker and Greg Roumeliotis in New York Additional reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco Editing by Bill Rigby and Meredith Mazzilli Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Oil prices climbed to their highest level in three weeks on Tuesday as tension in the Middle East and the possibility of further falls in Venezuelan output helped offset the impact of growing US crude production FILE PHOTO A motorist holds a fuel pump at a Gulf petrol station in London April 18 2006 REUTERSLuke MacGregorFile Photo Brent crude LCOc1 futures for May delivery rose 137 to 6742 a barrel a 207 percent gain The global benchmark rose to 6788 during the session its highest level since late February US West Texas Intermediate WTI crude CLc1 futures for April delivery rose 134 to settle at 6340 a barrel a 22 percent gain WTI traded between 6208 and 6381 The more active May US crude futures CLc2 rose 141 to settle at 6354 a barrel GRAPHIC Russia vs Saudi vs US oil production reutrs2G7AK80 Prices extended gains in postsettlement trading after data from the American Petroleum Institute showed a surprise draw in US crude inventories Stocks fell 27 million barrels in the week ended March 16 to 4253 million barrels according to the API compared with analysts8217 expectations for an increase of 26 million barrels Government inventory data is due on Wednesday at 1030 am EDT 1430 GMT GRAPHIC World oil supply and demand balance reutrs2FIxGvP Geopolitical risks were top of mind on Tuesday Saudi Arabia called the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers a 8220flawed agreement8221 on Monday on the eve of a meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US President Donald Trump Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from the accord between Tehran and six world powers raising the prospect of new sanctions that could hurt Iran8217s oil industry 8220There8217s an expectation that Trump and Prince Mohammed are going to take a harder line on Iran and that8217s bringing prices up8221 said Phil Flynn a senior energy analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago Worries about falling production in Venezuela whose output has been halved since 2005 to below 2 million barrels per day bpd PRODNVE due to the country8217s economic crisis also supported oil markets The International Energy Agency said last week Venezuela was 8220vulnerable to an accelerated decline8221 and that the Latin American country could trigger a renewed drawdown in stocks However increased output in the United States Canada and Brazil has capped oil price gains US crude oil production COUTTEIA has risen more than a fifth since mid2016 to 1038 million bpd The rampedup production threatens to undermine cuts made by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in an effort to draw down a global supply glut GRAPHIC US vs Venezuela oil production since 2005 reutrs2FWXdBH Appetite for US crude is adding to the headache facing OPEC A widening discount of WTI to Brent crude makes it more attractive for foreign refiners to process US oil Brent is the benchmark for several Middle East and other global crudes The premium of Brent crude to WTI WTCLc1LCOc1 rose above 4 a barrel on Tuesday Gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange RBc1 rose 21 percent on Tuesday to settle at 19659 a gallon the highest level since August 2017 Data from market intelligence firm Genscape showed gasoline inventories in the New York Harbor region fell by about 11 million barrels last week traders who saw the data said Heating oil futures HOc1 rose 22 percent to finish at 19495 a gallon their highest settle since late February Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore Editing by Marguerita Choy and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>President Bush gave a false description of proposed legislation to expand the 10-year-old federal program to provide health insurance for children in low-income working families.</p> <p>He said it "would result" in covering children in families with incomes up to $83,000 per year, which isn&#8217;t true. The Urban Institute estimated that 70 percent of children who would gain coverage are in families earning half that amount, and the bill contains no requirement for setting income eligibility caps any higher than what&#8217;s in the current law. (The compromise bill that was released a few days after Bush&#8217;s press conference does rescind an administration effort to block New York state from increasing its eligibility cap to that level.)</p> <p>He also said the program was "meant to help poor children," when in fact Congress stated that it was meant to expand insurance coverage beyond the poor and to cover millions of "low-income" children who were well above the poverty line. Under current law most states cover children at twice or even three times the official poverty level.</p> <p>The president also says Congress&#8217; expansion is a step toward government-run health care for all. It&#8217;s true that some children and families with private insurance are expected to shift to the government program. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a shift is relatively low considering the number of uninsured these bills would reach.</p> <p>In President Bush&#8217;s Sept. 20 news conference, he <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070920-2.html" type="external">expressed</a> his displeasure with Congress&#8217; bill to expand the State Children&#8217;s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Bush said he supported the program and had called for an increase in funding for SCHIP of $5 billion over five years. But both the House and the Senate have called for a much larger expansion, one that would cost an additional $35 or $50 billion, with the House calling for the larger upgrade. Bush has a threatened a veto. In explaining his opposition to Congress&#8217; plans, however, he falsely characterized the bill in one instance and was misleading in others. (Today, congressional leaders <a href="http://www.senate.gov/%7Efinance/press/Gpress/2007/prg092107a.pdf" type="external">agreed</a> on compromise legislation that would call for the $35 billion increase. The full legislation will be available Monday.)</p> <p>Covering those making $83k?</p> <p>Bush: Their proposal would result in taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year.</p> <p>In fact, nothing in either the <a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&amp;amp;docid=f:h3162eh.txt.pdf" type="external">House</a> or <a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&amp;amp;docid=f:s1893pcs.txt.pdf" type="external">Senate</a> bill would force coverage for families earning $83,000 a year. That&#8217;s already possible under current law, but no state sets its cut-off that high for a family of four and the bill contains no requirement for any such increase. The Bush administration, in fact, just denied a request by New York to set its income cut-off at $82,600 for a family of four, a move New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and members of Congress from the state have vigorously <a href="http://www.ny.gov/governor/press/SCHIP_Letters.html" type="external">protested</a>. And Bush would retain the authority to deny similar applications under the proposed legislation. An Aug. 17 <a href="http://www.cms.hhs.gov/smdl/downloads/SHO081707.pdf" type="external">letter</a> to state health officials from the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Services outlined new guidelines for states that would make it quite difficult for states to raise eligibility above 250 percent of the <a href="http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/07poverty.shtml" type="external">federal poverty level</a> ($51,625 for a family of four). So Bush is simply wrong to say that the legislation "would" result in families making $83,000 a year to be eligible. It might happen in a future administration, but that would be possible without the new legislation.</p> <p>In fact, the vast majority of the children who stand to gain coverage under the proposed legislation are in families making half of the figure Bush gave. A <a href="http://www.urban.org/publications/411545.html" type="external">study</a> just released by the Urban Institute estimates that 70 percent of children who are projected to benefit from either the Senate or House bills are in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level (currently $41,300 for a family of four). Our several calls to the White House press office to pinpoint exactly what the president meant by the $83k remark were not returned.</p> <p>The Poor?</p> <p>Bush also misstated the intent of the SCHIP program by claiming it "was meant to help poor children." That&#8217;s false as well. Poor children, defined as those in families below the official federal poverty level, were already covered by Medicaid. The stated intent of Congress when it established the program in 1997 was to expand coverage beyond those who were poor to "uninsured low-income" children. And in Washington-speak, there&#8217;s a significant difference between "poor" and "low-income."</p> <p>Congress didn&#8217;t specify exactly what it meant by "low-income" in the bill that became law or the <a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=105_cong_reports&amp;amp;docid=f:hr217.105.pdf" type="external">conference report</a> that accompanied it on final passage, and reasonable people can certainly come up with different definitions. However, if one defines "low" as meaning "lower than most families make," then there is plenty of room to expand the current SCHIP program without violating the original aim stated by Congress in 1997.</p> <p>Currently, the state with the highest income cap is New Jersey, where a family of four making up to $72,275 is eligible. (See chart at left for current cut-offs for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.) That&#8217;s well below the median income for a family of four in that state, which was $94,441 in 2006 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median means half of all families made less than that, and half made more. So even New Jersey&#8217;s ceiling for SCHIP is significantly lower than what most families in that state bring in.</p> <p>The same is true for all 10 of the jurisdictions with the highest ceilings. The median income for families of four last year was $84,472 in Hawaii, $93,821 in Connecticut, $94,017 in Maryland, $71,571 in D.C., $89,347 in Massachusetts, $63,274 in Missouri, $87,396 in New Hampshire, $74,072 in Pennsylvania, and $67,884 in Vermont. So under current law even the top 10 cover only families with income that is "low" compared to most others there.</p> <p>Bush: The proposal would move millions of American children who now have private health insurance into government-run health care. Our goals should be for children who have no health insurance to be able to get private coverage, not for children who already have private health insurance to be able to get government coverage&#8230;. Their S-CHIP plan is an incremental step toward the goal of government-run health care for every American.</p> <p>It is true that the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the House and Senate bills will cause some who recently had private coverage to sign up for SCHIP or Medicaid coverage, depending on how the state administers those programs. However, Bush is being misleading by leaving out additional details about this shift. The Congressional Budget Office director said he hasn&#8217;t seen another policy proposal that would reach as great a level of the uninsured with as low of an effect on those who had private insurance.</p> <p>Health care and government experts, including CBO Director Peter R. Orszag and MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber, have said that when the government offers programs that target the uninsured, those programs will inevitably be used by some who already have or could have private insurance. Experts call this effect "crowd-out."</p> <p>The House bill would extend <a href="http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8519/HR3162.pdf" type="external">coverage</a> to a total of 7.5 million people, 5 million of whom are uninsured, while the Senate bill would <a href="http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8584/08-28-CHIP.pdf" type="external">reach</a> 6.1 million, 4 million of whom are uninsured, according to CBO reports. The rest of those affected by the expansions would have private or other coverage. Those numbers give crowd-out rates of 32 percent for the House bill and 34 percent for Senate&#8217;s. Orszag said of the House crowd-out effect, "given the scale of the net reduction in the uninsured, it&#8217;s pretty much as good as you&#8217;re going to get. In other words, I have not seen any other proposals to reduce the number of uninsured children by 5 million with crowd-out rates that are lower than 33 percent. Again, in the absence of a mandate on an employer, or a mandate on an individual, or a mandate on state governments, CBO does not believe you&#8217;re going to do much better than these kinds of crowd-out rates."&amp;#160; (Our calculations show 32 percent from the CBO charts, which include numbers rounded to one decimal point.)</p> <p>Orszag made those remarks at an Aug. 29 <a href="http://www.allhealth.org/briefing_detail.asp?bi=112" type="external">conference</a> by The Alliance for Health Reform, where he also said that the bills included measures to minimize the crowd-out effect and that the Senate bill gave states incentives to target lower-income families. Gruber, who worked on the initial development of SCHIP, <a href="http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_110/110-ltr.022807.Gruber_ltr_to_Dingell.pdf" type="external">wrote</a> in a letter to Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the energy and commerce committee, that "no public policy can perfectly target the uninsured," but that expansions like SCHIP are the most cost-effective ways of increasing health coverage.</p> <p>Gruber: I have undertaken a number of analyses to compare the public sector costs of public sector expansions such as SCHIP to alternatives such as tax credits. I find that the public sector provides much more insurance coverage at a much lower cost under SCHIP than these alternatives. Tax subsidies mostly operate to "buy out the base" of insured without providing much new coverage.&amp;#160;</p> <p>As for SCHIP&#8217;s current crowd-out rate, a May 2007 CBO <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/80xx/doc8092/05-10-SCHIP.pdf" type="external">report</a> said that estimates vary but that the figure is &#8220;most probably&#8221; between 25 percent and 50 percent.</p> <p>The president says movement of people from private to public insurance under these bills is unacceptable, which is a matter of opinion. We feel this additional information is necessary to give a full picture of the bills&#8217; effects.</p> <p>A Better Way to Reach the Uninsured?</p> <p>After the president spoke, Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt continued to field press questions. He spoke highly of the president&#8217;s proposal to help the uninsured:</p> <p>Leavitt: He made a proposal at the State of the Union that, ironically, would have &#8212; according to the Lewin Group, would have provided insurance to 4.25 million children, children who currently do not have coverage. The bill that the President will veto will &#8212; is represented to offer 2.6 million insurance. However, 1.2 million of those already have private insurance, and 900,000 of them already qualify.</p> <p>We&#8217;re not sure where the 2.6 million or 1.2 million numbers come from. As we&#8217;ve said, according to the CBO analyses, the House bill would reach 7.5 million people, 2.4 million of whom had private or other coverage. The Senate bill would cover 6.1 million, 2.1 million of whom had private insurance.</p> <p>We do know where the 4.25 million figure comes from: According to John Sheils at the Lewin Group, the secretary simply misspoke. The Lewin Group did not analyze the effect Bush&#8217;s proposed tax refund program would have on children in particular; all Sheils could tell us with total confidence was that &#8220;more than a dozen&#8221; children would gain insurance under the plan. The group did <a href="http://www.lewin.com/NR/rdonlyres/B45E2670-8A65-4817-B68B-83B818616DDF/0/BushHealthCarePlanAnalysisRev.pdf" type="external">find</a> that Bush&#8217;s initial proposal would reduce the uninsured by 9.2 million, a disproportionate number of whom would be well above the poverty level. For instance, 38.6 percent of the uninsured with a family income of $100,000 or more per year would become newly insured, but only 3.8 percent of those making less than $10,000 would. (Lewin uses the Census&#8217; <a href="https://ask.census.gov/cgi-bin/askcensus.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=614&amp;amp;p_created=1091641666&amp;amp;p_sid=3BmYxhMi&amp;amp;p_accessibility=0&amp;amp;p_redirect=&amp;amp;p_lva=&amp;amp;p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzA4JnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz0mcF9wdj0mcF9jdj0mcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1mYW1pbHkgdW5pdA**&amp;amp;p_li=&amp;amp;p_topview=1" type="external">definition</a> of a family, which doesn&#8217;t differentiate based on family size.) The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, has <a href="http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/84xx/doc8496/07-30-HealthProposal-NoOfUninsured.pdf" type="external">estimated</a> that Bush&#8217;s proposal would lead to a net decrease of fewer than 0.5 million uninsured children.</p> <p>Finally, the president&#8217;s interpretation of the SCHIP program&#8217;s effect on taxes needs some context. Bush said, &#8220;The legislation would raise taxes on working people.&#8221; Actually, what SCHIP would do is increase the federal tobacco excise tax on all tobacco products. The federal government puts a tax of 39 cents a pack on cigarettes, with all revenue going into the general treasury fund. The House bill would increase that tax by 45 cents, while the Senate would tack on 61 cents, with the revenue specifically funding the SCHIP expansion.</p> <p>It is unclear what the president means by &#8220;working people.&#8221; But as the Congressional Research Service <a href="http://www.opencrs.com/rpts/RS22681_20070619.pdf" type="external">pointed</a> out, an increased cigarette tax means the &#8220;burden falls heavily on lower income people.&#8221; Statistics reported by the American Heart Association <a href="http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4559" type="external">showed</a> that smoking is &#8220;highest among persons living below the poverty level.&#8221; Forty-six million adults in the country are smokers.</p> <p>&#8211; by Lori Robertson and Jess Henig, with Brooks Jackson and Justin Bank</p> <p>Update: On September 24, the Senate Finance Committee <a href="http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/senate_hr976.pdf" type="external">released</a> the text of the compromise legislation, which went on to pass both houses of Congress that week. The CBO <a href="http://cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=8655&amp;amp;type=1" type="external">determined</a> that the bill would expand coverage to 5.8 million children, 3.8 million of whom are uninsured and 2 million of whom have or have access to private health insurance. That&#8217;s a crowd-out rate of 34 percent. About 79 percent of the new enrollees qualify under the existing eligibility guidelines, the CBO report said.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s what would happen to New York&#8217;s request to increase its eligibility cap to 400 percent of the poverty level: The new legislation would rescind the Aug. 17 letter from HHS that required states to meet certain requirements before they could raise eligibility above 250 percent of the poverty level. Instead, HHS would issue new requirements for states seeking to increase their caps above 300 percent. After Oct. 1, 2010, states failing to meet those requirements wouldn&#8217;t get federal funds for children above that 300 percent mark (see Sec. 116 of the bill).</p> <p>Also, states that meet the requirements and extend eligibility above 300 percent of the poverty level would get a reduced federal matching rate for children in families above that 300 percent threshold. States that already have a higher cap (only New Jersey) and those that were about to put one in place (only New York) would be exempt from that federal match restriction. So, New York could increase its income eligibility cap to $82,600 for a family of four for at least two years, until late 2010, as long as the state&#8217;s plan is approved by HHS. After that, to continue getting funds for children above the 300 percent level, the state would have to meet the federal government&#8217;s new guidelines. The president has a point in that the bill allows New York to increase its eligibility cap beyond what his administration was willing to permit. But with the eligibility restrictions and incentives the new legislation puts in place, it&#8217;s misleading for the president to say the bill is &#8220;turning [the program] into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to $83,000 a year.&#8221;</p> <p>United States, Congressional Budget Office. " <a href="http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8584/08-28-CHIP.pdf" type="external">H.R. 976, the Children&#8217;s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007</a>." 24 Aug. 2007.</p> <p>United States, Congressional Budget Office. " <a href="http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/85xx/doc8519/HR3162.pdf" type="external">H.R. 3162, the Children&#8217;s Health and Medicare Protection Act</a>." 1 Aug. 2007.</p> <p>Alliance for Health Reform. " <a href="http://www.allhealth.org/briefing_detail.asp?bi=112" type="external">Who&#8217;s Counting? What is crowd-out, how big is it and does it matter for SCHIP?</a>" Conference transcript. 29 Aug. 2007.</p> <p>Kenney, Genevieve M.; Cook, Allison; and Pelletier, Jennifer. " <a href="http://urbaninstitute.org/publications/411545.html" type="external">SCHIP Reauthorization: How Will Low-Income Kids Benefit under House and Senate Bills?</a>" Urban Institute. 17 Sept. 2007.</p> <p>Baumrucker, Evelyne P.; Fernandez, Bernadette; et al. " <a href="http://www.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34129_20070815.pdf" type="external">Medicaid and SCHIP Provisions in H.R. 3162 and S. 1893/H.R. 976</a>," Congressional Research Service. 15 Aug. 2007.</p> <p>Sheils, John, and Randy Haught. " <a href="http://www.lewin.com/NR/rdonlyres/B45E2670-8A65-4817-B68B-83B818616DDF/0/BushHealthCarePlanAnalysisRev.pdf" type="external">President Bush&#8217;s Health Care Tax Deduction Proposal: Coverage, Costs and Distributional Impacts</a>." The Lewin Group. 29 Jan. 2007.</p>

Bush’s False Claims About Children’s Health Insurance

https://factcheck.org/2007/09/bushs-false-claims-about-childrens-health-insurance/

2007-09-21

2least

President Bush gave a false description of proposed legislation to expand the 10yearold federal program to provide health insurance for children in lowincome working families He said it would result in covering children in families with incomes up to 83000 per year which isn8217t true The Urban Institute estimated that 70 percent of children who would gain coverage are in families earning half that amount and the bill contains no requirement for setting income eligibility caps any higher than what8217s in the current law The compromise bill that was released a few days after Bush8217s press conference does rescind an administration effort to block New York state from increasing its eligibility cap to that level He also said the program was meant to help poor children when in fact Congress stated that it was meant to expand insurance coverage beyond the poor and to cover millions of lowincome children who were well above the poverty line Under current law most states cover children at twice or even three times the official poverty level The president also says Congress8217 expansion is a step toward governmentrun health care for all It8217s true that some children and families with private insurance are expected to shift to the government program But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a shift is relatively low considering the number of uninsured these bills would reach In President Bush8217s Sept 20 news conference he expressed his displeasure with Congress8217 bill to expand the State Children8217s Health Insurance Program SCHIP Bush said he supported the program and had called for an increase in funding for SCHIP of 5 billion over five years But both the House and the Senate have called for a much larger expansion one that would cost an additional 35 or 50 billion with the House calling for the larger upgrade Bush has a threatened a veto In explaining his opposition to Congress8217 plans however he falsely characterized the bill in one instance and was misleading in others Today congressional leaders agreed on compromise legislation that would call for the 35 billion increase The full legislation will be available Monday Covering those making 83k Bush Their proposal would result in taking a program meant to help poor children and turning it into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to 83000 a year In fact nothing in either the House or Senate bill would force coverage for families earning 83000 a year That8217s already possible under current law but no state sets its cutoff that high for a family of four and the bill contains no requirement for any such increase The Bush administration in fact just denied a request by New York to set its income cutoff at 82600 for a family of four a move New York Gov Eliot Spitzer and members of Congress from the state have vigorously protested And Bush would retain the authority to deny similar applications under the proposed legislation An Aug 17 letter to state health officials from the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Services outlined new guidelines for states that would make it quite difficult for states to raise eligibility above 250 percent of the federal poverty level 51625 for a family of four So Bush is simply wrong to say that the legislation would result in families making 83000 a year to be eligible It might happen in a future administration but that would be possible without the new legislation In fact the vast majority of the children who stand to gain coverage under the proposed legislation are in families making half of the figure Bush gave A study just released by the Urban Institute estimates that 70 percent of children who are projected to benefit from either the Senate or House bills are in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level currently 41300 for a family of four Our several calls to the White House press office to pinpoint exactly what the president meant by the 83k remark were not returned The Poor Bush also misstated the intent of the SCHIP program by claiming it was meant to help poor children That8217s false as well Poor children defined as those in families below the official federal poverty level were already covered by Medicaid The stated intent of Congress when it established the program in 1997 was to expand coverage beyond those who were poor to uninsured lowincome children And in Washingtonspeak there8217s a significant difference between poor and lowincome Congress didn8217t specify exactly what it meant by lowincome in the bill that became law or the conference report that accompanied it on final passage and reasonable people can certainly come up with different definitions However if one defines low as meaning lower than most families make then there is plenty of room to expand the current SCHIP program without violating the original aim stated by Congress in 1997 Currently the state with the highest income cap is New Jersey where a family of four making up to 72275 is eligible See chart at left for current cutoffs for all 50 states and the District of Columbia That8217s well below the median income for a family of four in that state which was 94441 in 2006 according to the US Census Bureau The median means half of all families made less than that and half made more So even New Jersey8217s ceiling for SCHIP is significantly lower than what most families in that state bring in The same is true for all 10 of the jurisdictions with the highest ceilings The median income for families of four last year was 84472 in Hawaii 93821 in Connecticut 94017 in Maryland 71571 in DC 89347 in Massachusetts 63274 in Missouri 87396 in New Hampshire 74072 in Pennsylvania and 67884 in Vermont So under current law even the top 10 cover only families with income that is low compared to most others there Bush The proposal would move millions of American children who now have private health insurance into governmentrun health care Our goals should be for children who have no health insurance to be able to get private coverage not for children who already have private health insurance to be able to get government coverage8230 Their SCHIP plan is an incremental step toward the goal of governmentrun health care for every American It is true that the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the House and Senate bills will cause some who recently had private coverage to sign up for SCHIP or Medicaid coverage depending on how the state administers those programs However Bush is being misleading by leaving out additional details about this shift The Congressional Budget Office director said he hasn8217t seen another policy proposal that would reach as great a level of the uninsured with as low of an effect on those who had private insurance Health care and government experts including CBO Director Peter R Orszag and MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber have said that when the government offers programs that target the uninsured those programs will inevitably be used by some who already have or could have private insurance Experts call this effect crowdout The House bill would extend coverage to a total of 75 million people 5 million of whom are uninsured while the Senate bill would reach 61 million 4 million of whom are uninsured according to CBO reports The rest of those affected by the expansions would have private or other coverage Those numbers give crowdout rates of 32 percent for the House bill and 34 percent for Senate8217s Orszag said of the House crowdout effect given the scale of the net reduction in the uninsured it8217s pretty much as good as you8217re going to get In other words I have not seen any other proposals to reduce the number of uninsured children by 5 million with crowdout rates that are lower than 33 percent Again in the absence of a mandate on an employer or a mandate on an individual or a mandate on state governments CBO does not believe you8217re going to do much better than these kinds of crowdout ratesamp160 Our calculations show 32 percent from the CBO charts which include numbers rounded to one decimal point Orszag made those remarks at an Aug 29 conference by The Alliance for Health Reform where he also said that the bills included measures to minimize the crowdout effect and that the Senate bill gave states incentives to target lowerincome families Gruber who worked on the initial development of SCHIP wrote in a letter to Rep John Dingell chairman of the energy and commerce committee that no public policy can perfectly target the uninsured but that expansions like SCHIP are the most costeffective ways of increasing health coverage Gruber I have undertaken a number of analyses to compare the public sector costs of public sector expansions such as SCHIP to alternatives such as tax credits I find that the public sector provides much more insurance coverage at a much lower cost under SCHIP than these alternatives Tax subsidies mostly operate to buy out the base of insured without providing much new coverageamp160 As for SCHIP8217s current crowdout rate a May 2007 CBO report said that estimates vary but that the figure is 8220most probably8221 between 25 percent and 50 percent The president says movement of people from private to public insurance under these bills is unacceptable which is a matter of opinion We feel this additional information is necessary to give a full picture of the bills8217 effects A Better Way to Reach the Uninsured After the president spoke Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt continued to field press questions He spoke highly of the president8217s proposal to help the uninsured Leavitt He made a proposal at the State of the Union that ironically would have 8212 according to the Lewin Group would have provided insurance to 425 million children children who currently do not have coverage The bill that the President will veto will 8212 is represented to offer 26 million insurance However 12 million of those already have private insurance and 900000 of them already qualify We8217re not sure where the 26 million or 12 million numbers come from As we8217ve said according to the CBO analyses the House bill would reach 75 million people 24 million of whom had private or other coverage The Senate bill would cover 61 million 21 million of whom had private insurance We do know where the 425 million figure comes from According to John Sheils at the Lewin Group the secretary simply misspoke The Lewin Group did not analyze the effect Bush8217s proposed tax refund program would have on children in particular all Sheils could tell us with total confidence was that 8220more than a dozen8221 children would gain insurance under the plan The group did find that Bush8217s initial proposal would reduce the uninsured by 92 million a disproportionate number of whom would be well above the poverty level For instance 386 percent of the uninsured with a family income of 100000 or more per year would become newly insured but only 38 percent of those making less than 10000 would Lewin uses the Census8217 definition of a family which doesn8217t differentiate based on family size The Congressional Budget Office meanwhile has estimated that Bush8217s proposal would lead to a net decrease of fewer than 05 million uninsured children Finally the president8217s interpretation of the SCHIP program8217s effect on taxes needs some context Bush said 8220The legislation would raise taxes on working people8221 Actually what SCHIP would do is increase the federal tobacco excise tax on all tobacco products The federal government puts a tax of 39 cents a pack on cigarettes with all revenue going into the general treasury fund The House bill would increase that tax by 45 cents while the Senate would tack on 61 cents with the revenue specifically funding the SCHIP expansion It is unclear what the president means by 8220working people8221 But as the Congressional Research Service pointed out an increased cigarette tax means the 8220burden falls heavily on lower income people8221 Statistics reported by the American Heart Association showed that smoking is 8220highest among persons living below the poverty level8221 Fortysix million adults in the country are smokers 8211 by Lori Robertson and Jess Henig with Brooks Jackson and Justin Bank Update On September 24 the Senate Finance Committee released the text of the compromise legislation which went on to pass both houses of Congress that week The CBO determined that the bill would expand coverage to 58 million children 38 million of whom are uninsured and 2 million of whom have or have access to private health insurance That8217s a crowdout rate of 34 percent About 79 percent of the new enrollees qualify under the existing eligibility guidelines the CBO report said Here8217s what would happen to New York8217s request to increase its eligibility cap to 400 percent of the poverty level The new legislation would rescind the Aug 17 letter from HHS that required states to meet certain requirements before they could raise eligibility above 250 percent of the poverty level Instead HHS would issue new requirements for states seeking to increase their caps above 300 percent After Oct 1 2010 states failing to meet those requirements wouldn8217t get federal funds for children above that 300 percent mark see Sec 116 of the bill Also states that meet the requirements and extend eligibility above 300 percent of the poverty level would get a reduced federal matching rate for children in families above that 300 percent threshold States that already have a higher cap only New Jersey and those that were about to put one in place only New York would be exempt from that federal match restriction So New York could increase its income eligibility cap to 82600 for a family of four for at least two years until late 2010 as long as the state8217s plan is approved by HHS After that to continue getting funds for children above the 300 percent level the state would have to meet the federal government8217s new guidelines The president has a point in that the bill allows New York to increase its eligibility cap beyond what his administration was willing to permit But with the eligibility restrictions and incentives the new legislation puts in place it8217s misleading for the president to say the bill is 8220turning the program into one that covers children in households with incomes of up to 83000 a year8221 United States Congressional Budget Office HR 976 the Children8217s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007 24 Aug 2007 United States Congressional Budget Office HR 3162 the Children8217s Health and Medicare Protection Act 1 Aug 2007 Alliance for Health Reform Who8217s Counting What is crowdout how big is it and does it matter for SCHIP Conference transcript 29 Aug 2007 Kenney Genevieve M Cook Allison and Pelletier Jennifer SCHIP Reauthorization How Will LowIncome Kids Benefit under House and Senate Bills Urban Institute 17 Sept 2007 Baumrucker Evelyne P Fernandez Bernadette et al Medicaid and SCHIP Provisions in HR 3162 and S 1893HR 976 Congressional Research Service 15 Aug 2007 Sheils John and Randy Haught President Bush8217s Health Care Tax Deduction Proposal Coverage Costs and Distributional Impacts The Lewin Group 29 Jan 2007

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<p /> <p>People wait in line to enter the Northern Brooklyn Food Stamp and DeKalb Job Center in New York City in 2012. AP/Mark Lennihan</p> <p>OXFORD, England &#8212; The morning after my <a href="" type="internal">Feb. 20 debate</a> at the Oxford Union, I walked from my hotel along Oxford&#8217;s narrow cobblestone streets, past its storied colleges with resplendent lawns and Gothic stone spires, to meet <a href="http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=46" type="external">Avner Offer</a>, an economic historian and Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History.</p> <p>Offer, the author of &#8220; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Affluence-Self-Control-Well-Being-Britain/dp/0198208537/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1393801776&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=the+challenge+of+affluence" type="external">The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950</a>,&#8221; for 25 years has explored the cavernous gap between our economic and social reality and our ruling economic ideology. Neoclassical economics, he says, is a &#8220;just-world theory,&#8221; one that posits that not only do good people get what they deserve but those who suffer deserve to suffer. He says this model is &#8220;a warrant for inflicting pain.&#8221; If we continue down a path of mounting scarcities, along with economic stagnation or decline, this neoclassical model is ominous. It could be used to justify repression in an effort to sustain a vision that does not correspond to the real world.</p> <p /> <p>Offer, who has studied the rationing systems set up in countries that took part in World War I, suggests we examine how past societies coped successfully with scarcity. In an age of scarcity it would be imperative to set up new, more egalitarian models of distribution, he says. Clinging to the old neoclassical model could, he argues, erode and perhaps destroy social cohesion and require the state to engage in greater forms of coercion.</p> <p>&#8220;The basic conventions of public discourse are those of the <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Age_of_Enlightenment.html%20" type="external">Enlightenment</a>, in which the use of reason [enabled] us to achieve human objectives,&#8221; Offer said as we sat amid piles of books in his cluttered office. &#8220;Reason should be tempered by reality, by the facts. So underlining this is a notion of science that confronts reality and is revised by reference to reality. This is the model for how we talk. It is the model for the things we assume. But the reality that has emerged around us has not come out of this process. So our basic conventions only serve to justify existing relationships, structures and hierarchies. Plausible arguments are made for principles that are incompatible with each other.&#8221;</p> <p>Offer cited a concept from social psychology called the <a href="http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html%20" type="external">just-world theory</a>. &#8220;A just-world theory posits that the world is just. People get what they deserve. If you believe that the world is fair you explain or rationalize away injustice, usually by blaming the victim.</p> <p>&#8220;Major ways of thinking about the world constitute just-world theories,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The Catholic Church is a just-world theory. If the Inquisition burned heretics, they only got what they deserved. Bolshevism was a just-world theory. If <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/324575/kulak%20" type="external">Kulaks</a> were starved and exiled, they got what they deserved. Fascism was a just-world theory. If Jews died in the concentration camps, they got what they deserved. The point is not that the good people get the good things, but the bad people get the bad things. Neoclassical economics, our principal source of policy norms, is a just-world theory.&#8221;</p> <p>Offer quoted the economist <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Friedman.html%20" type="external">Milton Friedman</a>: &#8220;The ethical principle that would directly justify the distribution of income in a free market society is, &#8216;To each according to what he and the instruments he owns produces.&#8217;&amp;#160;&#8220;</p> <p>&#8220;So,&#8221; Offer went on, &#8220;everyone gets what he or she deserves, either for his or her effort or for his or her property. No one asks how he or she got this property. And if they don&#8217;t have it, they probably don&#8217;t deserve it. The point about just-world theory is not that it dispenses justice, but that it provides a warrant for inflicting pain.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Just-world theories are models of reality,&#8221; he said. &#8220;A rough and ready test is how well the model fits with experienced reality. When used to derive policy, an economic model not only describes the world but also aspires to change it. In policy, if the model is bad, then reality has to be forcibly aligned with it by means of coercion. How much coercion is actually used provides a rough measure of a model&#8217;s validity. That the Soviet Union had to use so much coercion undermined the credibility of communism as a model of reality. It is perhaps symptomatic that the USA, a society that elevates freedom to the highest position among its values, is also the one that has one of the very largest penal systems in the world relative to its population. It also inflicts violence all over the world. It tolerates a great deal of gun violence, and a health service that excludes large numbers of people.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;There are two core doctrines in economics,&#8221; Offer said. &#8220;One is individual self-interest. The other is the invisible hand, the idea that the pursuit of individual self-interest aggregates or builds up for the good of society as a whole. This is a logical proposition that has never been proven. If we take the centrality of self-interest in economics, then it is not clear on what basis economics should be promoting the public good. This is not a norm that is part of economics itself; in fact, economics tells us the opposite. Economics tells us that everything anyone says should be motivated by strategic self-interest. And when economists use the word &#8216;strategic&#8217; they mean cheating.&#8221;Offer argued that &#8220;a silent revolution&#8221; took place in economics in the 1970s. &#8220;Economists,&#8221; he said of the 1970s, &#8220;discovered opportunism &#8212; a polite term for cheating. Before that, economics had been a just-world defense of the status quo. But when the status quo became the welfare state, suddenly economics became all about cheating. <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game%20theory%20" type="external">Game theory</a> was about cheating. <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html%20" type="external">Public-choice theory</a> was about cheating. <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/asymmetricinformation.asp%20" type="external">Asymmetric information</a> was about cheating. The invisible-hand doctrine tells us there is only one outcome, and that outcome is the best. But once you enter a world of cheating there is no longer one outcome. It is what economists call <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+multiple+equilibria&amp;amp;oq=definition+of+multiple+equ&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.6970j0j8&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;espv=210&amp;amp;es_sm=122&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8" type="external">multiple equilibria</a>, which means there is not a deterministic outcome. The outcome depends on how successful the cheating is. And one of the consequences of this is that economists are not in a strong position to tell society what to do.&#8221;</p> <p>The problem, he said, is that the old norms of economics continue to inform our policy norms, as if the cheating norm had never been introduced.</p> <p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s take the doctrine of optimal taxation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If you assume a world of perfect competition, where every person gets their <a href="https://www.boundless.com/economics/definition/marginal-product/" type="external">marginal products</a>, then you can deduce a tax distribution where high progressive taxation is inefficient. This doctrine has been one of the drivers to reduce progressive taxation. But looking at the historical record this has not been accompanied by any great surge in productivity; rather, it has produced a great surge in inequality. So once again, there is a gap between what the model tells us should happen and what actually happens. In this case the model works, but only in the model, only if all the assumptions are satisfied. Reality is more complicated.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The standard in modern society is that government allocates between 40 to 50 percent of output,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This anomaly is not explained by economic theory. If people are making democratic choices in their self-interest, why have these large government structures been built up?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;There is very little analytical argument in economics in support of government, but its benefits are so overwhelming it continues to hang on,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;One of the issues here is when those in authority, whether political, academic or civic, are expounding their doctrines through Enlightenment idioms and we must ask, is this being done in good faith?&#8221; he said. &#8220;And here I think the genuine insight provided by the economics of opportunism is that we cannot assume it is being done in good faith.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;When I hear Republicans in the United States say that taking away people&#8217;s food stamps will do them good I ask, what do you know that allows you to say this? This rhetoric invokes the Enlightenment model. We all use it. It is improvement by means of reason. But Enlightenment discourse should not be taken at face value. We have to again ask whether it is being carried out in good faith.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Economics, political science and even philosophy, ever since rational choice swept through the American social sciences, have embraced the idea that an individual has no responsibility towards anyone except himself or herself,&#8221; he said. &#8220;A responsibility to anyone else is optional. The public discourse, for this reason, has become a hall of mirrors. Nothing anymore is what it seems to be.&#8221;</p> <p>Our current economic model, he said, will be of little use to us in an age of ecological deterioration and growing scarcities. Energy shortages, global warming, population increases and increasing scarcity of water and food create an urgent need for new models of distribution. Our two options, he said, will be &#8220;hanging together or falling apart.&#8221; Offer argues that we cannot be certain that growth will continue. If standards of living stagnate or decline, he said, we must consider other models for the economy. Given the wealth and resources of industrialized nations, he said, a drop in living standards to what they were one or two generations ago would still permit a good quality of life.</p> <p>Offer has studied closely the economies of World War I. Amid this catastrophe, he notes, civilian economies adapted. He holds up these war economies, with their heavy rationing, as a possible model for collective action in a contracting economy.</p> <p>&#8220;What you had was a very sudden transition to a serious scarcity economy that was underpinned by the necessity for sharing,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Ordinary people were required to sacrifice their lives. They needed some guarantee for those they left at home. These war economies were relatively egalitarian. These economics were based on the safety net principle. If continued growth in the medium run is not feasible, and that is a contingency we need to think about, then these rationing societies provide quite a successful model. On the Allied side, people did not starve, society held together.&#8221;</p> <p>However, if we cling to our current economic model &#8212; which Offer labels &#8220;every man for himself&#8221; &#8212; then, he said, &#8220;it will require serious repression.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;There is not a free market solution to a peaceful decline,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;The state of current political economy in the West is similar to the state of communism in the Soviet Union around 1970,&#8221; he went on. &#8220;It is studied widely in the university. Everyone knows the formula. Everyone mouths it in discourse. But no one believes it.&#8221; The gap between the model and reality is now vast. Those in power seek &#8220;to bring reality into alignment with the model, and that usually involves coercion.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The amount of violence that is inflicted is an indicator of how well the model is aligned with reality,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That doesn&#8217;t mean imminent collapse. Incorrect models can endure for long periods of time. The Soviet model shows this.&#8221;</p> <p>Violence, however, is ultimately an inefficient form of control. Consent, he said, is a more effective form of social control. He argued, citing <a href="http://www.johnkennethgalbraith.com/%20" type="external">John Kenneth Galbraith</a>, that in affluent societies the relative contentment of the majorities has permitted, through free market ideology, the abandonment, impoverishment and repression of minorities, especially African-Americans. As larger and larger segments of society are forced because of declining economies to become outsiders, the use of coercion, under our current model, will probably become more widespread. &#8220;One of the unresolved issues in social science is how does the system hold together,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We have the economic model of the invisible hand, the miracle of the market, but we know it is not true, since government allocates up to 50 percent of output and income. We don&#8217;t actually rely on the &#8216;free&#8217; market for our prosperity. Even the market sector is mostly dominated by entities with large market power.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We have this model that we are all selfish and somehow this generates the miracle of cooperation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But equilibrium is only a truism for the well-off. There is money in the bank. The car is in the drive. The shops are full. The semesters follow each other. There is an overseas conference. The world seems to be OK. But if you look the other way, look at these other people, there is a world of hardship, misery and suffering. These suffering people are not always visible to invisible-hand advocates.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Experimental economics has, in fact, demonstrated that when people are placed in experimental situations they do not behave as individualistic maximizers,&#8221; he went on. &#8220;Some of them do. Some of them do not.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220; <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Smith.html%20" type="external">Adam Smith</a>,&#8221; he noted, &#8220;wrote that what drives us is not, in the end, individual selfishness but reciprocal obligation. We care about other people&#8217;s good opinions. This generates a reciprocal cycle. Reciprocity is not altruistic. That part of the economic core doctrine is preserved. But if we depend on other people for our self-worth then we are not truly self-sufficient. We depend on the sympathy of others for our own well-being. Therefore, obligation to others means that we do not always seek to maximize economic advantage. Intrinsic motivations, such as obligation, compassion and public spirit, crowd out financial ones. This model can also motivate a different type of political and economic aspiration.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The free market norm assumes a frictionless exchange which maximizes everyone&#8217;s well-being,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The existence of &#8230; coercive instruments, such as the prisons and the enormous military, makes you think that the theory is not all it is purported to be. There is a gap between what it pretends to be and what it is.&#8221;</p> <p>Offer said that universities, which should be incubators of new and radical ideas, are being stripped of their ability to independently critique the widening gap between reality and the false models of reality that are disseminated by the elites.</p> <p>&#8220;The kind of willfulness with which I can talk to you now is not guaranteed for future scholars,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The academic system has discovered it is no longer necessary to provide tenure. This system is fraying. And this is deliberate. This independence is a source of trouble. When Stalin carried out his purges he purged the best and the brightest. These were an alternative source of power. And I think there is a sense in government and business that there is too much independence in academia. We need to be put in our place. The spirit of free inquiry, free expression, and to some extent free teaching, and communality is alien to the corporate and political culture, which are repressive hierarchies.&#8221;</p> <p>Those academics who deviate from the central core doctrines, including in economics, are finding themselves defunded. Oversight committees impose quotas on academics and insist that the work conform to what they call disciplinary norms.</p> <p>&#8220;The golden age of the university was in the postwar years, especially in the 1960s,&#8221; Offer said. &#8220;You saw great expansion. The university thrived under the auspices of the Cold War. But once the Cold War imperative disappears it is no longer as vital to maintain national capacity. Universities could be privatized.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The idea of the autonomous scholar is disappearing,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I am not sure many people even remember it.&#8221;</p>

Suffering? Well, You Deserve It

https://truthdig.com/articles/suffering-well-you-deserve-it/

2014-03-03

4left

People wait in line to enter the Northern Brooklyn Food Stamp and DeKalb Job Center in New York City in 2012 APMark Lennihan OXFORD England 8212 The morning after my Feb 20 debate at the Oxford Union I walked from my hotel along Oxford8217s narrow cobblestone streets past its storied colleges with resplendent lawns and Gothic stone spires to meet Avner Offer an economic historian and Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History Offer the author of 8220 The Challenge of Affluence SelfControl and WellBeing in the United States and Britain Since 19508221 for 25 years has explored the cavernous gap between our economic and social reality and our ruling economic ideology Neoclassical economics he says is a 8220justworld theory8221 one that posits that not only do good people get what they deserve but those who suffer deserve to suffer He says this model is 8220a warrant for inflicting pain8221 If we continue down a path of mounting scarcities along with economic stagnation or decline this neoclassical model is ominous It could be used to justify repression in an effort to sustain a vision that does not correspond to the real world Offer who has studied the rationing systems set up in countries that took part in World War I suggests we examine how past societies coped successfully with scarcity In an age of scarcity it would be imperative to set up new more egalitarian models of distribution he says Clinging to the old neoclassical model could he argues erode and perhaps destroy social cohesion and require the state to engage in greater forms of coercion 8220The basic conventions of public discourse are those of the Enlightenment in which the use of reason enabled us to achieve human objectives8221 Offer said as we sat amid piles of books in his cluttered office 8220Reason should be tempered by reality by the facts So underlining this is a notion of science that confronts reality and is revised by reference to reality This is the model for how we talk It is the model for the things we assume But the reality that has emerged around us has not come out of this process So our basic conventions only serve to justify existing relationships structures and hierarchies Plausible arguments are made for principles that are incompatible with each other8221 Offer cited a concept from social psychology called the justworld theory 8220A justworld theory posits that the world is just People get what they deserve If you believe that the world is fair you explain or rationalize away injustice usually by blaming the victim 8220Major ways of thinking about the world constitute justworld theories8221 he said 8220The Catholic Church is a justworld theory If the Inquisition burned heretics they only got what they deserved Bolshevism was a justworld theory If Kulaks were starved and exiled they got what they deserved Fascism was a justworld theory If Jews died in the concentration camps they got what they deserved The point is not that the good people get the good things but the bad people get the bad things Neoclassical economics our principal source of policy norms is a justworld theory8221 Offer quoted the economist Milton Friedman 8220The ethical principle that would directly justify the distribution of income in a free market society is 8216To each according to what he and the instruments he owns produces8217amp1608220 8220So8221 Offer went on 8220everyone gets what he or she deserves either for his or her effort or for his or her property No one asks how he or she got this property And if they don8217t have it they probably don8217t deserve it The point about justworld theory is not that it dispenses justice but that it provides a warrant for inflicting pain8221 8220Justworld theories are models of reality8221 he said 8220A rough and ready test is how well the model fits with experienced reality When used to derive policy an economic model not only describes the world but also aspires to change it In policy if the model is bad then reality has to be forcibly aligned with it by means of coercion How much coercion is actually used provides a rough measure of a model8217s validity That the Soviet Union had to use so much coercion undermined the credibility of communism as a model of reality It is perhaps symptomatic that the USA a society that elevates freedom to the highest position among its values is also the one that has one of the very largest penal systems in the world relative to its population It also inflicts violence all over the world It tolerates a great deal of gun violence and a health service that excludes large numbers of people8221 8220There are two core doctrines in economics8221 Offer said 8220One is individual selfinterest The other is the invisible hand the idea that the pursuit of individual selfinterest aggregates or builds up for the good of society as a whole This is a logical proposition that has never been proven If we take the centrality of selfinterest in economics then it is not clear on what basis economics should be promoting the public good This is not a norm that is part of economics itself in fact economics tells us the opposite Economics tells us that everything anyone says should be motivated by strategic selfinterest And when economists use the word 8216strategic8217 they mean cheating8221Offer argued that 8220a silent revolution8221 took place in economics in the 1970s 8220Economists8221 he said of the 1970s 8220discovered opportunism 8212 a polite term for cheating Before that economics had been a justworld defense of the status quo But when the status quo became the welfare state suddenly economics became all about cheating Game theory was about cheating Publicchoice theory was about cheating Asymmetric information was about cheating The invisiblehand doctrine tells us there is only one outcome and that outcome is the best But once you enter a world of cheating there is no longer one outcome It is what economists call multiple equilibria which means there is not a deterministic outcome The outcome depends on how successful the cheating is And one of the consequences of this is that economists are not in a strong position to tell society what to do8221 The problem he said is that the old norms of economics continue to inform our policy norms as if the cheating norm had never been introduced 8220Let8217s take the doctrine of optimal taxation8221 he said 8220If you assume a world of perfect competition where every person gets their marginal products then you can deduce a tax distribution where high progressive taxation is inefficient This doctrine has been one of the drivers to reduce progressive taxation But looking at the historical record this has not been accompanied by any great surge in productivity rather it has produced a great surge in inequality So once again there is a gap between what the model tells us should happen and what actually happens In this case the model works but only in the model only if all the assumptions are satisfied Reality is more complicated8221 8220The standard in modern society is that government allocates between 40 to 50 percent of output8221 he said 8220This anomaly is not explained by economic theory If people are making democratic choices in their selfinterest why have these large government structures been built up8221 8220There is very little analytical argument in economics in support of government but its benefits are so overwhelming it continues to hang on8221 he said 8220One of the issues here is when those in authority whether political academic or civic are expounding their doctrines through Enlightenment idioms and we must ask is this being done in good faith8221 he said 8220And here I think the genuine insight provided by the economics of opportunism is that we cannot assume it is being done in good faith8221 8220When I hear Republicans in the United States say that taking away people8217s food stamps will do them good I ask what do you know that allows you to say this This rhetoric invokes the Enlightenment model We all use it It is improvement by means of reason But Enlightenment discourse should not be taken at face value We have to again ask whether it is being carried out in good faith8221 8220Economics political science and even philosophy ever since rational choice swept through the American social sciences have embraced the idea that an individual has no responsibility towards anyone except himself or herself8221 he said 8220A responsibility to anyone else is optional The public discourse for this reason has become a hall of mirrors Nothing anymore is what it seems to be8221 Our current economic model he said will be of little use to us in an age of ecological deterioration and growing scarcities Energy shortages global warming population increases and increasing scarcity of water and food create an urgent need for new models of distribution Our two options he said will be 8220hanging together or falling apart8221 Offer argues that we cannot be certain that growth will continue If standards of living stagnate or decline he said we must consider other models for the economy Given the wealth and resources of industrialized nations he said a drop in living standards to what they were one or two generations ago would still permit a good quality of life Offer has studied closely the economies of World War I Amid this catastrophe he notes civilian economies adapted He holds up these war economies with their heavy rationing as a possible model for collective action in a contracting economy 8220What you had was a very sudden transition to a serious scarcity economy that was underpinned by the necessity for sharing8221 he said 8220Ordinary people were required to sacrifice their lives They needed some guarantee for those they left at home These war economies were relatively egalitarian These economics were based on the safety net principle If continued growth in the medium run is not feasible and that is a contingency we need to think about then these rationing societies provide quite a successful model On the Allied side people did not starve society held together8221 However if we cling to our current economic model 8212 which Offer labels 8220every man for himself8221 8212 then he said 8220it will require serious repression8221 8220There is not a free market solution to a peaceful decline8221 he said 8220The state of current political economy in the West is similar to the state of communism in the Soviet Union around 19708221 he went on 8220It is studied widely in the university Everyone knows the formula Everyone mouths it in discourse But no one believes it8221 The gap between the model and reality is now vast Those in power seek 8220to bring reality into alignment with the model and that usually involves coercion8221 8220The amount of violence that is inflicted is an indicator of how well the model is aligned with reality8221 he said 8220That doesn8217t mean imminent collapse Incorrect models can endure for long periods of time The Soviet model shows this8221 Violence however is ultimately an inefficient form of control Consent he said is a more effective form of social control He argued citing John Kenneth Galbraith that in affluent societies the relative contentment of the majorities has permitted through free market ideology the abandonment impoverishment and repression of minorities especially AfricanAmericans As larger and larger segments of society are forced because of declining economies to become outsiders the use of coercion under our current model will probably become more widespread 8220One of the unresolved issues in social science is how does the system hold together8221 he said 8220We have the economic model of the invisible hand the miracle of the market but we know it is not true since government allocates up to 50 percent of output and income We don8217t actually rely on the 8216free8217 market for our prosperity Even the market sector is mostly dominated by entities with large market power8221 8220We have this model that we are all selfish and somehow this generates the miracle of cooperation8221 he said 8220But equilibrium is only a truism for the welloff There is money in the bank The car is in the drive The shops are full The semesters follow each other There is an overseas conference The world seems to be OK But if you look the other way look at these other people there is a world of hardship misery and suffering These suffering people are not always visible to invisiblehand advocates8221 8220Experimental economics has in fact demonstrated that when people are placed in experimental situations they do not behave as individualistic maximizers8221 he went on 8220Some of them do Some of them do not8221 8220 Adam Smith8221 he noted 8220wrote that what drives us is not in the end individual selfishness but reciprocal obligation We care about other people8217s good opinions This generates a reciprocal cycle Reciprocity is not altruistic That part of the economic core doctrine is preserved But if we depend on other people for our selfworth then we are not truly selfsufficient We depend on the sympathy of others for our own wellbeing Therefore obligation to others means that we do not always seek to maximize economic advantage Intrinsic motivations such as obligation compassion and public spirit crowd out financial ones This model can also motivate a different type of political and economic aspiration8221 8220The free market norm assumes a frictionless exchange which maximizes everyone8217s wellbeing8221 he said 8220The existence of 8230 coercive instruments such as the prisons and the enormous military makes you think that the theory is not all it is purported to be There is a gap between what it pretends to be and what it is8221 Offer said that universities which should be incubators of new and radical ideas are being stripped of their ability to independently critique the widening gap between reality and the false models of reality that are disseminated by the elites 8220The kind of willfulness with which I can talk to you now is not guaranteed for future scholars8221 he said 8220The academic system has discovered it is no longer necessary to provide tenure This system is fraying And this is deliberate This independence is a source of trouble When Stalin carried out his purges he purged the best and the brightest These were an alternative source of power And I think there is a sense in government and business that there is too much independence in academia We need to be put in our place The spirit of free inquiry free expression and to some extent free teaching and communality is alien to the corporate and political culture which are repressive hierarchies8221 Those academics who deviate from the central core doctrines including in economics are finding themselves defunded Oversight committees impose quotas on academics and insist that the work conform to what they call disciplinary norms 8220The golden age of the university was in the postwar years especially in the 1960s8221 Offer said 8220You saw great expansion The university thrived under the auspices of the Cold War But once the Cold War imperative disappears it is no longer as vital to maintain national capacity Universities could be privatized8221 8220The idea of the autonomous scholar is disappearing8221 he said 8220I am not sure many people even remember it8221

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<p>The MOX fuel plant under construction near Aiken, South Carolina. Experts say it will cost at least $20 billion to build and run over its lifetime.&amp;lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/51009184@N06/8057139405/sizes/c/in/photostream/"&amp;gt;Savanna River Site&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;/Flickr</p> <p /> <p>Before retiring from Congress four years ago, David Hobson, a powerful subcommittee chairman, says he couldn&#8217;t fathom why the Energy Department was so determined to build a multibillion dollar plant in South Carolina for transforming plutonium into fuel for US nuclear reactors.</p> <p>Although the plant was billed as a noble arms control initiative, meant to dispose of the plutonium so it could not be used in weapons again, Hobson was troubled by billions in cost overruns, a lack of demand for the reactor fuel and the existence of cheaper alternatives.</p> <p><a href="http://www.vorys.com/hobson" type="external">Hobson</a>, now 76, said in an interview that he concluded the project had three real aims: It was a multi-billion dollar jobs program for South Carolina, a Bush White House political gift to then-Gov. Mark Sanford and the state&#8217;s mainly Republican congressional delegation, and the potential kickoff of a much more ambitious and costly enterprise meant to benefit the nuclear industry.</p> <p>None of those justifications appealed to Hobson, a Republican from west of Columbus, Ohio, who chaired the House appropriations subcommittee on energy and water. But they reflected the heavily political impetus for the project, which so far has survived billion-dollar cost overruns, <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/06/25/12816/nuclear-waste-1-billion-energy-department-project-overshoots-its-budget-600-percent" type="external">a series of construction snafus</a>, and <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/06/24/12815/nuclear-waste-how-huge-us-nonproliferation-program-became-major-proliferation" type="external">revisions to its goals</a>that call into question whether the effort will shrink the risks of plutonium&#8217;s misuse.</p> <p>In 2006, Hobson recalls, he abandoned his effort to halt construction of the plant, in the face of intense lobbying by the Department of Energy, the Bush administration, and fellow congressional Republicans. &#8220;It should never have been done,&#8221; Hobson said about construction of the so-called Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel plant at the Savannah River site. &#8220;I tried to kill it, but I was pressured not to.&#8221; Officials in the Bush administration, Hobson explained, said the project was vital to Sanford&#8217;s reelection that fall. &#8220;I was told [that killing] it would hurt his chances of getting elected,&#8221; he said. So, he says, he reluctantly agreed to back down. Hobson did not say who contacted him, but his account was separately confirmed by a former aide.</p> <p>The MOX fuel factory rising in the piney woods near rural Aiken, South Carolina, sounds a lot like the kind of mammoth federal public works project that fiscal conservatives say they love to hate. Experts say it will cost at least $20 billion to build and run over its lifetime. It employs 2,100 skilled workers, many of them union members, and has burned through at least $3.7 billion in federal construction funds. But it is nowhere near completion and some doubt it will ever be finished.</p> <p>But the MOX plant has survived threats before, thanks to the ardent support of a handful of powerful public officials in South Carolina and their allies in Congress, including some leading deficit hawks.</p> <p>Many in the state&#8217;s congressional delegation have benefited from a stream of campaign donations by major companies with a financial stake in the project and have been lobbied by former government officials and ex-congressional aides on the contractors&#8217; payroll.</p> <p>While the Obama administration, citing the plant&#8217;s high cost overruns, wants to slash planned spending by half next year and maybe eliminate it in 2015, the Palmetto State&#8217;s politicians in the past have proven adept at keeping MOX alive by making the prospect of cancelation as painful as possible.</p> <p>South Carolina&#8217;s outsized influence</p> <p>At a critical early juncture, the State&#8217;s Democrats played an important role in keeping the MOX plant from foundering. Just as construction was getting under way, both James Clyburn (D-S.C.), then-House majority whip, whose district includes part of the Savannah River site, and then-Rep. John Spratt, who was a senior Democrat on the House armed services committee and, from 2007 to 2011, chairman of the House budget committee, stepped in to rescue it.</p> <p>Clyburn, after beating back Hobson&#8217;s efforts to halt the program, said in <a href="http://clyburn.house.gov/press-release/clyburn-announces-mox-fuel-facility-funding-savannah-river-site" type="external">a May 2007 press release</a>: &#8220;I am pleased to have worked closely with John Spratt to secure the funding to move this [MOX] project forward.&#8221;</p> <p>His efforts didn&#8217;t go unnoticed. &#8220;When it comes to nuclear power, Jim Clyburn is always on our side,&#8221; Robert Eble, a nuclear safety manager from Shaw Areva Mox Services LLC, the firm designing and constructing the MOX factory, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/politics/06charity.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">told the New York Times</a> in 2010. Eble was explaining hisfirm&#8217;s repeated financial donations to an annual golf tournament organized by Clyburn, now the House assistant minority leader.</p> <p>More recently South Carolina&#8217;s Republicans have played an even bigger role in the effort, none more crucial than that of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who once represented the town of Aiken, near the Savannah River site, as a member of the House.</p> <p>On January 1, Graham announced that &#8220;the time has come for the president to face up to the need to control federal spending.&#8221; But when the Obama administration announced it would throttle back on construction of the plant, now estimated to cost $7.7 billion, Graham called the White House&#8217;s chief of staff to complain. He blocked confirmation of Ernest Moniz as energy secretary for a month because Moniz refused to promise that the MOX will be finished. Under pressure from colleagues, Graham relented and let Moniz&#8217;s appointment go through, but the lawmaker pledged to carry on his fight in other ways. &amp;#160;</p> <p>Support from deficit hawks</p> <p>Former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a fiery promoter of the tea party&#8217;s fiscal conservatism, has also quietly supported the MOX project. While touring the site in May 2009, DeMint declared that the &#8220;Savannah River Site is at the center of the nuclear renaissance,&#8221; according to an <a href="http://www.theitem.com/apnews01/ga-s-c-senators-say-srs-is-vital-to-nation/article_07863534-140e-554a-9e3e-169aef177349.html" type="external">Associated Press account</a>.</p> <p>In April, a week after DeMint&#8212;who resigned his Senate seat this spring&#8212;became president of the Heritage Foundation, its web site published an article entitled, &#8220;Mixed Oxide Fuel Facility in South Carolina Needs Congress&#8217;s Support.&#8221; Jack Spencer, the article&#8217;s coauthor, said through a Heritage spokesman that DeMint neither requested the article nor influenced its message.</p> <p>Former governor Sanford, elected to Congress on May 7, has long backed the plant despite his carefully cultivated reputation as a critic of government spending. Although in 2009 he spearheaded a losing legal battle to block federal stimulus funds for his state, Sanford embraced the multi-billion dollar MOX project. &#8220;He sees it as an opportunity for Savannah River to have a new mission,&#8221; a Sanford spokesman <a href="http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2003/07/07/met_380493.shtml" type="external">told the Associated Press</a> in 2003.</p> <p>DeMint&#8217;s replacement in the Senate, former Republican congressman Tim Scott, has been described as &#8220;a fighter for limited government&#8221; by the president of the Club for Growth, a group dedicated to cutting federal spending. In an April statement, Scott called the White House search for a cheaper alternative to the MOX plant &#8220;irresponsible.&#8221;</p> <p>Sitting in the airport lounge in Columbia, South Carolina, Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth, a longtime critic of the MOX plant, reflected on the irony offiscal conservatives rushing to the rescue of a big government, job-generating project like the Savannah River plutonium plant.</p> <p>Clements noted that the company with the contract to build and operate the MOX plant is now a joint venture of two European companies, one based in France and the other in the Netherlands. Both are countries with left-leaning governments.</p> <p>&#8220;These are cheese-eating socialists who are [building] the MOX program, and Graham&#8217;s in bed with them,&#8221; Clements said with a sly grin. Then, referring to the other South Carolina Republicans who support the plutonium plant, he added: &#8220;They&#8217;re posing as fiscal conservatives, but in fact they&#8217;re big spenders.&#8221;</p> <p>Graham, Sanford, Scott, and DeMint declined to comment on that claim. Hobson now says that the soaring costs of the MOX plant have vindicated his opposition. &#8220;You go back and look at the hearings,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Everything I said would happen has happened. All that&#8217;s come true. And there is no end in sight.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>A contractor&#8217;s adroit lobbying</p> <p>It&#8217;s hardly surprising the MOX project is popular in South Carolina. The region near Savannah River Site is a sea of prosperity in a rural corner of the state. The roughly 11,000 workers at the Site enjoy an average income more than double that of their neighbors who work elsewhere, according to a May 2011 study by the University of South Carolina at Aiken.</p> <p>An industry-funded group, Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness in Aiken, holds &#8220; <a href="http://www.c-n-t-a.com/upmain.htm" type="external">Up and Atom</a>&#8221; breakfasts, sponsors golf tournaments, and each year there is an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AtomicCityFestival" type="external">Atomic City Festival</a> in New Ellenton, a town close to the site entrance.</p> <p>Aside from proliferation concerns, South Carolina politicians already have a strong political motive to support the MOX project. But they and their allies in other states have also benefited from campaign donations by companies with a financial stake in the project.</p> <p>Shaw Areva, which is designing and building the MOX plant, until this year was a joint venture between the Shaw Group and Areva SA, the French government-owned international nuclear giant. Shaw, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was purchased in February by the Netherlands-based Chicago Bridge &amp;amp; Iron NV&#8212;which now controls 70 percent of the MOX project.</p> <p>Since 2003, Areva&#8217;s employees and the political action committee formed by its US subsidiary have contributed at least $582,000 in campaign donations, an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity revealed. Chicago Bridge and Shaw Group&#8217;s employees and committees have provided at least $2.2 million.</p> <p>In total, donors from Shaw, Areva, and Chicago Bridge spent at least $416,000 of this amount on members of the four committees that control spending on the MOX plant. Among South Carolinians, Lindsey Graham&#8217;s campaign and leadership committee received $41,500, Rep. Joe Wilson&#8217;s received $26,000, and DeMint&#8217;s $5,000. Scott, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, received $5,500 for his campaign.</p> <p>Three other South Carolina Republicans received a total of $39,500 from the same donors for their campaigns after 2002. Areva, Shaw and a law firm that lobbied for the plant on Areva&#8217;s behalf also contributed $40,000 to Clyburn&#8217;s golf charity from 2008 to 2012. Political action committees controlled by Shaw and Areva contributed $51,000 to Clyburn&#8217;s campaign and leadership committee and $41,500 to Spratt after 2002.</p> <p>Clyburn&#8217;s spokeswoman Hope Derrick said the lawmaker &#8220;is solely motivated by the best interests of the people and communities he serves in Congress.&#8221; Spratt, in a telephone interview, said the contributions had not influenced his support. A spokesman for DeMint said the donations did not affect his policy positions, while Graham and Scott did not respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>In the last three years alone, Areva and Shaw have spent at least $6.3 million on lobbying, including efforts by at least four former congressmen and some former committee staffers that advocated spending on MOX and related nuclear issues, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity.</p> <p>The project&#8217;s lobbying team has included several heavy hitters: former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.), who left Congress in 2005; and Linda Ann Lingle, the Energy Department&#8217;s former top liaison to Congress.</p> <p>Lingle, who was paid $80,000 by Areva last year, said the company ramped up its lobbying after Hobson attempted to kill the MOX project; her responsibility, she said, was to promote the project to South Carolina and Georgia politicians so they could be better advocates. The support of the South Carolina delegation in Congress, she said, was &#8220;very important&#8221; to keeping MOX alive.</p> <p>A Shaw Group subsidiary, Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure, last year also hired three savvy Capitol Hill veterans at the international law firm K&amp;amp;L Gates to lobby for the MOX plant: Slade Gorton, a former senator from Washington who sat on the Senate&#8217;s appropriations and energy and natural resources committees; James T. Walsh, a former House member from New York who served on the appropriations committee; and Tim Peckinpaugh, a former staff member of the House science committee.</p> <p>Gorton signed a March 10 op-ed <a href="http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/03/10/2304926/in-focus-work-needed-to-eliminate.html" type="external">article</a> for the Tri-City Herald in Washington state defending the MOX project, saying that there remained a &#8220;very clear danger&#8221; that nuclear materials could fall into the hands of terrorists. &#8220;Some want to delay this important plutonium disposition, which would be a critical mistake,&#8221; he wrote.</p> <p>Gorton did not mention his work for Shaw in his piece, which was excerpted on Areva&#8217;s <a href="http://us.arevablog.com/2013/03/11/slade-goron-warnings-of-a-critical-mistake/" type="external">website</a>. Asked why, Gorton said that at the time it was published, he was only a consultant to K&amp;amp;L Gates, and wasn&#8217;t aware who had asked for the article: &#8220;I don&#8217;t even know who their client was. They [K&amp;amp;L Gates] asked me to do it.&#8221;</p> <p>Walsh did not respond to a request for comment. Peckinpaugh declined to discuss his work. &amp;#160;</p> <p>A way to make Washington pay</p> <p>MOX plant contractors and supporters have additional leverage. When plans for the MOX plant were first hatched, South Carolina worried about becoming a dumping ground for US plutonium. It agreed to host the plant only after Washington promised that the plutonium would eventually leave the state in the form of fuel. But from the outset, South Carolinians worried this promise could be broken.</p> <p>So in 2002, then-Rep. Lindsey Graham and then-Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) secured congressional approval for a unique system of fines: Washington would pay the state $1 million a day&#8212;up to $100 million a year&#8212;if the MOX plant did not begin producing a ton of plutonium-laced fuel a year by 2009.</p> <p>Graham has since twice inserted revised language into atomic energy legislation delaying those fines until 2016. &#8220;I sat down with the Obama administration and said, &#8216;Listen, we don&#8217;t want the $100 million, we want the MOX facility,'&#8221; Graham said at the April subcommittee hearing. &#8220;&#8230;I can assure you I would not have done that if I&#8217;d known this year in the president&#8217;s budget they would be suspending the MOX program for study. We have studied this thing to death. It is now time to get on, and getting it built.&#8221;</p> <p>The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the plant, also remains wedded to it. NNSA officials sought to increase spending for it by 47 percent in 2014, according to internal budget documents. But policy officials at the Defense Department urged instead that the MOX plant be scrapped and its budget shifted to modernizing nuclear warhead, according to participants in the deliberations.</p> <p>After a series of high-level inter-agency meetings, Obama administration officials reached a compromise. They would reduce funding now, spend $320 million to keep the plant&#8217;s construction going for a year and study cheaper alternatives.</p> <p>Asked about the $100-million-a-year fines looming over any cancelation, NNSA spokesman Joshua McConaha said &#8220;we understand our commitments under current legislation, and we will look to ensure compliance with the law.&#8221;</p> <p>When Graham agreed on May 15 to lift his hold on Moniz&#8217;s nomination, he did so without gaining a promise that the project will be completed. Instead, he released a <a href="http://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&amp;amp;ContentRecord_id=a8f99c66-ad7f-9e32-9326-c600d025ecac&amp;amp;Region_id=&amp;amp;Issue_id=" type="external">joint statement</a> with three other Republican senators&#8212;Tim Scott, Saxby Chambliss, and Johnny Isakson&#8212;vowing to hold up other nominations and use the budget process &#8220;to ensure the program moves forward.&#8221;</p> <p>Speaking of the administration&#8217;s desire to reduce funding and look at alternatives to the Savannah River project, they said &#8220;we will not allow this ill-conceived plan to proceed.&#8221;</p> <p>Center for Public Integrity data editor David Donald and reporter Alex Cohen contributed to this article. CPI is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic, go to <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/" type="external">publicintegrity.org</a>.</p> <p />

How Fiscal Conservatives Learned to Love a $20 Billion Nuke Plant

https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/south-carolina-mox-plant-fiscal-hawks/

2013-06-26

4left

The MOX fuel plant under construction near Aiken South Carolina Experts say it will cost at least 20 billion to build and run over its lifetimeamplta hrefhttpwwwflickrcomphotos51009184N068057139405sizescinphotostreamampgtSavanna River SiteampltaampgtFlickr Before retiring from Congress four years ago David Hobson a powerful subcommittee chairman says he couldn8217t fathom why the Energy Department was so determined to build a multibillion dollar plant in South Carolina for transforming plutonium into fuel for US nuclear reactors Although the plant was billed as a noble arms control initiative meant to dispose of the plutonium so it could not be used in weapons again Hobson was troubled by billions in cost overruns a lack of demand for the reactor fuel and the existence of cheaper alternatives Hobson now 76 said in an interview that he concluded the project had three real aims It was a multibillion dollar jobs program for South Carolina a Bush White House political gift to thenGov Mark Sanford and the state8217s mainly Republican congressional delegation and the potential kickoff of a much more ambitious and costly enterprise meant to benefit the nuclear industry None of those justifications appealed to Hobson a Republican from west of Columbus Ohio who chaired the House appropriations subcommittee on energy and water But they reflected the heavily political impetus for the project which so far has survived billiondollar cost overruns a series of construction snafus and revisions to its goalsthat call into question whether the effort will shrink the risks of plutonium8217s misuse In 2006 Hobson recalls he abandoned his effort to halt construction of the plant in the face of intense lobbying by the Department of Energy the Bush administration and fellow congressional Republicans 8220It should never have been done8221 Hobson said about construction of the socalled MixedOxide MOX fuel plant at the Savannah River site 8220I tried to kill it but I was pressured not to8221 Officials in the Bush administration Hobson explained said the project was vital to Sanford8217s reelection that fall 8220I was told that killing it would hurt his chances of getting elected8221 he said So he says he reluctantly agreed to back down Hobson did not say who contacted him but his account was separately confirmed by a former aide The MOX fuel factory rising in the piney woods near rural Aiken South Carolina sounds a lot like the kind of mammoth federal public works project that fiscal conservatives say they love to hate Experts say it will cost at least 20 billion to build and run over its lifetime It employs 2100 skilled workers many of them union members and has burned through at least 37 billion in federal construction funds But it is nowhere near completion and some doubt it will ever be finished But the MOX plant has survived threats before thanks to the ardent support of a handful of powerful public officials in South Carolina and their allies in Congress including some leading deficit hawks Many in the state8217s congressional delegation have benefited from a stream of campaign donations by major companies with a financial stake in the project and have been lobbied by former government officials and excongressional aides on the contractors8217 payroll While the Obama administration citing the plant8217s high cost overruns wants to slash planned spending by half next year and maybe eliminate it in 2015 the Palmetto State8217s politicians in the past have proven adept at keeping MOX alive by making the prospect of cancelation as painful as possible South Carolina8217s outsized influence At a critical early juncture the State8217s Democrats played an important role in keeping the MOX plant from foundering Just as construction was getting under way both James Clyburn DSC thenHouse majority whip whose district includes part of the Savannah River site and thenRep John Spratt who was a senior Democrat on the House armed services committee and from 2007 to 2011 chairman of the House budget committee stepped in to rescue it Clyburn after beating back Hobson8217s efforts to halt the program said in a May 2007 press release 8220I am pleased to have worked closely with John Spratt to secure the funding to move this MOX project forward8221 His efforts didn8217t go unnoticed 8220When it comes to nuclear power Jim Clyburn is always on our side8221 Robert Eble a nuclear safety manager from Shaw Areva Mox Services LLC the firm designing and constructing the MOX factory told the New York Times in 2010 Eble was explaining hisfirm8217s repeated financial donations to an annual golf tournament organized by Clyburn now the House assistant minority leader More recently South Carolina8217s Republicans have played an even bigger role in the effort none more crucial than that of Sen Lindsey Graham RSC who once represented the town of Aiken near the Savannah River site as a member of the House On January 1 Graham announced that 8220the time has come for the president to face up to the need to control federal spending8221 But when the Obama administration announced it would throttle back on construction of the plant now estimated to cost 77 billion Graham called the White House8217s chief of staff to complain He blocked confirmation of Ernest Moniz as energy secretary for a month because Moniz refused to promise that the MOX will be finished Under pressure from colleagues Graham relented and let Moniz8217s appointment go through but the lawmaker pledged to carry on his fight in other ways amp160 Support from deficit hawks Former Sen Jim DeMint RSC a fiery promoter of the tea party8217s fiscal conservatism has also quietly supported the MOX project While touring the site in May 2009 DeMint declared that the 8220Savannah River Site is at the center of the nuclear renaissance8221 according to an Associated Press account In April a week after DeMint8212who resigned his Senate seat this spring8212became president of the Heritage Foundation its web site published an article entitled 8220Mixed Oxide Fuel Facility in South Carolina Needs Congress8217s Support8221 Jack Spencer the article8217s coauthor said through a Heritage spokesman that DeMint neither requested the article nor influenced its message Former governor Sanford elected to Congress on May 7 has long backed the plant despite his carefully cultivated reputation as a critic of government spending Although in 2009 he spearheaded a losing legal battle to block federal stimulus funds for his state Sanford embraced the multibillion dollar MOX project 8220He sees it as an opportunity for Savannah River to have a new mission8221 a Sanford spokesman told the Associated Press in 2003 DeMint8217s replacement in the Senate former Republican congressman Tim Scott has been described as 8220a fighter for limited government8221 by the president of the Club for Growth a group dedicated to cutting federal spending In an April statement Scott called the White House search for a cheaper alternative to the MOX plant 8220irresponsible8221 Sitting in the airport lounge in Columbia South Carolina Tom Clements of Friends of the Earth a longtime critic of the MOX plant reflected on the irony offiscal conservatives rushing to the rescue of a big government jobgenerating project like the Savannah River plutonium plant Clements noted that the company with the contract to build and operate the MOX plant is now a joint venture of two European companies one based in France and the other in the Netherlands Both are countries with leftleaning governments 8220These are cheeseeating socialists who are building the MOX program and Graham8217s in bed with them8221 Clements said with a sly grin Then referring to the other South Carolina Republicans who support the plutonium plant he added 8220They8217re posing as fiscal conservatives but in fact they8217re big spenders8221 Graham Sanford Scott and DeMint declined to comment on that claim Hobson now says that the soaring costs of the MOX plant have vindicated his opposition 8220You go back and look at the hearings8221 he said 8220Everything I said would happen has happened All that8217s come true And there is no end in sight8221 amp160 A contractor8217s adroit lobbying It8217s hardly surprising the MOX project is popular in South Carolina The region near Savannah River Site is a sea of prosperity in a rural corner of the state The roughly 11000 workers at the Site enjoy an average income more than double that of their neighbors who work elsewhere according to a May 2011 study by the University of South Carolina at Aiken An industryfunded group Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness in Aiken holds 8220 Up and Atom8221 breakfasts sponsors golf tournaments and each year there is an Atomic City Festival in New Ellenton a town close to the site entrance Aside from proliferation concerns South Carolina politicians already have a strong political motive to support the MOX project But they and their allies in other states have also benefited from campaign donations by companies with a financial stake in the project Shaw Areva which is designing and building the MOX plant until this year was a joint venture between the Shaw Group and Areva SA the French governmentowned international nuclear giant Shaw based in Baton Rouge Louisiana was purchased in February by the Netherlandsbased Chicago Bridge ampamp Iron NV8212which now controls 70 percent of the MOX project Since 2003 Areva8217s employees and the political action committee formed by its US subsidiary have contributed at least 582000 in campaign donations an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity revealed Chicago Bridge and Shaw Group8217s employees and committees have provided at least 22 million In total donors from Shaw Areva and Chicago Bridge spent at least 416000 of this amount on members of the four committees that control spending on the MOX plant Among South Carolinians Lindsey Graham8217s campaign and leadership committee received 41500 Rep Joe Wilson8217s received 26000 and DeMint8217s 5000 Scott who was first elected to Congress in 2010 received 5500 for his campaign Three other South Carolina Republicans received a total of 39500 from the same donors for their campaigns after 2002 Areva Shaw and a law firm that lobbied for the plant on Areva8217s behalf also contributed 40000 to Clyburn8217s golf charity from 2008 to 2012 Political action committees controlled by Shaw and Areva contributed 51000 to Clyburn8217s campaign and leadership committee and 41500 to Spratt after 2002 Clyburn8217s spokeswoman Hope Derrick said the lawmaker 8220is solely motivated by the best interests of the people and communities he serves in Congress8221 Spratt in a telephone interview said the contributions had not influenced his support A spokesman for DeMint said the donations did not affect his policy positions while Graham and Scott did not respond to requests for comment In the last three years alone Areva and Shaw have spent at least 63 million on lobbying including efforts by at least four former congressmen and some former committee staffers that advocated spending on MOX and related nuclear issues according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity The project8217s lobbying team has included several heavy hitters former Sen John Breaux DLa who left Congress in 2005 and Linda Ann Lingle the Energy Department8217s former top liaison to Congress Lingle who was paid 80000 by Areva last year said the company ramped up its lobbying after Hobson attempted to kill the MOX project her responsibility she said was to promote the project to South Carolina and Georgia politicians so they could be better advocates The support of the South Carolina delegation in Congress she said was 8220very important8221 to keeping MOX alive A Shaw Group subsidiary Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure last year also hired three savvy Capitol Hill veterans at the international law firm KampampL Gates to lobby for the MOX plant Slade Gorton a former senator from Washington who sat on the Senate8217s appropriations and energy and natural resources committees James T Walsh a former House member from New York who served on the appropriations committee and Tim Peckinpaugh a former staff member of the House science committee Gorton signed a March 10 oped article for the TriCity Herald in Washington state defending the MOX project saying that there remained a 8220very clear danger8221 that nuclear materials could fall into the hands of terrorists 8220Some want to delay this important plutonium disposition which would be a critical mistake8221 he wrote Gorton did not mention his work for Shaw in his piece which was excerpted on Areva8217s website Asked why Gorton said that at the time it was published he was only a consultant to KampampL Gates and wasn8217t aware who had asked for the article 8220I don8217t even know who their client was They KampampL Gates asked me to do it8221 Walsh did not respond to a request for comment Peckinpaugh declined to discuss his work amp160 A way to make Washington pay MOX plant contractors and supporters have additional leverage When plans for the MOX plant were first hatched South Carolina worried about becoming a dumping ground for US plutonium It agreed to host the plant only after Washington promised that the plutonium would eventually leave the state in the form of fuel But from the outset South Carolinians worried this promise could be broken So in 2002 thenRep Lindsey Graham and thenSen Strom Thurmond RSC secured congressional approval for a unique system of fines Washington would pay the state 1 million a day8212up to 100 million a year8212if the MOX plant did not begin producing a ton of plutoniumlaced fuel a year by 2009 Graham has since twice inserted revised language into atomic energy legislation delaying those fines until 2016 8220I sat down with the Obama administration and said 8216Listen we don8217t want the 100 million we want the MOX facility8221 Graham said at the April subcommittee hearing 82208230I can assure you I would not have done that if I8217d known this year in the president8217s budget they would be suspending the MOX program for study We have studied this thing to death It is now time to get on and getting it built8221 The National Nuclear Security Administration which oversees the plant also remains wedded to it NNSA officials sought to increase spending for it by 47 percent in 2014 according to internal budget documents But policy officials at the Defense Department urged instead that the MOX plant be scrapped and its budget shifted to modernizing nuclear warhead according to participants in the deliberations After a series of highlevel interagency meetings Obama administration officials reached a compromise They would reduce funding now spend 320 million to keep the plant8217s construction going for a year and study cheaper alternatives Asked about the 100millionayear fines looming over any cancelation NNSA spokesman Joshua McConaha said 8220we understand our commitments under current legislation and we will look to ensure compliance with the law8221 When Graham agreed on May 15 to lift his hold on Moniz8217s nomination he did so without gaining a promise that the project will be completed Instead he released a joint statement with three other Republican senators8212Tim Scott Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson8212vowing to hold up other nominations and use the budget process 8220to ensure the program moves forward8221 Speaking of the administration8217s desire to reduce funding and look at alternatives to the Savannah River project they said 8220we will not allow this illconceived plan to proceed8221 Center for Public Integrity data editor David Donald and reporter Alex Cohen contributed to this article CPI is a nonprofit independent investigative news outlet For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrityorg

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Twenty-First Century Fox:</p> * 21CF RESPONSE TO THE CMA&#8217;S PROVISIONAL FINDINGS <p>* &#8205;WILL CONTINUE TO ENGAGE WITH CMA ON SKY DEAL AHEAD OF PUBLICATION OF FINAL REPORT IN MAY&#8203;</p> <p>* &#8205;WELCOMES CMA&#8217;S PROVISIONAL FINDING ON COMPANY&#8217;S GENUINE COMMITMENT TO BROADCASTING STANDARDS&#8203;</p> <p>* &#8205;ANTICIPATE REGULATORY APPROVAL OF TRANSACTION WITH SKY BY JUNE 30, 2018&#8203;</p> <p>* &#8220;&#8205;REGARDING PLURALITY, WE ARE DISAPPOINTED BY CMA&#8217;S PROVISIONAL FINDINGS&#8221;&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - With Beijing under heavy security as a mystery North Korean delegation visited the Chinese capital, internet users scrambled to stay a step ahead of censors on Tuesday as China&#8217;s tightly controlled state media remained silent.</p> The first vehicle of a motorcade believed to be carrying a North Korean delegation makes its way along Beijing's main east-west thoroughfare, Changan Avenue, in Beijing, China March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj <p>Videos circulated on popular messaging app WeChat on Monday evening of a motorcade traveling around Beijing including clips of cars entering Beijing&#8217;s Diaoyutai State Guest House.</p> <p>One car, a stretch Mercedes limousine, was believed to be transporting a senior North Korean official, possibly leader Kim Jong Un, who had never been known to make a journey abroad since assuming power after his father died in 2011.</p> <p>On Tuesday, Chinese internet users kept each other abreast, speculating about the enigmatic guests&#8217; visits to Beijing sites including Zhongguancun, one of China&#8217;s technology hubs, before the entourage is believed to have boarded the train they had arrived on a day earlier.</p> <p>WeChat public accounts focusing on news about North Korea had been censored by Chinese authorities, with no articles about a senior North Korean visitor on many prominent accounts that cover China-North Korea ties.</p> <p>&#8220;They have been deleting North Korea-related articles for the past few days. It&#8217;s been very hard for us to post on our public account,&#8221; one Chinese person who edits an online account about North Korea told Reuters.</p> <p>The people Reuters spoke to for this story declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.</p> <p>The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country&#8217;s Internet regulator, did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment late on Tuesday.</p> <p>China&#8217;s propaganda ministry released a notice on Monday banning state media from reporting news related to North Korea, one journalist who works for a Chinese state-run media outlet told Reuters. An editor at another state media outlet said they were directed by superiors not to cover discussions of the visit by a North Korean.</p> <p>China&#8217;s propaganda ministry did not immediately respond when contacted for comment.</p> <p>A search using the term &#8220;North Korea&#8221; was blocked on Tuesday on Weibo, a popular microblogging platform in China, yielding no results.</p> <p>Internet users tried to get around the censors by resorting to nicknames for the visitor including &#8220;the obese patient&#8221; and &#8220;the fatty on the train&#8221; as well as more ambiguous terms like &#8220;the visitor from the northeast&#8221; and &#8220;the sibling next door&#8221;.</p> <p>Speculation remains rife about whether Kim or his sister Kim Yo Jong or North Korea&#8217;s ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam was visiting Beijing. China-based North Korea-watchers scoured for clues to pin down the identity of the visitor.</p> <p>&#8220;Security is not so thorough as when the late Mr. Kim visited,&#8221; one source told Reuters, referring to Kim Jong Il&#8217;s last visit to China in 2011. During that visit, police were posted every 50-100 meters along the railway line, a contrast to this time around, the source said.</p> <p>Reporting by Sue-Lin Wong, Lusha Zhang, Zhang Min, Christian Shepherd and the Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Tony Munroe</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation left the Chinese capital on Tuesday following a dramatic whirlwind visit that some reports said included the country&#8217;s leader, Kim Jong Un.</p> <p>The conservative South Korea Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing an unnamed senior intelligence official, said the delegation had included Kim and that he had since left to return to North Korea.</p> <p>South Korea&#8217;s left-leaning press Hankyoreh also reported Kim had traveled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon before leaving for a &#8220;third location&#8221; on Tuesday. It did not cite specific sources.</p> <p>The Hankyoreh did not specify where the &#8220;third location&#8221; was but said it could be in China.</p> <p>Hong Kong&#8217;s South China Morning Post said Kim was on the train that left Beijing, citing two anonymous sources.</p> <p>South Korea said it was closely watching events in Beijing, where a foreign ministry spokeswoman deflected a question on whether Kim, his sister or some other senior North Korean was visiting. South Korea&#8217;s spy agency declined to confirm the report.</p> <p>&#8220;At present I have no understanding of the situation you mention. If there is news we will release it,&#8221; foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular daily briefing.</p> <p>Diplomatic sources in Beijing said a senior North Korean official was in town, but did not know exactly who.</p> <p>Bloomberg, citing three unidentified sources, reported late on Monday that Kim was in Beijing in what would be his first known trip outside North Korea since taking power in 2011.</p> <p>The unconfirmed visit came ahead of planned summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> <p>&#8220;The presidential Blue House is watching things in Beijing very closely, while keeping all possibilities open,&#8221; said the senior official in Seoul, who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p> <p>Improving ties between North Korea, which is pursuing nuclear and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and China would be a positive sign before the planned summits, he said.</p> <p>A Reuters reporter saw a convoy leave Beijing&#8217;s Diaoyutai State Guest House, where senior foreign leaders often stay, and drive north on Tuesday morning. It was unclear where the convoy was headed.</p> <p>Later, a Reuters journalist saw what was believed to be the delegation&#8217;s train pulling out of a Beijing station. The group was reported to have arrived in China on Sunday after crossing from North Korea in the border city of Dandong.</p> <p>A senior U.S. official who follows North Korea closely said the available evidence suggested that Kim had traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, but stressed that has not been confirmed.</p> <p>Underscoring the mystery, one senior Beijing-based diplomatic source told Reuters simply: &#8220;We just don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p> <p>One source with ties to China&#8217;s leadership said it was possible Kim&#8217;s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was in town. She visited South Korea for the Winter Olympics last month, paving the way for a summit between the two Koreas.</p> <p>South Korean news agency Newsis reported that Kim Yo Jong and the North&#8217;s ceremonial leader, Kim Yong Nam, were visiting Beijing, citing an unidentified North Korea-related source in Beijing.</p> A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation leaves the Beijing Railway Station in Beijing, China March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee <p>The pair visited South Korean President Moon Jae-in at his office in Seoul during the Winter Olympics in February.</p> <p>The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was unlikely Kim Jong Un would have sent his sister on such an important mission, unlike her ceremonial visit to South Korea for the Olympics.</p> <p>On the contrary, the official said, a summit with Xi would underscore Kim&#8217;s standing as a world leader.</p> &#8220;LOT OF LEVERAGE&#8221; <p>Xi and Kim Jong Un had reasons to meet in advance of Kim&#8217;s meetings with Moon and possibly Trump, the U.S. official said.</p> <p>&#8220;Xi has met Trump, and in many respects learned how to deal with him better than some people here do,&#8221; the official said.</p> Slideshow (10 Images) <p>&#8220;At the same time, despite the recent tensions, he needs to know what Kim has in mind for dealing with the South and the U.S., and he still has a lot of leverage with the North.&#8221;</p> <p>Japanese media reported on Monday that a high-ranking Pyongyang official appeared to have arrived by train in Beijing.</p> <p>The Blue House official said South Korea had been aware of &#8220;related movements&#8221; in North Korea, such as the train, for a few days but he could not confirm whether Kim or another high-ranking North Korean official was visiting China.</p> <p>Beijing is the main ally of secretive and isolated North Korea, as well as its biggest trading partner.</p> <p>China has not confirmed any visit by a North Korean but has not totally censored speculation.</p> <p>There were posts on Chinese social media talking about the possibility Kim Jong Un was in China, some citing family members in Dandong. The rail journey between Dandong and Beijing covers more than 1,100 km (680 miles). It takes at least 14 hours by ordinary service, according to Chinese railway timetables.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-security/beijing-shrouded-in-security-speculation-over-mystery-north-korean-guest-idUSKBN1H31A1" type="external">Beijing shrouded in security, speculation over mystery North Korean guest</a> <p>The North Korean leader is due to hold separate summits with South Korea in late April and the United States in May.</p> <p>&#8220;The fact that the summits are being held has been beyond our expectations. Right now, the situation surrounding the Korean peninsula is moving very quickly and it would be inadvisable to think with prejudice,&#8221; the Blue House official said.</p> <p>Kim Jong Un&#8217;s father, Kim Jong Il, met then-president Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year.</p> <p>Kim Jong Il was considered at the time to have made the visit to reaffirm close ties with China.</p> <p>&#8220;North Korea likely wants to confirm its relationship with China and believes it has some leverage with which it can ask for things from China,&#8221; said Yoo Ho-yeol, Professor of North Korean studies at Seoul&#8217;s Korea University.</p> <p>&#8220;If North Korea speaks with the United States on its own, it might feel it is at a disadvantage but, if it has China as an ally, Pyongyang may think it will be able to protect its interests and profits during the summits.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Christine Kim in SEOUL; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang in SEOUL and John Walcott in WASHINGTON; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ZURICH (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline is buying Novartis out of their consumer healthcare joint venture for $13 billion, taking full control of products including Sensodyne toothpaste, Panadol headache tablets, muscle gel Voltaren, and Nicotinell patches.</p> FILE PHOTO: Swiss drugmaker Novartis' logo is seen at the company's plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein, Switzerland October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann <p>GSK&#8217;s biggest move since Emma Walmsley became chief executive last year follows the British drugmaker&#8217;s decision last week to quit the race to buy Pfizer&#8217;s consumer healthcare business, endangering an auction the U.S. company hoped would bring in as much as $20 billion.</p> <p>Consumer remedies sold over the counter have lower margins than prescription drugs, but they are typically very well known and durable brands with loyal customers.</p> <p>&#8220;The proposed transaction addresses one of our key capital allocation priorities and will allow GSK shareholders to capture the full value of one of the world&#8217;s leading consumer healthcare businesses,&#8221; Walmsley said in a statement on Tuesday.</p> <p>Although some pharmaceuticals groups have been keen to hold consumer care products, intense price competition online, mainly from Amazon, as well as cheaper store-brand products, have led others to doubt their stable returns longer-term.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-novartis-gsk-margins/gsk-says-very-confident-about-consumer-margin-goal-of-at-least-20-percent-idUSKBN1H317X" type="external">GSK says very confident about consumer margin goal of at least 20 percent</a> <p>The British group&#8217;s shares jumped 4.5 percent, outperforming a 1.8 percent gain in the STOXX Europe 600 Health Care.</p> <p>GSK said that as well as ending the Novartis venture it would start a strategic review of Horlicks and other consumer nutrition products, sparking another potential industry shake-up. The review will include an assessment of its shareholding in its Indian subsidiary.</p> <p>&#8220;It (the deal) also removes uncertainty and allows us to plan use of our capital for other priorities, especially pharmaceuticals R&amp;amp;D,&#8221; Walmsley said, adding that the purchase would boost adjusted earnings and cash flows.</p> <p>Pfizer has been struggling to sell its consumer healthcare business after GSK and Reckitt Benckiser both dropped out of the bidding, while differences in price expectations have also hobbled German drugmaker Merck KGaA&#8217;s attempts to sell its consumer products unit.</p> <p>And GSK&#8217;s call for bids for its consumer healthcare nutrition brands - with a regional focus on India - is likely to detract attention from Merck&#8217;s asset, which relies heavily on sales of vitamins and dietary supplements in emerging markets.</p> FILE PHOTO: The GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) logo is seen on top of GSK Asia House in Singapore, March 21, 2018. Picture taken March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Loriene Perera/File Photo NOVARTIS SHARES RISE <p>Barclays analysts said Glaxo was paying less than 17 times expected 2018 core earnings for the joint venture stake, while sources have told Reuters that both Merck and Pfizer had asked for up to 20 times for their respective assets.</p> <p>Yet analysts at Baader Helvea welcomed the cash price fetched by Novartis as &#8220;excellent news&#8221; for the Swiss company, whose shares opened 1.9 percent higher.</p> <p>Deutsche Bank analysts said the move decluttered Novartis&#8217;s portfolio, but cautioned that the Swiss group was being too vague about what it would do with the cash.</p> <p>&#8220;While our&amp;#160;consumer healthcare&amp;#160;joint venture with GSK is progressing well,&amp;#160;the time&amp;#160;is&amp;#160;right for Novartis to divest&amp;#160;a&amp;#160;non-core asset at an&amp;#160;attractive price,&#8221; Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said.</p> <p>Novartis said the money would be used by Novartis to expand its business organically as well as for bolt-on acquisitions.</p> <p>In an interview before the deal was announced, Narasimhan ruled out large acquisitions by the Basel-based company.</p> <p>&#8220;We really think we want to focus our M&amp;amp;A efforts on bolt on acquisitions that have either new technologies or products that fit into our core therapeutic areas,&#8221; he told CNBC in an interview recorded on Sunday.</p> <p>Under the 2014 deal to pool their consumer assets, Novartis had the right so sell its 36.5 percent stake to Glaxo from this month. The transaction is set to complete in the second quarter, subject to necessary approvals.</p> <p>($1 = 0.7029 pounds)</p> <p>additional reporting by John Revill and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; editing by Edwina Gibbs and Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>FRANKFURT (Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GSK.L</a>) reaffirmed its margin goal for its consumer healthcare business after agreeing to buy Novartis ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NOVN.S" type="external">NOVN.S</a>) out of their joint venture (JV) for $13 billion.</p> <p>&#8220;We are very confident in terms of delivering on the outlook of at least 20 percent by 2020, which is what we confirmed at the formation of the JV,&#8221; GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said on a media call after the purchase was announced on Tuesday.</p> <p>The margin was 17.7 percent last year.</p> <p>She cited a focus on high margin brands such as Sensodyne toothpaste or anti-inflammatory product Voltaren, cost cuts in the supply chain and investments in innovation.</p> <p>Intense price competition online, led by Amazon ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>), as well as from cheaper store-brand products has weighed on the consumer care industry, affecting rivals such as Bayer ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BAYGn.DE" type="external">BAYGn.DE</a>), Pfizer ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PFE.N" type="external">PFE.N</a>) or Sanofi ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SASY.PA" type="external">SASY.PA</a>).</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GSK.L" type="external">GlaxoSmithKline PLC</a> 1363.0 GSK.L London Stock Exchange +74.80 (+5.81%) GSK.L NOVN.S AMZN.O BAYGn.DE PFE.N <p>She added the strategic review of Horlicks and other consumer healthcare nutrition brands reflected a focus on oral health and non-prescription drugs, and a potential exit from the entire nutrition and dietary product category.</p> <p>Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Arno Schuetze</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Twenty-First Century Fox Says Anticipate Regulatory Approval Of Deal With Sky By June 30 Beijing shrouded in security, speculation over mystery North Korean guest Train believed carrying top North Korean delegation leaves Beijing GSK buys out Novartis in $13 billion consumer healthcare shake-up GSK says very confident about consumer margin goal of at least 20 percent

https://reuters.com/article/brief-twenty-first-century-fox-says-anti/brief-twenty-first-century-fox-says-anticipate-regulatory-approval-of-deal-with-sky-by-june-30-idUSFWN1PI0BW

2018-01-23

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Jan 23 Reuters TwentyFirst Century Fox 21CF RESPONSE TO THE CMA8217S PROVISIONAL FINDINGS 8205WILL CONTINUE TO ENGAGE WITH CMA ON SKY DEAL AHEAD OF PUBLICATION OF FINAL REPORT IN MAY8203 8205WELCOMES CMA8217S PROVISIONAL FINDING ON COMPANY8217S GENUINE COMMITMENT TO BROADCASTING STANDARDS8203 8205ANTICIPATE REGULATORY APPROVAL OF TRANSACTION WITH SKY BY JUNE 30 20188203 82208205REGARDING PLURALITY WE ARE DISAPPOINTED BY CMA8217S PROVISIONAL FINDINGS82218203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters With Beijing under heavy security as a mystery North Korean delegation visited the Chinese capital internet users scrambled to stay a step ahead of censors on Tuesday as China8217s tightly controlled state media remained silent The first vehicle of a motorcade believed to be carrying a North Korean delegation makes its way along Beijings main eastwest thoroughfare Changan Avenue in Beijing China March 27 2018 REUTERSDamir Sagolj Videos circulated on popular messaging app WeChat on Monday evening of a motorcade traveling around Beijing including clips of cars entering Beijing8217s Diaoyutai State Guest House One car a stretch Mercedes limousine was believed to be transporting a senior North Korean official possibly leader Kim Jong Un who had never been known to make a journey abroad since assuming power after his father died in 2011 On Tuesday Chinese internet users kept each other abreast speculating about the enigmatic guests8217 visits to Beijing sites including Zhongguancun one of China8217s technology hubs before the entourage is believed to have boarded the train they had arrived on a day earlier WeChat public accounts focusing on news about North Korea had been censored by Chinese authorities with no articles about a senior North Korean visitor on many prominent accounts that cover ChinaNorth Korea ties 8220They have been deleting North Korearelated articles for the past few days It8217s been very hard for us to post on our public account8221 one Chinese person who edits an online account about North Korea told Reuters The people Reuters spoke to for this story declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter The Cyberspace Administration of China the country8217s Internet regulator did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment late on Tuesday China8217s propaganda ministry released a notice on Monday banning state media from reporting news related to North Korea one journalist who works for a Chinese staterun media outlet told Reuters An editor at another state media outlet said they were directed by superiors not to cover discussions of the visit by a North Korean China8217s propaganda ministry did not immediately respond when contacted for comment A search using the term 8220North Korea8221 was blocked on Tuesday on Weibo a popular microblogging platform in China yielding no results Internet users tried to get around the censors by resorting to nicknames for the visitor including 8220the obese patient8221 and 8220the fatty on the train8221 as well as more ambiguous terms like 8220the visitor from the northeast8221 and 8220the sibling next door8221 Speculation remains rife about whether Kim or his sister Kim Yo Jong or North Korea8217s ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam was visiting Beijing Chinabased North Koreawatchers scoured for clues to pin down the identity of the visitor 8220Security is not so thorough as when the late Mr Kim visited8221 one source told Reuters referring to Kim Jong Il8217s last visit to China in 2011 During that visit police were posted every 50100 meters along the railway line a contrast to this time around the source said Reporting by SueLin Wong Lusha Zhang Zhang Min Christian Shepherd and the Beijing Newsroom Editing by Tony Munroe Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSEOUL Reuters A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation left the Chinese capital on Tuesday following a dramatic whirlwind visit that some reports said included the country8217s leader Kim Jong Un The conservative South Korea Chosun Ilbo newspaper citing an unnamed senior intelligence official said the delegation had included Kim and that he had since left to return to North Korea South Korea8217s leftleaning press Hankyoreh also reported Kim had traveled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon before leaving for a 8220third location8221 on Tuesday It did not cite specific sources The Hankyoreh did not specify where the 8220third location8221 was but said it could be in China Hong Kong8217s South China Morning Post said Kim was on the train that left Beijing citing two anonymous sources South Korea said it was closely watching events in Beijing where a foreign ministry spokeswoman deflected a question on whether Kim his sister or some other senior North Korean was visiting South Korea8217s spy agency declined to confirm the report 8220At present I have no understanding of the situation you mention If there is news we will release it8221 foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular daily briefing Diplomatic sources in Beijing said a senior North Korean official was in town but did not know exactly who Bloomberg citing three unidentified sources reported late on Monday that Kim was in Beijing in what would be his first known trip outside North Korea since taking power in 2011 The unconfirmed visit came ahead of planned summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jaein and US President Donald Trump 8220The presidential Blue House is watching things in Beijing very closely while keeping all possibilities open8221 said the senior official in Seoul who spoke on condition of anonymity Improving ties between North Korea which is pursuing nuclear and missile programs in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and China would be a positive sign before the planned summits he said A Reuters reporter saw a convoy leave Beijing8217s Diaoyutai State Guest House where senior foreign leaders often stay and drive north on Tuesday morning It was unclear where the convoy was headed Later a Reuters journalist saw what was believed to be the delegation8217s train pulling out of a Beijing station The group was reported to have arrived in China on Sunday after crossing from North Korea in the border city of Dandong A senior US official who follows North Korea closely said the available evidence suggested that Kim had traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping but stressed that has not been confirmed Underscoring the mystery one senior Beijingbased diplomatic source told Reuters simply 8220We just don8217t know8221 One source with ties to China8217s leadership said it was possible Kim8217s younger sister Kim Yo Jong was in town She visited South Korea for the Winter Olympics last month paving the way for a summit between the two Koreas South Korean news agency Newsis reported that Kim Yo Jong and the North8217s ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam were visiting Beijing citing an unidentified North Korearelated source in Beijing A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation leaves the Beijing Railway Station in Beijing China March 27 2018 REUTERSJason Lee The pair visited South Korean President Moon Jaein at his office in Seoul during the Winter Olympics in February The US official speaking on condition of anonymity said it was unlikely Kim Jong Un would have sent his sister on such an important mission unlike her ceremonial visit to South Korea for the Olympics On the contrary the official said a summit with Xi would underscore Kim8217s standing as a world leader 8220LOT OF LEVERAGE8221 Xi and Kim Jong Un had reasons to meet in advance of Kim8217s meetings with Moon and possibly Trump the US official said 8220Xi has met Trump and in many respects learned how to deal with him better than some people here do8221 the official said Slideshow 10 Images 8220At the same time despite the recent tensions he needs to know what Kim has in mind for dealing with the South and the US and he still has a lot of leverage with the North8221 Japanese media reported on Monday that a highranking Pyongyang official appeared to have arrived by train in Beijing The Blue House official said South Korea had been aware of 8220related movements8221 in North Korea such as the train for a few days but he could not confirm whether Kim or another highranking North Korean official was visiting China Beijing is the main ally of secretive and isolated North Korea as well as its biggest trading partner China has not confirmed any visit by a North Korean but has not totally censored speculation There were posts on Chinese social media talking about the possibility Kim Jong Un was in China some citing family members in Dandong The rail journey between Dandong and Beijing covers more than 1100 km 680 miles It takes at least 14 hours by ordinary service according to Chinese railway timetables Related Coverage Beijing shrouded in security speculation over mystery North Korean guest The North Korean leader is due to hold separate summits with South Korea in late April and the United States in May 8220The fact that the summits are being held has been beyond our expectations Right now the situation surrounding the Korean peninsula is moving very quickly and it would be inadvisable to think with prejudice8221 the Blue House official said Kim Jong Un8217s father Kim Jong Il met thenpresident Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year Kim Jong Il was considered at the time to have made the visit to reaffirm close ties with China 8220North Korea likely wants to confirm its relationship with China and believes it has some leverage with which it can ask for things from China8221 said Yoo Hoyeol Professor of North Korean studies at Seoul8217s Korea University 8220If North Korea speaks with the United States on its own it might feel it is at a disadvantage but if it has China as an ally Pyongyang may think it will be able to protect its interests and profits during the summits8221 Reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Christine Kim in SEOUL Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang in SEOUL and John Walcott in WASHINGTON Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ZURICH Reuters GlaxoSmithKline is buying Novartis out of their consumer healthcare joint venture for 13 billion taking full control of products including Sensodyne toothpaste Panadol headache tablets muscle gel Voltaren and Nicotinell patches FILE PHOTO Swiss drugmaker Novartis logo is seen at the companys plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein Switzerland October 23 2017 REUTERSArnd Wiegmann GSK8217s biggest move since Emma Walmsley became chief executive last year follows the British drugmaker8217s decision last week to quit the race to buy Pfizer8217s consumer healthcare business endangering an auction the US company hoped would bring in as much as 20 billion Consumer remedies sold over the counter have lower margins than prescription drugs but they are typically very well known and durable brands with loyal customers 8220The proposed transaction addresses one of our key capital allocation priorities and will allow GSK shareholders to capture the full value of one of the world8217s leading consumer healthcare businesses8221 Walmsley said in a statement on Tuesday Although some pharmaceuticals groups have been keen to hold consumer care products intense price competition online mainly from Amazon as well as cheaper storebrand products have led others to doubt their stable returns longerterm Related Coverage GSK says very confident about consumer margin goal of at least 20 percent The British group8217s shares jumped 45 percent outperforming a 18 percent gain in the STOXX Europe 600 Health Care GSK said that as well as ending the Novartis venture it would start a strategic review of Horlicks and other consumer nutrition products sparking another potential industry shakeup The review will include an assessment of its shareholding in its Indian subsidiary 8220It the deal also removes uncertainty and allows us to plan use of our capital for other priorities especially pharmaceuticals RampampD8221 Walmsley said adding that the purchase would boost adjusted earnings and cash flows Pfizer has been struggling to sell its consumer healthcare business after GSK and Reckitt Benckiser both dropped out of the bidding while differences in price expectations have also hobbled German drugmaker Merck KGaA8217s attempts to sell its consumer products unit And GSK8217s call for bids for its consumer healthcare nutrition brands with a regional focus on India is likely to detract attention from Merck8217s asset which relies heavily on sales of vitamins and dietary supplements in emerging markets FILE PHOTO The GlaxoSmithKline GSK logo is seen on top of GSK Asia House in Singapore March 21 2018 Picture taken March 21 2018 REUTERSLoriene PereraFile Photo NOVARTIS SHARES RISE Barclays analysts said Glaxo was paying less than 17 times expected 2018 core earnings for the joint venture stake while sources have told Reuters that both Merck and Pfizer had asked for up to 20 times for their respective assets Yet analysts at Baader Helvea welcomed the cash price fetched by Novartis as 8220excellent news8221 for the Swiss company whose shares opened 19 percent higher Deutsche Bank analysts said the move decluttered Novartis8217s portfolio but cautioned that the Swiss group was being too vague about what it would do with the cash 8220While ouramp160consumer healthcareamp160joint venture with GSK is progressing wellamp160the timeamp160isamp160right for Novartis to divestamp160aamp160noncore asset at anamp160attractive price8221 Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said Novartis said the money would be used by Novartis to expand its business organically as well as for bolton acquisitions In an interview before the deal was announced Narasimhan ruled out large acquisitions by the Baselbased company 8220We really think we want to focus our MampampA efforts on bolt on acquisitions that have either new technologies or products that fit into our core therapeutic areas8221 he told CNBC in an interview recorded on Sunday Under the 2014 deal to pool their consumer assets Novartis had the right so sell its 365 percent stake to Glaxo from this month The transaction is set to complete in the second quarter subject to necessary approvals 1 07029 pounds additional reporting by John Revill and Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt editing by Edwina Gibbs and Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles FRANKFURT Reuters GlaxoSmithKline GSKL reaffirmed its margin goal for its consumer healthcare business after agreeing to buy Novartis NOVNS out of their joint venture JV for 13 billion 8220We are very confident in terms of delivering on the outlook of at least 20 percent by 2020 which is what we confirmed at the formation of the JV8221 GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley said on a media call after the purchase was announced on Tuesday The margin was 177 percent last year She cited a focus on high margin brands such as Sensodyne toothpaste or antiinflammatory product Voltaren cost cuts in the supply chain and investments in innovation Intense price competition online led by Amazon AMZNO as well as from cheaper storebrand products has weighed on the consumer care industry affecting rivals such as Bayer BAYGnDE Pfizer PFEN or Sanofi SASYPA GlaxoSmithKline PLC 13630 GSKL London Stock Exchange 7480 581 GSKL NOVNS AMZNO BAYGnDE PFEN She added the strategic review of Horlicks and other consumer healthcare nutrition brands reflected a focus on oral health and nonprescription drugs and a potential exit from the entire nutrition and dietary product category Reporting by Ludwig Burger Editing by Arno Schuetze Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175203/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>Sitting in air-conditioned comfort, cans of Coke and 7-Up within reach as they watched their screens, the ground controllers gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness. There had been no declaration of war.&amp;#160; No advance warning, nothing, in fact, that would have alerted the &#8220;enemy&#8221; to the sudden, unprecedented bombing raids. The secret computer-guided strikes were authorized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just weeks after a new American president entered the Oval Office.&amp;#160; They represented an effort to wipe out the enemy&#8217;s central headquarters whose location intelligence experts claimed to have pinpointed just across the border from the war-torn land where tens of thousands of American troops were fighting daily.</p> <p>In remote villages where no reporters dared to go, far from the battlefields where Americans were dying, who knew whether the bombs that rained from the night sky had killed high-level insurgents or innocent civilians? For 14 months the raids continued and, after each one was completed, the commander of the bombing crews was instructed to relay a one-sentence message: &#8220;The ball game is over.&#8221;</p> <p>The campaign was called &#8220;Operation Breakfast,&#8221; and, while it may sound like the CIA&#8217;s present air campaign over <a href="/politics/2009/05/americas-pakistan-problem" type="external">Pakistan</a>, it wasn&#8217;t. You need to turn the clock back to another American war, four decades earlier, to March 18, 1969, to be exact.&amp;#160; The target was an area of Cambodia known as the Fish Hook that jutted into South Vietnam, and Operation Breakfast would be but the first of dozens of top secret bombing raids.&amp;#160; Later ones were named &#8220;Lunch,&#8221; &#8220;Snack,&#8221; and &#8220;Supper,&#8221; and they went under the collective label &#8220;Menu.&#8221; They were authorized by President Richard Nixon and were meant to destroy a (non-existent) &#8220;Bamboo Pentagon,&#8221; a central headquarters in the Cambodian borderlands where North Vietnamese communists were supposedly orchestrating raids deep into South Vietnam.</p> <p>Like President Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war. On the day he was sworn in, he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah: &#8220;They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.&#8221; He also <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=1941" type="external">spoke</a> of transforming Washington&#8217;s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity: &#8220;We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.&#8221;</p> <p>Return to the Killing Fields</p> <p>In recent years, many commentators and pundits have resorted to &#8220;the <a href="/politics/2009/04/d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu-all-over-again-afghanistan" type="external">Vietnam analogy</a>,&#8221; comparing first the American war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War. Despite a number of similarities, the analogy disintegrates quickly enough if you consider that U.S. military campaigns in post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq against small forces of lightly-armed insurgents bear little resemblance to the large-scale war that Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon waged against both southern revolutionary guerrillas and the military of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who commanded a real army, with the backing of, and supplies from, the Soviet Union and China.</p> <p>A more provocative&#8212;and perhaps more ominous&#8212;analogy today might be between the CIA&#8217;s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon&#8217;s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent.&amp;#160; To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a &#8220;neutralist&#8221; king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found &#8220;sanctuaries.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1568583923/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way.&amp;#160; In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge.&amp;#160; (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.)&amp;#160; They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk&#8212;until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began.&amp;#160; As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.</p> <p>You know the grim end of that old story.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Forty years, almost to the day, after Operation Breakfast began, I traveled to the town of Snuol, close to where the American bombs once fell. It is a quiet town, no longer remote, as modern roads and Chinese-led timber companies have systematically cut down the jungle that once sheltered anti-government rebels. I went in search of anyone who remembered the bombing raids, only to discover that few there were old enough to have been alive at the time, largely because the Khmer Rouge executed as much as a quarter of the total Cambodian population after they took power in 1975.</p> <p>Eventually, a 15-minute ride out of town, I found an old soldier living by himself in a simple one-room house adorned with pictures of the old king, Sihanouk. His name was Kong Kan and he had first moved to the nearby town of Memot in 1960. A little further away, I ran into three more old men, Choenung Klou, Keo Long, and Hoe Huy, who had gathered at a newly built temple to chat.</p> <p>All of them remembered the massive 1969 B-52 raids vividly and the arrival of U.S. troops the following year. &#8220;We thought the Americans had come to help us,&#8221; said Choenung Klou. &#8220;But then they left and the [South] Vietnamese soldiers who came with them destroyed the villages and raped the women.&#8221;</p> <p>He had no love for the North Vietnamese communists either. &#8220;They would stay at people&#8217;s houses, take our hammocks and food. We didn&#8217;t like them and we were afraid of them.&#8221;</p> <p>Caught between two Vietnamese armies and with American planes carpet-bombing the countryside, increasing numbers of Cambodians soon came to believe that the Khmer Rouge, who were their countrymen, might help them. Like the Taliban of today, many of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, teenaged villagers who had responded, under the pressure of war and disruption, to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles.</p> <p>&#8220;If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge, the main reason is because of the American invasion,&#8221; Hun Sen, the current prime minister of Cambodia, <a href="http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=2412" type="external">has said</a>. &#8220;If there was no invasion, by now, I would be a pilot or a professor.&#8221;</p> <p>Six years after the bombings of Cambodia began, shortly after the last helicopter lifted off the U.S. embassy in Saigon and the flow of military aid to the crumbling government of Cambodia stopped, a reign of terror took hold in the capital, Phnom Penh.</p> <p>The Khmer Rouge left the jungles and entered the capital where they began a systemic <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7002629.stm" type="external">genocide</a> against city dwellers and anyone who was educated. They vowed to restart history at Year Zero, a new era in which much of the past became irrelevant. Some two million people are believed to have died from executions, starvation, and forced labor in the camps established by the Angkar leadership of the Khmer Rouge commanded by Pol Pot.</p> <p>Unraveling Pakistan</p> <p>Could the same thing happen in Pakistan today? A new American president was ordering escalating drone attacks, in a country where no war has been declared, at the moment when I flew from Cambodia across South Asia to Afghanistan, so this question loomed large in my mind.&amp;#160; Both there and just across the border, Operation Breakfast seems to be repeating itself.</p> <p>In the Afghan capital, Kabul, I met earnest aid workers who drank late into the night in places like <a href="http://latmospherekabul.blogs.com/" type="external">L&#8217;Atmosphere</a>, a foreigner-only bar that could easily have doubled as a movie set for Saigon in the 1960s. Like modern-day equivalents of Graham Greene&#8217;s &#8220;quiet American,&#8221; these &#8220;consultants&#8221; describe a Third Way that is neither Western nor fundamentalist Islam.</p> <p>At the very same time, CIA analysts in distant Virginia are <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175195/nick_turse_the_forty-year_drone_war" type="external">using pilot-less drones</a> and satellite technology to order strikes against supposed terrorist headquarters across the border in Pakistan.&amp;#160; They are not so unlike the military men who watched radar screens in South Vietnam in the 1960s as the Cambodian air raids went on.</p> <p>In 2009, on the orders of President Obama, the U.S. unloaded more missiles and bombs on Pakistan than President Bush did in the years of his secret drone war, and the strikes have been accelerating in number and intensity.&amp;#160; By this January, there was a drone attack <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23drone.html" type="external">almost every other day</a>. Even if, this time around, no one is using the code phrase, &#8220;the ball game is over,&#8221; Washington continually hails success after success, terrorist leader after terrorist leader killed, implying that something approaching victory could be somewhere just over the horizon.&amp;#160;</p> <p>As in the 1960s in Cambodia, these strikes are, in actuality, having a devastating, destabilizing effect in Pakistan, not just on the targeted communities, but on public consciousness throughout the region. An article in the January 23rd New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/asia/24military.html" type="external">indicated</a> that the fury over these attacks has even spread into Pakistan&#8217;s military establishment which, in a manner similar to Sihanouk in the 1960s, knows its limits in its tribal borderlands and is publicly uneasy about U.S. air strikes which undermine the country&#8217;s sovereignty. &#8220;Are you with us or against us?&#8221; the newspaper quoted a senior Pakistani military officer demanding of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he spoke last month at Pakistan&#8217;s National Defense University.</p> <p>Even pro-American Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has spoken out publicly against drone strikes.&amp;#160; Of one such attack, he <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/2827257/Pakistani-fury-as-suspected-US-drone-attack-kills-12.html" type="external">recently told</a> reporters, &#8220;We strongly condemn this attack and the government will raise this issue at [the] diplomatic level.&#8221;</p> <p>Despite the public displays of outrage, however, the American strikes have undoubtedly been tacitly approved at the highest levels of the Pakistani government because of that country&#8217;s inability to control militants in its tribal borderlands.&amp;#160; Similarly, Sihanouk finally looked the other way after the U.S. provided secret papers, code-named Vesuvius, as proof that the Vietnamese were operating from his country.</p> <p>While most Democratic and Republican hawks have praised the growing drone war in the skies over Pakistan, some experts in the U.S. are starting to express worries about them (even if they don&#8217;t have the Cambodian analogy in mind). For example, John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the military, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23drone.html" type="external">says</a> that an expansion of the drone strikes &#8220;might even spark a social revolution in Pakistan.&#8221;</p> <p>Indeed, even General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102172.html" type="external">wrote in a secret assessment</a> on May 27, 2009: &#8220;Anti-U.S. sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan&#8230; especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties.&#8221; Quoting local polls, he wrote: &#8220;35 percent [of Pakistanis] say they do not support U.S. strikes into Pakistan, even if they are coordinated with the GOP [government of Pakistan] and the Pakistan Military ahead of time.&#8221;</p> <p>The Pakistani Army has, in fact, launched several significant operations against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and in South Waziristan, just as Sihanouk initially ordered the Cambodian military to attack the Khmer Rouge and suppress peasant rebellions in Battambang Province. Again like Sihanouk in the late 1960s, however, the Pakistanis have balked at more comprehensive assaults on the Taliban, and especially on the Afghan Taliban using the border areas as &#8220;sanctuaries.&#8221;</p> <p>The New Jihadists</p> <p>What happens next is the $64 million question. Most Pakistani experts dismiss any suggestion that the Taliban has widespread support in their country, but it must be remembered that the Khmer Rouge was a fringe group with no more than 4,000 fighters at the time that Operation Breakfast began.</p> <p>And if Cambodia&#8217;s history is any guide to the future, the drone strikes do not have to create a groundswell for revolution. They only have to begin to destabilize Pakistan as would, for instance, the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2009/1206/p99s01-duts.html" type="external">threatened spread</a> of such strikes into the already unsettled province of Baluchistan, or any future American ground incursions into the country. A few charismatic intellectuals like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot always have the possibility of taking it from there, rallying angry and unemployed youth to create an infrastructure for disruptive change.</p> <p>Despite often repeated claims by both the Bush and Obama administrations that the drone raids are smashing al-Qaeda&#8217;s intellectual leadership, more and more educated and disenchanted young men from around the world seem to be rallying to the fundamentalist cause.</p> <p>Some have struck directly at American targets like <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8431530.stm" type="external">Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab</a>, the 23-year-old Nigerian who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009, and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8442473.stm" type="external">Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi</a>, the 32-year-old Jordanian double agent and suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives at a military base in Khost, southern Afghanistan, five days later.</p> <p>Some have even been U.S.-born, like <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8438635.stm" type="external">Anwar al-Awlaki</a>, the 38-year-old Islamic preacher from New Mexico who has moved to Yemen; Adam Pearlman, a 32-year-old Southern Californian and al-Qaeda spokesman now known as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6042700.stm" type="external">&#8220;Azzam the American,&#8221;</a> who reportedly lives somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions; and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31Jihadist-t.html" type="external">Omar Hammami</a>, the 25-year-old Syrian-American from Alabama believed to be an al-Shabaab leader in Somalia.</p> <p>Like the Khmer Rouge before them, these new jihadists display no remorse for killing innocent civilians. &#8220;One of the sad truths I have come to see is that for this kind of mass violence, you don&#8217;t need monsters,&#8221; <a href="http://www.khmerfuture.com/index.php?name=News&amp;amp;file=article&amp;amp;sid=628&amp;amp;theme=Printer" type="external">says</a> Craig Etcheson, author of After the Killing Fields and founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. &#8220;Ordinary people will do just fine. This thing lives in all of us.&#8221;</p> <p>Even King Sihanouk, who had once ordered raids against the Khmer Rouge, eventually agreed to support them after he had been overthrown in a coup and was living in exile in China. Could the same thing happen to Pakistani politicians if they fall from grace and U.S. backing?</p> <p>What threw Sihanouk&#8217;s fragile government into serious disarray&#8212;other than his own eccentricity and self-absorption&#8212;was the devastating spillover of Nixon&#8217;s war in Vietnam into Cambodia&#8217;s border regions. It finally brought the Khmer Rouge to power.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Pakistan 2010, with its enormous modern military and industrialized base, is hardly impoverished Cambodia 1969.&amp;#160; Nonetheless, in that now ancient history lies both a potential analogy and a cautionary tale.&amp;#160; Beware secret air wars that promise success and yet wreak havoc in lands that are not even enemy nations.</p> <p>When his war plans were questioned, Nixon pressed ahead, despite a growing public distaste for his war. A similar dynamic seems to be underway today.&amp;#160; In 1970, after Operation Breakfast was revealed by the New York Times, Nixon told his top military and national security aides: &#8220;We cannot sit here and let the enemy believe that Cambodia is our last gasp.&#8221;</p> <p>Had he refrained first from launching Operation Breakfast and then from supping on the whole &#8220;menu,&#8221; some historians like Etcheson believe a genocide would have been averted. It would be a sad day if the drone strikes, along with the endless war that the Obama administration has inherited and that is now spilling over ever more devastatingly into Pakistan, were to create a new class of fundamentalists who actually had the capacity to seize power.</p>

Destabilizing Pakistan

https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/destabilizing-pakistan/

2010-02-08

4left

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website Sitting in airconditioned comfort cans of Coke and 7Up within reach as they watched their screens the ground controllers gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness There had been no declaration of waramp160 No advance warning nothing in fact that would have alerted the 8220enemy8221 to the sudden unprecedented bombing raids The secret computerguided strikes were authorized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff just weeks after a new American president entered the Oval Officeamp160 They represented an effort to wipe out the enemy8217s central headquarters whose location intelligence experts claimed to have pinpointed just across the border from the wartorn land where tens of thousands of American troops were fighting daily In remote villages where no reporters dared to go far from the battlefields where Americans were dying who knew whether the bombs that rained from the night sky had killed highlevel insurgents or innocent civilians For 14 months the raids continued and after each one was completed the commander of the bombing crews was instructed to relay a onesentence message 8220The ball game is over8221 The campaign was called 8220Operation Breakfast8221 and while it may sound like the CIA8217s present air campaign over Pakistan it wasn8217t You need to turn the clock back to another American war four decades earlier to March 18 1969 to be exactamp160 The target was an area of Cambodia known as the Fish Hook that jutted into South Vietnam and Operation Breakfast would be but the first of dozens of top secret bombing raidsamp160 Later ones were named 8220Lunch8221 8220Snack8221 and 8220Supper8221 and they went under the collective label 8220Menu8221 They were authorized by President Richard Nixon and were meant to destroy a nonexistent 8220Bamboo Pentagon8221 a central headquarters in the Cambodian borderlands where North Vietnamese communists were supposedly orchestrating raids deep into South Vietnam Like President Obama today Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war On the day he was sworn in he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah 8220They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks8221 He also spoke of transforming Washington8217s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity 8220We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices8221 Return to the Killing Fields In recent years many commentators and pundits have resorted to 8220the Vietnam analogy8221 comparing first the American war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War Despite a number of similarities the analogy disintegrates quickly enough if you consider that US military campaigns in postinvasion Afghanistan and Iraq against small forces of lightlyarmed insurgents bear little resemblance to the largescale war that Presidents Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon waged against both southern revolutionary guerrillas and the military of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh who commanded a real army with the backing of and supplies from the Soviet Union and China A more provocative8212and perhaps more ominous8212analogy today might be between the CIA8217s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon8217s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalentamp160 To briefly recapitulate that ancient history In the late 1960s Cambodia was ruled by a 8220neutralist8221 king Norodom Sihanouk leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens In its borderlands largely beyond its control the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found 8220sanctuaries8221amp160 Sihanouk helpless to do anything looked the other wayamp160 In the meantime sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group littleknown communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rougeamp160 Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani governmentamp160 They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk8212until that is those secret bombing raids by American B52s beganamp160 As these intensified in the summer of 1969 areas of the country began to destabilize helped on in 1970 by a USencouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength You know the grim end of that old storyamp160 Forty years almost to the day after Operation Breakfast began I traveled to the town of Snuol close to where the American bombs once fell It is a quiet town no longer remote as modern roads and Chineseled timber companies have systematically cut down the jungle that once sheltered antigovernment rebels I went in search of anyone who remembered the bombing raids only to discover that few there were old enough to have been alive at the time largely because the Khmer Rouge executed as much as a quarter of the total Cambodian population after they took power in 1975 Eventually a 15minute ride out of town I found an old soldier living by himself in a simple oneroom house adorned with pictures of the old king Sihanouk His name was Kong Kan and he had first moved to the nearby town of Memot in 1960 A little further away I ran into three more old men Choenung Klou Keo Long and Hoe Huy who had gathered at a newly built temple to chat All of them remembered the massive 1969 B52 raids vividly and the arrival of US troops the following year 8220We thought the Americans had come to help us8221 said Choenung Klou 8220But then they left and the South Vietnamese soldiers who came with them destroyed the villages and raped the women8221 He had no love for the North Vietnamese communists either 8220They would stay at people8217s houses take our hammocks and food We didn8217t like them and we were afraid of them8221 Caught between two Vietnamese armies and with American planes carpetbombing the countryside increasing numbers of Cambodians soon came to believe that the Khmer Rouge who were their countrymen might help them Like the Taliban of today many of the Khmer Rouge were in fact teenaged villagers who had responded under the pressure of war and disruption to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles 8220If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge the main reason is because of the American invasion8221 Hun Sen the current prime minister of Cambodia has said 8220If there was no invasion by now I would be a pilot or a professor8221 Six years after the bombings of Cambodia began shortly after the last helicopter lifted off the US embassy in Saigon and the flow of military aid to the crumbling government of Cambodia stopped a reign of terror took hold in the capital Phnom Penh The Khmer Rouge left the jungles and entered the capital where they began a systemic genocide against city dwellers and anyone who was educated They vowed to restart history at Year Zero a new era in which much of the past became irrelevant Some two million people are believed to have died from executions starvation and forced labor in the camps established by the Angkar leadership of the Khmer Rouge commanded by Pol Pot Unraveling Pakistan Could the same thing happen in Pakistan today A new American president was ordering escalating drone attacks in a country where no war has been declared at the moment when I flew from Cambodia across South Asia to Afghanistan so this question loomed large in my mindamp160 Both there and just across the border Operation Breakfast seems to be repeating itself In the Afghan capital Kabul I met earnest aid workers who drank late into the night in places like L8217Atmosphere a foreigneronly bar that could easily have doubled as a movie set for Saigon in the 1960s Like modernday equivalents of Graham Greene8217s 8220quiet American8221 these 8220consultants8221 describe a Third Way that is neither Western nor fundamentalist Islam At the very same time CIA analysts in distant Virginia are using pilotless drones and satellite technology to order strikes against supposed terrorist headquarters across the border in Pakistanamp160 They are not so unlike the military men who watched radar screens in South Vietnam in the 1960s as the Cambodian air raids went on In 2009 on the orders of President Obama the US unloaded more missiles and bombs on Pakistan than President Bush did in the years of his secret drone war and the strikes have been accelerating in number and intensityamp160 By this January there was a drone attack almost every other day Even if this time around no one is using the code phrase 8220the ball game is over8221 Washington continually hails success after success terrorist leader after terrorist leader killed implying that something approaching victory could be somewhere just over the horizonamp160 As in the 1960s in Cambodia these strikes are in actuality having a devastating destabilizing effect in Pakistan not just on the targeted communities but on public consciousness throughout the region An article in the January 23rd New York Times indicated that the fury over these attacks has even spread into Pakistan8217s military establishment which in a manner similar to Sihanouk in the 1960s knows its limits in its tribal borderlands and is publicly uneasy about US air strikes which undermine the country8217s sovereignty 8220Are you with us or against us8221 the newspaper quoted a senior Pakistani military officer demanding of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he spoke last month at Pakistan8217s National Defense University Even proAmerican Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has spoken out publicly against drone strikesamp160 Of one such attack he recently told reporters 8220We strongly condemn this attack and the government will raise this issue at the diplomatic level8221 Despite the public displays of outrage however the American strikes have undoubtedly been tacitly approved at the highest levels of the Pakistani government because of that country8217s inability to control militants in its tribal borderlandsamp160 Similarly Sihanouk finally looked the other way after the US provided secret papers codenamed Vesuvius as proof that the Vietnamese were operating from his country While most Democratic and Republican hawks have praised the growing drone war in the skies over Pakistan some experts in the US are starting to express worries about them even if they don8217t have the Cambodian analogy in mind For example John Arquilla a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the military says that an expansion of the drone strikes 8220might even spark a social revolution in Pakistan8221 Indeed even General David Petraeus head of US Central Command wrote in a secret assessment on May 27 2009 8220AntiUS sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan8230 especially in regard to crossborder and reported drone strikes which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties8221 Quoting local polls he wrote 822035 percent of Pakistanis say they do not support US strikes into Pakistan even if they are coordinated with the GOP government of Pakistan and the Pakistan Military ahead of time8221 The Pakistani Army has in fact launched several significant operations against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and in South Waziristan just as Sihanouk initially ordered the Cambodian military to attack the Khmer Rouge and suppress peasant rebellions in Battambang Province Again like Sihanouk in the late 1960s however the Pakistanis have balked at more comprehensive assaults on the Taliban and especially on the Afghan Taliban using the border areas as 8220sanctuaries8221 The New Jihadists What happens next is the 64 million question Most Pakistani experts dismiss any suggestion that the Taliban has widespread support in their country but it must be remembered that the Khmer Rouge was a fringe group with no more than 4000 fighters at the time that Operation Breakfast began And if Cambodia8217s history is any guide to the future the drone strikes do not have to create a groundswell for revolution They only have to begin to destabilize Pakistan as would for instance the threatened spread of such strikes into the already unsettled province of Baluchistan or any future American ground incursions into the country A few charismatic intellectuals like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot always have the possibility of taking it from there rallying angry and unemployed youth to create an infrastructure for disruptive change Despite often repeated claims by both the Bush and Obama administrations that the drone raids are smashing alQaeda8217s intellectual leadership more and more educated and disenchanted young men from around the world seem to be rallying to the fundamentalist cause Some have struck directly at American targets like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab the 23yearold Nigerian who attempted to blow up a Detroitbound plane on Christmas Day 2009 and Dr Humam Khalil Abu Mulal alBalawi the 32yearold Jordanian double agent and suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives at a military base in Khost southern Afghanistan five days later Some have even been USborn like Anwar alAwlaki the 38yearold Islamic preacher from New Mexico who has moved to Yemen Adam Pearlman a 32yearold Southern Californian and alQaeda spokesman now known as 8220Azzam the American8221 who reportedly lives somewhere in the AfghanPakistan border regions and Omar Hammami the 25yearold SyrianAmerican from Alabama believed to be an alShabaab leader in Somalia Like the Khmer Rouge before them these new jihadists display no remorse for killing innocent civilians 8220One of the sad truths I have come to see is that for this kind of mass violence you don8217t need monsters8221 says Craig Etcheson author of After the Killing Fields and founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia 8220Ordinary people will do just fine This thing lives in all of us8221 Even King Sihanouk who had once ordered raids against the Khmer Rouge eventually agreed to support them after he had been overthrown in a coup and was living in exile in China Could the same thing happen to Pakistani politicians if they fall from grace and US backing What threw Sihanouk8217s fragile government into serious disarray8212other than his own eccentricity and selfabsorption8212was the devastating spillover of Nixon8217s war in Vietnam into Cambodia8217s border regions It finally brought the Khmer Rouge to poweramp160 Pakistan 2010 with its enormous modern military and industrialized base is hardly impoverished Cambodia 1969amp160 Nonetheless in that now ancient history lies both a potential analogy and a cautionary taleamp160 Beware secret air wars that promise success and yet wreak havoc in lands that are not even enemy nations When his war plans were questioned Nixon pressed ahead despite a growing public distaste for his war A similar dynamic seems to be underway todayamp160 In 1970 after Operation Breakfast was revealed by the New York Times Nixon told his top military and national security aides 8220We cannot sit here and let the enemy believe that Cambodia is our last gasp8221 Had he refrained first from launching Operation Breakfast and then from supping on the whole 8220menu8221 some historians like Etcheson believe a genocide would have been averted It would be a sad day if the drone strikes along with the endless war that the Obama administration has inherited and that is now spilling over ever more devastatingly into Pakistan were to create a new class of fundamentalists who actually had the capacity to seize power

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<p>(Reuters) - HSBC Holdings Plc on Thursday agreed to pay $101.5 million to settle a U.S. criminal probe into the rigging of currency transactions, which has already led the conviction of one of its former bankers.</p> A Swiss International aircraft flies past the HSBC headquarters building in the Canary Wharf financial district in east London February 15, 2015. HSBC apologised to customers and investors on Sunday for past practices at its Swiss private bank after allegations that it helped hundreds of clients to dodge taxes. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls (BRITAIN - Tags: BUSINESS CRIME LAW TRANSPORT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) <p>The payment includes a $63.1 million fine plus $38.4 million in restitution to a corporate client, according to a deferred prosecution agreement filed on Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York.</p> <p>In the settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, HSBC also agreed to bolster its internal controls, and admitted and accepted responsibility for wrongdoing underlying two criminal wire fraud charges filed on Thursday against the bank, according to the agreement.</p> <p>Deferred prosecution agreements let companies avoid criminal charges so long as they comply with the terms.</p> <p>Thursday&#8217;s sanctions came a month after HSBC was freed from a five-year deferred prosecution agreement over its alleged dealings with Mexican drug cartels and other money launderers, and conducting of transactions for customers in countries barred by U.S. sanctions. It was fined $1.92 billion in that case.</p> <p>In October, a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Mark Johnson, the former head of HSBC&#8217;s global foreign exchange cash trading desk, of trading ahead of a $3.5 billion currency transaction by his client Cairn Energy Plc.</p> <p>Johnson has yet to be sentenced. Stuart Scott, HSBC&#8217;s former head of cash trading for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, was also charged in that case and has fought extradition.</p> <p>HSBC agreed to pay Cairn $8.08 million under a settlement reached in July, which the Justice Department said it credited as &#8220;full restitution&#8221; to that company.</p> <p>In a statement on Thursday, HSBC said the $63.1 million fine reflected a 15 percent reduction that took into account the bank&#8217;s cooperation and &#8220;extensive remediation&#8221; efforts.</p> <p>The case is U.S. v. HSBC Holdings Plc, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 18-cr-00030.</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Global stocks recovered to three-week highs on Friday as anticipated strong earnings season took center stage after U.S. President Donald Trump backtracked on his suggestion of an imminent missile attack on Syria.</p> FILE PHOTO: A pedestrian casts a shadow in front of an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, November 9, 2016. REUTERS/Issei Kato <p>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS ticked up 0.1 percent while Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> gained 0.8 percent.</p> <p>MSCI&#8217;s broadest gauge of the world&#8217;s stock markets .MIWD00000PUS also edged up 0.1 percent after hitting a three-week high on Thursday.</p> <p>In New York, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 0.83 percent, led by a 1.83 percent gain in financials .SPSY after strong quarterly results from BlackRock Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BLK.N</a>) boosted optimism for corporate earnings.</p> <p>The earnings season begins in earnest on Friday with reports from JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>), Citigroup Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=C.N" type="external">C.N</a>) and Wells Fargo &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>).</p> <p>Analysts expect quarterly profit for S&amp;amp;P 500 companies to rise 18.4 percent from a year ago, in what would be the biggest gain in seven years, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <p>The mood improved also after Trump tweeted an attack on Syria &#8220;could be very soon or not so soon at all,&#8221; allaying fears of an immediate military action that investors fear could lead to wider conflict between Washington and Moscow.</p> <p>In another change of tack, Trump has asked his trade advisers to look at re-joining the Trans Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade pact he withdrew the United States from early last year.</p> <p>&#8220;Markets have been pushed around by Trump. His modus operandi seems to do anything that seems to be good for his re-election. If protectionism doesn&#8217;t work, he may switch to international trade,&#8221; said Hiroshi Watanabe, economist at Sony Financial Holdings.</p> <p>&#8220;Markets are still not yet convinced yet if the U.S. is really re-joining the TPP. But if it does, it&#8217;s very positive for the global economy and stock markets will like it,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>The improved sentiment drove up U.S. bond yields. The 10-year U.S. Treasuries yield US10YT=RR rose to 2.843 percent, its highest level since March 27.</p> <p>In the currency market, the dollar rose to 107.27 yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a>, edging near a five-week high of 107.49 touched on Apr. 5.</p> <p>The yen has become litmus test for risk sentiment, sought when investors turn risk averse because Japan&#8217;s hefty current surplus gives protection to any capital outflows deficit-running countries are vulnerable to.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">Nikkei Inc</a> 21847.88 .N225 Nikkei Index +187.60 (+0.87%) .N225 BLK.N JPM.N C.N WFC.N <p>The euro <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a> eased to $1.2327, though on the week it has kept gains of 0.4 percent.</p> <p>The Hong Kong dollar stood at 7.8498 to the dollar <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=HKD&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">HKD=D4</a>, near the lower end of its 7.75-7.85 trading band, a day after Hong Kong's de facto central bank intervened to support the currency for the first time since 2015.</p> <p>The Singapore dollar gained slightly after Singapore&#8217;s central bank tightened monetary policy for the first time in six years as expected.</p> <p>Oil prices remained close to highs last reached in late 2014 on tensions in the oil-rich Middle East and shrinking global oil inventories.</p> <p>Brent crude futures LCOc1 traded at $71.90 a barrel, a tad below Thursday close but not far from Wednesday&#8217;s high of $73.09. U.S. WTI crude futures CLc1 stood at $66.87.</p> <p>Elsewhere, bitcoin <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=BTC&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">BTC=BTSP</a> fetched $7,968.5 after 14.2 percent gains on Thursday, its biggest gain in four months.</p> <p>Editing by Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks climbed on Thursday as investors anticipated a strong earnings season and as U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s suggestion that a military strike on Syria may not be imminent ratcheted down geopolitical worries.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 has now recouped nearly all its losses from earlier this year.</p> <p>Trump said in a tweet on Thursday that a possible attack on Syria could occur &#8220;very soon or not so soon at all,&#8221; easing fears of confrontation with Russia.</p> <p>That lifted U.S. Treasury yields US10YT=RR, leading to a 1.8 percent increase in financial stocks .SPSY, which had the biggest percentage advance among the S&amp;amp;P&#8217;s 11 major sectors.</p> <p>The technology sector .SPLRCT rose 1.3 percent, adding the most gains to the S&amp;amp;P.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re hearing less talk of firing missiles and less talk of trade war,&#8221; said Michael Antonelli, managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee. &#8220;Earnings are coming up and expectations are high.&#8221;</p> <p>Strong quarterly results from BlackRock Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BLK.N</a>) and Delta Air Lines Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DAL.N" type="external">DAL.N</a>) added to the sanguine mood.</p> <p>Delta topped profit estimates, sending its shares 2.9 percent higher and boosting other airline stocks.</p> <p>BlackRock gained 1.5 percent after the asset manager&#8217;s quarterly profit rose more than expected.</p> <p>The earnings season begins in earnest on Friday with reports from JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>), Citigroup Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=C.N" type="external">C.N</a>) and Wells Fargo &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>).</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Analysts expect quarterly profit for S&amp;amp;P 500 companies to rise 18.4 percent from a year ago, in what would be the biggest gain in seven years, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <p>&#8220;People are looking forward to earnings season,&#8221; said Tracie McMillion, head of global asset allocation strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. &#8220;Market participants are not wanting to miss out if (earnings are) as good as the forecasts say they will be.&#8221;</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 293.6 points, or 1.21 percent, to 24,483.05, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 21.8 points, or 0.83 percent, to 2,663.99, and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 71.22 points, or 1.01 percent, to 7,140.25.</p> <p>Investor sentiment was also boosted by the weekly U.S. initial jobless claims report, which pointed to sustained labor market strength.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BlackRock Inc</a> 533.01 BLK.N New York Stock Exchange +7.70 (+1.47%) BLK.N DAL.N JPM.N C.N WFC.N <p>Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) was a notable laggard among technology stocks, falling 1.5 percent following a 5.3 percent gain over the past two days when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on the social network&#8217;s data security.</p> <p>Bed Bath &amp;amp; Beyond Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BBBY.O" type="external">BBBY.O</a>) shares dived 20.0 percent after the company&#8217;s full-year profit forecast missed estimates.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 1.20-to-1 ratio and on the Nasdaq, for a 1.84-to-1 ratio.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.12 billion shares, compared to the 7.27 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Genuine Parts Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GPC.N" type="external">GPC.N</a>) said on Thursday it would spin off its wholesale distribution business S.P. Richards and merge it with Essendant ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ESND.O" type="external">ESND.O</a>) in a tax-free transaction for shareholders, as it focuses on its industrial and auto parts businesses.</p> <p>The combined company will have more products and resources, giving its customers - mainly independent dealers - a one-stop shop as they grapple with intense competition from e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) and big-box stores.</p> <p>&#8220;This combination of our customer centric companies creates a stronger partner to support those dealers and help them to be more competitive with all the other options available to customers in the industry,&#8221; Essendant Chief Executive Officer Ric Phillips said on a call with analysts.</p> <p>Essendant&#8217;s shares jumped 18 percent to $10.00, while those of Genuine Parts were up about 1 percent at $90.17 in morning trading.</p> <p>Illinois-based Essendant is a wholesale distributor of workplace items including janitorial supplies, while Atlanta, Georgia-based S.P. Richards distributes products ranging from office furniture to school supplies.</p> <p>The combined entity will be called Essendant and headed by Phillips. S.P. Richards CEO Rick Toppin will become chief operating officer of the new company. Essendant had a market capitalization of about $323.5 million as of Wednesday&#8217;s close.</p> <p>Genuine Parts, one of the leading U.S. car parts distributors, said the deal implied a valuation of about $680 million for S.P. Richards.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GPC.N" type="external">Genuine Parts Co</a> 90.13 GPC.N New York Stock Exchange +0.47 (+0.52%) GPC.N ESND.O AMZN.O <p>Genuine Parts will get $347 million in cash and its shareholders 51 percent of the newly-formed combined company. Structured as a Reverse Morris Trust deal, the transaction will be tax-free for the companies&#8217; shareholders.</p> <p>The company has been evaluating options for the S.P. Richards business, which has been pressured by weak demand for office supplies.</p> <p>Essendant has also been hit as large customers source products directly from manufacturers. Its net sales declined 6.2 percent to $5.04 billion in 2017, while adjusted profit fell more than 50 percent.</p> <p>Genuine Parts has been focusing on its auto parts and industrial businesses. Last year, the company completed a deal to buy London-based Alliance Automotive Group and took a stake in Australia&#8217;s Inenco Group.</p> <p>Citigroup Global Markets Inc was the financial adviser for Essendant, while J.P. Morgan advised Genuine Parts.</p> <p>Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The global oil stocks surplus is close to evaporating, OPEC said on Thursday, citing healthy energy demand and its own supply cuts while revising up its forecast for production from rivals who have benefited from higher oil prices.</p> A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) logo is seen during a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries in Vienna, Austria September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>U.S. shale oil output has been booming over the past year since OPEC reduced its own production in tandem with Russia to prop up global oil prices.</p> <p>But as oil production collapsed in OPEC member Venezuela and is still facing hiccups in countries such as Libya and Angola, the oil exporters&#8217; group is still producing below its targets meaning the world needs to use stocks to meet rising demand.</p> <p>The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its monthly report oil stocks in the developed world reversed a rise in January to fall by 17.4 million barrels in February to 2.854 billion barrels, around 43 million barrels above the latest five-year average.</p> <p>&#8220;We have achieved an over 150 percent conformity level,&#8221; OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters in New Delhi, referring to OPEC&#8217;s commitments under the supply-cutting pact. He said the glut has effectively shrunk by nine-tenths since the start of 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;We have seen an accelerated shrinkage of stocks in storage from unparalleled highs of about 400 million barrels to about 43 million above the five-year average,&#8221; Barkindo said.</p> <p>Stock levels are now 207 million barrels below their level in February 2017, with crude stocks in a surplus of 55 million barrels and product stocks in a deficit of 12 million.</p> <p>&#8220;Looking forward, a healthy global economic forecast for 2018, positive car sales data in recent months, stronger 2018 yea-on-year U.S. product consumption in January and potentially tighter global product markets are expected to boost gasoline and distillates demand ...,&#8221; OPEC said.</p> <p>&#8220;High conformity levels observed by OPEC and non-OPEC producing countries ... should further enhance market stability and support crude and product markets in the months ahead.&#8221;</p> <p>The 14-member, Vienna-based producer group said its collective output, according to secondary sources, fell 201,000 bpd to 31.96 million bpd in March from February, driven by declines in Angola, Algeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Libya.</p> <p>The figure is below the 32.6 million bpd that OPEC sees as demand for its crude for the whole of 2018.</p> <p>OPEC, Russia and several other non-OPEC producers began to cut supply in January 2017. The pact runs until the end of the year and OPEC meets in Vienna in June to decide on its next course of action.</p> THIRD YEAR OF CUTS <p>OPEC&#8217;s leader Saudi Arabia has said it would like the pact to be extended into 2019.</p> <p>&#8220;There is growing confidence that the declaration of cooperation will be extended beyond 2018,&#8221; Barkindo told Reuters. &#8220;Russia will continue to play a leading role.&#8221;</p> <p>On Thursday, OPEC also revised its forecast for supply growth from its rivals, non-OPEC, which is now forecast to grow by a further 80,000 barrels per day this year to 1.71 million bpd, driven largely by higher-than-anticipated growth in the first quarter in the United States and the former Soviet Union.</p> <p>At the same time, it increased its forecast for global oil demand growth for this year by 30,000 bpd to 1.63 million bpd.</p> <p>&#8220;This mainly reflects the positive momentum in the OECD in the 1Q18 on the back of better-than-expected data, and supported by development in industrial activities, colder-than-anticipated weather and strong mining activities in the OECD Americas and the OECD Asia Pacific,&#8221; it said in the monthly market report.</p> <p>Production in the United Arab Emirates posted the largest month-on-month increase, according to the secondary sources, rising by around 45,000 bpd in March to 2.86 million bpd.</p> <p>OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia told the group it pumped 9.907 million bpd in March, 28,000 bpd below its February level.</p> <p>Venezuela reported production of 1.509 million bpd in March, 77,000 bpd below the level it reported in February.</p> <p>Reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

HSBC to pay $100 mln to settle U.S. probe into currency rigging Stocks bounce as Trump changes tack on Syria, earnings hopes Wall Street gains on earnings optimism, waning Syria jitters Genuine Parts to merge S.P. Richards business with Essendant OPEC sees oil markets tighten further even as U.S. shale booms

https://reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-settlement/hsbc-to-pay-100-million-to-settle-us-probe-into-currency-rigging-idUSKBN1F7365

2018-01-19

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Reuters HSBC Holdings Plc on Thursday agreed to pay 1015 million to settle a US criminal probe into the rigging of currency transactions which has already led the conviction of one of its former bankers A Swiss International aircraft flies past the HSBC headquarters building in the Canary Wharf financial district in east London February 15 2015 HSBC apologised to customers and investors on Sunday for past practices at its Swiss private bank after allegations that it helped hundreds of clients to dodge taxes REUTERSPeter Nicholls BRITAIN Tags BUSINESS CRIME LAW TRANSPORT TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY The payment includes a 631 million fine plus 384 million in restitution to a corporate client according to a deferred prosecution agreement filed on Thursday with the US District Court in Brooklyn New York In the settlement with the US Department of Justice HSBC also agreed to bolster its internal controls and admitted and accepted responsibility for wrongdoing underlying two criminal wire fraud charges filed on Thursday against the bank according to the agreement Deferred prosecution agreements let companies avoid criminal charges so long as they comply with the terms Thursday8217s sanctions came a month after HSBC was freed from a fiveyear deferred prosecution agreement over its alleged dealings with Mexican drug cartels and other money launderers and conducting of transactions for customers in countries barred by US sanctions It was fined 192 billion in that case In October a federal jury in Brooklyn convicted Mark Johnson the former head of HSBC8217s global foreign exchange cash trading desk of trading ahead of a 35 billion currency transaction by his client Cairn Energy Plc Johnson has yet to be sentenced Stuart Scott HSBC8217s former head of cash trading for Europe the Middle East and Africa was also charged in that case and has fought extradition HSBC agreed to pay Cairn 808 million under a settlement reached in July which the Justice Department said it credited as 8220full restitution8221 to that company In a statement on Thursday HSBC said the 631 million fine reflected a 15 percent reduction that took into account the bank8217s cooperation and 8220extensive remediation8221 efforts The case is US v HSBC Holdings Plc US District Court Eastern District of New York No 18cr00030 Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters Global stocks recovered to threeweek highs on Friday as anticipated strong earnings season took center stage after US President Donald Trump backtracked on his suggestion of an imminent missile attack on Syria FILE PHOTO A pedestrian casts a shadow in front of an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan November 9 2016 REUTERSIssei Kato MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS ticked up 01 percent while Japans Nikkei N225 gained 08 percent MSCI8217s broadest gauge of the world8217s stock markets MIWD00000PUS also edged up 01 percent after hitting a threeweek high on Thursday In New York the SampampP 500 SPX gained 083 percent led by a 183 percent gain in financials SPSY after strong quarterly results from BlackRock Inc BLKN boosted optimism for corporate earnings The earnings season begins in earnest on Friday with reports from JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co JPMN Citigroup Inc CN and Wells Fargo ampamp Co WFCN Analysts expect quarterly profit for SampampP 500 companies to rise 184 percent from a year ago in what would be the biggest gain in seven years according to Thomson Reuters IBES The mood improved also after Trump tweeted an attack on Syria 8220could be very soon or not so soon at all8221 allaying fears of an immediate military action that investors fear could lead to wider conflict between Washington and Moscow In another change of tack Trump has asked his trade advisers to look at rejoining the Trans Pacific Partnership a multinational trade pact he withdrew the United States from early last year 8220Markets have been pushed around by Trump His modus operandi seems to do anything that seems to be good for his reelection If protectionism doesn8217t work he may switch to international trade8221 said Hiroshi Watanabe economist at Sony Financial Holdings 8220Markets are still not yet convinced yet if the US is really rejoining the TPP But if it does it8217s very positive for the global economy and stock markets will like it8221 he added The improved sentiment drove up US bond yields The 10year US Treasuries yield US10YTRR rose to 2843 percent its highest level since March 27 In the currency market the dollar rose to 10727 yen JPY edging near a fiveweek high of 10749 touched on Apr 5 The yen has become litmus test for risk sentiment sought when investors turn risk averse because Japan8217s hefty current surplus gives protection to any capital outflows deficitrunning countries are vulnerable to Nikkei Inc 2184788 N225 Nikkei Index 18760 087 N225 BLKN JPMN CN WFCN The euro EUR eased to 12327 though on the week it has kept gains of 04 percent The Hong Kong dollar stood at 78498 to the dollar HKDD4 near the lower end of its 775785 trading band a day after Hong Kongs de facto central bank intervened to support the currency for the first time since 2015 The Singapore dollar gained slightly after Singapore8217s central bank tightened monetary policy for the first time in six years as expected Oil prices remained close to highs last reached in late 2014 on tensions in the oilrich Middle East and shrinking global oil inventories Brent crude futures LCOc1 traded at 7190 a barrel a tad below Thursday close but not far from Wednesday8217s high of 7309 US WTI crude futures CLc1 stood at 6687 Elsewhere bitcoin BTCBTSP fetched 79685 after 142 percent gains on Thursday its biggest gain in four months Editing by Shri Navaratnam Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters US stocks climbed on Thursday as investors anticipated a strong earnings season and as US President Donald Trump8217s suggestion that a military strike on Syria may not be imminent ratcheted down geopolitical worries The SampampP 500 has now recouped nearly all its losses from earlier this year Trump said in a tweet on Thursday that a possible attack on Syria could occur 8220very soon or not so soon at all8221 easing fears of confrontation with Russia That lifted US Treasury yields US10YTRR leading to a 18 percent increase in financial stocks SPSY which had the biggest percentage advance among the SampampP8217s 11 major sectors The technology sector SPLRCT rose 13 percent adding the most gains to the SampampP 8220We8217re hearing less talk of firing missiles and less talk of trade war8221 said Michael Antonelli managing director of institutional sales trading at Robert W Baird in Milwaukee 8220Earnings are coming up and expectations are high8221 Strong quarterly results from BlackRock Inc BLKN and Delta Air Lines Inc DALN added to the sanguine mood Delta topped profit estimates sending its shares 29 percent higher and boosting other airline stocks BlackRock gained 15 percent after the asset manager8217s quarterly profit rose more than expected The earnings season begins in earnest on Friday with reports from JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co JPMN Citigroup Inc CN and Wells Fargo ampamp Co WFCN Slideshow 3 Images Analysts expect quarterly profit for SampampP 500 companies to rise 184 percent from a year ago in what would be the biggest gain in seven years according to Thomson Reuters IBES 8220People are looking forward to earnings season8221 said Tracie McMillion head of global asset allocation strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute in WinstonSalem North Carolina 8220Market participants are not wanting to miss out if earnings are as good as the forecasts say they will be8221 The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 2936 points or 121 percent to 2448305 the SampampP 500 SPX gained 218 points or 083 percent to 266399 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 7122 points or 101 percent to 714025 Investor sentiment was also boosted by the weekly US initial jobless claims report which pointed to sustained labor market strength BlackRock Inc 53301 BLKN New York Stock Exchange 770 147 BLKN DALN JPMN CN WFCN Facebook Inc FBO was a notable laggard among technology stocks falling 15 percent following a 53 percent gain over the past two days when Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress on the social network8217s data security Bed Bath ampamp Beyond Inc BBBYO shares dived 200 percent after the company8217s fullyear profit forecast missed estimates Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 120to1 ratio and on the Nasdaq for a 184to1 ratio Volume on US exchanges was 612 billion shares compared to the 727 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Genuine Parts Co GPCN said on Thursday it would spin off its wholesale distribution business SP Richards and merge it with Essendant ESNDO in a taxfree transaction for shareholders as it focuses on its industrial and auto parts businesses The combined company will have more products and resources giving its customers mainly independent dealers a onestop shop as they grapple with intense competition from ecommerce giant Amazoncom Inc AMZNO and bigbox stores 8220This combination of our customer centric companies creates a stronger partner to support those dealers and help them to be more competitive with all the other options available to customers in the industry8221 Essendant Chief Executive Officer Ric Phillips said on a call with analysts Essendant8217s shares jumped 18 percent to 1000 while those of Genuine Parts were up about 1 percent at 9017 in morning trading Illinoisbased Essendant is a wholesale distributor of workplace items including janitorial supplies while Atlanta Georgiabased SP Richards distributes products ranging from office furniture to school supplies The combined entity will be called Essendant and headed by Phillips SP Richards CEO Rick Toppin will become chief operating officer of the new company Essendant had a market capitalization of about 3235 million as of Wednesday8217s close Genuine Parts one of the leading US car parts distributors said the deal implied a valuation of about 680 million for SP Richards Genuine Parts Co 9013 GPCN New York Stock Exchange 047 052 GPCN ESNDO AMZNO Genuine Parts will get 347 million in cash and its shareholders 51 percent of the newlyformed combined company Structured as a Reverse Morris Trust deal the transaction will be taxfree for the companies8217 shareholders The company has been evaluating options for the SP Richards business which has been pressured by weak demand for office supplies Essendant has also been hit as large customers source products directly from manufacturers Its net sales declined 62 percent to 504 billion in 2017 while adjusted profit fell more than 50 percent Genuine Parts has been focusing on its auto parts and industrial businesses Last year the company completed a deal to buy Londonbased Alliance Automotive Group and took a stake in Australia8217s Inenco Group Citigroup Global Markets Inc was the financial adviser for Essendant while JP Morgan advised Genuine Parts Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru editing by Patrick Graham and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDONNEW DELHI Reuters The global oil stocks surplus is close to evaporating OPEC said on Thursday citing healthy energy demand and its own supply cuts while revising up its forecast for production from rivals who have benefited from higher oil prices A flag with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC logo is seen during a meeting of OPEC and nonOPEC producing countries in Vienna Austria September 22 2017 REUTERSLeonhard Foeger US shale oil output has been booming over the past year since OPEC reduced its own production in tandem with Russia to prop up global oil prices But as oil production collapsed in OPEC member Venezuela and is still facing hiccups in countries such as Libya and Angola the oil exporters8217 group is still producing below its targets meaning the world needs to use stocks to meet rising demand The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its monthly report oil stocks in the developed world reversed a rise in January to fall by 174 million barrels in February to 2854 billion barrels around 43 million barrels above the latest fiveyear average 8220We have achieved an over 150 percent conformity level8221 OPEC SecretaryGeneral Mohammad Barkindo told Reuters in New Delhi referring to OPEC8217s commitments under the supplycutting pact He said the glut has effectively shrunk by ninetenths since the start of 2017 8220We have seen an accelerated shrinkage of stocks in storage from unparalleled highs of about 400 million barrels to about 43 million above the fiveyear average8221 Barkindo said Stock levels are now 207 million barrels below their level in February 2017 with crude stocks in a surplus of 55 million barrels and product stocks in a deficit of 12 million 8220Looking forward a healthy global economic forecast for 2018 positive car sales data in recent months stronger 2018 yeaonyear US product consumption in January and potentially tighter global product markets are expected to boost gasoline and distillates demand 8221 OPEC said 8220High conformity levels observed by OPEC and nonOPEC producing countries should further enhance market stability and support crude and product markets in the months ahead8221 The 14member Viennabased producer group said its collective output according to secondary sources fell 201000 bpd to 3196 million bpd in March from February driven by declines in Angola Algeria Venezuela Saudi Arabia and Libya The figure is below the 326 million bpd that OPEC sees as demand for its crude for the whole of 2018 OPEC Russia and several other nonOPEC producers began to cut supply in January 2017 The pact runs until the end of the year and OPEC meets in Vienna in June to decide on its next course of action THIRD YEAR OF CUTS OPEC8217s leader Saudi Arabia has said it would like the pact to be extended into 2019 8220There is growing confidence that the declaration of cooperation will be extended beyond 20188221 Barkindo told Reuters 8220Russia will continue to play a leading role8221 On Thursday OPEC also revised its forecast for supply growth from its rivals nonOPEC which is now forecast to grow by a further 80000 barrels per day this year to 171 million bpd driven largely by higherthananticipated growth in the first quarter in the United States and the former Soviet Union At the same time it increased its forecast for global oil demand growth for this year by 30000 bpd to 163 million bpd 8220This mainly reflects the positive momentum in the OECD in the 1Q18 on the back of betterthanexpected data and supported by development in industrial activities colderthananticipated weather and strong mining activities in the OECD Americas and the OECD Asia Pacific8221 it said in the monthly market report Production in the United Arab Emirates posted the largest monthonmonth increase according to the secondary sources rising by around 45000 bpd in March to 286 million bpd OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia told the group it pumped 9907 million bpd in March 28000 bpd below its February level Venezuela reported production of 1509 million bpd in March 77000 bpd below the level it reported in February Reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar Editing by Dale Hudson and David Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p><a href="" type="internal" />Jay Dyer &amp;amp; Jennifer Sodini <a href="http://wp.me/p3bwni-hQj" type="external">21st Century Wire</a></p> <p>After a period of silence, Radiohead has reappeared with a new single after a curious marketing pitch, removing their social media profiles from <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/03/entertainment/radiohead-releases-instagram-clips/&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090931000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGr-QgEZsxFuX5Jy2Eb5XoC-arTXw" type="external">public view</a>. &amp;#160; The new single, &#8220;Burn the Witch&#8221; is garnering much media attention, particularly in regard to the enigmatic lyrics and symbolism presented in the video. &amp;#160; <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1133-decoding-the-politics-in-radioheads-burn-the-witch-video/&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090932000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFUmQU0GWcRY5HE_yYaTr8-dEaHiw" type="external">Pitchfork</a>&amp;#160;elaborated on the coded lyrics in a political commentary, writing:</p> <p>&#8220;&#8230;the &#8220;Burn the Witch&#8221; video, which ends up resembling a bit of vintage UK cinema far more familiar to non-British viewers: &#8217;70s horror film The Wicker Man. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1044-19-unreleased-radiohead-songs-that-could-be-on-their-next-album/&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090933000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEYJ3J4YhZRlp_bB44wAIJkAed0CA" type="external">Teased since the mid-&#8217;00s</a>, the song finds Thom Yorke intoning ominous commands like &#8220;Stay in the shadows/Cheer at the gallows&#8221; and &#8220;Abandon all reason/Avoid all eye contact.&#8221; Arriving at the current chaotic moment in global politics, though, and set in the quaint visual context of &#8220;Trumpton,&#8221; the &#8220;Burn the Witch&#8221; video plays as a pointed critique of nativism-embracing leaders across the UK and Europe, perhaps even the show&#8217;s near-namesake stateside (Donald Trump, anyone?). &amp;#160;</p> <p>In that sense, &#8220;Trumpton&#8221; reflects the mythical small-town &#8220;family values&#8221; often championed by the sort of right-wing politicians who, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13384-hail-to-the-thief-special-collectors-edition/&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090933000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFF-duz95ybSD9hR-jyWTxyKif8vA" type="external">let it be said</a>, have never exactly been Radiohead&#8217;s cup of tea. The connection between &#8220;Trumpton&#8221; and far-right politics became explicit in 2014, when a Twitter user with the handle <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/trumpton_ukip?lang%3Den&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090934000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEBs0TyGXQhAqo5GQWv5n72y_ZcCw" type="external">@Trumpton_UKIP</a>&amp;#160;began poking fun at the right-wing, populist UK Independence Party&#8212;and a <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/06/ukip-mep-ridiculed-twitter-call-ban-spoof-trumpton-account&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090934000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGarrwsUsXrqibd8yr63Efbju8Rwg" type="external">UKIP politician called for a ban on the spoof account</a>. Sad!</p> <p /> <p>You can read the Pitchfork article in its entirety by <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1133-decoding-the-politics-in-radioheads-burn-the-witch-video/&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090935000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGBbZ8MqZVk8FrERIxYp_v3Tbtr0Q" type="external">clicking here</a>, but we thought it would be interesting to analyze the mystical/esoteric significance of the video &#8211; since that&#8217;s our area of expertise and interest.</p> <p>The video begins and ends with a blue jay singing, and if you&#8217;re piqued by the political element of the video &#8211; perhaps this could be alluding to the fact that social media has played such a huge presence in this particular political climate since this bird resembles the Twitter logo, or this may be a reference to @Trumpton_UKIP. &amp;#160;The bird also bears an eerie similarity to the opening montage of &amp;#160;David Lynch&#8217;s Twin Peaks&amp;#160;and Disney&#8217;s Alice in Wonderland&amp;#160;(as well as the close of Lynch&#8217;s Blue Velvet). &amp;#160;Both Lynch works present idealized America as a dreamland with a dark, occult underbelly masked by conventionalism and hypocrisy. &amp;#160; Radiohead&#8217;s video also presents Puritan America (and thus idealized America with its Puritan work ethic and values) as a hypocritical monstrosity, yet foisted upon the global stage as the &#8220;model village.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>However, from a metaphysical point of view &#8211; the blue jay&#8217;s spirit is an interesting element to begin and end with regardless. Blue jay&#8217;s have the ability to mimic hawk calls as a ploy to lure these birds of prey away from jay&#8217;s nests &#8211; a blue jay&#8217;s totem spirit is known for loquaciousness, and the gift of gab.&amp;#160;Common vocations of &amp;#160;the blue jay totem are sales people, lawyers, politicians, public speakers, and teachers. Even from a mystical point of view, there seems to be an air of political undertone.</p> <p /> <p>From here, we are taken into a small town &#8211; where it seems the mayor of the town is dressed in a rather Masonic garb (see picture above) and is having a discussion with his &#8220;village,&#8221; giving them a pep talk to be on their best behavior as a rather dapper man is chauffeured into their town. &amp;#160;The pilgrim&#8217;s colony is an extension of the British Empire, illustrated by the man in the bowler hat, as time shifts from post-industrial revolution Britain to colonial U.S. , where the puritan work ethic has given rise to a massive labor force concerned with its jobs (&#8220;jobes&#8221;), thus the Trumpton (Trumpt0wn) reference.</p> <p>Women are then shown dressing a Maypole (interestingly, the video was released a few days after Beltane), which has a Pagan history, and in <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man_(1973_film)&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090938000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEeTGpdkq-quYsu2hVGqTu1ptzvbQ" type="external">The Wicker Man</a>&amp;#160;film, the sexuality behind this symbol/tradition is the basis for a large part of the storyline. According to <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/beltanecustomandfolklore/fl/History-of-the-Maypole.htm&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090939000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNENFQCLGd32U7P4ktk2RxHJRRz9pQ" type="external">PaganWiccan.com:</a></p> <p>&#8220;It is believed that the earliest Maypoles were actually living trees, rather than just being a cut pole, as we know them today. Oxford professor and anthropologist E.O. James discusses the Maypole and its connection to Roman traditions in his 1962 article, The Influence of Folklore On the History of Religion. James suggests that trees were stripped of their leaves and limbs, and then decorated with garlands of ivy, vines and flowers as part of the Roman spring celebration. This may have been part of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/beltanemayday/p/Floralia.htm&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090939000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNG_K4K3oBiySMTFNLn1p37h67iZ-w" type="external">the festival of Floralia</a>, which began on April 28th. Other theories include that the trees, or poles, were wrapped in violets as homage to <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://paganwiccan.about.com/od/romandeities/p/CybeleProfile.htm&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090940000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNH0oEJw4uGvELoxizipaccj9xs5kA" type="external">Attis and Cybele</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>There&#8217;s not much documentation about the early years of this celebration, but by the middle ages, most villages in Britain had an annual Maypole celebration going on. In rural areas, the Maypole was typically erected on the village green, but a few places, including some urban neighborhoods in London, had a permanent Maypole that stayed up all year round.</p> <p /> <p>We &amp;#160;then see a man painting a red &#8220;x&#8221; on a door which is a reference to the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_cross&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090941000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFYYvxoWWIOMutOnJQhKpbvjtJSrQ" type="external">Plague cross</a>&amp;#160;&#8211; could this refer to a plague on both houses politically speaking? &amp;#160;It could also be a reference to the blood of the lamb in the first Passover where the Israelites were spared the Angel of Death as Egypt&#8217;s firstborn were killed (see Exodus 12).</p> <p /> <p>At times of plague, it was common to mark the doors of victims of the disease with a large painted cross, either in red or black paint. In later times, large printed crosses were often affixed to doors. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Defoe&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090943000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF5Z-oSCXJn6crXRRWiHWbUhIRQBA" type="external">Daniel Defoe</a>&amp;#160;reported, at the time of the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plague_of_London&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090943000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGOWS_XMk2B6gUmQSNzd-idX90MfA" type="external">Great Plague</a>&amp;#160;in 1665, that the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Mayor_of_London&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090944000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEtS4QzIsjkFE2vMSsXxOWnFdnLMg" type="external">Lord Mayor of London</a>, in his regulations, stated: <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_cross%23cite_note-1&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090944000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF3PjPAplZoE2bzvL2c3uRVkhWiOg" type="external">[1]</a></p> <p>&#8220;That every house visited [by the disease] be marked with a red cross of a foot long in the middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed words, that is to say, &#8220;Lord, have mercy upon us,&#8221; to be set close over the same cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the same house.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Later in the video we also see six men wearing deer masks holding <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.evolveandascend.com/2015/11/24/esoteric-encyclopedia-entry-of-the-week-athame/&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090945000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNG6QadWkTKDzELTvBzlUD5loAxZ3Q" type="external">athames</a>, conducting a rite in a <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090946000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHSq61q05tpS05h0P4RiDdZVbbb5w" type="external">magic circle</a>&amp;#160;around a woman who is tied up, yet unharmed (see photo above).</p> <p /> <p>What&#8217;s interesting to note in that in the film Eyes Wide Shut a magical circle ritual is conducted, but the masked/cloaked members of the circle are female &#8211; with a man in the middle. Eyes Wide Shut was quite controversial because Stanley Kubrick, died shortly after &#8211; and many believe it was an expose of the satanic rituals, and sex magick rites performed by the wealthy elite. &amp;#160;Some authors such as Peter Levenda has proposed a revisionary thesis in regard to the Salem Trials &#8211; that the real practitioners of sorcery were the elite New England families who practiced Satanism under a cloak of religious puritanical piety. &amp;#160;Levenda writes:</p> <p>&#8220;In her The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Dame Frances Yates) makes an interesting, if daring, claim that the Puritan movement owed much to occult ideology current in New England at the time, with connections to Pico della Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, and other saints of the occultist canon. This form of occultism, known as Christian Cabala to historians, was an amalgamation of the Jewish Cabala with Muslim and Christian elements&#8230;.Many of New England&#8217;s practicing alchemists were Yale and Harvard graduates who continued their experiments into the 1920s. &amp;#160;These alchemists served as chief justice of Massachusetts, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, president of Yale College, and president of the Cincinnati Medical Society.&#8221; (Sinister Foces, Vol. 1, pgs. 16-7)</p> <p>With the political sub-current of the video, tied to the esoteric symbolism perhaps the inversion here is that the &#8220;witch&#8221; is the politician/controller &#8211; not necessarily the small town folk who are adept at magical practice and trickery. There is one scene where a baker&#8217;s pie is shown with a baby calf still bleeding inside of it&#8230;perhaps a nod at the gluttony, and greed of the elite at the expense of the innocent?</p> <p>The Book of Job begins with an introduction to Job&#8217;s character&#8212;he is described as a blessed man who lived righteously in the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Uz&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090948000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFrq4xuKCX0mS293RRQN9hVC0CKew" type="external">Land of Uz</a>. The Lord&#8217;s praise of Job prompted <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satan&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090949000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGgWR4pn-uUgYrUMBqP_P7ALvyT-Q" type="external">Satan</a>&amp;#160;to challenge Job&#8217;s integrity, suggesting that Job served God simply because God protected him. God removed Job&#8217;s protection, allowing Satan to take his wealth, his children, and his physical health (but not his life) in order to test Job&#8217;s character. Despite his difficult circumstances, he did not curse God, but rather cursed the day of his birth. And although he anguished over his plight, he stopped short of accusing God of injustice.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;The effigy is then lit as a burnt offering of human sacrifice.</p> <p /> <p>Album art with the &#8220;pool of blood&#8221; based on Moore&#8217;s narrative of government staged terror.</p> <p>Radiohead is no stranger to the notion of pre-signifying future events in their artwork. &amp;#160;Noted author Chuck Klosterman proposed soon after 9/11 that the band&#8217;s album Kid A (released prior to 9/11) appeared to have eerie coincidence with the fateful terror events. &amp;#160;Couched in the claims of &#8220;climate fear,&#8221; the album appears to have a much darker significance. &amp;#160;Klosterman <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://vassifer.blogs.com/alexinnyc/2005/07/klostermans_the.html&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090951000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFsosg03pqNAoFZrqiM0V1sWO_Pfw" type="external">wrote</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;The first song on Kid A paints the Manhattan skyline at 8:00 A.M. on Tuesday morning; the song is titled &#8220;Everything in Its Right Place.&#8221; People woke up that day &#8220;sucking on a lemon,&#8221; because that&#8217;s what life normally feels like on the Manhattan subway; the city is a beautiful, sour, sarcastic place. We soon move onto song two, which is the title track. It is the sound of woozy, ephemeral normalcy. It is the sound of Jonny Greenwood playing an Ondes Martenot, an instrument best remembered for its use in the Star Trek theme song. You can imagine humans walking to work, riding elevators, getting off the C train and the 3 train, and thinking about a future that will be a lot like the present, only better. The term KID A is Yorke&#8217;s moniker for the first cloned human, which he (only half jokingly) suspects may already exist. The consciously misguided message is this: Science is the answer. Technology solves everything, because technology is invulnerable. And this is what almost everyone in America thought around 8:30 A.M. But something happens three and a half minutes into &#8220;Kid A&#8221;. It suddenly doesn&#8217;t feel right, and you don&#8217;t exactly know why. This is followed by track three, &#8220;The National Anthem&#8221;</p> <p>This is when the first plane slams into the north tower at 470 mph.</p> <p>&#8220;The National Anthem&#8221; sounds a bit like a Morphine song. It&#8217;s a completely different direction from the first two songs on KID A, and it&#8217;s confusing; it&#8217;s chaotic. &#8220;What&#8217;s going on?,&#8221; the lyrics ask. &#8220;What&#8217;s going on?&#8221; It gets crazier and crazier, until the second plane hits the second tower (at 9:03 A.M. in reality and at 3:42 in the song). For a moment, things are somber. But then it gets more anarchic. (Reader&#8217;s Note: You might want to consider playing KID A right about now, since I&#8217;m not always so good at explaining shit like this). Which leads into track four, &#8220;How to Disappear Completely.&#8221; This is the point where it feels like the world is possibly ending. People try to convince themselves that they are not there. People keep repeating: &#8220;This isn&#8217;t happening&#8221;. People are &#8220;floating&#8221; (read: falling) to the earth. We are told of strobe lights and blown speakers; there are fireworks and hurricanes. This is a song about being burned alive and jumping out of windows, and this is a song about having to watch those things happen. And it&#8217;s followed by an instrumental piece without melody (&#8220;Treefingers&#8221;), because what can you say when skyscrapers collapse? All you can do is stare at them with your hand over your mouth.</p> <p>Time passes. It&#8217;s afternoon. KID A&#8217;s side two, if you have it on vinyl. Action is replaced by thought. The song is &#8220;Optimistic, &#8221; a word that becomes more meaningful in its absence. It has lyrics about Ground Zero (&#8220;vultures circle the dead&#8221;), and it offers a glimpse into how Al Qaeda members think Americans perceive international diplomacy (&#8220;the big fish eat the little ones, the big fish eat the little ones/Not my problem, give me some&#8221;). Track seven, &#8220;In Limbo&#8221; is about how the United States has been shaken out of its fantasy, with &#8220;nowhere to hide,&#8221; finding only &#8220;trap doors that open, I spiral down&#8221;</p> <p>Upon first reading, it seems a bit of a stretch &#8211; isn&#8217;t this merely an author&#8217;s interpretation of the album and its artwork, with no real substance to the claim? &amp;#160;When we dig a little deeper, we discover some surprising connections, especially when we look at album artist Stanley Donwood&#8217;s inspiration:</p> <p>&#8220;The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1998 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in 50-gallon swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image &#8220;haunted&#8221; him during the recording of the album, calling it &#8220;a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations.&#8221; &amp;#160;( <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_A%23Artwork&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090954000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHxPsYY4CnDgMlJS1T0UiPxO4YAxg" type="external">Link</a>)</p> <p /> <p>Alan Moore, famed esoteric artist, appears to have based his 1988 graphic novel on the noted book of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, detailing the CIA&#8217;s covert false flag (and staged) events. &amp;#160;Also titled in the series is &#8220;Secret Team.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>And Donwood <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://web.archive.org/web/20070610203044/http://shop.slowlydownward.com/Store/DisplayIndividualItem/1/575.html&amp;amp;sa=D&amp;amp;ust=1462482090957000&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGo29wG3Ns6oeYXTMeZRVXQttb5uA" type="external">writes</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;In a book called &#8216;Brought to Light&#8217; by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz the numbers of people killed by CIA-sponsored state terrorism is measured in swimming pools. The average human body holds a gallon of blood. An Olympic swimming pool holds fifty gallons. The pools mount up through the book&#8217;s narrative, reaching a number I no longer wish to recall. This image haunted me throughout Radiohead&#8217;s &#8216;Kid A&#8217; project, and here I&#8217;ve coupled it with a scary bear; the record&#8217;s iconic image, and a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations.&#8221;</p> <p>In conclusion, Radiohead&#8217;s video and song constitute a critique of American exceptionalism, consumerism as a result of the Protestant/puritan work ethic and luxurious lifestyle that resulted from industrialization and corporatism, leading to (in the video producer&#8217;s mind), a xenophobic perspective of anti-immigration (&#8220;Trumptown&#8221;). &amp;#160; Behind this political veneer, however, there is a deeper current of an occultic elite that control the engine of American prosperity for a nefarious agenda, where the models build models &#8211; puppets building puppets, signifying simulacra &amp;#160;layers veiling the real power structure. &amp;#160;</p> <p>Far from being a &#8220;Christian&#8221; nation, Radiohead&#8217;s song seems to mirror that of Lynch, that the CIA is actually in the background (i.e., the &#8220;secret team&#8221; reference) functioning as the shadow government that was behind the mass ritual of 9/11 as a version of the towering inferno known as Wicker Man. &amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>To hear Jay&#8217;s full podcasts, see more information and learn how you can become a <a href="https://jaysanalysis.com/" type="external">subscriber to JaysAnalysis</a>.</p> <p>Jennifer Sodini is the owner and editor of <a href="http://www.evolveandascend.com/" type="external">EvolveandAscend.com</a></p> <p>Jay Dyer is the author of the forthcoming title, <a href="http://trineday.com/paypal_store/product_pages/9781634240772-Esoteric_Hollywood/index.html" type="external">Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults and Symbols in Film</a> from Trine Day.&amp;#160; Focusing on film, philosophy, geopolitics and all things esoteric, JaysAnalysis and&amp;#160;his podcast, <a href="http://www.alternatecurrentradio.com/news-radio/jays-analysis/" type="external">&#8220;Esoteric Hollywood,&#8221;</a>&amp;#160;investigates the deeper&amp;#160;meanings between the headlines, exploring the hidden aspects of our sinister&amp;#160;synthetic mass media&amp;#160;matrix.</p> <p>READ MORE HOLLYWOOD NEWS AT:&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Hollywood Files</a></p>

Radiohead, 9-11 and the Esoteric “Burn the Witch”

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/05/radiohead-9-11-and-the-esoteric-burn-the-witch/

2016-05-05

4left

Jay Dyer ampamp Jennifer Sodini 21st Century Wire After a period of silence Radiohead has reappeared with a new single after a curious marketing pitch removing their social media profiles from public view amp160 The new single 8220Burn the Witch8221 is garnering much media attention particularly in regard to the enigmatic lyrics and symbolism presented in the video amp160 Pitchforkamp160elaborated on the coded lyrics in a political commentary writing 82208230the 8220Burn the Witch8221 video which ends up resembling a bit of vintage UK cinema far more familiar to nonBritish viewers 821770s horror film The Wicker Man Teased since the mid821700s the song finds Thom Yorke intoning ominous commands like 8220Stay in the shadowsCheer at the gallows8221 and 8220Abandon all reasonAvoid all eye contact8221 Arriving at the current chaotic moment in global politics though and set in the quaint visual context of 8220Trumpton8221 the 8220Burn the Witch8221 video plays as a pointed critique of nativismembracing leaders across the UK and Europe perhaps even the show8217s nearnamesake stateside Donald Trump anyone amp160 In that sense 8220Trumpton8221 reflects the mythical smalltown 8220family values8221 often championed by the sort of rightwing politicians who let it be said have never exactly been Radiohead8217s cup of tea The connection between 8220Trumpton8221 and farright politics became explicit in 2014 when a Twitter user with the handle Trumpton_UKIPamp160began poking fun at the rightwing populist UK Independence Party8212and a UKIP politician called for a ban on the spoof account Sad You can read the Pitchfork article in its entirety by clicking here but we thought it would be interesting to analyze the mysticalesoteric significance of the video 8211 since that8217s our area of expertise and interest The video begins and ends with a blue jay singing and if you8217re piqued by the political element of the video 8211 perhaps this could be alluding to the fact that social media has played such a huge presence in this particular political climate since this bird resembles the Twitter logo or this may be a reference to Trumpton_UKIP amp160The bird also bears an eerie similarity to the opening montage of amp160David Lynch8217s Twin Peaksamp160and Disney8217s Alice in Wonderlandamp160as well as the close of Lynch8217s Blue Velvet amp160Both Lynch works present idealized America as a dreamland with a dark occult underbelly masked by conventionalism and hypocrisy amp160 Radiohead8217s video also presents Puritan America and thus idealized America with its Puritan work ethic and values as a hypocritical monstrosity yet foisted upon the global stage as the 8220model village8221 amp160 However from a metaphysical point of view 8211 the blue jay8217s spirit is an interesting element to begin and end with regardless Blue jay8217s have the ability to mimic hawk calls as a ploy to lure these birds of prey away from jay8217s nests 8211 a blue jay8217s totem spirit is known for loquaciousness and the gift of gabamp160Common vocations of amp160the blue jay totem are sales people lawyers politicians public speakers and teachers Even from a mystical point of view there seems to be an air of political undertone From here we are taken into a small town 8211 where it seems the mayor of the town is dressed in a rather Masonic garb see picture above and is having a discussion with his 8220village8221 giving them a pep talk to be on their best behavior as a rather dapper man is chauffeured into their town amp160The pilgrim8217s colony is an extension of the British Empire illustrated by the man in the bowler hat as time shifts from postindustrial revolution Britain to colonial US where the puritan work ethic has given rise to a massive labor force concerned with its jobs 8220jobes8221 thus the Trumpton Trumpt0wn reference Women are then shown dressing a Maypole interestingly the video was released a few days after Beltane which has a Pagan history and in The Wicker Manamp160film the sexuality behind this symboltradition is the basis for a large part of the storyline According to PaganWiccancom 8220It is believed that the earliest Maypoles were actually living trees rather than just being a cut pole as we know them today Oxford professor and anthropologist EO James discusses the Maypole and its connection to Roman traditions in his 1962 article The Influence of Folklore On the History of Religion James suggests that trees were stripped of their leaves and limbs and then decorated with garlands of ivy vines and flowers as part of the Roman spring celebration This may have been part of the festival of Floralia which began on April 28th Other theories include that the trees or poles were wrapped in violets as homage to Attis and Cybele8221 There8217s not much documentation about the early years of this celebration but by the middle ages most villages in Britain had an annual Maypole celebration going on In rural areas the Maypole was typically erected on the village green but a few places including some urban neighborhoods in London had a permanent Maypole that stayed up all year round We amp160then see a man painting a red 8220x8221 on a door which is a reference to the Plague crossamp1608211 could this refer to a plague on both houses politically speaking amp160It could also be a reference to the blood of the lamb in the first Passover where the Israelites were spared the Angel of Death as Egypt8217s firstborn were killed see Exodus 12 At times of plague it was common to mark the doors of victims of the disease with a large painted cross either in red or black paint In later times large printed crosses were often affixed to doors Daniel Defoeamp160reported at the time of the Great Plagueamp160in 1665 that the Lord Mayor of London in his regulations stated 1 8220That every house visited by the disease be marked with a red cross of a foot long in the middle of the door evident to be seen and with these usual printed words that is to say 8220Lord have mercy upon us8221 to be set close over the same cross there to continue until lawful opening of the same house8221 Later in the video we also see six men wearing deer masks holding athames conducting a rite in a magic circleamp160around a woman who is tied up yet unharmed see photo above What8217s interesting to note in that in the film Eyes Wide Shut a magical circle ritual is conducted but the maskedcloaked members of the circle are female 8211 with a man in the middle Eyes Wide Shut was quite controversial because Stanley Kubrick died shortly after 8211 and many believe it was an expose of the satanic rituals and sex magick rites performed by the wealthy elite amp160Some authors such as Peter Levenda has proposed a revisionary thesis in regard to the Salem Trials 8211 that the real practitioners of sorcery were the elite New England families who practiced Satanism under a cloak of religious puritanical piety amp160Levenda writes 8220In her The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age Dame Frances Yates makes an interesting if daring claim that the Puritan movement owed much to occult ideology current in New England at the time with connections to Pico della Mirandola Cornelius Agrippa and other saints of the occultist canon This form of occultism known as Christian Cabala to historians was an amalgamation of the Jewish Cabala with Muslim and Christian elements8230Many of New England8217s practicing alchemists were Yale and Harvard graduates who continued their experiments into the 1920s amp160These alchemists served as chief justice of Massachusetts president of the Massachusetts Medical Society president of Yale College and president of the Cincinnati Medical Society8221 Sinister Foces Vol 1 pgs 167 With the political subcurrent of the video tied to the esoteric symbolism perhaps the inversion here is that the 8220witch8221 is the politiciancontroller 8211 not necessarily the small town folk who are adept at magical practice and trickery There is one scene where a baker8217s pie is shown with a baby calf still bleeding inside of it8230perhaps a nod at the gluttony and greed of the elite at the expense of the innocent The Book of Job begins with an introduction to Job8217s character8212he is described as a blessed man who lived righteously in the Land of Uz The Lord8217s praise of Job prompted Satanamp160to challenge Job8217s integrity suggesting that Job served God simply because God protected him God removed Job8217s protection allowing Satan to take his wealth his children and his physical health but not his life in order to test Job8217s character Despite his difficult circumstances he did not curse God but rather cursed the day of his birth And although he anguished over his plight he stopped short of accusing God of injusticeamp160amp160The effigy is then lit as a burnt offering of human sacrifice Album art with the 8220pool of blood8221 based on Moore8217s narrative of government staged terror Radiohead is no stranger to the notion of presignifying future events in their artwork amp160Noted author Chuck Klosterman proposed soon after 911 that the band8217s album Kid A released prior to 911 appeared to have eerie coincidence with the fateful terror events amp160Couched in the claims of 8220climate fear8221 the album appears to have a much darker significance amp160Klosterman wrote 8220The first song on Kid A paints the Manhattan skyline at 800 AM on Tuesday morning the song is titled 8220Everything in Its Right Place8221 People woke up that day 8220sucking on a lemon8221 because that8217s what life normally feels like on the Manhattan subway the city is a beautiful sour sarcastic place We soon move onto song two which is the title track It is the sound of woozy ephemeral normalcy It is the sound of Jonny Greenwood playing an Ondes Martenot an instrument best remembered for its use in the Star Trek theme song You can imagine humans walking to work riding elevators getting off the C train and the 3 train and thinking about a future that will be a lot like the present only better The term KID A is Yorke8217s moniker for the first cloned human which he only half jokingly suspects may already exist The consciously misguided message is this Science is the answer Technology solves everything because technology is invulnerable And this is what almost everyone in America thought around 830 AM But something happens three and a half minutes into 8220Kid A8221 It suddenly doesn8217t feel right and you don8217t exactly know why This is followed by track three 8220The National Anthem8221 This is when the first plane slams into the north tower at 470 mph 8220The National Anthem8221 sounds a bit like a Morphine song It8217s a completely different direction from the first two songs on KID A and it8217s confusing it8217s chaotic 8220What8217s going on8221 the lyrics ask 8220What8217s going on8221 It gets crazier and crazier until the second plane hits the second tower at 903 AM in reality and at 342 in the song For a moment things are somber But then it gets more anarchic Reader8217s Note You might want to consider playing KID A right about now since I8217m not always so good at explaining shit like this Which leads into track four 8220How to Disappear Completely8221 This is the point where it feels like the world is possibly ending People try to convince themselves that they are not there People keep repeating 8220This isn8217t happening8221 People are 8220floating8221 read falling to the earth We are told of strobe lights and blown speakers there are fireworks and hurricanes This is a song about being burned alive and jumping out of windows and this is a song about having to watch those things happen And it8217s followed by an instrumental piece without melody 8220Treefingers8221 because what can you say when skyscrapers collapse All you can do is stare at them with your hand over your mouth Time passes It8217s afternoon KID A8217s side two if you have it on vinyl Action is replaced by thought The song is 8220Optimistic 8221 a word that becomes more meaningful in its absence It has lyrics about Ground Zero 8220vultures circle the dead8221 and it offers a glimpse into how Al Qaeda members think Americans perceive international diplomacy 8220the big fish eat the little ones the big fish eat the little onesNot my problem give me some8221 Track seven 8220In Limbo8221 is about how the United States has been shaken out of its fantasy with 8220nowhere to hide8221 finding only 8220trap doors that open I spiral down8221 Upon first reading it seems a bit of a stretch 8211 isn8217t this merely an author8217s interpretation of the album and its artwork with no real substance to the claim amp160When we dig a little deeper we discover some surprising connections especially when we look at album artist Stanley Donwood8217s inspiration 8220The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1998 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in 50gallon swimming pools filled with blood Donwood said this image 8220haunted8221 him during the recording of the album calling it 8220a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations8221 amp160 Link Alan Moore famed esoteric artist appears to have based his 1988 graphic novel on the noted book of Col L Fletcher Prouty The Secret Team detailing the CIA8217s covert false flag and staged events amp160Also titled in the series is 8220Secret Team8221 amp160 And Donwood writes 8220In a book called 8216Brought to Light8217 by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz the numbers of people killed by CIAsponsored state terrorism is measured in swimming pools The average human body holds a gallon of blood An Olympic swimming pool holds fifty gallons The pools mount up through the book8217s narrative reaching a number I no longer wish to recall This image haunted me throughout Radiohead8217s 8216Kid A8217 project and here I8217ve coupled it with a scary bear the record8217s iconic image and a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations8221 In conclusion Radiohead8217s video and song constitute a critique of American exceptionalism consumerism as a result of the Protestantpuritan work ethic and luxurious lifestyle that resulted from industrialization and corporatism leading to in the video producer8217s mind a xenophobic perspective of antiimmigration 8220Trumptown8221 amp160 Behind this political veneer however there is a deeper current of an occultic elite that control the engine of American prosperity for a nefarious agenda where the models build models 8211 puppets building puppets signifying simulacra amp160layers veiling the real power structure amp160 Far from being a 8220Christian8221 nation Radiohead8217s song seems to mirror that of Lynch that the CIA is actually in the background ie the 8220secret team8221 reference functioning as the shadow government that was behind the mass ritual of 911 as a version of the towering inferno known as Wicker Man amp160 To hear Jay8217s full podcasts see more information and learn how you can become a subscriber to JaysAnalysis Jennifer Sodini is the owner and editor of EvolveandAscendcom Jay Dyer is the author of the forthcoming title Esoteric Hollywood Sex Cults and Symbols in Film from Trine Dayamp160 Focusing on film philosophy geopolitics and all things esoteric JaysAnalysis andamp160his podcast 8220Esoteric Hollywood8221amp160investigates the deeperamp160meanings between the headlines exploring the hidden aspects of our sinisteramp160synthetic mass mediaamp160matrix READ MORE HOLLYWOOD NEWS ATamp160 21st Century Wire Hollywood Files

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<p>BERLIN/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - The leader of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) tried on Tuesday to quash a grassroots rebellion against a blueprint agreed with Angela Merkel's conservatives to enter formal talks on a "grand coalition" which could scupper her plan for a fourth term.</p> FILE PHOTO: Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Martin Schulz attend a news conference after exploratory talks about forming a new coalition government at the SPD headquarters in Berlin, Germany, January 12, 2018. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke <p>After five days of talks, SPD leader Martin Schulz agreed a framework deal with Merkel and Bavarian conservatives on Friday. But before he can start official negotiations he needs the backing of his party in a vote at a conference on Sunday.</p> <p>Convincing them is proving difficult. Two regional branches have already said they do not back his deal. Many rank and file members accuse Schulz of selling out to Merkel and failing to win a signature policy to take to coalition talks, such as a major healthcare reform or tax hikes for the rich.</p> <p>Schulz is touring the country to convince his party base.</p> <p>Speaking to reporters before meeting SPD members in the western city of Duesseldorf, Schulz said the coalition blueprint had enough "political substance" to start detailed negotiations.</p> <p>"We want to put the SPD into a position ... in which it can make our country better," Schulz said. Two dozen young SPD members protested against another grand coalition, or "Groko", government with Merkel's conservatives, holding up placards reading "Groko is rubbish" and "Groko never again."</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-germany-politics-chair/merkels-conservatives-wont-bar-far-right-party-from-committee-chair-idUSKBN1F527F" type="external">Merkel's conservatives won't bar far-right party from committee chair</a> <a href="/article/us-germany-politics-spd-rules-factbox/factbox-the-spds-path-to-a-german-coalition-deal-idUSKBN1F51W4" type="external">Factbox: The SPD's path to a German coalition deal</a> <p>In a live Facebook broadcast, Schulz said the party had a duty to look at how it could improve the life of people.</p> <p>"We are living in the world of (U.S. President Donald) Trump, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, (Turkish President Tayyip) Erdogan. We live in a world of dictators who make the world's breath pause with their crazed ideas ... And we have the chance to make Europe a bit more social, peaceful and just."</p> <p>If the SPD rejects entering talks on Sunday, the prospect looms of a new election or a minority government under Merkel, both unwelcome options for stability-loving Germans.</p> <p>Defeat would also almost certainly mean the end of Schulz's leadership of the SPD.</p> <p>Uncertainty over the shape of the government in Europe's biggest economy is worrying investors, nearly four months after an election in which the conservatives had their worst result since 1949 and the SPD their worst since World War Two. Both of the parties that have dominated Germany for generations bled support to the far right AfD, which joined parliament for the first time, becoming the third biggest bloc.</p> <p>Many in the SPD are wary of a re-run of the grand coalition which ruled under Merkel between 2013 and 2017. A junior role leaves them in her shadow, unable to win credit from voters.</p> <p>The SPD had vowed to go into opposition after its dismal election result but was forced to reconsider in the interest of national stability after Merkel was humiliated by the collapse of three-way talks on a coalition with other parties.</p> <p>Coalitions under Merkel - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2AdhTpO" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2AdhTpO</a></p> STRONG FEELING <p>Highlighting the strength of feeling, regional party branches in Berlin and the state of Saxony Anhalt have already signaled their opposition to the deal.</p> <p>"A renewed grand coalition cannot be the result of talks. We reject the start of coalition negotiations with the conservatives," said the motion by Berlin's SPD chief Michael Mueller which was passed.</p> <p>It said proposals on home building, rents and migration and integration were unsatisfactory, and expressed disappointment over the absence of plans to shake up the health system.</p> <p>The SPD's youth wing, Jusos, opposes the deal and its head, Kevin Kuehnert, is undertaking his own "NoGroKo Tour".</p> <p>However, it is difficult to predict the outcome of Sunday's vote as the regional results are not binding. At the Bonn congress 600 delegates are free to vote how they wish.</p> <p>Both states that have rejected the agreement so far are relatively small. Schulz is trying to woo delegates in the biggest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, which has more than a quarter of the votes, in a series of events this week.</p> <p>Trade unions, some other localities and the state of Brandenburg, have already said they back the deal.</p> <p>Some leading SPD members argue Sunday's vote is only on the blueprint for a final deal and details can still be negotiated. After any final coalition deal, the SPD's 443,000 members will be balloted.</p> <p>Some conservatives have expressed confidence that the SPD will back the blueprint. "I can only recommend moving at top speed," said Bavarian conservative Alexander Dobrindt.</p> <p>"I look forward to starting coalition negotiations on Monday," he said, adding his only concern was the "masochistic way" the SPD had of talking down its successes.</p> <p>Coaltion and election scenarios - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2AjqF5m" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2AjqF5m</a></p> <p>Additional reporting by Holger Hansen, Thomas Escritt and Michael Nienaber; Editing by Alison Williams and Peter Graff</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MANAGUA (Reuters) - Protests in Nicaragua over changes to social security have led to the deaths of at least three people, including a police officer, the Red Cross said on Friday, heaping pressure on the leftist government of President Daniel Ortega.</p> A riot policeman fires rubber bullets during clashes with university students protesting over a controversial reform to the pension plans of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) in Managua, Nicaragua April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas <p>Nicaraguans have been protesting for three straight days against government changes to social security, signed into law earlier this week, that increase worker contributions and lower pensions.</p> <p>On Thursday, the police officer and a young protester were shot dead in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, while another youth was shot in the city of Tipitapa, northeast of Managua, the nation's Red Cross told Reuters on Friday.</p> <p>"We're not sure what happened. It's unclear. We don't know whose side (the victims were on), whether they were in favor or opposed," said Lisseth Guido, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross of Nicaragua.</p> A demonstrator uses a slingshot to hurl stones toward riot police during a protest of university students over a controversial reform to the pension plans of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS) in Managua, Nicaragua April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas <p>Guido said some 48 people had received medical attention on Thursday for varying injuries due to the protests. Violent protests continued into Friday as anti-riot police used tear gas, but it was not immediately clear if there were further casualties.</p> <p>A former leftist guerrilla leader who critics accuse of trying to set up a family dictatorship, Ortega has been president since 2007, delivering solid growth by fusing socialist policies with an embrace of free markets.</p> <p>But moves to increase worker contributions to social security and reduce pensions, which the government argues are fiscally necessary, has sparked a violent backlash.</p> <p>The wave of protests is the biggest since Ortega took power, placing him alongside other Latin American leftists who have come under pressure after failing to consolidate economic gains.</p> <p>After Ortega's government approved the social security overhaul this week, hundreds of retirees hit the streets in protest on Wednesday. They were joined the next day by thousands of students and business workers in cities around the nation, sparking violent clashes with police.</p> <p>Protesters on Friday held signs saying: "no more repression" and "we are not scared."</p> Slideshow (10 Images) <p>Since the protests began, at least three local television stations that were broadcasting the protests live had their signals abruptly cut.</p> <p>100% Noticias, the only TV station still without a signal, called the move "arbitrary and illegal."</p> <p>Neighboring Costa Rica's foreign policy chief, Christian Guillermet, expressed concern on Friday about the violence and media censorship.</p> <p>"It's always important to maintain social peace and in that sense we don't believe infringing on freedom of expression is conducive," said Guillermet.</p> <p>Reporting by Oswaldo Rivas in Managua; Additional reporting by Diego Ore in Mexico City; Writing by Anthony Esposito, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MBABANE (Reuters) - Swaziland's King Mswati III, Africa's last absolute monarch, said on Thursday he was officially renaming the country as the Kingdom of eSwatini.</p> <p>He announced the change to eSwatini, meaning "land of the Swazis", in the local Swati language at Golden Jubilee celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Swazi independence and of his 50th birthday.</p> <p>The king has referred to the "Kingdom of eSwatini" several times in recent years - in an address to the UN General Assembly in 2017 and at African Union and other international conferences.</p> <p>Addressing a large gathering in a stadium in the second city of Manzini, 40 km (25 miles) east of the capital Mbabane, the king said Swaziland was reverting to the original name it had before being colonized by the British.</p> <p>The impoverished southern African nation - a member of the Commonwealth - gained independence from Britain in 1968.</p> <p>"I would like to announce that from today onwards, our country will be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini," the king said.</p> <p>He said the name "Swaziland" had caused confusion. "Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland," the king said.</p> <p>The king, who wore a red and black military uniform and rode in an open car into the stadium, said he wanted his country to have a name people could identify with.</p> <p>Most of the king's subjects eke out a living in agriculture, often cultivating sugar. There is widespread poverty in a country with the world's highest HIV/AIDS rate.</p> <p>Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen attended the event while on a visit to a country which is one of the few to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan rather than Beijing.</p> FILE PHOTO: Swaziland King Mswati III addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson <p>It is Tsai's first trip to Africa since assuming the presidency in 2016.</p> <p>Writing by James Macharia; editing by Andrew Roche</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Friday it would strongly support Zimbabwe's re-entry to the Commonwealth and praised President Emmerson Mnangagwa for impressive progress since Robert Mugabe was toppled in a military coup.</p> Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson poses for a photograph before a meeting with the Zimbabwe and other African delegations at the CHOGM conference in London, Britain, April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <p>But it said Mnangagwa, who became president following a military take-over, would still have to deliver on free and fair elections in July to win over Zimbabwe's critics at home and abroad.</p> <p>Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth network of 53 mostly former territories of the British Empire in 2003 after Mugabe, who had ruled Zimbabwe from its independence in 1980, came under criticism over disputed elections and land seizures from white farmers.</p> <p>"The UK would strongly support Zimbabwe's re-entry and a new Zimbabwe that is committed to political and economic reform that works for all its people," the Foreign Office said in a statement.</p> Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson poses for a photograph before a meeting with the Zimbabwe and other African delegations at the CHOGM conference in London, Britain, April 20, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <p>As Harare looks to rebuild its international ties, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met his Zimbabwean counterpart Sibusiso Moyo and ministers from other nations over breakfast on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London.</p> <p>Moyo - the general who went on state television in khaki fatigues last November to announce the military takeover - also met ministers from neighboring African states and Australia at the breakfast.</p> <p>Mugabe cast himself as a liberation hero but opponents said he drove Zimbabwe's economy into the ground and made the country an international pariah. He was forced to step down in November during a coup and was replaced by Mnangagwa.</p> <p>Johnson praised Mnangagwa's record in office in the past 150 days but said a bellwether for the direction of a new Zimbabwe would be the election in July.</p> <p>"The Zimbabwe government must deliver the free and fair elections the people of Zimbabwe deserve and which it has promised," he said.</p> <p>The election will pit Mnangagwa against a clutch of opponents including 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa from the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>David Coltart, a former education minister and member of parliament from the Movement for Democratic Change, said he was shocked by the speed with which Mnangagwa has been welcomed back to the fold after an unconstitutional seizure of power.</p> <p>"I am utterly appalled by the @Commonwealth18 and the British Government feting the #Zimbabwe regime," Coltart said on Twitter.</p> <p>The West imposed sanctions on Mugabe and members of his inner circle, accusing them of rigging a series of votes - charges they denied.</p> <p>Now Zimbabwe has said it will invite Western powers to monitor its national elections for the first time in more than 15 years.</p> <p>"President Mnangagwa has been in power for 150 days and while Zimbabwe has made impressive progress, there is still much to do," Johnson said. "That's why Britain, the Commonwealth and the wider international community will do everything it can in supporting Zimbabwe on its path of reform."</p> <p>"The UK stands ready in friendship to support a Zimbabwe that fully embraces the rule of law, human rights and economic reform," he said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Ed Cropley in Johannesburg; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A group of 50 Central American migrants who set out from southern Mexico in late March have reached the U.S. border, having endured the long journey despite threats by President Donald Trump to secure the border with National Guard personnel.</p> A Central American migrant, moving in a caravan through Mexico, crosses between the wagons of a freight train before embarking on a new leg of his travels, in Tlaquepaque, in Jalisco state, Mexico April 19, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido <p>Since peaking at around 1,500 people, the so-called migrant "caravan" has dwindled under pressure from Trump and Mexican migration authorities, who vowed to separate those migrants with a right to stay in Mexico from those who did not.</p> <p>Some of those migrants began arriving in the Mexican border city of Tijuana on Wednesday and have requested asylum in the United States.</p> <p>"Since yesterday, some began to cross into the United States to turn themselves in from Tijuana and request asylum. We understand more of (the migrants) will do the same," said Jose Maria Garcia, director of Juventud 2000, an organization dedicated to assisting migrants.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>He said more migrants, many of whom are stranded in Mexico's central states, are expected to arrive in the coming days.</p> <p>"We will continue to receive them and it will be up to them if they stay in the country or leave," Garcia said.</p> <p>Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas, prompting many people to leave in search of a better life.</p> <p>Every year, thousands of migrants -especially Central Americans- venture to cross Mexico and reach the United States, often risking their lives along the way.</p> <p>Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Darren Schuettler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Split Social Democrats could sink Merkel's coalition plans At least three dead, including police officer, in Nicaragua protests Africa's last absolute monarch renames Swaziland as 'eSwatini' Britain wants Zimbabwe back in the Commonwealth, but eyes July election Some 50 members of migrant caravan reach Mexico, U.S. border

https://reuters.com/article/germany-politics/update-1-split-social-democrats-could-sink-merkels-coalition-plans-idUSL8N1PB6AE

2018-01-16

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BERLINDUESSELDORF Reuters The leader of Germanys Social Democrats SPD tried on Tuesday to quash a grassroots rebellion against a blueprint agreed with Angela Merkels conservatives to enter formal talks on a grand coalition which could scupper her plan for a fourth term FILE PHOTO Acting German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Social Democratic Party SPD leader Martin Schulz attend a news conference after exploratory talks about forming a new coalition government at the SPD headquarters in Berlin Germany January 12 2018 REUTERSHannibal Hanschke After five days of talks SPD leader Martin Schulz agreed a framework deal with Merkel and Bavarian conservatives on Friday But before he can start official negotiations he needs the backing of his party in a vote at a conference on Sunday Convincing them is proving difficult Two regional branches have already said they do not back his deal Many rank and file members accuse Schulz of selling out to Merkel and failing to win a signature policy to take to coalition talks such as a major healthcare reform or tax hikes for the rich Schulz is touring the country to convince his party base Speaking to reporters before meeting SPD members in the western city of Duesseldorf Schulz said the coalition blueprint had enough political substance to start detailed negotiations We want to put the SPD into a position in which it can make our country better Schulz said Two dozen young SPD members protested against another grand coalition or Groko government with Merkels conservatives holding up placards reading Groko is rubbish and Groko never again Related Coverage Merkels conservatives wont bar farright party from committee chair Factbox The SPDs path to a German coalition deal In a live Facebook broadcast Schulz said the party had a duty to look at how it could improve the life of people We are living in the world of US President Donald Trump Russian President Vladimir Putin Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan We live in a world of dictators who make the worlds breath pause with their crazed ideas And we have the chance to make Europe a bit more social peaceful and just If the SPD rejects entering talks on Sunday the prospect looms of a new election or a minority government under Merkel both unwelcome options for stabilityloving Germans Defeat would also almost certainly mean the end of Schulzs leadership of the SPD Uncertainty over the shape of the government in Europes biggest economy is worrying investors nearly four months after an election in which the conservatives had their worst result since 1949 and the SPD their worst since World War Two Both of the parties that have dominated Germany for generations bled support to the far right AfD which joined parliament for the first time becoming the third biggest bloc Many in the SPD are wary of a rerun of the grand coalition which ruled under Merkel between 2013 and 2017 A junior role leaves them in her shadow unable to win credit from voters The SPD had vowed to go into opposition after its dismal election result but was forced to reconsider in the interest of national stability after Merkel was humiliated by the collapse of threeway talks on a coalition with other parties Coalitions under Merkel tmsnrtrs2AdhTpO STRONG FEELING Highlighting the strength of feeling regional party branches in Berlin and the state of Saxony Anhalt have already signaled their opposition to the deal A renewed grand coalition cannot be the result of talks We reject the start of coalition negotiations with the conservatives said the motion by Berlins SPD chief Michael Mueller which was passed It said proposals on home building rents and migration and integration were unsatisfactory and expressed disappointment over the absence of plans to shake up the health system The SPDs youth wing Jusos opposes the deal and its head Kevin Kuehnert is undertaking his own NoGroKo Tour However it is difficult to predict the outcome of Sundays vote as the regional results are not binding At the Bonn congress 600 delegates are free to vote how they wish Both states that have rejected the agreement so far are relatively small Schulz is trying to woo delegates in the biggest state North RhineWestphalia which has more than a quarter of the votes in a series of events this week Trade unions some other localities and the state of Brandenburg have already said they back the deal Some leading SPD members argue Sundays vote is only on the blueprint for a final deal and details can still be negotiated After any final coalition deal the SPDs 443000 members will be balloted Some conservatives have expressed confidence that the SPD will back the blueprint I can only recommend moving at top speed said Bavarian conservative Alexander Dobrindt I look forward to starting coalition negotiations on Monday he said adding his only concern was the masochistic way the SPD had of talking down its successes Coaltion and election scenarios tmsnrtrs2AjqF5m Additional reporting by Holger Hansen Thomas Escritt and Michael Nienaber Editing by Alison Williams and Peter Graff Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MANAGUA Reuters Protests in Nicaragua over changes to social security have led to the deaths of at least three people including a police officer the Red Cross said on Friday heaping pressure on the leftist government of President Daniel Ortega A riot policeman fires rubber bullets during clashes with university students protesting over a controversial reform to the pension plans of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute INSS in Managua Nicaragua April 20 2018 REUTERSOswaldo Rivas Nicaraguans have been protesting for three straight days against government changes to social security signed into law earlier this week that increase worker contributions and lower pensions On Thursday the police officer and a young protester were shot dead in the Nicaraguan capital Managua while another youth was shot in the city of Tipitapa northeast of Managua the nations Red Cross told Reuters on Friday Were not sure what happened Its unclear We dont know whose side the victims were on whether they were in favor or opposed said Lisseth Guido a spokeswoman for the Red Cross of Nicaragua A demonstrator uses a slingshot to hurl stones toward riot police during a protest of university students over a controversial reform to the pension plans of the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute INSS in Managua Nicaragua April 20 2018 REUTERSOswaldo Rivas Guido said some 48 people had received medical attention on Thursday for varying injuries due to the protests Violent protests continued into Friday as antiriot police used tear gas but it was not immediately clear if there were further casualties A former leftist guerrilla leader who critics accuse of trying to set up a family dictatorship Ortega has been president since 2007 delivering solid growth by fusing socialist policies with an embrace of free markets But moves to increase worker contributions to social security and reduce pensions which the government argues are fiscally necessary has sparked a violent backlash The wave of protests is the biggest since Ortega took power placing him alongside other Latin American leftists who have come under pressure after failing to consolidate economic gains After Ortegas government approved the social security overhaul this week hundreds of retirees hit the streets in protest on Wednesday They were joined the next day by thousands of students and business workers in cities around the nation sparking violent clashes with police Protesters on Friday held signs saying no more repression and we are not scared Slideshow 10 Images Since the protests began at least three local television stations that were broadcasting the protests live had their signals abruptly cut 100 Noticias the only TV station still without a signal called the move arbitrary and illegal Neighboring Costa Ricas foreign policy chief Christian Guillermet expressed concern on Friday about the violence and media censorship Its always important to maintain social peace and in that sense we dont believe infringing on freedom of expression is conducive said Guillermet Reporting by Oswaldo Rivas in Managua Additional reporting by Diego Ore in Mexico City Writing by Anthony Esposito Editing by Rosalba OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MBABANE Reuters Swazilands King Mswati III Africas last absolute monarch said on Thursday he was officially renaming the country as the Kingdom of eSwatini He announced the change to eSwatini meaning land of the Swazis in the local Swati language at Golden Jubilee celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Swazi independence and of his 50th birthday The king has referred to the Kingdom of eSwatini several times in recent years in an address to the UN General Assembly in 2017 and at African Union and other international conferences Addressing a large gathering in a stadium in the second city of Manzini 40 km 25 miles east of the capital Mbabane the king said Swaziland was reverting to the original name it had before being colonized by the British The impoverished southern African nation a member of the Commonwealth gained independence from Britain in 1968 I would like to announce that from today onwards our country will be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini the king said He said the name Swaziland had caused confusion Whenever we go abroad people refer to us as Switzerland the king said The king who wore a red and black military uniform and rode in an open car into the stadium said he wanted his country to have a name people could identify with Most of the kings subjects eke out a living in agriculture often cultivating sugar There is widespread poverty in a country with the worlds highest HIVAIDS rate Taiwan President Tsai Ingwen attended the event while on a visit to a country which is one of the few to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan rather than Beijing FILE PHOTO Swaziland King Mswati III addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York US September 20 2017 REUTERSLucas Jackson It is Tsais first trip to Africa since assuming the presidency in 2016 Writing by James Macharia editing by Andrew Roche Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain said on Friday it would strongly support Zimbabwes reentry to the Commonwealth and praised President Emmerson Mnangagwa for impressive progress since Robert Mugabe was toppled in a military coup Britains Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson poses for a photograph before a meeting with the Zimbabwe and other African delegations at the CHOGM conference in London Britain April 20 2018 REUTERSHannah McKay But it said Mnangagwa who became president following a military takeover would still have to deliver on free and fair elections in July to win over Zimbabwes critics at home and abroad Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth network of 53 mostly former territories of the British Empire in 2003 after Mugabe who had ruled Zimbabwe from its independence in 1980 came under criticism over disputed elections and land seizures from white farmers The UK would strongly support Zimbabwes reentry and a new Zimbabwe that is committed to political and economic reform that works for all its people the Foreign Office said in a statement Britains Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson poses for a photograph before a meeting with the Zimbabwe and other African delegations at the CHOGM conference in London Britain April 20 2018 REUTERSHannah McKay As Harare looks to rebuild its international ties Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met his Zimbabwean counterpart Sibusiso Moyo and ministers from other nations over breakfast on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London Moyo the general who went on state television in khaki fatigues last November to announce the military takeover also met ministers from neighboring African states and Australia at the breakfast Mugabe cast himself as a liberation hero but opponents said he drove Zimbabwes economy into the ground and made the country an international pariah He was forced to step down in November during a coup and was replaced by Mnangagwa Johnson praised Mnangagwas record in office in the past 150 days but said a bellwether for the direction of a new Zimbabwe would be the election in July The Zimbabwe government must deliver the free and fair elections the people of Zimbabwe deserve and which it has promised he said The election will pit Mnangagwa against a clutch of opponents including 40yearold Nelson Chamisa from the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change Slideshow 2 Images David Coltart a former education minister and member of parliament from the Movement for Democratic Change said he was shocked by the speed with which Mnangagwa has been welcomed back to the fold after an unconstitutional seizure of power I am utterly appalled by the Commonwealth18 and the British Government feting the Zimbabwe regime Coltart said on Twitter The West imposed sanctions on Mugabe and members of his inner circle accusing them of rigging a series of votes charges they denied Now Zimbabwe has said it will invite Western powers to monitor its national elections for the first time in more than 15 years President Mnangagwa has been in power for 150 days and while Zimbabwe has made impressive progress there is still much to do Johnson said Thats why Britain the Commonwealth and the wider international community will do everything it can in supporting Zimbabwe on its path of reform The UK stands ready in friendship to support a Zimbabwe that fully embraces the rule of law human rights and economic reform he said Additional reporting by Ed Cropley in Johannesburg Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MEXICO CITY Reuters A group of 50 Central American migrants who set out from southern Mexico in late March have reached the US border having endured the long journey despite threats by President Donald Trump to secure the border with National Guard personnel A Central American migrant moving in a caravan through Mexico crosses between the wagons of a freight train before embarking on a new leg of his travels in Tlaquepaque in Jalisco state Mexico April 19 2018 REUTERSEdgard Garrido Since peaking at around 1500 people the socalled migrant caravan has dwindled under pressure from Trump and Mexican migration authorities who vowed to separate those migrants with a right to stay in Mexico from those who did not Some of those migrants began arriving in the Mexican border city of Tijuana on Wednesday and have requested asylum in the United States Since yesterday some began to cross into the United States to turn themselves in from Tijuana and request asylum We understand more of the migrants will do the same said Jose Maria Garcia director of Juventud 2000 an organization dedicated to assisting migrants Slideshow 11 Images He said more migrants many of whom are stranded in Mexicos central states are expected to arrive in the coming days We will continue to receive them and it will be up to them if they stay in the country or leave Garcia said Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas prompting many people to leave in search of a better life Every year thousands of migrants especially Central Americans venture to cross Mexico and reach the United States often risking their lives along the way Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz Writing by Anthony Esposito Editing by Darren Schuettler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Boeing Co:</p> <p>* BOEING&#8217;S 787-10 DREAMLINER CLEARED FOR COMMERCIAL SERVICE BY FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>) and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California, a Los Angeles judge has ruled, possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines.</p> FILE PHOTO - A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California, United States, October 27, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson <p>A little-known not-for-profit group sued some 90 coffee retailers, including Starbucks, on grounds they were violating a California law requiring companies to warn consumers of chemicals in their products that could cause cancer.</p> <p>One of those chemicals is acrylamide, a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee.</p> <p>Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision dated Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process, court documents showed.</p> <p>Starbucks and other defendants have until April 10 to file objections to the decision.</p> <p>Starbucks declined to comment, referring reporters to a statement by the National Coffee Association (NCA) that said the industry was considering an appeal and further legal actions.</p> <p>&#8220;Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading. The U.S. government&#8217;s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle,&#8221; the NCA statement said.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">Starbucks Corp</a> 57.89 SBUX.O Nasdaq -0.01 (-0.02%) SBUX.O DNKN.O MCD.N <p>In his decision, Berle said: &#8220;Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health.&#8221;</p> <p>Officials from Dunkin&#8217; Donuts ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DNKN.O" type="external">DNKN.O</a>), McDonald&#8217;s Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MCD.N" type="external">MCD.N</a>), Peet&#8217;s and other big coffee sellers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT). It calls for fines as large as $2,500 per person for every exposure to the chemical since 2002 at the defendants&#8217; shops in California. Any civil penalties, which will be decided in a third phase of the trial, could be huge in California, which has a population of nearly 40 million.</p> <p>CERT&#8217;s lawyer Raphael Metzger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Starbucks lost the first phase of the trial in which it failed to show the level of acrylamide in coffee was below that which would pose a significant risk of cancer. In the second phase of the trial, defendants failed to prove there was an acceptable &#8220;alternative&#8221; risk level for the carcinogen, court documents showed.</p> <p>Several defendants in the case settled before Wednesday&#8217;s decision, agreeing to post signage about the cancer-linked chemical and pay millions in fines, according to published reports.</p> <p>Reporting by Nate Raymond; Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein; Writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Richard Chang and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Online retailing behemoth Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) has cut ties with Washington lobbying firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer &amp;amp; Feld LLP and Squire Patton Boggs, Bloomberg reported on Friday.</p> FILE PHOTO: An Amazon.com Inc driver stands next to an Amazon delivery truck in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 21, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">Amazon.com Inc</a> 1447.34 AMZN.O Nasdaq +15.92 (+1.11%) AMZN.O ORCL.N <p>The changes took place about a week before U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon in a tweet on Thursday of not paying enough tax, taking advantage of the U.S. postal system and putting small retailers out of business.</p> <p>Amazon had cut ties from the lobbying firms last Friday and in their place hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc, both of whom have previously worked as outside lobbyists for Airbnb Inc and Oracle Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ORCL.N" type="external">ORCL.N</a>), the report said, citing a source.</p> <p>Neither of the parties were immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.</p> <p>The e-commerce giant employs about 15 lobbyists, according to earlier disclosures submitted to the U.S. Senate, with another 15 outside lobbying firms who each assign more lobbyists to work on behalf of the company.</p> <p>The retailer spent $15.4 million in 2017 on lobbying in Washington, up from $12 million a year earlier.</p> <p>Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three firms that bought crude oil last year from U.S. emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes, according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> <p>Problems with crude quality would make the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel. The reserve is the world&#8217;s largest government stockpile, currently holding 665 million barrels.</p> <p>Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) occurs naturally in crude and natural gas, but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers. High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines - and can be lethal to humans in gas form.</p> <p>Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies. The U.S. government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies, as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns.</p> <p>Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters.</p> <p>The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">RDSa.L</a>), Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America, the U.S. trading arm of state-owned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd [601857.SS], according to the shipping documents, emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request, and a department official who declined to be identified.</p> <p>The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high, according to the department official. The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes, the official said.</p> <p>All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound, Texas last year. The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport, Texas before being loaded onto ships, according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official.</p> <p>The Freeport facility is owned by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">EPD.N</a>). Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal, Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview.</p> <p>&#8220;Of the hundreds of cargoes we&#8217;ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals, we&#8217;ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S,&#8221; he said.</p> UNPLEASANT SURPRISE <p>In March, Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 6.2 million-barrel purchase from the U.S. government in January, according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request.</p> <p>The firm was &#8220;unpleasantly surprised&#8221; to find the high levels, Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department, adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases.</p> <p>Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government.</p> <p>The oil firm&#8217;s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million (ppm). But a later test by Shell - after it shipped the crude by boat to another U.S. location - showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million, according to Shell&#8217;s emails to the department.</p> <p>Exposure to vapors containing 500-700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.</p> SAFETY CONCERNS <p>In November, Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina, according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise, the documents show.</p> <p>A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie, according to the documents, and found H2S levels of up to 9,000 ppm.</p> <p>Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department. Macquarie declined to comment.</p> <p>After the Inspectorate testing, the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations, according to the shipping documents.</p> <p>It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo. PetroChina shipped the oil to China, where it arrived on Jan. 18, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.</p> RARE INCIDENTS <p>Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry, but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">Royal Dutch Shell PLC</a> 2233.5 RDSa.L London Stock Exchange +2.00 (+0.09%) RDSa.L EPD.N <p>Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston. But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers.</p> <p>Contamination could result from blending different crude grades, for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade, Krishnamoorti said.</p> <p>&#8220;There has to be some concentrated source of it,&#8221; Krishnamoorti said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just very odd.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Catherine Ngai; Editing by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China warned the United States on Thursday not to open Pandora&#8217;s Box and spark a flurry of protectionist practices across the globe, even as Beijing pointed to U.S. goods that it could target in a deepening Sino-U.S. trade dispute.</p> <p>China could target a broad range of U.S. businesses from agriculture to aircraft, autos, semiconductors and even services if the trade conflict escalates, the official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday.</p> <p>President Donald Trump&#8217;s move last week to slap up to $60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports has since provoked a warning from Beijing that it could retaliate with duties of up to $3 billion of U.S. imports.</p> <p>China&#8217;s biggest U.S. imports are aircraft and related equipment, soybeans and autos, with the total bill about $40 billion last year.</p> <p>&#8220;The malicious practices of the United States are like opening Pandora&#8217;s Box, and there is a danger of triggering a chain reaction that will spread the virus of trade protectionism across the globe,&#8221; a commerce ministry spokesman said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-china-economy-intellectualproperty/china-issues-guidelines-on-transfer-of-ip-rights-to-foreign-investors-idUSKBN1H514P" type="external">China issues guidelines on transfer of IP rights to foreign investors</a> <p>The official line from China continues to be stern even as Beijing says it is all for dialogue and negotiations. The feedback from U.S. and Chinese officials on the nature and extent of trade talks remains mixed, media reports show.</p> <p>The Financial Times reported only on Monday that China had offered to buy more U.S. micro-chips and move more quickly to finalize rules allowing foreign firms to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms, citing people briefed on the negotiations.</p> <p>Chinese customs data shows the U.S. accounted for just $2.6 billion, or 1 percent, of China&#8217;s total semiconductor imports last year by value, with suppliers in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan commanding a bigger share.</p> <p>But a source in the U.S. semiconductor industry said U.S. companies have slightly more than 50 percent of China&#8217;s market for chips, though export data does not reflect that because much of the product is sent offshore for low value added processing.</p> <p>The source said the U.S. semiconductor industry had not asked the Trump administration to urge China to buy more U.S. chips and had been told by senior U.S. officials that the U.S. government had not made such a request to Beijing.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t need China to buy more chips,&#8221; the source said, adding that U.S. industry was concerned about being targeted by Chinese non-tariff barriers.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s more about (Chinese) subsidies, IP protection, and cyber rules,&#8221; the source said, referring to concerns over Chinese retaliation.</p> <p>China has long said it would like to import more U.S. high-tech goods, including high-end chips, but has been stymied by U.S. export controls set on national security grounds.</p> <p>The Trump administration is accusing Chinese firms of stealing intellectual property and forcing U.S. firms to share commercial secrets - allegations that China denies.</p> <p>On Thursday, China&#8217;s State Council, or cabinet, said transfers of Chinese intellectual property rights to foreign investors will be reviewed if national security is determined to be at stake, or if core technological innovations are involved.</p> <p>Government approval will also be needed for intellectual property transfers involving semiconductors, software and agriculture.</p> SERVICES MAY BE TARGETED <p>China&#8217;s commerce ministry said on Thursday the U.S. approach to trade could trigger a domino effect and U.S. trade protectionism will only hurt U.S. consumers.</p> FILE PHOTO: Container boxes are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, in Shanghai, China September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo <p>While China hopes the U.S. will resolve trade conflicts with China through dialogue, it will take all possible steps to protect its interests, ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a regular briefing in Beijing.</p> <p>&#8220;Negotiations must be equal, and China will not accept any consultation under unilateral coercion,&#8221; Gao said.</p> <p>On Wednesday, Trump&#8217;s top trade envoy said he would give China a 60-day window before tariffs on Chinese goods take effect, but added that it would take years to bring the two countries&#8217; trading relationship &#8220;to a good place.&#8221;</p> <p>The tariff list is expected in the next several days.</p> <p>The China Daily on Thursday quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling a U.S. Congressional delegation this week that China was open to dialogue but &#8220;fully prepared with countermeasures&#8221;.</p> FILE PHOTO: Containers are seen at the port in San Pedro, California, U.S., March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Riha, Jr. <p>It warned that if the conflict continued to escalate &#8220;China could consider taking reciprocal measures against U.S. imports of agricultural products besides soybeans, as well as aircraft, automobiles and semiconductors.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;And should the Trump administration further obstruct Chinese investments in the U.S., even tougher measures such as restrictions on imports of U.S. services and similar investment reviews would likely be on the table,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>Separately, Hong Kong&#8217;s South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that U.S. and Chinese officials had been holding talks to shield American soybeans and other agricultural products from trade sanctions.</p> <p>China is still considering import curbs on U.S. soybeans, U.S. Soybean Export Council Asia director Paul Burke said on Thursday, following a meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture.</p> <p>Reporting by Se Young Lee and Yawen Chen in BEIJING; Additional reporting by Michael Martina, John Ruwitch, Dominique Patton and Stella Qiu; Additional writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Boeing's 787-10 Dreamliner Cleared For Commercial Service By Federal Aviation Administration Starbucks coffee in California must have cancer warning, judge says Amazon cuts ties with top Washington lobbying firms: Bloomberg Exclusive: Firms complain of contaminated crude from U.S. reserve China warns U.S. not to open Pandora's Box, unleash trade ills on world

https://reuters.com/article/brief-boeings-787-10-dreamliner-cleared/brief-boeings-787-10-dreamliner-cleared-for-commercial-service-by-federal-aviation-administration-idUSFWN1PH0WG

2018-01-22

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Boeing Co BOEING8217S 78710 DREAMLINER CLEARED FOR COMMERCIAL SERVICE BY FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Starbucks Corp SBUXO and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California a Los Angeles judge has ruled possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines FILE PHOTO A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles California United States October 27 2015 REUTERSLucy Nicholson A littleknown notforprofit group sued some 90 coffee retailers including Starbucks on grounds they were violating a California law requiring companies to warn consumers of chemicals in their products that could cause cancer One of those chemicals is acrylamide a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision dated Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process court documents showed Starbucks and other defendants have until April 10 to file objections to the decision Starbucks declined to comment referring reporters to a statement by the National Coffee Association NCA that said the industry was considering an appeal and further legal actions 8220Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading The US government8217s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle8221 the NCA statement said Starbucks Corp 5789 SBUXO Nasdaq 001 002 SBUXO DNKNO MCDN In his decision Berle said 8220Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health8221 Officials from Dunkin8217 Donuts DNKNO McDonald8217s Corp MCDN Peet8217s and other big coffee sellers did not immediately respond to requests for comment The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics CERT It calls for fines as large as 2500 per person for every exposure to the chemical since 2002 at the defendants8217 shops in California Any civil penalties which will be decided in a third phase of the trial could be huge in California which has a population of nearly 40 million CERT8217s lawyer Raphael Metzger did not immediately respond to a request for comment Starbucks lost the first phase of the trial in which it failed to show the level of acrylamide in coffee was below that which would pose a significant risk of cancer In the second phase of the trial defendants failed to prove there was an acceptable 8220alternative8221 risk level for the carcinogen court documents showed Several defendants in the case settled before Wednesday8217s decision agreeing to post signage about the cancerlinked chemical and pay millions in fines according to published reports Reporting by Nate Raymond Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein Writing by Andrew Hay Editing by Richard Chang and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Online retailing behemoth Amazoncom Inc AMZNO has cut ties with Washington lobbying firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer ampamp Feld LLP and Squire Patton Boggs Bloomberg reported on Friday FILE PHOTO An Amazoncom Inc driver stands next to an Amazon delivery truck in Los Angeles California US May 21 2016 REUTERSLucy NicholsonFile Photo Amazoncom Inc 144734 AMZNO Nasdaq 1592 111 AMZNO ORCLN The changes took place about a week before US President Donald Trump accused Amazon in a tweet on Thursday of not paying enough tax taking advantage of the US postal system and putting small retailers out of business Amazon had cut ties from the lobbying firms last Friday and in their place hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc both of whom have previously worked as outside lobbyists for Airbnb Inc and Oracle Corp ORCLN the report said citing a source Neither of the parties were immediately available for comment outside regular business hours The ecommerce giant employs about 15 lobbyists according to earlier disclosures submitted to the US Senate with another 15 outside lobbying firms who each assign more lobbyists to work on behalf of the company The retailer spent 154 million in 2017 on lobbying in Washington up from 12 million a year earlier Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Sunil Nair Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Three firms that bought crude oil last year from US emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Problems with crude quality would make the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve SPR less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel The reserve is the world8217s largest government stockpile currently holding 665 million barrels Hydrogen sulfide H2S occurs naturally in crude and natural gas but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines and can be lethal to humans in gas form Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies The US government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo The US Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co RDSaL Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America the US trading arm of stateowned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd 601857SS according to the shipping documents emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request and a department official who declined to be identified The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high according to the department official The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes the official said All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound Texas last year The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport Texas before being loaded onto ships according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official The Freeport facility is owned by Houstonbased Enterprise Products Partners LP EPDN Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview 8220Of the hundreds of cargoes we8217ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals we8217ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S8221 he said UNPLEASANT SURPRISE In March Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 62 millionbarrel purchase from the US government in January according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request The firm was 8220unpleasantly surprised8221 to find the high levels Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government The oil firm8217s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million ppm But a later test by Shell after it shipped the crude by boat to another US location showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million according to Shell8217s emails to the department Exposure to vapors containing 500700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration SAFETY CONCERNS In November Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Slideshow 3 Images The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise the documents show A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie according to the documents and found H2S levels of up to 9000 ppm Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department Macquarie declined to comment After the Inspectorate testing the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations according to the shipping documents It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo PetroChina shipped the oil to China where it arrived on Jan 18 according to Thomson Reuters shipping data RARE INCIDENTS Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare Royal Dutch Shell PLC 22335 RDSaL London Stock Exchange 200 009 RDSaL EPDN Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced said Ramanan Krishnamoorti chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers Contamination could result from blending different crude grades for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade Krishnamoorti said 8220There has to be some concentrated source of it8221 Krishnamoorti said 8220It8217s just very odd8221 Reporting by Catherine Ngai Editing by David Gaffen Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China warned the United States on Thursday not to open Pandora8217s Box and spark a flurry of protectionist practices across the globe even as Beijing pointed to US goods that it could target in a deepening SinoUS trade dispute China could target a broad range of US businesses from agriculture to aircraft autos semiconductors and even services if the trade conflict escalates the official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday President Donald Trump8217s move last week to slap up to 60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports has since provoked a warning from Beijing that it could retaliate with duties of up to 3 billion of US imports China8217s biggest US imports are aircraft and related equipment soybeans and autos with the total bill about 40 billion last year 8220The malicious practices of the United States are like opening Pandora8217s Box and there is a danger of triggering a chain reaction that will spread the virus of trade protectionism across the globe8221 a commerce ministry spokesman said Related Coverage China issues guidelines on transfer of IP rights to foreign investors The official line from China continues to be stern even as Beijing says it is all for dialogue and negotiations The feedback from US and Chinese officials on the nature and extent of trade talks remains mixed media reports show The Financial Times reported only on Monday that China had offered to buy more US microchips and move more quickly to finalize rules allowing foreign firms to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms citing people briefed on the negotiations Chinese customs data shows the US accounted for just 26 billion or 1 percent of China8217s total semiconductor imports last year by value with suppliers in South Korea Taiwan and Japan commanding a bigger share But a source in the US semiconductor industry said US companies have slightly more than 50 percent of China8217s market for chips though export data does not reflect that because much of the product is sent offshore for low value added processing The source said the US semiconductor industry had not asked the Trump administration to urge China to buy more US chips and had been told by senior US officials that the US government had not made such a request to Beijing 8220We don8217t need China to buy more chips8221 the source said adding that US industry was concerned about being targeted by Chinese nontariff barriers 8220It8217s more about Chinese subsidies IP protection and cyber rules8221 the source said referring to concerns over Chinese retaliation China has long said it would like to import more US hightech goods including highend chips but has been stymied by US export controls set on national security grounds The Trump administration is accusing Chinese firms of stealing intellectual property and forcing US firms to share commercial secrets allegations that China denies On Thursday China8217s State Council or cabinet said transfers of Chinese intellectual property rights to foreign investors will be reviewed if national security is determined to be at stake or if core technological innovations are involved Government approval will also be needed for intellectual property transfers involving semiconductors software and agriculture SERVICES MAY BE TARGETED China8217s commerce ministry said on Thursday the US approach to trade could trigger a domino effect and US trade protectionism will only hurt US consumers FILE PHOTO Container boxes are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Shanghai China September 24 2016 REUTERSAly SongFile Photo While China hopes the US will resolve trade conflicts with China through dialogue it will take all possible steps to protect its interests ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a regular briefing in Beijing 8220Negotiations must be equal and China will not accept any consultation under unilateral coercion8221 Gao said On Wednesday Trump8217s top trade envoy said he would give China a 60day window before tariffs on Chinese goods take effect but added that it would take years to bring the two countries8217 trading relationship 8220to a good place8221 The tariff list is expected in the next several days The China Daily on Thursday quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling a US Congressional delegation this week that China was open to dialogue but 8220fully prepared with countermeasures8221 FILE PHOTO Containers are seen at the port in San Pedro California US March 22 2018 REUTERSBob Riha Jr It warned that if the conflict continued to escalate 8220China could consider taking reciprocal measures against US imports of agricultural products besides soybeans as well as aircraft automobiles and semiconductors8221 8220And should the Trump administration further obstruct Chinese investments in the US even tougher measures such as restrictions on imports of US services and similar investment reviews would likely be on the table8221 it said Separately Hong Kong8217s South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that US and Chinese officials had been holding talks to shield American soybeans and other agricultural products from trade sanctions China is still considering import curbs on US soybeans US Soybean Export Council Asia director Paul Burke said on Thursday following a meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture Reporting by Se Young Lee and Yawen Chen in BEIJING Additional reporting by Michael Martina John Ruwitch Dominique Patton and Stella Qiu Additional writing by Ryan Woo Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>(Reuters) - Tesco Plc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSCO.L" type="external">TSCO.L</a>) has poached Ulster Bank Chief Executive Gerry Mallon to run the financial services arm of Britain&#8217;s biggest retailer, Sky News reported on Tuesday.</p> FILE PHOTO: A company logo is pictured outside a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham northern England, April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo <p>Mallon has resigned as CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS)( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RBS.L" type="external">RBS.L</a>) Irish operation Ulster Bank to join Tesco Bank, with an official announcement expected on Wednesday, the report said, citing sources. ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2n3kb2q" type="external">bit.ly/2n3kb2q</a>)</p> <p>He will be replacing Tesco Bank CEO Benny Higgins, who will retire in February.</p> <p>Mallon, who is also chairman of the Irish Football Association, is expected to join Tesco Bank after his replacement at Ulster Bank is found, the report said.</p> <p>Mallon is also likely to be included in Tesco&#8217;s main executive committee, Sky News reported.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSCO.L" type="external">Tesco PLC</a> 202.6 TSCO.L London Stock Exchange -- (--%) TSCO.L RBS.L <p>Tesco Plc and Ulster Bank did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.</p> <p>Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Chris Reese</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - As U.S. President Donald Trump dealt a blow to China with plans to slap tariffs on $60 billion of trade, he quietly delivered a slap in the face to one of Washington&#8217;s closest allies, Japan, which got no exemption from earlier announced duties.</p> FILE PHOTO: Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko arrives at the European Commission headquarters ahead of a meeting with European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, to discuss steel overcapacity, in Brussels, Belgium March 10, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Walschaerts <p>The move to exclude most U.S. allies, but not Japan, from steel and aluminum tariffs that took effect on Friday is an apparent snub to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has assiduously courted Trump since he was elected.</p> <p>U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also ratcheted up pressure for a bilateral trade pact with Tokyo, which has been in sporadic talks with Washington on cutting Japan&#8217;s trade surplus.</p> <p>Abe was the first foreign leader to travel to New York and meet Trump in the days after the November 2016 election, when he presented him with a golf club worth nearly $4,000 and showered praise on him.</p> <p>Officials tried to put a positive spin on the trade spat, which comes just as Tokyo seeks to coordinate its North Korea policies with those of Washington, an effort complicated by an ever-changing cast of characters at the White House.</p> <p>&#8220;We are aware that U.S. Trade Representative Lighthizer has been saying the U.S. wants to negotiate a free trade agreement,&#8221; Japanese trade minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters on Friday.</p> <p>&#8220;I understand we will have constructive talks on what&#8217;s the best framework for Japan and the U.S. as well as the Asia-Pacific region under Japan-U.S. economic dialogue. We want to closely communicate with the United States.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday targeting up to $60 billion in Chinese goods with tariffs after a 30-day consultation period that starts once a list is published.</p> <p>China responded strongly and the escalating tension between Beijing and Washington hit financial markets, with investors fearing dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.</p> <p>Lighthizer on Thursday read out a list of countries with which the U.S. was negotiating exemptions from the earlier announced tariffs, among them Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the European Union and South Korea.</p> <p>&#8220;Retaliation against the U.S. trade measures could destroy the free-trade system,&#8221; Seko said. &#8220;It is extremely important that Japan calmly seeks solutions under the framework of the WTO,&#8221; he added, referring to the World Trade Organization.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: U.S. Steel Imports - <a href="http://reut.rs/2D8jBWa" type="external">reut.rs/2D8jBWa</a>)</p> <p>Reporting by Ami Miyazaki and Kaori Kaneko; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Chris Gallagher</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China urged the United States on Friday to &#8220;pull back from the brink&#8221; as President Donald Trump&#8217;s plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese goods brought the world&#8217;s two largest economies closer to a trade war.</p> <p>The escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up.</p> <p>Trump is planning to impose the tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property. A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.</p> <p>&#8220;China doesn&#8217;t hope to be in a trade war, but is not afraid of engaging in one,&#8221; the Chinese commerce ministry responded in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink, make prudent decisions, and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place.&#8221;</p> <p>In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday, there will be a 30-day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published.</p> <p>That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump&#8217;s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.</p> <p>Trump said he views the Chinese as &#8220;a friend&#8221;, and both sides are in the midst of negotiations.</p> <p>Meantime, China showed readiness to retaliate by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports including fresh fruit, wine and nuts in response to imports tariffs Trump announced earlier this month on steel and aluminum, which were due to go into effect on Friday.</p> <p>The inevitable fall in demand from a full-blown trade war would spell trouble for all the economies supplying the United States and China.</p> <p>Feeling the chill, MSCI&#8217;s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS dropped 2.4 percent, tracking a large overnight fall in Wall Street shares, but perceived safe havens such as government bonds gained.</p> <p>&#8220;The upshot is that today&#8217;s (U.S.) tariffs amount to no more than a slap on the wrist for China,&#8221; Mark Williams, Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note. &#8220;China won&#8217;t change its ways. Worries about escalation therefore won&#8217;t go away.&#8221;</p> <p>Williams estimated that the $506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 2.5 percent of its total gross domestic product, and the $50-60 billion targeted by the U.S. tariffs contributed just around 0.25 percent.</p> <p>Trump, however, appears intent on fulfilling election campaign promises to reduce the record U.S. trade deficit with China.</p> FILE PHOTO - A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian, Liaoning province, China May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer <p>U.S. multi-nationals at a business gathering in Shanghai were warned by Stephen Roach, a Yale University economist, &#8220;to prepare for the worst&#8221; and make contingencies until calmer heads prevail.</p> <p>Roach said he could foresee &#8220;the Chinese government moving to restrict, in some form or another, the financial as well as the supply chain activities of American companies operating in this country.&#8221;</p> LOW HANGING FRUIT <p>Alarm over Trump&#8217;s protectionist leanings mounted earlier this month after he imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which allows safeguards based on &#8220;national security&#8221;.</p> <p>On Friday, Trump gave Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South Korea and the European Union temporary exemptions. China was not exempted even though it was a far smaller supplier than Canada or South Korea.</p> <p>Also omitted from the exemption list was U.S. ally Japan, though a government spokesman said Tokyo would press to be included. And Finance Minister Taro Aso expressed empathy with Washington regarding the importance of protecting intellectual property.</p> <p>China&#8217;s retaliation against the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum appeared restrained.</p> <p>Targeting $3 billion of U.S. imports, China has drawn a list of 128 U.S. products that could be hit with tariffs if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues, the ministry said.</p> <p>The commerce ministry said China was considering implementing measures in two stages: first the 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes, dried fruit and wine worth $977 million, and later, the higher 25 percent tariff on $1.99 billion of pork and recycled aluminum.</p> <p>U.S. wine exports to China last year were $79 million, according to data from the U.S. Wine Institute, which represents Californian wine makers.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-steel/trump-temporarily-excludes-eu-six-other-allies-from-steel-tariffs-idUSKBN1GZ0ET" type="external">Trump temporarily excludes EU, six other allies from steel tariffs</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-japan-seko/japan-loses-out-amid-china-trade-threat-that-shakes-markets-idUSKBN1GZ04H" type="external">Japan loses out amid China trade threat that shakes markets</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-germany/germany-welcomes-u-s-tariff-exemption-wants-more-trade-cooperation-idUSKBN1GZ0PL" type="external">Germany welcomes U.S. tariff exemption, wants more trade cooperation</a> <p>The fruit growers of California, Florida, Michigan and Washington all stood to lose as China&#8217;s list also included close to 80 fruit and nut products. U.S. exports of fruits, frozen juices and nuts to China amounted to $669 million last year, and it was the top supplier of apples, cherries, walnuts and almonds.</p> <p>&#8220;With the restrained response, China hopes Trump can realize his errors and mend his ways,&#8221; said Xu Hongcai, deputy chief economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing think tank.</p> <p>&#8220;If we really want to counter, the strongest response would be to target soybean and automobiles,&#8221; said Xu. &#8220;China is &#8216;drawing its bow but not firing. We still have some cards to play.&#8221;</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: U.S. imports from China - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q</a>)</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: U.S. trade in goods with China - <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH</a>)</p> <p>Additional reporting by Wang Jing, Lusha Zhang, John Ruwitch, Elias Glenn, Dominique Patton, Josephine Mason and Meng Meng; Editing By Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany&#8217;s economy minister on Friday welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s decision to temporarily exclude European Union countries from higher U.S. import duties on steel and aluminum and called for more international cooperation on trade.</p> FILE PHOTO: German Economic Minister Peter Altmaier delivers a statement regarding the Trump Administration's steel and aluminum tariffs outside of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 19, 2018. REUTERS/ Leah Millis <p>&#8220;I am very pleased that we have avoided a situation for the German steel and aluminum industry and its workers that could have led to great uncertainty,&#8221; Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Deutschlandfunk radio.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t want further unilateral measures; rather we want sensible agreements,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Our goal is that at the end of these talks, the international trade architecture must be more stable - there must be more cooperation, not less.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Paul Carrel and Georg Merziger; Editing by Douglas Busvine</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - The rumblings of a global trade war shook stock and currency markets on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump announced long-promised tariffs on Chinese goods and Beijing pledged to fight any such war to the end.</p> A man is seen against an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Spreadbetters expected European stocks to open lower, with Britain's FTSE <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FTSE" type="external">.FTSE</a> losing 0.9 percent, Germany's DAX <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.GDAXI" type="external">.GDAXI</a> falling 1.6 percent and France's CAC <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FCHI" type="external">.FCHI</a> shedding 1.5 percent.</p> <p>S&amp;amp;P futures ESc1 were down 0.6 percent, suggesting a weaker open on Wall Street later in the day.</p> <p>Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday that could impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China, although they have a 30-day consultation period, raising the chance that final measures could be watered down.</p> <p>Investors fear that the U.S. measures could escalate into a trade war, with potentially dire consequences for the global economy.</p> <p>Beijing urged the United States on Friday to &#8220;pull back from the brink&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;China doesn&#8217;t hope to be in a trade war, but is not afraid of engaging in one,&#8221; the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement.</p> <p>China unveiled its own plans on Friday to impose tariffs on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports in retaliation against U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products.</p> <p>MSCI&#8217;s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 2.5 percent as stocks across the region dropped. For the week, the index recoiled over 4 percent.</p> <p>Shanghai shares <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SSEC" type="external">.SSEC</a> were down 3.8 percent.</p> <p>&#8220;The economic impact on both China and the U.S. will be determined by what form the tariffs end up taking. The effects are likely to be felt more strongly in the U.S. and will increase both consumer and producer prices,&#8221; wrote Hannah Anderson, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.</p> <p>&#8220;The equity market will bear the brunt of the market reaction. Most impacted will be the U.S., Korea, and Taiwan as companies domiciled in these markets make up a significant portion of the global production chain of Chinese exports.&#8221;</p> <p>Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> dropped 4.5 percent.</p> <p>Australian stocks lost 1.9 percent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.HSI" type="external">.HSI</a> was down 3.1 percent, Taiwan shares <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.TWII" type="external">.TWII</a> slid 1.6 percent and South Korea's KOSPI <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.KS11" type="external">.KS11</a> retreated almost 3 percent.</p> <p>&#8220;A possible trade war between the United States and China is especially serious for the South Korean economy as it could directly or indirectly affect the country&#8217;s trade with them as well,&#8221; said Se Sang-young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities.</p> A man is seen against an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Setting a downbeat tone for Asia, the Dow <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> on Thursday shed 2.9 percent, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> dropped 2.5 percent and the Nasdaq <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> fell 2.4 percent.</p> <p>As equities took a beating, the yen, often sought in times of market turmoil, rallied against the dollar.</p> <p>The greenback fell roughly 0.5 percent to as low as 104.635 yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a>, its weakest since November 2016. The dollar was down more than 1 percent on the week.</p> <p>&#8220;In the longer run, protectionist policies touted by the United States could be watered down, in turn limiting the negative effect on trade and the global economy,&#8221; said Masafumi Yamamoto, chief forex strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo, referring to the U.S. decision to exempt some countries from steel and aluminum tariffs.</p> <p>&#8220;But until the United States makes such concessions, global stocks will be under pressure and the yen will appreciate, especially if China decides to confront the U.S. measures.&#8221;</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FTSE" type="external">FTSE International</a> 6952.59 .FTSE FT-SE International -86.38 (-1.23%) .FTSE .GDAXI .FCHI .SSEC .N225 <p>The euro was 0.3 percent higher at $1.2334 <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a>.</p> <p>The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies slipped 0.3 percent to 89.615 .DXY. It has lost roughly 0.7 percent this week, weighed down by a steady decline in U.S. Treasury yields.</p> <p>Yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury US10YT=RR fell 7.5 basis points overnight as bond prices rose on jitters gripping the broader financial markets.</p> <p>The yield fell further on Friday to 2.792 percent, its lowest in six weeks.</p> <p>The 10-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yield dipped to a four-month trough of 0.020 percent JP10YTN=JBTC.</p> <p>In commodities, oil prices recouped overnight losses after Saudi Arabia said that OPEC and Russian-led production curbs introduced in 2017 will need to be extended into 2019.</p> <p>U.S. crude futures CLc1 were up 1.1 percent at $64.99 per barrel after losing 1.3 percent on Thursday and Brent gained 0.9 percent to $69.53 LCOc1.</p> <p>Safe-haven spot gold XAU= rose to $1,339.12 an ounce, highest since March 7.</p> <p>Other commodities did not fare as well amid the trade war fears, with copper on the London Metal Exchange CMCU3 falling to a three-month low of $6,628.00 per ton.</p> <p>Iron ore futures on China&#8217;s Dalian Commodity Exchange DCIOcv1 lost more than 5 percent.</p> <p>Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Additional reporting by Dahee Kim in Seoul; Editing by Eric Meijer, Richard Borsuk and Kim Coghill</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Tesco poaches Ulster Bank CEO Mallon for its financial services arm: Sky News Japan loses out amid China trade threat that shakes markets China urges U.S. to 'pull back from brink' as Trump unveils tariffs Germany welcomes U.S. tariff exemption, wants more trade cooperation Stocks tumble, bonds and yen gain as trade war fears drive rush to safety

https://reuters.com/article/us-tesco-moves/tesco-poaches-ulster-bank-ceo-mallon-for-its-financial-services-arm-sky-news-idUSKBN1FC38V

2018-01-23

2least

Reuters Tesco Plc TSCOL has poached Ulster Bank Chief Executive Gerry Mallon to run the financial services arm of Britain8217s biggest retailer Sky News reported on Tuesday FILE PHOTO A company logo is pictured outside a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham northern England April 16 2016 REUTERSPhil NobleFile Photo Mallon has resigned as CEO of Royal Bank of Scotlands RBS RBSL Irish operation Ulster Bank to join Tesco Bank with an official announcement expected on Wednesday the report said citing sources bitly2n3kb2q He will be replacing Tesco Bank CEO Benny Higgins who will retire in February Mallon who is also chairman of the Irish Football Association is expected to join Tesco Bank after his replacement at Ulster Bank is found the report said Mallon is also likely to be included in Tesco8217s main executive committee Sky News reported Tesco PLC 2026 TSCOL London Stock Exchange TSCOL RBSL Tesco Plc and Ulster Bank did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours Reporting by Kanishka Singh Editing by Chris Reese Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters As US President Donald Trump dealt a blow to China with plans to slap tariffs on 60 billion of trade he quietly delivered a slap in the face to one of Washington8217s closest allies Japan which got no exemption from earlier announced duties FILE PHOTO Japans Minister of Economy Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko arrives at the European Commission headquarters ahead of a meeting with European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to discuss steel overcapacity in Brussels Belgium March 10 2018 REUTERSFrancois Walschaerts The move to exclude most US allies but not Japan from steel and aluminum tariffs that took effect on Friday is an apparent snub to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who has assiduously courted Trump since he was elected US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also ratcheted up pressure for a bilateral trade pact with Tokyo which has been in sporadic talks with Washington on cutting Japan8217s trade surplus Abe was the first foreign leader to travel to New York and meet Trump in the days after the November 2016 election when he presented him with a golf club worth nearly 4000 and showered praise on him Officials tried to put a positive spin on the trade spat which comes just as Tokyo seeks to coordinate its North Korea policies with those of Washington an effort complicated by an everchanging cast of characters at the White House 8220We are aware that US Trade Representative Lighthizer has been saying the US wants to negotiate a free trade agreement8221 Japanese trade minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters on Friday 8220I understand we will have constructive talks on what8217s the best framework for Japan and the US as well as the AsiaPacific region under JapanUS economic dialogue We want to closely communicate with the United States8221 Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday targeting up to 60 billion in Chinese goods with tariffs after a 30day consultation period that starts once a list is published China responded strongly and the escalating tension between Beijing and Washington hit financial markets with investors fearing dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up Lighthizer on Thursday read out a list of countries with which the US was negotiating exemptions from the earlier announced tariffs among them Argentina Australia Brazil the European Union and South Korea 8220Retaliation against the US trade measures could destroy the freetrade system8221 Seko said 8220It is extremely important that Japan calmly seeks solutions under the framework of the WTO8221 he added referring to the World Trade Organization GRAPHIC US Steel Imports reutrs2D8jBWa Reporting by Ami Miyazaki and Kaori Kaneko Writing by Aaron Sheldrick Editing by Chris Gallagher Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSHANGHAI Reuters China urged the United States on Friday to 8220pull back from the brink8221 as President Donald Trump8217s plans for tariffs on up to 60 billion in Chinese goods brought the world8217s two largest economies closer to a trade war The escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington sent shivers through financial markets as investors foresaw dire consequences for the global economy if trade barriers start going up Trump is planning to impose the tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of US intellectual property A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act 8220China doesn8217t hope to be in a trade war but is not afraid of engaging in one8221 the Chinese commerce ministry responded in a statement 8220China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink make prudent decisions and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place8221 In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday there will be a 30day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump8217s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers Trump said he views the Chinese as 8220a friend8221 and both sides are in the midst of negotiations Meantime China showed readiness to retaliate by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to 3 billion of US imports including fresh fruit wine and nuts in response to imports tariffs Trump announced earlier this month on steel and aluminum which were due to go into effect on Friday The inevitable fall in demand from a fullblown trade war would spell trouble for all the economies supplying the United States and China Feeling the chill MSCI8217s broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS dropped 24 percent tracking a large overnight fall in Wall Street shares but perceived safe havens such as government bonds gained 8220The upshot is that today8217s US tariffs amount to no more than a slap on the wrist for China8221 Mark Williams Chief Asia Economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note 8220China won8217t change its ways Worries about escalation therefore won8217t go away8221 Williams estimated that the 506 billion that China exported to the United States drove around 25 percent of its total gross domestic product and the 5060 billion targeted by the US tariffs contributed just around 025 percent Trump however appears intent on fulfilling election campaign promises to reduce the record US trade deficit with China FILE PHOTO A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian Liaoning province China May 15 2017 REUTERSStringer US multinationals at a business gathering in Shanghai were warned by Stephen Roach a Yale University economist 8220to prepare for the worst8221 and make contingencies until calmer heads prevail Roach said he could foresee 8220the Chinese government moving to restrict in some form or another the financial as well as the supply chain activities of American companies operating in this country8221 LOW HANGING FRUIT Alarm over Trump8217s protectionist leanings mounted earlier this month after he imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232 of the 1962 US Trade Expansion Act which allows safeguards based on 8220national security8221 On Friday Trump gave Canada Mexico Argentina Australia Brazil and South Korea and the European Union temporary exemptions China was not exempted even though it was a far smaller supplier than Canada or South Korea Also omitted from the exemption list was US ally Japan though a government spokesman said Tokyo would press to be included And Finance Minister Taro Aso expressed empathy with Washington regarding the importance of protecting intellectual property China8217s retaliation against the US tariffs on steel and aluminum appeared restrained Targeting 3 billion of US imports China has drawn a list of 128 US products that could be hit with tariffs if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues the ministry said The commerce ministry said China was considering implementing measures in two stages first the 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes dried fruit and wine worth 977 million and later the higher 25 percent tariff on 199 billion of pork and recycled aluminum US wine exports to China last year were 79 million according to data from the US Wine Institute which represents Californian wine makers Related Coverage Trump temporarily excludes EU six other allies from steel tariffs Japan loses out amid China trade threat that shakes markets Germany welcomes US tariff exemption wants more trade cooperation The fruit growers of California Florida Michigan and Washington all stood to lose as China8217s list also included close to 80 fruit and nut products US exports of fruits frozen juices and nuts to China amounted to 669 million last year and it was the top supplier of apples cherries walnuts and almonds 8220With the restrained response China hopes Trump can realize his errors and mend his ways8221 said Xu Hongcai deputy chief economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges a Beijing think tank 8220If we really want to counter the strongest response would be to target soybean and automobiles8221 said Xu 8220China is 8216drawing its bow but not firing We still have some cards to play8221 GRAPHIC US imports from China tmsnrtrs2FMsz1Q GRAPHIC US trade in goods with China tmsnrtrs2GcOZIH Additional reporting by Wang Jing Lusha Zhang John Ruwitch Elias Glenn Dominique Patton Josephine Mason and Meng Meng Editing By Simon CameronMoore Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BERLIN Reuters Germany8217s economy minister on Friday welcomed US President Donald Trump8217s decision to temporarily exclude European Union countries from higher US import duties on steel and aluminum and called for more international cooperation on trade FILE PHOTO German Economic Minister Peter Altmaier delivers a statement regarding the Trump Administrations steel and aluminum tariffs outside of the White House in Washington US March 19 2018 REUTERS Leah Millis 8220I am very pleased that we have avoided a situation for the German steel and aluminum industry and its workers that could have led to great uncertainty8221 Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Deutschlandfunk radio 8220We don8217t want further unilateral measures rather we want sensible agreements8221 he added 8220Our goal is that at the end of these talks the international trade architecture must be more stable there must be more cooperation not less8221 Reporting by Paul Carrel and Georg Merziger Editing by Douglas Busvine Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters The rumblings of a global trade war shook stock and currency markets on Friday after US President Donald Trump announced longpromised tariffs on Chinese goods and Beijing pledged to fight any such war to the end A man is seen against an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Hangzhou Zhejiang province China March 23 2018 REUTERSStringer Spreadbetters expected European stocks to open lower with Britains FTSE FTSE losing 09 percent Germanys DAX GDAXI falling 16 percent and Frances CAC FCHI shedding 15 percent SampampP futures ESc1 were down 06 percent suggesting a weaker open on Wall Street later in the day Trump signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion of imports from China although they have a 30day consultation period raising the chance that final measures could be watered down Investors fear that the US measures could escalate into a trade war with potentially dire consequences for the global economy Beijing urged the United States on Friday to 8220pull back from the brink8221 8220China doesn8217t hope to be in a trade war but is not afraid of engaging in one8221 the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement China unveiled its own plans on Friday to impose tariffs on up to 3 billion of US imports in retaliation against US tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum products MSCI8217s broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS fell 25 percent as stocks across the region dropped For the week the index recoiled over 4 percent Shanghai shares SSEC were down 38 percent 8220The economic impact on both China and the US will be determined by what form the tariffs end up taking The effects are likely to be felt more strongly in the US and will increase both consumer and producer prices8221 wrote Hannah Anderson global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management 8220The equity market will bear the brunt of the market reaction Most impacted will be the US Korea and Taiwan as companies domiciled in these markets make up a significant portion of the global production chain of Chinese exports8221 Japans Nikkei N225 dropped 45 percent Australian stocks lost 19 percent Hong Kongs Hang Seng HSI was down 31 percent Taiwan shares TWII slid 16 percent and South Koreas KOSPI KS11 retreated almost 3 percent 8220A possible trade war between the United States and China is especially serious for the South Korean economy as it could directly or indirectly affect the country8217s trade with them as well8221 said Se Sangyoung an analyst at Kiwoom Securities A man is seen against an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage house in Hangzhou Zhejiang province China March 23 2018 REUTERSStringer Setting a downbeat tone for Asia the Dow DJI on Thursday shed 29 percent the SampampP 500 SPX dropped 25 percent and the Nasdaq IXIC fell 24 percent As equities took a beating the yen often sought in times of market turmoil rallied against the dollar The greenback fell roughly 05 percent to as low as 104635 yen JPY its weakest since November 2016 The dollar was down more than 1 percent on the week 8220In the longer run protectionist policies touted by the United States could be watered down in turn limiting the negative effect on trade and the global economy8221 said Masafumi Yamamoto chief forex strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo referring to the US decision to exempt some countries from steel and aluminum tariffs 8220But until the United States makes such concessions global stocks will be under pressure and the yen will appreciate especially if China decides to confront the US measures8221 FTSE International 695259 FTSE FTSE International 8638 123 FTSE GDAXI FCHI SSEC N225 The euro was 03 percent higher at 12334 EUR The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies slipped 03 percent to 89615 DXY It has lost roughly 07 percent this week weighed down by a steady decline in US Treasury yields Yield on the benchmark 10year Treasury US10YTRR fell 75 basis points overnight as bond prices rose on jitters gripping the broader financial markets The yield fell further on Friday to 2792 percent its lowest in six weeks The 10year Japanese government bond JGB yield dipped to a fourmonth trough of 0020 percent JP10YTNJBTC In commodities oil prices recouped overnight losses after Saudi Arabia said that OPEC and Russianled production curbs introduced in 2017 will need to be extended into 2019 US crude futures CLc1 were up 11 percent at 6499 per barrel after losing 13 percent on Thursday and Brent gained 09 percent to 6953 LCOc1 Safehaven spot gold XAU rose to 133912 an ounce highest since March 7 Other commodities did not fare as well amid the trade war fears with copper on the London Metal Exchange CMCU3 falling to a threemonth low of 662800 per ton Iron ore futures on China8217s Dalian Commodity Exchange DCIOcv1 lost more than 5 percent Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro Additional reporting by Dahee Kim in Seoul Editing by Eric Meijer Richard Borsuk and Kim Coghill Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175095" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq&#8217;s fate.</p> <p>For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.</p> <p>In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Later, Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC, provoking unrelenting British and American hostility. Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company, part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country&#8217;s Shiite majority. And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil.</p> <p>Iraq is, of course, one of the world&#8217;s great hydrocarbon preserves. According to oil giant BP, it <a href="http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&amp;amp;contentId=7044622" type="external">harbors</a> proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels &#8212; more than any country except Saudi Arabia (with 264 billion barrels) and Iran (with 138 billion). Many analysts, however, believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored, and that the utilization of modern search technologies will <a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Full.html" type="external">yield</a> additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels. If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies.</p> <p>Nailing Down the Energy Heartland of the Planet</p> <p>Iraq&#8217;s great hydrocarbon promise has been continually thwarted by war, foreign intervention, sanctions, internal disorder, corruption, and plain old ineptitude. Saddam Hussein did succeed for a time in elevating oil output, in the process raising national income and creating a well-educated middle class. However, his ill-conceived invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 led to devastating attacks on Iraqi oil facilities, as well as trade embargoes and crippling debt, erasing much of his country&#8217;s previous economic gains. The trade sanctions imposed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the wake of the First Gulf War only further eroded the country&#8217;s oil-production capacity.</p> <p>When President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, his overarching goals all revolved around the geopolitics of oil. He and his top officials were intent on replacing Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime with one that would prove friendly to American oil interests. They also imagined that, greeted as liberators by a grateful population, they would preside over a radical upgrading of Iraq&#8217;s petroleum capacity, thereby ensuring adequate supplies for American consumers at an affordable price. Finally, by building and manning a constellation of major military bases in a grateful Iraq, they saw themselves ensuring continued American dominance over the oil-soaked Persian Gulf region, and so the energy heartland of the planet.</p> <p>All of this, of course, proved to be a mirage. The U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation policies provoked a bitter Sunni insurgency that quickly overshadowed all other American concerns, including oil. As a result, no matter how much money they poured into the task, the Bush administration and its Baghdad agents found themselves incapable of boosting petroleum output even to the levels of the worst days of Saddam Hussein&#8217;s regime &#8212; and so their plans to use oil revenues to pay for the war, the occupation, and the reconstruction of the country all vanished into thin air.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805089217/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />The data provided by BP on yearly production tallies cannot be starker when it comes to the impact on oil output of the insurgency, rampant corruption, the loss of the nation&#8217;s oil professionals (many of whom fled into exile amid sectarian warfare), and other related factors. Prior to the American invasion, Iraq was pumping 2.6 million barrels of oil per day, already significantly below its pre-invasion peak of 3.5 million barrels per day. In the first year of the ill-starred U.S. occupation, production quickly plunged to a paltry 1.3 million barrels per day. Only in 2007 did it finally top the two million mark and, with improved security, 2.4 million in 2008. Assuming conditions continue to improve, Iraqi output could, for the first time, exceed pre-invasion levels, though barely, in 2009 or 2010 &#8212; six years or more after Baghdad fell to American forces.</p> <p>A Sea Change in Iraqi Oil Production?</p> <p>Until recently, most analysts assumed that Iraq would continue, at best, to make modest progress in its efforts to increase daily output. There were too many obstacles, it was argued, to achieve dramatic breakthroughs. These included continued insurgent attacks on pipelines and production facilities; corruption in the Oil Ministry and major energy production enterprises; the failure of parliament to adopt a national hydrocarbons law; differences between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the central government over who has the right to award what sort of oil contracts in Kurdish-controlled territories; and the reluctance of major foreign oil firms to venture into, or invest in a major way in such a dangerous and unstable place.</p> <p>Recently, however, the Oil Ministry has made noticeable progress in overcoming at least some of these obstacles. Under the leadership of Oil Minister <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124579553986643975.html" type="external">Hussain al-Shahristani</a>, a former nuclear scientist who was jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein for refusing to assist in the development of nuclear weapons, corruption has been substantially reduced and various production bottlenecks eliminated. Shahristani has also <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html" type="external">won support</a> from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for the participation of foreign firms in the development of Iraqi oil fields, even though this has alienated many in Iraq who oppose any such involvement. Once derided for ineptitude, the Oil Ministry is beginning to be viewed as a functioning, professional operation.</p> <p>As a result, there are clear indications that Iraq&#8217;s oil industry could be poised for a major turnaround. Among the most significant recent developments:</p> <p>* Late last year, Iraq&#8217;s state-owned North Oil Company <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/world/middleeast/12crude.html" type="external">signed</a> a $3.5 billion, 20-year service contract with the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to develop the Adhab oil field in Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad. Originally negotiated under the Saddam Hussein regime, the deal was put on hold after the 2003 invasion and only given final approval in November 2008. This is the first major contract the government in Baghdad has signed with a foreign oil firm since the Iraq Petroleum Company was nationalized in the 1970s. It also represents the first significant investment by a company from China in Iraq. Under the agreement, CNPC and its partners will develop the Adhab field and deliver all resulting crude oil to state refineries; as the field&#8217;s main operator, CNPC will be paid a fee by the Iraqi government for its engineering work and all delivered petroleum.</p> <p>* In May, the Oil Ministry <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/world/middleeast/11iraq.html" type="external">reached an accord</a> with the Kurdistan Regional Government that, for the first time, will allow the Kurds to export oil from fields under their control. Previously, the Baghdad government had refused to recognize any contracts signed by the KRG with private oil firms to develop fields in their territory and had prevented the Kurds from exporting oil from these fields through pipelines controlled by the central government. Under the accord, the KRG will initially be allowed to export 100,000 barrels per day from the Tawke and Taq Taq fields, with higher rates expected in the future; 73% of the resulting revenues will go to the central government, 15% to the Kurds, and 12% to the foreign oil companies that signed production contracts directly with the KRG, bypassing the central government in Baghdad. This agreement paves the way for a significant increase in output from Kurdish-controlled areas, which are thought to hold substantial reserves of untapped petroleum.</p> <p>* In June, the Oil Ministry conducted its first auction of rights to operate existing fields in the country&#8217;s major producing areas. This represented a major &#8212; even staggering &#8212; shift in policy, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f6bec2aa-3a9f-11de-8a2d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1" type="external">opening the door</a> for the first time in three decades to the participation of major international oil companies in the operation &#8212; if not the ownership &#8212; of the country&#8217;s nationalized oil fields. Although opposed by many key groups in Iraq, ranging from the oil workers&#8217; union to significant factions in parliament, the move was taken to secure outside expertise in modernizing and upgrading the country&#8217;s crumbling oil infrastructure, thereby boosting output in a country that still relies on oil for more than 75% of its gross domestic product and <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D999JHDG0.htm" type="external">about 95%</a> of its revenues. In fact, many foreign companies <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/business/global/01iraqoil.html" type="external">chose not to bid</a> in the auction&#8217;s opening round, finding the returns being offered insufficiently attractive. Nevertheless, one Western firm, BP, won the right (in partnership with CNPC) to operate the giant Rumaila field, Iraq&#8217;s largest. The Oil Ministry has since <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124653439569985287.html" type="external">indicated</a> that it will conduct additional auctions, including one for the right to explore for oil, on terms as yet unrevealed, in the country&#8217;s undeveloped south and west &#8212; possibly laying the groundwork for significantly more intrusive participation by foreign firms.</p> <p>Taken together, these steps &#8212; aimed at securing the necessary external financing and expertise to achieve a significant boost in production &#8212; represent a genuine sea change in the way the Oil Ministry has been overseeing the country&#8217;s hydrocarbons industry. If all goes as planned, it <a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Full.html" type="external">intends</a> to increase output by 1.5 million barrels per day, and another four to five million barrels by 2017. These efforts, if successful (and given recent history, that remains a big &#8220;if&#8221;), would place Iraq among the world&#8217;s top four or five oil producers, along with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States.</p> <p>A New Petro-State Servicing the Global Economy?</p> <p>No one should underestimate the potential obstacles in the way of this objective. Any number of factors &#8212; a rise in opposition to giving away any part of the national &#8220;patrimony&#8221; to foreigners, a significant increase in insurgent violence, heightened factional fighting in Baghdad, a sharpening of tension between Baghdad and the Kurds, an increase in corruption &#8212; could prevent the realization of these ambitious goals. Moreover, pending the passage of a national oil and gas law (a goal pursued by U.S. officials for years), the major foreign oil companies will remain reluctant to sink too much money into Iraq, fearful that their assets will not be protected.</p> <p>Nevertheless, it appears that, for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, the stars in the energy firmament are aligning in ways that may favor Iraq&#8217;s reemergence as a major oil producer. Whereas the major powers once competed among themselves for influence in Iraq or backed one or another of Iraq&#8217;s local rivals in efforts to weaken or contain that country, all now seem inclined to invest in, and benefit from, the reconstruction of its energy infrastructure. The Bush administration, which looked with alarm at Saddam Hussein&#8217;s growing ties to Russia and China, invaded the country in part to reassert American dominance in the Persian Gulf region and diminish the role played by Moscow and Beijing. Today, Washington appears to welcome the growing role of Chinese and Russian firms in the rehabilitation of Iraq&#8217;s dilapidated energy infrastructure.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a reasonable assumption that behind this unprecedented shift lies an acknowledgement of the inescapable reality of <a href="http://www.peakoil.net" type="external">peak oil</a>. As things stand now, the world will soon reach a maximum level of sustainable daily oil output, followed by an inevitable contraction in available supplies. Many experts <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082/michael_klare_goodbye_to_cheap_oil" type="external">believe</a> that the peak in conventional (liquid) oil output is likely to occur in the very near future, perhaps in the 2010-2015 timeframe, with global output topping out about 5 to 10 million barrels per day higher than today&#8217;s 85 million barrels.</p> <p>Hitting the peak moment in that timeframe, and at that level, would prove devastating to the world economy, as global energy demand is expected to climb far higher, thanks to rising consumption patterns in China, India, and other dynamos of the developing world. It&#8217;s not hard, then, to do the math. An addition of perhaps six million supplemental barrels per day from Iraq would make a striking difference in the energy equation. In fact, it might prove the difference between squeaking by and a catastrophic worldwide shortage. Under such circumstances, it is understandable that &#8212; no matter what their governments felt about the Bush administration&#8217;s invasion and occupation of Iraq &#8212; the major powers now share a common interest in facilitating that country&#8217;s recovery as a major oil exporter.</p> <p>For devastated Iraq, of course, these last years were a disaster and real reconstruction of the country still remains a long way off. For the United States, gone are expectations of converting Iraq into a model Middle Eastern democracy, or of inserting a Western-trained, pro-U.S. regime in Baghdad. Nor is there any expectation that the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company will be completely privatized &#8212; once the dream of Bush-era neocons. Nonetheless, the (re)emergence of a functioning Iraqi petro-state working closely with foreign energy firms to boost global oil supplies (with American troops, whether based in Iraq or neighboring countries, providing ultimate security) would be an outcome that could be sold to Congress and, presumably, a majority of the American public.</p> <p>Within Iraq itself, conditions may favor such an outcome. Although various Iraqi factions have enormous differences, all recognize that their future prosperity rests on the successful development of the nation&#8217;s hydrocarbon reserves. While Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds may each hope to benefit disproportionately from this great treasure, they all realize that some degree of cooperation &#8212; for example, in the construction and maintenance of export facilities &#8212; is essential to their ambitions, however disparate. While the bargaining over the terms of cooperation may seem endless, and violence may sometimes accompany these negotiations, it is likely that some sort of collaborative structure will, in the end, emerge. A gradual drawdown, if not total departure, of American forces will, in all likelihood, only accelerate this process.</p> <p>So it has finally come to this dismal possible end point: after all the blood and tears, all the death and destruction, almost all interested parties seem to be returning to the only vision of the country, however depressing, that has demonstrated any viability. In the future, Iraq is likely to be an oil-fueled petro-state with no function other than to service global markets and enrich local elites as well as the technocrats that assist them. This may be not be an inspiring vision &#8212; especially for Iraqis who have suffered so much &#8212; but it might possibly be the only reality available that will circumvent the horrific bloodletting of the past 30 years.</p> <p>Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author, most recently, of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805089217/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy</a> (Henry Holt).</p>

Will Iraq Be a Global Gas Pump?

https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/will-iraq-be-global-gas-pump/

2009-07-14

4left

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website Has it all come to this The wars and invasions the death and destruction the exile and torture the resistance and collapse In a world of shrinking energy reserves is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway even before the chaos and catastrophe set in a giant gas pump for an energystarved planet Will it all end not with a bang but with a gusher The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq8217s fate For modern Iraq oil has always been at the heart of everything Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil In 1920 under the aegis of the League of Nations Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra Baghdad and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company IPC Later Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC provoking unrelenting British and American hostility Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country8217s Shiite majority And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil Iraq is of course one of the world8217s great hydrocarbon preserves According to oil giant BP it harbors proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels 8212 more than any country except Saudi Arabia with 264 billion barrels and Iran with 138 billion Many analysts however believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored and that the utilization of modern search technologies will yield additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels If all its reserves known and suspected were developed to their full potential Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies Nailing Down the Energy Heartland of the Planet Iraq8217s great hydrocarbon promise has been continually thwarted by war foreign intervention sanctions internal disorder corruption and plain old ineptitude Saddam Hussein did succeed for a time in elevating oil output in the process raising national income and creating a welleducated middle class However his illconceived invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 led to devastating attacks on Iraqi oil facilities as well as trade embargoes and crippling debt erasing much of his country8217s previous economic gains The trade sanctions imposed by Presidents George HW Bush and Bill Clinton in the wake of the First Gulf War only further eroded the country8217s oilproduction capacity When President George W Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 his overarching goals all revolved around the geopolitics of oil He and his top officials were intent on replacing Saddam Hussein8217s regime with one that would prove friendly to American oil interests They also imagined that greeted as liberators by a grateful population they would preside over a radical upgrading of Iraq8217s petroleum capacity thereby ensuring adequate supplies for American consumers at an affordable price Finally by building and manning a constellation of major military bases in a grateful Iraq they saw themselves ensuring continued American dominance over the oilsoaked Persian Gulf region and so the energy heartland of the planet All of this of course proved to be a mirage The US invasion and ensuing occupation policies provoked a bitter Sunni insurgency that quickly overshadowed all other American concerns including oil As a result no matter how much money they poured into the task the Bush administration and its Baghdad agents found themselves incapable of boosting petroleum output even to the levels of the worst days of Saddam Hussein8217s regime 8212 and so their plans to use oil revenues to pay for the war the occupation and the reconstruction of the country all vanished into thin air The data provided by BP on yearly production tallies cannot be starker when it comes to the impact on oil output of the insurgency rampant corruption the loss of the nation8217s oil professionals many of whom fled into exile amid sectarian warfare and other related factors Prior to the American invasion Iraq was pumping 26 million barrels of oil per day already significantly below its preinvasion peak of 35 million barrels per day In the first year of the illstarred US occupation production quickly plunged to a paltry 13 million barrels per day Only in 2007 did it finally top the two million mark and with improved security 24 million in 2008 Assuming conditions continue to improve Iraqi output could for the first time exceed preinvasion levels though barely in 2009 or 2010 8212 six years or more after Baghdad fell to American forces A Sea Change in Iraqi Oil Production Until recently most analysts assumed that Iraq would continue at best to make modest progress in its efforts to increase daily output There were too many obstacles it was argued to achieve dramatic breakthroughs These included continued insurgent attacks on pipelines and production facilities corruption in the Oil Ministry and major energy production enterprises the failure of parliament to adopt a national hydrocarbons law differences between the Kurdish Regional Government KRG and the central government over who has the right to award what sort of oil contracts in Kurdishcontrolled territories and the reluctance of major foreign oil firms to venture into or invest in a major way in such a dangerous and unstable place Recently however the Oil Ministry has made noticeable progress in overcoming at least some of these obstacles Under the leadership of Oil Minister Hussain alShahristani a former nuclear scientist who was jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein for refusing to assist in the development of nuclear weapons corruption has been substantially reduced and various production bottlenecks eliminated Shahristani has also won support from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal alMaliki for the participation of foreign firms in the development of Iraqi oil fields even though this has alienated many in Iraq who oppose any such involvement Once derided for ineptitude the Oil Ministry is beginning to be viewed as a functioning professional operation As a result there are clear indications that Iraq8217s oil industry could be poised for a major turnaround Among the most significant recent developments Late last year Iraq8217s stateowned North Oil Company signed a 35 billion 20year service contract with the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation CNPC to develop the Adhab oil field in Wasit province southeast of Baghdad Originally negotiated under the Saddam Hussein regime the deal was put on hold after the 2003 invasion and only given final approval in November 2008 This is the first major contract the government in Baghdad has signed with a foreign oil firm since the Iraq Petroleum Company was nationalized in the 1970s It also represents the first significant investment by a company from China in Iraq Under the agreement CNPC and its partners will develop the Adhab field and deliver all resulting crude oil to state refineries as the field8217s main operator CNPC will be paid a fee by the Iraqi government for its engineering work and all delivered petroleum In May the Oil Ministry reached an accord with the Kurdistan Regional Government that for the first time will allow the Kurds to export oil from fields under their control Previously the Baghdad government had refused to recognize any contracts signed by the KRG with private oil firms to develop fields in their territory and had prevented the Kurds from exporting oil from these fields through pipelines controlled by the central government Under the accord the KRG will initially be allowed to export 100000 barrels per day from the Tawke and Taq Taq fields with higher rates expected in the future 73 of the resulting revenues will go to the central government 15 to the Kurds and 12 to the foreign oil companies that signed production contracts directly with the KRG bypassing the central government in Baghdad This agreement paves the way for a significant increase in output from Kurdishcontrolled areas which are thought to hold substantial reserves of untapped petroleum In June the Oil Ministry conducted its first auction of rights to operate existing fields in the country8217s major producing areas This represented a major 8212 even staggering 8212 shift in policy opening the door for the first time in three decades to the participation of major international oil companies in the operation 8212 if not the ownership 8212 of the country8217s nationalized oil fields Although opposed by many key groups in Iraq ranging from the oil workers8217 union to significant factions in parliament the move was taken to secure outside expertise in modernizing and upgrading the country8217s crumbling oil infrastructure thereby boosting output in a country that still relies on oil for more than 75 of its gross domestic product and about 95 of its revenues In fact many foreign companies chose not to bid in the auction8217s opening round finding the returns being offered insufficiently attractive Nevertheless one Western firm BP won the right in partnership with CNPC to operate the giant Rumaila field Iraq8217s largest The Oil Ministry has since indicated that it will conduct additional auctions including one for the right to explore for oil on terms as yet unrevealed in the country8217s undeveloped south and west 8212 possibly laying the groundwork for significantly more intrusive participation by foreign firms Taken together these steps 8212 aimed at securing the necessary external financing and expertise to achieve a significant boost in production 8212 represent a genuine sea change in the way the Oil Ministry has been overseeing the country8217s hydrocarbons industry If all goes as planned it intends to increase output by 15 million barrels per day and another four to five million barrels by 2017 These efforts if successful and given recent history that remains a big 8220if8221 would place Iraq among the world8217s top four or five oil producers along with Saudi Arabia Russia and the United States A New PetroState Servicing the Global Economy No one should underestimate the potential obstacles in the way of this objective Any number of factors 8212 a rise in opposition to giving away any part of the national 8220patrimony8221 to foreigners a significant increase in insurgent violence heightened factional fighting in Baghdad a sharpening of tension between Baghdad and the Kurds an increase in corruption 8212 could prevent the realization of these ambitious goals Moreover pending the passage of a national oil and gas law a goal pursued by US officials for years the major foreign oil companies will remain reluctant to sink too much money into Iraq fearful that their assets will not be protected Nevertheless it appears that for the first time since the outbreak of the IranIraq War in 1980 the stars in the energy firmament are aligning in ways that may favor Iraq8217s reemergence as a major oil producer Whereas the major powers once competed among themselves for influence in Iraq or backed one or another of Iraq8217s local rivals in efforts to weaken or contain that country all now seem inclined to invest in and benefit from the reconstruction of its energy infrastructure The Bush administration which looked with alarm at Saddam Hussein8217s growing ties to Russia and China invaded the country in part to reassert American dominance in the Persian Gulf region and diminish the role played by Moscow and Beijing Today Washington appears to welcome the growing role of Chinese and Russian firms in the rehabilitation of Iraq8217s dilapidated energy infrastructure It8217s a reasonable assumption that behind this unprecedented shift lies an acknowledgement of the inescapable reality of peak oil As things stand now the world will soon reach a maximum level of sustainable daily oil output followed by an inevitable contraction in available supplies Many experts believe that the peak in conventional liquid oil output is likely to occur in the very near future perhaps in the 20102015 timeframe with global output topping out about 5 to 10 million barrels per day higher than today8217s 85 million barrels Hitting the peak moment in that timeframe and at that level would prove devastating to the world economy as global energy demand is expected to climb far higher thanks to rising consumption patterns in China India and other dynamos of the developing world It8217s not hard then to do the math An addition of perhaps six million supplemental barrels per day from Iraq would make a striking difference in the energy equation In fact it might prove the difference between squeaking by and a catastrophic worldwide shortage Under such circumstances it is understandable that 8212 no matter what their governments felt about the Bush administration8217s invasion and occupation of Iraq 8212 the major powers now share a common interest in facilitating that country8217s recovery as a major oil exporter For devastated Iraq of course these last years were a disaster and real reconstruction of the country still remains a long way off For the United States gone are expectations of converting Iraq into a model Middle Eastern democracy or of inserting a Westerntrained proUS regime in Baghdad Nor is there any expectation that the stateowned Iraq National Oil Company will be completely privatized 8212 once the dream of Bushera neocons Nonetheless the reemergence of a functioning Iraqi petrostate working closely with foreign energy firms to boost global oil supplies with American troops whether based in Iraq or neighboring countries providing ultimate security would be an outcome that could be sold to Congress and presumably a majority of the American public Within Iraq itself conditions may favor such an outcome Although various Iraqi factions have enormous differences all recognize that their future prosperity rests on the successful development of the nation8217s hydrocarbon reserves While Shiites Sunnis and Kurds may each hope to benefit disproportionately from this great treasure they all realize that some degree of cooperation 8212 for example in the construction and maintenance of export facilities 8212 is essential to their ambitions however disparate While the bargaining over the terms of cooperation may seem endless and violence may sometimes accompany these negotiations it is likely that some sort of collaborative structure will in the end emerge A gradual drawdown if not total departure of American forces will in all likelihood only accelerate this process So it has finally come to this dismal possible end point after all the blood and tears all the death and destruction almost all interested parties seem to be returning to the only vision of the country however depressing that has demonstrated any viability In the future Iraq is likely to be an oilfueled petrostate with no function other than to service global markets and enrich local elites as well as the technocrats that assist them This may be not be an inspiring vision 8212 especially for Iraqis who have suffered so much 8212 but it might possibly be the only reality available that will circumvent the horrific bloodletting of the past 30 years Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts He is the author most recently of Rising Powers Shrinking Planet The New Geopolitics of Energy Henry Holt

This/DET story/NOUN first/ADV appeared/VERB on/ADP the/DET TomDispatch/PROPN website/NOUN Has/VERB it/PRON all/PRON come/VERB to/ADP this/PRON The/DET wars/NOUN and/CCONJ invasions/VERB the/DET death/NOUN and/CCONJ destruction/NOUN the/DET exile/NOUN and/CCONJ torture/VERB the/DET resistance/NOUN and/CCONJ collapse/NOUN In/ADP a/DET world/NOUN of/ADP shrinking/VERB energy/NOUN reserves/NOUN is/AUX Iraq/PROPN finally/ADV fated/VERB to/PART become/VERB what/PRON it/PRON was/AUX going/VERB to/PART be/AUX anyway/ADV even/ADV before/ADP the/DET chaos/NOUN and/CCONJ catastrophe/NOUN set/VERB in/ADP a/DET giant/ADJ gas/NOUN pump/NOUN for/ADP an/DET energystarved/ADJ planet/NOUN Will/AUX it/PRON all/PRON end/VERB not/PART with/ADP a/DET bang/NOUN but/CCONJ with/ADP a/DET gusher/NOUN The/DET latest/ADJ oil/NOUN news/NOUN out/ADP of/ADP that/DET country/NOUN offers/VERB at/ADP least/ADJ a/DET hint/NOUN of/ADP Iraq8217s/PROPN fate/NOUN For/ADP modern/ADJ Iraq/PROPN oil/NOUN has/AUX always/ADV 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<p>Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program. McGovern now works for "Tell the Word," a ministry of the inner-city/Washington Church of the Saviour.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. Now joining us to discuss the WikiLeaks leak is Ray McGovern. He was an analyst for the CIA for 27 years. He helped prepare and sometimes present to various presidents, including Bush I and Reagan. Also writes regularly at ConsortiumNews.com, and also he's a blogger on The Real News. Thanks for joining us. So, first of all, we get a critique of WikiLeaks from one side which says WikiLeaks is endangering national security and this stuff was never meant for public eyes and it's going to endanger our safety and such. You also get another critique, which doesn't get heard too much in the media, but that, you know, it's a little suspicious that one guy could download so many documents. It's a little fortuitous that right at a time when Israel would like some support on the issue of Iran as a threat to the region that they get it out of WikiLeaks. Right at a time the Korean crisis is blowing up, you get some disclosures of cables that China may be ready to back away from North Korea, which would help threaten North Korea in some way. So what's your, first of all, take on the credibility of the whole process? <p /> <p />RAY MCGOVERN, RETIRED CIA ANALYST: It's completely credible to me. I've been around a few years. I think Julian Assange is the real deal. I really kind of resent all the focus on all these trees, missing the forest for what it is. Here's an outfit that had the courage to face into the Defense Department, do what the United States government really warned it against doing, and all because one young private in our Army saw abuses that he couldn't tolerate and wanted to get that out to the rest of the world. That's what he said in his emails. I hope--what my hope is is that this information become available to the American people. Then the American people can debate these issues, which is not the case now, with the fourth estate being in disrepair. <p /> <p />JAY: I would guess from a technical point of view it's not that big a deal. Each cable is a few kilobytes. It's not--one or two decent hard drives. It wouldn't be that hard to get that many. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: That's my understanding, yeah. <p /> <p />JAY: The press has been focused mostly on the Iran issue. So talk a little bit about what you think the press coverage has been in the last day or two. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, it's really quite amazing. Here's The New York Times. We have not only two large front-page stories, one of which talks about the sharp distress over a nuclear Iran, but the jump page--ah, there you go: Ahmadinejad, surrounded by a whole bunch of evil-looking people. And then, the next page, 10-11, you get the whole deal here: arsenal with aid of North Korea; King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia says, well, we have to cut the head off the snake. It's a canard, Paul. It's a canard. And I'm an intelligence officer, or I used to be, okay? I was for 27 years. Sometimes we take painstaking efforts to get something right. And to my great relief, somebody did that in 2007, and he came to the conclusion that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2003. <p /> <p />JAY: You've chaired previous estimates. And if I understand it correctly, it's like, what, 17 or 18 agencies? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Sixteen now. <p /> <p />JAY: Sixteen agencies. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: It used to be 14 when I was on duty, so to speak. <p /> <p />JAY: Who all give their point of view on the question. And the question here was: is there a weapons program in Iran? The majority of the agencies come up with--. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: It wasn't a majority. It was unanimous, Paul. <p /> <p />JAY: Unanimous. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Yeah. <p /> <p />JAY: There are no weapons program that we know of in Iran. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: It was an incredibly sensitive estimate, because the president and vice president were going around the world saying Iran was about to get a nuclear weapon. And what happened when Tom Fingar came in, from the State Department, he did a bottom-up assessment and found out that there was dubious evidence all along, even before 2003, but for sure in 2003, they had made a decision to stop making the nuclear warhead [inaudible] <p /> <p />JAY: Now, all the players involved in this, from Obama onwards to Netanyahu in Israel, apparently to Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, everybody's operating on the assumption that there is a weapons program and ignoring the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), who--essentially saying they got it wrong. And one of the more vocal voices in all of this is Alan Dershowitz, an American lawyer who's very well known to be considered by some a defender of Israel's interests, by others to be a representative of Likud in the United States. At any rate--. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: And a devotee of torture. <p /> <p />JAY: A devotee, some say; others may say, someone who finds some justifiable moments where you might want to use torture. Here's what Dershowitz says about the NIE in a blog he writes in the Huffington Post. "Under George Bush's watch, the United States issued its notorious National Security Estimate of November 2007, which essentially denied that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons." And then here's the key sentence. According to Dershowitz, "This report was known to be false at the time it was issued since American intelligence became aware of the nuclear weapons facility at Qum before the report was issued." <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Does he say "nuclear weapons facility at Qum"? <p /> <p />JAY: He says the intelligence agencies had become "aware of the nuclear weapons facility" in Qom. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, that's a lie. There is no nuclear weapons facility at Qom. <p /> <p />JAY: That we know of. There's no evidence of it. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: No. You know, I'm sorry, but I don't do faith-based intelligence. You know? I do evidentiary intelligence. And when there's evidence, I weigh it and I come to a conclusion. And that, to my great relief and my great pride, was done in 2007. And, you know, Dershowitz knows more than 16 US intelligence agencies who unanimously decided, as they put it, "with great confidence," in quotes, that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed work. Now, that was three years ago, okay? The story proceeds here. Who didn't like that? Well, President Bush really didn't like that; and Netanyahu and the Israelis, Olmert at the time, they were really very furious. And here's Bush's book, okay? I invested in it. And it's really interesting what he says about the NIE. He said, and I quote here: in November 2007, the intelligence community produced a national intelligence estimate on Iran's nuclear program. The NIE opened with an eye-popping declaration. Quote, we judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. Now, if I were worried about a nuclear weapon in Iran's hands, you know, I think the appropriate action would be, phew! You know, I'll go over to Tel Aviv and tell those guys, no sweat; we have detected that they stopped it; now all we need to do is make sure they don't restart it. Okay? No, no. He says the NIE's conclusion was stunning. And so I took a trip to the Middle East. I remember this distinctly. He went to Israel, apologized, apologized for the NIE, and said, I have a different view. He said Israel and the Arabs were beside themselves. Both were, quote, deeply concerned about Iran and furious with the United States over the NIE. Okay? It continues. In Saudi Arabia, I met with King Abdullah, the same king now who is saying we have to cut the head off the monster. I met with King Abdullah, and I said, your Majesty, would you let me begin the meeting? He said, yeah. I'm confident that every one of you thinks that I wrote the NIE as a way of avoiding war with Iran, but it was not the case, it was not the case. I had no control over it. These intelligence agencies sometimes act independently. And here's the problem. The NIE was produced by the intelligence community. And I am as angry about it as you are. And here's the kicker. This is Bush. Quote: after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program? Big problem, okay? Now, what was all this about? Well, Cheney and Bush were about to do that in the following spring. Cheney admits it. He says, you know, I was not in the majority here, and I was overruled finally, but, yeah, we were going to go after Iran, okay? So he's proud of that. So is it different now? No, it's not different now. That's really what gets my back up. The New York Times can put full pages on the Iranian part of the WikiLeaks thing, and it means nothing, because all you're getting from people like the king of Saudi Arabia or the king of the UAE or [inaudible] my proletarian background is--you know, [singing] We three kings of Orient are--. You know. Okay, they all think that--well, I don't think Abdullah really thinks that. I think he'd really like to have, why don't you and he fight? You know, why don't the US fight with Iran? And, hey, wow, what will happen to the price of oil then? And, wow, we get rid of a Shia government that I really don't like and, you know, help things in Iraq turn out the way I want them and not the way [Iran wants them.] Well, I'm sure there are some people sophisticated enough in the State Department to realize that Abdullah's going to try to goad us into attacking Iran. And Israel, of course, has been doing that forever. <p /> <p />JAY: So let's go back to Dershowitz's comment. This is one of the first times I personally have seen so clearly articulated why--and Dershowitz is often considered someone who speaks or certainly has good connections with the government of Israel--why they think the NIE wasn't correct, this idea that they knew there was a nuclear weapons facility in Qom. Now, the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] has people all over these facilities, as far as I understand it. So what do we know from the IAEA about whether there is a weapons program at Qom or not? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, they've been consistent in saying that there has been no diversion of the nuclear materials to a weapons program, that they keep track of this. Okay? For the Iranians to work on a real weapon, on the kind of uranium enrichment that would be required, they would have to back out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They would have to send the inspectors home, just as Bush sent the inspectors home from Iraq when they were not coming up with WMD. And, you know, we would know. I mean, it's a canard to say that, oh, enrichment is the big thing. Well, enrichment has a specific purpose, okay? It can be used to generate electrical energy. Under President Ford, Henry Kissinger and Don Rumsfeld persuaded President Ford very reluctantly in 1976 to approve Westinghouse and GE getting a $5 billion, $6 billion contract with the Shah for the same kind of facility that now we say Iran can't have. Why? Not to build weapons, but for electricity. Now, people say, well, they have all this oil; why do they need electricity? Well, you know, the oil is not going to last forever. Any prudent--. <p /> <p />JAY: And they also don't refine it themselves, mostly. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, I think they're starting to do that little bit more. <p /> <p />JAY: A lot of the finished product has to come back in. Well, let's just go back to this issue, then. The prevailing opinion seems to be, amongst people I've talked to who seem to know, is that if Iran is really on the road to a weapon, what they seem to want to do is get about half or two-thirds of the way, so that they could take the leap to a weaponized program if they wanted to. But there's no evidence that they're actually doing anything to get past this sort of preparatory stage. Is that your reading of it? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: There you go. Yeah, I'm really glad you mentioned the word evidence. That's what we [inaudible] bread and butter, okay? Now, people say, don't you think Iran would like to have a nuclear weapon? Don't you believe that they would? And I say, of course I believe that, but I don't do faith-based intelligence, okay? I got in a big argument with a correspondent just earlier today. Surely Iran wants a nuclear weapon. Yeah, that's right. Well, they're working on it, aren't they? I say, what is your evidence? Oh, I talked to so and so, I talked to so and so--these same fellas that want to cut the head off the beast or the serpent or--. And, you know, it really is quite amazing that nowhere in the The New York Times, Washington Post, or any of the--what I call the fawning corporate media has mentioned this fact that there is this estimate out there, that a update was commissioned more than a year ago, that the draft has been languishing because the Israel lobby doesn't want to risk the chance that this estimate, too, would leak. <p /> <p />JAY: Now, this is a really important point, because--you've said that there is another NIE already prepared. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Yeah. <p /> <p />JAY: And you know this from intelligence sources. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: I know somebody who's seen the draft. <p /> <p />JAY: And the NIE, the new one, comes to more or less the same conclusion of the previous one, that there's no weapons program that they're aware of. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: No change. And that's politically unacceptable in Washington, because, well, if you watch Barack Obama, he doesn't have any vertebras in his back when it comes to what the Israelis want, and they don't want anybody to say that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program, because then they won't be able to fill The New York Times with four pages of drivel, as they did this morning. <p /> <p />JAY: Thanks for joining us. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Welcome. <p /> <p />JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. <p /> <p />End of Transcript <p /> <p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

New York Times Beats Drums for War

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D5945

2010-11-30

4left

Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University received an MA in Russian Studies from Fordham a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University and graduated from Harvard Business Schools Advanced Management Program McGovern now works for Tell the Word a ministry of the innercityWashington Church of the Saviour PAUL JAY SENIOR EDITOR TRNN Welcome to The Real News Network Im Paul Jay in Washington Now joining us to discuss the WikiLeaks leak is Ray McGovern He was an analyst for the CIA for 27 years He helped prepare and sometimes present to various presidents including Bush I and Reagan Also writes regularly at ConsortiumNewscom and also hes a blogger on The Real News Thanks for joining us So first of all we get a critique of WikiLeaks from one side which says WikiLeaks is endangering national security and this stuff was never meant for public eyes and its going to endanger our safety and such You also get another critique which doesnt get heard too much in the media but that you know its a little suspicious that one guy could download so many documents Its a little fortuitous that right at a time when Israel would like some support on the issue of Iran as a threat to the region that they get it out of WikiLeaks Right at a time the Korean crisis is blowing up you get some disclosures of cables that China may be ready to back away from North Korea which would help threaten North Korea in some way So whats your first of all take on the credibility of the whole process RAY MCGOVERN RETIRED CIA ANALYST Its completely credible to me Ive been around a few years I think Julian Assange is the real deal I really kind of resent all the focus on all these trees missing the forest for what it is Heres an outfit that had the courage to face into the Defense Department do what the United States government really warned it against doing and all because one young private in our Army saw abuses that he couldnt tolerate and wanted to get that out to the rest of the world Thats what he said in his emails I hopewhat my hope is is that this information become available to the American people Then the American people can debate these issues which is not the case now with the fourth estate being in disrepair JAY I would guess from a technical point of view its not that big a deal Each cable is a few kilobytes Its notone or two decent hard drives It wouldnt be that hard to get that many MCGOVERN Thats my understanding yeah JAY The press has been focused mostly on the Iran issue So talk a little bit about what you think the press coverage has been in the last day or two MCGOVERN Well its really quite amazing Heres The New York Times We have not only two large frontpage stories one of which talks about the sharp distress over a nuclear Iran but the jump pageah there you go Ahmadinejad surrounded by a whole bunch of evillooking people And then the next page 1011 you get the whole deal here arsenal with aid of North Korea King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia says well we have to cut the head off the snake Its a canard Paul Its a canard And Im an intelligence officer or I used to be okay I was for 27 years Sometimes we take painstaking efforts to get something right And to my great relief somebody did that in 2007 and he came to the conclusion that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon in the fall of 2003 JAY Youve chaired previous estimates And if I understand it correctly its like what 17 or 18 agencies MCGOVERN Sixteen now JAY Sixteen agencies MCGOVERN It used to be 14 when I was on duty so to speak JAY Who all give their point of view on the question And the question here was is there a weapons program in Iran The majority of the agencies come up with MCGOVERN It wasnt a majority It was unanimous Paul JAY Unanimous MCGOVERN Yeah JAY There are no weapons program that we know of in Iran MCGOVERN It was an incredibly sensitive estimate because the president and vice president were going around the world saying Iran was about to get a nuclear weapon And what happened when Tom Fingar came in from the State Department he did a bottomup assessment and found out that there was dubious evidence all along even before 2003 but for sure in 2003 they had made a decision to stop making the nuclear warhead inaudible JAY Now all the players involved in this from Obama onwards to Netanyahu in Israel apparently to Abdullah in Saudi Arabia everybodys operating on the assumption that there is a weapons program and ignoring the NIE National Intelligence Estimate whoessentially saying they got it wrong And one of the more vocal voices in all of this is Alan Dershowitz an American lawyer whos very well known to be considered by some a defender of Israels interests by others to be a representative of Likud in the United States At any rate MCGOVERN And a devotee of torture JAY A devotee some say others may say someone who finds some justifiable moments where you might want to use torture Heres what Dershowitz says about the NIE in a blog he writes in the Huffington Post Under George Bushs watch the United States issued its notorious National Security Estimate of November 2007 which essentially denied that Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons And then heres the key sentence According to Dershowitz This report was known to be false at the time it was issued since American intelligence became aware of the nuclear weapons facility at Qum before the report was issued MCGOVERN Does he say nuclear weapons facility at Qum JAY He says the intelligence agencies had become aware of the nuclear weapons facility in Qom MCGOVERN Well thats a lie There is no nuclear weapons facility at Qom JAY That we know of Theres no evidence of it MCGOVERN No You know Im sorry but I dont do faithbased intelligence You know I do evidentiary intelligence And when theres evidence I weigh it and I come to a conclusion And that to my great relief and my great pride was done in 2007 And you know Dershowitz knows more than 16 US intelligence agencies who unanimously decided as they put it with great confidence in quotes that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 and had not resumed work Now that was three years ago okay The story proceeds here Who didnt like that Well President Bush really didnt like that and Netanyahu and the Israelis Olmert at the time they were really very furious And heres Bushs book okay I invested in it And its really interesting what he says about the NIE He said and I quote here in November 2007 the intelligence community produced a national intelligence estimate on Irans nuclear program The NIE opened with an eyepopping declaration Quote we judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program Now if I were worried about a nuclear weapon in Irans hands you know I think the appropriate action would be phew You know Ill go over to Tel Aviv and tell those guys no sweat we have detected that they stopped it now all we need to do is make sure they dont restart it Okay No no He says the NIEs conclusion was stunning And so I took a trip to the Middle East I remember this distinctly He went to Israel apologized apologized for the NIE and said I have a different view He said Israel and the Arabs were beside themselves Both were quote deeply concerned about Iran and furious with the United States over the NIE Okay It continues In Saudi Arabia I met with King Abdullah the same king now who is saying we have to cut the head off the monster I met with King Abdullah and I said your Majesty would you let me begin the meeting He said yeah Im confident that every one of you thinks that I wrote the NIE as a way of avoiding war with Iran but it was not the case it was not the case I had no control over it These intelligence agencies sometimes act independently And heres the problem The NIE was produced by the intelligence community And I am as angry about it as you are And heres the kicker This is Bush Quote after the NIE how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program Big problem okay Now what was all this about Well Cheney and Bush were about to do that in the following spring Cheney admits it He says you know I was not in the majority here and I was overruled finally but yeah we were going to go after Iran okay So hes proud of that So is it different now No its not different now Thats really what gets my back up The New York Times can put full pages on the Iranian part of the WikiLeaks thing and it means nothing because all youre getting from people like the king of Saudi Arabia or the king of the UAE or inaudible my proletarian background isyou know singing We three kings of Orient are You know Okay they all think thatwell I dont think Abdullah really thinks that I think hed really like to have why dont you and he fight You know why dont the US fight with Iran And hey wow what will happen to the price of oil then And wow we get rid of a Shia government that I really dont like and you know help things in Iraq turn out the way I want them and not the way Iran wants them Well Im sure there are some people sophisticated enough in the State Department to realize that Abdullahs going to try to goad us into attacking Iran And Israel of course has been doing that forever JAY So lets go back to Dershowitzs comment This is one of the first times I personally have seen so clearly articulated whyand Dershowitz is often considered someone who speaks or certainly has good connections with the government of Israelwhy they think the NIE wasnt correct this idea that they knew there was a nuclear weapons facility in Qom Now the IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency has people all over these facilities as far as I understand it So what do we know from the IAEA about whether there is a weapons program at Qom or not MCGOVERN Well theyve been consistent in saying that there has been no diversion of the nuclear materials to a weapons program that they keep track of this Okay For the Iranians to work on a real weapon on the kind of uranium enrichment that would be required they would have to back out of the NonProliferation Treaty They would have to send the inspectors home just as Bush sent the inspectors home from Iraq when they were not coming up with WMD And you know we would know I mean its a canard to say that oh enrichment is the big thing Well enrichment has a specific purpose okay It can be used to generate electrical energy Under President Ford Henry Kissinger and Don Rumsfeld persuaded President Ford very reluctantly in 1976 to approve Westinghouse and GE getting a 5 billion 6 billion contract with the Shah for the same kind of facility that now we say Iran cant have Why Not to build weapons but for electricity Now people say well they have all this oil why do they need electricity Well you know the oil is not going to last forever Any prudent JAY And they also dont refine it themselves mostly MCGOVERN Well I think theyre starting to do that little bit more JAY A lot of the finished product has to come back in Well lets just go back to this issue then The prevailing opinion seems to be amongst people Ive talked to who seem to know is that if Iran is really on the road to a weapon what they seem to want to do is get about half or twothirds of the way so that they could take the leap to a weaponized program if they wanted to But theres no evidence that theyre actually doing anything to get past this sort of preparatory stage Is that your reading of it MCGOVERN There you go Yeah Im really glad you mentioned the word evidence Thats what we inaudible bread and butter okay Now people say dont you think Iran would like to have a nuclear weapon Dont you believe that they would And I say of course I believe that but I dont do faithbased intelligence okay I got in a big argument with a correspondent just earlier today Surely Iran wants a nuclear weapon Yeah thats right Well theyre working on it arent they I say what is your evidence Oh I talked to so and so I talked to so and sothese same fellas that want to cut the head off the beast or the serpent or And you know it really is quite amazing that nowhere in the The New York Times Washington Post or any of thewhat I call the fawning corporate media has mentioned this fact that there is this estimate out there that a update was commissioned more than a year ago that the draft has been languishing because the Israel lobby doesnt want to risk the chance that this estimate too would leak JAY Now this is a really important point becauseyouve said that there is another NIE already prepared MCGOVERN Yeah JAY And you know this from intelligence sources MCGOVERN I know somebody whos seen the draft JAY And the NIE the new one comes to more or less the same conclusion of the previous one that theres no weapons program that theyre aware of MCGOVERN No change And thats politically unacceptable in Washington because well if you watch Barack Obama he doesnt have any vertebras in his back when it comes to what the Israelis want and they dont want anybody to say that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program because then they wont be able to fill The New York Times with four pages of drivel as they did this morning JAY Thanks for joining us MCGOVERN Welcome JAY Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network End of Transcript DISCLAIMER Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy

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<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://www.af.mil/photos/media_search.asp?q=Drones&amp;amp;page=2"&amp;gt;Sgt. Michael Ammons/US Air Force&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;</p> <p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175265/" type="external" />This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175265/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the US had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/17uav.html" type="external">over Kosovo</a> in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.</p> <p>In November 2002, a Predator drone would <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-11-04-yemen-explosion_x.htm" type="external">loose a Hellfire missile</a> on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren&#8217;t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/cia-chief-drones-only-game-in-town-for-stopping-al-qaeda/" type="external">USS Cole</a> would be turned into twisted metal and ash&#8212;the first &#8220;targeted killings&#8221; of the American robotic era.</p> <p>Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/12/schneider.iraq/" type="external">&#8220;introducing&#8221;</a> its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney &#8220; <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001848577_powell01.html" type="external">trooped up</a> to Capitol Hill&#8221; to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A &#8220;smoking gun&#8221; had been uncovered.</p> <p>According to &#8220;new intelligence,&#8221; Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable&#8212;so the CIA director and vice president claimed&#8212;of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.</p> <p>Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration&#8217;s resolution authorizing force in Iraq because &#8220;I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard.&#8221;</p> <p>In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam&#8217;s supposed ability to produce <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/9301/jim_lobe_on_timing_the_cheney_nuclear_drumbeat" type="external">&#8220;mushroom clouds&#8221;</a> over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat&#8217;s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the US coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/10/video-killer-dr/" type="external">repeatedly attack</a> Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.</p> <p>In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175040/tom_engelhardt_the_imperial_unconscious" type="external">&#8220;secret&#8221; or &#8220;covert&#8221; war</a>, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE65I00R.htm" type="external">humdrum headlines</a> slapped on (&#8220;US missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan&#8221;), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.</p> <p>And yet those robotic planes, with their young &#8220;pilots&#8221; (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/29/world/la-fg-predator-20100530" type="external">make up</a> a drone &#8220;crew&#8221;) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175155/tomgram:_droning_on/" type="external">wonder weapon</a> and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency&#8217;s drones flying over Pakistan &#8220; <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/cia-chief-drones-only-game-in-town-for-stopping-al-qaeda/" type="external">the only game in town</a>&#8220; when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous US official in a Washington Post report <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042503114.html?hpid=topnews" type="external">claims</a> of drone missile attacks, &#8220;We&#8217;re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare&#8221;; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon&#8217;s Joint Forces Command <a href="http://www.nuvo.net/nuvo/indiana-connections-to-drone-warfare-technology/Content?oid=1343970" type="external">told</a> author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: &#8220;They don&#8217;t get hungry. They are not afraid. They don&#8217;t forget their orders. They don&#8217;t care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.&#8221;</p> <p>Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that&#8217;s before swarms of <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/04/usually-our-dys/" type="external">&#8220;mini-drones&#8221;</a> come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.</p> <p>In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703754_pf.html" type="external">spent time with</a> Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield &#8220;valor&#8221;&#8212;a necessity for most combat award citations&#8212;to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. &#8220;Valor to me is not risking your life,&#8221; the colonel told the reporter. &#8220;Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor.&#8221;</p> <p>Smoking Drones</p> <p>These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/17/AR2010031702558_pf.html" type="external">disrupting</a> al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it &#8220;deeper into hiding,&#8221; and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda&#8217;s top leadership has already widened considerably. The <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/05/04/pakistan.drone.attacks/" type="external">&#8220;target set&#8221;</a> has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).</p> <p>If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it&#8217;s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175195/tomgram:_nick_turse,_the_forty-year_drone_war_/" type="external">the year 2047</a>), of a time when single pilots should be able to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703754_pf.html" type="external">handle multiple drones</a> in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/army-s-futuristic-plan-features-drones-that-need-no-human-help-1.108125" type="external">handle themselves</a>, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.</p> <p>When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there&#8217;s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.</p> <p>Now it&#8217;s the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It&#8217;s the US which is <a href="http://amconmag.com/article/2010/apr/01/00030/" type="external">developing</a> a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and ( <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/11/can-killer-drones-land-on-carriers-like-human-top-guns/" type="external">theoretically</a>) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. &amp;#160;It&#8217;s the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by <a href="http://amconmag.com/article/2010/apr/01/00030/" type="external">700%</a> over the next decade.</p> <p>Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, &#8220;precision,&#8221; and &#8220;valor.&#8221; It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/03drones.html" type="external">issued</a> a 29-page report criticizing Washington&#8217;s &#8220;ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.&#8221; Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA&#8217;s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America&#8217;s footprints, attacking people in other lands &#8220;labeled as terrorists by one group or another.&#8221;</p> <p>Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. &#8220;Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a &#8216;PlayStation&#8217; mentality to killing.&#8221;</p> <p>Similarly, the ACLU has <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/drone-wars-without-any-ru_n_511056.html" type="external">filed</a> a freedom of information lawsuit against the US government, demanding that it &#8220;disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.&#8221;</p> <p>But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303450704575159864237752180.html" type="external">claim</a> of legitimate <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/03/drone-attacks-legit-self-defense-says-administration-lawyer/#more-23429" type="external">&#8220;self-defense,&#8221;</a> but senses that it&#8217;s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.&amp;#160;</p> <p>It&#8217;s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.</p> <p>A Pilotless Military</p> <p>If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a moment that could, of course, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175056/tom_engelhardt_terminator_planet" type="external">be presented</a> as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the US as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how &#8220;networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare&#8221; (as Christopher Drew <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/technology/08homefront.html" type="external">recently put it</a> in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work &#8220;in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk&#8230; and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.&#8221; It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice&#8212;the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away&#8212;or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.</p> <p>The drones&#8212;their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Should-Drones-Be-Allowed-Across-US-Skies-3990" type="external">heading for</a> &#8220;the homeland&#8221;&#8212;could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the US) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/21" type="external">few American problems</a> seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it&#8217;s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd <a href="http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&amp;amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;amp;newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&amp;amp;plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a32530e23-3fa1-4379-8f67-3f785feb01fd&amp;amp;plck" type="external">malfunctioning drone</a>. Not that even all <a href="http://blogs.alternet.org/skeeterbitesreport/2010/06/08/cias-drone-attacks-in-pakistan-drawing-new-round-of-opposition-from-inside-cia/" type="external">CIA operatives</a> involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there&#8217;s a price to be paid.</p> <p>As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it&#8217;s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/technology/08homefront.html" type="external">chat rooms</a>, and &#8220;single shooter&#8221; death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-drone-crews21-2010feb21,0,2614633.story" type="external">to the barbecue</a> (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.</p> <p>The Air Force <a href="http://www.nellis.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123075622" type="external">&#8220;detachments&#8221;</a> that &#8220;manage&#8221; the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are &#8220;detached&#8221; from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn&#8217;t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.</p> <p>After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175261/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_washington_drunk_on_war/" type="external">unending, unwinnable frontier wars</a> and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens&#8217; army proved disastrous for Washington&#8217;s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.</p> <p>As a start, with no draft and so no citizen&#8217;s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee <a href="http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF18Ak01.html" type="external">reported</a> recently, &#8220;[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.&#8221; And a majority of those contractors aren&#8217;t even US citizens.</p> <p>If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of &#8220;support for our troops&#8221;)?</p> <p>Under these circumstances, it&#8217;s hardly surprising that a &#8220;pilotless&#8221; force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236?RS_show_page=0" type="external">can be seen</a> in the <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/obamas-macarthur-moment-mcchrystal-disses-biden.html" type="external">recent flap</a> over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.</p> <p>The Globalization of Death</p> <p>Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush&#8217;s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it&#8217;s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn&#8217;t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than <a href="http://www.nuvo.net/nuvo/indiana-connections-to-drone-warfare-technology/Content?oid=1343970" type="external">40 countries</a> developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians <a href="http://www.sfexaminer.com/world/83787472.html" type="external">announced</a> that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah <a href="http://www.noahshachtman.com/blog/archives/2828.html" type="external">used them</a> against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/21/new-israeli-drone-can-reach-iran/" type="external">pioneering</a> their use in <a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/06/30/precisely-wrong-0" type="external">targeted killings</a> of Palestinians.</p> <p>Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the US is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we&#8217;re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.</p> <p>We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won&#8217;t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of &#8220;terrorists,&#8221; we won&#8217;t like it one bit. When the first &#8220;suicide drones&#8221; appear, we&#8217;ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we&#8217;ll be truly unnerved.</p> <p>In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of &#8220;globalization&#8221; which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the US and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It&#8217;s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.</p> <p>Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the <a href="http://www.americanempireproject.com/" type="external">American Empire Project</a>, runs the Nation Institute&#8217;s <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>. His latest book, just published, is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The American Way of War: How Bush&#8217;s Wars Became Obama&#8217;s</a> (Haymarket Books). Watch a Timothy MacBain TomCast video of him discussing the American way of war by clicking <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/videonation#p/a/u/0/GLHgTnxXyns" type="external">here</a>.</p>

America Detached from War

https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/america-detached-war/

2010-06-24

4left

amplta hrefhttpwwwafmilphotosmedia_searchaspqDronesampamppage2ampgtSgt Michael AmmonsUS Air Forceampltaampgt This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website Admittedly before George W Bush had his fever dream the US had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s By November 2001 it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan In November 2002 a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen a country with which we weren8217t at war Six suspected alQaeda members including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash8212the first 8220targeted killings8221 of the American robotic era Just two months earlier in September 2002 as the Bush administration was 8220introducing8221 its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney 8220 trooped up to Capitol Hill8221 to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hairraising threat to the country A 8220smoking gun8221 had been uncovered According to 8220new intelligence8221 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry Worse yet these were capable8212so the CIA director and vice president claimed8212of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media and the news evidently made an impression in Congress Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida for example said that he voted for the administration8217s resolution authorizing force in Iraq because 8220I was told not only that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard8221 In a speech in October 2002 President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public Of course like Saddam8217s supposed ability to produce 8220mushroom clouds8221 over American cities the Iraqi autocrat8217s advanced UAVs along with the ships needed to position them off the US coast were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten Instead in the years to come it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs In those years our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan where in an escalating 8220secret8221 or 8220covert8221 war which has been no secret to anyone multiple drone attacks often occur weekly They are now considered so much the norm that with humdrum headlines slapped on 8220US missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan8221 they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press And yet those robotic planes with their young 8220pilots8221 as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone 8220crew8221 sitting in front of consoles 7000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing have become another kind of American fever dream The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about CIA director Leon Panetta has for instance called the Agency8217s drones flying over Pakistan 8220 the only game in town8220 when it comes to destroying alQaeda a typically anonymous US official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks 8220We8217re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare8221 or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon8217s Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer speaking of the glories of drones 8220They don8217t get hungry They are not afraid They don8217t forget their orders They don8217t care if the guy next to them has been shot Will they do a better job than humans Yes8221 Seven thousand of them the vast majority surveillance varieties are reportedly already being operated by the military and that8217s before swarms of 8220minidrones8221 come on line Our American world is being redefined accordingly In February Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement Mathewson reported Jaffe was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield 8220valor82218212a necessity for most combat award citations8212to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles 8220Valor to me is not risking your life8221 the colonel told the reporter 8220Valor is doing what is right Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek It is doing what is right for the right reasons That to me is valor8221 Smoking Drones These days CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones in disrupting alQaeda destroying its leadership or driving it 8220deeper into hiding8221 and taking out key figures in the Taliban Indeed what started as a 247 assassination campaign against alQaeda8217s top leadership has already widened considerably The 8220target set8221 has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lowerlevel militants in the tribal borderlands In other words a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first fullscale drone war and as in all wars from the air civilians are dying in unknown numbers If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons this time it8217s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047 of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves flying fighting and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene When we possess such weaponry it turns out there8217s nothing unnerving or disturbing apocalyptic or dystopian about it Today in the American homeland not a single smoking drone is in sight Now it8217s the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized It8217s the US which is developing a 22ton tailless drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and theoretically land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier amp160It8217s the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700 over the next decade Admittedly there is a modest counternarrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess 8220precision8221 and 8220valor8221 It involves legal types like Philip Alston the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions He recently issued a 29page report criticizing Washington8217s 8220everexpanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe8221 Unless limits are put on such claims and especially on the CIA8217s drone war over Pakistan he suggests soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America8217s footprints attacking people in other lands 8220labeled as terrorists by one group or another8221 Such mechanized longdistance warfare he also suggests will breach what respect remains for the laws of war 8220Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield8221 he wrote 8220and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audiofeed there is a risk of developing a 8216PlayStation8217 mentality to killing8221 Similarly the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the US government demanding that it 8220disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas as well as the ground rules regarding when where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized and the number of civilian casualties they have caused8221 But pay no mind to all this The arguments may be legally compelling but not in Washington which has mounted a halfhearted claim of legitimate 8220selfdefense8221 but senses that it8217s already well past the point where legalities matter The die is cast the money committed The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelmingamp160 It8217s a done deal Drone war is and will be us A Pilotless Military If there are zeitgeist moments for products movie stars and even politicians then such moments can exist for weaponry as well The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment It8217s a moment that could of course be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies with the US as the soulcrushing Skynet or as a remarkable tale of how 8220networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to daytoday warfare8221 as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of oneway slaughter verging on entertainment or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work 8220in camouflage uniforms complete with combat boots on open floors with four computer monitors on each desk8230 and coffee and Red Bull helping them get through the 12hour shifts8221 It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice8212the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away8212or as Col Mathewson would prefer a new form of valor The drones8212their use expanding exponentially with ever newer generations on the drawing boards and the planes even heading for 8220the homeland82218212could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare or as is generally the case in the US a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity a problemsolver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution Thanks to our technological prowess it8217s claimed that we can now kill them wherever they may be lurking at absolutely no cost to ourselves other than the odd malfunctioning drone Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one Some of them understand perfectly well that there8217s a price to be paid As it happens the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002 but it8217s also distinctly us In fact drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove With its consoles chat rooms and 8220single shooter8221 death machines it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer Facebook and video games That our valorous warriors their day of battle done can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue or given American life the foreclosure also fits an American mood of the moment The Air Force 8220detachments8221 that 8220manage8221 the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are 8220detached8221 from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F16 over Afghanistan who could at least experience engine failure isn8217t If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield on only one side of course and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about it also catches something important about the American way of war After all while this country garrisons the world invests its wealth in its military and fights unending unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes most Americans are remarkably detached from all this If anything since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens8217 army proved disastrous for Washington8217s global aims such detachment has been the goal of American warmaking As a start with no draft and so no citizen8217s army war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans and their families It occurs thousands of miles away and in the Bush years also became a heavily privatized forprofit activity As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently 8220Every US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company All told about 239451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world8221 And a majority of those contractors aren8217t even US citizens If drones have entered our world as media celebrities they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace In a sense our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind The question is Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of 8220support for our troops8221 Under these circumstances it8217s hardly surprising that a 8220pilotless8221 force should in turn develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials The Globalization of Death Maybe what we need is the return of George W Bush8217s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it8217s now interred He was beyond wrong of course when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones but he wasn8217t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilotless planes Earlier this year the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians Right now in what still remains largely a postCold War arms race of one the US is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars with few competitors in sight In the process we8217re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances In the process we may not just be obliterating enemies but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike We are also creating the illegal framework for future war on a frontier where we won8217t long be flying solo And when the first Iranian or Russian or Chinese missilearmed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of 8220terrorists8221 we won8217t like it one bit When the first 8220suicide drones8221 appear we8217ll like it even less And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene we8217ll be truly unnerved In the 1990s we were said to be in an era of 8220globalization8221 which was widely hailed as good news Now the US and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries relies on the selfdefinitions of whoever owns the nearest drone and establishes planetary freefire zones It8217s a nasty combination this globalization of death Tom Engelhardt cofounder of the American Empire Project runs the Nation Institute8217s TomDispatchcom His latest book just published is The American Way of War How Bush8217s Wars Became Obama8217s Haymarket Books Watch a Timothy MacBain TomCast video of him discussing the American way of war by clicking here

amplta/PROPN hrefhttpwwwafmilphotosmedia_searchaspqDronesampamppage2ampgtSgt/PROPN Michael/PROPN AmmonsUS/PUNCT Air/PROPN Forceampltaampgt/PROPN This/DET story/NOUN first/ADV appeared/VERB on/ADP the/DET TomDispatch/PROPN website/NOUN Admittedly/ADV before/SCONJ George/PROPN W/PROPN Bush/PROPN had/VERB his/PRON fever/NOUN dream/NOUN the/DET US/PROPN had/AUX already/ADV put/VERB its/PRON first/ADJ unmanned/ADJ aerial/ADJ vehicles/NOUN UAVs/NOUN or/CCONJ drone/NOUN surveillance/NOUN planes/NOUN in/ADP the/DET skies/NOUN over/ADP Kosovo/PROPN in/ADP the/DET late/ADJ 1990s/NOUN By/ADP November/PROPN 2001/NUM it/PRON had/AUX armed/VERB them/PRON with/ADP missiles/NOUN and/CCONJ was/AUX flying/VERB them/PRON over/ADP Afghanistan/PROPN In/ADP November/PROPN 2002/NUM a/DET Predator/PROPN drone/NOUN would/AUX loose/VERB a/DET Hellfire/PROPN missile/NOUN on/ADP a/DET car/NOUN in/ADP Yemen/PROPN a/DET country/NOUN with/ADP which/PRON we/PRON weren8217/VERB t/NOUN at/ADP war/NOUN Six/NUM 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<p>(Reuters) - Photoshop maker Adobe Systems Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ADBE.O" type="external">ADBE.O</a>) on Monday lifted its adjusted profit forecast for the current quarter and the full year, saying it expects its effective tax rate to decline &#8220;substantially&#8221; due to the recently enacted U.S. tax reforms.</p> FILE PHOTO: An Adobe Systems Inc software box is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo <p>Adobe said it expects a charge of about $85 million in the current quarter related to taxes on repatriation of foreign earnings and remeasuring deferred tax assets, and a tax rate of 17 percent compared with its previous target of about 9 percent.</p> <p>But the company raised its current-quarter adjusted profit forecast, which will exclude the charge, to $1.43 per share from $1.27 per share.</p> <p>Analysts on average were expecting a profit of $1.27 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ADBE.O" type="external">Adobe Systems Inc</a> 212.54 ADBE.O Nasdaq -1.26 (-0.59%) ADBE.O <p>For fiscal year 2018, the company said it expects adjusted earnings of $6.20 per share, up from its prior forecast of $5.50. Analysts on average were expecting $5.57 per share.</p> <p>Adobe also said Chief Financial Officer Mark Garrett and General Counsel Mike Dillon would retire this year.</p> <p>The company&#8217;s shares rose 2.6 percent to $203 in after-hours trading.</p> <p>Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Savio D'Souza</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fund managers have begun to ditch so-called FANG stocks that powered the U.S. stock market to record highs in January and are slowly rotating into commodity-related shares and other value stocks which typically outperform in late-cycle recoveries.</p> <p>Portfolio managers holding shares of Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>), Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>), Netflix Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NFLX.O" type="external">NFLX.O</a>), and Google-parent Alphabet Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) say they are increasingly concerned that the data scandal that has sent shares of Facebook down nearly 15 percent year-to-date will spill over into all of the FANG stocks, imperiling the broad market&#8217;s momentum at a time when there are no clear companies or sectors to take their place.</p> <p>On Tuesday, an index which tracks the FANG stocks along with six other mega-cap technology stocks tumbled 6.3 percent, the biggest decline since September 2014.</p> <p>Facebook rose as much as 1.5 percent in early trading Wednesday before falling into the red, one day after sources told Reuters that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify before Congress. Amazon.com dropped 4 percent, while Netflix fell 5 percent. Google-parent Alphabet was slightly positive.</p> <p>&#8220;There are legitimate concerns over the business models of these companies, and I expect that they will be ironed out in legislation&#8221; that will likely eat into their profit margins, said Michael Cuggino, a portfolio manager of the $17-billion Permanent Portfolio funds.</p> <p>Cuggino, who would not say whether he was selling any of his shares in Facebook, said that commodity and industrial stocks look more attractive now given rising inflation and continued global economic growth.</p> <p>Each FANG company rose more than 33 percent last year, helping power the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> to a nearly 20-percent gain. Yet those gains have left the broad S&amp;amp;P 500 trading at a high trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 21.7, leaving it overpriced despite a boost to margins from the Republican-led corporate tax cut at the end of 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;Rising volatility and changing market leadership are now pointing towards the possible conclusion that the stock market peaked in late January 2018,&#8221; said Douglas Kass, president of Seabreeze Capital Management.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 is now down 2.2 percent for the year, and down nearly 10 percent below the high of 2872.87 it reached on Jan. 26.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) UNFRIENDED <p>Fund managers say that the high valuation of FANG stocks and the likelihood of regulation are pushing them into traditional value stocks like energy and defense companies.</p> <p>Connor Browne, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, said that he sold his shares of Netflix and Amazon.com last year after both companies blew through his price targets. He used those gains instead to increase positions in energy stocks such as pipeline operator Enterprise Products Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">EPD.N</a>) and crude oil shipping company Overseas Shipholding Group Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OSG.N" type="external">OSG.N</a>) that stand to benefit from the recovery in the price of oil.</p> <p>&#8220;We noticed that in all of this excitement over the FANGs taking over the world, there are parts of the economy that seem really out of favor and offer more compelling opportunities,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Even after the selloff, FANG stocks continue to trade at higher valuations than the broad market. Netflix trades at a P/E of 210 and Amazon.com trades at a P/E of 327. Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet, both of which have been directly linked with privacy concerns, now trade at valuations near 52-week lows.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 153.03 FB.O Nasdaq +0.81 (+0.53%) FB.O AMZN.O NFLX.O GOOGL.O .SPX <p>The overhang of increased government oversight has sunk the fortunes of large technology companies in the past. Microsoft Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MSFT.O" type="external">MSFT.O</a>) reached a settlement in an antitrust case with the Department of Justice in 2002 that lasted until 2011, contributing to a long period of underperformance that kept the stock below the high it reached in 1999 until 2016. Since then, the stock is up nearly 60 percent on the strength of its cloud-based services.</p> <p>Margaret Patel, a senior portfolio manager at Wells Fargo Funds, said that she has been adding to defense stocks like Raytheon Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RTN.N" type="external">RTN.N</a>) that should benefit from increasing military spending in both the U.S. and overseas. At the same time, she is increasing her exposure of non-FANG technology stocks like Adobe Systems Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ADBE.O" type="external">ADBE.O</a>) and Microsoft that have been hurt by the recent sell-off in the sector.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very hard to see another sector that still has all the fundamental drivers for growing much faster than any other sector,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Reporting by David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) shares fell almost 5 percent on Wednesday, wiping more than $30 billion off its market value, after news website Axios reported that U.S. President Donald Trump is obsessed with the world&#8217;s largest online retailer and wants to rein in its growing power.</p> The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in Lauwin-Planque, northern France, February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol <p>Trump has talked about using antitrust law to &#8220;go after&#8221; the company because he is worried about mom-and-pop retailers being put out of business by Amazon, Axios reported, citing five sources it said had discussed the issue with him.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-amazon-com-trump/no-u-s-policy-changes-on-amazon-at-the-moment-white-house-official-idUSKBN1H42IY" type="external">No U.S. policy changes on Amazon at the moment: White House official</a> <p>Trump also wants to change Amazon&#8217;s tax treatment, the Axios report said, an issue the president raised publicly last year when he called for an internet tax for online retailers, even though Amazon already collects sales tax on items it sells direct to customers.</p> <p>&#8220;The president has said many times before he&#8217;s always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses and this is no different,&#8221; said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, when asked about the Axios report. &#8220;He&#8217;s always going to look at different ways, but there aren&#8217;t any specific policies on the table at this time.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has been complaining about Amazon in private, believing the company has become too powerful, another administration official confirmed to Reuters.</p> <p>The official said Trump links this to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos&#8217; private ownership of the Washington Post, which he has called &#8220;fake news&#8221; for its critical coverage of his administration. Trump regards the newspaper as a mouthpiece for Bezos&#8217; business interests, calling it #AmazonWashingtonPost on Twitter.</p> The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/Illustration <p>Amazon did not reply to a request for comment on the Axios report.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">Amazon.com Inc</a> 1431.42 AMZN.O Nasdaq -65.63 (-4.38%) AMZN.O FB.O FAVORITE TARGET <p>Trump has criticized Amazon over taxes and jobs in the past, without offering evidence. The president urging the use of antitrust law to selectively thwart a company would be unprecedented, according to Jeffrey Jacobovitz of the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP.</p> <p>Amazon&#8217;s stock, which fell as low as $1,386.17 on Wednesday, was last down 4.6 percent at $1,427.83. The shares have nearly quadrupled over the last three years.</p> Pick up Amazon on the dip, says Kevin Kelly <p>Tech stocks have been under pressure after Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) acknowledged this month that user data had been improperly harvested by a consultancy.</p> <p>&#8220;With Facebook and regulatory worries, the last thing nervous tech investors wanted to see was news that Trump is targeting Bezos and Amazon over the coming months as this remains a lingering cloud over the stock and heightens the risk profile in the eyes of the Street,&#8221; GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Diane Bartz and Amanda Becker in Washington; Sinead Carew in New York; writing by Chris Sanders; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tesla Inc shares fell sharply again on Wednesday, reeling from a credit downgrade of the electric car maker by Moody&#8217;s Investors Service, federal probes of a fatal crash and concerns about Model 3 production.</p> <p>Shares tumbled 9 percent before ending down 7.7 percent at $257.78. On Tuesday, Tesla tumbled 8.2 percent to its lowest close in almost a year after the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) opened a field investigation into a fatal crash and vehicle fire in California on March 23.</p> <p>On Wednesday, a second federal regulator, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), said it was sending a team to California to investigate the crash.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-tesla-stock-options/extreme-bearish-options-on-tesla-making-money-as-stock-dives-idUSKBN1H434B" type="external">Extreme bearish options on Tesla making money as stock dives</a> <a href="/article/us-tesla-crash/u-s-auto-safety-agency-to-probe-fatal-tesla-california-crash-idUSKBN1H42X1" type="external">U.S. auto safety agency to probe fatal Tesla California crash</a> <p>Late on Tuesday, Moody&#8217;s Investors Service downgraded Tesla&#8217;s credit rating to B3 from B2, citing &#8220;the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company&#8217;s Model 3 electric vehicle.&#8221; It also noted &#8220;liquidity pressures due to its large negative free cash flow and the pending maturities of convertible bonds.&#8221;</p> <p>Tesla has $230 million in convertible bonds maturing in November 2018 and $920 million in March 2019.</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s said its negative outlook &#8220;reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large, near-term capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall.&#8221;</p> <p>It said Tesla&#8217;s weekly production target is now 2,500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of March, down sharply from its year-earlier target of 5,000 per week by the end of 2017. Tesla&#8217;s weekly target for the end of June is 5,000.</p> <p>Tesla declined to comment on the downgrade. The company plans to provide an update on Model 3 production next week.</p> <p>Tesla shares have experienced big swings in the past, as worries about losses have vied with enthusiasm for Chief Executive Elon Musk&#8217;s ambitious plans.</p> <p>The sell-off has left Tesla&#8217;s stock market value at $44 billion, below General Motors Co&#8217;s $49 billion. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla has at times had a larger market value than GM, the largest U.S. automaker by vehicle sales.</p> A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton, just outside London, Britain, February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <p>Since the end of February, the median analyst price target for Tesla has dipped by $10 to $356, about 37 percent higher than Wednesday&#8217;s price, according to Thomson Reuters data. Nomura Securities analyst Romit Shah has the highest Tesla price target, $500, or nearly double the current price. All the targets were set before the March 23 crash.</p> <p>In last week&#8217;s accident in which the Tesla struck a highway median, it was unclear if the vehicle&#8217;s automated control system called Autopilot was driving, the NTSB and police said.</p> <p>The 38-year-old driver of the Tesla died at a nearby hospital shortly after the crash.</p> <p>Late Tuesday, Tesla said in a blog post it does &#8220;not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the crash,&#8221; but added that data shows Tesla owners have driven the same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged &#8220;roughly 85,000 times ... and there has never been an accident that we know of.&#8221; The statement did not say if the crashed vehicle was in Autopilot mode.</p> <p>Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Alexandria Sage and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(This version of the March 27 story corrects to &#8220;Minneapolis&#8221; from &#8220;Helena, Montana&#8221; in paragraph 3)</p> <p>By Sruthi Shankar and Sweta Singh</p> <p>(Reuters) - The S&amp;amp;P 500 and the Dow rose on Tuesday, led by gains in industrial and consumer staple shares, while weakness in technology stocks dragged down the Nasdaq.</p> <p>Stocks have been volatile in the session after the main U.S. indexes notched their best day in 2-1/2 years on Monday on waning concerns of a trade war between the United States and China.</p> <p>&#8220;Right now, the biggest driver in the market seems to be around the trade news and it is looking more like some of these tariff discussions are negotiations rather than strong protectionist measures,&#8221; said Lisa Erickson, head of traditional investments at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis.</p> <p>&#8220;But there&#8217;s going to be continued volatility in the short term and a lot of it will depend on how the fundamental news flow comes out.&#8221;</p> <p>U.S. stocks suffered their worst declines of the year last week after President Donald Trump moved to impose tariffs on Chinese imports of up to $60 billion.</p> <p>But the sentiment has improved after reports that the countries were willing to renegotiate tariffs and trade imbalances.</p> <p>At 13:00 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> was up 0.67 percent at 24,365.61 and the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> rose 0.29 percent to 2,666.16.</p> <p>The Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> fell 0.33 percent at 7,196.70.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 26, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) dropped 2.3 percent as it continued to be weighed down by data privacy issues. The company faces an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to explain how it allowed data of 50 million users get into the hands of a political consultancy.</p> <p>&#8220;Tech and FANG are still trying to figure out what the way forward is, and the market is dealing with the aftermath of a massive rally. It&#8217;s hard to maintain that kind of momentum,&#8221; said Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee.</p> <p>Another weak spot in the tech space was Nvidia ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NVDA.O" type="external">NVDA.O</a>), which fell 2.8 percent after the company temporarily suspended self-driving tests across the globe.</p> <p>Tesla ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O" type="external">TSLA.O</a>) shares dropped nearly 4 percent after the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board opened a field investigation of a fatal Tesla crash and major vehicle fire near Mountain View, California, last week.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 23848.42 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes -9.29 (-0.04%) .DJI .SPX .IXIC FB.O NVDA.O <p>Twitter ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TWTR.N" type="external">TWTR.N</a>) fell more than 7 percent after short-seller Citron Research said it was short on the stock, adding that the company was &#8220;most vulnerable&#8221; to privacy regulations.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 1.38-to-1 ratio and for a 1.20-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.</p> <p>Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Adobe lifts profit forecast on tax reform boost FANG stocks' bite has U.S. fund managers looking for alternatives Amazon shares fall after report Trump wants to curb its power Tesla shares dive again, stung by fatal crash, credit downgrade Wall Street wavers after strong rally, tech stocks struggle

https://reuters.com/article/adobe-outlook/update-1-adobe-lifts-profit-forecast-on-tax-reform-boost-idUSL4N1PH5CV

2018-01-22

2least

Reuters Photoshop maker Adobe Systems Inc ADBEO on Monday lifted its adjusted profit forecast for the current quarter and the full year saying it expects its effective tax rate to decline 8220substantially8221 due to the recently enacted US tax reforms FILE PHOTO An Adobe Systems Inc software box is seen in Los Angeles California US March 13 2017 REUTERSLucy NicholsonFile Photo Adobe said it expects a charge of about 85 million in the current quarter related to taxes on repatriation of foreign earnings and remeasuring deferred tax assets and a tax rate of 17 percent compared with its previous target of about 9 percent But the company raised its currentquarter adjusted profit forecast which will exclude the charge to 143 per share from 127 per share Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 127 per share according to Thomson Reuters IBES Adobe Systems Inc 21254 ADBEO Nasdaq 126 059 ADBEO For fiscal year 2018 the company said it expects adjusted earnings of 620 per share up from its prior forecast of 550 Analysts on average were expecting 557 per share Adobe also said Chief Financial Officer Mark Garrett and General Counsel Mike Dillon would retire this year The company8217s shares rose 26 percent to 203 in afterhours trading Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Savio DSouza Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Fund managers have begun to ditch socalled FANG stocks that powered the US stock market to record highs in January and are slowly rotating into commodityrelated shares and other value stocks which typically outperform in latecycle recoveries Portfolio managers holding shares of Facebook Inc FBO Amazoncom Inc AMZNO Netflix Inc NFLXO and Googleparent Alphabet Inc GOOGLO say they are increasingly concerned that the data scandal that has sent shares of Facebook down nearly 15 percent yeartodate will spill over into all of the FANG stocks imperiling the broad market8217s momentum at a time when there are no clear companies or sectors to take their place On Tuesday an index which tracks the FANG stocks along with six other megacap technology stocks tumbled 63 percent the biggest decline since September 2014 Facebook rose as much as 15 percent in early trading Wednesday before falling into the red one day after sources told Reuters that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify before Congress Amazoncom dropped 4 percent while Netflix fell 5 percent Googleparent Alphabet was slightly positive 8220There are legitimate concerns over the business models of these companies and I expect that they will be ironed out in legislation8221 that will likely eat into their profit margins said Michael Cuggino a portfolio manager of the 17billion Permanent Portfolio funds Cuggino who would not say whether he was selling any of his shares in Facebook said that commodity and industrial stocks look more attractive now given rising inflation and continued global economic growth Each FANG company rose more than 33 percent last year helping power the SampampP 500 SPX to a nearly 20percent gain Yet those gains have left the broad SampampP 500 trading at a high trailing pricetoearnings ratio of 217 leaving it overpriced despite a boost to margins from the Republicanled corporate tax cut at the end of 2017 8220Rising volatility and changing market leadership are now pointing towards the possible conclusion that the stock market peaked in late January 20188221 said Douglas Kass president of Seabreeze Capital Management The SampampP 500 is now down 22 percent for the year and down nearly 10 percent below the high of 287287 it reached on Jan 26 Slideshow 2 Images UNFRIENDED Fund managers say that the high valuation of FANG stocks and the likelihood of regulation are pushing them into traditional value stocks like energy and defense companies Connor Browne a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management said that he sold his shares of Netflix and Amazoncom last year after both companies blew through his price targets He used those gains instead to increase positions in energy stocks such as pipeline operator Enterprise Products Partners LP EPDN and crude oil shipping company Overseas Shipholding Group Inc OSGN that stand to benefit from the recovery in the price of oil 8220We noticed that in all of this excitement over the FANGs taking over the world there are parts of the economy that seem really out of favor and offer more compelling opportunities8221 he said Even after the selloff FANG stocks continue to trade at higher valuations than the broad market Netflix trades at a PE of 210 and Amazoncom trades at a PE of 327 Facebook and Googleparent Alphabet both of which have been directly linked with privacy concerns now trade at valuations near 52week lows Facebook Inc 15303 FBO Nasdaq 081 053 FBO AMZNO NFLXO GOOGLO SPX The overhang of increased government oversight has sunk the fortunes of large technology companies in the past Microsoft Corp MSFTO reached a settlement in an antitrust case with the Department of Justice in 2002 that lasted until 2011 contributing to a long period of underperformance that kept the stock below the high it reached in 1999 until 2016 Since then the stock is up nearly 60 percent on the strength of its cloudbased services Margaret Patel a senior portfolio manager at Wells Fargo Funds said that she has been adding to defense stocks like Raytheon Co RTNN that should benefit from increasing military spending in both the US and overseas At the same time she is increasing her exposure of nonFANG technology stocks like Adobe Systems Inc ADBEO and Microsoft that have been hurt by the recent selloff in the sector 8220It8217s very hard to see another sector that still has all the fundamental drivers for growing much faster than any other sector8221 she said Reporting by David Randall Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Amazoncom Inc AMZNO shares fell almost 5 percent on Wednesday wiping more than 30 billion off its market value after news website Axios reported that US President Donald Trump is obsessed with the world8217s largest online retailer and wants to rein in its growing power The logo of Amazon is seen at the company logistics center in LauwinPlanque northern France February 20 2017 REUTERSPascal Rossignol Trump has talked about using antitrust law to 8220go after8221 the company because he is worried about momandpop retailers being put out of business by Amazon Axios reported citing five sources it said had discussed the issue with him Related Coverage No US policy changes on Amazon at the moment White House official Trump also wants to change Amazon8217s tax treatment the Axios report said an issue the president raised publicly last year when he called for an internet tax for online retailers even though Amazon already collects sales tax on items it sells direct to customers 8220The president has said many times before he8217s always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses and this is no different8221 said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders when asked about the Axios report 8220He8217s always going to look at different ways but there aren8217t any specific policies on the table at this time8221 Trump has been complaining about Amazon in private believing the company has become too powerful another administration official confirmed to Reuters The official said Trump links this to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos8217 private ownership of the Washington Post which he has called 8220fake news8221 for its critical coverage of his administration Trump regards the newspaper as a mouthpiece for Bezos8217 business interests calling it AmazonWashingtonPost on Twitter The logo of the web service Amazon is pictured in this June 8 2017 illustration photo REUTERSCarlos JassoIllustration Amazon did not reply to a request for comment on the Axios report Amazoncom Inc 143142 AMZNO Nasdaq 6563 438 AMZNO FBO FAVORITE TARGET Trump has criticized Amazon over taxes and jobs in the past without offering evidence The president urging the use of antitrust law to selectively thwart a company would be unprecedented according to Jeffrey Jacobovitz of the law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP Amazon8217s stock which fell as low as 138617 on Wednesday was last down 46 percent at 142783 The shares have nearly quadrupled over the last three years Pick up Amazon on the dip says Kevin Kelly Tech stocks have been under pressure after Facebook Inc FBO acknowledged this month that user data had been improperly harvested by a consultancy 8220With Facebook and regulatory worries the last thing nervous tech investors wanted to see was news that Trump is targeting Bezos and Amazon over the coming months as this remains a lingering cloud over the stock and heightens the risk profile in the eyes of the Street8221 GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives said Additional reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru Diane Bartz and Amanda Becker in Washington Sinead Carew in New York writing by Chris Sanders editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Tesla Inc shares fell sharply again on Wednesday reeling from a credit downgrade of the electric car maker by Moody8217s Investors Service federal probes of a fatal crash and concerns about Model 3 production Shares tumbled 9 percent before ending down 77 percent at 25778 On Tuesday Tesla tumbled 82 percent to its lowest close in almost a year after the US National Transportation Safety Board NTSB opened a field investigation into a fatal crash and vehicle fire in California on March 23 On Wednesday a second federal regulator the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration NHTSA said it was sending a team to California to investigate the crash Related Coverage Extreme bearish options on Tesla making money as stock dives US auto safety agency to probe fatal Tesla California crash Late on Tuesday Moody8217s Investors Service downgraded Tesla8217s credit rating to B3 from B2 citing 8220the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company8217s Model 3 electric vehicle8221 It also noted 8220liquidity pressures due to its large negative free cash flow and the pending maturities of convertible bonds8221 Tesla has 230 million in convertible bonds maturing in November 2018 and 920 million in March 2019 Moody8217s said its negative outlook 8220reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large nearterm capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall8221 It said Tesla8217s weekly production target is now 2500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of March down sharply from its yearearlier target of 5000 per week by the end of 2017 Tesla8217s weekly target for the end of June is 5000 Tesla declined to comment on the downgrade The company plans to provide an update on Model 3 production next week Tesla shares have experienced big swings in the past as worries about losses have vied with enthusiasm for Chief Executive Elon Musk8217s ambitious plans The selloff has left Tesla8217s stock market value at 44 billion below General Motors Co8217s 49 billion Palo Alto Californiabased Tesla has at times had a larger market value than GM the largest US automaker by vehicle sales A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton just outside London Britain February 7 2018 REUTERSHannah McKay Since the end of February the median analyst price target for Tesla has dipped by 10 to 356 about 37 percent higher than Wednesday8217s price according to Thomson Reuters data Nomura Securities analyst Romit Shah has the highest Tesla price target 500 or nearly double the current price All the targets were set before the March 23 crash In last week8217s accident in which the Tesla struck a highway median it was unclear if the vehicle8217s automated control system called Autopilot was driving the NTSB and police said The 38yearold driver of the Tesla died at a nearby hospital shortly after the crash Late Tuesday Tesla said in a blog post it does 8220not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the crash8221 but added that data shows Tesla owners have driven the same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged 8220roughly 85000 times and there has never been an accident that we know of8221 The statement did not say if the crashed vehicle was in Autopilot mode Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Alexandria Sage and Noel Randewich in San Francisco Editing by Dan Grebler and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles This version of the March 27 story corrects to 8220Minneapolis8221 from 8220Helena Montana8221 in paragraph 3 By Sruthi Shankar and Sweta Singh Reuters The SampampP 500 and the Dow rose on Tuesday led by gains in industrial and consumer staple shares while weakness in technology stocks dragged down the Nasdaq Stocks have been volatile in the session after the main US indexes notched their best day in 212 years on Monday on waning concerns of a trade war between the United States and China 8220Right now the biggest driver in the market seems to be around the trade news and it is looking more like some of these tariff discussions are negotiations rather than strong protectionist measures8221 said Lisa Erickson head of traditional investments at US Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis 8220But there8217s going to be continued volatility in the short term and a lot of it will depend on how the fundamental news flow comes out8221 US stocks suffered their worst declines of the year last week after President Donald Trump moved to impose tariffs on Chinese imports of up to 60 billion But the sentiment has improved after reports that the countries were willing to renegotiate tariffs and trade imbalances At 1300 pm ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI was up 067 percent at 2436561 and the SampampP 500 SPX rose 029 percent to 266616 The Nasdaq Composite IXIC fell 033 percent at 719670 Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 26 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Facebook FBO dropped 23 percent as it continued to be weighed down by data privacy issues The company faces an investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission to explain how it allowed data of 50 million users get into the hands of a political consultancy 8220Tech and FANG are still trying to figure out what the way forward is and the market is dealing with the aftermath of a massive rally It8217s hard to maintain that kind of momentum8221 said Michael Antonelli managing director institutional sales trading at Robert W Baird in Milwaukee Another weak spot in the tech space was Nvidia NVDAO which fell 28 percent after the company temporarily suspended selfdriving tests across the globe Tesla TSLAO shares dropped nearly 4 percent after the US National Transportation Safety Board opened a field investigation of a fatal Tesla crash and major vehicle fire near Mountain View California last week Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 2384842 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 929 004 DJI SPX IXIC FBO NVDAO Twitter TWTRN fell more than 7 percent after shortseller Citron Research said it was short on the stock adding that the company was 8220most vulnerable8221 to privacy regulations Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 138to1 ratio and for a 120to1 ratio on the Nasdaq Reporting by Sruthi Shankar and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Anil DSilva Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>By Justin Elliott / <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-administration-hires-official-five-students-accused-sexual-assault" type="external">ProPublica</a></p> <p /> <p>&amp;#160; &amp;#160; Steve Munoz, left, has been appointed to the State Department by the Trump administration. (Munoz&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stevenmunoz" type="external">Facebook)</a></p> <p>A political appointee hired by the Trump administration for a significant State Department role was accused of multiple sexual assaults as a student several years ago at The Citadel military college.</p> <p /> <p>Steven Munoz was hired by the Trump administration as assistant chief of visits, <a href="https://www.state.gov/s/cpr/c35642.htm" type="external">running an office</a> of up to 10 staffers charged with the sensitive work of organizing visits of foreign heads of state to the U.S. That includes arranging meetings with the president.</p> <p>At The Citadel, five male freshmen alleged that Munoz used his positions as an upperclassman, class president and head of the campus Republican Society to grope them. In one incident, a student reported waking up with Munoz on top of him, kissing him and grabbing his genitals. In another, on a trip to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., a student said that Munoz jumped on him in bed and he &#8220;felt jerking and bouncing on my back.&#8221;</p> <p>An investigation by The Citadel later found that &#8220;certain assaults likely occurred.&#8221; A local prosecutor reviewed the case and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688286-Solicitor-Wilson-Letter-3-15-13.html" type="external">declined to</a> seek an indictment.</p> <p>Munoz&#8217;s hiring raises questions about the Trump administration&#8217;s vetting of political appointees, which has been both <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-white-house-staff-vacancies-237081" type="external">slow</a> and spotty, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/us/politics/shermichael-singleton-housing-urban-development.html" type="external">multiple</a> <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2017/02/white-house-failed-background-checks-dismissals-235112" type="external">incidents</a> of staff being fired only weeks into their jobs, including for <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-cabinet-hiring-clash-235250" type="external">disloyalty</a> to Trump. The White House didn&#8217;t respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Munoz, a Miami native, worked as a political consultant in South Carolina after graduating from The Citadel in 2011. He was publicly reported to be under investigation the following year around the time he was working for Rick Santorum&#8217;s presidential campaign. <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/former-santorum-staffer-acccused-of-sexual-harassm" type="external">Stories</a> from that time, which outline some but not all of the allegations against Munoz, are easy to find via a <a href="https://www.google.com/#q=steven+munoz" type="external">simple Google search</a>.</p> <p>Details of the case, drawn from an extensive, previously unreported police case file, also raise questions about The Citadel&#8217;s response to the alleged string of assaults, according to experts in campus sexual assault. After one student reported to a school official in 2010 that Munoz had sexually assaulted him, The Citadel didn&#8217;t discipline Munoz. Instead, it gave him a warning.</p> <p>Over the next year and a half, Munoz allegedly assaulted four other students. Those incidents weren&#8217;t reported until well after Munoz graduated in 2011.</p> <p>Munoz referred questions to his lawyer, the prominent Charleston defense attorney Andy Savage, who denied the allegations. &#8220;I believe that certain disgruntled cadets made exaggerated claims of wrongdoing concerning Munoz&#8217;s participation in boorish behavior that was historically tacitly approved, if not encouraged, by the Institution,&#8221; Savage said.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Upon graduation, The Citadel gave Munoz <a href="http://www.citadel.edu/root/commencement_algernon_awards_2011" type="external">an award</a> for &#8220;leadership, sound character and service to others.&#8221; The citation said he could &#8220;always be counted upon to help classmates who need assistance and to mentor younger cadets adjusting to life at The Citadel.&#8221;</p> <p>A Citadel spokeswoman, Kim Keelor, said the committee that gave the award would not have known about the 2010 allegation because of privacy law. Keelor said of the case overall: &#8220;The college proceeded thoughtfully in addressing the reports in accordance with its policy and related processes, and with great concern for those involved and the protection of their privacy.&#8221;</p> <p>When more students came forward the year after Munoz graduated, The Citadel banned him from campus and referred the case to state police, who did an extensive investigation.</p> <p>When The Citadel later conducted its investigation, it interviewed complainants and witnesses and concluded in 2014 that assaults occurred &#8220;based upon a &#8216;preponderance of evidence,'&#8221; according to a statement from the school to ProPublica.</p> <p>The Citadel is a storied public college based in Charleston, South Carolina, where students, known as cadets, get military instruction as well as traditional coursework. Many join the armed services after graduation.</p> <p>Freshman are dubbed &#8220;knobs&#8221; for their shaved haircuts. They go through what the school refers to as &#8220;strict indoctrination.&#8221; They are subordinate to upperclassmen. There have been <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/citadel-settles-suit-from-cadet-who-says-he-was-bound/article_8b5fbb32-dace-5866-9070-6b63268a6835.html" type="external">repeated</a> <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/news/hazing-remains-a-citadel-tradition-cadets-parents-question-effectiveness-of/article_69fd7bfd-90f3-5e9f-bdb7-f03fefa54ed0.html" type="external">hazing</a> <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/news/knob-beaten-officials-say/article_4098c243-cb92-5d66-ac1d-ef8c8c00061b.html" type="external">problems</a> <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/the-citadel-crawls-into-the-modern-era/article_b79e0ea2-08ee-5e81-a2e0-95fb0ad51bc0.html" type="external">for many</a> <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/citadel-cracking-down-on-hazing/article_a4ae5e6a-6fb3-5425-a80a-11f0ee181378.html" type="external">years</a>, and there was a <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/citadel-sued-again-over-reville-s-sex-abuse/article_626d4c93-2a31-584f-8f99-adeff58ef992.html" type="external">major</a> <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/news/haley-questions-the-citadel-s-role-in-reville-scandal/article_3256fcb9-44bf-5fc3-9be7-8d1e267bf723.html" type="external">scandal</a> <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/two-new-lawsuits-say-the-citadel-covered-up-skip-reville/article_b064ce6a-4fb6-5429-97cf-4dadefcf74d1.html" type="external">involving</a> sexual abuse at the school&#8217;s summer camp in the mid-2000s.</p> <p>The students who accused Munoz of assaults say that he abused his power as an upperclassman and student leader.</p> <p>Here is what one Citadel student <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688487-1-9-13-Statement.html" type="external">told police</a> about his encounters with Munoz in 2009 and 2010 during his freshman year:</p> <p>&#8220;Munoz coerced threatened and convinced me to allow inappropriate touching, grabbing, and kissing by leading me to believe it was what I needed to do to gain acceptance in the corps of cadets. He threatened to call my upperclassmen who would be upset if I did not comply with him.&#8221;</p> <p>The student told police he and Munoz would sometimes return to campus early and stay at the home of a Citadel professor, where &#8220;during the night Munoz would enter my room and continue the touching.&#8221;</p> <p>Another student who was a freshman in 2011 traveled with Munoz, then a senior, as part of the Republican Society trip to the annual CPAC event in Washington. The student later <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688548-10-26-12-Statement.html" type="external">said in a statement</a> to police that Munoz had jumped on him two times. In one incident, after the freshman was caught with alcohol, Munoz informed the younger student that he would not be citing him for the violation, then came into the freshman&#8217;s hotel room:</p> <p>&#8220;I was groggy, [Munoz] jumped on me, I felt jerking and bouncing on my back, I threw my elbow up which threw him off the bed to the floor.&#8221;</p> <p>A third student, who met Munoz through the Republican Society, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688552-10-2-12-Statement.html" type="external">described</a> Munoz setting up a series of meetings with him alone in Munoz&#8217;s room to talk about how to get leadership positions in campus organizations.</p> <p>&#8220;He instructed me to sit on his bed during these meetings. &#8230; After a few meetings he began to rub my leg with his hand. He moved his hand under my shorts and the first time I pushed his hand off my leg he said he was just playing and that he did it with his other knobs so I shouldn&#8217;t mind. I had seen this in the past and when I asked my classmates about the interaction, they said when they resisted, he yelled at them for not trusting him and Mr. Munoz made them stay longer in his room.&#8221;</p> <p>In another meeting, Munoz &#8220;put his other hand down my underwear until I again pushed him away, but he did not stop. He said as a new leader I had to learn to trust other leaders on the team and this was how I should show him I trusted him.&#8221; Munoz said &#8220;he read the Bible and knew what it said and I should not question his love of God. He continued to rub my leg and rub my private area. &#8230; He said this needed to stay between us and dismissed me.&#8221;</p> <p>The first incident reported to the school took place in April 2009. As later <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688553-April-2009-Incident.html" type="external">recounted</a> by a state police investigator, Munoz, then a sophomore, and a freshman were at an off-campus house watching TV and consensually spooning. The freshman later woke up in the middle of the night, &#8220;thinking he was having a wet dream, but it was Munoz on top of him with fully body contact, kissing him with his tongue in his mouth. Munoz had his left hand down [the other student&#8217;s] shorts touching his penis.&#8221;</p> <p>The following year, in February 2010, the student reported that incident to a Citadel official, Sexual Assault Response Coordinator Janet Shealy. The reporting student told Shealy he didn&#8217;t &#8220;want to do anything but informal,&#8221; according to her <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688292-Citadel-Incident-Report-2-11-10.html#document/p4" type="external">notes</a>.</p> <p>School officials set up a mediation session in which Munoz and the other student met in a conference room. In that meeting, according to <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688292-Citadel-Incident-Report-2-11-10.html#document/p4" type="external">Shealy&#8217;s notes</a>, Munoz &#8220;said it was consensual and that accuser started it.&#8221; The other student left &#8220;upset,&#8221; saying that Munoz had &#8220;lied.&#8221;</p> <p>Shealy and another Citadel official, Col. Christopher &#8220;Hawk&#8221; Moore, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688304-Shealy-Email-3-12-10.html" type="external">met with</a> Munoz again to tell him there would be no disciplinary action taken. Munoz was warned and told to write a statement about what happened.</p> <p>Experts on campus sexual assault questioned how The Citadel handled that initial report.</p> <p>&#8220;The school has the responsibility to keep people safe on campus,&#8221; said Colby Bruno, an attorney at <a href="https://www.victimrights.org/vrlc-staff" type="external">Victim Rights Law Center</a>. &#8220;The school should have investigated this more thoroughly. Instead of investigation they went to this mediation.&#8221;</p> <p>Bruno pointed out that the federal government&#8217;s guidance on how schools should respond to sexual assault under federal civil rights law <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3678043-2001-Title-IX-Guidance.html#document/p30" type="external">explicitly says</a> that even voluntary mediation is not appropriate in assault cases.</p> <p>&#8220;Sexual assault is about power and control,&#8221; Bruno said. &#8220;You can&#8217;t sit two people down who have an imbalance of control and power to have a balanced mediation.&#8221;</p> <p>Citadel spokeswoman Keelor said in a statement that the school&#8217;s policy on mediation differs from the federal guidance &#8220;because it was developed under the direction of the Department of Justice and the federal courts during the school&#8217;s transition to coeducation&#8221; in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/29/us/citadel-bowing-to-court-says-it-will-admit-women.html" type="external">1996</a>.</p> <p>Keelor said after the 2010 assault report &#8220;the college conducted an investigation.&#8221; She said the school could not give details about any specific case. But she said in <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3690969-Citadel-Investigation-Explanation.html" type="external">a statement</a> that generally an &#8220;informal investigation&#8221; would include interviewing both students and providing options for support services. The statement <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3690984-Citadel-Statement-on-Sexual-Assault-Education.html" type="external">also details how</a> the Citadel requires sexual assault prevention classes for each year of a student&#8217;s time at the school.</p> <p>Shealy, The Citadel&#8217;s sexual assault response coordinator, declined to comment.</p> <p>Bruno said a thorough investigation would include speaking to potential witnesses or people who had seen Munoz or the other student soon after the alleged assault.</p> <p>When more students came forward in fall 2012 &#8212; more than a year after Munoz graduated &#8212; The Citadel <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688438-Brandenburg-Email-9-17-12.html" type="external">referred the case</a> to the state police, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. The school also sent a campus-wide email notifying students of the allegations and banned Munoz, then an alumnus, from campus.</p> <p>One student said in a statement to campus police that he had come forward so long after what happened because he had heard of other incidents and &#8220;I want this school to be safe from sexual predators.&#8221;</p> <p>Over the course of several months, police interviewed the five alleged victims, who said they were willing to press charges. (None of them responded to our requests for comment.) The incidents were classified variously as forcible fondling, sexual battery and simple assault.</p> <p>In March 2013, the state police referred the case to the office of the Charleston County prosecutor, <a href="http://www.scsolicitor9.org/" type="external">Solicitor Scarlett Wilson</a>. A week after receiving the nearly 200-page case file, the prosecutor said in a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3688286-Solicitor-Wilson-Letter-3-15-13.html" type="external">letter</a> to police that her office would not seek indictments against Munoz because &#8220;there is no probable cause that he committed a crime prosecutable in General Sessions Court.&#8221;</p> <p>Wilson&#8217;s office did not respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>In 2014, according to The Citadel, Munoz requested that the school review its decision to ban him from campus. That&#8217;s when the school conducted its own investigation and found that &#8220;certain assaults likely occurred.&#8221;</p> <p>Later that year, the school partially rescinded the no-trespass order, &#8220;permitting general access to public facilities and events, but no direct cadet interactions.&#8221; Asked why, the school pointed to the prosecutor&#8217;s decision not to seek indictments.</p> <p>Savage, Munoz&#8217;s lawyer, said in his statement: &#8220;Steven Munoz, a graduate of the Corp with a sterling reputation for honesty, integrity and all Corp values, was used as a whipping boy in an attempt by the institution to change its shameful image shaped by its ignorance of the conduct of Skip ReVille and Michael Arpaio.&#8221; <a href="http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/skip-reville-was-unstoppable-until-a-mother-found-him-out/Content?oid=4094572" type="external">ReVille</a> and <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/arpaio-sentenced-to-years-citadel-grad-pleaded-guilty-in-carjackingpolice/article_3619b3fe-4222-5211-aa59-45165e16555d.html" type="external">Arpaio</a> were at the center of widely covered Citadel sexual assault and child abuse scandals.</p> <p>At the time two of the allegations against Munoz surfaced in 2012, Savage told The Post and Courier newspaper that the allegations were not only <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/archives/ex-cadet-s-lawyer-claims-political/article_96a4c00e-3d58-5787-986e-0af6fe198cf1.html" type="external">false, but also politically motivated</a>. Savage claimed that an unnamed Citadel employee &#8212; who was also the mother of one of the alleged victims &#8212; had released information on the allegations because she disliked Munoz&#8217;s conservative politics. Savage declined our request to provide details to substantiate his claim.</p> <p>Savage also criticized the investigation of the case, saying that &#8220;several cadets complained that they were being pressured to provide misleading statements.&#8221; They were &#8220;pressured to report interactions that the cadets considered typical barracks banter as if they felt it was inappropriate,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>When asked for details, Savage provided the name of one student, who Savage said was a witness, not a victim. The student is not cited as a witness in the nearly 200-page police case file, and was not immediately available for comment.</p> <p>Savage also criticized the school&#8217;s investigation, saying he was not given enough time to provide witnesses or statements.</p> <p>Since Munoz graduated, he has been president of a Charleston-based political consulting firm called American Southern Group, according to his <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmunoz/" type="external">LinkedIn profile</a>. The Trump campaign paid the firm tens of thousands of dollars for &#8220;event consulting,&#8221; according to disclosure <a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00580100/1135946/sb/23" type="external">filings</a>.</p> <p>Munoz was then hired to work on Trump&#8217;s inaugural committee.</p> <p>He joined the State Department on Jan. 25, a spokesperson confirmed. The agency declined to comment further.</p> <p>During the Obama administration, vetting of potential political appointees like Munoz was extensive. A possible hire would be thoroughly examined by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel before being offered a job. That would include everything from a Google search to running a person&#8217;s name through criminal records and news databases.</p> <p>Any significant negative media reports or criminal accusations would lead a file to be flagged for further scrutiny by White House lawyers, according to a former staffer in the office who vetted Obama appointees. Sexual assault allegations would be a serious flag. In the Obama years, candidates under consideration for jobs were passed over because of, for example, a drunk driving case or for being a registered lobbyist.</p> <p>President Trump&#8217;s personnel office is being run by a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/this-beltway-insider-is-in-charge-of-hiring-for-the-trump-administration-its-taking-awhile/2017/04/18/06febf20-1b08-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.05dac4aa7694" type="external">Johnny DeStefano</a>. But not much is known about how the office checks the backgrounds of political appointees. The White House didn&#8217;t respond to a request for comment about details of its vetting process.</p> <p>April 2009: Alleged assault of Student #1 occurs.</p> <p>November 2009-May 2010: Alleged assaults of Student #2 occur.</p> <p>February 2010: Student #1 reports assault to The Citadel.</p> <p>February-March 2010: School officials meet with Munoz and Student #1 for mediation. Officials warn Munoz but take no disciplinary action.</p> <p>April 2010: Alleged assault of Student #3 occurs.</p> <p>February 2011: Alleged assault of Student #4 occurs.</p> <p>March-April 2011: Alleged assault of Student #5 occurs.</p> <p>May 2011: Munoz graduates.</p> <p>September 2012: After receiving more reports of past alleged assaults, The Citadel refers case to state police. The school bans Munoz, now an alumnus, from campus.</p> <p>March 2013: After an investigation of over five months, state police send case file to the office of the prosecutor, Solicitor Scarlett Wilson.</p> <p>March 2013: Prosecutor declines to seek indictments.</p> <p>2014: Munoz requests that school review no trespass order. The Citadel &#8220;conducted an investigation, interviewing complainants and witnesses. Based upon a &#8216;preponderance of evidence,&#8217; it was concluded that certain assaults likely occurred,&#8221; according to a spokesperson.</p> <p>Later in 2014, the no-trespass order was partially rescinded, allowing Munoz to attend public events at the college, but limiting interactions with students.</p> <p>ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.</p>

Trump Administration Hires Official Whom Five Citadel Students Accused of Sexual Assault

https://truthdig.com/articles/trump-administration-hires-official-whom-five-citadel-students-accused-of-sexual-assault/

2017-05-04

4left

By Justin Elliott ProPublica amp160 amp160 Steve Munoz left has been appointed to the State Department by the Trump administration Munoz8217s Facebook A political appointee hired by the Trump administration for a significant State Department role was accused of multiple sexual assaults as a student several years ago at The Citadel military college Steven Munoz was hired by the Trump administration as assistant chief of visits running an office of up to 10 staffers charged with the sensitive work of organizing visits of foreign heads of state to the US That includes arranging meetings with the president At The Citadel five male freshmen alleged that Munoz used his positions as an upperclassman class president and head of the campus Republican Society to grope them In one incident a student reported waking up with Munoz on top of him kissing him and grabbing his genitals In another on a trip to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC a student said that Munoz jumped on him in bed and he 8220felt jerking and bouncing on my back8221 An investigation by The Citadel later found that 8220certain assaults likely occurred8221 A local prosecutor reviewed the case and declined to seek an indictment Munoz8217s hiring raises questions about the Trump administration8217s vetting of political appointees which has been both slow and spotty with multiple incidents of staff being fired only weeks into their jobs including for disloyalty to Trump The White House didn8217t respond to a request for comment Munoz a Miami native worked as a political consultant in South Carolina after graduating from The Citadel in 2011 He was publicly reported to be under investigation the following year around the time he was working for Rick Santorum8217s presidential campaign Stories from that time which outline some but not all of the allegations against Munoz are easy to find via a simple Google search Details of the case drawn from an extensive previously unreported police case file also raise questions about The Citadel8217s response to the alleged string of assaults according to experts in campus sexual assault After one student reported to a school official in 2010 that Munoz had sexually assaulted him The Citadel didn8217t discipline Munoz Instead it gave him a warning Over the next year and a half Munoz allegedly assaulted four other students Those incidents weren8217t reported until well after Munoz graduated in 2011 Munoz referred questions to his lawyer the prominent Charleston defense attorney Andy Savage who denied the allegations 8220I believe that certain disgruntled cadets made exaggerated claims of wrongdoing concerning Munoz8217s participation in boorish behavior that was historically tacitly approved if not encouraged by the Institution8221 Savage saidamp160 Upon graduation The Citadel gave Munoz an award for 8220leadership sound character and service to others8221 The citation said he could 8220always be counted upon to help classmates who need assistance and to mentor younger cadets adjusting to life at The Citadel8221 A Citadel spokeswoman Kim Keelor said the committee that gave the award would not have known about the 2010 allegation because of privacy law Keelor said of the case overall 8220The college proceeded thoughtfully in addressing the reports in accordance with its policy and related processes and with great concern for those involved and the protection of their privacy8221 When more students came forward the year after Munoz graduated The Citadel banned him from campus and referred the case to state police who did an extensive investigation When The Citadel later conducted its investigation it interviewed complainants and witnesses and concluded in 2014 that assaults occurred 8220based upon a 8216preponderance of evidence8221 according to a statement from the school to ProPublica The Citadel is a storied public college based in Charleston South Carolina where students known as cadets get military instruction as well as traditional coursework Many join the armed services after graduation Freshman are dubbed 8220knobs8221 for their shaved haircuts They go through what the school refers to as 8220strict indoctrination8221 They are subordinate to upperclassmen There have been repeated hazing problems for many years and there was a major scandal involving sexual abuse at the school8217s summer camp in the mid2000s The students who accused Munoz of assaults say that he abused his power as an upperclassman and student leader Here is what one Citadel student told police about his encounters with Munoz in 2009 and 2010 during his freshman year 8220Munoz coerced threatened and convinced me to allow inappropriate touching grabbing and kissing by leading me to believe it was what I needed to do to gain acceptance in the corps of cadets He threatened to call my upperclassmen who would be upset if I did not comply with him8221 The student told police he and Munoz would sometimes return to campus early and stay at the home of a Citadel professor where 8220during the night Munoz would enter my room and continue the touching8221 Another student who was a freshman in 2011 traveled with Munoz then a senior as part of the Republican Society trip to the annual CPAC event in Washington The student later said in a statement to police that Munoz had jumped on him two times In one incident after the freshman was caught with alcohol Munoz informed the younger student that he would not be citing him for the violation then came into the freshman8217s hotel room 8220I was groggy Munoz jumped on me I felt jerking and bouncing on my back I threw my elbow up which threw him off the bed to the floor8221 A third student who met Munoz through the Republican Society described Munoz setting up a series of meetings with him alone in Munoz8217s room to talk about how to get leadership positions in campus organizations 8220He instructed me to sit on his bed during these meetings 8230 After a few meetings he began to rub my leg with his hand He moved his hand under my shorts and the first time I pushed his hand off my leg he said he was just playing and that he did it with his other knobs so I shouldn8217t mind I had seen this in the past and when I asked my classmates about the interaction they said when they resisted he yelled at them for not trusting him and Mr Munoz made them stay longer in his room8221 In another meeting Munoz 8220put his other hand down my underwear until I again pushed him away but he did not stop He said as a new leader I had to learn to trust other leaders on the team and this was how I should show him I trusted him8221 Munoz said 8220he read the Bible and knew what it said and I should not question his love of God He continued to rub my leg and rub my private area 8230 He said this needed to stay between us and dismissed me8221 The first incident reported to the school took place in April 2009 As later recounted by a state police investigator Munoz then a sophomore and a freshman were at an offcampus house watching TV and consensually spooning The freshman later woke up in the middle of the night 8220thinking he was having a wet dream but it was Munoz on top of him with fully body contact kissing him with his tongue in his mouth Munoz had his left hand down the other student8217s shorts touching his penis8221 The following year in February 2010 the student reported that incident to a Citadel official Sexual Assault Response Coordinator Janet Shealy The reporting student told Shealy he didn8217t 8220want to do anything but informal8221 according to her notes School officials set up a mediation session in which Munoz and the other student met in a conference room In that meeting according to Shealy8217s notes Munoz 8220said it was consensual and that accuser started it8221 The other student left 8220upset8221 saying that Munoz had 8220lied8221 Shealy and another Citadel official Col Christopher 8220Hawk8221 Moore met with Munoz again to tell him there would be no disciplinary action taken Munoz was warned and told to write a statement about what happened Experts on campus sexual assault questioned how The Citadel handled that initial report 8220The school has the responsibility to keep people safe on campus8221 said Colby Bruno an attorney at Victim Rights Law Center 8220The school should have investigated this more thoroughly Instead of investigation they went to this mediation8221 Bruno pointed out that the federal government8217s guidance on how schools should respond to sexual assault under federal civil rights law explicitly says that even voluntary mediation is not appropriate in assault cases 8220Sexual assault is about power and control8221 Bruno said 8220You can8217t sit two people down who have an imbalance of control and power to have a balanced mediation8221 Citadel spokeswoman Keelor said in a statement that the school8217s policy on mediation differs from the federal guidance 8220because it was developed under the direction of the Department of Justice and the federal courts during the school8217s transition to coeducation8221 in 1996 Keelor said after the 2010 assault report 8220the college conducted an investigation8221 She said the school could not give details about any specific case But she said in a statement that generally an 8220informal investigation8221 would include interviewing both students and providing options for support services The statement also details how the Citadel requires sexual assault prevention classes for each year of a student8217s time at the school Shealy The Citadel8217s sexual assault response coordinator declined to comment Bruno said a thorough investigation would include speaking to potential witnesses or people who had seen Munoz or the other student soon after the alleged assault When more students came forward in fall 2012 8212 more than a year after Munoz graduated 8212 The Citadel referred the case to the state police the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division The school also sent a campuswide email notifying students of the allegations and banned Munoz then an alumnus from campus One student said in a statement to campus police that he had come forward so long after what happened because he had heard of other incidents and 8220I want this school to be safe from sexual predators8221 Over the course of several months police interviewed the five alleged victims who said they were willing to press charges None of them responded to our requests for comment The incidents were classified variously as forcible fondling sexual battery and simple assault In March 2013 the state police referred the case to the office of the Charleston County prosecutor Solicitor Scarlett Wilson A week after receiving the nearly 200page case file the prosecutor said in a letter to police that her office would not seek indictments against Munoz because 8220there is no probable cause that he committed a crime prosecutable in General Sessions Court8221 Wilson8217s office did not respond to requests for comment In 2014 according to The Citadel Munoz requested that the school review its decision to ban him from campus That8217s when the school conducted its own investigation and found that 8220certain assaults likely occurred8221 Later that year the school partially rescinded the notrespass order 8220permitting general access to public facilities and events but no direct cadet interactions8221 Asked why the school pointed to the prosecutor8217s decision not to seek indictments Savage Munoz8217s lawyer said in his statement 8220Steven Munoz a graduate of the Corp with a sterling reputation for honesty integrity and all Corp values was used as a whipping boy in an attempt by the institution to change its shameful image shaped by its ignorance of the conduct of Skip ReVille and Michael Arpaio8221 ReVille and Arpaio were at the center of widely covered Citadel sexual assault and child abuse scandals At the time two of the allegations against Munoz surfaced in 2012 Savage told The Post and Courier newspaper that the allegations were not only false but also politically motivated Savage claimed that an unnamed Citadel employee 8212 who was also the mother of one of the alleged victims 8212 had released information on the allegations because she disliked Munoz8217s conservative politics Savage declined our request to provide details to substantiate his claim Savage also criticized the investigation of the case saying that 8220several cadets complained that they were being pressured to provide misleading statements8221 They were 8220pressured to report interactions that the cadets considered typical barracks banter as if they felt it was inappropriate8221 he said When asked for details Savage provided the name of one student who Savage said was a witness not a victim The student is not cited as a witness in the nearly 200page police case file and was not immediately available for comment Savage also criticized the school8217s investigation saying he was not given enough time to provide witnesses or statements Since Munoz graduated he has been president of a Charlestonbased political consulting firm called American Southern Group according to his LinkedIn profile The Trump campaign paid the firm tens of thousands of dollars for 8220event consulting8221 according to disclosure filings Munoz was then hired to work on Trump8217s inaugural committee He joined the State Department on Jan 25 a spokesperson confirmed The agency declined to comment further During the Obama administration vetting of potential political appointees like Munoz was extensive A possible hire would be thoroughly examined by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel before being offered a job That would include everything from a Google search to running a person8217s name through criminal records and news databases Any significant negative media reports or criminal accusations would lead a file to be flagged for further scrutiny by White House lawyers according to a former staffer in the office who vetted Obama appointees Sexual assault allegations would be a serious flag In the Obama years candidates under consideration for jobs were passed over because of for example a drunk driving case or for being a registered lobbyist President Trump8217s personnel office is being run by a former Republican Capitol Hill staffer Johnny DeStefano But not much is known about how the office checks the backgrounds of political appointees The White House didn8217t respond to a request for comment about details of its vetting process April 2009 Alleged assault of Student 1 occurs November 2009May 2010 Alleged assaults of Student 2 occur February 2010 Student 1 reports assault to The Citadel FebruaryMarch 2010 School officials meet with Munoz and Student 1 for mediation Officials warn Munoz but take no disciplinary action April 2010 Alleged assault of Student 3 occurs February 2011 Alleged assault of Student 4 occurs MarchApril 2011 Alleged assault of Student 5 occurs May 2011 Munoz graduates September 2012 After receiving more reports of past alleged assaults The Citadel refers case to state police The school bans Munoz now an alumnus from campus March 2013 After an investigation of over five months state police send case file to the office of the prosecutor Solicitor Scarlett Wilson March 2013 Prosecutor declines to seek indictments 2014 Munoz requests that school review no trespass order The Citadel 8220conducted an investigation interviewing complainants and witnesses Based upon a 8216preponderance of evidence8217 it was concluded that certain assaults likely occurred8221 according to a spokesperson Later in 2014 the notrespass order was partially rescinded allowing Munoz to attend public events at the college but limiting interactions with students ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative newsroom

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<p>(Adds background; GECAS plans for 2018)</p> <p>By Conor Humphries</p> <p>DUBLIN, Jan 24 (Reuters) - General Electric Co is looking at alternative structuring arrangements, not a break-up of the company, the head of its aircraft finance unit, GECAS, Alec Burger said on Wednesday.</p> <p>GE Chief Executive John Flannery last week said the conglomerate was looking at restructuring options &#8220;including separately traded assets&#8221; after it announced more than $11 billion in charges from its long-term care insurance portfolio and new U.S. tax laws.</p> <p>&#8220;I would like to say that John&#8217;s comments were not looking at breaking up GE, but looking at different structuring alternatives - and there is a difference,&#8221; Burger told the Air Finance conference in Dublin, without giving details. &#8220;I think his view is also that there will continue to be a General Electric company.&#8221;</p> <p>Flannery has already announced plans to eliminate thousands of jobs and cut $3.5 billion in costs as he tries to solve problems he inherited when he became CEO on Aug. 1, including falling sales of power turbines, a build-up of inventory and declining profit margins in some businesses. His turnaround effort is still likely to take a year or more to play out.</p> <p>GE&#8217;s fourth-quarter $11 billion charge includes $6.2 billion after tax for reevaluation of insurance assets, $3.4 billion for U.S. tax changes and $1.8 billion for impairments of energy financing at GE Capital.</p> <p>Burger on Wednesday reiterated that GE was unlikely to divest itself from its GECAS, the world&#8217;s second-largest aircraft lessor.</p> <p>&#8220;When you compare the stability of earnings, the consistency of earnings and return of capital, that&#8217;s definitely not lost on John Flannery, it&#8217;s not lost on the board,&#8221; Burger said.</p> <p>GECAS this year aims to increase its portfolio from a value of $43 billion to $44 billion or $45 billion, but it does not have immediate plans for large new aircraft orders, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;Over the last couple of years we have put in significant orders both for new (Boeing 737) MAXs and new (Airbus) NEOs. So I think this is a year when we are in what I would call consolidation mode,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>GECAS plans to deploy between $6 billion and $7 billion of capital this year and would consider acquiring aircraft portfolios from other lessors, he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Conor Humphries, editing by Louise Heavens</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its $62.5 billion buy of U.S. peer Monsanto, the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry.</p> European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir <p>The tie-up is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world&#8217;s seed and pesticides market.</p> <p>Driven by shifting weather patterns, competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy, Dow and Dupont, and ChemChina [CNNCC.UL] and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector.</p> <p>Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals.</p> <p>Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals, worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data, which can tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilize and pick crops based on algorithms.</p> <p>The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF, confirming a Reuters story on Feb. 28.</p> <p>&#8220;Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds, pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger,&#8221; European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;In particular, we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same.&#8221;</p> European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir <p>Vestager said the Commission, which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal, had been thorough by examining more than 2,000 different product markets and 2.7 million internal documents to produce a 1,285-page ruling.</p> <p>Bayer has already reached a deal to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 5.9 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to BASF and to give it a license to its global digital farming data. It will also divest its vegetable seeds business to BASF.</p> <p>The Commission is due to rule on the BASF deal by April 16.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Online campaigns group Avaaz criticized the EU approval.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a marriage made in hell. The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal, and caved in to lobbying to create a mega-corporation which will dominate our food supply,&#8221; Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said.</p> <p>U.S.-incorporated Avaaz, funded by its members, is active in climate change, poverty, conflict and corruption issues.</p> <p>The Greens grouping in the European Parliament echoed the sentiment, saying smaller players in the agriculture industry needed to be helped too.</p> <p>&#8220;The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated, giving a handful of massive firms a stranglehold on food production. Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse,&#8221; Greens spokesman Bart Staes said.</p> <p>China has given conditional approval to the Bayer, Monsanto deal, which has won a green light in Brazil. It is currently being reviewed by U.S. and Russian antitrust authorities.</p> <p>Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, editing by Robin Emmott and David Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us said at a bankruptcy court hearing on Tuesday that it was working hard to maximize payments to suppliers and lenders, as it starts to shutter 735 big-box toy stores across the United States.</p> FILE PHOTO - People pass by Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York, U.S., March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo <p>More than 50 suppliers, including Barbie maker Mattel ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">MAT.O</a>) and Lego, have objected in some form to the proceedings by the storied toy retailer to liquidate its U.S. business, putting 30,000 jobs at risk.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us had been trying to reorganize under U.S. Chapter 11 but last week said those efforts had failed and it was quickly running out of cash. It is also winding down its U.K business, but is looking for a buyer for operations in Canada, Europe and Asia.</p> <p>Some trade vendors are demanding the company return any unpaid inventory rather than selling it and using going out of business sales to pay secured lenders and bankruptcy lawyers, at their cost, court papers showed.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re making every effort to make sure (trade vendors) will be paid in full,&#8221; Lazard&#8217;s David Kurtz, who is advising Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us, testified at a hearing at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Virginia.</p> <p>The company is seeking approval for a March 26 deadline for bids for each of its foreign businesses, minus U.K., followed by an auction on March 29.</p> <p>It is also seeking approval for a series of U.S. liquidation procedures including a halt to more than $450 million in supplier payments as part of a plan that experts told Reuters could cause many small toy makers to disappear.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us was the last remaining specialty toy retailer in the United States. Hundreds of companies relied on its big-box stores as a showcase for both innovative toys as well as classics.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MAT.O" type="external">Mattel Inc</a> 12.965 MAT.O Nasdaq -0.00 (-0.04%) MAT.O <p>Under trade agreements, vendors were required to ship goods to Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us on unsecured trade credit.</p> <p>In a court filing, Lego said any &#8220;wind-down must be implemented in a manner that is fair and equitable to all&#8221; of the company&#8217;s creditors.</p> <p>The U.S. Trustee, a bankruptcy watchdog, has also objected, saying that while it is &#8220;resigned&#8221; to the company&#8217;s future, it is concerned about certain of the procedures and relief proposed as part of the liquidation.</p> <p>Toys &#8216;R&#8217; Us financial advisor Bill Kosturos of Alvarez &amp;amp; Marsal was also testifying at the hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips, which could run into Wednesday.</p> <p>Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates at its first policy meeting under Chairman Jerome Powell and may signal more hikes are coming in response to tax cuts and government spending that could further stoke a robust U.S. economy.</p> FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers the semi-annual Monetary Policy Report to the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo <p>The U.S. central bank projected late last year that it would lift rates three times in 2018, but some investors believe the fiscal stimulus and recent hints of inflation pressures will push policymakers to add an additional increase to the mix.</p> <p>(Interactive graphic of Fed's forecasts, dove-hawk divide: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2gsUVwB" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2gsUVwB</a>)</p> <p>The Fed is scheduled to issue its latest policy statement at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). Powell is due to hold a press conference half an hour later.</p> <p>Fed officials have speculated in recent weeks that the stimulus could drive more Americans into an already tight labor market and lift inflation to the central bank&#8217;s 2 percent target, or much above that level if the economy gets too hot.</p> <p>Yet analysts are split over whether the Fed, which is wary of an early misstep under its new leadership, will raise policy tightening expectations until more price pressures are clearly evident, especially given outside risks to the economy such as a possible global trade war.</p> <p>&#8220;A prudent institution would probably give more weight to the facts, at least for the moment,&#8221; Roberto Perli, a former Fed economist who is now a partner at Cornerstone Macro, wrote in a note predicting the Fed would stick with three projected rate increases for this year.</p> <p>The Fed&#8217;s drive to stimulate the world&#8217;s largest economy in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession is drawing to a close. It raised its benchmark overnight lending rate three times last year, to a range of 1.25 to 1.50 percent, as joblessness fell and economic growth accelerated. It is expected to raise rates by another 25 basis points on Wednesday.</p> <p>With futures markets anticipating another increase in June, Powell's Fed could leave its rate outlook unchanged until then to see how the economy absorbs the $1.8 trillion in stimulus expected from the Trump administration tax cuts and planned spending. (Graphic of Fed forecasts: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2gsUVwB" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2gsUVwB</a>)</p> POWELL IN SPOTLIGHT <p>While recent home sales and retail spending data have been on the weak side, the overall economic picture has brightened this year. Inflation has strengthened after remaining below the Fed&#8217;s target for more than five years, and there have been more hints of wage gains.</p> <p>The central bank is expected on Wednesday to boost its economic growth forecasts for the next few years, and could project that the unemployment rate will fall well below the current 4.1 percent, which is seen as a low but stable level.</p> <p>The blockbuster U.S. jobs report for February could further convince Powell and his colleagues that the Fed&#8217;s stated &#8220;gradual&#8221; rate hike path could carry on longer than previously thought. A sign of this would be a rise in the Fed&#8217;s longer-term, or neutral, expected policy rate, currently at 2.8 percent.</p> <p>Powell, who took over from former Fed chief Janet Yellen in early February, triggered a brief global market selloff when he told U.S. lawmakers late last month that he had grown more confident in the economic outlook. Yet worries over a new hawkish central bank are likely overblown given Powell&#8217;s cautious, consensus-building approach.</p> <p>Seven of the 15 Fed policymakers who will update their forecasts on Wednesday have recently indicated the fiscal stimulus could boost their expectations for the economy, rate hikes, or for both, according to an analysis of public statements.</p> <p>New York Fed President William Dudley, one of the most influential policymakers, said four rate increases this year would still be considered &#8220;gradual,&#8221; noting that fiscal policy is turning &#8220;quite stimulative.&#8221;</p> <p>The comments suggested a shift &#8220;towards a potentially faster pace of tightening ... particularly with tax cuts now implemented and with an additional fiscal boost from federal spending arriving this year,&#8221; Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a note predicting that the Fed would signal on Wednesday that rates will rise four times this year.</p> <p>Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Cloud storage firm Dropbox Inc [DBX.O] raised the price range for its initial public offering by $2 on Wednesday as investors bid strongly for the first big tech IPO this year ahead of final pricing expected on Thursday.</p> The DropBox logo is seen in this illustration photo July 28, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration <p>The company now expects the offering to be priced between $18 and $20 per share, up from its previous range of $16 to $18. <a href="http://bit.ly/2ubO2LU" type="external">bit.ly/2ubO2LU</a></p> <p>The new price range suggests the company, co-founded by Andrew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, could have a market capitalization of up to $8.7 billion based on a fully diluted share count and the IPO could raise up to $720 million.</p> <p>&#8220;The initial file price range was quite conservative relative to the valuations placed on comparable firms, such as Box,&#8221; said Jay Ritter, an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida.</p> <p>Despite the bump in price, Dropbox&#8217;s market cap is still below the $10 billion valuation that it commanded in a 2014 private funding round.</p> <p>Dropbox&#8217;s IPO is being closely watched by the investment world to gauge market appetite for tech unicorns - young companies valued at more than $1 billion.</p> <p>The last big unicorn to go public was Snapchat-owner Snap Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SNAP.N" type="external">SNAP.N</a>), whose shares have cratered since the company&#8217;s high-profile IPO last year. The stock closed a dollar below its IPO price of $17 on Tuesday.</p> <p>Dropbox&#8217;s IPO comes on the heels of a strong market debut of cyber security firm Zscaler Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ZS.O" type="external">ZS.O</a>), which had also raised the size and price of its offering.</p> <p>Music streaming service Spotify, valued at roughly $19 billion in the private markets, has also filed for a direct listing and will debut on the NYSE on April 3.</p> <p>Dropbox&#8217;s increase in IPO price range bodes well for Spotify, said Michael Carvin, Chief Executive of personal finance technology firm SmartAsset. &#8220;They will be watching this closely as they look towards their own debut.&#8221;</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SNAP.N" type="external">Snap Inc</a> 16.689 SNAP.N New York Stock Exchange +0.69 (+4.31%) SNAP.N ZS.O GOOGL.O MSFT.O AMZN.O <p>A direct listing lets investors and employees sell shares without the company raising new capital or hiring a Wall Street bank or broker to underwrite the offering.</p> <p>In contrast, San Francisco-based Dropbox has hired JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, among others, for its IPO.</p> <p>The order book for the offering closes at midday on Wednesday and the pricing is expected on Thursday.</p> <p>Sources told Reuters on Monday that the offering was oversubscribed.</p> <p>The company has 500 million users and competes with Alphabet Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) Google, Microsoft Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MSFT.O" type="external">MSFT.O</a>), Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>). Box Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BOX.N" type="external">BOX.N</a>) is its main rival.</p> <p>The stock will start trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.</p> <p>Reporting by Sweta Singh, additional reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

UPDATE 1-GE break-up not on cards, says head of aircraft finance unit Bayer wins EU approval for $62.5 billion Monsanto buy Toys 'R' Us says 'making every effort' to pay vendors Powell's Fed likely to raise rates, may upgrade 2018 outlook Dropbox raises IPO price range by $2 on strong demand

https://reuters.com/article/aviation-finance-gecas/update-1-ge-break-up-not-on-cards-says-head-of-aircraft-finance-unit-idUSL8N1PJ2M8

2018-01-24

2least

Adds background GECAS plans for 2018 By Conor Humphries DUBLIN Jan 24 Reuters General Electric Co is looking at alternative structuring arrangements not a breakup of the company the head of its aircraft finance unit GECAS Alec Burger said on Wednesday GE Chief Executive John Flannery last week said the conglomerate was looking at restructuring options 8220including separately traded assets8221 after it announced more than 11 billion in charges from its longterm care insurance portfolio and new US tax laws 8220I would like to say that John8217s comments were not looking at breaking up GE but looking at different structuring alternatives and there is a difference8221 Burger told the Air Finance conference in Dublin without giving details 8220I think his view is also that there will continue to be a General Electric company8221 Flannery has already announced plans to eliminate thousands of jobs and cut 35 billion in costs as he tries to solve problems he inherited when he became CEO on Aug 1 including falling sales of power turbines a buildup of inventory and declining profit margins in some businesses His turnaround effort is still likely to take a year or more to play out GE8217s fourthquarter 11 billion charge includes 62 billion after tax for reevaluation of insurance assets 34 billion for US tax changes and 18 billion for impairments of energy financing at GE Capital Burger on Wednesday reiterated that GE was unlikely to divest itself from its GECAS the world8217s secondlargest aircraft lessor 8220When you compare the stability of earnings the consistency of earnings and return of capital that8217s definitely not lost on John Flannery it8217s not lost on the board8221 Burger said GECAS this year aims to increase its portfolio from a value of 43 billion to 44 billion or 45 billion but it does not have immediate plans for large new aircraft orders he said 8220Over the last couple of years we have put in significant orders both for new Boeing 737 MAXs and new Airbus NEOs So I think this is a year when we are in what I would call consolidation mode8221 he said GECAS plans to deploy between 6 billion and 7 billion of capital this year and would consider acquiring aircraft portfolios from other lessors he said Reporting by Conor Humphries editing by Louise Heavens Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELS Reuters German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its 625 billion buy of US peer Monsanto the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commissions headquarters in Brussels Belgium March 21 2018 REUTERSFrancois Lenoir The tieup is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world8217s seed and pesticides market Driven by shifting weather patterns competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy Dow and Dupont and ChemChina CNNCCUL and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data which can tell farmers how and when to till sow spray fertilize and pick crops based on algorithms The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF confirming a Reuters story on Feb 28 8220Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger8221 European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement 8220In particular we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same8221 European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commissions headquarters in Brussels Belgium March 21 2018 REUTERSFrancois Lenoir Vestager said the Commission which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal had been thorough by examining more than 2000 different product markets and 27 million internal documents to produce a 1285page ruling Bayer has already reached a deal to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 59 billion euros 72 billion to BASF and to give it a license to its global digital farming data It will also divest its vegetable seeds business to BASF The Commission is due to rule on the BASF deal by April 16 Slideshow 2 Images Online campaigns group Avaaz criticized the EU approval 8220This is a marriage made in hell The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal and caved in to lobbying to create a megacorporation which will dominate our food supply8221 Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said USincorporated Avaaz funded by its members is active in climate change poverty conflict and corruption issues The Greens grouping in the European Parliament echoed the sentiment saying smaller players in the agriculture industry needed to be helped too 8220The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated giving a handful of massive firms a stranglehold on food production Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse8221 Greens spokesman Bart Staes said China has given conditional approval to the Bayer Monsanto deal which has won a green light in Brazil It is currently being reviewed by US and Russian antitrust authorities Reporting by Foo Yun Chee editing by Robin Emmott and David Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Toys 8216R8217 Us said at a bankruptcy court hearing on Tuesday that it was working hard to maximize payments to suppliers and lenders as it starts to shutter 735 bigbox toy stores across the United States FILE PHOTO People pass by Toys R Us store at Times Square in New York US March 9 2018 REUTERSEduardo MunozFile Photo More than 50 suppliers including Barbie maker Mattel MATO and Lego have objected in some form to the proceedings by the storied toy retailer to liquidate its US business putting 30000 jobs at risk Toys 8216R8217 Us had been trying to reorganize under US Chapter 11 but last week said those efforts had failed and it was quickly running out of cash It is also winding down its UK business but is looking for a buyer for operations in Canada Europe and Asia Some trade vendors are demanding the company return any unpaid inventory rather than selling it and using going out of business sales to pay secured lenders and bankruptcy lawyers at their cost court papers showed 8220We8217re making every effort to make sure trade vendors will be paid in full8221 Lazard8217s David Kurtz who is advising Toys 8216R8217 Us testified at a hearing at US Bankruptcy Court in Richmond Virginia The company is seeking approval for a March 26 deadline for bids for each of its foreign businesses minus UK followed by an auction on March 29 It is also seeking approval for a series of US liquidation procedures including a halt to more than 450 million in supplier payments as part of a plan that experts told Reuters could cause many small toy makers to disappear Toys 8216R8217 Us was the last remaining specialty toy retailer in the United States Hundreds of companies relied on its bigbox stores as a showcase for both innovative toys as well as classics Mattel Inc 12965 MATO Nasdaq 000 004 MATO Under trade agreements vendors were required to ship goods to Toys 8216R8217 Us on unsecured trade credit In a court filing Lego said any 8220winddown must be implemented in a manner that is fair and equitable to all8221 of the company8217s creditors The US Trustee a bankruptcy watchdog has also objected saying that while it is 8220resigned8221 to the company8217s future it is concerned about certain of the procedures and relief proposed as part of the liquidation Toys 8216R8217 Us financial advisor Bill Kosturos of Alvarez ampamp Marsal was also testifying at the hearing before US Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips which could run into Wednesday Reporting by Tracy Rucinski Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates at its first policy meeting under Chairman Jerome Powell and may signal more hikes are coming in response to tax cuts and government spending that could further stoke a robust US economy FILE PHOTO Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivers the semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington US February 27 2018 REUTERSJoshua RobertsFile Photo The US central bank projected late last year that it would lift rates three times in 2018 but some investors believe the fiscal stimulus and recent hints of inflation pressures will push policymakers to add an additional increase to the mix Interactive graphic of Feds forecasts dovehawk divide tmsnrtrs2gsUVwB The Fed is scheduled to issue its latest policy statement at 2 pm EDT 1800 GMT Powell is due to hold a press conference half an hour later Fed officials have speculated in recent weeks that the stimulus could drive more Americans into an already tight labor market and lift inflation to the central bank8217s 2 percent target or much above that level if the economy gets too hot Yet analysts are split over whether the Fed which is wary of an early misstep under its new leadership will raise policy tightening expectations until more price pressures are clearly evident especially given outside risks to the economy such as a possible global trade war 8220A prudent institution would probably give more weight to the facts at least for the moment8221 Roberto Perli a former Fed economist who is now a partner at Cornerstone Macro wrote in a note predicting the Fed would stick with three projected rate increases for this year The Fed8217s drive to stimulate the world8217s largest economy in the wake of the 20072009 financial crisis and recession is drawing to a close It raised its benchmark overnight lending rate three times last year to a range of 125 to 150 percent as joblessness fell and economic growth accelerated It is expected to raise rates by another 25 basis points on Wednesday With futures markets anticipating another increase in June Powells Fed could leave its rate outlook unchanged until then to see how the economy absorbs the 18 trillion in stimulus expected from the Trump administration tax cuts and planned spending Graphic of Fed forecasts tmsnrtrs2gsUVwB POWELL IN SPOTLIGHT While recent home sales and retail spending data have been on the weak side the overall economic picture has brightened this year Inflation has strengthened after remaining below the Fed8217s target for more than five years and there have been more hints of wage gains The central bank is expected on Wednesday to boost its economic growth forecasts for the next few years and could project that the unemployment rate will fall well below the current 41 percent which is seen as a low but stable level The blockbuster US jobs report for February could further convince Powell and his colleagues that the Fed8217s stated 8220gradual8221 rate hike path could carry on longer than previously thought A sign of this would be a rise in the Fed8217s longerterm or neutral expected policy rate currently at 28 percent Powell who took over from former Fed chief Janet Yellen in early February triggered a brief global market selloff when he told US lawmakers late last month that he had grown more confident in the economic outlook Yet worries over a new hawkish central bank are likely overblown given Powell8217s cautious consensusbuilding approach Seven of the 15 Fed policymakers who will update their forecasts on Wednesday have recently indicated the fiscal stimulus could boost their expectations for the economy rate hikes or for both according to an analysis of public statements New York Fed President William Dudley one of the most influential policymakers said four rate increases this year would still be considered 8220gradual8221 noting that fiscal policy is turning 8220quite stimulative8221 The comments suggested a shift 8220towards a potentially faster pace of tightening particularly with tax cuts now implemented and with an additional fiscal boost from federal spending arriving this year8221 Jan Hatzius chief US economist at Goldman Sachs wrote in a note predicting that the Fed would signal on Wednesday that rates will rise four times this year Reporting by Jonathan Spicer Editing by Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Cloud storage firm Dropbox Inc DBXO raised the price range for its initial public offering by 2 on Wednesday as investors bid strongly for the first big tech IPO this year ahead of final pricing expected on Thursday The DropBox logo is seen in this illustration photo July 28 2017 REUTERSThomas WhiteIllustration The company now expects the offering to be priced between 18 and 20 per share up from its previous range of 16 to 18 bitly2ubO2LU The new price range suggests the company cofounded by Andrew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007 could have a market capitalization of up to 87 billion based on a fully diluted share count and the IPO could raise up to 720 million 8220The initial file price range was quite conservative relative to the valuations placed on comparable firms such as Box8221 said Jay Ritter an IPO expert and professor at the University of Florida Despite the bump in price Dropbox8217s market cap is still below the 10 billion valuation that it commanded in a 2014 private funding round Dropbox8217s IPO is being closely watched by the investment world to gauge market appetite for tech unicorns young companies valued at more than 1 billion The last big unicorn to go public was Snapchatowner Snap Inc SNAPN whose shares have cratered since the company8217s highprofile IPO last year The stock closed a dollar below its IPO price of 17 on Tuesday Dropbox8217s IPO comes on the heels of a strong market debut of cyber security firm Zscaler Inc ZSO which had also raised the size and price of its offering Music streaming service Spotify valued at roughly 19 billion in the private markets has also filed for a direct listing and will debut on the NYSE on April 3 Dropbox8217s increase in IPO price range bodes well for Spotify said Michael Carvin Chief Executive of personal finance technology firm SmartAsset 8220They will be watching this closely as they look towards their own debut8221 Snap Inc 16689 SNAPN New York Stock Exchange 069 431 SNAPN ZSO GOOGLO MSFTO AMZNO A direct listing lets investors and employees sell shares without the company raising new capital or hiring a Wall Street bank or broker to underwrite the offering In contrast San Franciscobased Dropbox has hired JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs among others for its IPO The order book for the offering closes at midday on Wednesday and the pricing is expected on Thursday Sources told Reuters on Monday that the offering was oversubscribed The company has 500 million users and competes with Alphabet Inc8217s GOOGLO Google Microsoft Corp MSFTO Amazoncom Inc AMZNO Box Inc BOXN is its main rival The stock will start trading on the Nasdaq on Friday Reporting by Sweta Singh additional reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru Editing by Anil DSilva and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>(Reuters) - S&amp;amp;P Global Ratings on Friday raised Greece&#8217;s foreign and local currency long-term sovereign credit ratings to &#8216;B&#8217; from &#8216;B-&#8216;, citing improvements in the finances and fiscal outlook for the debt-laden south-eastern European nation.</p> A man walks among seaside as a greek flag flutters at Faliro suburb near Athens, Greece, September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Costas Baltas <p>"Our ratings on Greece are supported by the unusually low cost of servicing much of its general government debt burden and official creditors' ongoing support in the form of very long-dated concessional loans and debt relief," S&amp;amp;P said in a statement. ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2DoTxLu" type="external">bit.ly/2DoTxLu</a>)</p> <p>The credit ratings agency, which maintained a &#8216;positive&#8217; outlook on Greece, said it could consider a further rating upgrade if the country builds up liquidity buffers to pre-finance future government debt repayments upon its exit from the third Economic Adjustment Program.</p> <p>Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D'Souza</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SINGAPORE/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China on Wednesday announced plans to place a 25 percent tariff on certain U.S. aircraft, in a move expected to affect some older Boeing Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>) narrowbody models, according to documents from China&#8217;s Ministry of Commerce and the U.S. manufacturer.</p> FILE PHOTO: Boeing employees are pictured in front of a 737 MAX 8 produced for Southwest Airlines as Boeing celebrates the 10,000th 737 to come off the production line in Renton, Washington, U.S., March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Redmond/File Photo <p>But although several analysts said China had spared the newer 737 MAX - key to future Boeing profits - the impact remained uncertain because of a lack of detail in the announcement and the fact that not all airplane characteristics are published.</p> <p>Boeing shares fell as much as 6 percent after China hit back at U.S. tariffs with the announcement of duties on key U.S. imports including soybeans, cars, beef and chemicals, as well as planes.</p> <p>These include aircraft with an &#8220;empty weight&#8221; of between 15,000 kg and 45,000 kg, or 15 to 45 tonnes.</p> <p>Depending on how &#8220;empty weight&#8221; is defined, this leaves a question mark over the fate of Boeing&#8217;s new big-selling 737 MAX 8 jet - though the larger MAX 9 and MAX 10 could be spared.</p> <p>The stakes are high. The United States exported $15 billion of aircraft to China in 2016, ranking equally with agricultural products like soybeans as the biggest category of goods.</p> <p>Several definitions of &#8220;empty weight&#8221; are used in the aircraft industry and the ministry document gave no explanation.</p> <p>Two industry experts said the rules most likely refer to the &#8220;manufacturer&#8217;s empty weight,&#8221; or the core aircraft structure.</p> <p>But manufacturers are usually shy about publishing this number because of its commercial sensitivity, while they do give estimates for the slightly higher &#8220;operating empty weight,&#8221; which includes airline crew and some equipment, but not fuel.</p> <p>Yet even this number can vary according to an airline&#8217;s specific requirements, so it is seen as a guideline.</p> <p>Whatever category is used, the range appears comfortably to include the current-generation 737 narrowbody aircraft, which is in the midst of being replaced by the newer 737 MAX.</p> 737 MAX 8 IMPACT UNCLEAR <p>Boeing documents available online list the &#8220;operating empty weight&#8221; (OEW) of the 737-700, 737-800 and 737-900 well within the tariff zone at 37.6 to 42.9 tonnes.</p> <p>The &#8220;manufacturer&#8217;s empty weight&#8221; (MEW) would typically be about 1-1.5 tonnes lower, two airplane appraisal experts said.</p> <p>In contrast, the newer 737 MAX 8 is heavier than its predecessor, with an operating empty weight of 45,070 kg, according to a Boeing document published in August 2017.</p> <p>Depending on how rules are applied, this leaves it hovering close to the tariff border line and potentially still exposed to sanctions if the more conservative &#8220;manufacturer&#8221; scale is used.</p> <p>&#8220;I would expect a non-variable weight (MEW) to be used as the benchmark, as OEW will vary from operator to operator,&#8221; said Stuart Hatcher, chief operating officer of UK-based advisory firm IBA, adding this would pull the jet below 45 tonnes.</p> <p>Even if the more generous OEW weight format were used, not all 737 MAX 8s might escape as some use lighter layouts. &#8220;A 70kg drop is pretty easy once you get into the realms of low-cost carriers or standard single-class operations,&#8221; Hatcher added.</p> <p>Boeing said in a statement that while the United States and China have both outlined positions that could harm the global aerospace industry, nothing drastic has happened yet.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">Boeing Co</a> 327.44 BA.N New York Stock Exchange -3.38 (-1.02%) BA.N AIR.PA 600029.SS 600115.SS GD.N <p>&#8220;We will continue in our own efforts to proactively engage both governments and build on the recent assurances by U.S. and Chinese leaders that productive talks are ongoing,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>Chinese airlines have been on a buying spree from Boeing and rival Airbus ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AIR.PA" type="external">AIR.PA</a>) as air travel grows.</p> <p>Boeing and China&#8217;s Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) are expected to open a 737 completion center in the coastal city of Zhoushan to install interiors and paint liveries this year.</p> <p>The bulk of published 737 orders from Chinese that have not yet been delivered are for the newer MAX version.</p> <p>However, China Southern Airlines ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=600029.SS" type="external">600029.SS</a>), Ruili Airlines and Okay Airways each have two 737-800s on order and Xiamen Airlines has four more, according to the Boeing order book.</p> <p>Asked if the airline&#8217;s plane buying plans could shift away from Boeing, China Eastern Airlines Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=600115.SS" type="external">600115.SS</a>) Chief Executive Ma Xulun said on Wednesday &#8220;it&#8217;s too early to say, we will keep an eye on the situation of the China-U.S. trade war.&#8221;</p> <p>Apart from some Boeing jets, the Gulfstream G650, a large corporate jet manufactured by General Dynamics Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GD.N" type="external">GD.N</a>), also falls into the weight range targeted for tariffs.</p> <p>Gulfstream declined to comment.</p> <p>Reporting by Jamie Freed in SINGAPORE and Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; additional reporting by Tim Hepher in PARIS, Alwyn Scott in NEW YORK; Writing by Jamie Freed and Tim Hepher; Editing by Mark Potter, Susan Fenton and Tom Brown</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAO PAULO (Reuters) - China&#8217;s move to slap tariffs on U.S. farm products sent Brazil soy premiums surging to historic highs on expectations of higher export demand on Wednesday, but traders and analysts warned that Latin America could not entirely replace U.S. production.</p> FILE PHOTO: Workers harvest soybeans in a farm in the city of Primavera do Leste in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso January 29, 2013. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File photo <p>China responded to U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s plans to impose $50 billion in tariffs on its goods by announcing tariffs of equal value on U.S. imports, including a wide range of agricultural products.</p> <p>Goods produced in South America made the list, including soy, beef, tobacco, cotton and frozen orange juice.</p> <p>That raised the prospect that China would seek to shift large parts of its agricultural sourcing from the United States to the region. Alternate global suppliers of goods ranging from televisions to vaccines could be unexpected beneficiaries of Trump&#8217;s policies.</p> FILE PHOTO: A truck is loaded with soybeans in a farm in the city of Primavera do Leste in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso February 7, 2013. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File photo <p>Already record high premiums for Brazilian soy over Chicago prices were driven up 37 percent in response, the biggest one-day increase since January 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;I have never seen a premium this high in history, this in a way will more than compensate for the bloodbath in Chicago,&#8221; said Aedson Pereira, an analyst at IEG-FNP, a subsidiary of Informa Economics.</p> <p>Chicago soybeans futures contracts for May delivery fell 2 percent, closing at around $10.15 per bushel, retracing some losses after a 5 percent plunge.</p> <p>But Latin America does not produce enough to compensate fully for U.S. output - and that may help push China and the United States to settle the dispute, according to Pereira and other analysts.</p> <p>Brazil already sells roughly 75 percent of its soybean exports to China and with increasing domestic demand is unlikely to be able to free up much more for export.</p> <p>&#8220;Even if Brazil sells its entire export volume to China, the Asian country would be short of 30 million tonnes,&#8221; said one Brazil-based analyst, who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media.</p> FILE PHOTO: A close-up photo shows soy plants in a farm in Sao Desiderio, Bahia state, Brazil March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Roberto Samora <p>South America&#8217;s other top producer Argentina already sent almost 90 percent of its 7.3 million soybeans to China last year, while smaller Paraguay does not have diplomatic relations with China.</p> <p>The outlook for soybean prices was already robust after Argentina supplies took a hit from drought, while China&#8217;s demand has continued to rise.</p> <p>Rodrigo Oliveira, chief strategist of Agro Financeira, a small trading and hedging firm based in the state of Tocantins, said his firm was looking to take advantage, buying up more Brazilian soybeans compared to last year.</p> <p>&#8220;When China is going to buy from Brazilian trading (firms), they will have to pay us the Brazilian premium,&#8221; said Oliveira. &#8220;This is going to be huge for Brazilian soybean prices.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Ana Mano and Roberto Samora; Additional reporting by Maximilian Heath and Nicolas Misculin in BUENOS AIRES, Daniela Desantis in ASUNCION, Karl Plume in CHICAGO and Jose Roberto Gomes in SAO PAULO; Writing by Jake Spring, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese products, but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import: government debt.</p> <p>In a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration&#8217;s plan for 25 percent duties on $50 billion of Chinese imports, China hit back with its own list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals. But officials signaled no interest for now in bringing their vast holdings of U.S. Treasuries to the fight.</p> <p>China held around $1.17 trillion of Treasuries as of the end of January, making it the largest of America's foreign creditors and the No. 2 overall owner of U.S. government bonds after the Federal Reserve. Any move by China to chop its Treasury portfolio could inflict significant harm on U.S. finances and global investors, driving bond yields higher and making it more costly to finance the federal government.(Graphic: Top U.S. trade partners &amp;amp; foreign holders of Treasuries - <a href="http://reut.rs/2CUqQB0" type="external">reut.rs/2CUqQB0</a>)</p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2CUqQB0" type="external" /> <p>Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital LP, said China can use its Treasury holdings as leverage, but only if they keep holding them.</p> <p>&#8220;It is more effective as a threat. If they sell, they have no threat,&#8221; said Gundlach, known as Wall Street&#8217;s Bond King.</p> <p>&#8220;It would only escalate the situation and eliminate their leverage.&#8221;</p> <p>Prices on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes slipped on Wednesday, giving back earlier gains on the trade news. Their yield edged up to about 2.81 percent Wednesday afternoon.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Treasury holdings have dipped in recent months, declining by about $30 billion from $1.20 trillion last August, and they are down about 11 percent from their record high above $1.3 trillion in late 2013, according to U.S government data. In all, foreign governments own $4 trillion, or more than a quarter, of the $14.7 trillion in Treasury securities outstanding.</p> <p>Asked by a reporter on Wednesday if China would reduce its U.S. Treasury holdings in retaliation, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao reiterated China&#8217;s long-standing policy regarding its foreign exchange reserves, saying it is a responsible investor and that it will safeguard their value.</p> <p>China&#8217;s foreign exchange reserves, the world&#8217;s largest, stood at about $3.13 trillion at the end of February, with roughly a third of it held in Treasuries.</p> <p>&#8220;If they wanted to pull the nuclear switch, if they committed to dumping Treasuries, it would have an immediate and temporary impact on money markets in the United States,&#8221; said Jeff Klingelhofer, a portfolio manager who oversees more than $6 billion at Thornburg Investment Management Inc. &#8220;But I think it is a bigger hit to the sustainability of what they&#8217;re trying to accomplish.&#8221;</p> <p>Brad Setser, senior fellow for international economics&amp;#160;at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said China can sell Treasuries and buy lower-yielding European or Japanese debt.</p> <p>But the effect would likely be to strengthen the yuan against the dollar, weakening the relative desirability of its exports, analysts said. The sale could also tank the value of the Treasuries China retains, with nothing to show for the aggression.</p> <p>More likely, if China wanted to turn up the heat it would let the yuan depreciate against the U.S. dollar, according to CFR&#8217;s Setser, a move that could kneecap the Trump administration&#8217;s goal of jump-starting U.S. manufacturing. The yuan weakened by about 0.25 percent on Wednesday but remains near its strongest in two and a half years.</p> <p>Even if the likelihood of a change in Chinese policy regarding its Treasuries portfolio remains low, investors are sensitive to the risk any big shift would pose to world financial markets, where Treasuries are a global benchmark asset.</p> <p>A January report that China might halt its purchases of Treasuries forced yields higher, but China disputed the news and said it was only diversifying its foreign exchange reserves to safeguard their value.</p> <p>Reporting by Kate Duguid and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Dan Burns and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BERLIN (Reuters) - A decline in diesel-car sales in Germany accelerated in March, the first month after a court ruled that cities can ban vehicles to tackle pollution.</p> <p>Sales of diesel-powered cars in Europe&#8217;s largest auto market plunged by a quarter last month, Germany&#8217;s KBA automotive watchdog said on Wednesday, after declining 19.5 percent in February and 17.6 percent in January.</p> <p>Germany&#8217;s top administrative court ruled in February that cities have the right to ban the most polluting diesel vehicles as they struggle to improve air quality damaged by nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, known to cause respiratory disease.</p> <p>To stem the plunge in diesel sales, carmakers including Volkswagen ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VOWG_p.DE" type="external">VOWG_p.DE</a>) and Daimler have extended incentives for buyers of new diesel cars.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VOWG_p.DE" type="external">Volkswagen AG</a> 163.8 VOWG_p.DE Xetra +2.30 (+1.42%) VOWG_p.DE <p>But fears among drivers of possible restrictions and short supplies of vehicles with the latest Euro 6d generation of diesel engines will weigh on sales in coming months, analysts said.</p> <p>&#8220;For the time being, new diesel sales will not recover,&#8221; Peter Fuss, a senior partner and automotive specialist in concultancy EY&#8217;s German practice, said on Wednesday.</p> <p>&#8220;Rather, the downtrend looks set to continue in coming months,&#8221; Fuss added, predicting the share of diesels of Germany&#8217;s overall auto market would sink towards 25 percent from the current 31 percent.</p> <p>A global backlash against diesel cars broke out after Volkswagen (VW) admitted in 2015 to cheating U.S. exhaust tests. The scandal has spread across the industry and boosted investment in electric vehicles.</p> <p>The KBA also said total registrations in Germany fell 3.4 percent to 347,433 passenger cars, because of two fewer selling days, though first-quarter registrations increased 4 percent to 878,611 vehicles, confirming what an auto industry source told Reuters.</p> <p>Sales in Spain were up 2.1 percent in March but fell 5.8 percent in Italy, with diesel registrations continuing their decline in both markets, according to analysts.</p> <p>Reporting by Andreas Cremer; Editing by Maria Sheahan and David Holmes</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

S&P upgrades Greece by one notch to 'B' Jet weight puzzle to determine China tariff impact on Boeing Brazil soy exporters set to win big from U.S.-China trade spat China, holding Treasuries, keeps 'nuclear option' in U.S. trade war German diesel car sales plunge steepens in March

https://reuters.com/article/us-greece-ratings-s-p/sp-upgrades-greece-by-one-notch-to-b-idUSKBN1F82PD

2018-01-19

2least

Reuters SampampP Global Ratings on Friday raised Greece8217s foreign and local currency longterm sovereign credit ratings to 8216B8217 from 8216B8216 citing improvements in the finances and fiscal outlook for the debtladen southeastern European nation A man walks among seaside as a greek flag flutters at Faliro suburb near Athens Greece September 1 2017 REUTERSCostas Baltas Our ratings on Greece are supported by the unusually low cost of servicing much of its general government debt burden and official creditors ongoing support in the form of very longdated concessional loans and debt relief SampampP said in a statement bitly2DoTxLu The credit ratings agency which maintained a 8216positive8217 outlook on Greece said it could consider a further rating upgrade if the country builds up liquidity buffers to prefinance future government debt repayments upon its exit from the third Economic Adjustment Program Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru Editing by Savio DSouza Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SINGAPORESHANGHAI Reuters China on Wednesday announced plans to place a 25 percent tariff on certain US aircraft in a move expected to affect some older Boeing Co BAN narrowbody models according to documents from China8217s Ministry of Commerce and the US manufacturer FILE PHOTO Boeing employees are pictured in front of a 737 MAX 8 produced for Southwest Airlines as Boeing celebrates the 10000th 737 to come off the production line in Renton Washington US March 13 2018 REUTERSJason RedmondFile Photo But although several analysts said China had spared the newer 737 MAX key to future Boeing profits the impact remained uncertain because of a lack of detail in the announcement and the fact that not all airplane characteristics are published Boeing shares fell as much as 6 percent after China hit back at US tariffs with the announcement of duties on key US imports including soybeans cars beef and chemicals as well as planes These include aircraft with an 8220empty weight8221 of between 15000 kg and 45000 kg or 15 to 45 tonnes Depending on how 8220empty weight8221 is defined this leaves a question mark over the fate of Boeing8217s new bigselling 737 MAX 8 jet though the larger MAX 9 and MAX 10 could be spared The stakes are high The United States exported 15 billion of aircraft to China in 2016 ranking equally with agricultural products like soybeans as the biggest category of goods Several definitions of 8220empty weight8221 are used in the aircraft industry and the ministry document gave no explanation Two industry experts said the rules most likely refer to the 8220manufacturer8217s empty weight8221 or the core aircraft structure But manufacturers are usually shy about publishing this number because of its commercial sensitivity while they do give estimates for the slightly higher 8220operating empty weight8221 which includes airline crew and some equipment but not fuel Yet even this number can vary according to an airline8217s specific requirements so it is seen as a guideline Whatever category is used the range appears comfortably to include the currentgeneration 737 narrowbody aircraft which is in the midst of being replaced by the newer 737 MAX 737 MAX 8 IMPACT UNCLEAR Boeing documents available online list the 8220operating empty weight8221 OEW of the 737700 737800 and 737900 well within the tariff zone at 376 to 429 tonnes The 8220manufacturer8217s empty weight8221 MEW would typically be about 115 tonnes lower two airplane appraisal experts said In contrast the newer 737 MAX 8 is heavier than its predecessor with an operating empty weight of 45070 kg according to a Boeing document published in August 2017 Depending on how rules are applied this leaves it hovering close to the tariff border line and potentially still exposed to sanctions if the more conservative 8220manufacturer8221 scale is used 8220I would expect a nonvariable weight MEW to be used as the benchmark as OEW will vary from operator to operator8221 said Stuart Hatcher chief operating officer of UKbased advisory firm IBA adding this would pull the jet below 45 tonnes Even if the more generous OEW weight format were used not all 737 MAX 8s might escape as some use lighter layouts 8220A 70kg drop is pretty easy once you get into the realms of lowcost carriers or standard singleclass operations8221 Hatcher added Boeing said in a statement that while the United States and China have both outlined positions that could harm the global aerospace industry nothing drastic has happened yet Boeing Co 32744 BAN New York Stock Exchange 338 102 BAN AIRPA 600029SS 600115SS GDN 8220We will continue in our own efforts to proactively engage both governments and build on the recent assurances by US and Chinese leaders that productive talks are ongoing8221 it said Chinese airlines have been on a buying spree from Boeing and rival Airbus AIRPA as air travel grows Boeing and China8217s Commercial Aircraft Corp of China COMAC are expected to open a 737 completion center in the coastal city of Zhoushan to install interiors and paint liveries this year The bulk of published 737 orders from Chinese that have not yet been delivered are for the newer MAX version However China Southern Airlines 600029SS Ruili Airlines and Okay Airways each have two 737800s on order and Xiamen Airlines has four more according to the Boeing order book Asked if the airline8217s plane buying plans could shift away from Boeing China Eastern Airlines Corp 600115SS Chief Executive Ma Xulun said on Wednesday 8220it8217s too early to say we will keep an eye on the situation of the ChinaUS trade war8221 Apart from some Boeing jets the Gulfstream G650 a large corporate jet manufactured by General Dynamics Corp GDN also falls into the weight range targeted for tariffs Gulfstream declined to comment Reporting by Jamie Freed in SINGAPORE and Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI additional reporting by Tim Hepher in PARIS Alwyn Scott in NEW YORK Writing by Jamie Freed and Tim Hepher Editing by Mark Potter Susan Fenton and Tom Brown Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAO PAULO Reuters China8217s move to slap tariffs on US farm products sent Brazil soy premiums surging to historic highs on expectations of higher export demand on Wednesday but traders and analysts warned that Latin America could not entirely replace US production FILE PHOTO Workers harvest soybeans in a farm in the city of Primavera do Leste in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso January 29 2013 REUTERSPaulo WhitakerFile photo China responded to US President Donald Trump8217s plans to impose 50 billion in tariffs on its goods by announcing tariffs of equal value on US imports including a wide range of agricultural products Goods produced in South America made the list including soy beef tobacco cotton and frozen orange juice That raised the prospect that China would seek to shift large parts of its agricultural sourcing from the United States to the region Alternate global suppliers of goods ranging from televisions to vaccines could be unexpected beneficiaries of Trump8217s policies FILE PHOTO A truck is loaded with soybeans in a farm in the city of Primavera do Leste in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso February 7 2013 REUTERSPaulo WhitakerFile photo Already record high premiums for Brazilian soy over Chicago prices were driven up 37 percent in response the biggest oneday increase since January 2017 8220I have never seen a premium this high in history this in a way will more than compensate for the bloodbath in Chicago8221 said Aedson Pereira an analyst at IEGFNP a subsidiary of Informa Economics Chicago soybeans futures contracts for May delivery fell 2 percent closing at around 1015 per bushel retracing some losses after a 5 percent plunge But Latin America does not produce enough to compensate fully for US output and that may help push China and the United States to settle the dispute according to Pereira and other analysts Brazil already sells roughly 75 percent of its soybean exports to China and with increasing domestic demand is unlikely to be able to free up much more for export 8220Even if Brazil sells its entire export volume to China the Asian country would be short of 30 million tonnes8221 said one Brazilbased analyst who declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media FILE PHOTO A closeup photo shows soy plants in a farm in Sao Desiderio Bahia state Brazil March 21 2018 REUTERSRoberto Samora South America8217s other top producer Argentina already sent almost 90 percent of its 73 million soybeans to China last year while smaller Paraguay does not have diplomatic relations with China The outlook for soybean prices was already robust after Argentina supplies took a hit from drought while China8217s demand has continued to rise Rodrigo Oliveira chief strategist of Agro Financeira a small trading and hedging firm based in the state of Tocantins said his firm was looking to take advantage buying up more Brazilian soybeans compared to last year 8220When China is going to buy from Brazilian trading firms they will have to pay us the Brazilian premium8221 said Oliveira 8220This is going to be huge for Brazilian soybean prices8221 Reporting by Ana Mano and Roberto Samora Additional reporting by Maximilian Heath and Nicolas Misculin in BUENOS AIRES Daniela Desantis in ASUNCION Karl Plume in CHICAGO and Jose Roberto Gomes in SAO PAULO Writing by Jake Spring Editing by Rosalba OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1300 Chinese products but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import government debt In a titfortat response to the Trump administration8217s plan for 25 percent duties on 50 billion of Chinese imports China hit back with its own list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans planes cars beef and chemicals But officials signaled no interest for now in bringing their vast holdings of US Treasuries to the fight China held around 117 trillion of Treasuries as of the end of January making it the largest of Americas foreign creditors and the No 2 overall owner of US government bonds after the Federal Reserve Any move by China to chop its Treasury portfolio could inflict significant harm on US finances and global investors driving bond yields higher and making it more costly to finance the federal governmentGraphic Top US trade partners ampamp foreign holders of Treasuries reutrs2CUqQB0 Jeffrey Gundlach the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital LP said China can use its Treasury holdings as leverage but only if they keep holding them 8220It is more effective as a threat If they sell they have no threat8221 said Gundlach known as Wall Street8217s Bond King 8220It would only escalate the situation and eliminate their leverage8221 Prices on benchmark 10year US Treasury notes slipped on Wednesday giving back earlier gains on the trade news Their yield edged up to about 281 percent Wednesday afternoon China8217s Treasury holdings have dipped in recent months declining by about 30 billion from 120 trillion last August and they are down about 11 percent from their record high above 13 trillion in late 2013 according to US government data In all foreign governments own 4 trillion or more than a quarter of the 147 trillion in Treasury securities outstanding Asked by a reporter on Wednesday if China would reduce its US Treasury holdings in retaliation Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao reiterated China8217s longstanding policy regarding its foreign exchange reserves saying it is a responsible investor and that it will safeguard their value China8217s foreign exchange reserves the world8217s largest stood at about 313 trillion at the end of February with roughly a third of it held in Treasuries 8220If they wanted to pull the nuclear switch if they committed to dumping Treasuries it would have an immediate and temporary impact on money markets in the United States8221 said Jeff Klingelhofer a portfolio manager who oversees more than 6 billion at Thornburg Investment Management Inc 8220But I think it is a bigger hit to the sustainability of what they8217re trying to accomplish8221 Brad Setser senior fellow for international economicsamp160at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York said China can sell Treasuries and buy loweryielding European or Japanese debt But the effect would likely be to strengthen the yuan against the dollar weakening the relative desirability of its exports analysts said The sale could also tank the value of the Treasuries China retains with nothing to show for the aggression More likely if China wanted to turn up the heat it would let the yuan depreciate against the US dollar according to CFR8217s Setser a move that could kneecap the Trump administration8217s goal of jumpstarting US manufacturing The yuan weakened by about 025 percent on Wednesday but remains near its strongest in two and a half years Even if the likelihood of a change in Chinese policy regarding its Treasuries portfolio remains low investors are sensitive to the risk any big shift would pose to world financial markets where Treasuries are a global benchmark asset A January report that China might halt its purchases of Treasuries forced yields higher but China disputed the news and said it was only diversifying its foreign exchange reserves to safeguard their value Reporting by Kate Duguid and Trevor Hunnicutt Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan Editing by Dan Burns and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BERLIN Reuters A decline in dieselcar sales in Germany accelerated in March the first month after a court ruled that cities can ban vehicles to tackle pollution Sales of dieselpowered cars in Europe8217s largest auto market plunged by a quarter last month Germany8217s KBA automotive watchdog said on Wednesday after declining 195 percent in February and 176 percent in January Germany8217s top administrative court ruled in February that cities have the right to ban the most polluting diesel vehicles as they struggle to improve air quality damaged by nitrogen oxide NOx emissions known to cause respiratory disease To stem the plunge in diesel sales carmakers including Volkswagen VOWG_pDE and Daimler have extended incentives for buyers of new diesel cars Volkswagen AG 1638 VOWG_pDE Xetra 230 142 VOWG_pDE But fears among drivers of possible restrictions and short supplies of vehicles with the latest Euro 6d generation of diesel engines will weigh on sales in coming months analysts said 8220For the time being new diesel sales will not recover8221 Peter Fuss a senior partner and automotive specialist in concultancy EY8217s German practice said on Wednesday 8220Rather the downtrend looks set to continue in coming months8221 Fuss added predicting the share of diesels of Germany8217s overall auto market would sink towards 25 percent from the current 31 percent A global backlash against diesel cars broke out after Volkswagen VW admitted in 2015 to cheating US exhaust tests The scandal has spread across the industry and boosted investment in electric vehicles The KBA also said total registrations in Germany fell 34 percent to 347433 passenger cars because of two fewer selling days though firstquarter registrations increased 4 percent to 878611 vehicles confirming what an auto industry source told Reuters Sales in Spain were up 21 percent in March but fell 58 percent in Italy with diesel registrations continuing their decline in both markets according to analysts Reporting by Andreas Cremer Editing by Maria Sheahan and David Holmes Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>JOHANNESBURG, Jan 24 (Reuters) - South Africa&#8217;s headline consumer inflation quickened to 4.7 percent year-on-year in December from 4.6 percent in November, data from Statistics South Africa showed on Wednesday.</p> <p>On a month-on-month basis, inflation quickened to 0.5 percent in December from 0.1 percent in November.</p> <p>Core inflation, which excludes the prices of food, non-alcoholic beverages, petrol and energy, fell to 4.2 percent year-on-year in December from 4.4 percent in November, while on a month-on-month basis it quickened to 0.3 percent from 0.0 percent previously. (Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Joe Brock)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for mistakes his company made in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users and promised tougher steps to restrict developers&#8217; access to such information.</p> <p>The world&#8217;s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States about a whistleblower&#8217;s allegations that London-based political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed user information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.</p> <p>&#8220;This was a major breach of trust. I&#8217;m really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people&#8217;s data,&#8221; Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN, breaking a public silence since the scandal erupted at the weekend.</p> <p>Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook the company "made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it." ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2DHAlUJ" type="external">bit.ly/2DHAlUJ</a>)</p> <p>He said the social network planned to conduct an investigation of thousands of apps that have used Facebook&#8217;s platform, restrict developer access to data, and give members a tool that lets them to disable access to their Facebook data more easily.</p> <p>His plans did not represent a big reduction of advertisers&#8217; ability to use Facebook data, which is the company&#8217;s lifeblood.</p> <p>Zuckerberg said he was open to additional government regulation and happy to testify before the U.S. Congress if he was the right person.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not sure we shouldn&#8217;t be regulated,&#8221; he told CNN. &#8220;I actually think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than yes or no, should it be regulated? ... People should know who is buying the ads that they see on Facebook.&#8221;</p> <p>Zuckerberg said Facebook was committed to stopping interference in the U.S. midterm election in November and elections in India and Brazil.</p> INVESTOR FEARS <p>Facebook shares pared gains on Wednesday after Zuckerberg&#8217;s post, closing up 0.7 percent. The company has lost more than $45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days on investor fears that any failure by big tech firms to protect personal data could deter advertisers and users and invite tougher regulation.</p> <p>Zuckerberg told the New York Times in an interview published on Wednesday he had not seen a &#8220;meaningful number of people&#8221; deleting their accounts over the scandal.</p> <p>Facebook representatives, including Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman, met U.S. congressional staff for nearly two hours on Wednesday and planned to continue meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Facebook was unable to answer many questions, two aides who attended the briefing said.</p> Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the Alumni Exercises following the 366th Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder <p>Zuckerberg told the website Recode that fixes to protect users' data would cost "many millions of dollars." ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2IJbYJS" type="external">bit.ly/2IJbYJS</a>)</p> <p>The whistleblower who launched the scandal, Christopher Wylie, formerly of Cambridge Analytica, said on Twitter he had accepted invitations to testify before U.S. and UK lawmakers.</p> <p>The German government said Facebook must explain whether the personal data of the country&#8217;s 30 million users were protected from unlawful use by third parties, according to a report in the Funke group of German regional newspapers.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) &#8216;SCAPEGOAT&#8217; <p>On Tuesday, the board of Cambridge Analytica suspended its Chief Executive Alexander Nix, who was caught in a secret recording boasting that his company played a decisive role in Trump&#8217;s victory.</p> <p>However, the academic who provided the data disputed that on Wednesday.</p> <p>&#8220;I think what Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic, and they&#8217;ve made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you. But I think the reality is it&#8217;s not that,&#8221; psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, an academic at Cambridge University, told the BBC in an interview.</p> <p>Kogan, who gathered the data by running a survey app on Facebook, also said he was being made a scapegoat by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Both companies have blamed Kogan for alleged data misuse.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu/what-are-the-links-between-cambridge-analytica-and-a-brexit-campaign-group-idUSKBN1GX2IO" type="external">What are the links between Cambridge Analytica and a Brexit campaign group?</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-germany/germany-summons-facebook-over-user-data-safety-concerns-report-idUSKBN1GY006" type="external">Germany summons Facebook over user data safety concerns: report</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-brazil/brazil-prosecutors-open-investigation-into-cambridge-analytica-idUSKBN1GX35A" type="external">Brazil prosecutors open investigation into Cambridge Analytica</a> <p>Only 300,000 Facebook users responded to Kogan&#8217;s quiz, but that gave the researcher access to those people&#8217;s Facebook friends as well, who had not agreed to share information, producing details on 50 million users.</p> <p>Facebook has said it subsequently made changes that prevent people from sharing data about friends and maintains that no breach occurred because the original users gave permission. Critics say that it essentially was a breach because data of unsuspecting friends was taken.</p> <p>Analysts have raised concerns that the incident will reduce user engagement with Facebook, potentially lessening its clout with advertisers. Three Wall Street brokerages cut their price targets.</p> <p>&#8220;Investors now have to consider whether or not the company will conclude that it has grown in a manner that has proven to be untenable,&#8221; said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser.</p> <p>The company has risen more than 550 percent in value in the past five years.</p> <p>Reporting by David Ingram; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz and David Shepardson in WASHINGTON and Kate Holton in LONDON; Writing by Susan Thomas; Editing by Bill Rigby, Lisa Shumaker and Paul Tait</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy told magistrates who put him under formal investigation on Wednesday that accusations that he got illicit Libyan funding for his 2007 election campaign were lies that were making his life &#8220;hell&#8221;, Le Figaro newspaper said.</p> FILE PHOTO: Nicolas Sarkozy, former head of the Les Republicains political party, attends a Les Republicains (LR) public meeting in Les Sables d'Olonne, France, October 1, 2016. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo <p>The newspaper published a lengthy account of what it said was a declaration by Sarkozy, in power from 2007 until 2012, made to investigators who told him after two days in custody he was formally suspected of passive corruption and other offences.</p> <p>&#8220;This calumny has made my life a living hell since March 11, 2011,&#8221; the newspaper quoted the 63-year-old as having told the investigators. Prosecutors are looking into allegations that Sarkozy&#8217;s 2007 election campaign was aided by millions of euros in money from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.</p> <p>According to Le Figaro, Sarkozy said he was the victim of a destabilization campaign that began in March 2011, based on accusations from Tripoli and a Franco-Lebanese businessman who is also at the center of a judicial inquiry that began in 2013 but snowballed this week when Sarkozy was held for questioning.</p> <p>Reporting by Brian Love and Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Geert De Clercq</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China accused the United States of &#8220;repeatedly abusing&#8221; trade practices, as Beijing braced on Thursday for an imminent announcement from U.S. President Donald Trump slapping more tariffs on Chinese imports.</p> FILE PHOTO - Containers are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, in Shanghai, China September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo <p>The U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports worth as much as up to $60 billion are set to be unveiled later on Thursday, raising fears that the world&#8217;s two largest economies could be sliding toward a trade war.</p> <p>On Wednesday, the World Trade Organization ruled that Washington had not fully complied with a 2014 ruling against its anti-subsidy tariffs on various Chinese products ranging from solar panels and wind towers to steel cylinders and aluminum extrusions.</p> <p>The WTO ruling &#8220;proves that the U.S. side has violated WTO rules, repeatedly abused trade remedy measures, which has seriously damaged the fair and just nature of the international trade environment, and weakened the stability of the multilateral trading system,&#8221; China&#8217;s commerce ministry said late on Wednesday.</p> <p>The tariffs Trump is set to announce will be imposed under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act, following an intellectual property probe launched in August last year.</p> <p>Trump is accusing Beijing of compelling U.S. firms to transfer their intellectual property (IP) to China as a cost of doing business there.</p> <p>Trade wars are &#8220;good&#8221; and &#8220;easy to win&#8221;, said Trump, having made election campaign promises to get tough with China over its huge surplus with the United States.</p> <p>China has repeatedly said it has no wish to fight a trade war, but warned that it is ready if needed.</p> <p>&#8220;With regards to the Section 301 investigation, China has expressed its position on many occasions that we resolutely oppose this type of unilateral and protectionist action by the U.S.,&#8221; the Commerce Ministry said in a fresh statement on Thursday.</p> <p>&#8220;China will not sit idly by while legitimate rights and interests are hurt. We must take all necessary measures to firmly defend our rights and interests.&#8221;</p> <p>The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing has already prepared to strike back with tariffs aimed at Trump&#8217;s support base, including levies targeting U.S. agricultural exports.</p> &#8220;FOR TARIFFS SAKE&#8221; <p>U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Wednesday the tariffs would target China&#8217;s high-technology sector and there could also be restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States.</p> FILE PHOTO - A man rides a vehicle past containers at a port in Shanghai, China, February 17, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo <p>Other sectors like apparel could also be hit.</p> <p>Jacob Parker, Beijing-based vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council said the group wanted to know what action the U.S. administration wants China to take to improve protection for intellectual property, and over forced technology transfer.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really important for them to lay that out so that we have a strategy going forward and it&#8217;s not just tariffs for tariffs&#8217; sake.&#8221;</p> <p>Parker said China needs to adopt a tougher deterrent against counterfeiting and IP theft, and do away with joint venture and business licensing requirements that can be used to mandate technology transfers to gain market access.</p> <p>&#8220;At the moment, it&#8217;s very difficult for the two sides to sit down and talk because the Trump administration seems determined to go this way regardless of China&#8217;s maneuvers,&#8221; said He Weiwen, a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Beijing-based think tank.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BBY.N" type="external">Best Buy Co Inc</a> 68.44 BBY.N New York Stock Exchange -1.60 (-2.28%) BBY.N BA.N 600029.SS QCOM.O NXPI.O LIMITED IMPACT <p>The measures planned by Washington so far are expected to have a limited impact on China&#8217;s economy, which is far less dependent on exports than it was a decade ago.</p> <p>&#8220;Most Chinese corporates seems to be quite resilient against a potential trade war given the high share of domestic revenue,&#8221; said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis. &#8220;However, there are certain sectors which will be relatively more affected, such as information technology and consumer durables.&#8221;</p> <p>In a possible sign of what is to come, Best Buy Co Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BBY.N" type="external">BBY.N</a>), the largest U.S. consumer electronics retailer, has decided to stop buying smartphones from Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s Investors Service said the impact would be far greater if the United States significantly expands tariffs and throws in broad-ranging protectionist measures.</p> <p>Sectors with a large, direct exposure to the U.S. market, Moody&#8217;s said, included cork and wood products, furniture, office machines, household appliances, electrical equipment, road vehicles, telecommunications equipment, electrical machinery, apparel and footwear, animal oils and fats.</p> <p>Analysts said U.S. companies like Boeing Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>), which sell billions of dollars worth of planes to Chinese airlines, as well as deals which require Chinese approval could also become caught in the cross fire should a trade war break out.</p> <p>Boeing this week announced a $3.6 billion order from China Southern Airlines Co Ltd&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=600029.SS" type="external">600029.SS</a>) subsidiary Xiamen Airlines. Chip giant Qualcomm Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=QCOM.O" type="external">QCOM.O</a>) is still waiting for Chinese approval of its proposed $44 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors NV ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NXPI.O" type="external">NXPI.O</a>).</p> <p>U.S. electric carmaker Tesla Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O" type="external">TSLA.O</a>) is in long-running talks with Shanghai authorities to build a local manufacturing plant in the city, while Chinese state media have called for measures against U.S. soybean imports to China.</p> <p>Reporting by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI and Elias Glenn in BEIJING; Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global tech giants including Facebook and Twitter on Thursday expressed concern about a possible Singapore plan to bring in a new law to tackle the threat of fake news, saying sufficient rules are already in place.</p> FILE PHOTO: People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken in Warsaw, Poland, September 27, 2013. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo <p>Officials of Facebook, Twitter and Google attended a parliamentary hearing on how to counter the threat that Singapore said it was particularly vulnerable to due to its size, its role as a global financial hub and its ethnic and religious mix.</p> <p>They were among 79 people asked to speak in parliament over the eight days set for the hearing. The wealthy city state is among the countries looking to introduce legislation, so far unspecified, to rein in fake news, a trend that has stirred concern that such laws could be used to exert government control over the media.</p> <p>&#8220;We do not believe that legislation is the best approach to addressing the issue,&#8221; Alvin Tan, Facebook&#8217;s head of public policy for Southeast Asia, said in a written submission.</p> <p>&#8220;Singapore already has a variety of existing laws and regulations which address hate speech, defamation and the spreading of false news.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: A Facebook logo is seen at the Facebook Gather conference in Brussels, Belgium, January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo <p>Singapore ranks 151 among 180 countries rated in the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, a non-government group that promotes freedom of information.</p> <p>Lawmakers in the United States and Europe have called for probes into how Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to access data on 50 million users and use it to help the election campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine, California, U.S. August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo <p>Microblogging site Twitter also shared concerns about Singapore&#8217;s plans.</p> <p>&#8220;No single company, governmental or non-governmental actor, should be the arbiter of truth,&#8221; Kathleen Reen, Twitter&#8217;s director of Public Policy for Asia Pacific, said.</p> <p>A parliamentary panel set up to consider possible measures, including legislation, drew 164 written responses from the public, a record for reactions to such a committee on any issue.</p> <p>Many of the examples of fake news, cited in a Singapore government paper on deliberate online falsehoods published in January, came from abroad.</p> <p>Reporting by Fathin Ungku; Editing by Jack Kim and Nick Macfie</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

South Africa's CPI quickens to 4.7 percent year/year in December Zuckerberg apologizes for Facebook mistakes with user data, vows curbs Sarkozy says Libya funding accusations make his life 'hell' - paper China calls U.S. repeat abuser of world trade rules as tariffs loom Tech giants express concern over Singapore plan to fight fake news

https://reuters.com/article/safrica-cpi/south-africas-cpi-quickens-to-47-percent-year-year-in-december-idUSJ8N1KQ02D

2018-01-24

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JOHANNESBURG Jan 24 Reuters South Africa8217s headline consumer inflation quickened to 47 percent yearonyear in December from 46 percent in November data from Statistics South Africa showed on Wednesday On a monthonmonth basis inflation quickened to 05 percent in December from 01 percent in November Core inflation which excludes the prices of food nonalcoholic beverages petrol and energy fell to 42 percent yearonyear in December from 44 percent in November while on a monthonmonth basis it quickened to 03 percent from 00 percent previously Reporting by Olivia KumwendaMtambo Editing by Joe Brock Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for mistakes his company made in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users and promised tougher steps to restrict developers8217 access to such information The world8217s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States about a whistleblower8217s allegations that Londonbased political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed user information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016 8220This was a major breach of trust I8217m really sorry this happened We have a basic responsibility to protect people8217s data8221 Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN breaking a public silence since the scandal erupted at the weekend Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook the company made mistakes theres more to do and we need to step up and do it bitly2DHAlUJ He said the social network planned to conduct an investigation of thousands of apps that have used Facebook8217s platform restrict developer access to data and give members a tool that lets them to disable access to their Facebook data more easily His plans did not represent a big reduction of advertisers8217 ability to use Facebook data which is the company8217s lifeblood Zuckerberg said he was open to additional government regulation and happy to testify before the US Congress if he was the right person 8220I8217m not sure we shouldn8217t be regulated8221 he told CNN 8220I actually think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than yes or no should it be regulated People should know who is buying the ads that they see on Facebook8221 Zuckerberg said Facebook was committed to stopping interference in the US midterm election in November and elections in India and Brazil INVESTOR FEARS Facebook shares pared gains on Wednesday after Zuckerberg8217s post closing up 07 percent The company has lost more than 45 billion of its stock market value over the past three days on investor fears that any failure by big tech firms to protect personal data could deter advertisers and users and invite tougher regulation Zuckerberg told the New York Times in an interview published on Wednesday he had not seen a 8220meaningful number of people8221 deleting their accounts over the scandal Facebook representatives including Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman met US congressional staff for nearly two hours on Wednesday and planned to continue meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday Facebook was unable to answer many questions two aides who attended the briefing said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the Alumni Exercises following the 366th Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts US May 25 2017 REUTERSBrian Snyder Zuckerberg told the website Recode that fixes to protect users data would cost many millions of dollars bitly2IJbYJS The whistleblower who launched the scandal Christopher Wylie formerly of Cambridge Analytica said on Twitter he had accepted invitations to testify before US and UK lawmakers The German government said Facebook must explain whether the personal data of the country8217s 30 million users were protected from unlawful use by third parties according to a report in the Funke group of German regional newspapers Slideshow 5 Images 8216SCAPEGOAT8217 On Tuesday the board of Cambridge Analytica suspended its Chief Executive Alexander Nix who was caught in a secret recording boasting that his company played a decisive role in Trump8217s victory However the academic who provided the data disputed that on Wednesday 8220I think what Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic and they8217ve made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you But I think the reality is it8217s not that8221 psychologist Aleksandr Kogan an academic at Cambridge University told the BBC in an interview Kogan who gathered the data by running a survey app on Facebook also said he was being made a scapegoat by Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Both companies have blamed Kogan for alleged data misuse Related Coverage What are the links between Cambridge Analytica and a Brexit campaign group Germany summons Facebook over user data safety concerns report Brazil prosecutors open investigation into Cambridge Analytica Only 300000 Facebook users responded to Kogan8217s quiz but that gave the researcher access to those people8217s Facebook friends as well who had not agreed to share information producing details on 50 million users Facebook has said it subsequently made changes that prevent people from sharing data about friends and maintains that no breach occurred because the original users gave permission Critics say that it essentially was a breach because data of unsuspecting friends was taken Analysts have raised concerns that the incident will reduce user engagement with Facebook potentially lessening its clout with advertisers Three Wall Street brokerages cut their price targets 8220Investors now have to consider whether or not the company will conclude that it has grown in a manner that has proven to be untenable8221 said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser The company has risen more than 550 percent in value in the past five years Reporting by David Ingram Additional reporting by Dustin Volz and David Shepardson in WASHINGTON and Kate Holton in LONDON Writing by Susan Thomas Editing by Bill Rigby Lisa Shumaker and Paul Tait Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters French expresident Nicolas Sarkozy told magistrates who put him under formal investigation on Wednesday that accusations that he got illicit Libyan funding for his 2007 election campaign were lies that were making his life 8220hell8221 Le Figaro newspaper said FILE PHOTO Nicolas Sarkozy former head of the Les Republicains political party attends a Les Republicains LR public meeting in Les Sables dOlonne France October 1 2016 REUTERSStephane MaheFile Photo The newspaper published a lengthy account of what it said was a declaration by Sarkozy in power from 2007 until 2012 made to investigators who told him after two days in custody he was formally suspected of passive corruption and other offences 8220This calumny has made my life a living hell since March 11 20118221 the newspaper quoted the 63yearold as having told the investigators Prosecutors are looking into allegations that Sarkozy8217s 2007 election campaign was aided by millions of euros in money from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi According to Le Figaro Sarkozy said he was the victim of a destabilization campaign that began in March 2011 based on accusations from Tripoli and a FrancoLebanese businessman who is also at the center of a judicial inquiry that began in 2013 but snowballed this week when Sarkozy was held for questioning Reporting by Brian Love and Emmanuel Jarry Editing by Geert De Clercq Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China accused the United States of 8220repeatedly abusing8221 trade practices as Beijing braced on Thursday for an imminent announcement from US President Donald Trump slapping more tariffs on Chinese imports FILE PHOTO Containers are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Shanghai China September 24 2016 REUTERSAly SongFile Photo The US tariffs on Chinese imports worth as much as up to 60 billion are set to be unveiled later on Thursday raising fears that the world8217s two largest economies could be sliding toward a trade war On Wednesday the World Trade Organization ruled that Washington had not fully complied with a 2014 ruling against its antisubsidy tariffs on various Chinese products ranging from solar panels and wind towers to steel cylinders and aluminum extrusions The WTO ruling 8220proves that the US side has violated WTO rules repeatedly abused trade remedy measures which has seriously damaged the fair and just nature of the international trade environment and weakened the stability of the multilateral trading system8221 China8217s commerce ministry said late on Wednesday The tariffs Trump is set to announce will be imposed under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act following an intellectual property probe launched in August last year Trump is accusing Beijing of compelling US firms to transfer their intellectual property IP to China as a cost of doing business there Trade wars are 8220good8221 and 8220easy to win8221 said Trump having made election campaign promises to get tough with China over its huge surplus with the United States China has repeatedly said it has no wish to fight a trade war but warned that it is ready if needed 8220With regards to the Section 301 investigation China has expressed its position on many occasions that we resolutely oppose this type of unilateral and protectionist action by the US8221 the Commerce Ministry said in a fresh statement on Thursday 8220China will not sit idly by while legitimate rights and interests are hurt We must take all necessary measures to firmly defend our rights and interests8221 The Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing has already prepared to strike back with tariffs aimed at Trump8217s support base including levies targeting US agricultural exports 8220FOR TARIFFS SAKE8221 US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Wednesday the tariffs would target China8217s hightechnology sector and there could also be restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States FILE PHOTO A man rides a vehicle past containers at a port in Shanghai China February 17 2016 REUTERSAly SongFile Photo Other sectors like apparel could also be hit Jacob Parker Beijingbased vice president of China operations at the USChina Business Council said the group wanted to know what action the US administration wants China to take to improve protection for intellectual property and over forced technology transfer 8220It8217s really important for them to lay that out so that we have a strategy going forward and it8217s not just tariffs for tariffs8217 sake8221 Parker said China needs to adopt a tougher deterrent against counterfeiting and IP theft and do away with joint venture and business licensing requirements that can be used to mandate technology transfers to gain market access 8220At the moment it8217s very difficult for the two sides to sit down and talk because the Trump administration seems determined to go this way regardless of China8217s maneuvers8221 said He Weiwen a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization CCG a Beijingbased think tank Best Buy Co Inc 6844 BBYN New York Stock Exchange 160 228 BBYN BAN 600029SS QCOMO NXPIO LIMITED IMPACT The measures planned by Washington so far are expected to have a limited impact on China8217s economy which is far less dependent on exports than it was a decade ago 8220Most Chinese corporates seems to be quite resilient against a potential trade war given the high share of domestic revenue8221 said Alicia Garcia Herrero chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis 8220However there are certain sectors which will be relatively more affected such as information technology and consumer durables8221 In a possible sign of what is to come Best Buy Co Inc BBYN the largest US consumer electronics retailer has decided to stop buying smartphones from Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei a source familiar with the matter told Reuters Moody8217s Investors Service said the impact would be far greater if the United States significantly expands tariffs and throws in broadranging protectionist measures Sectors with a large direct exposure to the US market Moody8217s said included cork and wood products furniture office machines household appliances electrical equipment road vehicles telecommunications equipment electrical machinery apparel and footwear animal oils and fats Analysts said US companies like Boeing Co BAN which sell billions of dollars worth of planes to Chinese airlines as well as deals which require Chinese approval could also become caught in the cross fire should a trade war break out Boeing this week announced a 36 billion order from China Southern Airlines Co Ltd8217s 600029SS subsidiary Xiamen Airlines Chip giant Qualcomm Inc QCOMO is still waiting for Chinese approval of its proposed 44 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors NV NXPIO US electric carmaker Tesla Inc TSLAO is in longrunning talks with Shanghai authorities to build a local manufacturing plant in the city while Chinese state media have called for measures against US soybean imports to China Reporting by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI and Elias Glenn in BEIJING Writing by Ryan Woo Editing by Simon CameronMoore Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SINGAPORE Reuters Global tech giants including Facebook and Twitter on Thursday expressed concern about a possible Singapore plan to bring in a new law to tackle the threat of fake news saying sufficient rules are already in place FILE PHOTO People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken in Warsaw Poland September 27 2013 REUTERSKacper PempelFile Photo Officials of Facebook Twitter and Google attended a parliamentary hearing on how to counter the threat that Singapore said it was particularly vulnerable to due to its size its role as a global financial hub and its ethnic and religious mix They were among 79 people asked to speak in parliament over the eight days set for the hearing The wealthy city state is among the countries looking to introduce legislation so far unspecified to rein in fake news a trend that has stirred concern that such laws could be used to exert government control over the media 8220We do not believe that legislation is the best approach to addressing the issue8221 Alvin Tan Facebook8217s head of public policy for Southeast Asia said in a written submission 8220Singapore already has a variety of existing laws and regulations which address hate speech defamation and the spreading of false news8221 FILE PHOTO A Facebook logo is seen at the Facebook Gather conference in Brussels Belgium January 23 2018 REUTERSYves HermanFile Photo Singapore ranks 151 among 180 countries rated in the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders a nongovernment group that promotes freedom of information Lawmakers in the United States and Europe have called for probes into how Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to access data on 50 million users and use it to help the election campaign of US President Donald Trump FILE PHOTO The Google logo is pictured atop an office building in Irvine California US August 7 2017 REUTERSMike BlakeFile Photo Microblogging site Twitter also shared concerns about Singapore8217s plans 8220No single company governmental or nongovernmental actor should be the arbiter of truth8221 Kathleen Reen Twitter8217s director of Public Policy for Asia Pacific said A parliamentary panel set up to consider possible measures including legislation drew 164 written responses from the public a record for reactions to such a committee on any issue Many of the examples of fake news cited in a Singapore government paper on deliberate online falsehoods published in January came from abroad Reporting by Fathin Ungku Editing by Jack Kim and Nick Macfie Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> DIMITRI LASCARIS, TRNN: This is Dimitri Lascaris for the Real News reporting from COP21 in Paris, France. I'm here today with Pablo Solon, the former UN ambassador for Bolivia, who in that capacity successfully spearheaded resolutions for, amongst other subjects, the human right to water and indigenous rights. And subsequently, Mr. Solon became for a period of time the executive director of the NGO focus on the global South, and he has extensive experience in negotiations at COP conferences preceding this one. Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Solon. <p /> <p />PABLO SOLON: Thank you. And thank you for this opportunity to speak about this COP21. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: Yes, it's hopefully going to be a decisive one, but indications might suggest otherwise and I want to get into that with you. Before I do that, though, I want to talk about your work in the past. You've been a leading critic of the notion of the green economy. Could you summarize for us what the nature of your critique is? <p /> <p />SOLON: So I think that the green economy, its main goal, is to make money out of the environmental crisis. So what they are saying is our mistake, so their mistake, is that they didn't put a monetary value to the functions of nature. So now how we are going to address this environmental crisis, by putting price to the functions of nature. Pricing carbon, pricing the capacity of forests to capture and store the CO2, pricing ecological services. <p /> <p />So that is their approach. Their approach is that markets are going to fix the problem that markets have created. Because what we are suffering now is the consequences of a logic that commodifies everything. So I really don't believe that by bringing markets into nature we're going to solve this environmental crisis. I think exactly the opposite. We have to recognize that nature is a living organism, and that has its vital cycles, and that we must respect them. And that we cannot try to control them or bring them into the market. We have to put the economy under the vital cycles of the earth system, and not the other way around. <p /> <p />So that is why I'm a promoter of the rights of nature, and I'm a very strong critic of the green economy. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And based on the draft that has been produced thus far, here at COP21, and the statements that have been coming out of governments, particularly from the West, do you think that that is a critique that is being incorporated into the current agreement? And if it isn't, in what ways would the current agreement need to be amended in order to embrace the concepts you just articulated? <p /> <p />SOLON: Well, I would say that the current agreement is going to move in the direction of the commodification of nature, of the green economy. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: How so, how will it do that? <p /> <p />SOLON: Because you have Article 3 there, now. It's yet in the draft agreement. And when you read it, what this article is saying is that they are going to create, now, new carbon market mechanisms. And they have found a new name. The name is mechanism to support sustainable development. So the way they hide their intention to commodify nature is by this name of sustainable development. But when you read the text, they are speaking about carbon credits, offsets, on new sectors that are going to be defined, and for all countries. <p /> <p />So the real danger that we have now, here, is that at the end we will have a Paris agreement that will not solve the issue of global burning, but will create more carbon market mechanisms that probably will be defined in the next COP in Morocco. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And broadly speaking, what would you recommend to global governments in order to get away from this approach within this agreement of the commodification of nature? <p /> <p />SOLON: So in the first place, we should stop current carbon markets. They have not worked. They are very speculative. We have heard about many scandals in relation to carbon credits. We currently have one problem. We have the hot air from Russia. And if all the hot air from Russia, all those carbon credits, go into the carbon market, nobody has to do nothing at all. The only thing you have to do is buy very cheap carbon credits from Russia and say, oh, look, I already did my commitment of emission reduction. <p /> <p />So carbon credits is a way to cheat nature. I think it has failed during these year. It's going to be seven years. So we should stop promoting that, and not expand it. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And if you might elaborate on what you mean, hot air from Russia. <p /> <p />SOLON: Because Russia says, Russia had a commitment to reduce a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Now they say we have reduced more than that. According to the rules of the Kyoto protocol, the surplus that you did, you can bring it into the market as carbon credit. And other countries that have not fulfilled their obligation can buy those carbon credits and say, hey, we already achieved our commitment. Not by really decreasing the greenhouse gas emissions, but just by buying these carbon credits from, example, from Russia. <p /> <p />So the--and there are so, the amount of hot air from Russia is so big that the European Union has said, hey, we are not going to buy them. Because otherwise then no, no country will do nothing. So this shows how bad the issue of carbon credits is moving. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And in my country, Canada, the two largest provinces in terms of population, Ontario and Quebec, are now formulating a cap and trade scheme. And they are claiming that this is going to be a meaningful contribution, an important contribution to Canada's efforts to fight climate change. What's your view about that? <p /> <p />SOLON: I really don't think about it. I mean, we have to look at all the reports about carbon credits. They showed that carbon credit didn't contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And we have had so many cheating things. <p /> <p />Let me give you one example. There is one gas that is much stronger than carbon dioxide. HFC23. So what happened in the case of China and in India was that they developed projects to create factories that produce this gas in order then to say hey, we are going to now dismantle these factories. And because we're going to do that, we are going to bring carbon credits into the market. And this is not something that I'm saying. We all know that this has happened. And if you look at carbon credits, they are used in order to make money. <p /> <p />So I really don't believe in the mechanism. I think that if you have a commitment, no, you have to pay your commitment. You have to do it. You cannot use a carbon credit mechanism to say, okay, look, I'm not going to do it, but I'm going to buy from this one. If you are going to go to jail, you must be--two years in jail. You cannot say, oh look, I'm going to pay this other guy to be in jail for the next two years,because yeah, that's the way that I'm going to fulfill my obligation. That cannot be. <p /> <p />So I think that commitments of emission cuts have to be real. And if you commit to something, you have to do it without cheating. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: Now, Canada, as you know, has a relatively small population relative to the major emitters, approximately 34 million people. And in terms of its overall emissions, it's contributing I believe in the range of 1.6-1.7 percent of global emissions. Its population accounts for a little bit less than 0.5 of the human population at this time. James Hansen, the NASA scientist, recently did an article showing--he included in it an infographic which showed that historically only three countries had generated more per capita emissions than Canada: the UK, the U.S., and Germany. <p /> <p />And in our country, a lot of people who are skeptical about aggressive efforts to deal with climate change, they ignore the per capita emissions and say the real measure is total emissions by the country, and then they compare us, for example, to China and India and say that we're just a drop in the bucket. How do you respond to that, that perspective? <p /> <p />SOLON: Well, let me respond in the case of my country, Bolivia. Bolivia has even lower emissions than Canada. It has a population that's even smaller than Canada. And even though I think that Bolivia has to do a lot, because the per capita emissions are high. We are around 30 tonnes per capita of carbon dioxide. And why is that? It's because of deforestation. So can Bolivia say, okay, we are very tiny, we didn't contribute historically to emissions, so let deforestation continue? No, not at all. We have to stop it. <p /> <p />We have around 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide coming from deforestation. And I think that's a tragedy. I think if Bolivia, if Bolivia is going to speak about climate change, we have to do our work in our own home, and reduce those emissions, reduce that deforestation. If we begin with that example, then let's say a person that is with a car, you know, sending carbon emissions, he will say, well, my emissions are nothing, you know. Yeah, the emissions of one car is nothing. So who cares? That cannot be the issue. <p /> <p />We have to commit to do real cuts, and I think Canada has to do much more than Bolivia. And we are pushing, in the case of Bolivia, we should push all around the world to do real cuts. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: Now, you've been internationally a champion of indigenous rights. And I understand that in the last couple of days, references to indigenous rights were removed from the draft COP21 accord. Is that correct? <p /> <p />SOLON: Well, they are still in brackets. So we cannot say that they are already removed, and maybe in the final text we will see that. But the key issue is, what is that going to change? Because it's not going to be the first time that we have a mention on indigenous people's rights, and I fully agree with that. But we had that mention already in the Cancun agreement. What has changed in the past five years? <p /> <p />So sometimes we, we think that words, because they are there, they are magic. But in reality they don't change the circumstances. So I think it would be very important not to have just a mention, that maybe happens, maybe not in some article, no. It has to be something that you say, okay. When it comes to finance, we are going to take into account indigenous people's rights. When we have projects for mitigation, projects for adaptation. This is the way we are going to guarantee the implementation of these rights. If you don't have that, a short mention on the words indigenous people's rights doesn't really change the reality of indigenous people's rights. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And by the same token there's talk about including in the current draft agreement a reference to a temperature increase limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius. And Canada has recently come out in favor of that, Germany and France. But it seems relatively clear that what these governments are talking about in the West is aspiration language around the 1.5 degree limit, and that they are not proposing that there would be a legally binding, enforceable cap of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Do you think a mere mention of 1.5 degrees Celsius in this agreement, coupled with some aspirational language, is really going to make a difference at the end of the day? <p /> <p />SOLON: I fully agree with you. I think it's not enough to have the mention, but it's good to have the mention. And there is no relation between what they are putting in the text, 1.5 degrees Celsius, and the fact that the intended nationally determined contributions that they have presented are far away from 1.5 degrees Celsius. So if you want to be coherent you say 1.5, and then I make commitments that are in line with that. But the real truth is that the pledges that are here now in COP21 will lead us to a world of around 4 degrees Celsius increase in the temperature. So that is the truth. <p /> <p />The second problem that we need to highlight, and I have heard it here, too, is that some are saying hey, yes, let's discuss 1.5, but in order to achieve that we are going to move to geoengineering, to carbon capture and storage, to bioenergy. So watch out. There is a threat. Because you can say I'm with 1.5, but not by any means. I mean, I don't want to have 1.5 degrees Celsius and use geoengineering, use carbon capture and storage, use bioenergy. I think that is a solution that is even worse than what we already have. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: Those are unproven technologies, essentially. <p /> <p />SOLON: Absolutely. They are not proven technologies. And some of those technologies could really harm the entire earth system, and we don't have a planet B. So more and more, you see that some groups are saying, hey, yes, let's go to a lower number. But through geoengineering. And I think this is really very dangerous. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And at the end of the day, just to close it out, where do you think we're going to end up at the end of this conference? Are we going to have an agreement that is going to come even remotely close to doing what global governments need to do and global business needs to do in order to prevent catastrophic climate change? <p /> <p />SOLON: Definitely we're not going to have an agreement that will stop the planet from burning. And that is because the current INDCs are really, really on the wrong direction. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: INDCs being the emissions reduction targets of the various states. <p /> <p />SOLON: Exactly. Because this is an agreement that has a bottom-up approach. So each country has made its pledge of emissions reductions. We already have them. There is an official report of the UNFCCC that synthesizes all of this. And whoa, you know, we should lower emissions by the year 2030 to 35 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. And instead of that we're going to be in around 60 gigatonnes by the year 2030. So there is going to be a gap, a surplus, of more than 25 gigatonnes. So that is why this is going to burn the planet. And this is not being negotiated in Paris. So we are negotiating things that don't have to do with the heart of the issue that is emission cuts. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: Well, thank you very much for your time. And I hope maybe we have the opportunity to talk to you again about the climate negotiations and their aftermath. <p /> <p />SOLON: Thank you very much. <p /> <p />LASCARIS: And this is Dimitri Lascaris for the Real News from Paris, France. <p /> <p />End <p /> <p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Former Bolivian UN Ambassador: COP21 Draft Text Shows Plans to Further Commodify Nature

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D15265

2015-12-09

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DIMITRI LASCARIS TRNN This is Dimitri Lascaris for the Real News reporting from COP21 in Paris France Im here today with Pablo Solon the former UN ambassador for Bolivia who in that capacity successfully spearheaded resolutions for amongst other subjects the human right to water and indigenous rights And subsequently Mr Solon became for a period of time the executive director of the NGO focus on the global South and he has extensive experience in negotiations at COP conferences preceding this one Thank you for joining us today Mr Solon PABLO SOLON Thank you And thank you for this opportunity to speak about this COP21 LASCARIS Yes its hopefully going to be a decisive one but indications might suggest otherwise and I want to get into that with you Before I do that though I want to talk about your work in the past Youve been a leading critic of the notion of the green economy Could you summarize for us what the nature of your critique is SOLON So I think that the green economy its main goal is to make money out of the environmental crisis So what they are saying is our mistake so their mistake is that they didnt put a monetary value to the functions of nature So now how we are going to address this environmental crisis by putting price to the functions of nature Pricing carbon pricing the capacity of forests to capture and store the CO2 pricing ecological services So that is their approach Their approach is that markets are going to fix the problem that markets have created Because what we are suffering now is the consequences of a logic that commodifies everything So I really dont believe that by bringing markets into nature were going to solve this environmental crisis I think exactly the opposite We have to recognize that nature is a living organism and that has its vital cycles and that we must respect them And that we cannot try to control them or bring them into the market We have to put the economy under the vital cycles of the earth system and not the other way around So that is why Im a promoter of the rights of nature and Im a very strong critic of the green economy LASCARIS And based on the draft that has been produced thus far here at COP21 and the statements that have been coming out of governments particularly from the West do you think that that is a critique that is being incorporated into the current agreement And if it isnt in what ways would the current agreement need to be amended in order to embrace the concepts you just articulated SOLON Well I would say that the current agreement is going to move in the direction of the commodification of nature of the green economy LASCARIS How so how will it do that SOLON Because you have Article 3 there now Its yet in the draft agreement And when you read it what this article is saying is that they are going to create now new carbon market mechanisms And they have found a new name The name is mechanism to support sustainable development So the way they hide their intention to commodify nature is by this name of sustainable development But when you read the text they are speaking about carbon credits offsets on new sectors that are going to be defined and for all countries So the real danger that we have now here is that at the end we will have a Paris agreement that will not solve the issue of global burning but will create more carbon market mechanisms that probably will be defined in the next COP in Morocco LASCARIS And broadly speaking what would you recommend to global governments in order to get away from this approach within this agreement of the commodification of nature SOLON So in the first place we should stop current carbon markets They have not worked They are very speculative We have heard about many scandals in relation to carbon credits We currently have one problem We have the hot air from Russia And if all the hot air from Russia all those carbon credits go into the carbon market nobody has to do nothing at all The only thing you have to do is buy very cheap carbon credits from Russia and say oh look I already did my commitment of emission reduction So carbon credits is a way to cheat nature I think it has failed during these year Its going to be seven years So we should stop promoting that and not expand it LASCARIS And if you might elaborate on what you mean hot air from Russia SOLON Because Russia says Russia had a commitment to reduce a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions Now they say we have reduced more than that According to the rules of the Kyoto protocol the surplus that you did you can bring it into the market as carbon credit And other countries that have not fulfilled their obligation can buy those carbon credits and say hey we already achieved our commitment Not by really decreasing the greenhouse gas emissions but just by buying these carbon credits from example from Russia So theand there are so the amount of hot air from Russia is so big that the European Union has said hey we are not going to buy them Because otherwise then no no country will do nothing So this shows how bad the issue of carbon credits is moving LASCARIS And in my country Canada the two largest provinces in terms of population Ontario and Quebec are now formulating a cap and trade scheme And they are claiming that this is going to be a meaningful contribution an important contribution to Canadas efforts to fight climate change Whats your view about that SOLON I really dont think about it I mean we have to look at all the reports about carbon credits They showed that carbon credit didnt contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions And we have had so many cheating things Let me give you one example There is one gas that is much stronger than carbon dioxide HFC23 So what happened in the case of China and in India was that they developed projects to create factories that produce this gas in order then to say hey we are going to now dismantle these factories And because were going to do that we are going to bring carbon credits into the market And this is not something that Im saying We all know that this has happened And if you look at carbon credits they are used in order to make money So I really dont believe in the mechanism I think that if you have a commitment no you have to pay your commitment You have to do it You cannot use a carbon credit mechanism to say okay look Im not going to do it but Im going to buy from this one If you are going to go to jail you must betwo years in jail You cannot say oh look Im going to pay this other guy to be in jail for the next two yearsbecause yeah thats the way that Im going to fulfill my obligation That cannot be So I think that commitments of emission cuts have to be real And if you commit to something you have to do it without cheating LASCARIS Now Canada as you know has a relatively small population relative to the major emitters approximately 34 million people And in terms of its overall emissions its contributing I believe in the range of 1617 percent of global emissions Its population accounts for a little bit less than 05 of the human population at this time James Hansen the NASA scientist recently did an article showinghe included in it an infographic which showed that historically only three countries had generated more per capita emissions than Canada the UK the US and Germany And in our country a lot of people who are skeptical about aggressive efforts to deal with climate change they ignore the per capita emissions and say the real measure is total emissions by the country and then they compare us for example to China and India and say that were just a drop in the bucket How do you respond to that that perspective SOLON Well let me respond in the case of my country Bolivia Bolivia has even lower emissions than Canada It has a population thats even smaller than Canada And even though I think that Bolivia has to do a lot because the per capita emissions are high We are around 30 tonnes per capita of carbon dioxide And why is that Its because of deforestation So can Bolivia say okay we are very tiny we didnt contribute historically to emissions so let deforestation continue No not at all We have to stop it We have around 90 million tonnes of carbon dioxide coming from deforestation And I think thats a tragedy I think if Bolivia if Bolivia is going to speak about climate change we have to do our work in our own home and reduce those emissions reduce that deforestation If we begin with that example then lets say a person that is with a car you know sending carbon emissions he will say well my emissions are nothing you know Yeah the emissions of one car is nothing So who cares That cannot be the issue We have to commit to do real cuts and I think Canada has to do much more than Bolivia And we are pushing in the case of Bolivia we should push all around the world to do real cuts LASCARIS Now youve been internationally a champion of indigenous rights And I understand that in the last couple of days references to indigenous rights were removed from the draft COP21 accord Is that correct SOLON Well they are still in brackets So we cannot say that they are already removed and maybe in the final text we will see that But the key issue is what is that going to change Because its not going to be the first time that we have a mention on indigenous peoples rights and I fully agree with that But we had that mention already in the Cancun agreement What has changed in the past five years So sometimes we we think that words because they are there they are magic But in reality they dont change the circumstances So I think it would be very important not to have just a mention that maybe happens maybe not in some article no It has to be something that you say okay When it comes to finance we are going to take into account indigenous peoples rights When we have projects for mitigation projects for adaptation This is the way we are going to guarantee the implementation of these rights If you dont have that a short mention on the words indigenous peoples rights doesnt really change the reality of indigenous peoples rights LASCARIS And by the same token theres talk about including in the current draft agreement a reference to a temperature increase limit of 15 degrees Celsius And Canada has recently come out in favor of that Germany and France But it seems relatively clear that what these governments are talking about in the West is aspiration language around the 15 degree limit and that they are not proposing that there would be a legally binding enforceable cap of 15 degrees Celsius Do you think a mere mention of 15 degrees Celsius in this agreement coupled with some aspirational language is really going to make a difference at the end of the day SOLON I fully agree with you I think its not enough to have the mention but its good to have the mention And there is no relation between what they are putting in the text 15 degrees Celsius and the fact that the intended nationally determined contributions that they have presented are far away from 15 degrees Celsius So if you want to be coherent you say 15 and then I make commitments that are in line with that But the real truth is that the pledges that are here now in COP21 will lead us to a world of around 4 degrees Celsius increase in the temperature So that is the truth The second problem that we need to highlight and I have heard it here too is that some are saying hey yes lets discuss 15 but in order to achieve that we are going to move to geoengineering to carbon capture and storage to bioenergy So watch out There is a threat Because you can say Im with 15 but not by any means I mean I dont want to have 15 degrees Celsius and use geoengineering use carbon capture and storage use bioenergy I think that is a solution that is even worse than what we already have LASCARIS Those are unproven technologies essentially SOLON Absolutely They are not proven technologies And some of those technologies could really harm the entire earth system and we dont have a planet B So more and more you see that some groups are saying hey yes lets go to a lower number But through geoengineering And I think this is really very dangerous LASCARIS And at the end of the day just to close it out where do you think were going to end up at the end of this conference Are we going to have an agreement that is going to come even remotely close to doing what global governments need to do and global business needs to do in order to prevent catastrophic climate change SOLON Definitely were not going to have an agreement that will stop the planet from burning And that is because the current INDCs are really really on the wrong direction LASCARIS INDCs being the emissions reduction targets of the various states SOLON Exactly Because this is an agreement that has a bottomup approach So each country has made its pledge of emissions reductions We already have them There is an official report of the UNFCCC that synthesizes all of this And whoa you know we should lower emissions by the year 2030 to 35 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent per year And instead of that were going to be in around 60 gigatonnes by the year 2030 So there is going to be a gap a surplus of more than 25 gigatonnes So that is why this is going to burn the planet And this is not being negotiated in Paris So we are negotiating things that dont have to do with the heart of the issue that is emission cuts LASCARIS Well thank you very much for your time And I hope maybe we have the opportunity to talk to you again about the climate negotiations and their aftermath SOLON Thank you very much LASCARIS And this is Dimitri Lascaris for the Real News from Paris France End DISCLAIMER Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy

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<p>Naomi Smalls (aka Davis Heppenstall) performs at Town and Capital Pride this weekend. (Photo courtesy Neverland Events)</p> <p>Once again this year, the top three queens from this season&#8217;s &#8220;RuPaul&#8217;s Drag Race&#8221; will be at both <a href="http://www.towndc.com" type="external">Town</a> and <a href="http://www.capitalpride.org/events/pride-concert-2016/" type="external">Capital Pride</a>. Kim Chi is at Town on Friday, June 10 and Naomi Smalls and champ Bob the Drag Queen are there Saturday, June 11. Naomi and Bob will also perform on the Capitol Concert Stage at the festival on Sunday, June 12.</p> <p>Naomi Smalls, a 21-year-old Redlands, Calif., native born Davis Heppenstall, spoke to us the week by phone from her home in Chicago.</p> <p>WASHINGTON BLADE: What was it like having to wait from the time you wrapped taping to finding out who won?</p> <p>NAOMI SMALLS: I was nervous but I think I was more nervous finding out who made the top three because we filmed that last year. &#8230; For us, it was different because we were kind of walking on eggshells. The other girls got to know how they did when they left and so they all knew when their bad episode was going to be, but for Bob, Kim Chi and I, we were all nervous.</p> <p>BLADE: You don&#8217;t find out who wins until the episode actually airs, so where did you watch it?</p> <p>NAOMI: They have a crowning and coronation in New York and Kim, Bob and I were all watching it live. It was our first time finding out who was going to win. I had a feeling it was going to be Bob, so I wasn&#8217;t super super surprised. But we were happy to be there and see his reaction in person.</p> <p>BLADE: How did he react?</p> <p>NAOMI: Well of course he started crying. It&#8217;s the biggest moment of his life. I&#8217;m glad Kim and I got to be there for him. The three of us are actually really good friends. So any of us would have had the same reaction no matter who won.</p> <p>BLADE: It was such a shock the night Ru sent both Dax and Laila home. What did it feel like when it was actually happening?</p> <p>NAOMI: When I was watching it live, I didn&#8217;t think either of them were doing very good. It was a surprise that it was so early in the competition and she was sending two people home, but it was probably the right decision.</p> <p>BLADE: How do they keep you all from seeing each other back stage when you walk into the work room for the first time?</p> <p>NAOMI: Well all come from the hotel in separate vans one by one and we all go there and wait in a holding room. Like a very small room with a mirror and snacks. Then they just tell you when it&#8217;s your time to go in and you don&#8217;t see any of the other queens. We&#8217;re all in these closed-off rooms until everyone walks in.</p> <p>BLADE: So you have to get ready at the hotel?</p> <p>NAOMI: Yes.</p> <p>BLADE: What did it feel like walking into the work room for the first time?</p> <p>NAOMI: I was nervous but also really excited. It&#8217;s like this surreal moment after seeing it on TV for so many years. I really wanted to be part of it but I was also nervous to see who else was going to be there and if the other queens would be easy to get along with.</p> <p>BLADE: Derrick was so nasty to you. Like she was going out of her way to pick a fight, especially the last episode she was on. Was that really how it felt at the time or did they edit it all together to seem nastier than it really was?</p> <p>NAOMI: I wouldn&#8217;t say worse than it really was. I just think some people make for really good TV. Derrick is a really good friend but he&#8217;s also very good at turning it on for television. I wouldn&#8217;t say the producers had anything to do with editing it any certain way. It&#8217;s more of how Derrick&#8217;s personality comes across on television when he turns it on.</p> <p>BLADE: So she&#8217;s not so confrontational when the camera&#8217;s not rolling?</p> <p>NAOMI: Oh for sure. Not so loud.</p> <p>BLADE: Acid Betty was such a bitch too, and I thought initially she would go a lot further. Do you think Ru takes the nastiness into consideration when sending them home or is it really just how good you are?</p> <p>NAOMI: I always think of it as kind of a &#8220;Big Brother&#8221; thing where Ru is always watching and if maybe you get some news back from an assistant or producer that someone&#8217;s not giving their all or grateful to be there, I think that may come into consideration when it comes to the judging. I think you should just treat people the way you want to be treated and don&#8217;t be an asshole.</p> <p>BLADE: But then it turned out that Betty had reached out to Cynthia when she was sick, so I guess she has a soft side too.</p> <p>NAOMI: I think certain people get into a certain mindset when they&#8217;re in a competition. They could be the sweetest person but once you&#8217;re in a room pitted against 12 other people, they go into competition mode and you forget about the way to treat people.</p> <p>BLADE: You seemed one of the nicest queens this season, though. Is that just your personality?</p> <p>NAOMI: I grew up in a big family so I&#8217;m good with treating people the way I want to be treated. Unless someone comes for me, I&#8217;m not going to come for them.</p> <p>BLADE: When you all saw all the kimonos coming out for the Madonna episode and realized almost everybody was doing &#8220;Nothing Really Matters,&#8221; why didn&#8217;t some of you switch gears? Was it too late? Were you all thinking, &#8220;Oh shit?&#8221;</p> <p>NAOMI: When you get called for the show, you only have two weeks to prepare so once we got there and we found out who everyone&#8217;s Madonna look was, we were all freaking out. I actually think there were three other kimonos from the girls who went home before that challenge. I think Naysha, Laila, I think Dax and I want to say maybe even Cynthia were all planning that too, but there&#8217;s not really much you can do because you don&#8217;t find out the runway category until the day before. So yeah, trust me, I definitely regret doing that runway.</p> <p>BLADE: So they did tell you to bring a Madonna look before you left home?</p> <p>NAOMI: We knew there was a Madonna category, we just didn&#8217;t know what everyone else was going to do. Everyone was trying to be original, picking something not super obvious, but it just didn&#8217;t pan out very well.</p> <p>BLADE: So that was just a huge coincidence?</p> <p>NAOMI: I didn&#8217;t really know that many Madonna references. Just &#8220;Music&#8221; and &#8220;Hung Up,&#8221; so I thought, &#8220;Oh, I&#8217;ll do dark-hair Madonna, no one else is going to do that.&#8221; And it bit me in the butt.</p> <p>BLADE: How tall are you out of drag?</p> <p>NAOMI: 6&#8217;, 4&#8221;</p> <p>BLADE: You often go without boobs in your drag. Is that like a little genderfuck thing or what?</p> <p>NAOMI: I always grew up lusting over the &#8216;90s supermodels who were bone thin with like no tits and no hips and that&#8217;s what I kind of based my drag off of. It&#8217;s just proportion to me. I&#8217;ve worn the pads, I&#8217;ve worn the boobs, but it just doesn&#8217;t really work for me. I like my look the way it is. I never try to be androgynous or genderfuck. I just think it suits my look and my silhouette better.</p> <p>BLADE: What are you planning for Capital Pride?</p> <p>NAOMI: I&#8217;m actually really excited to do it. I didn&#8217;t know &#8217;til today that it was with Bob on Saturday, so that&#8217;s going to be a blast. I&#8217;m just excited. I love Pride. It&#8217;s the best energy you ever have when you&#8217;re performing because everyone&#8217;s just there and proud to be who they are so I&#8217;m just excited to be there with everybody who&#8217;s celebrating.</p> <p>BLADE: Usually the episode before the finale is highlights with the past queens commenting. Did they not do that this year?</p> <p>NAOMI: I don&#8217;t think they did. Yeah, like a recap episode. I didn&#8217;t see it.</p> <p>BLADE: Had you seen (season seven winner) Violet&#8217;s gown before she came out at the finale? Oh my God, that dress!</p> <p>NAOMI: I saw the dress rehearsal but I didn&#8217;t see the full-on with makeup and all that amazingness until she came out. I was just as gagged as everybody else.</p> <p>BLADE: Was that amazing or what?</p> <p>NAOMI: I think it&#8217;s like the most legendary look that&#8217;s ever been on &#8220;RuPaul&#8217;s Drag Race&#8221; period. All seasons. It was amazing.</p> <p>BLADE: Do you know Violet at all?</p> <p>NAOMI: The first time I really got to meet her was at the finale but I looked up to Violet ever since she was on the show. So getting the chance to hang out with her and pick her brain a little was just really nice. She&#8217;s one of the sweetest queens. I think very highly of her.</p> <p>BLADE: Where do you even get a dress like that?</p> <p>NAOMI: I think somebody who mades a lot of her clothes made it but I don&#8217;t know his name.</p> <p>BLADE: Were you intimidated to be in the group photo with all the past queens at the beginning of your season?</p> <p>NAOMI: It sounds cocky, but once I found out I had to do a photo shoot, I was like super happy about it. I love being in front of the camera and taking photos so I wasn&#8217;t super intimidated by the other queens.</p> <p>BLADE: Did you get to say anything to them or was it just like shoot, on with the next girl?</p> <p>NAOMI: Just shoot and on to the next girl. I&#8217;ve worked with Raja and Sharon (Needles) before and they&#8217;re all very nice. So I wasn&#8217;t too scared.</p> <p>BLADE: How do they make the commentary seem like it&#8217;s happening as the show is unfolding? Obviously you can&#8217;t really be commenting in real time. Is that just really good editing?</p> <p>NAOMI: We do our interviews at the end of the week and we&#8217;re supposed to keep a journal but it&#8217;s really hard to do that because when you get back to the hotel, you&#8217;re so tired after filming you just want to go to bed. You don&#8217;t really want to stay up all night writing in a journal. But after you do the first round, you kind of get used to it.</p> <p>BLADE: They always make it seem so nerve wracking and like you&#8217;re so pressed for time but then you see something like Kim Chi gluing a lotus blossom headpiece together blossom by blossom so you obviously have time to do something painstaking like that. Is it really as big a time crunch as they make it seem?</p> <p>NAOMI: It&#8217;s definitely nerve wracking. You guys pretty much see all the time we have to work on things. We might get like an extra hour and a half. But yeah, it&#8217;s definitely not an easy competition.</p> <p>BLADE: Is it about what you thought it would be or easier or harder?</p> <p>NAOMI: It was about what I thought it would be. I knew it was going to be very stressful and there&#8217;s no way you can really prepare for it. It just kind of happens.</p> <p>BLADE: Who was your favorite celebrity guest judge?</p> <p>NAOMI: Probably Marc Jacobs. He&#8217;s just so legendary. So a chance to get critiqued by him was such an honor, especially on a design challenge. That was awesome.</p> <p>BLADE: Do weirdos and stalkers come out of the woodwork once you&#8217;ve been on the show?</p> <p>NAOMI: Most people have been pretty respectful. The only thing that&#8217;s annoying is drunk people at the clubs but that&#8217;s at every single club. You can&#8217;t really avoid that.</p> <p>BLADE: What&#8217;s your type? Who&#8217;s a celeb who would be a good reference point for the type you like?</p> <p>NAOMI: I like guys like Hugh Jackman or Jake Gyllenhaal.</p> <p>BLADE: Are you seeing anyone?</p> <p>NAOMI: Dating, but nothing like boyfriend status.</p> <p>BLADE: So you like guys who are different from you?</p> <p>NAOMI: My motto is if you&#8217;re cute, you&#8217;re cute. If you&#8217;re attracted to someone, you&#8217;re attracted to them no matter if they fit your type.</p> <p>BLADE: Was there anybody you felt went home too soon?</p> <p>NAOMI: I would say Laila is one of the most amazing performers and makeup artists I ever met. I would have loved to have gotten to know her better while she was on the show. I don&#8217;t think her personality really got a chance to shine. She&#8217;s super funny and super bubbly and just hilarious and I think the fans would have loved to have seen that.</p> <p>BLADE: Do you think the judges are ever too harsh in their assessments?</p> <p>NAOMI: I think they&#8217;re very accurate. They tell you exactly what you need to do. &#8230; They give it to you 100 percent, especially Michelle (Visage). I think she&#8217;s one of the best people to be in that position. She doesn&#8217;t say anything to bring you down.</p> <p>BLADE: What did it feel like with your glam Scarecrow look when Ross said, &#8220;This is how you win this competition.&#8221;</p> <p>NAOMI: Up until that moment, I still didn&#8217;t know if I&#8217;d done well that week, so when he said that, it was like this huge load off my shoulders. I was still scared I might be in the bottom two again, so it was a nice stamp of approval.</p> <p>BLADE: That episode was such a turning point for you. Is that what you had planned for that look all along?</p> <p>NAOMI: I had planned something a little shorter, a little leggier &#8230; but when Ru came around and was like, &#8220;The judges want to see something different from you,&#8221; that put off a lightbulb in my head that I should step it up, so I really wanted to put all my energy into that one because I&#8217;d been in the bottom two the week before. There was a lot of pressure to get it together.</p> <p>BLADE: The fans seem really divided on Kim Chi. Some people were saying they couldn&#8217;t believe she was still in it, she can&#8217;t even walk and so on, but others thought she was just brilliant at painting and there was so much depth and nuance. What do you think of her drag?</p> <p>NAOMI: I&#8217;m a huge fan of Kim and even before the show. So to see this beautiful image and this quirk of like, I can&#8217;t even walk in heels, I&#8217;m a big nerd,&#8221; is just so lovable and I think the audience gets that too. We all have our strengths. I can&#8217;t get on a stage and entertain a crowd like Bob can, I can&#8217;t create portraits like Kim can but I can do things they can&#8217;t do, so it&#8217;s all different skill sets and I think that&#8217;s amazing.</p> <p>Naomi Smalls (Photo courtesy of Neverland Events)</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Bob the Drag Queen</a> <a href="" type="internal">Capital Pride</a> <a href="" type="internal">Davis Heppenstall</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dax Exclamationpoint</a> <a href="" type="internal">Derrick Barry</a> <a href="" type="internal">Kim Chi</a> <a href="" type="internal">Laila</a> <a href="" type="internal">Michelle Visage</a> <a href="" type="internal">Naomi Smalls</a> <a href="" type="internal">Naomi Smalls interview</a> <a href="" type="internal">RuPaul</a> <a href="" type="internal">RuPaul's Drag Race</a> <a href="" type="internal">Sharon Needles</a> <a href="" type="internal">Town Danceboutique</a> <a href="" type="internal">Violet Chachki</a></p>

Naomi’s ‘Drag Race’ behind-the-scenes tour

http://washingtonblade.com/2016/06/08/naomi-smalls-interview/

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Naomi Smalls aka Davis Heppenstall performs at Town and Capital Pride this weekend Photo courtesy Neverland Events Once again this year the top three queens from this season8217s 8220RuPaul8217s Drag Race8221 will be at both Town and Capital Pride Kim Chi is at Town on Friday June 10 and Naomi Smalls and champ Bob the Drag Queen are there Saturday June 11 Naomi and Bob will also perform on the Capitol Concert Stage at the festival on Sunday June 12 Naomi Smalls a 21yearold Redlands Calif native born Davis Heppenstall spoke to us the week by phone from her home in Chicago WASHINGTON BLADE What was it like having to wait from the time you wrapped taping to finding out who won NAOMI SMALLS I was nervous but I think I was more nervous finding out who made the top three because we filmed that last year 8230 For us it was different because we were kind of walking on eggshells The other girls got to know how they did when they left and so they all knew when their bad episode was going to be but for Bob Kim Chi and I we were all nervous BLADE You don8217t find out who wins until the episode actually airs so where did you watch it NAOMI They have a crowning and coronation in New York and Kim Bob and I were all watching it live It was our first time finding out who was going to win I had a feeling it was going to be Bob so I wasn8217t super super surprised But we were happy to be there and see his reaction in person BLADE How did he react NAOMI Well of course he started crying It8217s the biggest moment of his life I8217m glad Kim and I got to be there for him The three of us are actually really good friends So any of us would have had the same reaction no matter who won BLADE It was such a shock the night Ru sent both Dax and Laila home What did it feel like when it was actually happening NAOMI When I was watching it live I didn8217t think either of them were doing very good It was a surprise that it was so early in the competition and she was sending two people home but it was probably the right decision BLADE How do they keep you all from seeing each other back stage when you walk into the work room for the first time NAOMI Well all come from the hotel in separate vans one by one and we all go there and wait in a holding room Like a very small room with a mirror and snacks Then they just tell you when it8217s your time to go in and you don8217t see any of the other queens We8217re all in these closedoff rooms until everyone walks in BLADE So you have to get ready at the hotel NAOMI Yes BLADE What did it feel like walking into the work room for the first time NAOMI I was nervous but also really excited It8217s like this surreal moment after seeing it on TV for so many years I really wanted to be part of it but I was also nervous to see who else was going to be there and if the other queens would be easy to get along with BLADE Derrick was so nasty to you Like she was going out of her way to pick a fight especially the last episode she was on Was that really how it felt at the time or did they edit it all together to seem nastier than it really was NAOMI I wouldn8217t say worse than it really was I just think some people make for really good TV Derrick is a really good friend but he8217s also very good at turning it on for television I wouldn8217t say the producers had anything to do with editing it any certain way It8217s more of how Derrick8217s personality comes across on television when he turns it on BLADE So she8217s not so confrontational when the camera8217s not rolling NAOMI Oh for sure Not so loud BLADE Acid Betty was such a bitch too and I thought initially she would go a lot further Do you think Ru takes the nastiness into consideration when sending them home or is it really just how good you are NAOMI I always think of it as kind of a 8220Big Brother8221 thing where Ru is always watching and if maybe you get some news back from an assistant or producer that someone8217s not giving their all or grateful to be there I think that may come into consideration when it comes to the judging I think you should just treat people the way you want to be treated and don8217t be an asshole BLADE But then it turned out that Betty had reached out to Cynthia when she was sick so I guess she has a soft side too NAOMI I think certain people get into a certain mindset when they8217re in a competition They could be the sweetest person but once you8217re in a room pitted against 12 other people they go into competition mode and you forget about the way to treat people BLADE You seemed one of the nicest queens this season though Is that just your personality NAOMI I grew up in a big family so I8217m good with treating people the way I want to be treated Unless someone comes for me I8217m not going to come for them BLADE When you all saw all the kimonos coming out for the Madonna episode and realized almost everybody was doing 8220Nothing Really Matters8221 why didn8217t some of you switch gears Was it too late Were you all thinking 8220Oh shit8221 NAOMI When you get called for the show you only have two weeks to prepare so once we got there and we found out who everyone8217s Madonna look was we were all freaking out I actually think there were three other kimonos from the girls who went home before that challenge I think Naysha Laila I think Dax and I want to say maybe even Cynthia were all planning that too but there8217s not really much you can do because you don8217t find out the runway category until the day before So yeah trust me I definitely regret doing that runway BLADE So they did tell you to bring a Madonna look before you left home NAOMI We knew there was a Madonna category we just didn8217t know what everyone else was going to do Everyone was trying to be original picking something not super obvious but it just didn8217t pan out very well BLADE So that was just a huge coincidence NAOMI I didn8217t really know that many Madonna references Just 8220Music8221 and 8220Hung Up8221 so I thought 8220Oh I8217ll do darkhair Madonna no one else is going to do that8221 And it bit me in the butt BLADE How tall are you out of drag NAOMI 68217 48221 BLADE You often go without boobs in your drag Is that like a little genderfuck thing or what NAOMI I always grew up lusting over the 821690s supermodels who were bone thin with like no tits and no hips and that8217s what I kind of based my drag off of It8217s just proportion to me I8217ve worn the pads I8217ve worn the boobs but it just doesn8217t really work for me I like my look the way it is I never try to be androgynous or genderfuck I just think it suits my look and my silhouette better BLADE What are you planning for Capital Pride NAOMI I8217m actually really excited to do it I didn8217t know 8217til today that it was with Bob on Saturday so that8217s going to be a blast I8217m just excited I love Pride It8217s the best energy you ever have when you8217re performing because everyone8217s just there and proud to be who they are so I8217m just excited to be there with everybody who8217s celebrating BLADE Usually the episode before the finale is highlights with the past queens commenting Did they not do that this year NAOMI I don8217t think they did Yeah like a recap episode I didn8217t see it BLADE Had you seen season seven winner Violet8217s gown before she came out at the finale Oh my God that dress NAOMI I saw the dress rehearsal but I didn8217t see the fullon with makeup and all that amazingness until she came out I was just as gagged as everybody else BLADE Was that amazing or what NAOMI I think it8217s like the most legendary look that8217s ever been on 8220RuPaul8217s Drag Race8221 period All seasons It was amazing BLADE Do you know Violet at all NAOMI The first time I really got to meet her was at the finale but I looked up to Violet ever since she was on the show So getting the chance to hang out with her and pick her brain a little was just really nice She8217s one of the sweetest queens I think very highly of her BLADE Where do you even get a dress like that NAOMI I think somebody who mades a lot of her clothes made it but I don8217t know his name BLADE Were you intimidated to be in the group photo with all the past queens at the beginning of your season NAOMI It sounds cocky but once I found out I had to do a photo shoot I was like super happy about it I love being in front of the camera and taking photos so I wasn8217t super intimidated by the other queens BLADE Did you get to say anything to them or was it just like shoot on with the next girl NAOMI Just shoot and on to the next girl I8217ve worked with Raja and Sharon Needles before and they8217re all very nice So I wasn8217t too scared BLADE How do they make the commentary seem like it8217s happening as the show is unfolding Obviously you can8217t really be commenting in real time Is that just really good editing NAOMI We do our interviews at the end of the week and we8217re supposed to keep a journal but it8217s really hard to do that because when you get back to the hotel you8217re so tired after filming you just want to go to bed You don8217t really want to stay up all night writing in a journal But after you do the first round you kind of get used to it BLADE They always make it seem so nerve wracking and like you8217re so pressed for time but then you see something like Kim Chi gluing a lotus blossom headpiece together blossom by blossom so you obviously have time to do something painstaking like that Is it really as big a time crunch as they make it seem NAOMI It8217s definitely nerve wracking You guys pretty much see all the time we have to work on things We might get like an extra hour and a half But yeah it8217s definitely not an easy competition BLADE Is it about what you thought it would be or easier or harder NAOMI It was about what I thought it would be I knew it was going to be very stressful and there8217s no way you can really prepare for it It just kind of happens BLADE Who was your favorite celebrity guest judge NAOMI Probably Marc Jacobs He8217s just so legendary So a chance to get critiqued by him was such an honor especially on a design challenge That was awesome BLADE Do weirdos and stalkers come out of the woodwork once you8217ve been on the show NAOMI Most people have been pretty respectful The only thing that8217s annoying is drunk people at the clubs but that8217s at every single club You can8217t really avoid that BLADE What8217s your type Who8217s a celeb who would be a good reference point for the type you like NAOMI I like guys like Hugh Jackman or Jake Gyllenhaal BLADE Are you seeing anyone NAOMI Dating but nothing like boyfriend status BLADE So you like guys who are different from you NAOMI My motto is if you8217re cute you8217re cute If you8217re attracted to someone you8217re attracted to them no matter if they fit your type BLADE Was there anybody you felt went home too soon NAOMI I would say Laila is one of the most amazing performers and makeup artists I ever met I would have loved to have gotten to know her better while she was on the show I don8217t think her personality really got a chance to shine She8217s super funny and super bubbly and just hilarious and I think the fans would have loved to have seen that BLADE Do you think the judges are ever too harsh in their assessments NAOMI I think they8217re very accurate They tell you exactly what you need to do 8230 They give it to you 100 percent especially Michelle Visage I think she8217s one of the best people to be in that position She doesn8217t say anything to bring you down BLADE What did it feel like with your glam Scarecrow look when Ross said 8220This is how you win this competition8221 NAOMI Up until that moment I still didn8217t know if I8217d done well that week so when he said that it was like this huge load off my shoulders I was still scared I might be in the bottom two again so it was a nice stamp of approval BLADE That episode was such a turning point for you Is that what you had planned for that look all along NAOMI I had planned something a little shorter a little leggier 8230 but when Ru came around and was like 8220The judges want to see something different from you8221 that put off a lightbulb in my head that I should step it up so I really wanted to put all my energy into that one because I8217d been in the bottom two the week before There was a lot of pressure to get it together BLADE The fans seem really divided on Kim Chi Some people were saying they couldn8217t believe she was still in it she can8217t even walk and so on but others thought she was just brilliant at painting and there was so much depth and nuance What do you think of her drag NAOMI I8217m a huge fan of Kim and even before the show So to see this beautiful image and this quirk of like I can8217t even walk in heels I8217m a big nerd8221 is just so lovable and I think the audience gets that too We all have our strengths I can8217t get on a stage and entertain a crowd like Bob can I can8217t create portraits like Kim can but I can do things they can8217t do so it8217s all different skill sets and I think that8217s amazing Naomi Smalls Photo courtesy of Neverland Events Bob the Drag Queen Capital Pride Davis Heppenstall Dax Exclamationpoint Derrick Barry Kim Chi Laila Michelle Visage Naomi Smalls Naomi Smalls interview RuPaul RuPauls Drag Race Sharon Needles Town Danceboutique Violet Chachki

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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel Ltd:</p> <p>* DECLARED INTERIM DIVIDEND FOR THE FINANCIAL YEAR 2017-18 OF 2.84 RUPEES PER EQUITY SHARE</p> * QTRLY AFRICA AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER (ARPU) US$3.2 <p>* SAYS Q3 HAS SEEN HIGHEST EVER BROADBAND SITE DEPLOYMENT OF 32K IN ANY QUARTER Source text - <a href="http://bit.ly/2EQi7RV" type="external">bit.ly/2EQi7RV</a> Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PRAGUE (Reuters) - Milos Forman, the Czech-born movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscar-winning classics &#8220;One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest&#8221; and &#8220;Amadeus,&#8221; has died at the age of 86.</p> <p>Forman passed away on Friday in the United States, where he lived, after a short illness, his wife, Martina, told Czech news agency CTK on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on Feb. 18, 1932. He moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the &#8220;Prague Spring&#8221; uprising in 1968 and became a U.S. citizen in the 1970s.</p> <p>&#8220;One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest,&#8221; in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world, and &#8220;Amadeus,&#8221; the life of 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri, earned 13 Oscars between them, including those for best director to Forman.</p> <p>His other notable work included the rock musical &#8220;Hair&#8221; in 1979, &#8220;Ragtime&#8221; in 1981 and &#8220;The People vs Larry Flynt&#8221; in 1996, which was nominated for an Academy Award that year.</p> <p>Jim Carrey, star of Forman&#8217;s 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic &#8220;Man on the Moon&#8221;, said on Twitter: &#8220;Another great one passes through the doorway. Milos Foreman. What a force. A lovely man. I&#8217;m glad we got to play together. It was a monumental experience.&#8221;</p> <p>Larry Karaszewski, the co-writer for &#8220;Man on the Moon&#8221; and &#8220;The People vs Larry Flynt&#8221;, called Forman a master filmmaker.</p> <p>&#8220;No one better at capturing small unrepeatable moments of human behavior,&#8221; he said on Twitter. &#8220;Milos loved life. I will miss his laughter.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: Czech director Milos Forman talks after being presented with the 'Giraldillo' award for his life-long career achievements at Sevilla Festival Film in Seville, Spain November 6, 2004. REUTERS/Marcelo Del Pozo/File photo NEW WAVE <p>Before emigrating, Forman studied at the Prague Film Academy (FAMU) and was a leading figure of the Czechoslovak New Wave film movement, along with directors Ivan Passer, Vera Chytilova and others.</p> <p>He was raised an orphan after both his parents died in concentration camps during World War Two.</p> <p>His films, such as 1964&#8217;s &#8220;Black Peter&#8221; and the 1967 communist satire &#8220;The Fireman&#8217;s Ball&#8221;, were banned for a time in the former Czechoslovakia.</p> <p>When Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in August 1968, Forman was in Paris for negotiations on his first American production and was fired by his Czech studio, leading him to emigrate. The film Taking Off - a look at youth protest movements - found critical acclaim but little financial success</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>He remained connected to his birth country, filming Amadeus there.</p> <p>Married three times, Forman met his third wife Martina - a writer three decades his junior - in Prague in the 1990s. He was father to two sets of twin boys, with his second and third wives.</p> <p>Jan Hrebejk, a leading Czech film director and a friend and former classmate of Forman&#8217;s wife Martina, told Reuters the director was a gifted storyteller and a great person.</p> <p>&#8220;In his films you can see the author,&#8221; he said. &#8220;When you watch them it&#8217;s as if that person is speaking to you, as the maker; not many people can do that.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jason Hovet and Robert Muller; editing by Angus MacSwan and Toby Chopra</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian warned of a humanitarian disaster in the rebel-controlled Syrian city of Idlib, which could be a next target of the Syrian army.</p> FILE PHOTO - People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel-held city of Idlib, Syria February 7, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah <p>The northwestern Idlib region remains the largest populated area of Syria in the hands of insurgents fighting the Damascus government. In recent years, tens of thousands of fighters and civilians have fled there from parts of the country which the army has recaptured with the help of Russia and Iran.</p> <p>Le Drian said Idlib now has some 2 million inhabitants, including hundreds of thousands of Syrians evacuated from rebel-held cities taken back by the Syrian regime.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a risk of a new humanitarian disaster. Idlib&#8217;s fate must be settled by a political process, which includes disarming the militias,&#8221; Le Drian said in an interview with French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.</p> <p>Some insurgent officials have said they feared an onslaught against Idlib, which a senior Iranian official has indicated could be the next target.</p> <p>He added that France would also keep a close eye on the situation in northeastern Syria, which was freed from Islamic State with French help.</p> <p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s not forget that our principal enemy remains Islamic State, as well as other terrorist groups which are currently regrouping in the east of the country,&#8221; Le Drian said.</p> <p>The insurgents controlling Idlib include both jihadist factions and nationalist FSA rebels. The dominant force there is Hayat Tahrir al Sham, an Islamist alliance spearheaded by the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria.</p> <p>Le Drian also said Russia was denying reality in Syria and that its protection of Bashar al-Assad could not be justified.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a denial of reality, and he have seen this several times. Already in 2013 and then again in 2017 the Russians denied that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>He said that at the time verification mechanisms already put in place by the United Nations had placed responsibility on the regime.</p> <p>&#8220;It is no wonder that Russia voted against the renewal of this mechanism last autumn,&#8221; he said, adding that when France proposed last week to put in place a comparable mechanism, Russia had vetoed it.</p> <p>Reporting by Geert De Clercqd; editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s progress in the 7-year-old civil war.</p> <p>The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities, including a research and development center in Damascus&#8217; Barzeh district and two installations near Homs.</p> <p>The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p> <p>The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success.</p> <p>He proclaimed on Twitter: &#8220;Mission accomplished,&#8221; echoing former President George W. Bush, whose use of the same phrase in 2003 to describe the U.S. invasion of Iraq was widely ridiculed as violence there dragged on for years.</p> <p>&#8220;We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we&#8217;ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program,&#8221; U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon.</p> <p>However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-trump/trump-mission-accomplished-on-perfectly-executed-syria-strike-idUSKBN1HL0TW" type="external">Trump: 'mission accomplished' on 'perfectly executed' Syria strike</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-idlib/france-warns-of-humanitarian-disaster-in-syrian-city-idlib-idUSKBN1HL1C2" type="external">France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-un/russia-fails-in-u-n-bid-to-condemn-u-s-led-strikes-on-syria-idUSKBN1HL0S9" type="external">Russia fails in U.N. bid to condemn U.S.-led strikes on Syria</a> <p>The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, &#8220;The United States is locked and loaded.&#8221;</p> <p>The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They blame Assad&#8217;s government for the attack.</p> <p>In Washington, a senior administration official said on Saturday that &#8220;while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use, we do have significant information that also points to sarin use&#8221; in the attack.</p> <p>Speaking at a summit in Peru, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence seemed less sure of the use of sarin, saying that Washington may well determine that it was used along with chlorine.</p> ASSAD &#8216;RESILIENCE&#8217; <p>Ten hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of casualties.</p> <p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;Morning of resilience&#8221;.</p> <p>Late on Saturday Syria time, a large explosion was heard in a Syrian government-controlled area in a rural region south of Aleppo, according to the Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Observatory said the cause of the explosion was unknown, as well as its target.</p> <p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p> <p>The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad&#8217;s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p> <p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p> <p>Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad.</p> <p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.</p> <p>Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes were &#8220;unacceptable and lawless.&#8221;</p> <p>Syrian state media called them a &#8220;flagrant violation of international law,&#8221; while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals.</p> <p>Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally, but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used. Syria fired 40 unguided surface-to-air missiles - but only after the Western strikes had ended, the Pentagon said.</p> <p>&#8220;We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets,&#8221; McKenzie said.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as &#8220;limited and targeted,&#8221; with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war.</p> <p>Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons; a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs; and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p> <p>The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria&#8217;s ability to produce such weapons.</p> <p>Trump spoke to May and French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss results of the strikes, the leaders&#8217; offices said.</p> A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer, deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, launches a strike as part of the multinational response to Syria's use of chemical weapons is seen in this image from Al Udeid Air Base, Doha, Qatar released on April 14, 2018. U.S. Air Force/Handout via REUTERS <p>U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation.</p> WEAPONS INSPECTIONS <p>Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings.</p> <p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p> <p>The Western countries took precautions to avoid unexpected conflict with Russia. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said Russians was warned beforehand to avert conflict.</p> <p>Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: &#8220;The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages.&#8221;</p> <p>In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad&#8217;s government of the war.</p> <p>The Western assault involved more missiles than a U.S. attack last year but struck targets limited to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons facilities. The U.S. intervention last year had effectively no impact on the war.</p> Slideshow (18 Images) <p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad&#8217;s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p> <p>Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry; additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow; writing by Doina Chiacu; editing by Yara Bayoumy, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Twitter praised Western air strikes against the Syrian government on Saturday as &#8220;perfectly executed&#8221;, and added &#8220;Mission Accomplished&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!&#8221; Trump said in a Twitter post.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s message echoed the words of a banner that hung behind former President George W. Bush when he gave a speech in 2003 from the USS Abraham Lincoln, during the Iraq War.</p> <p>That visual dogged Bush&#8217;s presidency as the war dragged out, with worsening American casualties, for the remainder of his two terms in office.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump makes a statement about Syria at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 13, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>(This version of the story refiles to fix typographical error in paragraph 3).</p> <p>Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Joel Schectman editing by Jason Neely and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Bharti Airtel Declares Interim Dividend Of 2.84 Rupees Per Equity Share Forman, Oscar-winning director of 'Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Amadeus', dies at 86 France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib U.S. says air strikes cripple Syria chemical weapons program Trump: 'mission accomplished' on 'perfectly executed' Syria strike

https://reuters.com/article/brief-bharti-airtel-declares-interim-div/brief-bharti-airtel-declares-interim-dividend-of-284-rupees-per-equity-share-idUSFWN1PD0QR

2018-01-18

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Jan 18 Reuters Bharti Airtel Ltd DECLARED INTERIM DIVIDEND FOR THE FINANCIAL YEAR 201718 OF 284 RUPEES PER EQUITY SHARE QTRLY AFRICA AVERAGE REVENUE PER USER ARPU US32 SAYS Q3 HAS SEEN HIGHEST EVER BROADBAND SITE DEPLOYMENT OF 32K IN ANY QUARTER Source text bitly2EQi7RV Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PRAGUE Reuters Milos Forman the Czechborn movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscarwinning classics 8220One Flew Over the Cuckoo8217s Nest8221 and 8220Amadeus8221 has died at the age of 86 Forman passed away on Friday in the United States where he lived after a short illness his wife Martina told Czech news agency CTK on Saturday 8220His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends8221 she said Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on Feb 18 1932 He moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the 8220Prague Spring8221 uprising in 1968 and became a US citizen in the 1970s 8220One Flew Over the Cuckoo8217s Nest8221 in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world and 8220Amadeus8221 the life of 18thcentury composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri earned 13 Oscars between them including those for best director to Forman His other notable work included the rock musical 8220Hair8221 in 1979 8220Ragtime8221 in 1981 and 8220The People vs Larry Flynt8221 in 1996 which was nominated for an Academy Award that year Jim Carrey star of Forman8217s 1999 Andy Kaufman biopic 8220Man on the Moon8221 said on Twitter 8220Another great one passes through the doorway Milos Foreman What a force A lovely man I8217m glad we got to play together It was a monumental experience8221 Larry Karaszewski the cowriter for 8220Man on the Moon8221 and 8220The People vs Larry Flynt8221 called Forman a master filmmaker 8220No one better at capturing small unrepeatable moments of human behavior8221 he said on Twitter 8220Milos loved life I will miss his laughter8221 FILE PHOTO Czech director Milos Forman talks after being presented with the Giraldillo award for his lifelong career achievements at Sevilla Festival Film in Seville Spain November 6 2004 REUTERSMarcelo Del PozoFile photo NEW WAVE Before emigrating Forman studied at the Prague Film Academy FAMU and was a leading figure of the Czechoslovak New Wave film movement along with directors Ivan Passer Vera Chytilova and others He was raised an orphan after both his parents died in concentration camps during World War Two His films such as 19648217s 8220Black Peter8221 and the 1967 communist satire 8220The Fireman8217s Ball8221 were banned for a time in the former Czechoslovakia When Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in August 1968 Forman was in Paris for negotiations on his first American production and was fired by his Czech studio leading him to emigrate The film Taking Off a look at youth protest movements found critical acclaim but little financial success Slideshow 4 Images He remained connected to his birth country filming Amadeus there Married three times Forman met his third wife Martina a writer three decades his junior in Prague in the 1990s He was father to two sets of twin boys with his second and third wives Jan Hrebejk a leading Czech film director and a friend and former classmate of Forman8217s wife Martina told Reuters the director was a gifted storyteller and a great person 8220In his films you can see the author8221 he said 8220When you watch them it8217s as if that person is speaking to you as the maker not many people can do that8221 Reporting by Jason Hovet and Robert Muller editing by Angus MacSwan and Toby Chopra Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters French Foreign Minister JeanYves Le Drian warned of a humanitarian disaster in the rebelcontrolled Syrian city of Idlib which could be a next target of the Syrian army FILE PHOTO People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebelheld city of Idlib Syria February 7 2017 REUTERSAmmar Abdullah The northwestern Idlib region remains the largest populated area of Syria in the hands of insurgents fighting the Damascus government In recent years tens of thousands of fighters and civilians have fled there from parts of the country which the army has recaptured with the help of Russia and Iran Le Drian said Idlib now has some 2 million inhabitants including hundreds of thousands of Syrians evacuated from rebelheld cities taken back by the Syrian regime 8220There is a risk of a new humanitarian disaster Idlib8217s fate must be settled by a political process which includes disarming the militias8221 Le Drian said in an interview with French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche Some insurgent officials have said they feared an onslaught against Idlib which a senior Iranian official has indicated could be the next target He added that France would also keep a close eye on the situation in northeastern Syria which was freed from Islamic State with French help 8220Let8217s not forget that our principal enemy remains Islamic State as well as other terrorist groups which are currently regrouping in the east of the country8221 Le Drian said The insurgents controlling Idlib include both jihadist factions and nationalist FSA rebels The dominant force there is Hayat Tahrir al Sham an Islamist alliance spearheaded by the former alQaeda affiliate in Syria Le Drian also said Russia was denying reality in Syria and that its protection of Bashar alAssad could not be justified 8220There is a denial of reality and he have seen this several times Already in 2013 and then again in 2017 the Russians denied that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons8221 he said He said that at the time verification mechanisms already put in place by the United Nations had placed responsibility on the regime 8220It is no wonder that Russia voted against the renewal of this mechanism last autumn8221 he said adding that when France proposed last week to put in place a comparable mechanism Russia had vetoed it Reporting by Geert De Clercqd editing by Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIRUT Reuters Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria8217s chemical weapons program but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar alAssad8217s progress in the 7yearold civil war The United States France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities including a research and development center in Damascus8217 Barzeh district and two installations near Homs The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and his superpower ally Russia but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria8217s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war The air attack denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people US President Donald Trump called the operation a success He proclaimed on Twitter 8220Mission accomplished8221 echoing former President George W Bush whose use of the same phrase in 2003 to describe the US invasion of Iraq was widely ridiculed as violence there dragged on for years 8220We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we8217ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program8221 US Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon However McKenzie acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future Related Coverage Trump mission accomplished on perfectly executed Syria strike France warns of humanitarian disaster in Syrian city Idlib Russia fails in UN bid to condemn USled strikes on Syria The US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again 8220The United States is locked and loaded8221 The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people They blame Assad8217s government for the attack In Washington a senior administration official said on Saturday that 8220while the available information is much greater on the chlorine use we do have significant information that also points to sarin use8221 in the attack Speaking at a summit in Peru US Vice President Mike Pence seemed less sure of the use of sarin saying that Washington may well determine that it was used along with chlorine ASSAD 8216RESILIENCE8217 Ten hours after the missiles hit smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed There were no immediate reports of casualties Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of Assad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220Morning of resilience8221 Late on Saturday Syria time a large explosion was heard in a Syrian governmentcontrolled area in a rural region south of Aleppo according to the Britainbased war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights The Observatory said the cause of the explosion was unknown as well as its target Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him The United States Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years arming rebels bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group But they have refrained from targeting Assad8217s government apart from a volley of US missiles last year Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power they held back in the past from striking his government lacking a wider strategy to defeat him Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a oneoff unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes were 8220unacceptable and lawless8221 Syrian state media called them a 8220flagrant violation of international law8221 while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used Syria fired 40 unguided surfacetoair missiles but only after the Western strikes had ended the Pentagon said 8220We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets8221 McKenzie said British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as 8220limited and targeted8221 with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war Washington described the strike targets as a center near Damascus for the research development production and testing of chemical and biological weapons a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria8217s ability to produce such weapons Trump spoke to May and French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss results of the strikes the leaders8217 offices said A US Air Force B1B Lancer deployed to Al Udeid Air Base launches a strike as part of the multinational response to Syrias use of chemical weapons is seen in this image from Al Udeid Air Base Doha Qatar released on April 14 2018 US Air ForceHandout via REUTERS UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation WEAPONS INSPECTIONS Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings Russia whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold Warera hostility has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up antiRussian hysteria The Western countries took precautions to avoid unexpected conflict with Russia French Defence Minister Florence Parly said Russians was warned beforehand to avert conflict Dmitry Belik a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes told Reuters 8220The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages8221 In Douma site of the suspected gas attack the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town state TV reported That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta marking one of the biggest victories for Assad8217s government of the war The Western assault involved more missiles than a US attack last year but struck targets limited to Syria8217s chemical weapons facilities The US intervention last year had effectively no impact on the war Slideshow 18 Images Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use although its use as a weapon is banned Allegations of Assad8217s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry additional reporting by Jeff Mason Steve Holland Idrees Ali Yara Bayoumy Matt Spetalnick and Joel Schectman in Washington Michelle Nichols in New York Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut Kinda Makieh in Barzeh Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Polina Ivanova in Moscow writing by Doina Chiacu editing by Yara Bayoumy Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US President Donald Trump on Twitter praised Western air strikes against the Syrian government on Saturday as 8220perfectly executed8221 and added 8220Mission Accomplished8221 8220A perfectly executed strike last night Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military Could not have had a better result Mission Accomplished8221 Trump said in a Twitter post Trump8217s message echoed the words of a banner that hung behind former President George W Bush when he gave a speech in 2003 from the USS Abraham Lincoln during the Iraq War That visual dogged Bush8217s presidency as the war dragged out with worsening American casualties for the remainder of his two terms in office US President Donald Trump makes a statement about Syria at the White House in Washington US April 13 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas This version of the story refiles to fix typographical error in paragraph 3 Reporting by Doina Chiacu Joel Schectman editing by Jason Neely and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>By William deBuys, TomDispatchThis article was produced and published by <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175475/" type="external">TomDispatch</a>.</p> <p>Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/forest_and_brush_fires/index.html" type="external">biggest wildfire</a> ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/las-conchas-fire-near-los-alamos-largest-in-new-mexico-history/2011/07/01/AGcNXptH_blog.html" type="external">biggest fire</a> ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), <a href="http://www.leanderfire.org/prevention/wildland-fire-information/" type="external">all-time worst fire year</a> in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).</p> <p>The fires were a function of drought.&amp;#160; As of summer&#8217;s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat.&amp;#160; It was the hottest summer <a href="http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/noaa-august-temps-precip-report_2011-09-08" type="external">ever recorded</a> for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.</p> <p>Editor&#8217;s note by Tom Engelhardt: The good news? While 2010 tied for the warmest year on record, 2011 &#8212; according to the U.N.&#8217;s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) &#8212; is likely to come in 10th once November and December temperatures are tallied. In part, this is evidently due to an especially strong La Ni&#241;a cooling event in the Pacific. On the other hand, with 2011 in the top ten despite La Ni&#241;a, 13 of the warmest years since such record-keeping began have occurred in the last 15 years. Think of that as an uncomfortably hot cluster. &#8230; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175475/" type="external">(continue reading)</a></p> <p /> <p>Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix, as usual, leading the march toward unlivability. This past summer, the so-called Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoe-melting 110&#186; F or higher. (The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007.)</p> <p>And here&#8217;s the bad news in a nutshell: if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West, you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst, which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.&amp;#160; No kidding.</p> <p>If that gets you down, here&#8217;s a little cheer-up note: the end is not yet nigh.</p> <p>In fact, this year the weather elsewhere rode to the rescue, and the news for the Southwest was good where it really mattered.&amp;#160; Since January, the biggest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead, backed up by the Hoover Dam and just 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas, has risen almost 40 feet. That lake is crucial when it comes to watering lawns or taking showers from Arizona to California.&amp;#160; And the near 40-foot surge of extra water offered a significant upward nudge to the Southwest&#8217;s water reserves.</p> <p>The Colorado River, which the reservoir impounds, supplies all or part of the water on which nearly 30 million people depend, most of them living downstream of Lake Mead in Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Tijuana, and scores of smaller communities in the United States and Mexico.</p> <p>Back in 1999, the lake was full. Patricia Mulroy, who heads the water utility serving Las Vegas, rues the optimism of those bygone days.&amp;#160; &#8220;We had a fifty-year, reliable water supply,&#8221; she says. &#8220;By 2002, we had no water supply. We were out. We were done. I swore to myself we&#8217;d never do that again.&#8221;</p> <p>In 2000, the lake <a href="http://www.arachnoid.com/NaturalResources/" type="external">began to fall</a> &#8212; like a boulder off a cliff, bouncing a couple of times on the way down. Its water level dropped a staggering 130 feet, stopping less than seven feet above the stage that would have triggered reductions in downstream deliveries. Then &#8212; and here&#8217;s the good news, just in case you were wondering &#8212; last winter, it snowed prodigiously up north in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming.</p> <p>The spring and summer run-off from those snowpacks brought enormous relief. It renewed what we in the Southwest like to call the Hydro-Illogic cycle: when drought comes, everybody wrings their hands and promises to institute needed reform, if only it would rain a little. Then the drought breaks or eases and we all return to business as usual, until the cycle comes around to drought again.</p> <p>So don&#8217;t be fooled.&amp;#160; One day, perhaps soon, Lake Mead will renew its downward plunge.&amp;#160; That&#8217;s a certainty, the experts tell us.&amp;#160; And here&#8217;s the thing: the next time, a sudden rescue by heavy snows in the northern Rockies might not come. If the snowpacks of the future are merely ordinary, let alone puny, then you&#8217;ll know that we really are entering a new age.</p> <p>And climate change will be a major reason, but we&#8217;ll have done a good job of aiding and abetting it. The states of the so-called Lower Basin of the Colorado River &#8212; California, Arizona, and Nevada &#8212; have been living beyond their water means for years. Any departure from recent decades of hydrological abundance, even a return to long-term average flows in the Colorado River, would produce a painful reckoning for the Lower Basin states.&amp;#160; And even worse is surely on the way.</p> <p>Just think of the coming Age of Thirst in the American Southwest and West as a three-act tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions.</p> <p>The Age of Thirst: Act I</p> <p>The curtain in this play would surely rise on the Colorado River Compact of 1922, which divided the river&#8217;s water equally between the Upper and Lower Basins, allocating to each annually 7.5 million acre-feet, also known by its acronym &#8220;maf.&#8221; (An acre-foot suffices to support three or four families for a year.) Unfortunately, the architects of the compact, drawing on data from an anomalously wet historical period, assumed the river&#8217;s average annual flow to be about 17 maf per year.&amp;#160; Based on reconstructions that now stretch back more than 1,000 years, the river&#8217;s long-term average is closer to 14.7 maf.&amp;#160; Factor in evaporation from reservoirs (1.5 maf per year) and our treaty obligation to Mexico (another 1.5 maf), and the math doesn&#8217;t favor a water-guzzling society.</p> <p>Nonetheless, the states of the Lower Basin have been taking their allotment as if nothing were wrong and consequently overdrafting their account by up to 1.3 maf annually.&amp;#160; At this rate, even under unrealistically favorable scenarios, the Lower Basin will eventually drain Lake Mead and cutbacks will begin, possibly as soon as in the next few years.&amp;#160; And then things will get dicier because California, the water behemoth of the West, won&#8217;t have to absorb any of those cutbacks.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s one of the screwiest quirks in western water law: to win Congressional approval for the building of a monumental aqueduct, the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which would bring Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona agreed to subordinate its Colorado River water rights to California&#8217;s.&amp;#160; In that way, the $4 billion, 336-mile-long CAP was born, and for it Arizona paid a heavy price. The state obliged itself to absorb not just its own losses in a cutback situation, but California&#8217;s as well.</p> <p>Worst case scenario: the CAP aqueduct, now a lifeline for millions, could become as dry as the desert it runs through, while California continues to bathe. Imagine Phoenix curling and cracking around the edges, while lawn sprinklers hiss in Malibu. The contrast will upset a lot of Arizonans.</p> <p>Worse yet, the prospective schedule of cutbacks now in place for the coming bad times is too puny to save Lake Mead.</p> <p>The Age of Thirst: Act II</p> <p>While that Arizona-California relationship guarantees full employment for battalions of water lawyers, a far bigger problem looms: climate change. Models for the Southwest have been predicting a 4&#186;C (7.2&#186;F) increase in mean temperature by century&#8217;s end, and events seem to be outpacing the predictions.</p> <p>We have already experienced close to 1&#186; C of that increase, which accounts, at least in part, for last summer&#8217;s colossal fires and record-setting temperatures &#8212; and it&#8217;s now clear that we&#8217;re just getting started.</p> <p>The simple rule of thumb for climate change is that wet places will get wetter and dry places drier. One reason the dry places will dry is that higher temperatures mean more evaporation. In other words, there will be ever less water in the rivers that keep the region&#8217;s cities (and much else) alive. Modeling already suggests that by mid-century surface stream-flow <a href="http://www.geo.arizona.edu/rcncrd/weblinks/Summary%203erd%20workshopRCN/Holly_Hartmann_Presentation_RCN-CRD_Nov14-16.pdf" type="external">will decline</a> by 10% to 30%.</p> <p>Independent studies at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in California and the University of Colorado evaluated the viability of Lake Mead and eventually arrived at similar conclusions: after about 2026, the <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/geography/geomorph/geog_5241_f10/rajagopalan_09.pdf" type="external">risk of &#8220;failure&#8221;</a> at Lake Mead, according to a member of the Colorado group, &#8220;just skyrockets.&#8221; Failure in this context would mean water levels lower than the dam&#8217;s lowest intake, no water heading downstream, and the lake becoming a &#8220;dead pool.&#8221;</p> <p>If &#8212; perhaps &#8220;when&#8221; is the more appropriate word &#8212; that happens, California&#8217;s Colorado River Aqueduct, which supplies water to Los Angeles, San Diego, and the All-American Canal, which sustains the Imperial and Coachella Valleys, will go just as dry as the Central Arizona Project aqueduct. Meanwhile, if climate change is affecting the Colorado River&#8217;s watershed that harshly, it will undoubtedly also be hitting the Sierra Nevada mountain range.</p> <p>The aptly named Lester Snow, a recent director of California&#8217;s Department of Water Resources, understood this. His future water planning assumed a 40% decline in runoff from the Sierras, which feeds the California Aqueduct. None of his contemplated scenarios were happy ones. The Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct make the urban conglomerations of southern California possible. If both fail at once, the result will be, as promised, the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization.</p> <p>Only Patricia Mulroy has an endgame strategy for the demise of Lake Mead. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is, even now, tunneling under the lake to install the equivalent of a bathtub drain at close to its lowest point. At a cost of more than $800 million, it will drain the dregs of Lake Mead for Las Vegas.</p> <p>Admittedly, water quality will be a problem, as the dead pool will concentrate pollutants. The good news, according to the standard joke among those who chronicle Sin City&#8217;s improbable history, is that the hard-partying residents and over-stimulated tourists who sip from Lake Mead&#8217;s last waters will no longer need to purchase anti-depressants. They&#8217;ll get all the Zoloft and Xanax they need from their tap water.</p> <p>And only now do we arrive at the third act of this expanding tragedy.</p> <p>The Age of Thirst: Act III</p> <p>Those who believe in American exceptionalism hold that the historical patterns shaping the fate of other empires and nations don&#8217;t apply to the United States. Be that as it may, we are certainly on track to test whether the U.S. is similarly inoculated against the patterns of environmental history.</p> <p>Because tree rings record growing conditions year by year, the people who study them have been able to reconstruct climate over very long spans of time. One of their biggest discoveries is that droughts more severe and far longer than anything known in recent centuries <a href="https://portal.azoah.com/08A-AWS001-DWR/Omnia/20070524%20Meko%20et%20al%20Medieval%20Drought%20CO%20River.pdf" type="external">have occurred repeatedly</a> in the American Southwest. The droughts of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, of the 1950s, and of the period from 1998 to 2004 are remembered in the region, yet none lasted a full decade.</p> <p>By contrast, the drought that brought the civilization of the ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, centered at Chaco Canyon, to its knees in the twelfth century, by contrast, <a href="http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/medieval.shtml" type="external">lasted</a> more than 30 years. The one that finished off Mesa Verdean culture in the thirteenth century was similarly a &#8220;megadrought.&#8221;</p> <p>Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who played a major role in the Nobel-Prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells me that the prospect of 130&#176; F days in Phoenix worries him far less than the prospect of decades of acute dryness. &#8220;If anything is scary, the scariest is that we could trip across a transition into a megadrought.&#8221; He adds, &#8220;You can probably bet your house that, unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions, the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past.&#8221;</p> <p>Other scientists believe that the Southwest is already making the transition to a <a href="http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/science.shtml" type="external">&#8220;new climatology,&#8221;</a> a new normal that will at least bring to mind the aridity of the <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_history.html" type="external">Dust Bowl years</a>. Richard Seager of Columbia University, for instance, suggests that &#8220;the cycle of natural dry periods and wet periods will continue, but&#8230; around a mean that gets drier. So the depths &#8212; the dry parts of the naturally occurring droughts &#8212; will be drier than we&#8217;re used to, and the wet parts won&#8217;t be as wet.&#8221;</p> <p>Drought affects people differently from other disasters. After something terrible happens &#8212; tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes &#8212; people regularly come together in memorable ways, rising above the things that divide them. In a drought, however, what is terrible is that nothing happens. By the time you know you&#8217;re in one, you&#8217;ve already had an extended opportunity to meditate on the shortcomings of your neighbors. You wait for what does not arrive. You thirst. You never experience the rush of compassion that helps you behave well. Drought brings out the worst in us.</p> <p>After the Chacoan drought, corn-farming ancestral Puebloans still remained in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. They hung on, even if at lower population densities. After the Mesa Verdean drought, everybody left.</p> <p>By the number of smashed crania and other broken bones in the ruins of the region&#8217;s beautiful stone villages, archaeologists judge that the aridifying world of the Mesa Verdeans was fatally afflicted by violence. Warfare and societal breakdown, evidently driven by the changing climate, helped end that culture.</p> <p>So it matters what we do. Within the limits imposed by the environment, the history we make is contingent, not fated. But we are not exactly off to a good start in dealing with the challenges ahead. The problem of water consumption in the Southwest is remarkably similar to the problem of greenhouse gas pollution. First, people haggle to exhaustion over the need to take action; then, they haggle over inadequate and largely symbolic reductions. For a host of well-considered, eminently understandable, and ultimately erroneous reasons, inaction becomes the main achievement. For this drama, think Hamlet. Or if the lobbyists who argue for business as usual out west and in Congress spring to mind first, think Iago.</p> <p>We know at least one big thing about how this particular tragedy will turn out: the so-called civilization of the Southwest will not survive the present century, not at its present scale anyway. The question yet to be answered is how much it will have to shrink, and at what cost. Stay tuned. It will be one of the greatest, if grimmest, shows on Earth.</p> <p>William deBuys is the author of seven books, including the just published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199778922/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">A Great Aridness:</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199778922/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest</a> (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1595340599/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The Walk</a> (an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize). He has long been involved in environmental affairs in the Southwest, including service as founding chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, which administers the 87,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico. To listen to Timothy MacBain&#8217;s latest Tomcast audio interview in which deBuys discusses the water politics of the American West click&amp;#160; <a href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2011/12/thirst-in-southwest.html" type="external">here</a>, or download it to your iPod&amp;#160; <a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&amp;amp;subid=&amp;amp;offerid=146261.1&amp;amp;type=10&amp;amp;tmpid=5573&amp;amp;RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817" type="external">here</a>.&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>Copyright 2011 William deBuys</p> <p />

The Age of Thirst in the American West

https://truthdig.com/articles/the-age-of-thirst-in-the-american-west/

2011-12-06

4left

By William deBuys TomDispatchThis article was produced and published by TomDispatch Consider it a taste of the future the fire smoke drought dust and heat that have made life unpleasant if not dangerous from Louisiana to Los Angeles New records tell the tale biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona 538049 acres biggest fire ever in New Mexico 156600 acres alltime worst fire year in Texas history 3697000 acres The fires were a function of droughtamp160 As of summer8217s end 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico Texas and Louisiana and the second driest for Oklahoma Those fires also resulted from record heatamp160 It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico Texas Oklahoma and Louisiana as well as the hottest August ever for those states plus Arizona and Colorado Editor8217s note by Tom Engelhardt The good news While 2010 tied for the warmest year on record 2011 8212 according to the UN8217s World Meteorological Organization WMO 8212 is likely to come in 10th once November and December temperatures are tallied In part this is evidently due to an especially strong La Ni241a cooling event in the Pacific On the other hand with 2011 in the top ten despite La Ni241a 13 of the warmest years since such recordkeeping began have occurred in the last 15 years Think of that as an uncomfortably hot cluster 8230 continue reading Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures with Phoenix as usual leading the march toward unlivability This past summer the socalled Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoemelting 110186 F or higher The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007 And here8217s the bad news in a nutshell if you live in the Southwest or just about anywhere in the American West you or your children and grandchildren could soon enough be facing the Age of Thirst which may also prove to be the greatest water crisis in the history of civilizationamp160 No kidding If that gets you down here8217s a little cheerup note the end is not yet nigh In fact this year the weather elsewhere rode to the rescue and the news for the Southwest was good where it really matteredamp160 Since January the biggest reservoir in the United States Lake Mead backed up by the Hoover Dam and just 30 miles southwest of Las Vegas has risen almost 40 feet That lake is crucial when it comes to watering lawns or taking showers from Arizona to Californiaamp160 And the near 40foot surge of extra water offered a significant upward nudge to the Southwest8217s water reserves The Colorado River which the reservoir impounds supplies all or part of the water on which nearly 30 million people depend most of them living downstream of Lake Mead in Los Angeles San Diego Phoenix Tucson Tijuana and scores of smaller communities in the United States and Mexico Back in 1999 the lake was full Patricia Mulroy who heads the water utility serving Las Vegas rues the optimism of those bygone daysamp160 8220We had a fiftyyear reliable water supply8221 she says 8220By 2002 we had no water supply We were out We were done I swore to myself we8217d never do that again8221 In 2000 the lake began to fall 8212 like a boulder off a cliff bouncing a couple of times on the way down Its water level dropped a staggering 130 feet stopping less than seven feet above the stage that would have triggered reductions in downstream deliveries Then 8212 and here8217s the good news just in case you were wondering 8212 last winter it snowed prodigiously up north in Colorado Utah and Wyoming The spring and summer runoff from those snowpacks brought enormous relief It renewed what we in the Southwest like to call the HydroIllogic cycle when drought comes everybody wrings their hands and promises to institute needed reform if only it would rain a little Then the drought breaks or eases and we all return to business as usual until the cycle comes around to drought again So don8217t be fooledamp160 One day perhaps soon Lake Mead will renew its downward plungeamp160 That8217s a certainty the experts tell usamp160 And here8217s the thing the next time a sudden rescue by heavy snows in the northern Rockies might not come If the snowpacks of the future are merely ordinary let alone puny then you8217ll know that we really are entering a new age And climate change will be a major reason but we8217ll have done a good job of aiding and abetting it The states of the socalled Lower Basin of the Colorado River 8212 California Arizona and Nevada 8212 have been living beyond their water means for years Any departure from recent decades of hydrological abundance even a return to longterm average flows in the Colorado River would produce a painful reckoning for the Lower Basin statesamp160 And even worse is surely on the way Just think of the coming Age of Thirst in the American Southwest and West as a threeact tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions The Age of Thirst Act I The curtain in this play would surely rise on the Colorado River Compact of 1922 which divided the river8217s water equally between the Upper and Lower Basins allocating to each annually 75 million acrefeet also known by its acronym 8220maf8221 An acrefoot suffices to support three or four families for a year Unfortunately the architects of the compact drawing on data from an anomalously wet historical period assumed the river8217s average annual flow to be about 17 maf per yearamp160 Based on reconstructions that now stretch back more than 1000 years the river8217s longterm average is closer to 147 mafamp160 Factor in evaporation from reservoirs 15 maf per year and our treaty obligation to Mexico another 15 maf and the math doesn8217t favor a waterguzzling society Nonetheless the states of the Lower Basin have been taking their allotment as if nothing were wrong and consequently overdrafting their account by up to 13 maf annuallyamp160 At this rate even under unrealistically favorable scenarios the Lower Basin will eventually drain Lake Mead and cutbacks will begin possibly as soon as in the next few yearsamp160 And then things will get dicier because California the water behemoth of the West won8217t have to absorb any of those cutbacks Here8217s one of the screwiest quirks in western water law to win Congressional approval for the building of a monumental aqueduct the Central Arizona Project CAP which would bring Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson Arizona agreed to subordinate its Colorado River water rights to California8217samp160 In that way the 4 billion 336milelong CAP was born and for it Arizona paid a heavy price The state obliged itself to absorb not just its own losses in a cutback situation but California8217s as well Worst case scenario the CAP aqueduct now a lifeline for millions could become as dry as the desert it runs through while California continues to bathe Imagine Phoenix curling and cracking around the edges while lawn sprinklers hiss in Malibu The contrast will upset a lot of Arizonans Worse yet the prospective schedule of cutbacks now in place for the coming bad times is too puny to save Lake Mead The Age of Thirst Act II While that ArizonaCalifornia relationship guarantees full employment for battalions of water lawyers a far bigger problem looms climate change Models for the Southwest have been predicting a 4186C 72186F increase in mean temperature by century8217s end and events seem to be outpacing the predictions We have already experienced close to 1186 C of that increase which accounts at least in part for last summer8217s colossal fires and recordsetting temperatures 8212 and it8217s now clear that we8217re just getting started The simple rule of thumb for climate change is that wet places will get wetter and dry places drier One reason the dry places will dry is that higher temperatures mean more evaporation In other words there will be ever less water in the rivers that keep the region8217s cities and much else alive Modeling already suggests that by midcentury surface streamflow will decline by 10 to 30 Independent studies at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in California and the University of Colorado evaluated the viability of Lake Mead and eventually arrived at similar conclusions after about 2026 the risk of 8220failure8221 at Lake Mead according to a member of the Colorado group 8220just skyrockets8221 Failure in this context would mean water levels lower than the dam8217s lowest intake no water heading downstream and the lake becoming a 8220dead pool8221 If 8212 perhaps 8220when8221 is the more appropriate word 8212 that happens California8217s Colorado River Aqueduct which supplies water to Los Angeles San Diego and the AllAmerican Canal which sustains the Imperial and Coachella Valleys will go just as dry as the Central Arizona Project aqueduct Meanwhile if climate change is affecting the Colorado River8217s watershed that harshly it will undoubtedly also be hitting the Sierra Nevada mountain range The aptly named Lester Snow a recent director of California8217s Department of Water Resources understood this His future water planning assumed a 40 decline in runoff from the Sierras which feeds the California Aqueduct None of his contemplated scenarios were happy ones The Colorado River Aqueduct and the California Aqueduct make the urban conglomerations of southern California possible If both fail at once the result will be as promised the greatest water crisis in the history of civilization Only Patricia Mulroy has an endgame strategy for the demise of Lake Mead The Southern Nevada Water Authority is even now tunneling under the lake to install the equivalent of a bathtub drain at close to its lowest point At a cost of more than 800 million it will drain the dregs of Lake Mead for Las Vegas Admittedly water quality will be a problem as the dead pool will concentrate pollutants The good news according to the standard joke among those who chronicle Sin City8217s improbable history is that the hardpartying residents and overstimulated tourists who sip from Lake Mead8217s last waters will no longer need to purchase antidepressants They8217ll get all the Zoloft and Xanax they need from their tap water And only now do we arrive at the third act of this expanding tragedy The Age of Thirst Act III Those who believe in American exceptionalism hold that the historical patterns shaping the fate of other empires and nations don8217t apply to the United States Be that as it may we are certainly on track to test whether the US is similarly inoculated against the patterns of environmental history Because tree rings record growing conditions year by year the people who study them have been able to reconstruct climate over very long spans of time One of their biggest discoveries is that droughts more severe and far longer than anything known in recent centuries have occurred repeatedly in the American Southwest The droughts of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s of the 1950s and of the period from 1998 to 2004 are remembered in the region yet none lasted a full decade By contrast the drought that brought the civilization of the ancestral Puebloans or Anasazi centered at Chaco Canyon to its knees in the twelfth century by contrast lasted more than 30 years The one that finished off Mesa Verdean culture in the thirteenth century was similarly a 8220megadrought8221 Jonathan Overpeck a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who played a major role in the NobelPrizewinning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells me that the prospect of 130176 F days in Phoenix worries him far less than the prospect of decades of acute dryness 8220If anything is scary the scariest is that we could trip across a transition into a megadrought8221 He adds 8220You can probably bet your house that unless we do something about these greenhouse gas emissions the megadroughts of the future are going to be a lot hotter than the ones of the past8221 Other scientists believe that the Southwest is already making the transition to a 8220new climatology8221 a new normal that will at least bring to mind the aridity of the Dust Bowl years Richard Seager of Columbia University for instance suggests that 8220the cycle of natural dry periods and wet periods will continue but8230 around a mean that gets drier So the depths 8212 the dry parts of the naturally occurring droughts 8212 will be drier than we8217re used to and the wet parts won8217t be as wet8221 Drought affects people differently from other disasters After something terrible happens 8212 tornados earthquakes hurricanes 8212 people regularly come together in memorable ways rising above the things that divide them In a drought however what is terrible is that nothing happens By the time you know you8217re in one you8217ve already had an extended opportunity to meditate on the shortcomings of your neighbors You wait for what does not arrive You thirst You never experience the rush of compassion that helps you behave well Drought brings out the worst in us After the Chacoan drought cornfarming ancestral Puebloans still remained in the Four Corners area of the Southwest They hung on even if at lower population densities After the Mesa Verdean drought everybody left By the number of smashed crania and other broken bones in the ruins of the region8217s beautiful stone villages archaeologists judge that the aridifying world of the Mesa Verdeans was fatally afflicted by violence Warfare and societal breakdown evidently driven by the changing climate helped end that culture So it matters what we do Within the limits imposed by the environment the history we make is contingent not fated But we are not exactly off to a good start in dealing with the challenges ahead The problem of water consumption in the Southwest is remarkably similar to the problem of greenhouse gas pollution First people haggle to exhaustion over the need to take action then they haggle over inadequate and largely symbolic reductions For a host of wellconsidered eminently understandable and ultimately erroneous reasons inaction becomes the main achievement For this drama think Hamlet Or if the lobbyists who argue for business as usual out west and in Congress spring to mind first think Iago We know at least one big thing about how this particular tragedy will turn out the socalled civilization of the Southwest will not survive the present century not at its present scale anyway The question yet to be answered is how much it will have to shrink and at what cost Stay tuned It will be one of the greatest if grimmest shows on Earth William deBuys is the author of seven books including the just published A Great Aridness Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest a Pulitzer Prize finalist and The Walk an excerpt of which won a Pushcart Prize He has long been involved in environmental affairs in the Southwest including service as founding chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust which administers the 87000acre Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico To listen to Timothy MacBain8217s latest Tomcast audio interview in which deBuys discusses the water politics of the American West clickamp160 here or download it to your iPodamp160 hereamp160 Copyright 2011 William deBuys

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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd:</p> <p>* BIOHAVEN ANNOUNCES INITIATION OF CLINICAL DEVELOPMENT FOR BHV-5000, A NOVEL LOW-TRAPPING NMDA ANTAGONIST</p> <p>* BIOHAVEN PHARMACEUTICAL HOLDING COMPANY LTD- U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION HAS NOTIFIED CO IT MAY PROCEED WITH CLINICAL INVESTIGATION OF BHV-5000&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Starbucks Chief Executive Kevin Johnson apologized late on Saturday for the arrests of two black men at a Philadelphia coffee shop last week, which sparked accusations of racial profiling.</p> <p>Promising to make everything right, Johnson promised a thorough investigation of the incident caught on video by a patron Thursday and shared widely online.</p> <p>The men were accused of trespassing but have said they were waiting for a friend before ordering.</p> <p>&#8220;The video shot by customers is very hard to watch and the actions in it are not representative of our Starbucks mission and values,&#8221; Johnson said in a statement.</p> <p>He added, &#8220;The basis for the call to the Philadelphia police department was wrong.&#8221;</p> <p>Philadelphia&#8217;s police commissioner on Saturday defended the arrest, saying his officers had to act after Starbucks employees told them the pair were trespassing.</p> <p>Video of Thursday&#8217;s incident showed other patrons telling officers the pair were doing nothing wrong and appeared to have been targeted merely because of their race.</p> <p>Police Commissioner Richard Ross said he knew the incident had prompted a lot of concern, but said his officers &#8220;did absolutely nothing wrong.&#8221;</p> <p>In a video statement, Ross said store employees called 911 to report a disturbance and trespassing.</p> <p>When officers arrived, Ross said, staff told them the two men had wanted to use the restroom but were informed it was only for paying customers. The pair repeatedly refused to leave when politely asked to do so by the employees and officers, he said.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>&#8220;If you think about it logically, that if a business calls and they say that someone is here that I no longer wish to be in my business, they (the officers) now have a legal obligation to carry out their duties. And they did just that,&#8221; Ross said.</p> <p>&#8220;They were professional in all their dealings with these gentlemen, and instead they got the opposite back.&#8221;</p> <p>Ross said that as an African-American man he was acutely aware of implicit bias. &#8220;We are committed to fair and unbiased policing and anything less than that will not be tolerated in this department,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The two men were released, Ross said, after officers learned Starbucks was &#8220;no longer interested&#8221; in prosecuting them.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">Starbucks Corp</a> 59.24 SBUX.O Nasdaq -0.19 (-0.32%) SBUX.O <p>In a post on Twitter earlier on Saturday, Starbucks Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>) said it was sorry for what took place.</p> <p>Johnson added his apology, saying the company would review its policies and &#8220;further train our partners to better know when police assistance is warranted.&#8221;</p> <p>Melissa DePino, an author who posted video of the arrest, said staff called police because the two men had not ordered anything while waiting for a friend. She said white customers were &#8220;wondering why it&#8217;s never happened to us when we do the same thing.&#8221;</p> <p>Police departments across the United States have come under criticism for repeated instances of killing unarmed black men in recent years, which activists blame on racial biases in the criminal justice system.</p> <p>Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by David Gregorio and Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barbara Bush, the wife of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, is in &#8220;failing health&#8221; and has decided to no longer seek medical treatment, the office of the ex-president said in a statement from Houston on Sunday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Former first lady Barbara Bush listens to remarks during the christening ceremony of the USS George H.W. Bush at Northrop-Grumman's shipyard in Newport News, Virginia, U.S., October 7, 2006. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo <p>The former first lady, who is also the mother of former President George W. Bush, &#8220;will instead focus on comfort care,&#8221; the statement said. She is 92 years old.</p> <p>The brief statement did not indicate the nature of Bush&#8217;s illness but said that she had had a series of recent hospitalizations.</p> <p>CNN reported that Bush was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure. A Bush family spokesman said she was being cared for at her home. He did not provide information on the nature of her illness.</p> <p>&#8220;She is surrounded by a family she adores and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving,&#8221; the statement added.</p> <p>As first lady from 1989 until the start of 1993, Bush was a popular national figure known for her sometimes blunt talk and self-deprecating wit.</p> <p>Her husband, the 41st U.S. president, is 93 years old. Her son, the 43 U.S. president, is 71.</p> FILE PHOTO - Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush participates in the coin toss ahead of the start of Super Bowl LI between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons as former first lady Barbara Bush looks on in Houston , Texas, U.S., February 5, 2017. REUTERS/Adrees Latif <p>Another son, Jeb, is a former governor of Florida who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2015 and early 2016, quitting after a series of lackluster performances highlighted by tough skirmishes with then-candidate Donald Trump.</p> <p>With hair that had turned white prematurely, Bush was known by family members as the &#8220;Silver Fox.&#8221;</p> <p>Her work as first lady focused on promoting literacy and reading. At the time, she said she was more interested in running a household than in helping her husband run the country.</p> <p>Bush holds a unique place in U.S. history.</p> <p>She is the only woman to see her husband and son sworn in as U.S. president. Abigail Adams, first lady from 1797 to 1801, was a major influence on husband John Adams, the nation&#8217;s second president, but died before her son, John Quincy Adams, was elected president in 1824.</p> <p>Reporting by Richard Cowan and Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said he had convinced U.S. President Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria, as he defended joint air strikes he said were legitimate and allowed France and allies to regain credibility.</p> French President Emmanuel Macron poses on the TV set before an interview with RMC-BFM and Mediapart French journalists at the Theatre National de Chaillot in Paris, France, April 15, 2018. Francois Guillot/Pool via Reuters <p>Early on Saturday, the United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what they said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7.</p> <p>&#8220;Ten days ago, President Trump was saying &#8216;the United States should withdraw from Syria&#8217;. We convinced him it was necessary to stay,&#8221; Macron said in an interview broadcast by BFM TV, RMC radio and Mediapart online news.</p> <p>&#8220;We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term.&#8221;</p> <p>The United States, Britain and France said they only hit Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons capabilities and that the strikes were not aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p> <p>Macron said limiting the strikes to these specific targets was not necessarily Trump&#8217;s initial plan.</p> <p>&#8220;We also persuaded him that we needed to limit the strikes to chemical weapons (sites), after things got a little carried away over tweets,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Saturday&#8217;s strikes on Syria were the first major military operation since Macron&#8217;s election in May last year.</p> <p>He reaffirmed that there was proof of chemical attacks, adding: &#8220;We had reached a point where these strikes were necessary to give back the (international) community some credibility.&#8221;</p> <p>Macron said he wanted to engage in dialogue with all parties involved, including Russia, which backs Assad politically and militarily, in order to find a political solution for Syria.</p> <p>There are no changes to his planned trip to Russia next month, he said.</p> <p>However, he said that Russia had made itself complicit in the Syrian government&#8217;s actions.</p> <p>&#8220;Of course they are complicit. They have not used chlorine themselves but they have methodically built the international community&#8217;s inability to act through diplomatic channels to stop the use of chemical weapons,&#8221; he said of Russia.</p> <p>Macron had warmer words for Turkey. &#8220;With those strikes we have separated the Russians and the Turks on this. The Turks condemned the chemical weapons.&#8221;</p> <p>Macron added that the strikes on Syria had been &#8220;perfectly carried out&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;All of our missiles reached their target,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Laurence Frost, Michel Rose, Marine Pennetier; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Sunday that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctions.In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement.</p> <p>&#8220;Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the U.N. Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,&#8221; the Kremlin statement said.</p> <p>Meanwhile, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, told CBS&#8217; &#8220;Face the Nation&#8221; program that the United States would announce new economic sanctions on Monday aimed at companies &#8220;that were dealing with equipment&#8221; related to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s alleged chemical weapons use.</p> <p>On Saturday, the United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7.</p> <p>(For a graphic detailing air strikes on Syria click <a href="https://tmsnrt.rs/2EKgAMN" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2EKgAMN</a>)</p> <p>The Western countries blame Assad for the Douma attack that killed dozens of people. The Syrian government and its ally Russia have denied involvement in any such attack.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-macron/frances-macron-says-he-persuaded-trump-to-keep-troops-in-syria-idUSKBN1HM0X4" type="external">France's Macron says he persuaded Trump to keep troops in Syria</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-sanctions/u-s-preparing-new-sanctions-on-russia-over-syria-haley-says-idUSKBN1HM0OQ" type="external">U.S. preparing new sanctions on Russia over Syria, Haley says</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-trump/trump-defends-use-of-mission-accomplished-phrase-for-syria-strike-idUSKBN1HM0GZ" type="external">Trump defends use of 'mission accomplished' phrase for Syria strike</a> <p>The bombings marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and ally Russia but the United States, France and Britain have said the missile strikes were limited to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p> <p>Responding to Haley&#8217;s remarks about the plans for new sanctions, Evgeny Serebrennikov, deputy head of the defense committee of Russia&#8217;s upper house of parliament, said Moscow was ready for the penalties, according to RIA news agency.</p> <p>&#8220;They are hard for us, but will do more damage to the USA and Europe,&#8221; RIA quoted Serebrennikov as saying.</p> <p>In Damascus, Syria&#8217;s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official.</p> <p>The inspectors were due to attempt to visit the Douma site. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for OPCW&#8217;s findings before attacking.</p> <p>Mekdad declined to comment to reporters waiting outside the hotel where the meeting took place.</p> &#8216;RESILIENCE&#8217; <p>Assad told a group of visiting Russian lawmakers that the Western missile strikes were an act of aggression, Russian news agencies reported.</p> <p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;morning of resilience&#8221; and there were no immediate reports of casualties.</p> <p>Russian agencies quoted the lawmakers as saying that Assad was in a &#8220;good mood&#8221;, had praised the Soviet-era air defense systems Syria used to repel the Western attacks and had accepted an invitation to visit Russia at an unspecified time.</p> <p>Trump had said &#8220;mission accomplished&#8221; on Twitter after the strikes, though U.S. Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie at the Pentagon acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> <p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p> <p>Though Israel has at times urged stronger U.S. involvement against Assad and his Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements in Syria, it voiced backing for Saturday&#8217;s air strikes by Western powers.</p> <p>&#8220;Israel fully supports President Trump&#8217;s decision to act against the use of chemical weapons in Syria,&#8221; Israel&#8217;s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks on Sunday, adding that he had commended his British counterpart, Theresa May, in a phone call.</p> <p>The leader of Lebanon&#8217;s Hezbollah said on Sunday that Western strikes on Syria had failed to achieve anything, including terrorizing the army, helping insurgents or serving the interests of Israel.</p> <p>Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the U.S. military had kept its strikes limited because it knew a wider attack would spark retaliation from Damascus and its allies and inflame the region.</p> Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a ceremony to receive credentials from foreign ambassadors at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2018. Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool via REUTERS <p>&#8220;The American (military) knows well that going towards a wide confrontation and a big operation against the regime and the army and the allied forces in Syria could not end, and any such confrontation would inflame the entire region,&#8221; Nasrallah said.</p> <p>The heavily armed, Iranian-backed Shi&#8217;ite Hezbollah movement, which fights alongside the Syrian army and is represented in the Beirut government, has been a vital ally of Damascus in Syria&#8217;s seven-year war.</p> DRAFT UN RESOLUTION <p>France, the United States and Britain circulated a draft resolution to U.N. Security Council late on Saturday that aims to establish a new independent inquiry into who is to responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The mechanism would look at cases where the OPCW fact-finding mission has established chemical weapons were used or likely used.</p> <p>Diplomats said negotiations on the draft resolution would begin on Monday and it was not immediately clear when the United States, France and Britain wanted to put it to a vote.</p> <p>Most Gulf stock markets rose on Sunday, supported by firm oil prices and relief that the weekend&#8217;s military attack on Syria was relatively limited in scope and there was no immediate retaliation.</p> Slideshow (10 Images) <p>Internationally, gold and oil are expected to extend gains on Monday, albeit modestly, when the markets open for the first time since the missile attack. Equities and bonds are unlikely to suffer big losses unless the West strikes again or Russia retaliates.</p> <p>Gold has benefited in recent days as a safe-haven asset amid a U.S.-China trade dispute and the escalating conflict in Syria, which also pushed oil above $70 a barrel on concerns over a spike in Middle Eastern tensions.</p> <p>Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Tom Perry; Additional Susan Cornwell and Joel Schectman in Washington; Michelle Nichols in New York; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clercq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Andrey Ostroukh and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; Alison Bevege in Sydney; Writing by Richard Cowan; Editing by Caren Bohan and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Biohaven says U.S. FDA has notified co it may proceed with clinical investigation of BHV-5000 Starbucks chief executive apologizes for arrests of two black men Barbara Bush, wife of ex-President George H.W. Bush, in 'failing health' France's Macron says he persuaded Trump to keep troops in Syria Russia's Putin predicts global 'chaos' if West hits Syria again

https://reuters.com/article/brief-biohaven-says-us-fda-has-notified/brief-biohaven-says-us-fda-has-notified-co-it-may-proceed-with-clinical-investigation-of-bhv-5000-idUSFWN1PD06Y

2018-01-18

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Jan 18 Reuters Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding Company Ltd BIOHAVEN ANNOUNCES INITIATION OF CLINICAL DEVELOPMENT FOR BHV5000 A NOVEL LOWTRAPPING NMDA ANTAGONIST BIOHAVEN PHARMACEUTICAL HOLDING COMPANY LTD US FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION HAS NOTIFIED CO IT MAY PROCEED WITH CLINICAL INVESTIGATION OF BHV50008203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Starbucks Chief Executive Kevin Johnson apologized late on Saturday for the arrests of two black men at a Philadelphia coffee shop last week which sparked accusations of racial profiling Promising to make everything right Johnson promised a thorough investigation of the incident caught on video by a patron Thursday and shared widely online The men were accused of trespassing but have said they were waiting for a friend before ordering 8220The video shot by customers is very hard to watch and the actions in it are not representative of our Starbucks mission and values8221 Johnson said in a statement He added 8220The basis for the call to the Philadelphia police department was wrong8221 Philadelphia8217s police commissioner on Saturday defended the arrest saying his officers had to act after Starbucks employees told them the pair were trespassing Video of Thursday8217s incident showed other patrons telling officers the pair were doing nothing wrong and appeared to have been targeted merely because of their race Police Commissioner Richard Ross said he knew the incident had prompted a lot of concern but said his officers 8220did absolutely nothing wrong8221 In a video statement Ross said store employees called 911 to report a disturbance and trespassing When officers arrived Ross said staff told them the two men had wanted to use the restroom but were informed it was only for paying customers The pair repeatedly refused to leave when politely asked to do so by the employees and officers he said Slideshow 5 Images 8220If you think about it logically that if a business calls and they say that someone is here that I no longer wish to be in my business they the officers now have a legal obligation to carry out their duties And they did just that8221 Ross said 8220They were professional in all their dealings with these gentlemen and instead they got the opposite back8221 Ross said that as an AfricanAmerican man he was acutely aware of implicit bias 8220We are committed to fair and unbiased policing and anything less than that will not be tolerated in this department8221 he said The two men were released Ross said after officers learned Starbucks was 8220no longer interested8221 in prosecuting them Starbucks Corp 5924 SBUXO Nasdaq 019 032 SBUXO In a post on Twitter earlier on Saturday Starbucks Corp SBUXO said it was sorry for what took place Johnson added his apology saying the company would review its policies and 8220further train our partners to better know when police assistance is warranted8221 Melissa DePino an author who posted video of the arrest said staff called police because the two men had not ordered anything while waiting for a friend She said white customers were 8220wondering why it8217s never happened to us when we do the same thing8221 Police departments across the United States have come under criticism for repeated instances of killing unarmed black men in recent years which activists blame on racial biases in the criminal justice system Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta Editing by David Gregorio and Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Barbara Bush the wife of former US President George HW Bush is in 8220failing health8221 and has decided to no longer seek medical treatment the office of the expresident said in a statement from Houston on Sunday FILE PHOTO Former first lady Barbara Bush listens to remarks during the christening ceremony of the USS George HW Bush at NorthropGrummans shipyard in Newport News Virginia US October 7 2006 REUTERSKevin LamarqueFile Photo The former first lady who is also the mother of former President George W Bush 8220will instead focus on comfort care8221 the statement said She is 92 years old The brief statement did not indicate the nature of Bush8217s illness but said that she had had a series of recent hospitalizations CNN reported that Bush was suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD and congestive heart failure A Bush family spokesman said she was being cared for at her home He did not provide information on the nature of her illness 8220She is surrounded by a family she adores and appreciates the many kind messages and especially the prayers she is receiving8221 the statement added As first lady from 1989 until the start of 1993 Bush was a popular national figure known for her sometimes blunt talk and selfdeprecating wit Her husband the 41st US president is 93 years old Her son the 43 US president is 71 FILE PHOTO Former US President George HW Bush participates in the coin toss ahead of the start of Super Bowl LI between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons as former first lady Barbara Bush looks on in Houston Texas US February 5 2017 REUTERSAdrees Latif Another son Jeb is a former governor of Florida who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2015 and early 2016 quitting after a series of lackluster performances highlighted by tough skirmishes with thencandidate Donald Trump With hair that had turned white prematurely Bush was known by family members as the 8220Silver Fox8221 Her work as first lady focused on promoting literacy and reading At the time she said she was more interested in running a household than in helping her husband run the country Bush holds a unique place in US history She is the only woman to see her husband and son sworn in as US president Abigail Adams first lady from 1797 to 1801 was a major influence on husband John Adams the nation8217s second president but died before her son John Quincy Adams was elected president in 1824 Reporting by Richard Cowan and Will Dunham Editing by Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said he had convinced US President Donald Trump to keep troops in Syria as he defended joint air strikes he said were legitimate and allowed France and allies to regain credibility French President Emmanuel Macron poses on the TV set before an interview with RMCBFM and Mediapart French journalists at the Theatre National de Chaillot in Paris France April 15 2018 Francois GuillotPool via Reuters Early on Saturday the United States France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what they said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 8220Ten days ago President Trump was saying 8216the United States should withdraw from Syria8217 We convinced him it was necessary to stay8221 Macron said in an interview broadcast by BFM TV RMC radio and Mediapart online news 8220We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term8221 The United States Britain and France said they only hit Syria8217s chemical weapons capabilities and that the strikes were not aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar alAssad or intervening in the civil war Macron said limiting the strikes to these specific targets was not necessarily Trump8217s initial plan 8220We also persuaded him that we needed to limit the strikes to chemical weapons sites after things got a little carried away over tweets8221 he said Saturday8217s strikes on Syria were the first major military operation since Macron8217s election in May last year He reaffirmed that there was proof of chemical attacks adding 8220We had reached a point where these strikes were necessary to give back the international community some credibility8221 Macron said he wanted to engage in dialogue with all parties involved including Russia which backs Assad politically and militarily in order to find a political solution for Syria There are no changes to his planned trip to Russia next month he said However he said that Russia had made itself complicit in the Syrian government8217s actions 8220Of course they are complicit They have not used chlorine themselves but they have methodically built the international community8217s inability to act through diplomatic channels to stop the use of chemical weapons8221 he said of Russia Macron had warmer words for Turkey 8220With those strikes we have separated the Russians and the Turks on this The Turks condemned the chemical weapons8221 Macron added that the strikes on Syria had been 8220perfectly carried out8221 8220All of our missiles reached their target8221 he said Reporting by Laurence Frost Michel Rose Marine Pennetier Writing by Ingrid Melander Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOWDAMASCUS Reuters Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Sunday that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctionsIn a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the sevenyear Syria conflict according to a Kremlin statement 8220Vladimir Putin in particular stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the UN Charter continue then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations8221 the Kremlin statement said Meanwhile US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told CBS8217 8220Face the Nation8221 program that the United States would announce new economic sanctions on Monday aimed at companies 8220that were dealing with equipment8221 related to Syrian President Bashar alAssad8217s alleged chemical weapons use On Saturday the United States France and Britain launched 105 missiles targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities in Syria in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 For a graphic detailing air strikes on Syria click tmsnrtrs2EKgAMN The Western countries blame Assad for the Douma attack that killed dozens of people The Syrian government and its ally Russia have denied involvement in any such attack Related Coverage Frances Macron says he persuaded Trump to keep troops in Syria US preparing new sanctions on Russia over Syria Haley says Trump defends use of mission accomplished phrase for Syria strike The bombings marked the biggest intervention by Western countries against Assad and ally Russia but the United States France and Britain have said the missile strikes were limited to Syria8217s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war Responding to Haley8217s remarks about the plans for new sanctions Evgeny Serebrennikov deputy head of the defense committee of Russia8217s upper house of parliament said Moscow was ready for the penalties according to RIA news agency 8220They are hard for us but will do more damage to the USA and Europe8221 RIA quoted Serebrennikov as saying In Damascus Syria8217s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official The inspectors were due to attempt to visit the Douma site Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for OPCW8217s findings before attacking Mekdad declined to comment to reporters waiting outside the hotel where the meeting took place 8216RESILIENCE8217 Assad told a group of visiting Russian lawmakers that the Western missile strikes were an act of aggression Russian news agencies reported Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of Assad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220morning of resilience8221 and there were no immediate reports of casualties Russian agencies quoted the lawmakers as saying that Assad was in a 8220good mood8221 had praised the Sovietera air defense systems Syria used to repel the Western attacks and had accepted an invitation to visit Russia at an unspecified time Trump had said 8220mission accomplished8221 on Twitter after the strikes though US Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie at the Pentagon acknowledged elements of the program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has allowed Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him Though Israel has at times urged stronger US involvement against Assad and his Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements in Syria it voiced backing for Saturday8217s air strikes by Western powers 8220Israel fully supports President Trump8217s decision to act against the use of chemical weapons in Syria8221 Israel8217s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks on Sunday adding that he had commended his British counterpart Theresa May in a phone call The leader of Lebanon8217s Hezbollah said on Sunday that Western strikes on Syria had failed to achieve anything including terrorizing the army helping insurgents or serving the interests of Israel Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the US military had kept its strikes limited because it knew a wider attack would spark retaliation from Damascus and its allies and inflame the region Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a ceremony to receive credentials from foreign ambassadors at the Kremlin in Moscow Russia April 11 2018 Sergei IlnitskyPool via REUTERS 8220The American military knows well that going towards a wide confrontation and a big operation against the regime and the army and the allied forces in Syria could not end and any such confrontation would inflame the entire region8221 Nasrallah said The heavily armed Iranianbacked Shi8217ite Hezbollah movement which fights alongside the Syrian army and is represented in the Beirut government has been a vital ally of Damascus in Syria8217s sevenyear war DRAFT UN RESOLUTION France the United States and Britain circulated a draft resolution to UN Security Council late on Saturday that aims to establish a new independent inquiry into who is to responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria The mechanism would look at cases where the OPCW factfinding mission has established chemical weapons were used or likely used Diplomats said negotiations on the draft resolution would begin on Monday and it was not immediately clear when the United States France and Britain wanted to put it to a vote Most Gulf stock markets rose on Sunday supported by firm oil prices and relief that the weekend8217s military attack on Syria was relatively limited in scope and there was no immediate retaliation Slideshow 10 Images Internationally gold and oil are expected to extend gains on Monday albeit modestly when the markets open for the first time since the missile attack Equities and bonds are unlikely to suffer big losses unless the West strikes again or Russia retaliates Gold has benefited in recent days as a safehaven asset amid a USChina trade dispute and the escalating conflict in Syria which also pushed oil above 70 a barrel on concerns over a spike in Middle Eastern tensions Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Tom Perry Additional Susan Cornwell and Joel Schectman in Washington Michelle Nichols in New York Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut Kinda Makieh in Barzeh Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clercq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Andrey Ostroukh and Jack Stubbs in Moscow Alison Bevege in Sydney Writing by Richard Cowan Editing by Caren Bohan and Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

Jan/PROPN 18/NUM Reuters/PROPN Biohaven/PROPN Pharmaceutical/PROPN Holding/PROPN Company/PROPN Ltd/PROPN BIOHAVEN/PROPN ANNOUNCES/VERB INITIATION/NOUN OF/ADP CLINICAL/PROPN DEVELOPMENT/PROPN FOR/ADP BHV5000/NOUN A/DET NOVEL/NOUN LOWTRAPPING/NOUN NMDA/PROPN ANTAGONIST/PROPN BIOHAVEN/PROPN PHARMACEUTICAL/PROPN HOLDING/PROPN COMPANY/PROPN LTD/PROPN US/PROPN FOOD/PROPN AND/CCONJ DRUG/PROPN ADMINISTRATION/PROPN HAS/AUX NOTIFIED/PROPN CO/PROPN IT/PROPN MAY/AUX PROCEED/VERB WITH/ADP CLINICAL/PROPN INVESTIGATION/NOUN OF/ADP BHV50008203/PROPN Source/PROPN text/NOUN for/ADP Eikon/PROPN Further/PROPN company/NOUN coverage/NOUN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Starbucks/PROPN Chief/PROPN Executive/PROPN Kevin/PROPN Johnson/PROPN apologized/VERB late/ADV on/ADP Saturday/PROPN for/SCONJ the/DET arrests/NOUN of/ADP two/NUM black/ADJ men/NOUN at/ADP a/DET Philadelphia/PROPN coffee/NOUN shop/NOUN last/ADJ week/NOUN which/PRON 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<p>KITZBUEHEL, Austria (Reuters) - Germany&#8217;s Thomas Dressen tamed the dangerous Streif course to snatch a surprise victory in the men&#8217;s downhill on Saturday and beat specialist Beat Feuz and Aksel Lund Svindal.</p> Alpine Skiing - FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup - Men's Alpine Downhill - Kitzbuehel, Austria - January 20, 2018 - Thomas Dressen of Germany in action. REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichler Slideshow (2 Images) <p>With the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics only three weeks away, the 24-year-old was superb as he charged down the awe-inspiring course in a near flawless race for his first World Cup win.</p> <p>&#8220;I still can&#8217;t believe it. It was always a dream to ski through the finish line and still be leading in Kitzbuehel,&#8221; a beaming Dressen told reporters. &#8220;It was just amazing.&#8221;</p> <p>Swiss Feuz, who led for a long time, was second a week after winning in Wengen, while Austrian Hannes Reichelt was third.</p> <p>Norwegian Svindal, who had suffered a season-ending injury at the Streif two years ago, won the Super-G on Friday but managed only eighth place in the downhill.</p> <p>Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Ken Ferris</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China hit back quickly on Wednesday against U.S. plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods, retaliating with a list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals in a move that sent global markets lower.</p> <p>Beijing responded after U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration targeted 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial technology, transport and medical products, acting less than 11 hours later in a sharp escalation of the trade dispute between the world&#8217;s two economic superpowers.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump, who contends his predecessors served the United States badly in trade matters, rejected the notion that the tit-for-tat moves amounted to a trade war.</p> <p>&#8220;We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S.,&#8221; he wrote on Twitter early on Wednesday.</p> <p>(For a graphic on U.S. imports from China, click <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2FMsz1Q</a>)</p> <p>The trade actions will not be carried out immediately, so there may be room for maneuver. Publication of Washington&#8217;s list starts a period of public comment and consultation expected to last around two months. The effective date of China&#8217;s moves depends on when the U.S. action takes effect.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross both held out the possibility of talks to resolve the matter. Asked by reporters outside the White House whether the United States could lose a trade war, Kudlow said, &#8220;No. I don&#8217;t see it that way. This is a negotiation, using all the tools.&#8221;</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-trade-winnersandlosers-factbox/factbox-u-s-winners-and-losers-from-trade-tit-for-tat-idUSKCN1HB2K0" type="external">Factbox: U.S. winners and losers from trade tit-for-tat</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-official/white-house-not-planning-new-big-trade-initiative-against-china-official-idUSKCN1HB2KE" type="external">White House not planning new big trade initiative against China: official</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-stocks/china-trade-retaliation-puts-stocks-of-u-s-exporters-in-spin-idUSKCN1HB1WL" type="external">China trade retaliation puts stocks of U.S. exporters in spin</a> <p>Ross told CNBC it would not be surprising if negotiations ensued, but did not say when this might happen.</p> <p>The latest trade moves unnerved investors and sent shivers through global stock markets and commodities. [MKTS/GLOB]</p> <p>Shares in U.S. exporters of everything from food to planes were hammered by Beijing&#8217;s list of duties on key U.S. imports, including agricultural products, planes and chemicals.</p> <p>At midday in New York, shares of aerospace giant Boeing Co, the single largest U.S. exporter to China, tumbled 2.7 percent, agricultural machinery maker Deere &amp;amp; Co slipped 4.4 percent and Caterpillar fell 1.8 percent.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.56 percent as big U.S. manufacturers and chipmakers bore the brunt, while the S&amp;amp;P 500 fell 0.29 percent. The U.S. dollar also fell and oil dropped to a two-week low.</p> <p>While Washington targeted products that benefit from Chinese industrial policy, including its &#8220;Made in China 2025&#8221; initiative to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products in strategic industries such as advanced IT and robotics, Beijing&#8217;s appeared tailored to inflict political damage.</p> <p>While Washington&#8217;s list was filled with many obscure industrial items, China&#8217;s list strikes at signature U.S. exports, including soybeans, frozen beef, cotton and other agricultural commodities produced in states from Iowa to Texas that voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>The list extends to tobacco and whiskey, both produced in states including Kentucky, home of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, like Trump a Republican.</p> <p>One of the first opportunities for the United States and China to discuss the dispute is during an April 20-22 meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, where finance officials traditionally meet on the sidelines to discuss bilateral issues.</p> <p>A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no talks had been scheduled yet between U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his Chinese counterpart during the IMF gathering of member countries.</p> <p>The possibility of an escalating U.S.-China trade war will result in &#8220;a bumpy ride&#8221; for the U.S. economy, said James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.</p> <p>U.S.-made goods that appear to face added tariffs in China, based on an analysis of Beijing&#8217;s list, include Tesla Inc electric cars, Ford Motor Co&#8217;s Lincoln auto models, Gulfstream jets made by General Dynamics Corp and Brown-Forman Corp&#8217;s Jack Daniel&#8217;s whiskey.</p> <p>Information technology products, from cellphones to personal computers, largely escaped the latest salvo of U.S.-China trade measures despite accounting for a significant portion of bilateral trade.</p> <p>China ran a $375 billion goods trade surplus with the United States in 2017. Trump has demanded that the China cut the trade gap by $100 billion.</p> &#8216;WEAKEN OUR WILL&#8217; <p>&#8220;China is also trying to weaken our will by targeting certain segments of our economy,&#8221; White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told National Public Radio. &#8220;But let&#8217;s remember: we buy five times more goods than they buy from us. They have a lot more to lose in any escalation in this matter.&#8221;</p> <p>Beijing&#8217;s list of 25 percent additional tariffs on U.S. goods covers 106 items with a trade value matching the $50 billion targeted on Washington&#8217;s list, China&#8217;s commerce and finance ministries said.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a real game changer and moves the trade dispute away from symbolism to measures which would really hurt U.S agricultural exports,&#8221; said Commerzbank commodities analyst Carsten Fritsch.</p> <p>China&#8217;s tariff list covers aircraft that would likely include older models such as Boeing Co&#8217;s workhorse 737 narrowbody jet, but not newer models like the 737 MAX or its larger planes.</p> FILE PHOTO: A worker takes a sample from an incoming truckload of soybeans at Peterson Farms Seed facility in Fargo, North Dakota, U.S., December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Dan Koeck/File Photo <p>The U.S. move was broadly flagged last month and is aimed at forcing Beijing to address what Washington says is deeply entrenched theft of U.S. intellectual property and forced technology transfer from U.S. companies to Chinese competitors, charges Chinese officials deny.</p> <p>Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had shown sincerity in wanting to resolve the dispute through negotiations.</p> <p>&#8220;But the best opportunities for resolving the issues through dialogue and negotiations have been repeatedly missed by the U.S. side,&#8221; he told a regular briefing on Wednesday.</p> <p>The tariff list from the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer followed China&#8217;s imposition of tariffs on $3 billion worth of U.S. fruits, nuts, pork and wine to protest U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs imposed last month by Trump.</p> <p>Many consumer electronics products such as cellphones made by Apple Inc and laptops made by Dell were excluded from the U.S. list, as were footwear and clothing, drawing a sigh of relief from retailers who had worried about higher costs for American consumers.</p> <p>Many U.S. business groups support Trump&#8217;s efforts to stop the theft of U.S. intellectual property but have questioned whether tariffs are the right approach.</p> <p>The Office of the United States Trade Representative has scheduled a May 15 public hearing on the tariffs.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>(For a graphic on U.S. trade in goods with China, click <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2GcOZIH</a>)</p> <p>Reporting by David Lawder, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson, Steve Holland, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey, David Chance and Lindsay Dunsmuir in WASHINGTON; Michael Martina, Cheng Fang, Ryan Woo, Ben Blanchard, Tony Munroe, Cate Cadell, Philip Wen, Dominique Patton and Josephine Mason in BEIJING and Engen Tham in SHANGHAI; Additional reporting Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Stella Qiu in Beijing, Tom Miles in Geneva and Michael Hogan in Hamburg; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Kim Coghill, Alex Richardson and Frances; Kerry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - China on Wednesday hit back at President Donald Trump&#8217;s plan to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods by proposing additional tariffs of 25 percent on 106 categories of U.S. imports including soybeans, autos, chemicals and some types of aircraft.</p> <p>The trade tensions brewing between the top two world economies hit stock markets, with shares of industrial companies with exposure to Chinese markets such as Boeing Co and Caterpillar Inc among the hardest hit.</p> <p>Following are some of the possible winners and losers among U.S. companies and sectors.</p> CAR COMPANIES <p>* U.S. auto maker General Motors Co urged the two countries to engage in constructive dialogue over trade. The company&#8217;s stock fell as much as 3 percent before reversing course to trade slightly higher.</p> <p>* GM rival Ford Motor Co lost as much as 3 percent while electric carmaker Tesla Inc, which depends on China for 17 percent of its revenue, dropped 2.5 percent. Shares of Fiat Chrysler fell as much as 3.4 percent before recovering.</p> <p>* Ford said it encouraged both governments to work together to resolve issues.</p> BOEING <p>* Aircraft maker Boeing Co was last down 2.5 percent, weighing the most on the Dow Jones Industrial Average as documents from China&#8217;s Ministry of Commerce and the U.S. manufacturer showed the move would affect some older Boeing narrowbody models. It was not immediately clear how much the tariffs would impact its newer aircraft.</p> <p>Boeing said it was assessing the situation while analysts from JP Morgan said the proposals from China looked to have been calibrated carefully to avoid a major impact on the planemaker.</p> TECH MAJORS <p>* The S&amp;amp;P 500 technology sector, which has the biggest revenue exposure to China among the benchmark&#8217;s 11 major sectors, dipped 0.5 percent.</p> <p>* Worst hit in the sector were chip stocks Intel Corp, Nvidia Corp and Broadcom Ltd. China&#8217;s position as an assembly hub for electronic devices makes it the biggest consumer of semiconductors.</p> SOYBEANS AND WHISKEY <p>* Jack Daniel&#8217;s maker Brown-Forman Corp slipped about 1 percent before recovering after whiskey was singled out as the only spirit on which China planned to impose more tariffs.</p> <p>* U.S. meat processor Tyson Foods Inc, meat exporter Hormel Foods Corp and Sanderson Farms Inc all rose on the prospect of a drop in prices of feedstock soybean following higher Chinese tariffs on U.S. exports.</p> <p>* DowDuPont Inc said its agriculture unit could be affected by the escalating conflict, warning of price declines for soybeans, and a negative impact on U.S. farmers.</p> <p>* Grain traders Archer Daniels Midlands Co and Bunge Ltd, which trade U.S. soybeans in China, were both off 1.5 percent.</p> <p>Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing Bernard Orr</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Reuters) - An Iranian-born woman who blogged about surviving in a world filled with &#8220;injustice and diseases&#8221; opened fire at YouTube&#8217;s California headquarters because she was angry at a site she believed was suppressing her videos, police said on Wednesday.</p> <p>In a series of Persian and English-language online postings, Nasim Najafi Aghdam, 39, had railed against the video-sharing site owned by Alphabet Inc&#8217;s Google before wounding three people and killing herself on Tuesday at its offices in San Bruno, just south of San Francisco.</p> <p>In an English-language video posted to her YouTube account before the channel was deleted on Tuesday, Aghdam said, &#8220;I am being discriminated. I am being filtered on YouTube.&#8221;</p> <p>Police believe the suspect was upset with the policies and practices of YouTube, which limits access to videos it deems to be inappropriate.</p> <p>&#8220;This appears to be the motive for this incident,&#8221; San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters.</p> <p>He added that Aghdam did not appear to have targeted particular victims when she opened fire with a legally purchased Smith &amp;amp; Wesson 9mm semiautomatic handgun at an open-air plaza on the corporate campus in California&#8217;s Silicon Valley. Aghdam had visited an area gun range that morning.</p> <p>In some of online posts before the attack, she spoke about herself in heroic terms for surviving in a hostile world.</p> <p>&#8220;I think I am doing a great job,&#8221; she wrote in Persian on her Instagram account. &#8220;I have never fallen in love and have never got married. I have no physical and psychological diseases. But I live on a planet that is full of injustice and diseases.&#8221;</p> <p>One of her three victims, a man in his 30s, remained in San Francisco General Hospital in serious condition on Wednesday, the hospital said. Two others were released Tuesday night, it said.</p> <p>The shooting is the latest to add fuel to a long-running debate on gun rights, which was inflamed by the February killing of 17 students and educators at a Florida high school. Mass shootings have become a regular occurrence in the United States but they are rarely carried out by women.</p> Nasim Najafi Aghdam appears in a handout photo provided by the San Bruno Police Department, April 4, 2018. San Bruno Police Department/Handout via REUTERS REPORTED MISSING <p>Aghdam&#8217;s father, Ismail Aghdam, called the San Diego sheriff&#8217;s office on Monday to report her missing after not hearing from her for two days, according to San Diego and San Bruno police. She was found sleeping in her car in Mountain View, California, where Google is based, early on Tuesday and police removed her from the national missing persons database.</p> <p>The San Jose Mercury News quoted her father as saying he had told police that she might go to YouTube&#8217;s headquarters because she &#8220;hated&#8221; the company.</p> <p>Efforts to reach her relatives by phone were unsuccessful.</p> Police officers are seen at Youtube headquarters following an active shooter situation in San Bruno, California, U.S., April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage <p>YouTube has long faced complaints about alleged censorship on its site, and says it attempts to balance its mission of fostering free speech while providing an appropriate and lawful environment for users.</p> <p>In some cases involving videos with sensitive content, YouTube has allowed the videos to stay online but cut off the ability for their publishers to share in advertising revenue.</p> <p>Criticisms from video makers that YouTube is too restrictive about which users can participate in revenue sharing swelled last year as the company imposed new restrictions.</p> <p>Reporting by Paresh Dave and Heather Somerville; additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in ANKARA and Gina Cherelus in NEW YORK; Writing by Rich McKay and Scott Malone; Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A trade group representing U.S. auto parts makers said on Wednesday it supported stronger bilateral engagement between the United States and China and that tariffs were not the solution for intellectual property theft.</p> <p>&#8220;We are concerned about the impact that tariffs will have on the ability of our 1,000 company members to remain competitive in a global marketplace,&#8221; said Ann Wilson, senior vice president of government affairs at Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association.</p> <p>Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Alpine Skiing: Germany's Dressen snatches surprise Kitzbuehel win China strikes back with duties on U.S. soybeans, planes; markets drop Factbox: U.S. winners and losers from trade tit-for-tat Shooter attacked YouTube for filtering her videos, police say Tariffs not the solution for intellectual property theft: MEMA

https://reuters.com/article/alpine-skiing-men/alpine-skiing-germanys-dressen-snatches-surprise-kitzbuehel-win-idUSL8N1PF08O

2018-01-20

2least

KITZBUEHEL Austria Reuters Germany8217s Thomas Dressen tamed the dangerous Streif course to snatch a surprise victory in the men8217s downhill on Saturday and beat specialist Beat Feuz and Aksel Lund Svindal Alpine Skiing FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup Mens Alpine Downhill Kitzbuehel Austria January 20 2018 Thomas Dressen of Germany in action REUTERSDominic Ebenbichler Slideshow 2 Images With the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics only three weeks away the 24yearold was superb as he charged down the aweinspiring course in a near flawless race for his first World Cup win 8220I still can8217t believe it It was always a dream to ski through the finish line and still be leading in Kitzbuehel8221 a beaming Dressen told reporters 8220It was just amazing8221 Swiss Feuz who led for a long time was second a week after winning in Wengen while Austrian Hannes Reichelt was third Norwegian Svindal who had suffered a seasonending injury at the Streif two years ago won the SuperG on Friday but managed only eighth place in the downhill Reporting by Karolos Grohmann Editing by Ken Ferris Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGWASHINGTON Reuters China hit back quickly on Wednesday against US plans to impose tariffs on 50 billion in Chinese goods retaliating with a list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans planes cars beef and chemicals in a move that sent global markets lower Beijing responded after US President Donald Trump8217s administration targeted 25 percent tariffs on some 1300 Chinese industrial technology transport and medical products acting less than 11 hours later in a sharp escalation of the trade dispute between the world8217s two economic superpowers US President Donald Trump who contends his predecessors served the United States badly in trade matters rejected the notion that the titfortat moves amounted to a trade war 8220We are not in a trade war with China that war was lost many years ago by the foolish or incompetent people who represented the US8221 he wrote on Twitter early on Wednesday For a graphic on US imports from China click tmsnrtrs2FMsz1Q The trade actions will not be carried out immediately so there may be room for maneuver Publication of Washington8217s list starts a period of public comment and consultation expected to last around two months The effective date of China8217s moves depends on when the US action takes effect Trump8217s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow and US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross both held out the possibility of talks to resolve the matter Asked by reporters outside the White House whether the United States could lose a trade war Kudlow said 8220No I don8217t see it that way This is a negotiation using all the tools8221 Related Coverage Factbox US winners and losers from trade titfortat White House not planning new big trade initiative against China official China trade retaliation puts stocks of US exporters in spin Ross told CNBC it would not be surprising if negotiations ensued but did not say when this might happen The latest trade moves unnerved investors and sent shivers through global stock markets and commodities MKTSGLOB Shares in US exporters of everything from food to planes were hammered by Beijing8217s list of duties on key US imports including agricultural products planes and chemicals At midday in New York shares of aerospace giant Boeing Co the single largest US exporter to China tumbled 27 percent agricultural machinery maker Deere ampamp Co slipped 44 percent and Caterpillar fell 18 percent The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 056 percent as big US manufacturers and chipmakers bore the brunt while the SampampP 500 fell 029 percent The US dollar also fell and oil dropped to a twoweek low While Washington targeted products that benefit from Chinese industrial policy including its 8220Made in China 20258221 initiative to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products in strategic industries such as advanced IT and robotics Beijing8217s appeared tailored to inflict political damage While Washington8217s list was filled with many obscure industrial items China8217s list strikes at signature US exports including soybeans frozen beef cotton and other agricultural commodities produced in states from Iowa to Texas that voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election The list extends to tobacco and whiskey both produced in states including Kentucky home of US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell like Trump a Republican One of the first opportunities for the United States and China to discuss the dispute is during an April 2022 meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington where finance officials traditionally meet on the sidelines to discuss bilateral issues A US official speaking on condition of anonymity said no talks had been scheduled yet between US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his Chinese counterpart during the IMF gathering of member countries The possibility of an escalating USChina trade war will result in 8220a bumpy ride8221 for the US economy said James Bullard president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis USmade goods that appear to face added tariffs in China based on an analysis of Beijing8217s list include Tesla Inc electric cars Ford Motor Co8217s Lincoln auto models Gulfstream jets made by General Dynamics Corp and BrownForman Corp8217s Jack Daniel8217s whiskey Information technology products from cellphones to personal computers largely escaped the latest salvo of USChina trade measures despite accounting for a significant portion of bilateral trade China ran a 375 billion goods trade surplus with the United States in 2017 Trump has demanded that the China cut the trade gap by 100 billion 8216WEAKEN OUR WILL8217 8220China is also trying to weaken our will by targeting certain segments of our economy8221 White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told National Public Radio 8220But let8217s remember we buy five times more goods than they buy from us They have a lot more to lose in any escalation in this matter8221 Beijing8217s list of 25 percent additional tariffs on US goods covers 106 items with a trade value matching the 50 billion targeted on Washington8217s list China8217s commerce and finance ministries said 8220This is a real game changer and moves the trade dispute away from symbolism to measures which would really hurt US agricultural exports8221 said Commerzbank commodities analyst Carsten Fritsch China8217s tariff list covers aircraft that would likely include older models such as Boeing Co8217s workhorse 737 narrowbody jet but not newer models like the 737 MAX or its larger planes FILE PHOTO A worker takes a sample from an incoming truckload of soybeans at Peterson Farms Seed facility in Fargo North Dakota US December 6 2017 REUTERSDan KoeckFile Photo The US move was broadly flagged last month and is aimed at forcing Beijing to address what Washington says is deeply entrenched theft of US intellectual property and forced technology transfer from US companies to Chinese competitors charges Chinese officials deny Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had shown sincerity in wanting to resolve the dispute through negotiations 8220But the best opportunities for resolving the issues through dialogue and negotiations have been repeatedly missed by the US side8221 he told a regular briefing on Wednesday The tariff list from the office of US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer followed China8217s imposition of tariffs on 3 billion worth of US fruits nuts pork and wine to protest US steel and aluminum tariffs imposed last month by Trump Many consumer electronics products such as cellphones made by Apple Inc and laptops made by Dell were excluded from the US list as were footwear and clothing drawing a sigh of relief from retailers who had worried about higher costs for American consumers Many US business groups support Trump8217s efforts to stop the theft of US intellectual property but have questioned whether tariffs are the right approach The Office of the United States Trade Representative has scheduled a May 15 public hearing on the tariffs Slideshow 6 Images For a graphic on US trade in goods with China click tmsnrtrs2GcOZIH Reporting by David Lawder Jason Lange Ginger Gibson Steve Holland Makini Brice Susan Heavey David Chance and Lindsay Dunsmuir in WASHINGTON Michael Martina Cheng Fang Ryan Woo Ben Blanchard Tony Munroe Cate Cadell Philip Wen Dominique Patton and Josephine Mason in BEIJING and Engen Tham in SHANGHAI Additional reporting Brenda Goh in Shanghai Stella Qiu in Beijing Tom Miles in Geneva and Michael Hogan in Hamburg Writing by Will Dunham Editing by Kim Coghill Alex Richardson and Frances Kerry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters China on Wednesday hit back at President Donald Trump8217s plan to impose tariffs on 50 billion in Chinese goods by proposing additional tariffs of 25 percent on 106 categories of US imports including soybeans autos chemicals and some types of aircraft The trade tensions brewing between the top two world economies hit stock markets with shares of industrial companies with exposure to Chinese markets such as Boeing Co and Caterpillar Inc among the hardest hit Following are some of the possible winners and losers among US companies and sectors CAR COMPANIES US auto maker General Motors Co urged the two countries to engage in constructive dialogue over trade The company8217s stock fell as much as 3 percent before reversing course to trade slightly higher GM rival Ford Motor Co lost as much as 3 percent while electric carmaker Tesla Inc which depends on China for 17 percent of its revenue dropped 25 percent Shares of Fiat Chrysler fell as much as 34 percent before recovering Ford said it encouraged both governments to work together to resolve issues BOEING Aircraft maker Boeing Co was last down 25 percent weighing the most on the Dow Jones Industrial Average as documents from China8217s Ministry of Commerce and the US manufacturer showed the move would affect some older Boeing narrowbody models It was not immediately clear how much the tariffs would impact its newer aircraft Boeing said it was assessing the situation while analysts from JP Morgan said the proposals from China looked to have been calibrated carefully to avoid a major impact on the planemaker TECH MAJORS The SampampP 500 technology sector which has the biggest revenue exposure to China among the benchmark8217s 11 major sectors dipped 05 percent Worst hit in the sector were chip stocks Intel Corp Nvidia Corp and Broadcom Ltd China8217s position as an assembly hub for electronic devices makes it the biggest consumer of semiconductors SOYBEANS AND WHISKEY Jack Daniel8217s maker BrownForman Corp slipped about 1 percent before recovering after whiskey was singled out as the only spirit on which China planned to impose more tariffs US meat processor Tyson Foods Inc meat exporter Hormel Foods Corp and Sanderson Farms Inc all rose on the prospect of a drop in prices of feedstock soybean following higher Chinese tariffs on US exports DowDuPont Inc said its agriculture unit could be affected by the escalating conflict warning of price declines for soybeans and a negative impact on US farmers Grain traders Archer Daniels Midlands Co and Bunge Ltd which trade US soybeans in China were both off 15 percent Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru Editing Bernard Orr Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Calif Reuters An Iranianborn woman who blogged about surviving in a world filled with 8220injustice and diseases8221 opened fire at YouTube8217s California headquarters because she was angry at a site she believed was suppressing her videos police said on Wednesday In a series of Persian and Englishlanguage online postings Nasim Najafi Aghdam 39 had railed against the videosharing site owned by Alphabet Inc8217s Google before wounding three people and killing herself on Tuesday at its offices in San Bruno just south of San Francisco In an Englishlanguage video posted to her YouTube account before the channel was deleted on Tuesday Aghdam said 8220I am being discriminated I am being filtered on YouTube8221 Police believe the suspect was upset with the policies and practices of YouTube which limits access to videos it deems to be inappropriate 8220This appears to be the motive for this incident8221 San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini told reporters He added that Aghdam did not appear to have targeted particular victims when she opened fire with a legally purchased Smith ampamp Wesson 9mm semiautomatic handgun at an openair plaza on the corporate campus in California8217s Silicon Valley Aghdam had visited an area gun range that morning In some of online posts before the attack she spoke about herself in heroic terms for surviving in a hostile world 8220I think I am doing a great job8221 she wrote in Persian on her Instagram account 8220I have never fallen in love and have never got married I have no physical and psychological diseases But I live on a planet that is full of injustice and diseases8221 One of her three victims a man in his 30s remained in San Francisco General Hospital in serious condition on Wednesday the hospital said Two others were released Tuesday night it said The shooting is the latest to add fuel to a longrunning debate on gun rights which was inflamed by the February killing of 17 students and educators at a Florida high school Mass shootings have become a regular occurrence in the United States but they are rarely carried out by women Nasim Najafi Aghdam appears in a handout photo provided by the San Bruno Police Department April 4 2018 San Bruno Police DepartmentHandout via REUTERS REPORTED MISSING Aghdam8217s father Ismail Aghdam called the San Diego sheriff8217s office on Monday to report her missing after not hearing from her for two days according to San Diego and San Bruno police She was found sleeping in her car in Mountain View California where Google is based early on Tuesday and police removed her from the national missing persons database The San Jose Mercury News quoted her father as saying he had told police that she might go to YouTube8217s headquarters because she 8220hated8221 the company Efforts to reach her relatives by phone were unsuccessful Police officers are seen at Youtube headquarters following an active shooter situation in San Bruno California US April 3 2018 REUTERSElijah Nouvelage YouTube has long faced complaints about alleged censorship on its site and says it attempts to balance its mission of fostering free speech while providing an appropriate and lawful environment for users In some cases involving videos with sensitive content YouTube has allowed the videos to stay online but cut off the ability for their publishers to share in advertising revenue Criticisms from video makers that YouTube is too restrictive about which users can participate in revenue sharing swelled last year as the company imposed new restrictions Reporting by Paresh Dave and Heather Somerville additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in ANKARA and Gina Cherelus in NEW YORK Writing by Rich McKay and Scott Malone Editing by Bill Trott and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A trade group representing US auto parts makers said on Wednesday it supported stronger bilateral engagement between the United States and China and that tariffs were not the solution for intellectual property theft 8220We are concerned about the impact that tariffs will have on the ability of our 1000 company members to remain competitive in a global marketplace8221 said Ann Wilson senior vice president of government affairs at Motor Equipment Manufacturers Association Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>your email</p> <p>your name</p> <p>recipient(s) email (comma separated)</p> <p /> <p>message</p> <p>captcha</p> <p /> <p>These are tough times for American workers. But the news in 2014 wasn't all bad. (Steve Rhodes / Flickr) &amp;#160;</p> <p>The mainstream press often files workers&#8217; stories between corporate gossip in the &#8220;business&#8221; or &#8220;money&#8221; sections. But the efforts of working people to organize for their common interests&#8212;as well as the efforts of the 1 percent to keep a lid on things&#8212;frequently made front-page news this year.</p> <p>Much has been made of the incredibly hostile climate for labor over the past few decades. Yet this past year, workers still organized on shop floors, went out on strike, marched in the street and shuffled into courthouses to hold their employers accountable, and campaigned hard for those who earned (or, often enough, didn&#8217;t earn) their vote. Legislators, meanwhile, tarried on with their anti-worker &#8220;right-to-work&#8221; laws, and union busters busted up unions. But if state legislatures and the U.S. Supreme Court were harsh on workers, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was refreshingly helpful, passing down several rulings that made organizing easier and wage-theft harder.</p> <p>Whether it was fast-food and retail workers demanding respect and better pay in record numbers, cities across the country raising their minimum wage under public pressure, or student athletes gaining recognition as employees of their universities, the labor movement has seen some important&#8212;and, at times, unexpected&#8212;victories this past year.</p> <p>The union election held by athletes at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in April sent shockwaves throughout the sports world. Professional athletes have formed labor unions like the National Football League Players Association in the NFL and the National Basketball Players Association in the NBA. But in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), where athletes bring in millions of dollars to their colleges and universities yet receive compensation only in the form of scholarships, the union drive at Northwestern is a historic first.</p> <p>As Alex Lubben&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">wrote</a>&amp;#160;earlier this year for&amp;#160;Working In These Times, the move was an affront to the longstanding argument for the acceptability of exploiting NCAA athletes&#8217; labor:</p> <p>The term &#8220;student athlete&#8221; has been used by the NCAA repeatedly to emphasize that college athletes are&amp;#160;not&amp;#160;employees and to bar them from receiving &#8220;undue&#8221; compensation. &#8230; This semantic twist has, so far, been enough to keep players from receiving the same rights as workers. Many are on year-to-year scholarships; if a player is deemed no longer valuable to his team&#8212;which can mean anything from injury to poor performance on the field&#8212;even if his grades are stellar, his scholarship can be stripped. And neither colleges nor the NCAA are required to care for athletes who experience conditions, like brain trauma, that manifest after a player graduates.</p> <p>The task of winning a union could take many more months if not years, and the athletes who voted may no longer be playing when the decision comes. But just getting the National Labor Relations Board to recognize student athletes as employees and hold an official vote has been&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/179042/northwestern-university-football-union-and-ncaas-death-spiral" type="external">called</a>&amp;#160;&#8220;the first real crack in the NCAA cartel.&#8221; That&#8217;s something worth cheering for.</p> <p>FedEx Ground drivers might seem to work the same job as UPS workers who are organized nationally by the Teamsters union. But at FedEx, drivers are classified as self-employed independent contractors. They are ostensibly given more control over their own scheduling and routing, but they also pay for their own vehicle expenses and don&#8217;t qualify for the rights or benefits that UPS drivers enjoy like overtime pay, minimum wage, workers compensation and the right to collectively bargain.&amp;#160;This business model gives FedEx a distinct advantage over its competitors, as the company has been known to&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-16/fedex-ground-says-its-drivers-arent-employees-dot-the-courts-will-decide" type="external">boast</a>.</p> <p>Drivers sued in 2009 in D.C. and 2010 in Indiana, claiming that they were misclassified and demanding back pay, but in both cases, the courts sided with FedEx.&amp;#160;This year, however, things turned in favor of the drivers.</p> <p>In August, a federal appeals court&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119263/court-california-oregon-fedex-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors" type="external">set precedent</a>&amp;#160;by ruling that, because of the level of control FedEx exerted over its drivers, about 2,600 FedEx drivers in California and Oregon were misclassified. Then, in early October, a Kansas court ruled in favor of drivers. The same week, the National Labor Relations Board&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.law360.com/articles/584034/nlrb-says-fedex-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors" type="external">ruled</a>&amp;#160;that FedEx&#8217;s drivers in Connecticut were indeed employees and forced the company to recognize a union that workers had formed in 2006.</p> <p>FedEx Ground changed its model in 2011 and the courts&#8217; rulings won&#8217;t pay out to drivers hired after that time. Nevertheless, lawsuits and action from the NLRB are the bugbears of employers who look to cut costs by compensating employees like contractors. 2014 was the year that courts turned up the pressure on FedEx, one of the country&#8217;s most flagrant misclassifiers.</p> <p>In its third year as a national movement of low-wage workers demanding $15 an hour and a union, the &#8220;Fight for 15&#8221; dug in its heels. &#8220;We&#8217;ve seen how the civil rights movement won civil rights and we&#8217;ve seen how women won the right to vote,&#8221; Kansas City organizer and Burger King employee Terrance Wise&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/business/in-fast-food-workers-fight-for-15-an-hour-a-strong-voice-in-terrance-wise.html?_r=0" type="external">told</a>&amp;#160;the&amp;#160;New York Times. &#8220;We have to do whatever it takes to win.&#8221;</p> <p>This refrain&#8212;&#8220;whatever it takes&#8221;&#8212;was&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.progressillinois.com/posts/content/2014/07/28/fast-food-workers-vow-escalate-fight-better-wages-union-representation-vide" type="external">affirmed</a>&amp;#160;at a national convention of 1,200 fast-food workers in July that was organized in part by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the union supporting the Fight for 15. The words described this year&#8217;s escalation of tactics in the streets where workers protested and participated in civil disobedience in record numbers and in more cities than ever, according to organizers.</p> <p>And the protests expanded to dozens of countries around the world. In May, fast-food workers in an estimated 30 countries&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">protested</a>&amp;#160;in solidarity with the Fight for 15. On September 4 and again on December 4, workers went on strike and faced arrest in over 100 U.S. cities each time&#8212;nearly 200 cities in December according to organizers&#8212;to call out their employers for paying poverty wages for grueling service work.</p> <p>The movement this year impelled municipal, state and federal raises in the minimum wage&#8212;including a $15 wage in Seattle and a $10.10 wage for&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/miniumum-wage-executive-order-barack-obama-103450.html" type="external">federal employees</a>&#8212;and made gains in the courts. In July, the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board determined that McDonald&#8217;s Corporation could be considered a &#8220;joint employer&#8221; in lawsuits the burger chain had previously deflected onto their franchisees. The ruling&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">has the potential</a>&amp;#160;to change the way powerful brands have hidden behind small franchisees, passing the buck on the poor working conditions they create for fast-food and other workers.</p> <p>Though the signature strikes of the Fight for 15 have forced minimal concessions from employers on the shop floor so far, they have begun reshaping the law in their favor and have brought international attention to the plight of low-wage workers in this country and around the world.</p> <p>President Obama&#8217;s&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">botched attempt</a>&amp;#160;to make appointments to the National Labor Relations Board this summer while the Senate was in recess kicked up a controversy that inspired wild accusations from Republicans that Obama had broken the law in order to set up a liberal NLRB. But the Right may, indeed, have some cause for concern. The NLRB issued several decisions this year that have improved the lives of thousands of workers and could eventually improve the lives of many more.</p> <p>This month, the agency ruled that employees can use company email for union activity, which gets rid of one of the many hurdles organizers and workers had to clear, especially during union elections, as Moshe Marvit&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">explained</a>&amp;#160;in this blog:</p> <p>The new rule includes a number of significant benefits for workers who are organizing, including postponing employer litigation over union election issues until after the election takes place to eliminating the waiting period between the time when an election is ordered and when it occurs (the time when many bosses carry out their union-busting campaigns through&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/bp235/" type="external">tactics</a>&amp;#160;like firings or threats of closing down a workplace).</p> <p>But perhaps the most overdue change is the modernization of the &#8220;Excelsior List&#8221; rules. Prior to today&#8217;s rule, employers were required to turn over to the union an Excelsior List, which contained the names and home addresses of workers within seven days after a union election is ordered, so that the union can effectively communicate with all the workers it seeks to represent.</p> <p>The new rule requires the employer to also turn over any employee email addresses and telephone numbers it possess, and shortens the amount of time management has to turn over the list to two days.</p> <p>With the U.S. Supreme Court coming down hard on workers this year&#8212;ruling earlier in December, as Marvit also explained, that Amazon workers&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">don&#8217;t have to be paid</a>&amp;#160;for all the time they spend locked in the warehouse&#8212;this nod from the federal government is consoling.</p> <p>In last year&#8217;s&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">list</a>, we gave a shout-out to&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Kshama Sawant</a>, who won a city council seat in Seattle on a socialist ticket with a $15 minimum wage as the pillar of her platform. Barely six months after she took office, her city passed such a wage, making Seattle the first major U.S. city to raise the bar for its lowest-paid workers to $15 an hour.</p> <p>The increase represents a significant win for a national movement that set $15 as a concrete goal in bringing working Americans out of poverty. As Peter Dreier&amp;#160; <a href="http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/08/how-seattles-15-minimum-wage-victory-began-in-new-york-citys-zuccotti-park/" type="external">wrote</a>&amp;#160;on BillMoyers.com,</p> <p>This dramatic change is &#8230; the consequence of years of&amp;#160;activism in Seattle and around the country. Now that Seattle has established a new standard, the pace of change is likely to accelerate quickly as activists and politicians elsewhere seek to capture the momentum. &#8230;</p> <p>Seattle now joins a growing list of cities&#8212;including San Francisco, Santa Fe,&amp;#160;Albuquerque, San Jose and Washington, DC (along with two adjacent Maryland counties)&#8212;that in the past few years have seized growing frustration over the widening income gap and declining living standards by establishing local minimum wages substantially above the federal level of $7.25. Unions, community groups and progressive politicians in San Diego, New York City, Oakland, Los Angeles and other cities are already taking steps to follow in Seattle&#8217;s footsteps.</p> <p>After a successful card check in September, the Teamsters and Unite Here will soon represent a combined total of 900 employees of Harrah&#8217;s Hotel and Casino in New Orleans, doubling the number of union members in the city&#8217;s tourism industry.</p> <p>This&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2014/09/hospitality_union_teamsters_qu_1.html" type="external">good news</a>&amp;#160;comes out of the Deep South, where labor has historically faced particularly vicious opposition. As Kevin Solari&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">wrote</a>&amp;#160;for this blog,</p> <p>The decades-old struggle for labor unions in the South has been reinvigorated in recent years. The North Carolina State AFL-CIO has said the labor needs to &#8220;organize the South&amp;#160; <a href="http://aflcionc.org/organize-the-south-or-die/" type="external">or die</a>.&#8221; Others have called for a&amp;#160; <a href="http://thesouthlawn.org/2013/09/10/a-call-for-a-second-operation-dixie/" type="external">Second Operation Dixie</a>, referencing the CIO&#8217;s failed mission in the late forties and early fifties to unionize the old Confederacy.</p> <p>Almost a thousand new union members in New Orleans is a good start.</p> <p>One of labor&#8217;s most crushing blows in recent decades came when Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers&#8217; strike in 1981. So the news of over 18,000 airport workers and pilots at three major airlines&#8212;American, Virgin, and JetBlue&#8212;voting to join unions this year was tinged with historical significance, if only because it represented an enormous victory in an industry that had dealt such a cruel defeat to the movement in the past.</p> <p>The Air Line Pilots Association union gained nearly 2,600 new members in April when pilots at JetBlue Airways&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/business/pilots-at-jetblue-vote-to-join-a-union.html?_r=0" type="external">voted</a>&amp;#160;by a strong majority to join. A few months later, after winning a vote to unionize in August, over 850 flight attendants at Virgin American gained representation from the Transport Workers Union, forming the first union at the airline, and&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-13/virgin-america-is-no-longer-a-union-virgin" type="external">ending</a>&amp;#160;Virgin&#8217;s status as the last U.S. airline without a collective bargaining agreement with its employees. Once more, in September, reservation agents at American Airlines&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">voted to join the Communications Workers of America</a>, adding 14,500 members to their ranks. The union&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.cwa-union.org/news/entry/american_airlines_passenger_service_agents_vote_big_for_union" type="external">called</a>&amp;#160;it &#8220;the largest labor organizing victory in the South in decades.&#8221;</p> <p>Following last year&#8217;s&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">victory at the Seattle-Tacoma airport in Washington state</a>, where employees joined with the surrounding town&#8217;s residents to pass the first $15 minimum wage in the country, the labor movement might just get used to looking to airports for uplifting news.</p> <p>For many workers in the retail industry, low pay and erratic scheduling are the norm. This latter grievance&#8212;that the income on which retail workers depend remains at the mercy of their employer&#8217;s scheduling whims&#8212;has been at the center of the &#8220;campaign for respect&#8221; at Walmart that organized their largest wave of one-day strikes the day after Thanksgiving this year.</p> <p>In San Francisco, workers got&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">a little help</a>&amp;#160;in this area from the city and county government, which passed the &#8220;Retail Workers&#8217; Bill of Rights&#8221; just before Thanksgiving. Brice Colvert at ThinkProgress&amp;#160; <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/11/26/3597287/san-francisco-retail-bill-of-rights/" type="external">explains</a>&amp;#160;the pair of bills that focus on fair scheduling practices:</p> <p>The new rules will require retail chains that have 11 or more locations across the country and employ 20 or more people in San Francisco to provide advance notice of schedules, improve the treatment of part-time employees, and give current workers the opportunity to take on more hours before hiring new people. Employers will have to give their workers at least two weeks&#8217; advance notice of their schedules, and if they fail to do so they will have to give those workers additional &#8220;predictability pay.&#8221; Workers also get paid if they&#8217;re required to be on call but their shifts are canceled. Employers will have to give part-time employees the same starting wage as those working full time in the same position and access to the same benefits.</p> <p>Although fair scheduling is only part of the battle for low-wage workers, the retail employees&#8217; &#8220;bill of rights&#8221; could take away one of the tools that employers like Walmart use to keep work precarious and workplaces difficult to organize. The AFL-CIO is&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/In-The-States/San-Francisco-Leads-the-Way-on-Fair-Scheduling-with-Retail-Workers-Bill-of-Rights" type="external">hailing</a>&amp;#160;it as a &#8220;big step in the right direction.&#8221;</p> <p>A devastating defeat for workers at a Volkswagen automobile factory in Chattanooga, TN, may have been the low point for labor this year. In February, after an&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">arduous campaign</a>&amp;#160;opposed and interfered with by state lawmakers, the United Auto Workers lost the union election by a mere 86 out of 1,338 votes, maintaining the Volkswagen plant&#8217;s status as the only one in the world without representation on the automaker&#8217;s international works council.</p> <p>But in November, UAW announced some surprising good news. After proving to Volkswagen that a majority of the Chattanooga plant&#8217;s workers are already members of UAW Local 42, the union will now represent just those members. As Will Craft&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">explained</a>&amp;#160;in this blog last month, the unconventional agreement</p> <p>allows a variety of unions different tiers of representational rights based on the percentage of the workforce that sign up to become members of the union. &#8230; The unions will have different representational responsibilities based on how many employees are members of the union. And &#8230; because the company policies now allow for workers to be represented by multiple unions, the United Auto Workers are not the only union vying to represent Chattanooga Volkswagen workers: another organization called the American Council of Employees is also hoping to sign up workers.</p> <p>The win was a far cry from what the UAW was hoping to achieve in February&#8212;exclusive representation of all the plant&#8217;s workers. But the union sees this agreement as a major step toward gaining a seat at Volkswagen&#8217;s global works council. &#8220;You have to walk before you run,&#8221; was how UAW Secretary-Treasurer Gary Casteel&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/union-automobile-workers-wins-major-victory-unionizing-volkswagen-workers-chattanooga-2/" type="external">put it</a>. In Chattanooga, the UAW seems finally to be on its feet.</p>

The 9 Most Important Victories for Workers in 2014

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17492/union_victories_2014

2014-12-30

4left

your email your name recipients email comma separated message captcha These are tough times for American workers But the news in 2014 wasnt all bad Steve Rhodes Flickr amp160 The mainstream press often files workers8217 stories between corporate gossip in the 8220business8221 or 8220money8221 sections But the efforts of working people to organize for their common interests8212as well as the efforts of the 1 percent to keep a lid on things8212frequently made frontpage news this year Much has been made of the incredibly hostile climate for labor over the past few decades Yet this past year workers still organized on shop floors went out on strike marched in the street and shuffled into courthouses to hold their employers accountable and campaigned hard for those who earned or often enough didn8217t earn their vote Legislators meanwhile tarried on with their antiworker 8220righttowork8221 laws and union busters busted up unions But if state legislatures and the US Supreme Court were harsh on workers the National Labor Relations Board NLRB was refreshingly helpful passing down several rulings that made organizing easier and wagetheft harder Whether it was fastfood and retail workers demanding respect and better pay in record numbers cities across the country raising their minimum wage under public pressure or student athletes gaining recognition as employees of their universities the labor movement has seen some important8212and at times unexpected8212victories this past year The union election held by athletes at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois in April sent shockwaves throughout the sports world Professional athletes have formed labor unions like the National Football League Players Association in the NFL and the National Basketball Players Association in the NBA But in the National Collegiate Athletic Association NCAA where athletes bring in millions of dollars to their colleges and universities yet receive compensation only in the form of scholarships the union drive at Northwestern is a historic first As Alex Lubbenamp160 wroteamp160earlier this year foramp160Working In These Times the move was an affront to the longstanding argument for the acceptability of exploiting NCAA athletes8217 labor The term 8220student athlete8221 has been used by the NCAA repeatedly to emphasize that college athletes areamp160notamp160employees and to bar them from receiving 8220undue8221 compensation 8230 This semantic twist has so far been enough to keep players from receiving the same rights as workers Many are on yeartoyear scholarships if a player is deemed no longer valuable to his team8212which can mean anything from injury to poor performance on the field8212even if his grades are stellar his scholarship can be stripped And neither colleges nor the NCAA are required to care for athletes who experience conditions like brain trauma that manifest after a player graduates The task of winning a union could take many more months if not years and the athletes who voted may no longer be playing when the decision comes But just getting the National Labor Relations Board to recognize student athletes as employees and hold an official vote has beenamp160 calledamp1608220the first real crack in the NCAA cartel8221 That8217s something worth cheering for FedEx Ground drivers might seem to work the same job as UPS workers who are organized nationally by the Teamsters union But at FedEx drivers are classified as selfemployed independent contractors They are ostensibly given more control over their own scheduling and routing but they also pay for their own vehicle expenses and don8217t qualify for the rights or benefits that UPS drivers enjoy like overtime pay minimum wage workers compensation and the right to collectively bargainamp160This business model gives FedEx a distinct advantage over its competitors as the company has been known toamp160 boast Drivers sued in 2009 in DC and 2010 in Indiana claiming that they were misclassified and demanding back pay but in both cases the courts sided with FedExamp160This year however things turned in favor of the drivers In August a federal appeals courtamp160 set precedentamp160by ruling that because of the level of control FedEx exerted over its drivers about 2600 FedEx drivers in California and Oregon were misclassified Then in early October a Kansas court ruled in favor of drivers The same week the National Labor Relations Boardamp160 ruledamp160that FedEx8217s drivers in Connecticut were indeed employees and forced the company to recognize a union that workers had formed in 2006 FedEx Ground changed its model in 2011 and the courts8217 rulings won8217t pay out to drivers hired after that time Nevertheless lawsuits and action from the NLRB are the bugbears of employers who look to cut costs by compensating employees like contractors 2014 was the year that courts turned up the pressure on FedEx one of the country8217s most flagrant misclassifiers In its third year as a national movement of lowwage workers demanding 15 an hour and a union the 8220Fight for 158221 dug in its heels 8220We8217ve seen how the civil rights movement won civil rights and we8217ve seen how women won the right to vote8221 Kansas City organizer and Burger King employee Terrance Wiseamp160 toldamp160theamp160New York Times 8220We have to do whatever it takes to win8221 This refrain82128220whatever it takes82218212wasamp160 affirmedamp160at a national convention of 1200 fastfood workers in July that was organized in part by the Service Employees International Union SEIU the union supporting the Fight for 15 The words described this year8217s escalation of tactics in the streets where workers protested and participated in civil disobedience in record numbers and in more cities than ever according to organizers And the protests expanded to dozens of countries around the world In May fastfood workers in an estimated 30 countriesamp160 protestedamp160in solidarity with the Fight for 15 On September 4 and again on December 4 workers went on strike and faced arrest in over 100 US cities each time8212nearly 200 cities in December according to organizers8212to call out their employers for paying poverty wages for grueling service work The movement this year impelled municipal state and federal raises in the minimum wage8212including a 15 wage in Seattle and a 1010 wage foramp160 federal employees8212and made gains in the courts In July the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board determined that McDonald8217s Corporation could be considered a 8220joint employer8221 in lawsuits the burger chain had previously deflected onto their franchisees The rulingamp160 has the potentialamp160to change the way powerful brands have hidden behind small franchisees passing the buck on the poor working conditions they create for fastfood and other workers Though the signature strikes of the Fight for 15 have forced minimal concessions from employers on the shop floor so far they have begun reshaping the law in their favor and have brought international attention to the plight of lowwage workers in this country and around the world President Obama8217samp160 botched attemptamp160to make appointments to the National Labor Relations Board this summer while the Senate was in recess kicked up a controversy that inspired wild accusations from Republicans that Obama had broken the law in order to set up a liberal NLRB But the Right may indeed have some cause for concern The NLRB issued several decisions this year that have improved the lives of thousands of workers and could eventually improve the lives of many more This month the agency ruled that employees can use company email for union activity which gets rid of one of the many hurdles organizers and workers had to clear especially during union elections as Moshe Marvitamp160 explainedamp160in this blog The new rule includes a number of significant benefits for workers who are organizing including postponing employer litigation over union election issues until after the election takes place to eliminating the waiting period between the time when an election is ordered and when it occurs the time when many bosses carry out their unionbusting campaigns throughamp160 tacticsamp160like firings or threats of closing down a workplace But perhaps the most overdue change is the modernization of the 8220Excelsior List8221 rules Prior to today8217s rule employers were required to turn over to the union an Excelsior List which contained the names and home addresses of workers within seven days after a union election is ordered so that the union can effectively communicate with all the workers it seeks to represent The new rule requires the employer to also turn over any employee email addresses and telephone numbers it possess and shortens the amount of time management has to turn over the list to two days With the US Supreme Court coming down hard on workers this year8212ruling earlier in December as Marvit also explained that Amazon workersamp160 don8217t have to be paidamp160for all the time they spend locked in the warehouse8212this nod from the federal government is consoling In last year8217samp160 list we gave a shoutout toamp160 Kshama Sawant who won a city council seat in Seattle on a socialist ticket with a 15 minimum wage as the pillar of her platform Barely six months after she took office her city passed such a wage making Seattle the first major US city to raise the bar for its lowestpaid workers to 15 an hour The increase represents a significant win for a national movement that set 15 as a concrete goal in bringing working Americans out of poverty As Peter Dreieramp160 wroteamp160on BillMoyerscom This dramatic change is 8230 the consequence of years ofamp160activism in Seattle and around the country Now that Seattle has established a new standard the pace of change is likely to accelerate quickly as activists and politicians elsewhere seek to capture the momentum 8230 Seattle now joins a growing list of cities8212including San Francisco Santa Feamp160Albuquerque San Jose and Washington DC along with two adjacent Maryland counties8212that in the past few years have seized growing frustration over the widening income gap and declining living standards by establishing local minimum wages substantially above the federal level of 725 Unions community groups and progressive politicians in San Diego New York City Oakland Los Angeles and other cities are already taking steps to follow in Seattle8217s footsteps After a successful card check in September the Teamsters and Unite Here will soon represent a combined total of 900 employees of Harrah8217s Hotel and Casino in New Orleans doubling the number of union members in the city8217s tourism industry Thisamp160 good newsamp160comes out of the Deep South where labor has historically faced particularly vicious opposition As Kevin Solariamp160 wroteamp160for this blog The decadesold struggle for labor unions in the South has been reinvigorated in recent years The North Carolina State AFLCIO has said the labor needs to 8220organize the Southamp160 or die8221 Others have called for aamp160 Second Operation Dixie referencing the CIO8217s failed mission in the late forties and early fifties to unionize the old Confederacy Almost a thousand new union members in New Orleans is a good start One of labor8217s most crushing blows in recent decades came when Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers8217 strike in 1981 So the news of over 18000 airport workers and pilots at three major airlines8212American Virgin and JetBlue8212voting to join unions this year was tinged with historical significance if only because it represented an enormous victory in an industry that had dealt such a cruel defeat to the movement in the past The Air Line Pilots Association union gained nearly 2600 new members in April when pilots at JetBlue Airwaysamp160 votedamp160by a strong majority to join A few months later after winning a vote to unionize in August over 850 flight attendants at Virgin American gained representation from the Transport Workers Union forming the first union at the airline andamp160 endingamp160Virgin8217s status as the last US airline without a collective bargaining agreement with its employees Once more in September reservation agents at American Airlinesamp160 voted to join the Communications Workers of America adding 14500 members to their ranks The unionamp160 calledamp160it 8220the largest labor organizing victory in the South in decades8221 Following last year8217samp160 victory at the SeattleTacoma airport in Washington state where employees joined with the surrounding town8217s residents to pass the first 15 minimum wage in the country the labor movement might just get used to looking to airports for uplifting news For many workers in the retail industry low pay and erratic scheduling are the norm This latter grievance8212that the income on which retail workers depend remains at the mercy of their employer8217s scheduling whims8212has been at the center of the 8220campaign for respect8221 at Walmart that organized their largest wave of oneday strikes the day after Thanksgiving this year In San Francisco workers gotamp160 a little helpamp160in this area from the city and county government which passed the 8220Retail Workers8217 Bill of Rights8221 just before Thanksgiving Brice Colvert at ThinkProgressamp160 explainsamp160the pair of bills that focus on fair scheduling practices The new rules will require retail chains that have 11 or more locations across the country and employ 20 or more people in San Francisco to provide advance notice of schedules improve the treatment of parttime employees and give current workers the opportunity to take on more hours before hiring new people Employers will have to give their workers at least two weeks8217 advance notice of their schedules and if they fail to do so they will have to give those workers additional 8220predictability pay8221 Workers also get paid if they8217re required to be on call but their shifts are canceled Employers will have to give parttime employees the same starting wage as those working full time in the same position and access to the same benefits Although fair scheduling is only part of the battle for lowwage workers the retail employees8217 8220bill of rights8221 could take away one of the tools that employers like Walmart use to keep work precarious and workplaces difficult to organize The AFLCIO isamp160 hailingamp160it as a 8220big step in the right direction8221 A devastating defeat for workers at a Volkswagen automobile factory in Chattanooga TN may have been the low point for labor this year In February after anamp160 arduous campaignamp160opposed and interfered with by state lawmakers the United Auto Workers lost the union election by a mere 86 out of 1338 votes maintaining the Volkswagen plant8217s status as the only one in the world without representation on the automaker8217s international works council But in November UAW announced some surprising good news After proving to Volkswagen that a majority of the Chattanooga plant8217s workers are already members of UAW Local 42 the union will now represent just those members As Will Craftamp160 explainedamp160in this blog last month the unconventional agreement allows a variety of unions different tiers of representational rights based on the percentage of the workforce that sign up to become members of the union 8230 The unions will have different representational responsibilities based on how many employees are members of the union And 8230 because the company policies now allow for workers to be represented by multiple unions the United Auto Workers are not the only union vying to represent Chattanooga Volkswagen workers another organization called the American Council of Employees is also hoping to sign up workers The win was a far cry from what the UAW was hoping to achieve in February8212exclusive representation of all the plant8217s workers But the union sees this agreement as a major step toward gaining a seat at Volkswagen8217s global works council 8220You have to walk before you run8221 was how UAW SecretaryTreasurer Gary Casteelamp160 put it In Chattanooga the UAW seems finally to be on its feet

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different/ADJ tiers/NOUN of/ADP representational/ADJ rights/NOUN based/VERB on/ADP the/DET percentage/NOUN of/ADP the/DET workforce/NOUN that/PRON sign/VERB up/ADP to/PART become/VERB members/NOUN of/ADP the/DET union/NOUN 8230/NUM The/DET unions/NOUN will/AUX have/VERB different/ADJ representational/ADJ responsibilities/NOUN based/VERB on/ADP how/SCONJ many/ADJ employees/NOUN are/AUX members/NOUN of/ADP the/DET union/NOUN And/CCONJ 8230/NUM because/SCONJ the/DET company/NOUN policies/NOUN now/ADV allow/VERB for/SCONJ workers/NOUN to/PART be/AUX represented/VERB by/ADP multiple/ADJ unions/NOUN the/DET United/PROPN Auto/PROPN Workers/PROPN are/AUX not/PART the/DET only/ADJ union/NOUN vying/VERB to/PART represent/VERB Chattanooga/PROPN Volkswagen/PROPN workers/NOUN another/DET organization/NOUN called/VERB the/DET American/PROPN Council/PROPN of/ADP Employees/PROPN is/AUX also/ADV hoping/VERB to/PART sign/VERB up/ADP workers/NOUN The/DET win/NOUN was/AUX a/DET far/ADJ cry/NOUN from/ADP 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<p>In January 2017, the Mexican government implemented a 20 percent hike in gasoline prices, setting the stage for a nationwide rebellion and a people&#8217;s mobilization against the tightening screws of neoliberalism. To a population already struggling with poverty and low wages, this blatant exercise of power and greed was a wake-up call heard across Mexico.</p> <p>Today, the struggle continues, but in the desert border city of Mexicali it has expanded to the protection of water, as the people face off with a United States-based multinational corporation known as Constellation Brands. In a familiar scenario in which capitalism seeks to privatize the commons, and through secret backroom deals with corrupt politicians, Constellation Brands wants access to Mexicali&#8217;s precious water to produce alcohol for exclusive export to the U.S.</p> <p>At a time of increased precariousness around anthropogenic climate disruption, we are witnessing the front-line battles where dwindling natural resources are being contested, where capitalism&#8217;s insatiable appetite for profits is like a drunk frantically wringing a damp cloth for a few more drops of alcohol, and where people are fighting back and organizing against a soulless and rapacious economic system.</p> <p>It is no accident that we are hearing similar slogans in Mexicali that we heard at <a href="" type="internal">Standing Rock</a>, where Native American communities faced off with Wall Street oil predators, and reminded us that water is life.</p> <p /> <p>The people of Mexicali Resiste have been organizing now for over a year, and the battle to defend their water is escalating. There are now calls for an organized boycott of Constellation Brands.</p> <p>At the beginning</p> <p>Mexicali, the capital of Baja California, is a quintessential NAFTA city, with a long history of capitalist interest in its workforce and natural resources. On Jan. 4, 2017, this modern rebellion manifested itself when people blocked the Pemex distribution plant at La Rosita, leaving gas stations closed and the city paralyzed.</p> <p>At the same time as the federal hike in gasoline prices, the state imposed a transportation and environmental tax on license plate renewals. This combination of being hit with both a federal and state tax increase was too much for people to bear, sparking a blockade of a tax collection center at city hall that escalated into an organized march on Jan. 12, 2017, of nearly 12,000 people in the civic center of Mexicali, where Baja California&#8217;s federal, state and municipal offices are concentrated.</p> <p>The sight of the angry crowd in the largest protest to that date scared the shit out of several Congress members, so much so that they began to flee the civic center. Blockades of both City Hall and Congress followed, giving birth to camps not too dissimilar from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street" type="external">Occupy Wall Street</a>.</p> <p>Later that week, on Jan. 15, as a part of the national resistance against the gas hike, another march took place and became the largest protest in Mexicali history, with upward of 75,000 people attending. The sheer number of people who took part reinforced the idea of a total government blockade, as five more camps were setup.</p> <p>As federal, state and local police were sent in to clear the civil disobedience groups, organizers dug in for the long haul. Over the next year, the struggle would continue with many different groups being spawned from the initial rebellion.</p> <p>Groups such as Mexicali Consciente, Baja California Resiste, Conciencia Civil Cachanilla and Tecate en Pie de Lucha were formed in Baja California, and all are a part of a growing people&#8217;s movement, despite different ideological and methodological organizing models.</p> <p>As the camps remained intact, organizers created multiple working groups, or committees, for various tasks, including research and communications, with weekly assemblies open to the public. This allowed the movement to serve as a vigilant watchdog against the government. And it was this vigilance that led to their most important discovery&#8212;namely, that the city government cut a secret water supply deal with the multinational corporation, Constellation Brands.</p> <p>Mexicali Resiste&#8212;Locally Made. Constellation Brands&#8212;Made in the USA.</p> <p>Out of this initial rebellion, a people&#8217;s resistance movement calling itself Mexicali Resiste was born. Predominantly known for its incessant opposition to the establishment of the Constellation Brands brewery in Mexicali, an effort that has warranted them the title of &#8220;water defenders,&#8221; Mexicali Resiste has been closely monitoring the government for fraud and corruption.</p> <p>Constellation Brands is a U.S.-based corporation and NAFTA beneficiary headquartered in New York that produces and markets alcohol (beer, wine and spirits), distributing brands such as Corona Extra, Corona Light, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, Pacifico, Victoria and Ballast Point. In collusion with Francisco &#8220;Kiko&#8221; Vega de Lamadrid, the governor of the state of Baja California, they negotiated a backroom deal giving them access to Mexicali&#8217;s water supply in the heart of the farmlands just south of the U.S. border.</p> <p>Needless to say, granting a foreign corporation guaranteed access to public water in a secret, unreleased agreement fueled the movement and its 24/7 civic center occupation in front of Congress. Concerns over the legitimacy and transparency of the deal were ignored, as were requests for public records and copies of the contracts.</p> <p>This theft of public water for private profit would later result in multiple physical blockades of the brewery construction site, reinforcing the people&#8217;s commitment to preserving Mexicali&#8217;s water through nonviolent, direct action.</p> <p>Corporate and Ruling-Class Collusion First&#8212;Repression Second</p> <p>It is estimated that Constellation Brands would use 20 million cubic meters of water per year throughout its 50-year contract. That&#8217;s 38,000 liters per minute, 634 liters per second, or 140 gallons per second.</p> <p>As in California, the people of Baja California are concerned about drought and the ecological impacts such water consumption would have in the desert region, as Colorado River expert Alfonso Cort&#233;s methodically explains <a href="https://geografiaseptentrional.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/la-super-explotacion-del-agua-en-baja-california/" type="external">in his writings</a>. The movement has attracted the attention of farmers, hydrologists, geologists and oceanographers, all being asked to contribute relevant research to the fight.</p> <p>How is it possible such a secret deal could be struck in the first place? A recently enacted law known as the Public and Private Associations law, or PPP (in English, Public-Private Partnership), basically allows the state to make business deals with the private sector with very few regulations.</p> <p>Due to increasing public pressure, however, Gov. &#8220;Kiko&#8221; on Jan. 17, 2017, repealed the tax on license plates, and apparently, a vague &#8220;water law&#8221; that would have increased the price of city water use, essentially a tax on the population.</p> <p>As the pressure and vigilance of the movement continued, several tactics were used to break the blockades of government offices and remove the camps. In one case, on Jan. 28, 2017, shortly after a provocation by the governor and his security team, who showed up unannounced to break the blockades, enraged members of the camps chased the governor and his security team into their cars. His response was to order undercover police into the camps in the wee hours of the morning to break them up.</p> <p>Watch video of people surrounding Gov. &#8220;Kiko&#8221; Vega:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Watch video of the 3 a.m. police raid:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Congress Watchdogs and State Repression</p> <p>Under the increasing public scrutiny of the government&#8217;s actions, sessions of the Congress were often held in the middle of the night (in one case at 2 a.m.), with limited or no access for citizens. Public access to sessions of Congress is protected by law, but in the case of Baja California, it was illegally blocked.</p> <p>One of the most outrageous measures the Mexicali City Council tried to pass was a motion to forgive at least 132 million pesos (approximately $7.1 million) in property taxes owed by large corporations, almost twice the amount of the municipal government&#8217;s public investment budget. Attempts to pass this kind of legislation behind the backs of the people prompted organizers at the camps to call on the general public to mobilize.</p> <p>Watch video of the city attempts to wipe away corporate debt:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Two school buses full of police, canine and intelligence units arrested 14 people inside city hall. There was a high level of concern for their safety as several movement members were nowhere to be found, particularly in a country where forced disappearances are often utilized as a method of control against civil resistance.</p> <p>As those arrested were transferred to several different jails, some managed to transmit messages live on social media from inside the police vans, alerting comrades to their whereabouts and mobilizing them to aid in their release.</p> <p>Social media documentation had such a negative impact on the government&#8217;s image that it initiated further intimidation tactics. In one such case, movement member Tania Gallaga&#8217;s house was attacked with a Molotov cocktail after she had confronted a female police officer on Black Monday.</p> <p>On July 4, 2017, Mexicali Resiste communication and media offices were broken into. Several hard drives were stolen and paper files containing months of documentation and research disappeared. Later, the pressure and antagonism grew to such levels that Congress erected a see-through barrier wall to keep an angered and awakened public at bay, but public ridicule in the media forced them to remove the barriers&#8212;such a visible symbol of tyranny.</p> <p>To the Blockades</p> <p>Blockades have been an integral tactic of the movement in Mexicali. When Constellation Brands&#8217; machinery was spotted being transported into the city, blockades were set up at the brewery&#8217;s construction site. Movement organizers visited the site unannounced, revealing the grim conditions facing workers from southern Mexico, who had to pay for their own transportation to get to the border city and sleep on the floors of the construction site.</p> <p>Just like the oil companies at Standing Rock, Constellation Brands justifies its presence in the region under the worn-out trope of providing jobs to workers, while simultaneously neglecting legal employment regulations by paying workers under the table, or hiring nonuniformed security forces wearing ski masks and bandanas.</p> <p>Not surprisingly, rumors began to spread on state-friendly media claiming that the contract allowing the deal was public and legitimate. Everything is OK, now just go back to sleep. To this day, no one has seen the paperwork.</p> <p>As huge water-tank containers were being brought in from Ensenada on flatbed trucks, organizers mobilized to block their entry onto the brewery premises. Seeing the determination and bravery of those on the blockade, the hired truck drivers left their cargo out on the road for weeks, until police and their threat of violence paved the way for the delivery.</p> <p>Watch video of the huge water tanks, and the words of Don Raymundo (Indio Zapoteco):</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Watch video of action to stop the transport of the water tanks:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Watch video of the confrontation with police during the last blockade:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>As anthropogenic climate disruption is being exacerbated by a capitalism run amok, we must unite across borders and support movements fighting against the destruction of the biosphere, against resource exploitation, and for dignity.</p> <p>Boycott Constellation Brands</p> <p>In Mexicali, we defend our water. Boycott Constellation Brands for taking away this resource. This is our mission statement:</p> <p>To the community and the immigrants of the United States and to the different nations around the world:</p> <p>The city of Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, needs your help. Constellation Brands Brewing Company insists on depriving us of our own water in order to export it to the United States as beer. Because of this, we are asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands in defense of our water, and we ask you not to consume any Constellation Brands product. This company is also owner of Grupo Modelo in the United States. If money is what drives the economic interests of this corrupt company, we must strike where it hurts the most: economically.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because we are tired of being the petty-cash country of the United States, economic superpower to which the Mexican government has given mining, oil, beaches, land, and, finally, our water.</p> <p>But because water is a nonrenewable and vital natural resource for all life on this planet. To fight for it is also a fight for sovereignty and national security, as well as a struggle for the defense of our territory. This foreign company has arrived only to find anything of value in Mexico and take it as money to its banks and money safes.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because this brewing company has come to Baja California to dry us out, just as it did to the municipality of Nava, Coahuila, Mexico.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because they come to Mexico to pay almost no taxes, to buy land at ridiculous prices, and to displace the Mexicali Valley farmers with threats and violence.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because they come to pay low wages and take our water without any regards, and then want to pay for it as if they were a regular client due to a decree by Gob. Francisco &#8220;Kiko&#8221; Vega de Lamadrid, benefiting the U.S. company with the lowest water rate available.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because of the repeated massive security deployments of every police force of the state to protect a beer company. And we remind you that these are police forces who are paid for with tax money from every Baja California citizen, thus placing the economic interests of the United States before Mexican citizens&#8217; right to public safety.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because the construction companies that are doing this job belong to politicians like Victor Hermosillo Celada and state-related companies that have benefited from illegal tax exemptions, like Grupo Cadena, supporting themselves on their political influence with the Baja California government for many years.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because this is a monument to corruption around the world and to the unlawful influence of U.S. economic interests and the Mexican political and economic elite.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because the corrupt company by the name of Constellation Brands is taking away our water and is spilling our blood: blood of us Mexicans who put our bodies before the local and state police of Baja California, both of them bought by foreign money.</p> <p>We&#8217;re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because the Latino community in the United States and abroad is being sold a marketed image of Mexican pride when the purchase of these Grupo Modelo/Constellation Brands products in the United States are indeed hurting their Mexican brothers and sisters, their families.</p> <p>This is how we ask for your help to share and spread this information to all the corners of the United States and the world.</p> <p>Stop dispossession, abuse, corruption, and the impunity of corrupt industries and politicians.</p> <p>Not a single isolated struggle anymore.</p> <p>Wholeheartedly,</p> <p>Grupo-Colectivo Mexicali Resiste</p> <p>Water is life, and capitalism is death.</p> <p>For more information, visit the <a href="http://www.mexicaliresiste.org" type="external">Mexicali Resiste website</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mexicaliresiste" type="external">Facebook page</a>, or contact Mexicali Resiste organizers at resistenciamexicali@gmail.com.</p> <p>Anniversary of Mexicali resistance march. (Courtesy of Mexicali Resiste)</p> <p>Chris Burnett hosts the weekly radio show &#8220;Indymedia On Air&#8221; on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, based on the global Indymedia network, and has been a longtime organizer in anti-authoritarian movements. You can email him at chris@indymedia.org.</p> <p>Marco Vera is the founder and director of Mexicali Rose Media/Arts Center, a grass-roots communitarian organization dedicated to providing free access to artistic media for the community youth of Mexicali, Baja California.</p>

Mexicali's 'Water Defenders' Take the Fight to Big Alcohol

https://truthdig.com/articles/mexicalis-water-defenders-take-the-fight-to-big-alcohol/

2018-03-16

4left

In January 2017 the Mexican government implemented a 20 percent hike in gasoline prices setting the stage for a nationwide rebellion and a people8217s mobilization against the tightening screws of neoliberalism To a population already struggling with poverty and low wages this blatant exercise of power and greed was a wakeup call heard across Mexico Today the struggle continues but in the desert border city of Mexicali it has expanded to the protection of water as the people face off with a United Statesbased multinational corporation known as Constellation Brands In a familiar scenario in which capitalism seeks to privatize the commons and through secret backroom deals with corrupt politicians Constellation Brands wants access to Mexicali8217s precious water to produce alcohol for exclusive export to the US At a time of increased precariousness around anthropogenic climate disruption we are witnessing the frontline battles where dwindling natural resources are being contested where capitalism8217s insatiable appetite for profits is like a drunk frantically wringing a damp cloth for a few more drops of alcohol and where people are fighting back and organizing against a soulless and rapacious economic system It is no accident that we are hearing similar slogans in Mexicali that we heard at Standing Rock where Native American communities faced off with Wall Street oil predators and reminded us that water is life The people of Mexicali Resiste have been organizing now for over a year and the battle to defend their water is escalating There are now calls for an organized boycott of Constellation Brands At the beginning Mexicali the capital of Baja California is a quintessential NAFTA city with a long history of capitalist interest in its workforce and natural resources On Jan 4 2017 this modern rebellion manifested itself when people blocked the Pemex distribution plant at La Rosita leaving gas stations closed and the city paralyzed At the same time as the federal hike in gasoline prices the state imposed a transportation and environmental tax on license plate renewals This combination of being hit with both a federal and state tax increase was too much for people to bear sparking a blockade of a tax collection center at city hall that escalated into an organized march on Jan 12 2017 of nearly 12000 people in the civic center of Mexicali where Baja California8217s federal state and municipal offices are concentrated The sight of the angry crowd in the largest protest to that date scared the shit out of several Congress members so much so that they began to flee the civic center Blockades of both City Hall and Congress followed giving birth to camps not too dissimilar from Occupy Wall Street Later that week on Jan 15 as a part of the national resistance against the gas hike another march took place and became the largest protest in Mexicali history with upward of 75000 people attending The sheer number of people who took part reinforced the idea of a total government blockade as five more camps were setup As federal state and local police were sent in to clear the civil disobedience groups organizers dug in for the long haul Over the next year the struggle would continue with many different groups being spawned from the initial rebellion Groups such as Mexicali Consciente Baja California Resiste Conciencia Civil Cachanilla and Tecate en Pie de Lucha were formed in Baja California and all are a part of a growing people8217s movement despite different ideological and methodological organizing models As the camps remained intact organizers created multiple working groups or committees for various tasks including research and communications with weekly assemblies open to the public This allowed the movement to serve as a vigilant watchdog against the government And it was this vigilance that led to their most important discovery8212namely that the city government cut a secret water supply deal with the multinational corporation Constellation Brands Mexicali Resiste8212Locally Made Constellation Brands8212Made in the USA Out of this initial rebellion a people8217s resistance movement calling itself Mexicali Resiste was born Predominantly known for its incessant opposition to the establishment of the Constellation Brands brewery in Mexicali an effort that has warranted them the title of 8220water defenders8221 Mexicali Resiste has been closely monitoring the government for fraud and corruption Constellation Brands is a USbased corporation and NAFTA beneficiary headquartered in New York that produces and markets alcohol beer wine and spirits distributing brands such as Corona Extra Corona Light Modelo Especial Negra Modelo Pacifico Victoria and Ballast Point In collusion with Francisco 8220Kiko8221 Vega de Lamadrid the governor of the state of Baja California they negotiated a backroom deal giving them access to Mexicali8217s water supply in the heart of the farmlands just south of the US border Needless to say granting a foreign corporation guaranteed access to public water in a secret unreleased agreement fueled the movement and its 247 civic center occupation in front of Congress Concerns over the legitimacy and transparency of the deal were ignored as were requests for public records and copies of the contracts This theft of public water for private profit would later result in multiple physical blockades of the brewery construction site reinforcing the people8217s commitment to preserving Mexicali8217s water through nonviolent direct action Corporate and RulingClass Collusion First8212Repression Second It is estimated that Constellation Brands would use 20 million cubic meters of water per year throughout its 50year contract That8217s 38000 liters per minute 634 liters per second or 140 gallons per second As in California the people of Baja California are concerned about drought and the ecological impacts such water consumption would have in the desert region as Colorado River expert Alfonso Cort233s methodically explains in his writings The movement has attracted the attention of farmers hydrologists geologists and oceanographers all being asked to contribute relevant research to the fight How is it possible such a secret deal could be struck in the first place A recently enacted law known as the Public and Private Associations law or PPP in English PublicPrivate Partnership basically allows the state to make business deals with the private sector with very few regulations Due to increasing public pressure however Gov 8220Kiko8221 on Jan 17 2017 repealed the tax on license plates and apparently a vague 8220water law8221 that would have increased the price of city water use essentially a tax on the population As the pressure and vigilance of the movement continued several tactics were used to break the blockades of government offices and remove the camps In one case on Jan 28 2017 shortly after a provocation by the governor and his security team who showed up unannounced to break the blockades enraged members of the camps chased the governor and his security team into their cars His response was to order undercover police into the camps in the wee hours of the morning to break them up Watch video of people surrounding Gov 8220Kiko8221 Vega Watch video of the 3 am police raid Congress Watchdogs and State Repression Under the increasing public scrutiny of the government8217s actions sessions of the Congress were often held in the middle of the night in one case at 2 am with limited or no access for citizens Public access to sessions of Congress is protected by law but in the case of Baja California it was illegally blocked One of the most outrageous measures the Mexicali City Council tried to pass was a motion to forgive at least 132 million pesos approximately 71 million in property taxes owed by large corporations almost twice the amount of the municipal government8217s public investment budget Attempts to pass this kind of legislation behind the backs of the people prompted organizers at the camps to call on the general public to mobilize Watch video of the city attempts to wipe away corporate debt Two school buses full of police canine and intelligence units arrested 14 people inside city hall There was a high level of concern for their safety as several movement members were nowhere to be found particularly in a country where forced disappearances are often utilized as a method of control against civil resistance As those arrested were transferred to several different jails some managed to transmit messages live on social media from inside the police vans alerting comrades to their whereabouts and mobilizing them to aid in their release Social media documentation had such a negative impact on the government8217s image that it initiated further intimidation tactics In one such case movement member Tania Gallaga8217s house was attacked with a Molotov cocktail after she had confronted a female police officer on Black Monday On July 4 2017 Mexicali Resiste communication and media offices were broken into Several hard drives were stolen and paper files containing months of documentation and research disappeared Later the pressure and antagonism grew to such levels that Congress erected a seethrough barrier wall to keep an angered and awakened public at bay but public ridicule in the media forced them to remove the barriers8212such a visible symbol of tyranny To the Blockades Blockades have been an integral tactic of the movement in Mexicali When Constellation Brands8217 machinery was spotted being transported into the city blockades were set up at the brewery8217s construction site Movement organizers visited the site unannounced revealing the grim conditions facing workers from southern Mexico who had to pay for their own transportation to get to the border city and sleep on the floors of the construction site Just like the oil companies at Standing Rock Constellation Brands justifies its presence in the region under the wornout trope of providing jobs to workers while simultaneously neglecting legal employment regulations by paying workers under the table or hiring nonuniformed security forces wearing ski masks and bandanas Not surprisingly rumors began to spread on statefriendly media claiming that the contract allowing the deal was public and legitimate Everything is OK now just go back to sleep To this day no one has seen the paperwork As huge watertank containers were being brought in from Ensenada on flatbed trucks organizers mobilized to block their entry onto the brewery premises Seeing the determination and bravery of those on the blockade the hired truck drivers left their cargo out on the road for weeks until police and their threat of violence paved the way for the delivery Watch video of the huge water tanks and the words of Don Raymundo Indio Zapoteco Watch video of action to stop the transport of the water tanks Watch video of the confrontation with police during the last blockade As anthropogenic climate disruption is being exacerbated by a capitalism run amok we must unite across borders and support movements fighting against the destruction of the biosphere against resource exploitation and for dignity Boycott Constellation Brands In Mexicali we defend our water Boycott Constellation Brands for taking away this resource This is our mission statement To the community and the immigrants of the United States and to the different nations around the world The city of Mexicali Baja California Mexico needs your help Constellation Brands Brewing Company insists on depriving us of our own water in order to export it to the United States as beer Because of this we are asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands in defense of our water and we ask you not to consume any Constellation Brands product This company is also owner of Grupo Modelo in the United States If money is what drives the economic interests of this corrupt company we must strike where it hurts the most economically We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because we are tired of being the pettycash country of the United States economic superpower to which the Mexican government has given mining oil beaches land and finally our water But because water is a nonrenewable and vital natural resource for all life on this planet To fight for it is also a fight for sovereignty and national security as well as a struggle for the defense of our territory This foreign company has arrived only to find anything of value in Mexico and take it as money to its banks and money safes We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because this brewing company has come to Baja California to dry us out just as it did to the municipality of Nava Coahuila Mexico We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because they come to Mexico to pay almost no taxes to buy land at ridiculous prices and to displace the Mexicali Valley farmers with threats and violence We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because they come to pay low wages and take our water without any regards and then want to pay for it as if they were a regular client due to a decree by Gob Francisco 8220Kiko8221 Vega de Lamadrid benefiting the US company with the lowest water rate available We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because of the repeated massive security deployments of every police force of the state to protect a beer company And we remind you that these are police forces who are paid for with tax money from every Baja California citizen thus placing the economic interests of the United States before Mexican citizens8217 right to public safety We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because the construction companies that are doing this job belong to politicians like Victor Hermosillo Celada and staterelated companies that have benefited from illegal tax exemptions like Grupo Cadena supporting themselves on their political influence with the Baja California government for many years We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because this is a monument to corruption around the world and to the unlawful influence of US economic interests and the Mexican political and economic elite We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because the corrupt company by the name of Constellation Brands is taking away our water and is spilling our blood blood of us Mexicans who put our bodies before the local and state police of Baja California both of them bought by foreign money We8217re asking you to help us boycott Constellation Brands because the Latino community in the United States and abroad is being sold a marketed image of Mexican pride when the purchase of these Grupo ModeloConstellation Brands products in the United States are indeed hurting their Mexican brothers and sisters their families This is how we ask for your help to share and spread this information to all the corners of the United States and the world Stop dispossession abuse corruption and the impunity of corrupt industries and politicians Not a single isolated struggle anymore Wholeheartedly GrupoColectivo Mexicali Resiste Water is life and capitalism is death For more information visit the Mexicali Resiste website Facebook page or contact Mexicali Resiste organizers at resistenciamexicaligmailcom Anniversary of Mexicali resistance march Courtesy of Mexicali Resiste Chris Burnett hosts the weekly radio show 8220Indymedia On Air8221 on KPFK 907 FM Los Angeles based on the global Indymedia network and has been a longtime organizer in antiauthoritarian movements You can email him at chrisindymediaorg Marco Vera is the founder and director of Mexicali Rose MediaArts Center a grassroots communitarian organization dedicated to providing free access to artistic media for the community youth of Mexicali Baja California

In/ADP January/PROPN 2017/NUM the/DET Mexican/ADJ government/NOUN implemented/VERB a/DET 20/NUM percent/NOUN hike/NOUN in/ADP gasoline/NOUN prices/NOUN setting/VERB the/DET stage/NOUN for/ADP a/DET nationwide/ADJ rebellion/NOUN and/CCONJ a/DET people8217s/ADJ mobilization/NOUN against/ADP the/DET tightening/VERB screws/NOUN of/ADP neoliberalism/NOUN To/ADP a/DET population/NOUN already/ADV struggling/VERB with/ADP poverty/NOUN and/CCONJ low/ADJ wages/NOUN this/DET blatant/ADJ exercise/NOUN of/ADP power/NOUN and/CCONJ greed/NOUN was/AUX a/DET wakeup/PROPN call/NOUN heard/VERB across/ADP Mexico/PROPN Today/PROPN the/DET struggle/NOUN continues/VERB but/CCONJ in/ADP the/DET desert/NOUN border/NOUN city/NOUN of/ADP Mexicali/PROPN it/PRON has/AUX expanded/VERB to/ADP the/DET protection/NOUN of/ADP water/NOUN as/SCONJ the/DET people/NOUN face/VERB off/ADP with/ADP a/DET United/PROPN Statesbased/PROPN multinational/ADJ corporation/NOUN known/VERB as/ADP Constellation/PROPN Brands/PROPN In/ADP a/DET familiar/ADJ scenario/NOUN in/ADP which/PRON capitalism/NOUN seeks/VERB to/PART privatize/VERB the/DET commons/NOUN and/CCONJ through/ADP secret/ADJ backroom/NOUN deals/NOUN with/ADP corrupt/ADJ politicians/NOUN Constellation/PROPN Brands/PROPN wants/VERB access/NOUN to/ADP Mexicali8217s/ADJ precious/ADJ water/NOUN to/PART produce/VERB alcohol/NOUN for/ADP exclusive/ADJ export/NOUN to/ADP the/DET US/PROPN At/ADP a/DET time/NOUN of/ADP increased/VERB precariousness/NOUN around/ADP anthropogenic/ADJ climate/NOUN disruption/NOUN we/PRON are/AUX witnessing/VERB the/DET frontline/NOUN battles/NOUN where/SCONJ dwindling/VERB natural/ADJ resources/NOUN are/AUX being/AUX contested/VERB where/SCONJ capitalism8217s/PROPN insatiable/ADJ appetite/NOUN for/ADP profits/NOUN is/AUX like/ADP a/DET drunk/ADJ frantically/ADV wringing/VERB a/DET damp/ADJ cloth/NOUN for/ADP a/DET few/ADJ more/ADJ drops/NOUN of/ADP alcohol/NOUN and/CCONJ where/SCONJ people/NOUN are/AUX fighting/VERB back/ADV and/CCONJ organizing/VERB against/ADP a/DET soulless/ADJ and/CCONJ rapacious/ADJ economic/ADJ system/NOUN It/PRON is/AUX no/DET accident/NOUN that/SCONJ we/PRON are/AUX hearing/VERB similar/ADJ slogans/NOUN in/ADP Mexicali/PROPN that/SCONJ we/PRON heard/VERB at/ADP Standing/PROPN Rock/PROPN where/SCONJ Native/ADJ American/ADJ communities/NOUN faced/VERB off/ADP with/ADP Wall/PROPN Street/PROPN oil/NOUN predators/NOUN and/CCONJ reminded/VERB us/PRON that/DET water/NOUN is/AUX life/NOUN The/DET people/NOUN of/ADP Mexicali/PROPN Resiste/PROPN have/AUX been/AUX organizing/VERB now/ADV for/ADP over/ADP a/PRON year/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET battle/NOUN to/PART defend/VERB their/PRON water/NOUN is/AUX escalating/VERB There/PRON are/VERB now/ADV calls/NOUN for/ADP an/DET organized/VERB boycott/NOUN of/ADP Constellation/PROPN Brands/PROPN At/ADP the/DET beginning/ADJ Mexicali/PROPN the/DET capital/NOUN of/ADP Baja/PROPN California/PROPN is/AUX a/DET quintessential/ADJ NAFTA/PROPN city/NOUN 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and/CCONJ Tecate/PROPN en/INTJ Pie/PROPN de/PROPN Lucha/PROPN were/AUX formed/VERB in/ADP Baja/PROPN California/PROPN and/CCONJ all/PRON are/AUX a/DET part/NOUN of/ADP a/DET growing/VERB people8217s/NOUN movement/NOUN despite/SCONJ different/ADJ ideological/ADJ and/CCONJ methodological/ADJ organizing/NOUN models/NOUN As/SCONJ the/DET camps/NOUN remained/VERB intact/ADJ organizers/NOUN created/VERB multiple/ADJ working/VERB groups/NOUN or/CCONJ committees/NOUN for/ADP various/ADJ tasks/NOUN including/VERB research/NOUN and/CCONJ communications/NOUN with/ADP weekly/ADJ assemblies/NOUN open/ADJ to/ADP the/DET public/NOUN This/PRON allowed/VERB the/DET movement/NOUN to/PART serve/VERB as/ADP a/DET vigilant/ADJ watchdog/NOUN against/ADP the/DET government/NOUN And/CCONJ it/PRON was/AUX this/DET vigilance/NOUN that/PRON led/VERB to/ADP their/PRON most/ADV important/ADJ discovery8212namely/ADV that/SCONJ the/DET city/NOUN government/NOUN cut/VERB a/DET secret/ADJ water/NOUN supply/NOUN 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<p>I wish I could say that the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/trump-rally-in-chicago-canceled-after-violent-scuffles.html?_r=0" type="external">violence at Donald Trump rallies</a> surprises me, but it doesn&#8217;t. For example, if you consider the people that we worship as &#8220;heroes&#8221; in our culture, these destructive actions were bound to happen.</p> <p>Our culture has an unhealthy fixation with the &#8220; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero" type="external">antihero</a>&#8221; character that is commonly seen in television and movies, someone who lacks conventional heroic qualities and occasionally commits heinous acts.</p> <p>I believe that the creation of antiheroes was in response to the cookie-cutter way heroes were portrayed in typical &#8220;good guy vs. bad guy&#8221; fashion. This black-and-white way of storytelling became trite over time, so antiheroes were a welcome change.</p> <p>Finally, we were able to color with shades of grey, which is a more accurate portrayal of reality. Finally, we could see bits of human vulnerability in our heroes and bits of ourselves as heroic.</p> <p>However, what started as a noble new attempt at storytelling developed into antiheroes becoming increasingly villainous over time.</p> <p>Instead of a protagonist who was flawed, we started following protagonists who were cold-hearted, frivolous murderers and gleefully cheered them on.</p> <p>The Tony Soprano character, for example, is an arrogant serial killer, and even when The Sopranos represents him as a despicable human being, large portions of people were rooting for him. People wanted to identify with a person who doesn&#8217;t care about anybody else.</p> <p>It feels powerful and liberating to feel like you can do whatever you want to whomever you want without consequences &#8212; even though this is a fantasy because there are always negative consequences when you hurt others.</p> <p>So identifying with someone who can be perceived as &#8220;rebellious&#8221; was a prospect that was too alluring for many people to reject morally.</p> <p>Then it started escalating, and people began cheering for the likes of Patrick Bateman, from American Psycho, who kills women with chainsaws and murders animals for fun.</p> <p>And most recently, the Frank Underwood character from House of Cards offers almost no redeeming qualities. His Machiavellian philosophy pushes him to seek power by any means necessary, and instead of his character being perceived as a cautionary tale, <a href="http://images.sunfrogshirts.com/2015/03/16/Power.jpg" type="external">t-shirts</a> are printed in his name glorifying his behavior.</p> <p>I find there&#8217;s little difference between cheering for these characters and cheering for Donald Trump.</p> <p>Even though many people can tell the difference between reality and fiction, so much of our lives are dominated by technology that we view people from behind a TV or computer screen. Differentiating what&#8217;s real and fake becomes increasingly difficult.</p> <p>And I believe these fictional characters get cheered because many people feel powerless. But instead of addressing this powerlessness internally, or directing their anger towards corrupt social, economic, and political systems, they would rather cheer for people who do things they consider to be rebellious. And quite honestly, sometimes the prospect of committing destructive behavior to regain some semblance of power can be really enticing.</p> <p>In the process, however, our constant rooting for fictional people who commit harmful acts diminishes our capacity for empathy when it comes to real-life people. Here are some reasons how.</p> <p>Since there are so many television shows that feature protagonists who have antihero tendencies (The Sopranos, The Walking Dead, House of Cards, etc.), we grow accustomed to seeing casually callous behavior from people we look up to. As a result, when someone commits a crime on the news, our reactions from fiction and reality slowly become one and the same.</p> <p>For instance, there was a strange sadistic fascination when a man <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/virginia-shooter-films-himself-gunning-6325156" type="external">filmed himself shooting two news anchors</a> live on the air and then posted the footage on Facebook. While many people were rightfully disturbed by this act, millions of people still watched and shared the video.</p> <p>Even though many people condemned his actions, passing around that horrific video just shows that this actual crime wasn&#8217;t treated with true horror as it should&#8217;ve been. It was treated like riveting television.</p> <p>I&#8217;m not saying that watching fictional characters perform horrible actions causes violence; I&#8217;m saying that watching horrible actions being committed by people we portray as heroes normalizes violent behavior.</p> <p>To make matters worse, there are studies that demonstrate how <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html" type="external">our brains cannot distinguish between real events and fiction</a>. Given how realistic violence has gotten on television and movies, an image of a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-st-louis_us_56e32844e4b0b25c9181ec8d" type="external">bloodied man on the floor of a Trump rally is met</a>&#8212; by a large portion of the population &#8212; with apathy. Even worse, it&#8217;s also met with anger, not that he was beaten, but that he brought it on himself because we&#8217;re used to rooting for perpetrators of violence rather than the victims.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s ascent to power, for example, feels like a reality TV show, and since reality TV is on the same networks as fictional programming, it almost doesn&#8217;t seem real that he&#8217;s a leading presidential candidate. I believe this is why so many people make jokes about how funny and entertaining it would be for him to actually win the presidency.</p> <p>To our culture, what is considered &#8220;funny&#8221; and &#8220;entertaining&#8221; supersedes all other importance, because the actual harm done to human life is not seriously taken into consideration. If killed or assaulted, we become collateral damage for other people&#8217;s amusement.</p> <p>But there are real people who are <a href="" type="internal">getting harmed and murdered</a>. Not everything is a television show. Not everything is consumption for entertainment.</p> <p>There&#8217;s nothing wrong with occasionally enjoying programming that contains violence and even characters that commit crimes, but our constant obsession with portraying them as heroes only fans the flames that perpetuate more bloodshed and brutality.</p> <p>One thing many antiheroes have in common is their propensity for obtaining power through aggression. They&#8217;ll assert themselves in situations and lead authoritatively, and many people gravitate towards them because it&#8217;s empowering to rally behind people who seem like they&#8217;re no-nonsense and don&#8217;t stand for any type of insubordination.</p> <p>While assertiveness is a desirable quality in leadership, we&#8217;ve gone from assertiveness to domineering. It is deeply disturbing, for instance, how many people find Frank Underwood&#8217;s character to be aspirational.</p> <p>For those that don&#8217;t watch House of Cards, he is a ruthless politician guilty of heinous crimes, but since he is so dominating to his opponents, he is perceived as ruthless renegade. He is perceived as &#8220;cool.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>It&#8217;s this same mentality that makes Donald Trump so popular, because he is perceived by many as a ruthless figure who wants to torture suspects for information and has called for his supporters to punch protesters.</p> <p>Fittingly, Donald Trump also holds this mentality which explains <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/donald-trump-putin-narcissism" type="external">his predilection towards Vladimir Putin</a>. It has nothing to do with Putin&#8217;s actual politics; it&#8217;s that he bullies other people to continually seize power, and that&#8217;s a quality that Donald Trump can appreciate and relate to.</p> <p>Heroes on TV and movies don&#8217;t necessarily need to be one-dimensional goody-two-shoes, but it&#8217;s possible for protagonists to be strong and interesting characters without glorifying toxic behavior.</p> <p>Jessica Jones, the protagonist of the Netflix television series with the same name, is an example of a flawed hero who <a href="http://thefbomb.org/2015/12/jessica-jones-handling-of-abuse-offers-empathy-and-hope/" type="external">doesn&#8217;t fall under the frivolously callous category</a> nor does she fall under the prudish category. Even though she has personality flaws, she doesn&#8217;t bask in having to commit violence.</p> <p>In fact, whenever she realizes that she may have to kill someone, or whenever she sees someone else getting killed, it disturbs her deeply. It isn&#8217;t &#8220;cool&#8221; that she has to inflict harm on others.</p> <p>There are other characters on television that hold these qualities as well, such as Molly and Lou Solverson on the first and second seasons of Fargo respectively. Both of these characters are <a href="http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/04/fargo-where-the-good-guys-are-good/360718/" type="external">genuinely good people</a> who want to do the right thing, and they aren&#8217;t boring cookie-cutter characters. Unfortunately, examples of these types of characters are few and far between.</p> <p>Otherwise, television and movies are dominated by characters who relish in destruction.</p> <p>And oftentimes when I speak out about these characters, I&#8217;m categorically dismissed as somebody who is an oversensitive wuss who can&#8217;t handle the harsh realities of the world.</p> <p>This mentality carries over when discussing real-life politics. When a politician is overly aggressive, huge segments of people will applaud their brashness instead of realizing that over-aggressiveness creates more enemies and long-term problems.</p> <p>It is possible &#8212; such as with the aforementioned examples that I&#8217;ve given &#8212; to have interesting compelling protagonist heroes who struggle internally with doing the right thing. They don&#8217;t always have to be rebellious contemptible people who don&#8217;t care for others.</p> <p>I hope that the portrayal of protagonists begins shifting to a different paradigm, because the more images we see of protagonists acting like kindhearted yet complex individuals, the more likely we&#8217;ll accept these types of people as heroes in real-life.</p> <p>In Breaking Bad, a television program about a chemistry teacher who becomes a drug kingpin, the protagonist&#8217;s wife, Skyler White, was on the <a href="http://entertainment.time.com/2013/08/26/on-anna-gunn-the-skyler-hating-sexists-and-the-billion-megaphone-era/" type="external">receiving end of so much vitriol</a> from the show&#8217;s fans.</p> <p>What was her grave crime? Constantly questioning her husband&#8217;s, Walter White&#8217;s, suspicious behavior. She was also criticized later on for insisting that he leave the life of crime because he&#8217;s putting their family in grave danger.</p> <p>Throughout the series, Skyler White is meant to be portrayed as a sympathetic character. She is constantly lied to and condescended to; she&#8217;s the victim of <a href="" type="internal">mental abuse</a>; she has to shield her son from her husband&#8217;s destructive behavior; she has to live knowing that there have been murderers and drug dealers staking out their house.</p> <p>But instead of being viewed as sympathetic, many of the show&#8217;s fans hated her passionately because she was getting in the way of watching antihero Walter White continually seize power.</p> <p>This show is a perfect example of a program that tries to portray the protagonist in the most evil light that it possibly can. Even the creator of the series, Vince Gilligan, has admitted that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/18/breaking-bad-vince-gilligan-walter-white" type="external">Walter White is supposed to be the villain of the series</a>. But in the end, too many people cheered for Walt. He was the hero no matter how heinous his actions were.</p> <p>I believe this is indicative of our society&#8217;s diminished capacity for empathy.</p> <p>The only way people could really cheer for Walt&#8217;s behaviors is if they don&#8217;t care about what happens to any of his victims.</p> <p>A person who is supposed to be villainous will not be perceived as evil if the audience relishes in their behavior.</p> <p>Consequently, the only people who are perceived as villains are the ones who are trying to stop the destructive behavior from continuing. Sadly, not only are they victims, but they are seen as antagonists.</p> <p>It should come as no surprise that how we speak about victims is so reminiscent with the way people speak about Skyler White. The continued escalation of cheering on toxic behavior has made it that we take the bully&#8217;s side because we view them as strong while <a href="" type="internal">we view victims as oversensitive killjoys</a>.</p> <p>If somebody gets hurt protesting injustices, many will say they had it coming because they shouldn&#8217;t have been there.</p> <p>When somebody laments about <a href="" type="internal">living in poverty</a>, many people will say that they deserve to be suffering because they <a href="" type="internal">didn&#8217;t work hard enough</a> to get out of their situations.</p> <p>When someone is <a href="" type="internal">sexually assaulted</a>, more people are concerned with <a href="" type="internal">what the victim wore</a> rather than who committed the heinous crime.</p> <p>When a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/30/3764717/trump-wisconsin-pepper-spray/" type="external">15-year-old girl is pepper sprayed at a Trump rally</a>, some people actually cheer it on.</p> <p>These television shows may not have created these problems, but they certainly shed a light on how everyday people react to brutality. In many cases, people&#8217;s reactions are uncaring because they have no empathy for others who get hurt.</p> <p>Some people emulate the protagonists they see on television because they symbolize people that we can look up to. Naturally, some qualities of an antihero become aspirational, such as not thinking or caring about what happens to others.</p> <p>The message that some people take away from these characters is that <a href="" type="internal">caring is for wusses</a>. Only weak people care.</p> <p>Trump personifies this mentality by how callously he treats people at his rallies. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-violence_us_56e1f16fe4b0b25c91815913" type="external">He encourages violence</a> against protestors and <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/265172-trump-tells-security-to-confiscate-protesters-coats" type="external">heartlessly throws them out into the cold</a>.</p> <p>Many of his supporters admire his viciousness.</p> <p>Although there is some value in maintaining one&#8217;s composure in the face of adversity, rarely are emotions seen with that level of nuance. It&#8217;s more common that viciously uncaring people like Trump are viewed as &#8220;cooler&#8221; because they are portrayed as more strong-willed than those weak people who dare show that they care about anything.</p> <p>In reality, <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-are-psychopaths-sociopaths" type="external">only 1-3% of people are born sociopathic</a> &#8212; which is an actual psychological disorder and not something to scapegoat callous violence into, so television&#8217;s glorification of the unemotional genius, such as <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/5933869/stop-calling-sherlock-a-sociopath-thanks-a-psychologist" type="external">Sherlock Holmes</a>, doesn&#8217;t exist in real-life. Everyone else who claims to &#8220;not care&#8221; is simply trying to escape feeling accountable to other people.</p> <p>Ironically, their detachment actually shows how fragile they are because they are so afraid of getting emotionally hurt that they try to shut off their emotions as a defense mechanism.</p> <p>When someone tries so hard to &#8220;not care,&#8221; what they are really saying &#8212; perhaps without realizing it &#8212; is that they wish to no longer have empathy and care for others because it&#8217;s too hard and it hurts too much.</p> <p>What they would like to happen is to become unfeeling and beat the empathy out of themselves.</p> <p>Lacking empathy shouldn&#8217;t be something to aspire to. Not only is it destructive, but it is counterproductive in terms of wanting to be a stronger person. Purposely trying to not feel for others is a cowardly way of living life because it takes away so much risk of being a human.</p> <p>When you care for someone else, it means that you might eventually learn to love or trust them; it also means that you make yourself vulnerable to potentially getting hurt.</p> <p>Rarely is it perceived as heroic to take an emotional risk and show vulnerability to someone else. But it really is, because caring about others deeply is one of the bravest and most heroic things you can do.</p> <p>***</p> <p>When we look at all the factors, Trump&#8217;s recent successes are wholly unsurprising. Unfortunately, neither is the violence perpetuated by some of his supporters.</p> <p>I believe that, over time, we can shift public perception and make people realize that having empathy for others is beneficial for everyone in society.</p> <p>We can show people that kindhearted protagonists can be interesting characters to look up to, while violent characters who lack empathy and compassion are cautionary tales rather than aspirational.</p> <p>Hopefully in the future, when a Trump-like figure rears their ugly head trying to obtain power, we will nip it in the bud before it gets out of control. We&#8217;ll come together collectively and unanimously say that we don&#8217;t condone the kind of hatred they&#8217;re spewing.</p> <p>We&#8217;ll see these characteristics and behaviors for what they are: destructive tendencies that have no place in our society.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Robin Tran is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. She is a standup comedian and blogger, and she holds a BA in English from UC Irvine.&amp;#160;In early 2015, Robin came out as transgender woman and has written about her firsthand experiences ever since.&amp;#160;She has performed at the Improv, Mad House Comedy Club, and the Comedy Palace, and her articles have been published in xoJane and Time.com.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Filed Under: <a href="" type="internal">Articles</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Posts</a> Tagged With: <a href="" type="internal">Fem 101</a></p>

4 Ways Our Media Antihero Worship Contributed to Donald Trump’s Rise to Power

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/04/antihero-worship-donald-trump/

2016-04-26

4left

I wish I could say that the violence at Donald Trump rallies surprises me but it doesn8217t For example if you consider the people that we worship as 8220heroes8221 in our culture these destructive actions were bound to happen Our culture has an unhealthy fixation with the 8220 antihero8221 character that is commonly seen in television and movies someone who lacks conventional heroic qualities and occasionally commits heinous acts I believe that the creation of antiheroes was in response to the cookiecutter way heroes were portrayed in typical 8220good guy vs bad guy8221 fashion This blackandwhite way of storytelling became trite over time so antiheroes were a welcome change Finally we were able to color with shades of grey which is a more accurate portrayal of reality Finally we could see bits of human vulnerability in our heroes and bits of ourselves as heroic However what started as a noble new attempt at storytelling developed into antiheroes becoming increasingly villainous over time Instead of a protagonist who was flawed we started following protagonists who were coldhearted frivolous murderers and gleefully cheered them on The Tony Soprano character for example is an arrogant serial killer and even when The Sopranos represents him as a despicable human being large portions of people were rooting for him People wanted to identify with a person who doesn8217t care about anybody else It feels powerful and liberating to feel like you can do whatever you want to whomever you want without consequences 8212 even though this is a fantasy because there are always negative consequences when you hurt others So identifying with someone who can be perceived as 8220rebellious8221 was a prospect that was too alluring for many people to reject morally Then it started escalating and people began cheering for the likes of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho who kills women with chainsaws and murders animals for fun And most recently the Frank Underwood character from House of Cards offers almost no redeeming qualities His Machiavellian philosophy pushes him to seek power by any means necessary and instead of his character being perceived as a cautionary tale tshirts are printed in his name glorifying his behavior I find there8217s little difference between cheering for these characters and cheering for Donald Trump Even though many people can tell the difference between reality and fiction so much of our lives are dominated by technology that we view people from behind a TV or computer screen Differentiating what8217s real and fake becomes increasingly difficult And I believe these fictional characters get cheered because many people feel powerless But instead of addressing this powerlessness internally or directing their anger towards corrupt social economic and political systems they would rather cheer for people who do things they consider to be rebellious And quite honestly sometimes the prospect of committing destructive behavior to regain some semblance of power can be really enticing In the process however our constant rooting for fictional people who commit harmful acts diminishes our capacity for empathy when it comes to reallife people Here are some reasons how Since there are so many television shows that feature protagonists who have antihero tendencies The Sopranos The Walking Dead House of Cards etc we grow accustomed to seeing casually callous behavior from people we look up to As a result when someone commits a crime on the news our reactions from fiction and reality slowly become one and the same For instance there was a strange sadistic fascination when a man filmed himself shooting two news anchors live on the air and then posted the footage on Facebook While many people were rightfully disturbed by this act millions of people still watched and shared the video Even though many people condemned his actions passing around that horrific video just shows that this actual crime wasn8217t treated with true horror as it should8217ve been It was treated like riveting television I8217m not saying that watching fictional characters perform horrible actions causes violence I8217m saying that watching horrible actions being committed by people we portray as heroes normalizes violent behavior To make matters worse there are studies that demonstrate how our brains cannot distinguish between real events and fiction Given how realistic violence has gotten on television and movies an image of a bloodied man on the floor of a Trump rally is met8212 by a large portion of the population 8212 with apathy Even worse it8217s also met with anger not that he was beaten but that he brought it on himself because we8217re used to rooting for perpetrators of violence rather than the victims Trump8217s ascent to power for example feels like a reality TV show and since reality TV is on the same networks as fictional programming it almost doesn8217t seem real that he8217s a leading presidential candidate I believe this is why so many people make jokes about how funny and entertaining it would be for him to actually win the presidency To our culture what is considered 8220funny8221 and 8220entertaining8221 supersedes all other importance because the actual harm done to human life is not seriously taken into consideration If killed or assaulted we become collateral damage for other people8217s amusement But there are real people who are getting harmed and murdered Not everything is a television show Not everything is consumption for entertainment There8217s nothing wrong with occasionally enjoying programming that contains violence and even characters that commit crimes but our constant obsession with portraying them as heroes only fans the flames that perpetuate more bloodshed and brutality One thing many antiheroes have in common is their propensity for obtaining power through aggression They8217ll assert themselves in situations and lead authoritatively and many people gravitate towards them because it8217s empowering to rally behind people who seem like they8217re nononsense and don8217t stand for any type of insubordination While assertiveness is a desirable quality in leadership we8217ve gone from assertiveness to domineering It is deeply disturbing for instance how many people find Frank Underwood8217s character to be aspirational For those that don8217t watch House of Cards he is a ruthless politician guilty of heinous crimes but since he is so dominating to his opponents he is perceived as ruthless renegade He is perceived as 8220cool8221 amp160 It8217s this same mentality that makes Donald Trump so popular because he is perceived by many as a ruthless figure who wants to torture suspects for information and has called for his supporters to punch protesters Fittingly Donald Trump also holds this mentality which explains his predilection towards Vladimir Putin It has nothing to do with Putin8217s actual politics it8217s that he bullies other people to continually seize power and that8217s a quality that Donald Trump can appreciate and relate to Heroes on TV and movies don8217t necessarily need to be onedimensional goodytwoshoes but it8217s possible for protagonists to be strong and interesting characters without glorifying toxic behavior Jessica Jones the protagonist of the Netflix television series with the same name is an example of a flawed hero who doesn8217t fall under the frivolously callous category nor does she fall under the prudish category Even though she has personality flaws she doesn8217t bask in having to commit violence In fact whenever she realizes that she may have to kill someone or whenever she sees someone else getting killed it disturbs her deeply It isn8217t 8220cool8221 that she has to inflict harm on others There are other characters on television that hold these qualities as well such as Molly and Lou Solverson on the first and second seasons of Fargo respectively Both of these characters are genuinely good people who want to do the right thing and they aren8217t boring cookiecutter characters Unfortunately examples of these types of characters are few and far between Otherwise television and movies are dominated by characters who relish in destruction And oftentimes when I speak out about these characters I8217m categorically dismissed as somebody who is an oversensitive wuss who can8217t handle the harsh realities of the world This mentality carries over when discussing reallife politics When a politician is overly aggressive huge segments of people will applaud their brashness instead of realizing that overaggressiveness creates more enemies and longterm problems It is possible 8212 such as with the aforementioned examples that I8217ve given 8212 to have interesting compelling protagonist heroes who struggle internally with doing the right thing They don8217t always have to be rebellious contemptible people who don8217t care for others I hope that the portrayal of protagonists begins shifting to a different paradigm because the more images we see of protagonists acting like kindhearted yet complex individuals the more likely we8217ll accept these types of people as heroes in reallife In Breaking Bad a television program about a chemistry teacher who becomes a drug kingpin the protagonist8217s wife Skyler White was on the receiving end of so much vitriol from the show8217s fans What was her grave crime Constantly questioning her husband8217s Walter White8217s suspicious behavior She was also criticized later on for insisting that he leave the life of crime because he8217s putting their family in grave danger Throughout the series Skyler White is meant to be portrayed as a sympathetic character She is constantly lied to and condescended to she8217s the victim of mental abuse she has to shield her son from her husband8217s destructive behavior she has to live knowing that there have been murderers and drug dealers staking out their house But instead of being viewed as sympathetic many of the show8217s fans hated her passionately because she was getting in the way of watching antihero Walter White continually seize power This show is a perfect example of a program that tries to portray the protagonist in the most evil light that it possibly can Even the creator of the series Vince Gilligan has admitted that Walter White is supposed to be the villain of the series But in the end too many people cheered for Walt He was the hero no matter how heinous his actions were I believe this is indicative of our society8217s diminished capacity for empathy The only way people could really cheer for Walt8217s behaviors is if they don8217t care about what happens to any of his victims A person who is supposed to be villainous will not be perceived as evil if the audience relishes in their behavior Consequently the only people who are perceived as villains are the ones who are trying to stop the destructive behavior from continuing Sadly not only are they victims but they are seen as antagonists It should come as no surprise that how we speak about victims is so reminiscent with the way people speak about Skyler White The continued escalation of cheering on toxic behavior has made it that we take the bully8217s side because we view them as strong while we view victims as oversensitive killjoys If somebody gets hurt protesting injustices many will say they had it coming because they shouldn8217t have been there When somebody laments about living in poverty many people will say that they deserve to be suffering because they didn8217t work hard enough to get out of their situations When someone is sexually assaulted more people are concerned with what the victim wore rather than who committed the heinous crime When a 15yearold girl is pepper sprayed at a Trump rally some people actually cheer it on These television shows may not have created these problems but they certainly shed a light on how everyday people react to brutality In many cases people8217s reactions are uncaring because they have no empathy for others who get hurt Some people emulate the protagonists they see on television because they symbolize people that we can look up to Naturally some qualities of an antihero become aspirational such as not thinking or caring about what happens to others The message that some people take away from these characters is that caring is for wusses Only weak people care Trump personifies this mentality by how callously he treats people at his rallies He encourages violence against protestors and heartlessly throws them out into the cold Many of his supporters admire his viciousness Although there is some value in maintaining one8217s composure in the face of adversity rarely are emotions seen with that level of nuance It8217s more common that viciously uncaring people like Trump are viewed as 8220cooler8221 because they are portrayed as more strongwilled than those weak people who dare show that they care about anything In reality only 13 of people are born sociopathic 8212 which is an actual psychological disorder and not something to scapegoat callous violence into so television8217s glorification of the unemotional genius such as Sherlock Holmes doesn8217t exist in reallife Everyone else who claims to 8220not care8221 is simply trying to escape feeling accountable to other people Ironically their detachment actually shows how fragile they are because they are so afraid of getting emotionally hurt that they try to shut off their emotions as a defense mechanism When someone tries so hard to 8220not care8221 what they are really saying 8212 perhaps without realizing it 8212 is that they wish to no longer have empathy and care for others because it8217s too hard and it hurts too much What they would like to happen is to become unfeeling and beat the empathy out of themselves Lacking empathy shouldn8217t be something to aspire to Not only is it destructive but it is counterproductive in terms of wanting to be a stronger person Purposely trying to not feel for others is a cowardly way of living life because it takes away so much risk of being a human When you care for someone else it means that you might eventually learn to love or trust them it also means that you make yourself vulnerable to potentially getting hurt Rarely is it perceived as heroic to take an emotional risk and show vulnerability to someone else But it really is because caring about others deeply is one of the bravest and most heroic things you can do When we look at all the factors Trump8217s recent successes are wholly unsurprising Unfortunately neither is the violence perpetuated by some of his supporters I believe that over time we can shift public perception and make people realize that having empathy for others is beneficial for everyone in society We can show people that kindhearted protagonists can be interesting characters to look up to while violent characters who lack empathy and compassion are cautionary tales rather than aspirational Hopefully in the future when a Trumplike figure rears their ugly head trying to obtain power we will nip it in the bud before it gets out of control We8217ll come together collectively and unanimously say that we don8217t condone the kind of hatred they8217re spewing We8217ll see these characteristics and behaviors for what they are destructive tendencies that have no place in our society Robin Tran is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism She is a standup comedian and blogger and she holds a BA in English from UC Irvineamp160In early 2015 Robin came out as transgender woman and has written about her firsthand experiences ever sinceamp160She has performed at the Improv Mad House Comedy Club and the Comedy Palace and her articles have been published in xoJane and Timecomamp160 Filed Under Articles Posts Tagged With Fem 101

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<p>Depiction of Donald Trump in the LA Times, which described the candidate as &#8220;polarizing.&#8221; (photo: Robert Gauthier / LAT)</p> <p>The outlandish rhetoric of Republican presidential wildcard Donald Trump has left many journalists at a loss for words&#8212;words such as bigotry, xenophobia, racism, sexism and demagoguery.</p> <p>Some media outlets raised these issues. Yet many reporters (or perhaps their editors) still seem reluctant to move past the aphasic and simplistic sports-reporting model, in which ideological content analysis is renounced.</p> <p>An example of a typical article is the piece on Trump&#8217;s stump speech by Michael Finnegan and Kurtis Lee in the Los Angeles Times ( <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-trump-national-security-20150915-story.html" type="external">9/15/15</a>). It is well-written, colorful and even includes the obligatory single sentence from an anti-Trump protester. Yet there is little serious political or historic context.</p> <p>One line does note that Trump borrowed from &#8220;Richard Nixon&#8217;s polarizing pledge to stand up for the &#8216;silent majority&#8217; amid the social upheaval of the 1960s.&#8221; <a href="http://www.c-span.org/video/?153819-1/silent-majority-speech" type="external">Nixon&#8217;s speech</a>, however, concerned support for the Vietnam War. A more apt comparison would have been Nixon&#8217;s &#8220;Southern Strategy&#8221; to garner votes from white voters (The Nation, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/" type="external">11/13/12</a>).</p> <p>Journalists and scholars familiar with the rise of contemporary right-wing populist political parties and social movements in Europe, however, recognize that xenophobic, anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric can lead to acts of violence.</p> <p>For several years, I have had editors tell me that the contention that right-wing rhetoric can lead to violence is a liberal myth. Right-wing media pundits certainly reject this claim. Yet this is a well-studied chain of events, analyzed by scholars since the rise of fascism in Europe following World War I and the Nazi genocide during World War II. So I wrote a survey of the scholarship as a book chapter titled &#8220; <a href="http://www.academia.edu/6920071/Heroes_Know_Which_Villains_to_Kill_How_Coded_Rhetoric_Incites_Scripted_Violence" type="external">Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill</a>: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence.&#8221; In it, I summarized the consensus:</p> <p>The leaders of organized political or social movements sometimes tell their followers that a specific group of &#8220;Others&#8221; is plotting to destroy civilized society. History tells us that if this message is repeated vividly enough, loudly enough, often enough, and long enough&#8212;it is only a matter of time before the bodies from the named scapegoated groups start to turn up.</p> <p>Freedom of speech is not the issue. A free and open debate is a necessity for democracy. Trump therefore is not legally culpable for any acts of violence against his named scapegoats. Trump should be held accountable on a moral basis by the media for his using the <a href="http://www.tools-of-fear.net/" type="external">tools of fear</a>, such as demonization and scapegoating, that put real people at risk for attacks.</p> <p>Photo from a Nation piece on Trump, which noted the &#8220;xenophobia at the heart of Trump&#8217;s campaign.&#8221; (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)</p> <p>The progressive press has done a better job of pointing out this ugly potential. Writing for The Nation ( <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/shouting-back-at-donald-trump/" type="external">9/14/15</a>), Julianne Hing argued, &#8220;It&#8217;s clear that the xenophobia at the core of Trump&#8217;s campaign is resonating, and his antics are already echoing beyond the campaign trail into both culture and policy.&#8221; Hing quotes Mario Carrillo of the immigrant rights group United We Dream as saying Trump&#8217;s &#8220;rhetoric is leading to real-life consequences.&#8221;</p> <p>Many instances of physical attacks are chronicled in Hing&#8217;s article, although motivation is usually unclear. One pair of attackers did tell police they were directly influenced by Trump&#8217;s rhetoric, according to the Associated Press ( <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3ccf3e0dca664295b90274a37449a87b/brothers-denied-bail-charges-they-beat-homeless-immigrant" type="external">9/3/15</a>). Trump said he does not condone violence. Nonetheless, immigrant rights activists worry violence will increase.</p> <p>Adele Stan in the American Prospect ( <a href="http://prospect.org/article/nation-sociopaths-what-trump-phenomenon-says-about-america" type="external">9/9/15</a>) put it boldly:</p> <p>What Trump is doing, via the media circus of which he has appointed himself ringmaster, is making the articulation of the basest bigotry acceptable in mainstream outlets, amplifying the many oppressive tropes and stereotypes of race and gender that already exist in more than adequate abundance.</p> <p>The headline for Evan Horowitz&#8217;s piece in the Boston Globe ( <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/08/19/donald-trump-blazes-european-path-american-politics/i5PXZAuuALf39tfb0EQ6pL/story.html" type="external">8/19/15</a>) claims &#8220;Donald Trump Blazes a European Path in American Politics,&#8221; and Horowitz asks, &#8220;Does Donald Trump represent the emergence of a new force in American politics, a right-populist movement that could reorganize the American&#8221; political spectrum? Missing is the fact that, from President Andrew Jackson in the early 1800s through George Wallace in the 1970s to Pat Buchanan, there have been right-wing populist movements in the United States. It is not a European import.</p> <p>Part of this confusion over Trump is definitional: Scholars write entire books trying to map out the contours of right-wing political and social movements, especially the line dividing right-wing populism and neofascism. The pre-eminent scholar in this area, University of Georgia&#8217;s Cas Mudde, explained in the Washington Post ( <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" type="external">8/26/15</a>):</p> <p>The key features of the populist radical right ideology &#8211; nativism, authoritarianism, and populism &#8211; are not unrelated to mainstream ideologies and mass attitudes. In fact, they are best seen as a radicalization of mainstream values.</p> <p>For many scholars, right-wing populism is classified as part of the &#8220;radical right,&#8221; while the term &#8220;extreme right&#8221; is reserved for insurgent groups seeking to overturn the constitutional order.</p> <p>In his book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Mudde lists as common &#8220;extreme right&#8221; features nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy and the strong state, including a law-and-order approach.</p> <p>In his Ideology of the Extreme Right, Mudde wrote:</p> <p>The terms neo-Nazism and to a lesser extent neo-fascism are now used exclusively for parties and groups that explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich (in the case of neo-fascism the Italian Social Republic) or quote historical <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialism" type="external">National Socialism</a> (fascism) as their ideological influence.</p> <p>That&#8217;s not Trump. His ideology and rhetoric are much more comparable to the European populist radical right, akin to Jean-Marie Le Pen&#8217;s National Front, the Danish People&#8217;s Party or Vladimir Zhirinovsky&#8217;s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. All of them use the common radical right rhetoric of nativism, authoritarianism and populism.</p> <p>Salon&#8216;s headline on Trump: He&#8217;s not, actually.</p> <p>&#8220;Donald Trump Is an Actual Fascist&#8221; trumpets the headline in Salon ( <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/07/25/donald_trump_is_an_actual_fascist_what_his_surging_popularity_says_about_the_gop_base/" type="external">7/25/15</a>) for Conor Lynch&#8217;s confused and badly researched article on Trump. Ignoring the current rise of xenophobic neo-fascist groups in Europe, Lynch tells us that &#8220;fascism died in the mid-20th century.&#8221;</p> <p>Undermining Salon&#8217;s headline, Lynch tells us the &#8220;GOP are obviously not fascists, but they share a family resemblance.&#8221; The resemblance, according to Lynch, is explained in the famous quote attributed to Italy&#8217;s fascist dictator during World War II, Benito Mussolini:</p> <p>Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.</p> <p>According to Lynch, this &#8220;definition may very well fit the GOP ideology: a kind of corporate fascism.&#8221; Alas, the quote is a hoax, widely circulated on the internet but <a href="http://www.politicalresearch.org/2005/01/12/mussolini-on-the-corporate-state/#sthash.H6NETour.dpbs" type="external">debunked</a> years ago. Mussolini never wrote or said anything like that, since the fake statement refutes Mussolini&#8217;s views on fascism.</p> <p>More complicated is the detailed and erudite polemic in Truthout ( <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32800-political-frauds-and-the-ghost-of-totalitarianism" type="external">9/15/15</a>) by Henry A. Giroux, expanded from Tikkun ( <a href="http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/donald-trump-and-the-ghost-of-totalitarianism" type="external">9/9/15</a>). In &#8220;Political Frauds and the Ghost of Totalitarianism,&#8221; Giroux invokes the theories of world-famous philosopher Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism. He warns that widespread civic illiteracy in the US population is more than the media manufacturing &#8220;ignorance on an individual scale&#8221;; it is, in fact</p> <p>producing a nationwide crisis of agency, memory and thinking itself&#8230;a kind of ideological sandstorm in which reason gives way to emotion, and a willful limitation on critical thought spreads through the culture as part of a political project that both infantilizes and depoliticizes the general public.</p> <p>According to Giroux, &#8220;Donald Trump is not the singular clown who has injected bizarre and laughable notions into US politics; he is the canary in the mineshaft warning us that totalitarianism relies on mass support and feeds on hate, moral panics&#8221; and what Arendt called the &#8220; <a href="http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=12466" type="external">the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>Xenophobic cartoon, 1899.</p> <p>Yet long before the appearance of totalitarianism in the modern era, the United States saw mass movements that used force to subjugate or purge the degraded and demonized &#8220;Other.&#8221; As a nation, we enforced white Christian nationalism through the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement and mass murder of black people for profit. For many decades, immigrants including those who were Irish, Italian, Polish or Russian were second-class citizens, not considered &#8220;white.&#8221; Women had few rights and were treated as the property of their fathers, then their husbands. Jews were perpetual outsiders. People with unpopular religious views were shunned and in some instances killed. Chinese were excluded, Japanese were interned in camps. Nativist racism periodically has cut a bloody gash through our body politic, without reliance on totalitarianism.</p> <p>Trump is not an example of creeping totalitarianism; he is the white man growing hoarse with bigoted canards while riding at the forefront of a new nativist movement. Adele Stan bluntly suggests that to &#8220;ask if the rogue Republican&#8217;s surge is good for Democrats is the wrong question.&#8221; Instead, we need to ask what is wrong with America, &#8220;that this racist, misogynist, money-cheating clown should be the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of one of its two major parties?&#8221;</p> <p>Trump feeds the resentment felt by many people who are white, male, straight or Christian who feel displaced by &#8220;Others&#8221; taking over &#8220;their&#8221; nation. These people see themselves as the real producers of value in the United States, and consider the disparaged &#8220;Others&#8221; to be parasites. Thus the 2012 campaign of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was built around the clandestine theme of mobilizing the &#8220;makers&#8221; against the &#8220;takers,&#8221; as reported by Eric Schulzke in the Deseret News ( <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865562693/Makers-takers-and-Mitt-Romneys-47-percent-comment.html" type="external">9/19/12</a>). This is called &#8220;producerism&#8221; by scholars, and it is a central element of right-wing populism in the United States.</p> <p>What fuels this sort of bitter backlash movement now? The late scholar Jean Hardisty of Political Research Associates argued in 1995 that a <a href="http://www.jeanhardisty.com/writing/articles-chapters-and-reports/the-resurgent-right-why-now/" type="external">confluence of several historic factors</a> has assisted the success of the right in the United States:</p> <p>&#8220;Each of these conditions has existed at previous times in US history,&#8221; wrote Hardisty:</p> <p>While they usually overlap to some extent, they also can be seen as distinct, identifiable phenomenon. The lightning speed of the right&#8217;s rise can be explained by the simultaneous existence of all five factors. Further, in this period they not only overlap, but reinforce each other. This mutual reinforcement accounts for the exceptional force of the current rightward swing.</p> <p>Scholars Michael Omi and Howard Winant, in Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, suggest that this set of circumstances makes many Americans fear the end of the &#8220;American Dream.&#8221; This backlash is picking up speed. The Republican voter base in the Tea Party long ago shifted its attention away from fiscal restraint toward anti-immigrant xenophobia, banning abortion and pushing gay people back into the closet.</p> <p>Many scholars of fascism and neofascism now suggest right-wing populism can metamorphosize into these fascistic totalitarian forms, but they recognize that it seldom does&#8211;and that fascist movements seldom gain state power. Yet the demonization and scapegoating that accompanies right-wing populism in the United States is breeding a counter-subversion panic targeting immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, feminists, gay people, liberals and leftists. Planned Parenthood has become a special target to appeal to the Christian Right.</p> <p>Authoritarian, xenophobic nativism is not a European import in the United States.</p> <p>While racism is not confined to the American South, a recent study by sociologists Rory McVeigh and David Cunningham, described on Brandeis Now ( <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2014/december/cunningham-kkk-impact.html" type="external">12/4/14</a>), found that a significant predictor of current Republican voting patterns in the South is the prior existence of a strong chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the area in the 1960s. McVeigh writes on the London School of Economics website ( <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/12/17/ku-klux-klan-activism-in-the-1960s-is-linked-to-the-souths-swing-to-the-republican-party/" type="external">12/17/14</a>) that although &#8220;populist politics appealed to many Southern voters in earlier times, the Southern Democratic Party was also a key instrument in the defense of white privilege and racial oppression.&#8221;</p> <p>The passage of federal Civil Rights Act in 1964 propelled many Democratic Party &#8220;Dixiecrats&#8221; into the Republican Party, where they now appear at campaign rallies in freebie &#8220;gimme hats&#8221; touting Monsanto, Koch brothers fertilizers and Coors beer. They choose racial privilege over economic security. That&#8217;s <a href="http://whatsthematterwithkansas.com/" type="external">What&#8217;s the Matter With Kansas</a>. Now this mass base cheers Trump on while he is <a href="http://www.jeanhardisty.com/writing/books/" type="external">Mobilizing Resentment</a>&#8211;the title of Hardisty&#8217;s 1999 book about the rise of right-wing politics in the US.</p> <p>McVeigh argues that it is shifts in power dynamics and hierarchies in economic, political and social spheres that launch the processes in which radical right-wing groups attract members, and sometimes a mass base large enough to intrude into the larger society. Using as his analytical example the Klan in the 1920s, McVeigh demonstrates that the right-wing KKK in the 1920s was composed of white people attempting to defend their relatively more privileged position in the social, political and economic life of their communities (E-Extreme, <a href="http://www.publiceye.org/research/sociology/mcveigh-pdm.pdf" type="external">2-3/10</a>).</p> <p>According to McVeigh, in his book The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics, &#8220;the Klan can best be understood as a response to devaluation in the economic, political and status-based &#8216;purchasing power&#8217; of the movement&#8217;s constituents.&#8221; McVeigh adds that &#8220;right-wing movements often provide individuals with an effective vehicle for preserving status-based interests as well as political and economic interests.&#8221;</p> <p>During the 1920s, millions of Americans joined the Klan, turning it into a major electoral force in several states with an important role in national politics. The tropes of racial threats posed by people of color as rapists and murderers were glued to the American psyche even before decades of stories planted by Klan organizers in their stump speeches for membership, notes Gerald Horne of the University of Houston, whom I interviewed for the Washington Spectator ( <a href="http://washingtonspectator.org/from-the-kkk-to-the-ccc-to-dylann-roof/" type="external">8/1/15</a>) after Dylann Roof allegedly murdered nine black people in a historic Charleston, South Carolina, church. Roof told a participant in a Bible study: &#8220;I have to do it. You rape our women and you&#8217;re taking over our country&#8230;and you have to go.&#8221;</p> <p>In covering the story, the New York Times ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/us/politics/views-on-race-and-gop-ties-define-group-council-of-conservative-citizens.html?_r=0" type="external">6/22/15</a>) invented a cowardly phrase, &#8220;white primacy,&#8221; to describe the blatantly white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, where Dylann Roof apparently learned this storyline.</p> <p>On the day of the Republican candidates debate, the New York Times ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/politics/donald-trump-firework-of-campaign-trail-shows-a-more-measured-side.html?ribbon-ad-idx=4&amp;amp;rref=politics&amp;amp;module=Ribbon&amp;amp;version=context&amp;amp;region=Header&amp;amp;action=click&amp;amp;contentCollection=Politics&amp;amp;pgtype=article" type="external">9/16/15</a>) burnished Trump&#8217;s rising star, declaring that Trump was starting to:</p> <p>conform to some of the demands of a presidential race, making him, in some ways, more of a typical politician. It suggests that, as much as the Republican electorate is becoming more comfortable with the idea of Mr. Trump as its standard-bearer, he is embracing the rituals and expectations of the role, too.</p> <p>The Trump candidacy and the shooting in Charleston are connected thematically by a mobilization to defend white nationalism while the racial and ethnic face of America changes hue. The populist right and the extreme right fuel each other. The more we as a nation ignore this process of nativist demonization, the more targets will be painted on the backs of our neighbors. History will record how long these right-wing backlash movements will spread their virulent rhetorical venom in our nation. But as Arendt observed, history judges us as individuals as to whether or not we stood up and spoke out against the banality of evil.</p> <p>Chip Berlet has written about bigotry for over 40 years, much of it while an analyst at Political Research Associates. He is co-author with Matthew N. Lyons of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort and has published scholarly articles on the dynamics of right-wing populism, fascism and totalitarianism. Additional resources for this article are at <a href="http://www.researchforprogress.us/jump/fair2015.html" type="external">http://www.researchforprogress.us/jump/fair2015.html .</a></p> <p>Subscribe: <a href="" type="internal">Android</a> | <a href="" type="internal">RSS</a></p>

Corporate Press Fails to Trump Bigotry

http://fair.org/home/corporate-press-fails-to-trump-bigotry/

2015-09-17

4left

Depiction of Donald Trump in the LA Times which described the candidate as 8220polarizing8221 photo Robert Gauthier LAT The outlandish rhetoric of Republican presidential wildcard Donald Trump has left many journalists at a loss for words8212words such as bigotry xenophobia racism sexism and demagoguery Some media outlets raised these issues Yet many reporters or perhaps their editors still seem reluctant to move past the aphasic and simplistic sportsreporting model in which ideological content analysis is renounced An example of a typical article is the piece on Trump8217s stump speech by Michael Finnegan and Kurtis Lee in the Los Angeles Times 91515 It is wellwritten colorful and even includes the obligatory single sentence from an antiTrump protester Yet there is little serious political or historic context One line does note that Trump borrowed from 8220Richard Nixon8217s polarizing pledge to stand up for the 8216silent majority8217 amid the social upheaval of the 1960s8221 Nixon8217s speech however concerned support for the Vietnam War A more apt comparison would have been Nixon8217s 8220Southern Strategy8221 to garner votes from white voters The Nation 111312 Journalists and scholars familiar with the rise of contemporary rightwing populist political parties and social movements in Europe however recognize that xenophobic antiimmigrant and racist rhetoric can lead to acts of violence For several years I have had editors tell me that the contention that rightwing rhetoric can lead to violence is a liberal myth Rightwing media pundits certainly reject this claim Yet this is a wellstudied chain of events analyzed by scholars since the rise of fascism in Europe following World War I and the Nazi genocide during World War II So I wrote a survey of the scholarship as a book chapter titled 8220 Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence8221 In it I summarized the consensus The leaders of organized political or social movements sometimes tell their followers that a specific group of 8220Others8221 is plotting to destroy civilized society History tells us that if this message is repeated vividly enough loudly enough often enough and long enough8212it is only a matter of time before the bodies from the named scapegoated groups start to turn up Freedom of speech is not the issue A free and open debate is a necessity for democracy Trump therefore is not legally culpable for any acts of violence against his named scapegoats Trump should be held accountable on a moral basis by the media for his using the tools of fear such as demonization and scapegoating that put real people at risk for attacks Photo from a Nation piece on Trump which noted the 8220xenophobia at the heart of Trump8217s campaign8221 photo Jonathan ErnstReuters The progressive press has done a better job of pointing out this ugly potential Writing for The Nation 91415 Julianne Hing argued 8220It8217s clear that the xenophobia at the core of Trump8217s campaign is resonating and his antics are already echoing beyond the campaign trail into both culture and policy8221 Hing quotes Mario Carrillo of the immigrant rights group United We Dream as saying Trump8217s 8220rhetoric is leading to reallife consequences8221 Many instances of physical attacks are chronicled in Hing8217s article although motivation is usually unclear One pair of attackers did tell police they were directly influenced by Trump8217s rhetoric according to the Associated Press 9315 Trump said he does not condone violence Nonetheless immigrant rights activists worry violence will increase Adele Stan in the American Prospect 9915 put it boldly What Trump is doing via the media circus of which he has appointed himself ringmaster is making the articulation of the basest bigotry acceptable in mainstream outlets amplifying the many oppressive tropes and stereotypes of race and gender that already exist in more than adequate abundance The headline for Evan Horowitz8217s piece in the Boston Globe 81915 claims 8220Donald Trump Blazes a European Path in American Politics8221 and Horowitz asks 8220Does Donald Trump represent the emergence of a new force in American politics a rightpopulist movement that could reorganize the American8221 political spectrum Missing is the fact that from President Andrew Jackson in the early 1800s through George Wallace in the 1970s to Pat Buchanan there have been rightwing populist movements in the United States It is not a European import Part of this confusion over Trump is definitional Scholars write entire books trying to map out the contours of rightwing political and social movements especially the line dividing rightwing populism and neofascism The preeminent scholar in this area University of Georgia8217s Cas Mudde explained in the Washington Post 82615 The key features of the populist radical right ideology 8211 nativism authoritarianism and populism 8211 are not unrelated to mainstream ideologies and mass attitudes In fact they are best seen as a radicalization of mainstream values For many scholars rightwing populism is classified as part of the 8220radical right8221 while the term 8220extreme right8221 is reserved for insurgent groups seeking to overturn the constitutional order In his book Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe Mudde lists as common 8220extreme right8221 features nationalism racism xenophobia antidemocracy and the strong state including a lawandorder approach In his Ideology of the Extreme Right Mudde wrote The terms neoNazism and to a lesser extent neofascism are now used exclusively for parties and groups that explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich in the case of neofascism the Italian Social Republic or quote historical National Socialism fascism as their ideological influence That8217s not Trump His ideology and rhetoric are much more comparable to the European populist radical right akin to JeanMarie Le Pen8217s National Front the Danish People8217s Party or Vladimir Zhirinovsky8217s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia All of them use the common radical right rhetoric of nativism authoritarianism and populism Salon8216s headline on Trump He8217s not actually 8220Donald Trump Is an Actual Fascist8221 trumpets the headline in Salon 72515 for Conor Lynch8217s confused and badly researched article on Trump Ignoring the current rise of xenophobic neofascist groups in Europe Lynch tells us that 8220fascism died in the mid20th century8221 Undermining Salon8217s headline Lynch tells us the 8220GOP are obviously not fascists but they share a family resemblance8221 The resemblance according to Lynch is explained in the famous quote attributed to Italy8217s fascist dictator during World War II Benito Mussolini Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power According to Lynch this 8220definition may very well fit the GOP ideology a kind of corporate fascism8221 Alas the quote is a hoax widely circulated on the internet but debunked years ago Mussolini never wrote or said anything like that since the fake statement refutes Mussolini8217s views on fascism More complicated is the detailed and erudite polemic in Truthout 91515 by Henry A Giroux expanded from Tikkun 9915 In 8220Political Frauds and the Ghost of Totalitarianism8221 Giroux invokes the theories of worldfamous philosopher Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism He warns that widespread civic illiteracy in the US population is more than the media manufacturing 8220ignorance on an individual scale8221 it is in fact producing a nationwide crisis of agency memory and thinking itself8230a kind of ideological sandstorm in which reason gives way to emotion and a willful limitation on critical thought spreads through the culture as part of a political project that both infantilizes and depoliticizes the general public According to Giroux 8220Donald Trump is not the singular clown who has injected bizarre and laughable notions into US politics he is the canary in the mineshaft warning us that totalitarianism relies on mass support and feeds on hate moral panics8221 and what Arendt called the 8220 the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude8221 Xenophobic cartoon 1899 Yet long before the appearance of totalitarianism in the modern era the United States saw mass movements that used force to subjugate or purge the degraded and demonized 8220Other8221 As a nation we enforced white Christian nationalism through the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement and mass murder of black people for profit For many decades immigrants including those who were Irish Italian Polish or Russian were secondclass citizens not considered 8220white8221 Women had few rights and were treated as the property of their fathers then their husbands Jews were perpetual outsiders People with unpopular religious views were shunned and in some instances killed Chinese were excluded Japanese were interned in camps Nativist racism periodically has cut a bloody gash through our body politic without reliance on totalitarianism Trump is not an example of creeping totalitarianism he is the white man growing hoarse with bigoted canards while riding at the forefront of a new nativist movement Adele Stan bluntly suggests that to 8220ask if the rogue Republican8217s surge is good for Democrats is the wrong question8221 Instead we need to ask what is wrong with America 8220that this racist misogynist moneycheating clown should be the frontrunner for the presidential nomination of one of its two major parties8221 Trump feeds the resentment felt by many people who are white male straight or Christian who feel displaced by 8220Others8221 taking over 8220their8221 nation These people see themselves as the real producers of value in the United States and consider the disparaged 8220Others8221 to be parasites Thus the 2012 campaign of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was built around the clandestine theme of mobilizing the 8220makers8221 against the 8220takers8221 as reported by Eric Schulzke in the Deseret News 91912 This is called 8220producerism8221 by scholars and it is a central element of rightwing populism in the United States What fuels this sort of bitter backlash movement now The late scholar Jean Hardisty of Political Research Associates argued in 1995 that a confluence of several historic factors has assisted the success of the right in the United States 8220Each of these conditions has existed at previous times in US history8221 wrote Hardisty While they usually overlap to some extent they also can be seen as distinct identifiable phenomenon The lightning speed of the right8217s rise can be explained by the simultaneous existence of all five factors Further in this period they not only overlap but reinforce each other This mutual reinforcement accounts for the exceptional force of the current rightward swing Scholars Michael Omi and Howard Winant in Racial Formation in the United States From the 1960s to the 1990s suggest that this set of circumstances makes many Americans fear the end of the 8220American Dream8221 This backlash is picking up speed The Republican voter base in the Tea Party long ago shifted its attention away from fiscal restraint toward antiimmigrant xenophobia banning abortion and pushing gay people back into the closet Many scholars of fascism and neofascism now suggest rightwing populism can metamorphosize into these fascistic totalitarian forms but they recognize that it seldom does8211and that fascist movements seldom gain state power Yet the demonization and scapegoating that accompanies rightwing populism in the United States is breeding a countersubversion panic targeting immigrants Mexicans Muslims feminists gay people liberals and leftists Planned Parenthood has become a special target to appeal to the Christian Right Authoritarian xenophobic nativism is not a European import in the United States While racism is not confined to the American South a recent study by sociologists Rory McVeigh and David Cunningham described on Brandeis Now 12414 found that a significant predictor of current Republican voting patterns in the South is the prior existence of a strong chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the area in the 1960s McVeigh writes on the London School of Economics website 121714 that although 8220populist politics appealed to many Southern voters in earlier times the Southern Democratic Party was also a key instrument in the defense of white privilege and racial oppression8221 The passage of federal Civil Rights Act in 1964 propelled many Democratic Party 8220Dixiecrats8221 into the Republican Party where they now appear at campaign rallies in freebie 8220gimme hats8221 touting Monsanto Koch brothers fertilizers and Coors beer They choose racial privilege over economic security That8217s What8217s the Matter With Kansas Now this mass base cheers Trump on while he is Mobilizing Resentment8211the title of Hardisty8217s 1999 book about the rise of rightwing politics in the US McVeigh argues that it is shifts in power dynamics and hierarchies in economic political and social spheres that launch the processes in which radical rightwing groups attract members and sometimes a mass base large enough to intrude into the larger society Using as his analytical example the Klan in the 1920s McVeigh demonstrates that the rightwing KKK in the 1920s was composed of white people attempting to defend their relatively more privileged position in the social political and economic life of their communities EExtreme 2310 According to McVeigh in his book The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan RightWing Movements and National Politics 8220the Klan can best be understood as a response to devaluation in the economic political and statusbased 8216purchasing power8217 of the movement8217s constituents8221 McVeigh adds that 8220rightwing movements often provide individuals with an effective vehicle for preserving statusbased interests as well as political and economic interests8221 During the 1920s millions of Americans joined the Klan turning it into a major electoral force in several states with an important role in national politics The tropes of racial threats posed by people of color as rapists and murderers were glued to the American psyche even before decades of stories planted by Klan organizers in their stump speeches for membership notes Gerald Horne of the University of Houston whom I interviewed for the Washington Spectator 8115 after Dylann Roof allegedly murdered nine black people in a historic Charleston South Carolina church Roof told a participant in a Bible study 8220I have to do it You rape our women and you8217re taking over our country8230and you have to go8221 In covering the story the New York Times 62215 invented a cowardly phrase 8220white primacy8221 to describe the blatantly white supremacist group the Council of Conservative Citizens where Dylann Roof apparently learned this storyline On the day of the Republican candidates debate the New York Times 91615 burnished Trump8217s rising star declaring that Trump was starting to conform to some of the demands of a presidential race making him in some ways more of a typical politician It suggests that as much as the Republican electorate is becoming more comfortable with the idea of Mr Trump as its standardbearer he is embracing the rituals and expectations of the role too The Trump candidacy and the shooting in Charleston are connected thematically by a mobilization to defend white nationalism while the racial and ethnic face of America changes hue The populist right and the extreme right fuel each other The more we as a nation ignore this process of nativist demonization the more targets will be painted on the backs of our neighbors History will record how long these rightwing backlash movements will spread their virulent rhetorical venom in our nation But as Arendt observed history judges us as individuals as to whether or not we stood up and spoke out against the banality of evil Chip Berlet has written about bigotry for over 40 years much of it while an analyst at Political Research Associates He is coauthor with Matthew N Lyons of RightWing Populism in America Too Close for Comfort and has published scholarly articles on the dynamics of rightwing populism fascism and totalitarianism Additional resources for this article are at httpwwwresearchforprogressusjumpfair2015html Subscribe Android RSS

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<p>&amp;lt;a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/7743239462/in/photostream/&amp;gt;The White House&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;/Flickr</p> <p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175596/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>Since this is my version of an election piece, I plan to get the usual stuff out of the way fast.</p> <p>So yes, the smartest political <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/sept-20-obamas-convention-bounce-may-not-be-receding/" type="external">odds-givers</a> around <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/20/is-the-2012-election-tilting-toward-democrats/?hpid=z1" type="external">believe</a> President Obama has a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/politics/romney-faces-an-uphill-fight-to-win-at-polls.html" type="external">distinct edge</a> over Mitt Romney coming out of the conventions, the Senate is <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/senate-forecast-what-has-gone-wrong-for-g-o-p-candidates/" type="external">trending</a> Democratic, and who knows about the House. In fact, it almost seems as if the Republicans put forward the only man in America incapable of defeating an economically wounded and deeply vulnerable president (other than, of course, the roster of candidates he ran against for the nomination).</p> <p>In every way that they <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/us/politics/obama-exploits-familiar-junction-of-policy-and-politics.html" type="external">can control</a>, the Obama people have simply been smarter. Take those conventions: in each of them, the presidential candidate was introduced by a well-known figure who went on stage and ad-libbed. One was an <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/31/video-watch-the-entire-clint-eastwood-speech-at-the-rnc/" type="external">82-year-old guy</a> talking to an empty chair (and I still thought he was the best thing the Republicans had to offer, including his shout-out about withdrawing all our troops from Afghanistan) and the other was&#8230; well, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5knEXDsrL4" type="external">Bill Clinton</a>.</p> <p>It wasn&#8217;t even a contest. As for the upcoming <a href="http://www.2012presidentialelectionnews.com/2012-debate-schedule/2012-presidential-debate-schedule/" type="external">debates</a>, if you think Romney can outduel Obama without wandering in among the thorns, I have a Nigerian prince I&#8217;d like to introduce you to. In other words, it should really all be over except for the usual shouting and the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/05/will-republicans-vast-super-pac-money-advantage-swing-the-election.html" type="external">gazillions of dollars</a> of attack ads that will turn swing-state TV screens into a mind-numbing blur of lies. Even there, however, some Super PAC and dark-money types may evidently be starting to consider <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/09/16/161241552/could-superpacs-shift-strategy-to-congress" type="external">shifting funds</a> from beating up on Obama to beating up on Democratic senatorial candidates. It&#8217;s a sign that the moneybags of the Republican right fear the Romney campaign is a rerun of McCain World and the candidate is a Bain Capital version of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbdzMLk9wHQ" type="external">John Kerry wind-surfing</a>. After all, Romney seems almost <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/opinion/collins-mitts-snake-bite-season.html" type="external">incapable</a> of opening his mouth without letting out a <a href="" type="internal">howler</a>, his staff is in a <a href="http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B6BEB452-8AF1-45FC-8831-9FCFF5CE1576" type="external">state of civil war</a>, and Republican candidates elsewhere are <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/susana-martinez-criticizes-mitt-romneys-47-percent-comment/story?id=17270956#.UFnqjhgVmHk" type="external">leaping</a> from the ditched bandwagon, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html" type="external">as are</a> even <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/peggy-noonan-romney-incompetent_n_1896332.html" type="external">conservative pundits</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" /></p> <p>By now, Obama and his savvy campaign staff should really be home free, having run political circles around their Republican opponent as he was running circles around himself. There&#8217;s only one problem: the world. These days it&#8217;s threatening to be a bizarrely uncooperative place for a president who wants to rest on his Osama-killing foreign-policy laurels.</p> <p>An Administration of Managers Face the Tsunami</p> <p>So send Mitt to the Cayman Islands, stick Paul Ryan in a Swiss bank account, and focus your attention instead on Obama versus the world. For the next 43 days, that&#8217;s the real contest. It could prove to be the greatest show on Earth, filled as it is with a stellar cast of Islamist extremists, Taliban militants, Afghan allies intent on blowing away their mentors, endangered American diplomats, an Israeli prime minister on the red-line express, sober central European bankers, and a perturbed Chinese leadership, among so many others.</p> <p>In such a potentially tumultuous situation, the president and his people are committed to a perilous high-wire act without a net. It involves bringing to bear all the power and savvy left to the last superpower on Earth to prevent some part of the world from spinning embarrassingly out of control, lest the president&#8217;s opponent be handed a delectable &#8220; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise" type="external">October surprise</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>Keep in mind that, despite the president&#8217;s reputation as a visionary speaker, in global terms his has distinctly been an administration of managers. The visionaries came earlier. They were the first-term Bushites, including George W., Dick, and Donald, each in his own way globally bonkers, and all of them and their associates almost blissfully wrong about the nature of power in our world. (They <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/101850/bush_s_faith_and_the_..." type="external">mistook</a> the destructive power of the US military for global power itself.) As a consequence, they blithely steered the ship of state directly into a field of giant icebergs.</p> <p>Think of that wrecking crew, in retrospect, as the three stooges of geopolitical dreaming. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, in particular&#8212;as well as the hubris that went with the very idea of a &#8220;global war on terror&#8221;&#8212;were acts of take-your-breath-away folly that help explain why the Bush administration was MIA at the recent Republican convention (as was, of course, the Iraq War). In the process, they drove a stake directly through the energy heartlands of the planet, leaving autocratic allies there gasping for breath and wondering what was next. Since 2009, the managers of the Obama administration have been doing what managers do best: fiddling with the order of the deck chairs on our particular Titanic. This might be thought of as managing the Bush legacy.</p> <p>The problem was that in much of the world an older order, linked to the Cold War scheme of things, was finally coming unglued. A <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175351/engelhardt_pox_americana" type="external">combination</a> of the Bush invasions of the Eurasian mainland and the way the US financial sector stormed the planet with a vast <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/wall-streets-naked-swindle-20100405" type="external">ponzi scheme</a> of bogus financial derivatives did much to promote the process, especially in what neoconservatives liked to call &#8220; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175442/" type="external">the arc of instability</a>&#8220;(before they offered a striking demonstration of just what instability was really all about). In a sense, what they dubbed their &#8220;democracy agenda&#8221;&#8212;though it had little enough to do with democracy&#8212;played a distinct role in unifying much of the Arab world in opposition to its Washington-backed one-percenters. In this way, the Arab Spring was launched against <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175466/juan_cole_protest_planet" type="external">Ben Ali-ism</a>, and Mubarak-ism, against, that is, an American system of well-armed regional autocrats. (The unraveling of Syria is just a reminder that what we are watching is the disintegration of the full Cold War set-up in the Middle East, including the less significant Soviet part of it.)</p> <p>Back in 2004, Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0914-01.htm" type="external">warned</a> the Bush administration that its invasion of Iraq had opened &#8220;the gates of hell.&#8221;Of course, Washington paid him no heed. He was neither an autocrat nor a soldier, but the secretary-general of the meaningless Arab League, so what were his credentials to explain reality to them? As it happened, he couldn&#8217;t have been more on the mark and they more in the dark. Unfortunately, it took some time, two minority insurgencies, much chaos, millions <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174892/michael_schwartz_iraq%27s_tidal_wave_of_misery" type="external">driven into exile</a>, a bitter sectarian civil war (now being repeated in Syria), and morgues filled with <a href="http://www.iraqbodycount.org/" type="external">dead bodies</a> before the Arab Spring would be launched. Though that movement was named for a season of renewal, its name was apt in another sense entirely: a whole system that had long held in place a key region of the planet was being sprung loose.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />From Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, vast hordes of people would take to the streets, nonviolently at first, to protest the corruption and depredations of the 1% in their countries and, often, the foreign powers behind them. As autocrats began to fall, a region-wide system in all its complexity, corruption, and brutality began to shudder and come apart at the seams.</p> <p>Today, that system is, politely put, in transition, but possibly simply in a state of collapse. What will replace it remains unknown and probably unknowable. In the meantime, into the emptied space have flowed all sorts of raw emotions, bitterness, repressed memories, hopes, and despair, much of it stored up for years if not decades, including feelings that are extreme indeed, and some that are simply murderous or quite mad. A way of life, a system in the Greater Middle East, is clearly over. Surprise is the order of the day, including <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019217372_approphetfilm.html" type="external">wild demonstrations</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/12/us-libya-usa-attack-idUSBRE88B0EI20120912" type="external">killings</a> over a bizarre &#8220;trailer&#8221;for a non-existent film that barely made it out of Southern California.</p> <p>The truth is, from Iran to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Libya to Yemen, despite almost four years of Obama&#8217;s ministrations and management, war and diplomacy, the Bush legacy is still threatening to blow the region sky-high. It could easily happen any time in the 43 days before November 6th. Which is why, from <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/marine-corps/249687-us-closes-embassy-amid-reports-sudan-rejected-request-to-send-marines" type="external">Sudan</a> to <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2012-09-12/africa/world_africa_libya-us-ambassador-killed-pentagon_1_libya-attack-benghazi-libyan-coast" type="external">Libya</a>, the Obama administration is playing little Dutch boy, trying to plug every hole it can in the Middle Eastern dike and praying that any coming tsunami won&#8217;t hit before the election.</p> <p>A World at the Boiling Point</p> <p>The question of the political season, then, has nothing to do with Mitt. It&#8217;s this: Can the Greater Middle East be managed effectively enough for any potentially embarrassing thing to be swept under some rug until November 7th? And that&#8217;s just one region on a planet aboil.</p> <p>Similar questions could be asked of Israeli policy on Iran where Prime Minister Netanyahu has been, quite literally, on the warpath and in the Obama administration&#8217;s face. He has been pushing for a green light for Israeli strikes on Iran&#8217;s nuclear facilities or guaranteed <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/16/israel-demands-us-red-line-iran-nuclear" type="external">red lines</a> that would lead to such strikes. To an outside observer, it might almost seem that &#8220;Bibi&#8221;is <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443720204578000623041016286.html" type="external">on TV</a> in the US often enough these days to be running for office. From <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/12/obama-makes-late-night-call-to-netanyahu-after-snub-over-proposed-iran-meeting/" type="external">late night</a> presidential phone calls to a stream of messages to Tel Aviv, some offering promises, others <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/09/after-dempsey-warning-israel-may-curb-war-threat/" type="external">warnings</a>, the Obama administration has been putting enormous energy into ensuring that no Israeli strike on Iran will take place before election day (and on this they are likely to succeed). But keep in mind that, to placate Israel, the US has <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175592/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_washington_invested_in_war/" type="external">built up</a> its <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/bloomberg/article/U-S-Leads-Biggest-Persian-Gulf-Mine-Exercise-in-3875111.php" type="external">forces</a> in the Persian Gulf region to such an extent that any misstep anywhere could result in a blow-up that neither Washington nor Tehran wants.</p> <p>When it comes to the disintegrating American position in Afghanistan, almost 11 years after victory was declared and the Bush administration decided to occupy the country rather than go home, the news is grim. The whole mission on which the withdrawal of US combat troops is ostensibly based&#8212;to train the Afghans to stand up and fight for their country&#8212;has essentially been <a href="http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/09/17/US-Afghan-operations-suspended/UPI-84431347880532/" type="external">put on hold</a>. That&#8217;s hardly surprising, since Washington&#8217;s Afghan allies are now regularly standing up and, with the weapons and training US mentors have given them, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175587/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_losing_it_in_washington/" type="external">blowing those mentors away</a>.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the actual enemy, the Taliban, supposedly surged into near nonexistence in its southern homeland, has just launched the <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/us-suffered-its-worst-airpower-loss-vietnam-last-week-and-no-one-really-noticed/57139/" type="external">most devastating attack</a> on a military base of the war, resulting in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/world/asia/green-on-blue-attacks-in-afghanistan-continue.html" type="external">at least $200 million</a> in allied loses. (It&#8217;s their first attack that might even faintly be compared to those the Vietnamese <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_attack_on_Pleiku_airbase" type="external">launched</a> against American bases in the 1960s.) The question once again is: Can Washington hang on in Afghanistan until November 7th, even if it has to put every Afghan training mission and joint operation on hold and confine American troops to their bases? The great advantage the Obama administration holds in this regard is that the American public has generally been paying next to no attention to the Afghan War. This, nonetheless, is a situation in which an American mission has a possibility of imploding (and <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2012/09/19/mccain-us-should-consider-leaving-afghanistan/" type="external">unexpected voices</a> are finally being raised on the issue of early withdrawal). And we haven&#8217;t even mentioned Afghanistan&#8217;s unsettled and unsettling nuclear neighbor Pakistan.</p> <p>Keep in mind that the increasingly disturbed regional system we&#8217;re discussing just happens to be located in the energy heartlands of the planet and, in case you hadn&#8217;t noticed, prices at the pump have been <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/09/17/rising-gas-prices-may-fall-come-november-benefiting-obama" type="external">rising</a> lately. The Saudis are, however, now <a href="http://uk.news.yahoo.com/petrol-prices-saudi-action-cut-costs-104443576--finance.html" type="external">promising</a> to put extra oil into the global system, which just might providentially help the Obama administration by lowering gas prices before November.</p> <p>Lest you think that Obama&#8217;s October surprise fears lie mainly in the Middle East, however, remember that a world system is shuddering, too. There&#8217;s the tottering Eurozone, in recession and threatening to shatter with unknown global financial consequences; and there&#8217;s the Chinese economy, that motor for the planet this last decade, which seems to be <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/5-reasons-china-might-already-be-in-a-recession/257636/" type="external">slipping into recession</a> (just as the powerhouse <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/global_economic_crisis_china_india_brazil_are_slowing_down_plunging_world_into_possible_recession_.html" type="external">Indian and Brazilian</a> economies do the same), amid growing signs of unrest and ugly <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/anti-japanese-protests-in-china-over-disputed-islands-spread/article4547683/?cmpid=rss1" type="external">nationalist upheavals</a>. And don&#8217;t even bother to bring up climate change, the state of the planet, or the fact that extreme droughts in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-usa-drought-idUSBRE88J0UU20120920" type="external">the US</a> and <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/28/food-asia-grains-idINL3E8JR1B720120828" type="external">elsewhere</a> this year are driving food prices <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/17/us-grains-g20-usa-idINBRE88G1FS20120917" type="external">up worldwide</a> in a way that guarantees <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175579/michael-Klare_the_hunger_wars_in_our_future" type="external">future popular unrest</a> on a large scale. Any of the above could burst into prominence in the next 43 days, surprising the world and putting President Obama on the hot seat. And keep in mind that we&#8217;re only talking about&#8212;to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns" type="external">paraphrase</a> former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld&#8212;the known knowns, and known unknowns. No one is even thinking about the unknown unknowns.</p> <p>The liberal hit on Obama has been that the man won&#8217;t fight for what he believes in. The next 43 days will put the lie to that. He&#8217;s ready to fight fiercely for his job by doing his damnedest to tamp down any possible embarrassments, any potential October surprises&#8212;and he&#8217;s enlisted the US government lock, stock, and State Department in that campaign. So if you want a little horse-race entertainment for the next six weeks, skip the Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia polls, don&#8217;t worry about the results of the coming debates, or the court tests on restrictive new voting laws. After all, there&#8217;s going to be no better show in town than the acrobatic contortions of the Obama crew as they work to keep global disaster off the menu until November 7th.</p> <p>It should be a lesson in what a declining superpower can (or can&#8217;t) still do: a shining tale of great power management and luck or a sobering parable of what is no longer within the grasp of such a power on this planet of ours.</p> <p>In the meantime, it&#8217;s Obama against the world and the horse-race question is: Will he make it to November 7th and a second term? Think of that as Obama&#8217;s problem.</p> <p>But there&#8217;s another far less entertaining problem few are thinking about right now. Consider it our problem. The Obama people are understandably focused on the election. Being of a managerial frame of mind, their thoughts don&#8217;t tend to run to the long-term anyhow. I doubt they have, at this point, put a second&#8217;s consideration into what&#8217;s likely to happen, if they manage to keep everything under wraps, 44 days from now&#8212;and beyond. It&#8217;s not as if war with Iran, disaster in Afghanistan, chaos in the Middle East, a staggering Eurozone, a stumbling Chinese economy (in the midst of seaborne saber rattling), rising oil and food prices, climate change, and so much else won&#8217;t be as threatening then. None of these are problems, however managed, that are going away anytime soon or are likely in the long run to prove particularly manageable from Washington.</p> <p>The question for the rest of us is: What the hell happens next? It&#8217;s one you better start thinking about because the Obama people, much as they want to rule the roost for four more years, don&#8217;t have a clue.</p> <p>Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the <a href="http://www.americanempireproject.com/" type="external">American Empire Project</a> and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608461548/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The United States of Fear</a> as well as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The End of Victory Culture</a>, runs the Nation Institute&#8217;s <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch.com</a>. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086EF89K/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;tag=tomdispatch-20&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=390957&amp;amp;creativeASIN=B0086EF89K" type="external">Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050</a>. To listen to Timothy MacBain&#8217;s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Engelhardt discusses an &#8220;October surprise&#8221;world and the presidential election, click <a href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2012/09/obama-against-world.html" type="external">here</a> or download it to your iPod <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tomcast-from-tomdispatch-com/id357095817" type="external">here</a>. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&amp;amp;id=1e41682ade" type="external">here</a>.</p>

Obama Against the World

https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/tom-engelhardt-obama-romney-election/

2012-09-24

4left

amplta hrefhttpwwwflickrcomphotoswhitehouse7743239462inphotostreamampgtThe White HouseampltaampgtFlickr This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website Since this is my version of an election piece I plan to get the usual stuff out of the way fast So yes the smartest political oddsgivers around believe President Obama has a distinct edge over Mitt Romney coming out of the conventions the Senate is trending Democratic and who knows about the House In fact it almost seems as if the Republicans put forward the only man in America incapable of defeating an economically wounded and deeply vulnerable president other than of course the roster of candidates he ran against for the nomination In every way that they can control the Obama people have simply been smarter Take those conventions in each of them the presidential candidate was introduced by a wellknown figure who went on stage and adlibbed One was an 82yearold guy talking to an empty chair and I still thought he was the best thing the Republicans had to offer including his shoutout about withdrawing all our troops from Afghanistan and the other was8230 well Bill Clinton It wasn8217t even a contest As for the upcoming debates if you think Romney can outduel Obama without wandering in among the thorns I have a Nigerian prince I8217d like to introduce you to In other words it should really all be over except for the usual shouting and the gazillions of dollars of attack ads that will turn swingstate TV screens into a mindnumbing blur of lies Even there however some Super PAC and darkmoney types may evidently be starting to consider shifting funds from beating up on Obama to beating up on Democratic senatorial candidates It8217s a sign that the moneybags of the Republican right fear the Romney campaign is a rerun of McCain World and the candidate is a Bain Capital version of John Kerry windsurfing After all Romney seems almost incapable of opening his mouth without letting out a howler his staff is in a state of civil war and Republican candidates elsewhere are leaping from the ditched bandwagon as are even conservative pundits By now Obama and his savvy campaign staff should really be home free having run political circles around their Republican opponent as he was running circles around himself There8217s only one problem the world These days it8217s threatening to be a bizarrely uncooperative place for a president who wants to rest on his Osamakilling foreignpolicy laurels An Administration of Managers Face the Tsunami So send Mitt to the Cayman Islands stick Paul Ryan in a Swiss bank account and focus your attention instead on Obama versus the world For the next 43 days that8217s the real contest It could prove to be the greatest show on Earth filled as it is with a stellar cast of Islamist extremists Taliban militants Afghan allies intent on blowing away their mentors endangered American diplomats an Israeli prime minister on the redline express sober central European bankers and a perturbed Chinese leadership among so many others In such a potentially tumultuous situation the president and his people are committed to a perilous highwire act without a net It involves bringing to bear all the power and savvy left to the last superpower on Earth to prevent some part of the world from spinning embarrassingly out of control lest the president8217s opponent be handed a delectable 8220 October surprise8221 Keep in mind that despite the president8217s reputation as a visionary speaker in global terms his has distinctly been an administration of managers The visionaries came earlier They were the firstterm Bushites including George W Dick and Donald each in his own way globally bonkers and all of them and their associates almost blissfully wrong about the nature of power in our world They mistook the destructive power of the US military for global power itself As a consequence they blithely steered the ship of state directly into a field of giant icebergs Think of that wrecking crew in retrospect as the three stooges of geopolitical dreaming The invasion and occupation of Iraq in particular8212as well as the hubris that went with the very idea of a 8220global war on terror82218212were acts of takeyourbreathaway folly that help explain why the Bush administration was MIA at the recent Republican convention as was of course the Iraq War In the process they drove a stake directly through the energy heartlands of the planet leaving autocratic allies there gasping for breath and wondering what was next Since 2009 the managers of the Obama administration have been doing what managers do best fiddling with the order of the deck chairs on our particular Titanic This might be thought of as managing the Bush legacy The problem was that in much of the world an older order linked to the Cold War scheme of things was finally coming unglued A combination of the Bush invasions of the Eurasian mainland and the way the US financial sector stormed the planet with a vast ponzi scheme of bogus financial derivatives did much to promote the process especially in what neoconservatives liked to call 8220 the arc of instability8220before they offered a striking demonstration of just what instability was really all about In a sense what they dubbed their 8220democracy agenda82218212though it had little enough to do with democracy8212played a distinct role in unifying much of the Arab world in opposition to its Washingtonbacked onepercenters In this way the Arab Spring was launched against Ben Aliism and Mubarakism against that is an American system of wellarmed regional autocrats The unraveling of Syria is just a reminder that what we are watching is the disintegration of the full Cold War setup in the Middle East including the less significant Soviet part of it Back in 2004 Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa warned the Bush administration that its invasion of Iraq had opened 8220the gates of hell8221Of course Washington paid him no heed He was neither an autocrat nor a soldier but the secretarygeneral of the meaningless Arab League so what were his credentials to explain reality to them As it happened he couldn8217t have been more on the mark and they more in the dark Unfortunately it took some time two minority insurgencies much chaos millions driven into exile a bitter sectarian civil war now being repeated in Syria and morgues filled with dead bodies before the Arab Spring would be launched Though that movement was named for a season of renewal its name was apt in another sense entirely a whole system that had long held in place a key region of the planet was being sprung loose From Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain Saudi Arabia and Syria vast hordes of people would take to the streets nonviolently at first to protest the corruption and depredations of the 1 in their countries and often the foreign powers behind them As autocrats began to fall a regionwide system in all its complexity corruption and brutality began to shudder and come apart at the seams Today that system is politely put in transition but possibly simply in a state of collapse What will replace it remains unknown and probably unknowable In the meantime into the emptied space have flowed all sorts of raw emotions bitterness repressed memories hopes and despair much of it stored up for years if not decades including feelings that are extreme indeed and some that are simply murderous or quite mad A way of life a system in the Greater Middle East is clearly over Surprise is the order of the day including wild demonstrations and killings over a bizarre 8220trailer8221for a nonexistent film that barely made it out of Southern California The truth is from Iran to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Libya to Yemen despite almost four years of Obama8217s ministrations and management war and diplomacy the Bush legacy is still threatening to blow the region skyhigh It could easily happen any time in the 43 days before November 6th Which is why from Sudan to Libya the Obama administration is playing little Dutch boy trying to plug every hole it can in the Middle Eastern dike and praying that any coming tsunami won8217t hit before the election A World at the Boiling Point The question of the political season then has nothing to do with Mitt It8217s this Can the Greater Middle East be managed effectively enough for any potentially embarrassing thing to be swept under some rug until November 7th And that8217s just one region on a planet aboil Similar questions could be asked of Israeli policy on Iran where Prime Minister Netanyahu has been quite literally on the warpath and in the Obama administration8217s face He has been pushing for a green light for Israeli strikes on Iran8217s nuclear facilities or guaranteed red lines that would lead to such strikes To an outside observer it might almost seem that 8220Bibi8221is on TV in the US often enough these days to be running for office From late night presidential phone calls to a stream of messages to Tel Aviv some offering promises others warnings the Obama administration has been putting enormous energy into ensuring that no Israeli strike on Iran will take place before election day and on this they are likely to succeed But keep in mind that to placate Israel the US has built up its forces in the Persian Gulf region to such an extent that any misstep anywhere could result in a blowup that neither Washington nor Tehran wants When it comes to the disintegrating American position in Afghanistan almost 11 years after victory was declared and the Bush administration decided to occupy the country rather than go home the news is grim The whole mission on which the withdrawal of US combat troops is ostensibly based8212to train the Afghans to stand up and fight for their country8212has essentially been put on hold That8217s hardly surprising since Washington8217s Afghan allies are now regularly standing up and with the weapons and training US mentors have given them blowing those mentors away Meanwhile the actual enemy the Taliban supposedly surged into near nonexistence in its southern homeland has just launched the most devastating attack on a military base of the war resulting in at least 200 million in allied loses It8217s their first attack that might even faintly be compared to those the Vietnamese launched against American bases in the 1960s The question once again is Can Washington hang on in Afghanistan until November 7th even if it has to put every Afghan training mission and joint operation on hold and confine American troops to their bases The great advantage the Obama administration holds in this regard is that the American public has generally been paying next to no attention to the Afghan War This nonetheless is a situation in which an American mission has a possibility of imploding and unexpected voices are finally being raised on the issue of early withdrawal And we haven8217t even mentioned Afghanistan8217s unsettled and unsettling nuclear neighbor Pakistan Keep in mind that the increasingly disturbed regional system we8217re discussing just happens to be located in the energy heartlands of the planet and in case you hadn8217t noticed prices at the pump have been rising lately The Saudis are however now promising to put extra oil into the global system which just might providentially help the Obama administration by lowering gas prices before November Lest you think that Obama8217s October surprise fears lie mainly in the Middle East however remember that a world system is shuddering too There8217s the tottering Eurozone in recession and threatening to shatter with unknown global financial consequences and there8217s the Chinese economy that motor for the planet this last decade which seems to be slipping into recession just as the powerhouse Indian and Brazilian economies do the same amid growing signs of unrest and ugly nationalist upheavals And don8217t even bother to bring up climate change the state of the planet or the fact that extreme droughts in the US and elsewhere this year are driving food prices up worldwide in a way that guarantees future popular unrest on a large scale Any of the above could burst into prominence in the next 43 days surprising the world and putting President Obama on the hot seat And keep in mind that we8217re only talking about8212to paraphrase former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld8212the known knowns and known unknowns No one is even thinking about the unknown unknowns The liberal hit on Obama has been that the man won8217t fight for what he believes in The next 43 days will put the lie to that He8217s ready to fight fiercely for his job by doing his damnedest to tamp down any possible embarrassments any potential October surprises8212and he8217s enlisted the US government lock stock and State Department in that campaign So if you want a little horserace entertainment for the next six weeks skip the Ohio Colorado and Virginia polls don8217t worry about the results of the coming debates or the court tests on restrictive new voting laws After all there8217s going to be no better show in town than the acrobatic contortions of the Obama crew as they work to keep global disaster off the menu until November 7th It should be a lesson in what a declining superpower can or can8217t still do a shining tale of great power management and luck or a sobering parable of what is no longer within the grasp of such a power on this planet of ours In the meantime it8217s Obama against the world and the horserace question is Will he make it to November 7th and a second term Think of that as Obama8217s problem But there8217s another far less entertaining problem few are thinking about right now Consider it our problem The Obama people are understandably focused on the election Being of a managerial frame of mind their thoughts don8217t tend to run to the longterm anyhow I doubt they have at this point put a second8217s consideration into what8217s likely to happen if they manage to keep everything under wraps 44 days from now8212and beyond It8217s not as if war with Iran disaster in Afghanistan chaos in the Middle East a staggering Eurozone a stumbling Chinese economy in the midst of seaborne saber rattling rising oil and food prices climate change and so much else won8217t be as threatening then None of these are problems however managed that are going away anytime soon or are likely in the long run to prove particularly manageable from Washington The question for the rest of us is What the hell happens next It8217s one you better start thinking about because the Obama people much as they want to rule the roost for four more years don8217t have a clue Tom Engelhardt cofounder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Victory Culture runs the Nation Institute8217s TomDispatchcom His latest book coauthored with Nick Turse is Terminator Planet The First History of Drone Warfare 20012050 To listen to Timothy MacBain8217s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Engelhardt discusses an 8220October surprise8221world and the presidential election click here or download it to your iPod here To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom here

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<p>You want to see &#8220;blowback&#8221; in action? That&#8217;s easy enough. All you need is a vague sense of how Google Search works. Then type into it phrases like &#8220; <a href="http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/the-10-hottest-global-years-on-record" type="external">warmest years</a>,&#8221; &#8220; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/12/world/sea-level-rise-accelerating/index.html" type="external">rising sea levels</a>,&#8221; &#8220; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/13/melting-ice-sheets-are-hastening-sea-level-rise-satellite-data-confirms" type="external">melting ice</a>,&#8221; &#8220; <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/08/01/wildfire-season-is-scorching-the-west_partner/" type="external">lengthening wildfire season</a>,&#8221; or &#8220; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/02/climate-change-will-create-worlds-biggest-refugee-crisis" type="external">future climate refugees</a>,&#8221; and you&#8217;ll find yourself immersed in the grimmest of blowback universes.&amp;#160; It&#8217;s a world which should give that CIA term of tradecraft a meaning even the Agency never imagined for it.</p> <p>But before I put you on this blowback planet of ours and introduce you to the blowback president presiding over it, I want to take a moment to remember Mr. Blowback himself.</p> <p>And what a guy he was!&amp;#160; Here&#8217;s how he&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175864/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_portrait_of_a_sagging_empire__/" type="external">described himself</a>&amp;#160;in the last piece he wrote for&amp;#160;TomDispatch&amp;#160;just months before his death in November 2010: &#8220;My own role these past 20 years has been that of Cassandra, whom the gods gave the gift of foreseeing the future, but also cursed because no one believed her.&#8221;</p> <p>He wasn&#8217;t being immodest.&amp;#160; He had, in many ways, seen the shape of things to come for what he never hesitated to call &#8220;the American empire,&#8221; including &#8212; in that 2010 piece &#8212; its decline.&amp;#160; As he wrote then, &#8220;Thirty-five years from now, America&#8217;s official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now. We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run, as we come face to face with, if not necessarily to terms with, our aging infrastructure, declining international clout, and sagging economy.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>You know how &#8212; if you&#8217;re of a certain age at least &#8212; there are those moments when you go back to the books that truly mattered to you, the ones that somehow prepared you, as best anyone can be prepared, for the years to come.&amp;#160; One I return to regularly is his.&amp;#160; I&#8217;m talking about&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805075593/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire</a>.</p> <p>The man who wrote that was Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant and an eminent scholar of modern Asian history, who would in that work characterize himself in his former life as a &#8220;spear-carrier for empire.&#8221;</p> <p>Blowback&amp;#160;was&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175864/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_portrait_of_a_sagging_empire__/" type="external">published</a>&amp;#160;in 2000 to next to no notice.&amp;#160; After the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, it became a bestseller.&amp;#160; There was so much to learn from it, starting with the very definition of blowback, a word he brought out of the secret world for the rest of us to consider. &#8220;The term &#8216;blowback,&#8217; which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people.&amp;#160; What the daily press reports as the malign acts of &#8216;terrorists&#8217; or &#8216;drug lords&#8217; or &#8216;rogue states&#8217; or &#8216;illegal arms merchants&#8217; often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.&#8221;</p> <p>And if &#8220;unintended consequences&#8221; isn&#8217;t a supremely appropriate title under which to write the misbegotten history of the years that followed 9/11 in the era of the self-proclaimed &#8220;sole superpower&#8221; or, as American politicians love to say, &#8220;the indispensable nation,&#8221; what is?&amp;#160; Of course, in the best blowback fashion, al-Qaeda&#8217;s attacks of that day hit this country like literal bolts from the blue &#8212; even the top officials of George W. Bush&#8217;s administration were stunned as they&amp;#160; <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/" type="external">scurried for cover</a>.&amp;#160; Of all Americans, they at least should have been better prepared, given the warning offered to the president only weeks earlier by that blowback center of operations, the CIA. &amp;#160;(&#8220;Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.&#8221; was the title of the&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html" type="external">presidential daily brief</a>&amp;#160;of August 6, 2001.)</p> <p>Osama bin Laden would prove to be the&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176345/tomgram:_engelhardt,_doing_bin_laden%27s_bidding/" type="external">poster boy</a>&amp;#160;of blowback.&amp;#160; His organization, al-Qaeda, would be nurtured into existence by an&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/" type="external">all-American urge</a>&amp;#160;to give the Soviet Union its own Vietnam, what its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, would later call its &#8220; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175261/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_washington_drunk_on_war/" type="external">bleeding wound</a>,&#8221; and to do so in, of all places, Afghanistan.&amp;#160; In October 2001, 12 years after the Red Army limped out of that country in defeat and a decade after the Soviet Union imploded, in part thanks to that very wound, Washington would launch a &#8220;Global War on Terror.&#8221; It would be the Bush administration&#8217;s response to al-Qaeda&#8217;s supposedly inexplicable attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.&amp;#160; The Taliban&#8217;s Afghanistan would be its first target and so would begin America&#8217;s second Afghan War, a conflict now almost 17 years old with&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/petraeus-afghan-war-generational-struggle-will-not-end-soon" type="external">no end in sight</a>.&amp;#160; Yet in our American world, remarkably few connections are ever made between the present war and that blowback moment against the Soviets nearly 40 years ago.&amp;#160; (Were he alive, Chalmers Johnson, who&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/" type="external">never ceased</a>&amp;#160;to make such connections, would have been grimly amused.)</p> <p>Giving Imperial Overstretch New Meaning</p> <p>Talk about the endless ramifications of blowback.&amp;#160; It was bin Laden&#8217;s&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175388/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_osama_dead_and_alive/" type="external">genius</a>&amp;#160;&#8212; for a mere&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Exec.htm" type="external">$400,000 to $500,000</a>&amp;#160;&#8212; to goad Washington into spending&amp;#160; <a href="http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/news/Costs%20of%20U.S.%20Post-9_11%20NC%20Crawford%20FINAL%20.pdf" type="external">trillions of dollars</a>&amp;#160;across significant parts of the Islamic world fighting conflict after conflict, all of which only seemed to create yet more&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176310/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_bombing_the_rubble/" type="external">rubble</a>, terror outfits, and&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html" type="external">refugees</a>&amp;#160;(who, in turn, have helped fuel yet more&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176359/tomgram%3A_john_feffer%2C_drowning_liberalism_in_the_bathtub/" type="external">right-wing populist</a>&amp;#160;movements from Europe to Donald Trump&#8217;s America). Tell me it&#8217;s not a blowback world!</p> <p>As it happened, bin Laden&#8217;s 2001 attacks brought official Washington not to its knees but to its deepest post-Cold War conviction: that the world was its oyster; that, for the first time in history, a single great power potentially had it all, a shot at everything, starting with Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, then much of the rest of the Middle East, and sooner or later the whole planet.&amp;#160; In a post-Soviet world in which America&#8217;s leaders felt the deepest sense of triumphalism, the 9/11 attacks seemed like the ultimate insult.&amp;#160; Who would dream of doing such a thing to the greatest power of all of time?</p> <p>In an act of&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175388/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_osama_dead_and_alive/" type="external">pure wizardry</a>, bin Laden drew&amp;#160;out of Bush, Cheney, and company their deepest geopolitical fantasies about the ability of that all-powerful country and, in particular, &#8220;the&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175337" type="external">greatest force for freedom</a>&amp;#160;in the history of the world,&#8221; the U.S. military, to dominate any situation on Earth.&amp;#160; The early months of 2003, when they were preparing to invade Saddam Hussein&#8217;s Iraq, may have been their ultimate hubristic moment, in which imagining anything other than success of a historic sort, not just in that country but far beyond it, was inconceivable.</p> <p>Until then, never &#8212; except in Hollywood movies when the bad guy rubbed his hands with glee and cackled that the world was his &#8212; had any power truly dreamed of taking it all, of ruling, or at least directing, the planet itself.&amp;#160; Even for a globalizing great power without rivals and wealthy almost beyond compare that would prove the ultimate in conceptual overstretch. Looking back, it&#8217;s easy enough to see that almost 17 years of ceaseless war and conflict across the Greater Middle East, Africa, and even parts of Asia, of massive destruction, of multiplying failed states, of burgeoning terror outfits, and of blowback of every sort, have given the old phrase, &#8220;biting off more than you can chew,&#8221; new geopolitical meaning.</p> <p>Washington created what was, in effect, a never-ending blowback machine.&amp;#160; In those years, while the distant wars went on and on (and terrors of every imaginable sort grew in this country), the United States was transformed in a remarkable, if not yet fully graspable, fashion.&amp;#160; The national security state now reigns supreme in Washington; generals (or retired generals) are perched ( <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-mcmaster-kelly/two-top-white-house-advisers-may-leave-over-tensions-with-trump-sources-idUSKCN1G7001" type="external">however precariously</a>) atop key parts of the civilian government; a right-wing populist, who rose to power in part on the fear of immigrants, refugees, and Islamic extremists, has his giant golden letters emblazoned on the White House (and a&amp;#160; <a href="http://time.com/donald-trumps-suite-of-power/" type="external">hotel&amp;#160;</a>just down Pennsylvania Avenue that no diplomat or lobbyist with any sense would dare not patronize); the&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175881/tomgram%3A_matthew_harwood,_one_nation_under_swat/" type="external">police</a>&amp;#160;have been&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176337/tomgram%3A_danny_sjursen%2C_embracing_our_inner_empire/" type="external">militarized</a>; borders have been further fortified; spy drones have been&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/03/09/pentagon-admits-has-deployed-military-spy-drones-over-us/81474702/" type="external">dispatched</a>&amp;#160;to American skies; and the surveillance of the citizenry and its communications have been made the&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/privacy-and-surveillance/if-government-spied-you-how-would-you-know" type="external">order of the day</a>.&amp;#160; Meanwhile, the latest disturbed teen, armed with a military-style&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/14/ar-15-mass-shootings/339519002/" type="external">AR-15 semi-automatic</a>, has just perpetrated another in a growing list of slaughters in American schools. In response, the&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/politics/donald-trump-gun-reforms-school-shooting/index.html" type="external">president</a>, Republican politicians, and the National Rifle Association have all&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/02/23/donald-trumps-awful-plan-arm-teachers-straight-nra-playbook-james-alan-fox-column/365058002/" type="external">plugged</a>&amp;#160;the arming of teachers and administrators, as well as the &#8220; <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/375086-trump-prefers-hardening-schools-over-holding-active-shooter-drills" type="external">hardening</a>&#8221; of schools ( <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/inside-the-safest-school-in-america-1166029891710" type="external">including</a>&amp;#160;the use of surveillance systems and other militarized methods of &#8220;defense&#8221;), and so have given phrases like &#8220;citadel of learning&#8221; or &#8220;bastion of education&#8221; new meaning. In these same years, various unnamed terrors and the weaponization of the most psychically distraught parts of the citizenry under the rubric of the Second Amendment and the sponsorship of the NRA, the Republican Party, and most recently Donald Trump have transformed this country into something like an armed camp.</p> <p>It seems, in other words, that in setting out to take the world, in some surprising fashion this country both terrorized and conquered itself.&amp;#160; For that, Osama bin Laden should certainly be congratulated but so should George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and all their neoconservative pals, not to speak of David Petraeus, James Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, and a host of other generals of America&#8217;s losing wars.</p> <p>Think of it this way: at what looked like the height of American power, Washington managed to give imperial&amp;#160;overstretch a historically new meaning.&amp;#160; Even on a planet without other great power rivals, a&amp;#160;Pax Americana&amp;#160;in the Greater Middle East, no less the full-scale garrisoning and policing of significant parts of the rest of the globe proved far too much for the sole superpower, no matter how technologically advanced its military or powerful and transnational its economy.&amp;#160; As it turned out, that urge to take everything would prove the perfect launching pad for this country&#8217;s decline.</p> <p>Someday (if there is such a day), this record will prove a goldmine for historians of imperial power and blowback.&amp;#160; And yet all of this, even the fate of this country, should be considered relatively minor matters, given the ultimate blowback to come.</p> <p>Humanity Nailed to a Cross of Coal</p> <p>There was, in fact, another kind of blowback underway and the American empire was clearly a player in it, too, even a major one, but hardly the only one.&amp;#160; Every place using fossil fuels was involved.&amp;#160; This form of blowback threatens not just the decline of a single great imperial power but of humanity itself, of the very environment that nurtured generation after generation of us over these thousands of years.&amp;#160; By definition, that makes it the worst form of blowback imaginable.</p> <p>What I have in mind, of course, is climate change or global warming.&amp;#160; In a way, you could think of it as the story of another kind of superpower and how it launched the decline of us all.&amp;#160; On a planetary scale, the giant corporations (and national fuel companies) that make up global Big Energy have long been on the hunt for every imaginable reserve of fossil fuels and for ways to control and exploit them.&amp;#160; The oil, natural gas, and coal such outfits extracted fueled industrial society,&amp;#160; <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/India-zooms-past-Germany-as-fourth-largest-auto-market" type="external">still-spreading</a>&amp;#160;car cultures, and consumerism as we know it.</p> <p>Over most of the years such companies were powering human development, the men who ran them and their employees had no idea that the greenhouse gasses released by the burning of fossil fuels were heating the atmosphere and the planet&#8217;s waters in potentially disastrous ways.&amp;#160; By the late 1970s and&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding" type="external">early 1980s</a>, however, like scientists elsewhere, those employed by ExxonMobil, the world&#8217;s largest oil company, had become aware of the phenomenon (as would those of other energy companies).&amp;#160; That meant the men who ran Exxon and other major firms recognized in advance of most of the rest of us just what kind of blowback the long-term burning of oil, natural gas, and coal was going to deliver: a planet ever less fit for human habitation.</p> <p>They just didn&#8217;t think those of us in the non-scientific community should know about it and so, by the 1990s, they were already doing their damnedest to hide it from us.&amp;#160; However, when scientists not in their employ started to publicize the new reality in a significant way, as the heads of some of the most influential and wealthiest corporations on Earth they began to invest striking sums in the fostering of a universe of think tanks, lobbyists, and politicians devoted to what became known as climate-change denial.&amp;#160; Between 1998 and 2014, for instance, Exxon would&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/exxon-and-the-oil-industry-knew-about-climate-change/exxons-climate-denial-history-a-timeline/" type="external">pump</a>&amp;#160;$30 million into just such think tanks and similar groups, while donating $1.87 million directly to congressional climate-change deniers.</p> <p>It doesn&#8217;t take a lot of thought to realize that, from its inception, this was the functional definition of the&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175703/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_the_biggest_criminal_enterprise_in_history/" type="external">worst crime</a>&amp;#160;in history.&amp;#160; In the name of&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/oil-and-gas-industry-a-decade-of-record-breaking-profits/" type="external">record profits</a>&amp;#160;and the comfortable life (as well as corporate sustainability in an unendingly fossil-fuelized world), their CEOs had no hesitation about potentially dooming the human future to a hell on Earth of rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and ever more extreme weather; they gave, that is, a new, all-encompassing meaning to the term genocide.&amp;#160; They were prepared, if necessary, to take out the human species.</p> <p>But I suspect even they couldn&#8217;t have imagined quite how successful they would be when it came to bringing the sole superpower of the post-9/11 world on board.&amp;#160; In a sense, the two leading forms of blowback of the twenty-first century &#8212; the imperial and fossil-fuelized ones &#8212; came to be focused in a single figure.&amp;#160; After all, it&#8217;s&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176387/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_tom_engelhardt%2C_through_the_gates_of_hell" type="external">hard to imagine</a>&amp;#160;the rise to power of Donald Trump in a world in which the Bush administration had decided not to invade either Afghanistan or Iraq but to treat its &#8220;Global War on Terror&#8221; as a localized set of police actions against one international criminal and his scattered group of followers.</p> <p>As it happened, one form of blowback from the disastrous wars that were meant to create the basis for a&amp;#160;Pax Americana&amp;#160;planet helped to produce the conditions and fears at home that put Donald Trump in the White House.</p> <p>Or put another way, in the face of the evidence&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/scientists-agree-global-warming-happening-humans-primary-cause#.WpLX2IJOlTY" type="external">produced</a>&amp;#160;by essentially every knowledgeable scientist on Earth, on a planet already feeling the early and increasingly extreme results of a warming atmosphere, millions of Americans elected a man who claimed it was all a &#8220; <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun/03/hillary-clinton/yes-donald-trump-did-call-climate-change-chinese-h/" type="external">hoax</a>,&#8221; who was unabashedly dedicated above anything else (except perhaps his &#8220; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-california-campaign-20160602-snap-story.html" type="external">big, fat, beautiful wall</a>&#8221; on the Mexican border) to a&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176222/tomgram%3A_michael_klare,_donald_trump%27s_energy_nostalgia_and_the_path_to_hell/" type="external">fossil-fuelized</a>&amp;#160;American planet, and who insisted that he would run an administration that would&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176384/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_militarizing_america%27s_energy_policy/" type="external">make</a>&amp;#160;this country &#8220; <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/340135-trump-rolls-out-actions-to-boost-nuclear-fossil-fuels" type="external">energy dominant</a>&#8221; again.&amp;#160; They elected, in other words, a representative of the very set of lobbyists, climate deniers, and politicians who had, in essence, been created by Big Energy.&amp;#160; Or put another way, they voted for a man who&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/29/trump-promised-to-bring-back-coal-jobs-that-promise-will-not-be-kept-experts-say/?utm_term=.70cc61027eca" type="external">pledged</a>&amp;#160;to bring back the dying American coal industry and was prepared to&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/24/politics/trump-keystone-xl-dakota-access-pipelines-executive-actions/index.html" type="external">green-light</a>&amp;#160;oil and natural gas pipelines of whatever sort,&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/climate/trump-offshore-drilling.html" type="external">open</a>&amp;#160;the nation&#8217;s coastal waters to drilling, and&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html" type="external">lift restrictions</a>&amp;#160;of every kind on energy companies, while&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/trump-taxes-solar-imports-in-biggest-blow-to-clean-energy-yet" type="external">impeding</a>&amp;#160;the development of alternative sources of energy and other attempts to mitigate climate change.&amp;#160; As the ultimate President Blowback, Donald Trump promptly&amp;#160; <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/trump-cabinet-climate-deniers-2ff87aba57ec/" type="external">filled</a>&amp;#160;every last faintly relevant post in his administration with&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/10/climatedesk-the-whole-country-is-being-run-by-climate-deniers/" type="external">climate-change deniers</a>&amp;#160;and&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/01/13/mapping-epa-nominee-scott-pruitt-many-fossil-fuel-ties" type="external">allies</a>&amp;#160;of Big Energy, while&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/climate/trump-paris-climate-agreement.html" type="external">abandoning</a>&amp;#160;the Paris climate accord.</p> <p>In other words, President Donald Trump has dedicated himself to nailing humanity to a cross of coal.</p> <p>Where&#8217;s Chalmers Johnson now that we really need him?</p>

A Planet Boiling With Unintended Consequences

https://truthdig.com/articles/planet-boiling-unintended-consequences/

2018-03-04

4left

You want to see 8220blowback8221 in action That8217s easy enough All you need is a vague sense of how Google Search works Then type into it phrases like 8220 warmest years8221 8220 rising sea levels8221 8220 melting ice8221 8220 lengthening wildfire season8221 or 8220 future climate refugees8221 and you8217ll find yourself immersed in the grimmest of blowback universesamp160 It8217s a world which should give that CIA term of tradecraft a meaning even the Agency never imagined for it But before I put you on this blowback planet of ours and introduce you to the blowback president presiding over it I want to take a moment to remember Mr Blowback himself And what a guy he wasamp160 Here8217s how heamp160 described himselfamp160in the last piece he wrote foramp160TomDispatchamp160just months before his death in November 2010 8220My own role these past 20 years has been that of Cassandra whom the gods gave the gift of foreseeing the future but also cursed because no one believed her8221 He wasn8217t being immodestamp160 He had in many ways seen the shape of things to come for what he never hesitated to call 8220the American empire8221 including 8212 in that 2010 piece 8212 its declineamp160 As he wrote then 8220Thirtyfive years from now America8217s official century of being top dog 19452045 will have come to an end its time may in fact be running out right now We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run as we come face to face with if not necessarily to terms with our aging infrastructure declining international clout and sagging economy8221 You know how 8212 if you8217re of a certain age at least 8212 there are those moments when you go back to the books that truly mattered to you the ones that somehow prepared you as best anyone can be prepared for the years to comeamp160 One I return to regularly is hisamp160 I8217m talking aboutamp160 Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire The man who wrote that was Chalmers Johnson a former CIA consultant and an eminent scholar of modern Asian history who would in that work characterize himself in his former life as a 8220spearcarrier for empire8221 Blowbackamp160wasamp160 publishedamp160in 2000 to next to no noticeamp160 After the attacks of September 11 2001 however it became a bestselleramp160 There was so much to learn from it starting with the very definition of blowback a word he brought out of the secret world for the rest of us to consider 8220The term 8216blowback8217 which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use8221 he wrote 8220refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American peopleamp160 What the daily press reports as the malign acts of 8216terrorists8217 or 8216drug lords8217 or 8216rogue states8217 or 8216illegal arms merchants8217 often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations8221 And if 8220unintended consequences8221 isn8217t a supremely appropriate title under which to write the misbegotten history of the years that followed 911 in the era of the selfproclaimed 8220sole superpower8221 or as American politicians love to say 8220the indispensable nation8221 what isamp160 Of course in the best blowback fashion alQaeda8217s attacks of that day hit this country like literal bolts from the blue 8212 even the top officials of George W Bush8217s administration were stunned as theyamp160 scurried for coveramp160 Of all Americans they at least should have been better prepared given the warning offered to the president only weeks earlier by that blowback center of operations the CIA amp1608220Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US8221 was the title of theamp160 presidential daily briefamp160of August 6 2001 Osama bin Laden would prove to be theamp160 poster boyamp160of blowbackamp160 His organization alQaeda would be nurtured into existence by anamp160 allAmerican urgeamp160to give the Soviet Union its own Vietnam what its leader Mikhail Gorbachev would later call its 8220 bleeding wound8221 and to do so in of all places Afghanistanamp160 In October 2001 12 years after the Red Army limped out of that country in defeat and a decade after the Soviet Union imploded in part thanks to that very wound Washington would launch a 8220Global War on Terror8221 It would be the Bush administration8217s response to alQaeda8217s supposedly inexplicable attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centeramp160 The Taliban8217s Afghanistan would be its first target and so would begin America8217s second Afghan War a conflict now almost 17 years old withamp160 no end in sightamp160 Yet in our American world remarkably few connections are ever made between the present war and that blowback moment against the Soviets nearly 40 years agoamp160 Were he alive Chalmers Johnson whoamp160 never ceasedamp160to make such connections would have been grimly amused Giving Imperial Overstretch New Meaning Talk about the endless ramifications of blowbackamp160 It was bin Laden8217samp160 geniusamp1608212 for a mereamp160 400000 to 500000amp1608212 to goad Washington into spendingamp160 trillions of dollarsamp160across significant parts of the Islamic world fighting conflict after conflict all of which only seemed to create yet moreamp160 rubble terror outfits andamp160 refugeesamp160who in turn have helped fuel yet moreamp160 rightwing populistamp160movements from Europe to Donald Trump8217s America Tell me it8217s not a blowback world As it happened bin Laden8217s 2001 attacks brought official Washington not to its knees but to its deepest postCold War conviction that the world was its oyster that for the first time in history a single great power potentially had it all a shot at everything starting with Afghanistan followed by Iraq then much of the rest of the Middle East and sooner or later the whole planetamp160 In a postSoviet world in which America8217s leaders felt the deepest sense of triumphalism the 911 attacks seemed like the ultimate insultamp160 Who would dream of doing such a thing to the greatest power of all of time In an act ofamp160 pure wizardry bin Laden drewamp160out of Bush Cheney and company their deepest geopolitical fantasies about the ability of that allpowerful country and in particular 8220theamp160 greatest force for freedomamp160in the history of the world8221 the US military to dominate any situation on Earthamp160 The early months of 2003 when they were preparing to invade Saddam Hussein8217s Iraq may have been their ultimate hubristic moment in which imagining anything other than success of a historic sort not just in that country but far beyond it was inconceivable Until then never 8212 except in Hollywood movies when the bad guy rubbed his hands with glee and cackled that the world was his 8212 had any power truly dreamed of taking it all of ruling or at least directing the planet itselfamp160 Even for a globalizing great power without rivals and wealthy almost beyond compare that would prove the ultimate in conceptual overstretch Looking back it8217s easy enough to see that almost 17 years of ceaseless war and conflict across the Greater Middle East Africa and even parts of Asia of massive destruction of multiplying failed states of burgeoning terror outfits and of blowback of every sort have given the old phrase 8220biting off more than you can chew8221 new geopolitical meaning Washington created what was in effect a neverending blowback machineamp160 In those years while the distant wars went on and on and terrors of every imaginable sort grew in this country the United States was transformed in a remarkable if not yet fully graspable fashionamp160 The national security state now reigns supreme in Washington generals or retired generals are perched however precariously atop key parts of the civilian government a rightwing populist who rose to power in part on the fear of immigrants refugees and Islamic extremists has his giant golden letters emblazoned on the White House and aamp160 hotelamp160just down Pennsylvania Avenue that no diplomat or lobbyist with any sense would dare not patronize theamp160 policeamp160have beenamp160 militarized borders have been further fortified spy drones have beenamp160 dispatchedamp160to American skies and the surveillance of the citizenry and its communications have been made theamp160 order of the dayamp160 Meanwhile the latest disturbed teen armed with a militarystyleamp160 AR15 semiautomatic has just perpetrated another in a growing list of slaughters in American schools In response theamp160 president Republican politicians and the National Rifle Association have allamp160 pluggedamp160the arming of teachers and administrators as well as the 8220 hardening8221 of schools includingamp160the use of surveillance systems and other militarized methods of 8220defense8221 and so have given phrases like 8220citadel of learning8221 or 8220bastion of education8221 new meaning In these same years various unnamed terrors and the weaponization of the most psychically distraught parts of the citizenry under the rubric of the Second Amendment and the sponsorship of the NRA the Republican Party and most recently Donald Trump have transformed this country into something like an armed camp It seems in other words that in setting out to take the world in some surprising fashion this country both terrorized and conquered itselfamp160 For that Osama bin Laden should certainly be congratulated but so should George W Bush Dick Cheney Donald Rumsfeld and all their neoconservative pals not to speak of David Petraeus James Mattis John Kelly HR McMaster and a host of other generals of America8217s losing wars Think of it this way at what looked like the height of American power Washington managed to give imperialamp160overstretch a historically new meaningamp160 Even on a planet without other great power rivals aamp160Pax Americanaamp160in the Greater Middle East no less the fullscale garrisoning and policing of significant parts of the rest of the globe proved far too much for the sole superpower no matter how technologically advanced its military or powerful and transnational its economyamp160 As it turned out that urge to take everything would prove the perfect launching pad for this country8217s decline Someday if there is such a day this record will prove a goldmine for historians of imperial power and blowbackamp160 And yet all of this even the fate of this country should be considered relatively minor matters given the ultimate blowback to come Humanity Nailed to a Cross of Coal There was in fact another kind of blowback underway and the American empire was clearly a player in it too even a major one but hardly the only oneamp160 Every place using fossil fuels was involvedamp160 This form of blowback threatens not just the decline of a single great imperial power but of humanity itself of the very environment that nurtured generation after generation of us over these thousands of yearsamp160 By definition that makes it the worst form of blowback imaginable What I have in mind of course is climate change or global warmingamp160 In a way you could think of it as the story of another kind of superpower and how it launched the decline of us allamp160 On a planetary scale the giant corporations and national fuel companies that make up global Big Energy have long been on the hunt for every imaginable reserve of fossil fuels and for ways to control and exploit themamp160 The oil natural gas and coal such outfits extracted fueled industrial societyamp160 stillspreadingamp160car cultures and consumerism as we know it Over most of the years such companies were powering human development the men who ran them and their employees had no idea that the greenhouse gasses released by the burning of fossil fuels were heating the atmosphere and the planet8217s waters in potentially disastrous waysamp160 By the late 1970s andamp160 early 1980s however like scientists elsewhere those employed by ExxonMobil the world8217s largest oil company had become aware of the phenomenon as would those of other energy companiesamp160 That meant the men who ran Exxon and other major firms recognized in advance of most of the rest of us just what kind of blowback the longterm burning of oil natural gas and coal was going to deliver a planet ever less fit for human habitation They just didn8217t think those of us in the nonscientific community should know about it and so by the 1990s they were already doing their damnedest to hide it from usamp160 However when scientists not in their employ started to publicize the new reality in a significant way as the heads of some of the most influential and wealthiest corporations on Earth they began to invest striking sums in the fostering of a universe of think tanks lobbyists and politicians devoted to what became known as climatechange denialamp160 Between 1998 and 2014 for instance Exxon wouldamp160 pumpamp16030 million into just such think tanks and similar groups while donating 187 million directly to congressional climatechange deniers It doesn8217t take a lot of thought to realize that from its inception this was the functional definition of theamp160 worst crimeamp160in historyamp160 In the name ofamp160 record profitsamp160and the comfortable life as well as corporate sustainability in an unendingly fossilfuelized world their CEOs had no hesitation about potentially dooming the human future to a hell on Earth of rising temperatures rising sea levels and ever more extreme weather they gave that is a new allencompassing meaning to the term genocideamp160 They were prepared if necessary to take out the human species But I suspect even they couldn8217t have imagined quite how successful they would be when it came to bringing the sole superpower of the post911 world on boardamp160 In a sense the two leading forms of blowback of the twentyfirst century 8212 the imperial and fossilfuelized ones 8212 came to be focused in a single figureamp160 After all it8217samp160 hard to imagineamp160the rise to power of Donald Trump in a world in which the Bush administration had decided not to invade either Afghanistan or Iraq but to treat its 8220Global War on Terror8221 as a localized set of police actions against one international criminal and his scattered group of followers As it happened one form of blowback from the disastrous wars that were meant to create the basis for aamp160Pax Americanaamp160planet helped to produce the conditions and fears at home that put Donald Trump in the White House Or put another way in the face of the evidenceamp160 producedamp160by essentially every knowledgeable scientist on Earth on a planet already feeling the early and increasingly extreme results of a warming atmosphere millions of Americans elected a man who claimed it was all a 8220 hoax8221 who was unabashedly dedicated above anything else except perhaps his 8220 big fat beautiful wall8221 on the Mexican border to aamp160 fossilfuelizedamp160American planet and who insisted that he would run an administration that wouldamp160 makeamp160this country 8220 energy dominant8221 againamp160 They elected in other words a representative of the very set of lobbyists climate deniers and politicians who had in essence been created by Big Energyamp160 Or put another way they voted for a man whoamp160 pledgedamp160to bring back the dying American coal industry and was prepared toamp160 greenlightamp160oil and natural gas pipelines of whatever sortamp160 openamp160the nation8217s coastal waters to drilling andamp160 lift restrictionsamp160of every kind on energy companies whileamp160 impedingamp160the development of alternative sources of energy and other attempts to mitigate climate changeamp160 As the ultimate President Blowback Donald Trump promptlyamp160 filledamp160every last faintly relevant post in his administration withamp160 climatechange deniersamp160andamp160 alliesamp160of Big Energy whileamp160 abandoningamp160the Paris climate accord In other words President Donald Trump has dedicated himself to nailing humanity to a cross of coal Where8217s Chalmers Johnson now that we really need him

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<p>By Michael T. Klare, TomDispatchThis piece originally appeared at TomDispatch. Read Tom Engelhardt&#8217;s introduction <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175601/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_extreme_energy_means_an_extreme_planet/#more" type="external">here</a>.</p> <p>Last winter, fossil-fuel enthusiasts began trumpeting the dawn of a new &#8220;golden age of oil&#8221; that would kick-start the American economy, generate millions of new jobs, and free this country from its dependence on imported petroleum.&amp;#160; Ed Morse, head commodities analyst at Citibank, was typical.&amp;#160; In the Wall Street Journal he <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577285972222946812.html" type="external">crowed</a>, &#8220;The United States has become the fastest-growing oil and gas producer in the world, and is likely to remain so for the rest of this decade and into the 2020s.&#8221;</p> <p>Once this surge in U.S. energy production was linked to a predicted boom in energy from Canada&#8217;s tar sands reserves, the results seemed obvious and uncontestable.&amp;#160; &#8220;North America,&#8221; he announced, &#8220;is becoming the new Middle East.&#8221;&amp;#160; Many other analysts have elaborated similarly on this rosy scenario, which now provides the foundation for Mitt Romney&#8217;s plan to achieve &#8220; <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/23/news/economy/romney-energy/index.html" type="external">energy independence</a>&#8221; by 2020.</p> <p>By employing impressive new technologies &#8212; notably deepwater drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or hydro-fracking) &#8212; energy companies were said to be on the verge of unlocking vast new stores of oil in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and shale formations across the United States.&amp;#160; &#8220;A &#8216;Great Revival&#8217; in U.S. oil production is taking shape &#8212; a major break from the near 40-year trend of falling output,&#8221; James Burkhard of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) <a href="http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=ace3e7ff-44de-49d8-8b53-e4a9bbed87e2" type="external">told</a> the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in January 2012.</p> <p /> <p>Increased output was also predicted elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, especially Canada and Brazil.&amp;#160; &#8220;The outline of a new world oil map is emerging, and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere,&#8221; Daniel Yergin, chairman of CERA, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-yergin-for-the-future-of-oil-look-to-the-americas-not-the-middle-east/2011/10/18/gIQAxdDw7L_story.html" type="external">wrote</a> in the Washington Post.&amp;#160; &#8220;The new energy axis runs from Alberta, Canada, down through North Dakota and South Texas&#8230; to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil.&#8221;</p> <p>Extreme Oil</p> <p>It turns out, however, that the future may prove far more recalcitrant than these prophets of an American energy cornucopia imagine.&amp;#160; To reach their ambitious targets, energy firms will have to overcome severe geological and environmental barriers &#8212; and recent developments suggest that they are going to have a tough time doing so.</p> <p>Consider this: while many analysts and pundits joined in the premature celebration of the new &#8220;golden age,&#8221; few emphasized that it would rest almost entirely on the exploitation of &#8220;unconventional&#8221; petroleum resources &#8212; shale oil, oil shale, Arctic oil, deep offshore oil, and tar sands (bitumen).&amp;#160; As for conventional oil (petroleum substances that emerge from the ground in liquid form and can be extracted using familiar, standardized technology), no one doubts that it will continue its historic decline in North America.</p> <p>The &#8220;unconventional&#8221; oil that is to liberate the U.S. and its neighbors from the unreliable producers of the Middle East involves substances too hard or viscous to be extracted using standard technology or embedded in forbidding locations that require highly specialized equipment for extraction.&amp;#160; Think of it as &#8220; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175515" type="external">tough oil</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>Shale oil, for instance, is oil trapped in shale rock.&amp;#160; It can only be liberated through the application of concentrated force in a process known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing" type="external">hydraulic fracturing</a> that requires millions of gallons of chemically laced water per &#8220;frack,&#8221; plus the subsequent disposal of vast quantities of toxic wastewater once the fracking has been completed. <a href="http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm" type="external">Oil shale</a>, or kerogen, is a primitive form of petroleum that must be melted to be useful, a process that itself consumes vast amounts of energy. <a href="http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/tarsands/index.cfm" type="external">Tar sands</a> (or &#8220;oil sands,&#8221; as the industry prefers to call them) must be gouged from the earth using open-pit mining technology or pumped up after first being melted in place by underground steam jets, then treated with various chemicals.&amp;#160; Only then can the material be transported to refineries via, for example, the highly controversial <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/k/keystone_pipeline/index.html" type="external">Keystone XL pipeline</a>.&amp;#160; Similarly, deepwater and Arctic drilling requires the deployment of specialized multimillion-dollar rigs along with enormously costly backup safety systems under the most dangerous of conditions.</p> <p>All these processes have at least one thing in common: each pushes the envelope of what is technically possible in extracting oil (or natural gas) from geologically and geographically forbidding environments.&amp;#160; They are all, that is, versions of &#8220; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175249/Michael_Klare_the_oil_rush_to_hell" type="external">extreme energy</a>.&#8221;&amp;#160; To produce them, energy companies will have to drill in extreme temperatures or extreme weather, or use extreme pressures, or operate under extreme danger &#8212; or some combination of all of these.&amp;#160; In each, accidents, mishaps, and setbacks are guaranteed to be more frequent and their consequences more serious than in conventional drilling operations.&amp;#160; The apocalyptic poster child for these processes already played out in 2010 with BP&#8217;s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and this summer we saw intimations of how it will happen again as a range of major unconventional drilling initiatives &#8212; all promising that &#8220;golden age&#8221; &#8212; ran into serious trouble.</p> <p>Perhaps the most notable example of this was Shell Oil&#8217;s costly failure to commence test drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.&amp;#160; After <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/science/earth/shell-arctic-ocean-drilling-stands-to-open-new-oil-frontier.html" type="external">investing</a> $4.5 billion and years of preparation, Shell was poised to drill five test wells this summer in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska&#8217;s northern and northwestern coasts.&amp;#160; However, on September 17th, a series of accidents and mishaps forced the company to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/business/global/shell-delays-arctic-oil-drilling-until-next-year.html" type="external">announce</a> that it would suspend operations until next summer &#8212; the only time when those waters are largely free of pack ice and so it is safer to drill.</p> <p>Shell&#8217;s problems began early and picked up pace as the summer wore on.&amp;#160; On September 10th, its Noble Discoverer drill ship was forced to <a href="http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/shell-halts-arctic-drilling-right-after-it-began/" type="external">abandon operations</a> at the Burger Prospect, about 70 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea, when floating sea ice threatened the safety of the ship.&amp;#160; A more serious setback occurred later in the month when a containment dome designed to cover any leak that developed at an undersea well malfunctioned during tests in Puget Sound in Washington State.&amp;#160; As Clifford Krauss <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/business/global/shell-delays-arctic-oil-drilling-until-next-year.html" type="external">noted</a> in the New York Times, &#8220;Shell&#8217;s inability to control its containment equipment in calm waters under predictable test conditions suggested that the company would not be able to effectively stop a sudden leak in treacherous Arctic waters, where powerful ice floes and gusty winds would complicate any spill response.&#8221;</p> <p>Shell&#8217;s effort was also impeded by <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175577/subhankar_banerjee_arctic_shell_game" type="external">persistent opposition</a> from environmentalists and native groups.&amp;#160; They have repeatedly brought suit to block its operations on the grounds that Arctic drilling will threaten the survival of marine life essential to native livelihoods and culture.&amp;#160; Only after promising to take immensely costly protective measures and winning the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/science/earth/shell-arctic-ocean-drilling-stands-to-open-new-oil-frontier.html" type="external">support</a> of the Obama administration &#8212; fearful of appearing to block &#8220;job creation&#8221; or &#8220;energy independence&#8221; during a presidential campaign &#8212; did the company obtain the necessary permits to proceed.&amp;#160; But some lawsuits remain in play and, with this latest delay, Shell&#8217;s opponents will have added time and ammunition.</p> <p>Officials from Shell insist that the company will overcome all these hurdles and be ready to drill next summer.&amp;#160; But many observers view its experience as a deterrent to future drilling in the Arctic.&amp;#160; &#8220;As long as Shell has not been able to show that they can get the permits and start to drill, we&#8217;re a bit skeptical about moving forward,&#8221; <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/48b8471a-f6aa-11e1-9dff-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27rtpnM4S" type="external">said</a> Tim Dodson of Norway&#8217;s Statoil.&amp;#160; That company also owns licenses for drilling in the Chukchi Sea, but has now decided to postpone operations until 2015 at the earliest.</p> <p>Extreme Water</p> <p>Another unexpected impediment to the arrival of energy&#8217;s next &#8220;golden age&#8221; in North America emerged even more unexpectedly from this summer&#8217;s record-breaking drought, which still has <a href="http://www.ers.usda.gov/newsroom/us-drought-2012-farm-and-food-impacts.aspx" type="external">80%</a> of U.S. agricultural land in its grip.&amp;#160; The energy angle on all this was, however, a surprise.</p> <p>Any increase in U.S. hydrocarbon output will require greater extraction of oil and gas from shale rock, which can only be accomplished via hydro-fracking.&amp;#160; More fracking, in turn, means more water consumption.&amp;#160; With the planet warming thanks to climate change, such intensive droughts are expected to <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175573/debuys_the_west_in_flames" type="external">intensify</a> in many regions, which means rising agricultural demand for less water, including potentially in prime fracking locations like the Bakken formation of North Dakota, the Eagle Ford area of West Texas, and the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania.</p> <p>The drought&#8217;s impact on hydro-fracking became strikingly evident when, in June and July, wells and streams started drying up in many drought-stricken areas and drillers suddenly found themselves <a href="http://www.moneynews.com/Markets/Drought-Oil-Fracking-energy/2012/08/01/id/447210" type="external">competing</a> with hard-pressed food-producers for whatever water was available.&amp;#160; &#8220;The amount of water needed for drilling is a double whammy,&#8221; Chris Faulkner, the president and chief executive officer of <a href="http://www.breitlingoilandgas.com" type="external">Breitling Oil &amp;amp; Gas</a>, told Oil &amp;amp; Gas Journal in July.&amp;#160; &#8220;We&#8217;re getting pushback from farmers, and my fear is that it&#8217;s going to get worse.&#8221;&amp;#160; In July, in fact, the situation became so dire in Pennsylvania that the Susquehanna River Basin Commission <a href="http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/business/commission-suspends-water-withdrawals-on-low-river-levels-1.1344225" type="external">suspended permits</a> for water withdrawals from the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, forcing some drillers to suspend operations.</p> <p>If this year&#8217;s &#8220; <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/the-endless-summer/" type="external">endless summer</a>&#8221; of unrelenting drought were just a fluke, and we could expect abundant water in the future, the golden age scenario might still be viable.&amp;#160; But most climate scientists suggest that severe drought is likely to become the &#8220; <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/08-4" type="external">new normal</a>&#8221; in many parts of the United States, putting the fracking boom very much into question.&amp;#160; &#8220;Bakken and Eagle Ford are our big keys to energy independence,&#8221; Faulkner noted.&amp;#160; &#8220;Without water, drilling shale gas and oil wells is not possible.&amp;#160; A continuing drought could cause our domestic production to decline and derail our road to energy independence in a hurry.&#8221;</p> <p>And then there are those Canadian tar sands.&amp;#160; Turning them into &#8220;oil&#8221; also requires vast amounts of water, and climate-change-related shortages of that vital commodity are also likely in Alberta, Canada, their heartland.&amp;#160; In addition, tar sands production releases far more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil production, which has sparked its own fiercely determined opposition in Canada, the United States, and Europe.</p> <p>In the U.S., opposition to tar sands has until now largely focused on the construction of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline" type="external">Keystone XL pipeline</a>, a $7 billion, 2,000-mile conduit that would carry diluted tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, thousands of miles away.&amp;#160; Parts of the Keystone system are already in place.&amp;#160; If completed, the pipeline is designed to carry 1.1 million barrels a day of unrefined liquid across the United States.</p> <p>Keystone XL opponents <a href="http://www.foe.org/projects/climate-and-energy/tar-sands/keystone-xl-pipeline" type="external">charge</a> that the project will contribute to the acceleration of climate change.&amp;#160; It also exposes crucial underground water supplies in the Midwest to severe risk of contamination by the highly corrosive tar-sands fluid (and pipeline leaks are commonplace).&amp;#160; Citing the closeness of its proposed route to the critical <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer" type="external">Ogallala Aquifer</a>, President Obama <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/us/state-dept-to-put-oil-pipeline-on-hold.html" type="external">denied permission</a> for its construction last January. &amp;#160;(Because it will cross an international boundary, the president gets to make the call.)&amp;#160; He is, however, expected to grant post-election approval to a new, less aquifer-threatening route; Mitt Romney has vowed to give it his approval on his first day in office.</p> <p>Even if Keystone XL were in place, the golden age of Canada&#8217;s tar sands won&#8217;t be in sight &#8212; not without yet more pipelines as the bitumen producers face mounting opposition to their extreme operations.&amp;#160; As a result of fierce resistance to Keystone XL, led in large part by TomDispatch contributor <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175468/bill_mckibben_puncturing_the_pipeline" type="external">Bill McKibben</a>, &#8212; the public has become far more aware of the perils of tar sands production.&amp;#160; Resistance to it, for example, could stymie plans to deliver tar sands oil to Portland, Maine (for transshipment by ship to refineries elsewhere), via an existing pipeline that runs from Montreal through Vermont and New Hampshire to the Maine coast.&amp;#160; Environmentalists in New England are already <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2012/06/19/news/portland/energy-companys-plan-to-move-tar-sands-oil-through-maine-meets-opposition-in-portland-rally" type="external">gearing up</a> to oppose the plan.</p> <p>If the U.S. proves too tough a nut to crack, Alberta has a backup plan: construction of the Northern Gateway, a proposed pipeline through British Columbia for the export of tar sands oil to Asia.&amp;#160; However, it, too, is running into trouble.&amp;#160; Environmentalists and native communities in that province are implacably opposed and have threatened <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/09/13/b-c-plans-mass-demonstration-enbridge-pipeline-october-22-2012" type="external">civil disobedience</a> to prevent its construction (with major protests already set for October 22nd outside the Parliament Building in Victoria).</p> <p>Sending tar sands oil across the Atlantic is likely to have its own set of problems.&amp;#160; The European Union is <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/23/eu-tarsands-idUSL5E8DN83820120223" type="external">considering</a> adopting rules that would label it a dirtier form of energy, subjecting it to various penalties when imported into the European Union.&amp;#160; All of this is, in turn, has forced Albertan authorities to consider <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/alberta-eyes-tougher-carbon-rules/article4477836" type="external">tough new environmental regulations</a> that would make it more difficult and costly to extract bitumen, potentially dampening the enthusiasm of investors and so diminishing the future output of tar sands.</p> <p>Extreme Planet</p> <p>In a sense, while the dreams of the boosters of these new forms of energy may thrill journalists and pundits, their reality could be expressed this way: extreme energy = extreme methods = extreme disasters = extreme opposition.</p> <p>There are already many indications that the new &#8220;golden age&#8221; of North American oil is unlikely to materialize as publicized, including an unusually <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/2012/08/10/tempering-u-s-shale-potential" type="external">rapid decline</a> in oil output at existing shale oil drilling operations in Montana.&amp;#160; (Although Montana is not a major producer, the decline there is significant because it is occurring in part of the Bakken field, widely considered a major source of new oil.)&amp;#160; As for the rest of the Western Hemisphere, there is little room for optimism there either when it comes to the &#8220;promise&#8221; of extreme energy. Typically, for instance, a Brazilian court has <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/01/chevron-brazil-idINL2E8J1F3S20120801" type="external">ordered</a> Chevron to cease production at its multibillion-dollar <a href="http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/fradefieldcamposbasi" type="external">Frade field</a> in the Campos basin of Brazil&#8217;s deep and dangerous Atlantic waters because of repeated oil leaks. <a href="http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=BR" type="external">Doubts</a> have meanwhile arisen over the ability of Petrobras, Brazil&#8217;s state-controlled oil company, to develop the immensely challenging Atlantic &#8220;pre-salt&#8221; fields on its own.</p> <p>While output from unconventional oil operations in the U.S. and Canada is likely to show some growth in the years ahead, there is no &#8220;golden age&#8221; on the horizon, only various kinds of potentially disastrous scenarios.&amp;#160; Those like Mitt Romney who claim that the United States can achieve energy &#8220;independence&#8221; by 2020 or any other near-term date are only fooling themselves, and perhaps some elements of the American public.&amp;#160; They may indeed employ such claims to gain support for the rollback of what environmental protections exist against the exploitation of extreme energy, but the United States will remain dependent on Middle Eastern and African oil for the foreseeable future.</p> <p>Of course, were such a publicized golden age to come about, we would be burning vast quantities of the dirtiest energy on the planet with truly disastrous consequences. &amp;#160;The truth is this: there is just one possible golden age for U.S. (or any other kind of) energy and it would be based on a major push to produce breakthroughs in climate-friendly renewables, especially wind, solar, geothermal, wave, and tidal power.</p> <p>Otherwise the only &#8220;golden&#8221; sight around is likely to be the sun on an ever hotter, ever dirtier, ever more extreme planet.</p> <p>Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175579/michael_klare_the_hunger_wars_in_our_future" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>, and the author, most recently, of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805091262/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">The Race for What&#8217;s Left</a>.&amp;#160; A movie based on one of his earlier books, Blood and Oil, can be ordered at <a href="http://www.bloodandoilmovie.com" type="external">http://www.bloodandoilmovie.com</a>.&amp;#160; Klare&#8217;s other books and articles are described at his <a href="http://www.michaelklare.com" type="external">website</a>.&amp;#160; You can follow Klare&#8217;s work on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-Klare/316344375093469" type="external">Facebook.</a></p> <p>Copyright 2012 Michael T. Klare</p>

The New 'Golden Age of Oil' That Wasn’t

https://truthdig.com/articles/the-new-golden-age-of-oil-that-wasnt/

2012-10-05

4left

By Michael T Klare TomDispatchThis piece originally appeared at TomDispatch Read Tom Engelhardt8217s introduction here Last winter fossilfuel enthusiasts began trumpeting the dawn of a new 8220golden age of oil8221 that would kickstart the American economy generate millions of new jobs and free this country from its dependence on imported petroleumamp160 Ed Morse head commodities analyst at Citibank was typicalamp160 In the Wall Street Journal he crowed 8220The United States has become the fastestgrowing oil and gas producer in the world and is likely to remain so for the rest of this decade and into the 2020s8221 Once this surge in US energy production was linked to a predicted boom in energy from Canada8217s tar sands reserves the results seemed obvious and uncontestableamp160 8220North America8221 he announced 8220is becoming the new Middle East8221amp160 Many other analysts have elaborated similarly on this rosy scenario which now provides the foundation for Mitt Romney8217s plan to achieve 8220 energy independence8221 by 2020 By employing impressive new technologies 8212 notably deepwater drilling and hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking 8212 energy companies were said to be on the verge of unlocking vast new stores of oil in Alaska the Gulf of Mexico and shale formations across the United Statesamp160 8220A 8216Great Revival8217 in US oil production is taking shape 8212 a major break from the near 40year trend of falling output8221 James Burkhard of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates CERA told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in January 2012 Increased output was also predicted elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere especially Canada and Brazilamp160 8220The outline of a new world oil map is emerging and it is centered not on the Middle East but on the Western Hemisphere8221 Daniel Yergin chairman of CERA wrote in the Washington Postamp160 8220The new energy axis runs from Alberta Canada down through North Dakota and South Texas8230 to huge offshore oil deposits found near Brazil8221 Extreme Oil It turns out however that the future may prove far more recalcitrant than these prophets of an American energy cornucopia imagineamp160 To reach their ambitious targets energy firms will have to overcome severe geological and environmental barriers 8212 and recent developments suggest that they are going to have a tough time doing so Consider this while many analysts and pundits joined in the premature celebration of the new 8220golden age8221 few emphasized that it would rest almost entirely on the exploitation of 8220unconventional8221 petroleum resources 8212 shale oil oil shale Arctic oil deep offshore oil and tar sands bitumenamp160 As for conventional oil petroleum substances that emerge from the ground in liquid form and can be extracted using familiar standardized technology no one doubts that it will continue its historic decline in North America The 8220unconventional8221 oil that is to liberate the US and its neighbors from the unreliable producers of the Middle East involves substances too hard or viscous to be extracted using standard technology or embedded in forbidding locations that require highly specialized equipment for extractionamp160 Think of it as 8220 tough oil8221 Shale oil for instance is oil trapped in shale rockamp160 It can only be liberated through the application of concentrated force in a process known as hydraulic fracturing that requires millions of gallons of chemically laced water per 8220frack8221 plus the subsequent disposal of vast quantities of toxic wastewater once the fracking has been completed Oil shale or kerogen is a primitive form of petroleum that must be melted to be useful a process that itself consumes vast amounts of energy Tar sands or 8220oil sands8221 as the industry prefers to call them must be gouged from the earth using openpit mining technology or pumped up after first being melted in place by underground steam jets then treated with various chemicalsamp160 Only then can the material be transported to refineries via for example the highly controversial Keystone XL pipelineamp160 Similarly deepwater and Arctic drilling requires the deployment of specialized multimilliondollar rigs along with enormously costly backup safety systems under the most dangerous of conditions All these processes have at least one thing in common each pushes the envelope of what is technically possible in extracting oil or natural gas from geologically and geographically forbidding environmentsamp160 They are all that is versions of 8220 extreme energy8221amp160 To produce them energy companies will have to drill in extreme temperatures or extreme weather or use extreme pressures or operate under extreme danger 8212 or some combination of all of theseamp160 In each accidents mishaps and setbacks are guaranteed to be more frequent and their consequences more serious than in conventional drilling operationsamp160 The apocalyptic poster child for these processes already played out in 2010 with BP8217s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and this summer we saw intimations of how it will happen again as a range of major unconventional drilling initiatives 8212 all promising that 8220golden age8221 8212 ran into serious trouble Perhaps the most notable example of this was Shell Oil8217s costly failure to commence test drilling in the Alaskan Arcticamp160 After investing 45 billion and years of preparation Shell was poised to drill five test wells this summer in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska8217s northern and northwestern coastsamp160 However on September 17th a series of accidents and mishaps forced the company to announce that it would suspend operations until next summer 8212 the only time when those waters are largely free of pack ice and so it is safer to drill Shell8217s problems began early and picked up pace as the summer wore onamp160 On September 10th its Noble Discoverer drill ship was forced to abandon operations at the Burger Prospect about 70 miles offshore in the Chukchi Sea when floating sea ice threatened the safety of the shipamp160 A more serious setback occurred later in the month when a containment dome designed to cover any leak that developed at an undersea well malfunctioned during tests in Puget Sound in Washington Stateamp160 As Clifford Krauss noted in the New York Times 8220Shell8217s inability to control its containment equipment in calm waters under predictable test conditions suggested that the company would not be able to effectively stop a sudden leak in treacherous Arctic waters where powerful ice floes and gusty winds would complicate any spill response8221 Shell8217s effort was also impeded by persistent opposition from environmentalists and native groupsamp160 They have repeatedly brought suit to block its operations on the grounds that Arctic drilling will threaten the survival of marine life essential to native livelihoods and cultureamp160 Only after promising to take immensely costly protective measures and winning the support of the Obama administration 8212 fearful of appearing to block 8220job creation8221 or 8220energy independence8221 during a presidential campaign 8212 did the company obtain the necessary permits to proceedamp160 But some lawsuits remain in play and with this latest delay Shell8217s opponents will have added time and ammunition Officials from Shell insist that the company will overcome all these hurdles and be ready to drill next summeramp160 But many observers view its experience as a deterrent to future drilling in the Arcticamp160 8220As long as Shell has not been able to show that they can get the permits and start to drill we8217re a bit skeptical about moving forward8221 said Tim Dodson of Norway8217s Statoilamp160 That company also owns licenses for drilling in the Chukchi Sea but has now decided to postpone operations until 2015 at the earliest Extreme Water Another unexpected impediment to the arrival of energy8217s next 8220golden age8221 in North America emerged even more unexpectedly from this summer8217s recordbreaking drought which still has 80 of US agricultural land in its gripamp160 The energy angle on all this was however a surprise Any increase in US hydrocarbon output will require greater extraction of oil and gas from shale rock which can only be accomplished via hydrofrackingamp160 More fracking in turn means more water consumptionamp160 With the planet warming thanks to climate change such intensive droughts are expected to intensify in many regions which means rising agricultural demand for less water including potentially in prime fracking locations like the Bakken formation of North Dakota the Eagle Ford area of West Texas and the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania The drought8217s impact on hydrofracking became strikingly evident when in June and July wells and streams started drying up in many droughtstricken areas and drillers suddenly found themselves competing with hardpressed foodproducers for whatever water was availableamp160 8220The amount of water needed for drilling is a double whammy8221 Chris Faulkner the president and chief executive officer of Breitling Oil ampamp Gas told Oil ampamp Gas Journal in Julyamp160 8220We8217re getting pushback from farmers and my fear is that it8217s going to get worse8221amp160 In July in fact the situation became so dire in Pennsylvania that the Susquehanna River Basin Commission suspended permits for water withdrawals from the Susquehanna River and its tributaries forcing some drillers to suspend operations If this year8217s 8220 endless summer8221 of unrelenting drought were just a fluke and we could expect abundant water in the future the golden age scenario might still be viableamp160 But most climate scientists suggest that severe drought is likely to become the 8220 new normal8221 in many parts of the United States putting the fracking boom very much into questionamp160 8220Bakken and Eagle Ford are our big keys to energy independence8221 Faulkner notedamp160 8220Without water drilling shale gas and oil wells is not possibleamp160 A continuing drought could cause our domestic production to decline and derail our road to energy independence in a hurry8221 And then there are those Canadian tar sandsamp160 Turning them into 8220oil8221 also requires vast amounts of water and climatechangerelated shortages of that vital commodity are also likely in Alberta Canada their heartlandamp160 In addition tar sands production releases far more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil production which has sparked its own fiercely determined opposition in Canada the United States and Europe In the US opposition to tar sands has until now largely focused on the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline a 7 billion 2000mile conduit that would carry diluted tar sands oil from Hardisty Alberta to refineries on the US Gulf Coast thousands of miles awayamp160 Parts of the Keystone system are already in placeamp160 If completed the pipeline is designed to carry 11 million barrels a day of unrefined liquid across the United States Keystone XL opponents charge that the project will contribute to the acceleration of climate changeamp160 It also exposes crucial underground water supplies in the Midwest to severe risk of contamination by the highly corrosive tarsands fluid and pipeline leaks are commonplaceamp160 Citing the closeness of its proposed route to the critical Ogallala Aquifer President Obama denied permission for its construction last January amp160Because it will cross an international boundary the president gets to make the callamp160 He is however expected to grant postelection approval to a new less aquiferthreatening route Mitt Romney has vowed to give it his approval on his first day in office Even if Keystone XL were in place the golden age of Canada8217s tar sands won8217t be in sight 8212 not without yet more pipelines as the bitumen producers face mounting opposition to their extreme operationsamp160 As a result of fierce resistance to Keystone XL led in large part by TomDispatch contributor Bill McKibben 8212 the public has become far more aware of the perils of tar sands productionamp160 Resistance to it for example could stymie plans to deliver tar sands oil to Portland Maine for transshipment by ship to refineries elsewhere via an existing pipeline that runs from Montreal through Vermont and New Hampshire to the Maine coastamp160 Environmentalists in New England are already gearing up to oppose the plan If the US proves too tough a nut to crack Alberta has a backup plan construction of the Northern Gateway a proposed pipeline through British Columbia for the export of tar sands oil to Asiaamp160 However it too is running into troubleamp160 Environmentalists and native communities in that province are implacably opposed and have threatened civil disobedience to prevent its construction with major protests already set for October 22nd outside the Parliament Building in Victoria Sending tar sands oil across the Atlantic is likely to have its own set of problemsamp160 The European Union is considering adopting rules that would label it a dirtier form of energy subjecting it to various penalties when imported into the European Unionamp160 All of this is in turn has forced Albertan authorities to consider tough new environmental regulations that would make it more difficult and costly to extract bitumen potentially dampening the enthusiasm of investors and so diminishing the future output of tar sands Extreme Planet In a sense while the dreams of the boosters of these new forms of energy may thrill journalists and pundits their reality could be expressed this way extreme energy extreme methods extreme disasters extreme opposition There are already many indications that the new 8220golden age8221 of North American oil is unlikely to materialize as publicized including an unusually rapid decline in oil output at existing shale oil drilling operations in Montanaamp160 Although Montana is not a major producer the decline there is significant because it is occurring in part of the Bakken field widely considered a major source of new oilamp160 As for the rest of the Western Hemisphere there is little room for optimism there either when it comes to the 8220promise8221 of extreme energy Typically for instance a Brazilian court has ordered Chevron to cease production at its multibilliondollar Frade field in the Campos basin of Brazil8217s deep and dangerous Atlantic waters because of repeated oil leaks Doubts have meanwhile arisen over the ability of Petrobras Brazil8217s statecontrolled oil company to develop the immensely challenging Atlantic 8220presalt8221 fields on its own While output from unconventional oil operations in the US and Canada is likely to show some growth in the years ahead there is no 8220golden age8221 on the horizon only various kinds of potentially disastrous scenariosamp160 Those like Mitt Romney who claim that the United States can achieve energy 8220independence8221 by 2020 or any other nearterm date are only fooling themselves and perhaps some elements of the American publicamp160 They may indeed employ such claims to gain support for the rollback of what environmental protections exist against the exploitation of extreme energy but the United States will remain dependent on Middle Eastern and African oil for the foreseeable future Of course were such a publicized golden age to come about we would be burning vast quantities of the dirtiest energy on the planet with truly disastrous consequences amp160The truth is this there is just one possible golden age for US or any other kind of energy and it would be based on a major push to produce breakthroughs in climatefriendly renewables especially wind solar geothermal wave and tidal power Otherwise the only 8220golden8221 sight around is likely to be the sun on an ever hotter ever dirtier ever more extreme planet Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College a TomDispatch regular and the author most recently of The Race for What8217s Leftamp160 A movie based on one of his earlier books Blood and Oil can be ordered at httpwwwbloodandoilmoviecomamp160 Klare8217s other books and articles are described at his websiteamp160 You can follow Klare8217s work on Facebook Copyright 2012 Michael T Klare

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<p>NEW YORK, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Speculators&#8217; net short dollar bets rose in the latest week to the largest position since mid-October, according to calculations by Reuters and Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday.</p> <p>The value of the net short dollar positions, derived from net positions of International Monetary Market speculators in the yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars, was $9.59 billion, in the week to Jan. 16.</p> <p>That compares with a net short position of $8.85 billion the previous week.</p> <p>To be short a currency means traders believe it will fall in value.</p> <p>The net long position on sterling grew to 26,204 contracts, the highest since September 2014, the data showed.</p> <p>Meanwhile, speculators&#8217; net short position on bitcoin Cboe futures rose to a new high of 2,226 contracts, up from 1,907 contracts in the prior week, the data showed. (Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - The S&amp;amp;P 500 on Thursday headed for its best three-day rise since President Donald Trump&#8217;s election as technology and industrial shares bolstered a recovery on easing trade war concerns.</p> <p>Shares of Boeing ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>) and Caterpillar ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CAT.N" type="external">CAT.N</a>), among the worst hit on Wednesday after China retaliated with $50 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods such as soybeans, autos, and some types of aircraft, rose 1.7 percent and 3 percent.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a lot of bad news on the trade front built into the market. So the ability of the equity markets to push significantly lower is going to be limited,&#8221; said John Brady, senior vice president at R.J. O&#8217;Brien &amp;amp; Associates in Chicago.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to need brand new, bad news on trade for the equity markets to push lower.&#8221;</p> <p>Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>), Amazon ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>), Alphabet ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) and Netflix ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NFLX.O" type="external">NFLX.O</a>) - collectively known as the &#8220;FANG&#8221; group - were up between 1.2 percent and 2.6 percent.</p> <p>At 12:02 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> was 1.46 percent at 24,617.39. The S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 1.03 percent to 2,671.85 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> rose 0.92 percent to 7,106.54.</p> <p>If current gains for S&amp;amp;P 500 hold, it would be the best three-day run since Trump&#8217;s election victory in November 2016.</p> <p>Nine of the 11 major S&amp;amp;P sectors were higher, led by a 1.2 percent gain on the material .SPLRCM and the energy .SPNY indexes.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 index showed four new 52-week highs and one new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 47 new highs and 24 new lows.</p> <p>Facebook shares gained after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company had not seen &#8220;any meaningful impact&#8221; on usage or ad sales since the data privacy scandal.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>&#8220;Zuckerberg is going to testify the Congress next week on the Facebook issues, so probably there&#8217;s some bargain hunting in FANG space,&#8221; said Brady.</p> <p>On Wednesday, the Dow bounced back from a 500 point fall earlier to close up about 230 points after President Donald Trump&#8217;s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was involved in a &#8220;negotiation&#8221; with China rather than a trade war.</p> <p>Economic data on Thursday showed the U.S. trade deficit increased to a near 9-1/2-year high in February, but the shortfall with China narrowed sharply. While exports to China were unchanged in February, imports from the country declined 14.7 percent.</p> <p>Advanced Micro Devices ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMD.O" type="external">AMD.O</a>) jumped 3.2 percent after Stifel upgraded to &#8220;buy&#8221;, while Micron Technology ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MU.O" type="external">MU.O</a>) fell 5.3 percent after UBS started with a &#8220;sell&#8221; rating.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">Boeing Co</a> 327.44 BA.N New York Stock Exchange -3.38 (-1.02%) BA.N CAT.N FB.O AMZN.O GOOGL.O <p>Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 2.76-to-1 ratio and on the Nasdaq for a 1.90-to-1 ratio.</p> <p>Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese products, but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import: government debt.</p> <p>In a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration&#8217;s plan for 25 percent duties on $50 billion of Chinese imports, China hit back with its own list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals. But officials signaled no interest for now in bringing their vast holdings of U.S. Treasuries to the fight.</p> <p>China held around $1.17 trillion of Treasuries as of the end of January, making it the largest of America's foreign creditors and the No. 2 overall owner of U.S. government bonds after the Federal Reserve. Any move by China to chop its Treasury portfolio could inflict significant harm on U.S. finances and global investors, driving bond yields higher and making it more costly to finance the federal government.(Graphic: Top U.S. trade partners &amp;amp; foreign holders of Treasuries - <a href="http://reut.rs/2CUqQB0" type="external">reut.rs/2CUqQB0</a>)</p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2CUqQB0" type="external" /> <p>Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital LP, said China can use its Treasury holdings as leverage, but only if they keep holding them.</p> <p>&#8220;It is more effective as a threat. If they sell, they have no threat,&#8221; said Gundlach, known as Wall Street&#8217;s Bond King.</p> <p>&#8220;It would only escalate the situation and eliminate their leverage.&#8221;</p> <p>Prices on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes slipped on Wednesday, giving back earlier gains on the trade news. Their yield edged up to about 2.81 percent Wednesday afternoon.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Treasury holdings have dipped in recent months, declining by about $30 billion from $1.20 trillion last August, and they are down about 11 percent from their record high above $1.3 trillion in late 2013, according to U.S government data. In all, foreign governments own $4 trillion, or more than a quarter, of the $14.7 trillion in Treasury securities outstanding.</p> <p>Asked by a reporter on Wednesday if China would reduce its U.S. Treasury holdings in retaliation, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao reiterated China&#8217;s long-standing policy regarding its foreign exchange reserves, saying it is a responsible investor and that it will safeguard their value.</p> <p>China&#8217;s foreign exchange reserves, the world&#8217;s largest, stood at about $3.13 trillion at the end of February, with roughly a third of it held in Treasuries.</p> <p>&#8220;If they wanted to pull the nuclear switch, if they committed to dumping Treasuries, it would have an immediate and temporary impact on money markets in the United States,&#8221; said Jeff Klingelhofer, a portfolio manager who oversees more than $6 billion at Thornburg Investment Management Inc. &#8220;But I think it is a bigger hit to the sustainability of what they&#8217;re trying to accomplish.&#8221;</p> <p>Brad Setser, senior fellow for international economics&amp;#160;at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said China can sell Treasuries and buy lower-yielding European or Japanese debt.</p> <p>But the effect would likely be to strengthen the yuan against the dollar, weakening the relative desirability of its exports, analysts said. The sale could also tank the value of the Treasuries China retains, with nothing to show for the aggression.</p> <p>More likely, if China wanted to turn up the heat it would let the yuan depreciate against the U.S. dollar, according to CFR&#8217;s Setser, a move that could kneecap the Trump administration&#8217;s goal of jump-starting U.S. manufacturing. The yuan weakened by about 0.25 percent on Wednesday but remains near its strongest in two and a half years.</p> <p>Even if the likelihood of a change in Chinese policy regarding its Treasuries portfolio remains low, investors are sensitive to the risk any big shift would pose to world financial markets, where Treasuries are a global benchmark asset.</p> Shares recoil as China fires back in U.S. trade war <p>A January report that China might halt its purchases of Treasuries forced yields higher, but China disputed the news and said it was only diversifying its foreign exchange reserves to safeguard their value.</p> <p>Reporting by Kate Duguid and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Dan Burns and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar gained and equity markets around the world jumped on Thursday in a relief rally as fears eased of a trade war between China and the United States after Washington expressed a willingness to negotiate.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 5, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>The dollar rose to a three-week high against the Japanese yen and a 10-week peak versus the Swiss franc, two safe-haven assets that investors buy in times of market uncertainty.</p> <p>U.S. Treasury yields rose to one-week highs as rising stock markets were a sign of improving risk appetite amid expectations a growing economy will be confirmed Friday when the closely watched U.S. employment report for March is released.</p> <p>Major European stock indexes surged 2 percent or more, with Germany's exporter-heavy DAX <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.GDAXI" type="external">.GDAXI</a>, the market most exposed to China, climbing 2.90 percent.</p> <p>MSCI&#8217;s all-country world stock index .MIWD00000PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, gained 1.12 percent, led by Amazon.com ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>), Apple ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>) and Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>).</p> <p>&#8220;Markets seem to be in relief rally mode and part of this is really driven by the fact we&#8217;re not really in a trade war yet,&#8221; said Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist at Allianz Investment Management in Minneapolis.</p> <p>&#8220;This is quite small in terms of the impact to the economy, we still have the runway of tax reform that&#8217;s coming along,&#8221; Ripley said, referring to boost U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s new tax code is delivering to corporate earnings.</p> <p>The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.FTEU3" type="external">.FTEU3</a> of leading regional shares rose 2.47 percent.</p> <p>On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 324.01 points, or 1.34 percent, to 24,588.31. The S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 25.55 points, or 0.97 percent, to 2,670.24 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 65.37 points, or 0.93 percent, to 7,107.48.</p> <p>Signs the United States is looking to resolve a trade dispute with China lifted the dollar but limited an advance in oil prices as crude is dollar-priced and a stronger greenback makes oil purchases in other currencies more expensive.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.GDAXI" type="external">Deutsche Boerse AG</a> 11957.9 .GDAXI Xetra -44.55 (-0.37%) .GDAXI AMZN.O AAPL.O FB.O .FTEU3 <p>White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said he expects the United States and China to work out differences and trade barriers likely &#8220;will come down on both sides.&#8221;</p> <p>The dollar index .DXY rose 0.48 percent, with the euro <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a> down 0.46 percent to $1.2221. The Japanese yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a> weakened 0.63 percent versus the greenback at 107.45 per dollar.</p> <p>Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solution in Washington, said the dollar was boosted by a view that &#8220;Washington and Beijing might broker a trade deal that doesn&#8217;t torpedo global commerce or damage the world economy.&#8221;</p> <p>U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 43 cents to $63.80 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 gained 51 cents to $68.53.</p> <p>Gold prices fell as the apparent willingness to resolve a trade dispute reduced demand for bullion as a place to park money. A stronger dollar also crimped gold as it&#8217;s more expensive for users of other currencies.</p> <p>U.S. gold futures GCcv1 fell $11.70 to $1,328.50 an ounce.</p> <p>Many suspect Washington will likely back down on some fronts after Beijing threatened tariffs on soybeans, the top U.S. agricultural export to China. Threats to such exports are a powerful weapon for Beijing to wield given the potential impact on Iowa and other farming states that backed Trump in the presidential election.</p> <p>U.S. soybeans Sc1 and corn Cc1 regained ground, following losses of around 2 percent the previous day.</p> <p>Reporting by Kit Rees; Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Bernadette Baum</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street&#8217;s three major indexes staged a comeback to close around 1 percent higher on Wednesday as investors turned their focus to earnings and away from a trade conflict between the United States and China that wreaked havoc in earlier trading.</p> <p>After investors fled equities in the morning due to proposed retaliatory tariffs from China, their concerns about a potential trade war eased by the afternoon after Trump&#8217;s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was in a &#8220;negotiation&#8221; with China rather than a trade war.</p> <p>Investors said they were comforted by the fact that any tariffs would not take effect immediately, if at all. Strategists also cited the S&amp;amp;P&#8217;s bounce above a key technical support level and said they expect equities to rise further around the first quarter earnings season, due to start in mid-April.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re starting to feel that while markets hate uncertainty, Trump&#8217;s bark is worse than his bite when it comes to trade,&#8221; said Robert Phipps, a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin, Texas.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s earnings that&#8217;s going to lift us off this bottom. It wouldn&#8217;t shock me if we chopped around sideways for a little bit before earnings season ... The trade stuff is really a side show. We&#8217;re waiting for real economic data like the jobs report Friday and for earnings. For now it&#8217;s going to be all about the technicals,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P opened below its 200-day moving average, a key technical level, but inched above it as the session progressed, and by afternoon was in positive territory.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 230.94 points, or 0.96 percent, to close at 24,264.30, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 30.24 points, or 1.16 percent, to 2,644.69 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 100.83 points, or 1.45 percent, to 7,042.11.</p> <p>The turnaround marked the first time the S&amp;amp;P had showed gains for two consecutive days since early March.</p> <p>Despite big swings in stocks, trading activity in U.S. equity options was muted as expectations for strong corporate earnings quelled the urge to load up on contracts that benefit from a surge in market volatility. The Cboe Volatility Index .VIX, the most widely followed barometer of expected near-term volatility for the S&amp;amp;P 500, closed down 1.04 points at 20.06.</p> <p>The technology sector .SPLRCT rose 1.4 percent with only two of its stocks ending the day in negative territory including Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>), which was pummeled after news its chief executive would testify in Congress over a data privacy scandal. It too closed well off its session low with a 0.6 percent drop to $155.10.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>Boeing ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>) was the biggest drag on the Dow due to its exposure to China, and ended the day well off its session lows with a 1 percent decline to $327.44 after falling as low as $311.88.</p> <p>Farm machinery company Deere &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DE.N" type="external">DE.N</a>) ended down 2.9 percent at $148.57 as it could be hurt by China tariffs if its customers&#8217; exports are curbed.</p> <p>After being a laggard for much of the session, the S&amp;amp;P 500&#8217;s industrials sector .SPLRCI turned positive late in the day to close 0.4 percent higher.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 2.19-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.95-to-1 ratio favored advancers.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24264.3 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes +230.94 (+0.96%) .DJI .SPX .IXIC FB.O BA.N <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 posted one new 52-week high and eight new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 40 new highs and 94 new lows.</p> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 7.04 billion shares, compared with the 7.3 billion average for the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Herbert Lash in New York and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Patrick Graham and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Speculators boost short U.S. dollar bets -CFTC, Reuters S&P 500 eyes best three-day gain since Trump's election China, holding Treasuries, keeps 'nuclear option' in U.S. trade war Dollar, stocks climb in relief rally over trade spat Wall Street closes higher as China tariff fears ease

https://reuters.com/article/cftc-forex/speculators-boost-short-us-dollar-bets-cftc-reuters-idUSL1N1PE1O4

2018-01-19

2least

NEW YORK Jan 19 Reuters Speculators8217 net short dollar bets rose in the latest week to the largest position since midOctober according to calculations by Reuters and Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday The value of the net short dollar positions derived from net positions of International Monetary Market speculators in the yen euro British pound Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars was 959 billion in the week to Jan 16 That compares with a net short position of 885 billion the previous week To be short a currency means traders believe it will fall in value The net long position on sterling grew to 26204 contracts the highest since September 2014 the data showed Meanwhile speculators8217 net short position on bitcoin Cboe futures rose to a new high of 2226 contracts up from 1907 contracts in the prior week the data showed Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed Editing by Chizu Nomiyama Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters The SampampP 500 on Thursday headed for its best threeday rise since President Donald Trump8217s election as technology and industrial shares bolstered a recovery on easing trade war concerns Shares of Boeing BAN and Caterpillar CATN among the worst hit on Wednesday after China retaliated with 50 billion in tariffs on US goods such as soybeans autos and some types of aircraft rose 17 percent and 3 percent 8220There is a lot of bad news on the trade front built into the market So the ability of the equity markets to push significantly lower is going to be limited8221 said John Brady senior vice president at RJ O8217Brien ampamp Associates in Chicago 8220We8217re going to need brand new bad news on trade for the equity markets to push lower8221 Facebook FBO Amazon AMZNO Alphabet GOOGLO and Netflix NFLXO collectively known as the 8220FANG8221 group were up between 12 percent and 26 percent At 1202 pm ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI was 146 percent at 2461739 The SampampP 500 SPX gained 103 percent to 267185 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC rose 092 percent to 710654 If current gains for SampampP 500 hold it would be the best threeday run since Trump8217s election victory in November 2016 Nine of the 11 major SampampP sectors were higher led by a 12 percent gain on the material SPLRCM and the energy SPNY indexes The SampampP 500 index showed four new 52week highs and one new low while the Nasdaq recorded 47 new highs and 24 new lows Facebook shares gained after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the company had not seen 8220any meaningful impact8221 on usage or ad sales since the data privacy scandal Slideshow 3 Images 8220Zuckerberg is going to testify the Congress next week on the Facebook issues so probably there8217s some bargain hunting in FANG space8221 said Brady On Wednesday the Dow bounced back from a 500 point fall earlier to close up about 230 points after President Donald Trump8217s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was involved in a 8220negotiation8221 with China rather than a trade war Economic data on Thursday showed the US trade deficit increased to a near 912year high in February but the shortfall with China narrowed sharply While exports to China were unchanged in February imports from the country declined 147 percent Advanced Micro Devices AMDO jumped 32 percent after Stifel upgraded to 8220buy8221 while Micron Technology MUO fell 53 percent after UBS started with a 8220sell8221 rating Boeing Co 32744 BAN New York Stock Exchange 338 102 BAN CATN FBO AMZNO GOOGLO Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE for a 276to1 ratio and on the Nasdaq for a 190to1 ratio Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1300 Chinese products but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import government debt In a titfortat response to the Trump administration8217s plan for 25 percent duties on 50 billion of Chinese imports China hit back with its own list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans planes cars beef and chemicals But officials signaled no interest for now in bringing their vast holdings of US Treasuries to the fight China held around 117 trillion of Treasuries as of the end of January making it the largest of Americas foreign creditors and the No 2 overall owner of US government bonds after the Federal Reserve Any move by China to chop its Treasury portfolio could inflict significant harm on US finances and global investors driving bond yields higher and making it more costly to finance the federal governmentGraphic Top US trade partners ampamp foreign holders of Treasuries reutrs2CUqQB0 Jeffrey Gundlach the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital LP said China can use its Treasury holdings as leverage but only if they keep holding them 8220It is more effective as a threat If they sell they have no threat8221 said Gundlach known as Wall Street8217s Bond King 8220It would only escalate the situation and eliminate their leverage8221 Prices on benchmark 10year US Treasury notes slipped on Wednesday giving back earlier gains on the trade news Their yield edged up to about 281 percent Wednesday afternoon China8217s Treasury holdings have dipped in recent months declining by about 30 billion from 120 trillion last August and they are down about 11 percent from their record high above 13 trillion in late 2013 according to US government data In all foreign governments own 4 trillion or more than a quarter of the 147 trillion in Treasury securities outstanding Asked by a reporter on Wednesday if China would reduce its US Treasury holdings in retaliation Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao reiterated China8217s longstanding policy regarding its foreign exchange reserves saying it is a responsible investor and that it will safeguard their value China8217s foreign exchange reserves the world8217s largest stood at about 313 trillion at the end of February with roughly a third of it held in Treasuries 8220If they wanted to pull the nuclear switch if they committed to dumping Treasuries it would have an immediate and temporary impact on money markets in the United States8221 said Jeff Klingelhofer a portfolio manager who oversees more than 6 billion at Thornburg Investment Management Inc 8220But I think it is a bigger hit to the sustainability of what they8217re trying to accomplish8221 Brad Setser senior fellow for international economicsamp160at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York said China can sell Treasuries and buy loweryielding European or Japanese debt But the effect would likely be to strengthen the yuan against the dollar weakening the relative desirability of its exports analysts said The sale could also tank the value of the Treasuries China retains with nothing to show for the aggression More likely if China wanted to turn up the heat it would let the yuan depreciate against the US dollar according to CFR8217s Setser a move that could kneecap the Trump administration8217s goal of jumpstarting US manufacturing The yuan weakened by about 025 percent on Wednesday but remains near its strongest in two and a half years Even if the likelihood of a change in Chinese policy regarding its Treasuries portfolio remains low investors are sensitive to the risk any big shift would pose to world financial markets where Treasuries are a global benchmark asset Shares recoil as China fires back in US trade war A January report that China might halt its purchases of Treasuries forced yields higher but China disputed the news and said it was only diversifying its foreign exchange reserves to safeguard their value Reporting by Kate Duguid and Trevor Hunnicutt Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan Editing by Dan Burns and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters The US dollar gained and equity markets around the world jumped on Thursday in a relief rally as fears eased of a trade war between China and the United States after Washington expressed a willingness to negotiate Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 5 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid The dollar rose to a threeweek high against the Japanese yen and a 10week peak versus the Swiss franc two safehaven assets that investors buy in times of market uncertainty US Treasury yields rose to oneweek highs as rising stock markets were a sign of improving risk appetite amid expectations a growing economy will be confirmed Friday when the closely watched US employment report for March is released Major European stock indexes surged 2 percent or more with Germanys exporterheavy DAX GDAXI the market most exposed to China climbing 290 percent MSCI8217s allcountry world stock index MIWD00000PUS which tracks shares in 47 countries gained 112 percent led by Amazoncom AMZNO Apple AAPLO and Facebook FBO 8220Markets seem to be in relief rally mode and part of this is really driven by the fact we8217re not really in a trade war yet8221 said Charlie Ripley senior investment strategist at Allianz Investment Management in Minneapolis 8220This is quite small in terms of the impact to the economy we still have the runway of tax reform that8217s coming along8221 Ripley said referring to boost US President Donald Trump8217s new tax code is delivering to corporate earnings The panEuropean FTSEurofirst 300 index FTEU3 of leading regional shares rose 247 percent On Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 32401 points or 134 percent to 2458831 The SampampP 500 SPX gained 2555 points or 097 percent to 267024 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 6537 points or 093 percent to 710748 Signs the United States is looking to resolve a trade dispute with China lifted the dollar but limited an advance in oil prices as crude is dollarpriced and a stronger greenback makes oil purchases in other currencies more expensive Deutsche Boerse AG 119579 GDAXI Xetra 4455 037 GDAXI AMZNO AAPLO FBO FTEU3 White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said he expects the United States and China to work out differences and trade barriers likely 8220will come down on both sides8221 The dollar index DXY rose 048 percent with the euro EUR down 046 percent to 12221 The Japanese yen JPY weakened 063 percent versus the greenback at 10745 per dollar Joe Manimbo senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solution in Washington said the dollar was boosted by a view that 8220Washington and Beijing might broker a trade deal that doesn8217t torpedo global commerce or damage the world economy8221 US crude CLcv1 rose 43 cents to 6380 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 gained 51 cents to 6853 Gold prices fell as the apparent willingness to resolve a trade dispute reduced demand for bullion as a place to park money A stronger dollar also crimped gold as it8217s more expensive for users of other currencies US gold futures GCcv1 fell 1170 to 132850 an ounce Many suspect Washington will likely back down on some fronts after Beijing threatened tariffs on soybeans the top US agricultural export to China Threats to such exports are a powerful weapon for Beijing to wield given the potential impact on Iowa and other farming states that backed Trump in the presidential election US soybeans Sc1 and corn Cc1 regained ground following losses of around 2 percent the previous day Reporting by Kit Rees Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo Editing by Bernadette Baum Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Wall Street8217s three major indexes staged a comeback to close around 1 percent higher on Wednesday as investors turned their focus to earnings and away from a trade conflict between the United States and China that wreaked havoc in earlier trading After investors fled equities in the morning due to proposed retaliatory tariffs from China their concerns about a potential trade war eased by the afternoon after Trump8217s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was in a 8220negotiation8221 with China rather than a trade war Investors said they were comforted by the fact that any tariffs would not take effect immediately if at all Strategists also cited the SampampP8217s bounce above a key technical support level and said they expect equities to rise further around the first quarter earnings season due to start in midApril 8220We8217re starting to feel that while markets hate uncertainty Trump8217s bark is worse than his bite when it comes to trade8221 said Robert Phipps a director at Per Stirling Capital Management in Austin Texas 8220It8217s earnings that8217s going to lift us off this bottom It wouldn8217t shock me if we chopped around sideways for a little bit before earnings season The trade stuff is really a side show We8217re waiting for real economic data like the jobs report Friday and for earnings For now it8217s going to be all about the technicals8221 he said The SampampP opened below its 200day moving average a key technical level but inched above it as the session progressed and by afternoon was in positive territory The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 23094 points or 096 percent to close at 2426430 the SampampP 500 SPX gained 3024 points or 116 percent to 264469 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 10083 points or 145 percent to 704211 The turnaround marked the first time the SampampP had showed gains for two consecutive days since early March Despite big swings in stocks trading activity in US equity options was muted as expectations for strong corporate earnings quelled the urge to load up on contracts that benefit from a surge in market volatility The Cboe Volatility Index VIX the most widely followed barometer of expected nearterm volatility for the SampampP 500 closed down 104 points at 2006 The technology sector SPLRCT rose 14 percent with only two of its stocks ending the day in negative territory including Facebook Inc FBO which was pummeled after news its chief executive would testify in Congress over a data privacy scandal It too closed well off its session low with a 06 percent drop to 15510 Slideshow 7 Images Boeing BAN was the biggest drag on the Dow due to its exposure to China and ended the day well off its session lows with a 1 percent decline to 32744 after falling as low as 31188 Farm machinery company Deere ampamp Co DEN ended down 29 percent at 14857 as it could be hurt by China tariffs if its customers8217 exports are curbed After being a laggard for much of the session the SampampP 5008217s industrials sector SPLRCI turned positive late in the day to close 04 percent higher Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 219to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 295to1 ratio favored advancers Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 242643 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 23094 096 DJI SPX IXIC FBO BAN The SampampP 500 posted one new 52week high and eight new lows the Nasdaq Composite recorded 40 new highs and 94 new lows Volume on US exchanges was 704 billion shares compared with the 73 billion average for the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Herbert Lash in New York and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Patrick Graham and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - All of the Federal Reserve&#8217;s policymakers felt that the U.S. economy would firm further and that inflation would rise in the coming months, minutes of the central bank&#8217;s last policy meeting on March 20-21 released on Wednesday showed.</p> FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meetings in Washington, U.S., March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>The readout of the meeting, at which the Fed unanimously voted to raise borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point, also showed that policymakers were wary about the impact of the Trump administration&#8217;s trade and fiscal policies.</p> <p>&#8220;All participants agreed that the outlook for the economy beyond the current quarter had strengthened in recent months,&#8221; the Fed said in the minutes. &#8220;In addition, all participants expected inflation on a 12-month basis to move up in coming months.&#8221;</p> <p>U.S. stocks, Treasuries and the dollar were little changed following their publication.</p> <p>&#8220;From a market sense there&#8217;s not much for people to take away here, they are still looking for a gradual pace of hikes. I think the debate rages on whether that means three this year of four this year,&#8221; said Gennadiy Goldberg, an interest rates strategist at TD Securities in New York.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-fed-uncertainty/despite-trade-worries-fed-officials-see-risks-as-little-changed-idUSKBN1HI35D" type="external">Despite trade worries, Fed officials see risks as little changed</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-fed-minutes-factbox/factbox-fed-staff-forecasts-from-fomc-minutes-idUSKBN1HI2XV" type="external">Factbox: Fed staff forecasts from FOMC minutes</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-fed-instant-view/instant-view-minutes-from-march-fomc-meeting-idUSKBN1HI2WT" type="external">Instant View: Minutes from March FOMC meeting</a> <p>The Fed&#8217;s target range for its benchmark lending rate is currently between 1.50 and 1.75 percent. The increase in March was the sixth rise since the central bank began a tightening cycle back in December 2015.</p> <p>As the economy has strengthened, the Fed has upped the pace of hikes. It sees another two rate rises this year, although quarterly forecasts at the last meeting showed more officials than in December were supportive of three more hikes in 2018.</p> <p>The Fed&#8217;s preferred measure of inflation currently sits at 1.6 percent and has undershot its 2 percent target rate for six years but various indicators have recently pointed to an uptick in price pressures.</p> <p>Policymakers also see additional impetus from an economy in which the labor market is tightening, the dollar weakening and the stimulus from a $1.5 trillion income tax cut package and increased government spending yet to impact on the economy.</p> <p>Earlier on Wednesday, one of the Fed&#8217;s key measures of consumer prices, the so-called core CPI, rose 2.1 percent year-on-year in March, the largest advance since February 2017, after increasing 1.8 percent in February.</p> U.S. TRADE POLICY WORRIES <p>Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last Friday that the central bank would likely need to keep raising rates to keep inflation under control, but also pledged to stick to a gradual path.</p> <p>However, the meeting minutes showed that already some Fed officials worried the central bank would have to move faster than previously expected.</p> <p>A number said the outlook for the economy and inflation could lead to a slightly steeper path of rate increases over the next few years and some suggested that at a given point the Fed might have to change its statement language to acknowledge monetary policy would have to move to a neutral or &#8220;restraining factor&#8221; for economic activity.</p> <p>Several thought it would likely also become appropriate at some point for interest rates to rise above the Fed&#8217;s longer-run estimate for a time.</p> <p>One potential headache for Fed officials remains threats of tit-for-tat tariffs worth tens of billions of dollars between the Trump administration and China, which if implemented could damage U.S. growth and raise consumer prices. Those tensions have roiled financial markets over potential damage to global growth.</p> <p>In the minutes, Fed policymakers showed concern about this as well as uncertainty about the implication of Trump&#8217;s stimulus on fiscal sustainability and real interest rates.</p> <p>&#8220;A strong majority of participants viewed the prospect of retaliatory trade actions by other countries, as well as other issues and uncertainties associated with trade policies, as downside risks for the U.S. economy,&#8221; the minutes read.</p> <p>Since the March meeting, Fed officials have largely adopted a wait-and-see attitude to trade policy, noting it is not yet clear if the tariffs will go into effect and their eventual size if implemented.</p> <p>The Fed is expected to keep rates unchanged at its next policy meeting on May 1-2, but investors overwhelmingly see another rate increase at the following one in mid June.</p> <p>Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir and Jason Lange; Additional reporting by Karen Brettell in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street stocks fell on Wednesday as possible U.S. military action against Syria stoked investor concerns about geopolitical risk to the American economy and minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee sparked worries about a more hawkish view on interest-rate increases.</p> <p>The decline followed two days of gains, driven by easing concerns about trade tensions between the United States and China.</p> <p>On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump warned Russia of imminent military action in Syria, declaring missiles &#8220;will be coming.&#8221;</p> <p>The rising tensions sent oil prices surging, boosting energy stocks .SPNY 1 percent. But the risk-off sentiment weighed on Treasury yields US10YT=RR, pushing financial stocks .SPSY down 1.3 percent.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s general nervousness about what might happen with any strikes and the potential escalation of tensions with Russia,&#8221; said Anwiti Bahuguna, senior portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments in Boston.</p> <p>The major Wall Street indexes edged even lower after minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee showed concern among a few of its members that rising inflation might require a faster pace of interest rate hikes than anticipated.</p> <p>Members of the Federal Reserve voted unanimously to raise borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point and expressed confidence that the economy would strengthen and inflation would rise in coming months.</p> <p>&#8220;The minutes were modestly negative,&#8221; said John Carey, portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer Asset Management in Boston. &#8220;People had been speculating that due to all the turbulence in the market because of geopolitical uncertainties that the Fed might consider pausing or slowing down the interest rate increases.&#8221;</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> fell 218.55 points, or 0.9 percent, to 24,189.45, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> lost 14.68 points, or 0.55 percent, to 2,642.19 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> dropped 25.28 points, or 0.36 percent, to 7,069.03.</p> <p>Investors said they are looking to earnings season to provide a sustained boost to U.S. stocks. Banks JPMorgan Chase &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>), Citigroup Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=C.N" type="external">C.N</a>) and Wells Fargo &amp;amp; Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>) will report quarterly results on Friday.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Analysts expect quarterly profits for S&amp;amp;P 500 companies to rise 18.5 percent from a year ago, which would be the biggest gain in seven years, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p> <p>Industrial distributor Fastenal ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FAST.O" type="external">FAST.O</a>) fell 6.2 percent after its earnings missed expectations. The stock was the biggest decliner on the S&amp;amp;P, followed by industry peer WW Grainger&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GWW.N" type="external">GWW.N</a>) 4.4 percent drop.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.03-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.06-to-1 ratio favored decliners.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 posted six new 52-week highs and two new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 46 new highs and 27 new lows.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24483.05 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes +293.60 (+1.21%) .DJI .SPX .IXIC JPM.N C.N <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.04 billion shares, compared with the 7.29 billion-share average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Dan Grebler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twelve U.S. senators on Thursday asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Sinclair Broadcasting Group ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBGI.O" type="external">SBGI.O</a>) for &#8220;deliberately distorting news&#8221; and asked the commission to pause its ongoing review of the company&#8217;s proposed $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRCO.N" type="external">TRCO.N</a>).</p> The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) logo is seen before the FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington February 26, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Sinclair, which is already the largest U.S. broadcaststation owner, announced plans in May 2017 to acquire Tribune&#8217;s 42 TV stations in 33 markets, extending its reach to 72 percent of American households.</p> <p>In a letter, the senators, 11 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders, expressed concern about local news anchors at Sinclair-owned stations around the country being forced to read company-mandated scripts. The scripts criticized &#8220;the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country&#8221; and have drawn fire.</p> <p>&#8220;We are concerned that Sinclair is engaged in a systematic news distortion operation that seeks to undermine freedom of the press and the robust localism and diversity of viewpoint that is the foundation of our national broadcasting laws,&#8221; the senators wrote. They added that it &#8220;may have violated the FCC&#8217;s longstanding policy against broadcast licensees deliberately distorting news by staging, slanting, or falsifying information.&#8221;</p> <p>In a letter to senators on Thursday reviewed by Reuters, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected their request, saying the agency does not have authority to revoke a license based on the content of a particular newscast. Pai made similar comments last year when President Donald Trump suggested NBC&#8217;s licenses could be challenged over its news reporting.</p> <p>&#8220;I can hardly think of an action more chilling of free speech than the federal government investigating a broadcast station because of disagreement with its news coverage or promotion of that coverage,&#8221; Pai wrote.</p> <p>After the scripts drew significant public attention, Trump tweeted on April 2 in defense of Sinclair: &#8220;Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC.&#8221;</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBGI.O" type="external">Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc</a> 29.5 SBGI.O Nasdaq +0.05 (+0.17%) SBGI.O TRCO.N <p>In February, Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat, said the FCC&#8217;s inspector general was investigating whether Pai was biased in Sinclair&#8217;s favor.</p> <p>Pallone in November asked the inspector general to investigate, citing a string of FCC decisions he said benefited Sinclair and a media report that Trump&#8217;s election campaign struck a deal with Sinclair for favorable coverage.</p> <p>Pai has repeatedly denied he has taken actions aimed at benefiting a single company and Sinclair has denied improper conduct.</p> <p>Sinclair declined to comment on the senators&#8217; letter, signed by the 11 Democrats, including Senators Maria Cantwell, Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal, as well as Sanders.</p> <p>Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tesla Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O" type="external">TSLA.O</a>) is targeting November 2019 as the start of production for its Model Y sport utility vehicle, with production in China to begin two years later, two sources told Reuters this week, shedding some light on the electric vehicle maker&#8217;s next project that could tax its resources and capacity.</p> FILE PHOTO: A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton, just outside London, Britain, February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo <p>Reuters has learned the Silicon Valley company led by Chief Executive Elon Musk is accepting preliminary bids for supplier contracts on the Model Y, a compact crossover companion to the Model 3 sedan. Tesla has given suppliers scant details about the program and had not provided a production time frame, but has now indicated the vehicle would begin to be built at its Fremont, California, plant in November of next year, the two sources with knowledge of the supply chain said.</p> <p>Tesla declined to comment.</p> <p>The new Model Y details show that Tesla is pushing ahead on plans to build a new vehicle even as it struggles to produce the Model 3, which launched in July. Despite initially attracting about 500,000 advance orders in the form of refundable deposits, the sedan&#8217;s launch has been plagued by delays and manufacturing bottlenecks, postponing Tesla&#8217;s anticipated revenue stream and exacerbating a cash crunch for the money-losing company.</p> <p>Earlier this month, Tesla tried to reassure investors, saying its weekly Model 3 output had doubled during the first quarter and that production rates would accelerate through the second quarter to 5,000 units per week, or about 250,000 vehicles per year.</p> <p>Competitive bidding is a crucial early step in the complicated process of automotive manufacturing. After the automaker discloses its plans, suppliers compete based on factors including cost and technology.</p> <p>Tesla issued to suppliers what is known as a &#8220;request for information,&#8221; or RFI, which gives a directional view of what will be needed.</p> <p>With a new car model, automakers normally choose parts suppliers two to two-and-a-half years before the start of production. At about one-and-a-half years away, a November 2019 start date for the Model Y would be considered &#8220;aggressive, but possible,&#8221; said one of the sources. A shorter timeline is potentially feasible, the source said, as the Model Y will be built on the same platform as the Model 3.</p> <p>Tesla is known for its aggressive timelines and high risk-tolerance in order to get cars to market quicker. To save time and cost, Tesla made the risky bet to skip a pre-production testing phase for the Model 3 in order to advance straight to production tooling, which is harder to fix if problems arise, as Reuters first reported last year.</p> <p>1 MILLION MODEL Ys?</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O" type="external">Tesla Inc</a> 294.08 TSLA.O Nasdaq -6.85 (-2.28%) TSLA.O <p>The Model Y is just one of many projects in the pipeline for Tesla, which also launched a Tesla Semi and a new Roadster in recent months. It is spending to build out its Gigafactory battery factory in Nevada, where battery module assembly issues have contributed to Model 3 delays, and also expects to build a factory in China in the near future.</p> <p>Tesla has said it will not need to raise additional funds this year. But Moody&#8217;s cited the likelihood of a capital raise of more than $2 billion in its downgrade of the company last month, spurred by concerns about cash reserves and Tesla&#8217;s ability to meet production targets. The company burned through $3.4 billion last year.</p> <p>Without giving a time frame, Musk in February told analysts the company would aim for production capacity of 1 million Model Ys per year.</p> <p>The two sources said suppliers could be estimating an annual production of 500,000 vehicles in the United States, with much lower volume in China, likely in the tens of thousands. Building 500,000 Model Ys per year would be the equivalent of what Musk has planned for total production in Fremont by the end of this year, although the company is nowhere near that volume.</p> <p>Suppliers generally use automakers&#8217; production targets to formulate a good guess on how many vehicles will actually be built, based on the individual automaker&#8217;s capability to execute and consumer demand. One of the sources said Tesla&#8217;s RFI was light on details compared with other automakers, and did not provide volume estimates for the Model Y.</p> <p>Musk said in February that capital investments related to the SUV would begin toward the end of 2018. Tesla has said its current factory in Fremont could produce 10,000 vehicles a week - what the company hopes it will build in the Model 3 alone some time in 2018 - without the need for a new building, although some in the industry believe there is not enough room at the plant to support that volume.</p> <p>Any major Model Y program would likely require a new facility, although low volume of the Model Y could be built on the existing Model 3 line, the sources said.</p> <p>Reporting by Alexandria Sage; Editing by Matthew Lewis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

METALS-Shanghai aluminium prices climb after China GDP boost Federal Reserve policymakers all saw strengthening economy, inflation: minutes Wall Street falls on Syria concerns, interest rate worries Twelve senators seek FCC probe of Sinclair news scripts, pause in Tribune review Exclusive: Tesla targets November 2019 for start of Model Y production - sources

https://reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-shanghai-aluminium-prices-climb-after-china-gdp-boost-idUSL3N1PE1FA

2018-01-19

2least

The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters All of the Federal Reserve8217s policymakers felt that the US economy would firm further and that inflation would rise in the coming months minutes of the central bank8217s last policy meeting on March 2021 released on Wednesday showed FILE PHOTO Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meetings in Washington US March 21 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein The readout of the meeting at which the Fed unanimously voted to raise borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point also showed that policymakers were wary about the impact of the Trump administration8217s trade and fiscal policies 8220All participants agreed that the outlook for the economy beyond the current quarter had strengthened in recent months8221 the Fed said in the minutes 8220In addition all participants expected inflation on a 12month basis to move up in coming months8221 US stocks Treasuries and the dollar were little changed following their publication 8220From a market sense there8217s not much for people to take away here they are still looking for a gradual pace of hikes I think the debate rages on whether that means three this year of four this year8221 said Gennadiy Goldberg an interest rates strategist at TD Securities in New York Related Coverage Despite trade worries Fed officials see risks as little changed Factbox Fed staff forecasts from FOMC minutes Instant View Minutes from March FOMC meeting The Fed8217s target range for its benchmark lending rate is currently between 150 and 175 percent The increase in March was the sixth rise since the central bank began a tightening cycle back in December 2015 As the economy has strengthened the Fed has upped the pace of hikes It sees another two rate rises this year although quarterly forecasts at the last meeting showed more officials than in December were supportive of three more hikes in 2018 The Fed8217s preferred measure of inflation currently sits at 16 percent and has undershot its 2 percent target rate for six years but various indicators have recently pointed to an uptick in price pressures Policymakers also see additional impetus from an economy in which the labor market is tightening the dollar weakening and the stimulus from a 15 trillion income tax cut package and increased government spending yet to impact on the economy Earlier on Wednesday one of the Fed8217s key measures of consumer prices the socalled core CPI rose 21 percent yearonyear in March the largest advance since February 2017 after increasing 18 percent in February US TRADE POLICY WORRIES Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last Friday that the central bank would likely need to keep raising rates to keep inflation under control but also pledged to stick to a gradual path However the meeting minutes showed that already some Fed officials worried the central bank would have to move faster than previously expected A number said the outlook for the economy and inflation could lead to a slightly steeper path of rate increases over the next few years and some suggested that at a given point the Fed might have to change its statement language to acknowledge monetary policy would have to move to a neutral or 8220restraining factor8221 for economic activity Several thought it would likely also become appropriate at some point for interest rates to rise above the Fed8217s longerrun estimate for a time One potential headache for Fed officials remains threats of titfortat tariffs worth tens of billions of dollars between the Trump administration and China which if implemented could damage US growth and raise consumer prices Those tensions have roiled financial markets over potential damage to global growth In the minutes Fed policymakers showed concern about this as well as uncertainty about the implication of Trump8217s stimulus on fiscal sustainability and real interest rates 8220A strong majority of participants viewed the prospect of retaliatory trade actions by other countries as well as other issues and uncertainties associated with trade policies as downside risks for the US economy8221 the minutes read Since the March meeting Fed officials have largely adopted a waitandsee attitude to trade policy noting it is not yet clear if the tariffs will go into effect and their eventual size if implemented The Fed is expected to keep rates unchanged at its next policy meeting on May 12 but investors overwhelmingly see another rate increase at the following one in mid June Reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir and Jason Lange Additional reporting by Karen Brettell in New York Editing by Andrea Ricci Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Wall Street stocks fell on Wednesday as possible US military action against Syria stoked investor concerns about geopolitical risk to the American economy and minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee sparked worries about a more hawkish view on interestrate increases The decline followed two days of gains driven by easing concerns about trade tensions between the United States and China On Wednesday US President Donald Trump warned Russia of imminent military action in Syria declaring missiles 8220will be coming8221 The rising tensions sent oil prices surging boosting energy stocks SPNY 1 percent But the riskoff sentiment weighed on Treasury yields US10YTRR pushing financial stocks SPSY down 13 percent 8220There8217s general nervousness about what might happen with any strikes and the potential escalation of tensions with Russia8221 said Anwiti Bahuguna senior portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle Investments in Boston The major Wall Street indexes edged even lower after minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee showed concern among a few of its members that rising inflation might require a faster pace of interest rate hikes than anticipated Members of the Federal Reserve voted unanimously to raise borrowing costs by a quarter percentage point and expressed confidence that the economy would strengthen and inflation would rise in coming months 8220The minutes were modestly negative8221 said John Carey portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer Asset Management in Boston 8220People had been speculating that due to all the turbulence in the market because of geopolitical uncertainties that the Fed might consider pausing or slowing down the interest rate increases8221 The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI fell 21855 points or 09 percent to 2418945 the SampampP 500 SPX lost 1468 points or 055 percent to 264219 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC dropped 2528 points or 036 percent to 706903 Investors said they are looking to earnings season to provide a sustained boost to US stocks Banks JPMorgan Chase ampamp Co JPMN Citigroup Inc CN and Wells Fargo ampamp Co WFCN will report quarterly results on Friday Slideshow 2 Images Analysts expect quarterly profits for SampampP 500 companies to rise 185 percent from a year ago which would be the biggest gain in seven years according to Thomson Reuters IBES Industrial distributor Fastenal FASTO fell 62 percent after its earnings missed expectations The stock was the biggest decliner on the SampampP followed by industry peer WW Grainger8217s GWWN 44 percent drop Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 103to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 106to1 ratio favored decliners The SampampP 500 posted six new 52week highs and two new lows the Nasdaq Composite recorded 46 new highs and 27 new lows Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 2448305 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 29360 121 DJI SPX IXIC JPMN CN Volume on US exchanges was 604 billion shares compared with the 729 billionshare average for the full session over the last 20 trading days Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru Editing by Arun Koyyur and Dan Grebler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Twelve US senators on Thursday asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate Sinclair Broadcasting Group SBGIO for 8220deliberately distorting news8221 and asked the commission to pause its ongoing review of the company8217s proposed 39 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co TRCON The Federal Communications Commission FCC logo is seen before the FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington February 26 2015 REUTERSYuri Gripas Sinclair which is already the largest US broadcaststation owner announced plans in May 2017 to acquire Tribune8217s 42 TV stations in 33 markets extending its reach to 72 percent of American households In a letter the senators 11 Democrats and independent Bernie Sanders expressed concern about local news anchors at Sinclairowned stations around the country being forced to read companymandated scripts The scripts criticized 8220the troubling trend of irresponsible one sided news stories plaguing our country8221 and have drawn fire 8220We are concerned that Sinclair is engaged in a systematic news distortion operation that seeks to undermine freedom of the press and the robust localism and diversity of viewpoint that is the foundation of our national broadcasting laws8221 the senators wrote They added that it 8220may have violated the FCC8217s longstanding policy against broadcast licensees deliberately distorting news by staging slanting or falsifying information8221 In a letter to senators on Thursday reviewed by Reuters FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rejected their request saying the agency does not have authority to revoke a license based on the content of a particular newscast Pai made similar comments last year when President Donald Trump suggested NBC8217s licenses could be challenged over its news reporting 8220I can hardly think of an action more chilling of free speech than the federal government investigating a broadcast station because of disagreement with its news coverage or promotion of that coverage8221 Pai wrote After the scripts drew significant public attention Trump tweeted on April 2 in defense of Sinclair 8220Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC8221 Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc 295 SBGIO Nasdaq 005 017 SBGIO TRCON In February Representative Frank Pallone a Democrat said the FCC8217s inspector general was investigating whether Pai was biased in Sinclair8217s favor Pallone in November asked the inspector general to investigate citing a string of FCC decisions he said benefited Sinclair and a media report that Trump8217s election campaign struck a deal with Sinclair for favorable coverage Pai has repeatedly denied he has taken actions aimed at benefiting a single company and Sinclair has denied improper conduct Sinclair declined to comment on the senators8217 letter signed by the 11 Democrats including Senators Maria Cantwell Tom Udall Elizabeth Warren Cory Booker and Richard Blumenthal as well as Sanders Reporting by David Shepardson Editing by Dan Grebler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters Tesla Inc TSLAO is targeting November 2019 as the start of production for its Model Y sport utility vehicle with production in China to begin two years later two sources told Reuters this week shedding some light on the electric vehicle maker8217s next project that could tax its resources and capacity FILE PHOTO A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton just outside London Britain February 7 2018 REUTERSHannah McKayFile Photo Reuters has learned the Silicon Valley company led by Chief Executive Elon Musk is accepting preliminary bids for supplier contracts on the Model Y a compact crossover companion to the Model 3 sedan Tesla has given suppliers scant details about the program and had not provided a production time frame but has now indicated the vehicle would begin to be built at its Fremont California plant in November of next year the two sources with knowledge of the supply chain said Tesla declined to comment The new Model Y details show that Tesla is pushing ahead on plans to build a new vehicle even as it struggles to produce the Model 3 which launched in July Despite initially attracting about 500000 advance orders in the form of refundable deposits the sedan8217s launch has been plagued by delays and manufacturing bottlenecks postponing Tesla8217s anticipated revenue stream and exacerbating a cash crunch for the moneylosing company Earlier this month Tesla tried to reassure investors saying its weekly Model 3 output had doubled during the first quarter and that production rates would accelerate through the second quarter to 5000 units per week or about 250000 vehicles per year Competitive bidding is a crucial early step in the complicated process of automotive manufacturing After the automaker discloses its plans suppliers compete based on factors including cost and technology Tesla issued to suppliers what is known as a 8220request for information8221 or RFI which gives a directional view of what will be needed With a new car model automakers normally choose parts suppliers two to twoandahalf years before the start of production At about oneandahalf years away a November 2019 start date for the Model Y would be considered 8220aggressive but possible8221 said one of the sources A shorter timeline is potentially feasible the source said as the Model Y will be built on the same platform as the Model 3 Tesla is known for its aggressive timelines and high risktolerance in order to get cars to market quicker To save time and cost Tesla made the risky bet to skip a preproduction testing phase for the Model 3 in order to advance straight to production tooling which is harder to fix if problems arise as Reuters first reported last year 1 MILLION MODEL Ys Tesla Inc 29408 TSLAO Nasdaq 685 228 TSLAO The Model Y is just one of many projects in the pipeline for Tesla which also launched a Tesla Semi and a new Roadster in recent months It is spending to build out its Gigafactory battery factory in Nevada where battery module assembly issues have contributed to Model 3 delays and also expects to build a factory in China in the near future Tesla has said it will not need to raise additional funds this year But Moody8217s cited the likelihood of a capital raise of more than 2 billion in its downgrade of the company last month spurred by concerns about cash reserves and Tesla8217s ability to meet production targets The company burned through 34 billion last year Without giving a time frame Musk in February told analysts the company would aim for production capacity of 1 million Model Ys per year The two sources said suppliers could be estimating an annual production of 500000 vehicles in the United States with much lower volume in China likely in the tens of thousands Building 500000 Model Ys per year would be the equivalent of what Musk has planned for total production in Fremont by the end of this year although the company is nowhere near that volume Suppliers generally use automakers8217 production targets to formulate a good guess on how many vehicles will actually be built based on the individual automaker8217s capability to execute and consumer demand One of the sources said Tesla8217s RFI was light on details compared with other automakers and did not provide volume estimates for the Model Y Musk said in February that capital investments related to the SUV would begin toward the end of 2018 Tesla has said its current factory in Fremont could produce 10000 vehicles a week what the company hopes it will build in the Model 3 alone some time in 2018 without the need for a new building although some in the industry believe there is not enough room at the plant to support that volume Any major Model Y program would likely require a new facility although low volume of the Model Y could be built on the existing Model 3 line the sources said Reporting by Alexandria Sage Editing by Matthew Lewis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&amp;amp;search_source=search_form&amp;amp;version=llv1&amp;amp;anyorall=all&amp;amp;safesearch=1&amp;amp;searchterm=United+States&amp;amp;search_group=#id=77507947&amp;amp;src=1QnUCMSvgNRv8yshIWr4NA-2-91"&amp;gt;Maximus256&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;/Shutterstock; &amp;lt;a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&amp;amp;search_source=search_form&amp;amp;version=llv1&amp;amp;anyorall=all&amp;amp;safesearch=1&amp;amp;searchterm=closed&amp;amp;search_group=#id=119825899&amp;amp;src=5bHUEOIJY3iazTfIkKfsDA-1-3"&amp;gt;Francesco Corticchia&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;/Shutterstock</p> <p /> <p>Starting March 1, federal programs and their state and local beneficiaries began grappling with $85.4 billion in cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Some programs have been spared&#8212;Congress voted to restore tuition assistance for members of the armed services and, just last week, restored funding to the Federal Aviation Administration to forestall flight-delaying furloughs. But for the most part, the cuts have remained intact. Six weeks in, we took a look at how sequestration is has impacted 50 states, from canceled festivals to shuttered Head Start programs to massive layoffs.</p> <p><a href="http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2013/04/north_alabama_federal_public_d.html" type="external">Birmingham</a>: North Albama public defenders office furloughing 11 of 15 employees.</p> <p><a href="http://blog.al.com/breaking/2013/03/sequestration_cuts_huntsville.html" type="external">Huntsville</a>: Huntsville Housing Authority, which provides heating, plumbing, and financial assistance, to serve 300 fewer people.</p> <p><a href="http://www.alabamas13.com/story/22066793/sequester-cuts-force-jeffco-headstart-program-to-close-for-10-weeks" type="external">Jefferson County</a>: Head Start program closing for 10 weeks, affecting 276 kids. Fifteen staffers will be furloughed.</p> <p><a href="http://articles.ktuu.com/2013-03-28/alaska-natives_38107521" type="external">Sitka</a>: Bill Brady Healing Center, which treats Native Alaskans for drug and alcohol addiction, closed as part of $3.5 million in cuts to the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Corporation.</p> <p><a href="http://kucb.org/news/article/federal-budget-cuts-curb-alaska-volcano-monitoring/" type="external">Fairbanks</a>: Alaska Volcano Observatory is cutting back on volcano and earthquake monitoring.</p> <p><a href="http://www.ktoo.org/2013/04/10/eielson-f-16s-grounded-by-budget-cuts/" type="external">Eielson Air Force Base</a>: 18th Aggressor Squadron will be grounded until the end of the fiscal year. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2013/mar/19/sequester-hitting-state-schools/" type="external">Window Rock</a>: School district eliminated 40 positions due to budget cuts, considering eliminating 65 more and closing three schools.</p> <p><a href="http://www.azjournal.com/2013/03/06/petrified-forest-is-ready-for-sequestration-cuts/" type="external">Holbrook</a>: Hiring freeze at Petrified Forest National Park delays filling five spots.</p> <p><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/arizona-sequester-sequestration-defense-90593.html" type="external">Phoenix</a>: 30 research engineers at a defense contractor laid off. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/head-start-sequestration_n_2925014.html" type="external">Fayetteville</a>: Head Start program ends 13 days early.</p> <p><a href="http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/apr/04/hot-springs-feel-sequester-cutbacks/?f=trilakes" type="external">Hot Springs</a>: Campgrounds at Hot Springs National Park are closed for the summer, hours of operation will be scaled back, and rangers won&#8217;t plant any trees despite losing thousands of them in the park in last winter&#8217;s storms.</p> <p><a href="http://www.katv.com/story/21460560/sequestration-could-impact-federal-prison-in-east-arkansas" type="external">Forrest City</a>: Federal prison curtailing drug treatment and vocational programs, furloughing employees. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/grade/x511835903/Head-Start-families-feeling-impact-of-sequester" type="external">Bakersfield</a>: Community Action Partnership of Kern, which receives 77 percent of its funding from Washington, forced to shut down its 44 Head Start programs two weeks early.</p> <p><a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/21/55921.htm" type="external">Eureka</a>: Federal courts will begin mandating one furlough per month at locations in San Francisco, San Jose, and the Lost Coast.</p> <p><a href="http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/12/Sequestration-Navy-HII-continentalmaritime/" type="external">San Diego</a>: Shipbuilder Continental Maritime laid off 185 employees. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20130308/NEWS01/303090013/Budget-cuts-digging-Rocky-Mountain-National-Park" type="external">Estes Park</a>: More than $600,000 in cuts forces Rocky Mountain National Park to close Glacier Basin Campground for the summer, and leave the famous Trail Ridge Road inaccessible.</p> <p><a href="http://rapsinews.com/judicial_news/20130401/266888151.html" type="external">Denver</a>: US District Court announced mandatory furloughs in April.</p> <p><a href="http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22822383/colorado-springs-iss-lays-off-40-blames-sequestration" type="external">Colorado Springs</a>: Intelligent Software Solutions Inc. laid off 40 employees in March after its Air Force contract was put on ice. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/investigations/LWRD--202445131.html" type="external">Bristol</a>: Housing authority reduces funding for Section 8 vouchers by 8 percent, lengthening the waiting list.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/health/medicare-sequester-impacts-patients#.UWclnBkZ-e0" type="external">Manchester</a>: Private medical practice informs patients it can no longer treat people who are on Medicare.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/03/federal-defenders-face-deep-cuts-delays-in-cases-86616.html" type="external">Hartford</a>: Employees at public defenders office furloughed 28 days between April 1 and September 30. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.wdde.org/41566-dsu-financial-aid-issues" type="external">Dover</a>: Sequester cuts limiting the number of grants available to incoming students at Delaware State University.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wdde.org/40780-dover-air-force-base-comander" type="external">Dover</a>: 700 civilian employees at Dover Air Force Base to be furloughed beginning in April.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wdde.org/42621-delaware-hospice-layoffs" type="external">Wilmington</a>: 52 employees of Delaware Hospice laid off in part due to cuts to Medicare reimbursements. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20130409/NEWS/304099963/1040?Title=Parents-concerned-about-cuts-to-Head-Start" type="external">Seville</a>: Head Start program closing for summer two weeks early.</p> <p><a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/head-start-staffers-will-forgo-retirement-money-to-maintain-services/2112173" type="external">Brooksville</a>: Head Start program won&#8217;t reduce the number of kids it serves&#8212;but it&#8217;ll stop paying into employees&#8217; retirement accounts beginning in April, affecting 225 people.</p> <p><a href="http://www.winknews.com/Local-Florida/2013-04-16/Sequestration-cuts-100-Lee-County-School-district-jobs#.UXqqzYIZ-e0" type="external">Fort Myers</a>: Lee County school district to lay off 100 employees, including 15 teachers. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://eastatlanta.patch.com/articles/sequestration-cuts-mean-reductions-at-mlk-historic-site" type="external">Atlanta</a>: MLK National Historic Site reducing number of student employees, and freezing hiring for key spots.</p> <p><a href="http://www.gpb.org/news/2013/04/12/sequester-hits-georgia-universities#" type="external">Atlanta</a>: Funding for a cancer research project at Emory University reduced from 12 months to 6.</p> <p><a href="http://www.mysouthwestga.com/news/story.aspx?list=196423&amp;amp;id=879921#.UXqtm4IZ-e0" type="external">Albany</a>: 10 disability aides and three family service workers will be laid off due to cuts to the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/blog/morning_call/2013/03/hawaiis-pearl-harbor-hawaii.html" type="external">Volcano</a>: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park canceling teacher workshops, not hiring summer staff.</p> <p><a href="http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20130410__Air_Force_combat_units_grounded.html" type="external">Honolulu</a>: Hawaii Air National Guard grounded flying exercises for two weeks.</p> <p><a href="http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20130411_Rail_project_loses_14_million_in_sequestration_cuts.html" type="external">Honolulu</a>: Rail project loses $14 million in funding. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.nwcn.com/news/idaho/202811151.html" type="external">Mountain Home</a>: F-15E Strike Eagle planes at Mountain Home Air Force Base are grounded until October 1.</p> <p><a href="http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2013/apr/25/three-idaho-stream-gauges-shut-down-may-1-riggins-gauge-spared-cut/" type="external">Lapwai</a>: Water gauge on Lapwai Creek one of three USGS gauges being closed in the state, affecting agriculture industries and flood control.</p> <p><a href="http://www.idahoreporter.com/2013/idaho-sequester-cuts-impact-conservation-programs-air-national-guard/" type="external">Boise</a>: 800 civilian technicians at Gowen Field Air National Guard Base will take two-week furloughs. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.bnd.com/2013/04/08/2568428/civilian-furloughs-at-scotts-gaurd.html" type="external">Belleville</a>: 1,300 civilian employees of the Illinois National Guard and Air National Guard to take unpaid two-week furloughs in June.</p> <p><a href="http://www.kwqc.com/story/21830022/rock-island-arsenal-workers-notified-of-job-cuts" type="external">Rock Island</a>: 175 employees of the Army&#8217;s Rock Island Arsenal being laid off or seeing their contracts expire.</p> <p><a href="http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/illinois/education/granite-city-school-board-lays-off-teachers-others/article_4db98f7d-8156-544d-81c8-a3004f5ec8bf.html" type="external">Granite City</a>: School board lays off nine teachers due to budget cuts. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/monroe-county-head-start-cut-spots-employees-47522/" type="external">Bloomington</a>: Head Start program in Monroe County ending one month early, eliminating 12 spots and laying off 15 employees.</p> <p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-03-13/36-ind-dot-children-cut-from-head-start-programs" type="external">Columbus</a>: Holding a lottery to determine who will remain in the local Head Start program after 36 slots were cut in two cities.</p> <p><a href="http://www.in.gov/activecalendar/EventList.aspx?fromdate=4/1/2013&amp;amp;todate=4/30/2013&amp;amp;display=Month&amp;amp;type=public&amp;amp;eventidn=88699&amp;amp;view=EventDetails&amp;amp;information_id=176186&amp;amp;print=print" type="external">Indianapolis</a>: 1,000 military technicians to take once-a-week furloughs. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.kcautv.com/story/21771975/sioux-city-schools-hit-hard-with-budget-cuts" type="external">Sioux City</a>: Five special-ed staffers, 12 reading staffers, and 15 staffers with the Early Intervention Block Grant program were laid off.</p> <p><a href="http://www.kwwl.com/story/21762170/2013/03/21/sequestration-cuts-could-hit-dububue-head-start-pre-schools" type="external">Dubuque</a>: New Section 8 housing vouchers put on hold.</p> <p><a href="http://wqad.com/2013/03/21/some-local-head-start-pre-schools-will-take-furlough-days/" type="external">Muscatine</a>: Head Start programs closing 12 days early in Scott, Clinton, Cedar, and Muscatine Counties, affecting 420 kids. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?stationid=3580&amp;amp;DateTime=03%2F29%2F2013+02%3A23%3A12&amp;amp;mediapreload=14&amp;amp;playclip=true" type="external">Wichita</a>: Head Start services stopped for 71 kids, and 10 staff positions have been eliminated.</p> <p><a href="http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/mar/15/federal-budget-cuts-cost-kansas-federal-courthouse/" type="external">Topeka</a>: A 14 percent drop in funding for Kansas&#8217; federal court is creating a backlog in cases, and longer delays before defendants can meet with their lawyers.</p> <p><a href="http://www.khi.org/news/2013/apr/09/sequester-takes-toll-kansas-head-start-programs/" type="external">Eureka</a>: Head Start program closed for good. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Henderson</a>: Head Start ending its program a month early.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/90-Jobs-lost-in-Lexington-due-to-sequester-202170301.html?ref=301" type="external">Lexington</a>: Ceradyne, which manufactures ceramics for body armor, laid off nearly 100 workers.</p> <p><a href="http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130418/NEWS0103/304180004/Sequester-cuts-hit-NKY-neighborhood-centers" type="external">Newport</a>: Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission is closing its eight locations for low-income families on Fridays. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.ktbs.com/news/Defense-cuts-set-sites-on-Barksdale-education-program/-/144844/19495586/-/12qt2o8/-/index.html" type="external">Barksdale Air Force Base</a>: 10 employees of the STEM outreach program Starbase Louisiana facing layoffs unless funding is restored.</p> <p><a href="http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20130413/NEWS01/130412032/Region-Briefs-Author-speak-Stonewall-Branch-Library" type="external">Natchitoches</a>: Staff reduced at Cane River Creole National Historical Park.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/03/hano_recalls_700_section_8_vou.html" type="external">New Orleans</a>: New Orleans Housing Authority recalling 700 Section 8 vouchers for low-income families. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/09/news/midcoast/federal-budget-cuts-loom-as-a-big-hit-for-maine-head-start-families/" type="external">Bath</a>: Head Start program closing eight days early.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wcsh6.com/news/article/238236/2/MPBN-cuts-MaineWatch-program-lays-off-10-people" type="external">Portland</a>: Maine Public Broadcasting to lay off 10 employees, in part due to sequestration.</p> <p><a href="http://www.coastaljournal.com/website/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=4114:sequestration-forces-cuts-in-elderly-care" type="external">Rockland</a>: Meals on Wheels program for seniors serving fewer meals and implementing a waiting list. Methodist Conference Home eliminating noontime meal program. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bs-md-public-defenders-sequestration-20130403,0,27375.story" type="external">Baltimore</a>: Public defenders began serving two-week furloughs in April, after seeing budget slashed $500,000.</p> <p><a href="http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20130413/OPINION02/304130031/Robert-B-Reich-stealth-sequester" type="external">Adelphi</a>: 2,000 civilian technicians received one-day-a-week furloughs, starting in April.</p> <p><a href="http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/03/20/sequester-effects-start-to-be-felt-in-baltimore/" type="external">Fort Meade</a>: 900 civilian technicians scheduled to receive 22-day furloughs. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.mvgazette.com/news/2013/03/14/sequester-cuts-takes-bite-out-head-start-tribal-services" type="external">Martha&#8217;s Vineyard</a>: Ended Head Start one month early; plans on starting it one month late.</p> <p><a href="http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/03/federal-sequester-cuts-start-hit-federal-court-system-massachusetts/ggElPlBiIPkqVVMAB4C3rI/story.html" type="external">Boston</a>: Employees in public defender&#8217;s offices furloughed for 16.5 days.</p> <p><a href="http://bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/south/2013/04/03/federal-sequester-about-first-locally-round-first-losses-program-about-first-round-cuts-about-round-first-round-cuts-about-descend/aDr5uYFrk202vNjXT0zA8N/story.html" type="external">Natick</a>: 1,500 employees at US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center will see their put cut by 20 percent, will release 57 student employees, and let 71 contracts expire. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.dailypress.net/page/content.detail/id/541597/Local-Head-Start-loses--150-000.html?nav=5003" type="external">Escanaba</a>: Head Start programs closing three and a half weeks early in Menominee, Delta, and Schoolcraft counties, affecting 245 families.</p> <p><a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/snow_cover_sequester_cuts_dela.html" type="external">Glen Arbor</a>: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore seasonal staff reduced by five.</p> <p><a href="http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/news/story.aspx?id=880457#.UWhS6BkZ-e0" type="external">Marquette</a>: Head Start programs closing three weeks early in Marquette and Alger county. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/263777/" type="external">Cloquet</a>: Fon du Lac Objiwe School laid off five teachers (including two special-education staffers), made three teachers part time, and increased class sizes after losing $410,000 in funding.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/03/national-park-service-sequestration-update-closed-campgrounds-fewer-seasonal-employees-sunday-closur22903" type="external">International Falls</a>: Delays in snow removal at Voyageurs National Park.</p> <p><a href="http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/198883761.html?refer=y" type="external">Red Lake</a>: White Earth Reservation forced to lay off security guards in district that was the site of a 2005 school shooting that left seven students dead in 2005. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2013/03/sequestration_cuts_push_jackso.html" type="external">Jackson County</a>: Head Start closing two weeks early, affecting 717 kids.</p> <p><a href="http://djournal.com/view/full_story/22184775/article-Federal-court-feels-budget--impact?instance=home_news_right" type="external">Oxford</a>: Public defenders accepting furloughs and pay cuts.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wjtv.com/story/21819227/how-the-sequestration-is-affecting-the-natchez-trace" type="external">Tupelo</a>: Natchez Trace Parkway not hiring 15 seasonal employees or filling five full-time vacancies. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://stcharles.patch.com/articles/sequester-impact-head-start-facility-closing-job-cuts-coming-friday" type="external">St. Charles</a>: Head Start facility closed on April 12, while reducing the number of kids served by 65, and laying off 18 staffers.</p> <p><a href="http://dailyjournalonline.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/ironton-head-start-hit-by-sequestration/article_ba762f2c-98c9-11e2-8ea5-001a4bcf887a.html?comment_form=true" type="external">Ironton</a>: Iron County Head Start closing three weeks early due to budget cuts.</p> <p><a href="http://fox2now.com/2013/03/10/budget-cuts-force-job-cuts-at-historic-missouri-battlefield/" type="external">Brookline</a>: Wilson&#8217;s Creek National Battlefield eliminating its Youth Conservation Corps program for inner-city kids. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-03-21/local/37904086_1_sequester-tribal-leaders-million-in-additional-cuts" type="external">Poplar</a>: Fort Peck Indian Reservation can&#8217;t hire a reading teacher, although half the kids ride below grade level; it can&#8217;t hire a second guidance counselor despite 20 suicide attempts.</p> <p><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/21/usace-may-have-to-dole-out-overtime-to-cover-for-furloughed-power-plant/" type="external">Fort Peck</a>: Workers at Army Corps of Engineers dam notified by email that they will be forced to take unpaid leave.</p> <p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/sequestration-cancer-clinics_n_3045108.html" type="external">Kalispell</a>: Glacier Oncology, the state&#8217;s only private cancer clinic, says patients will have to travel to Washington, DC, for treatment. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.ketv.com/news/local-news/Neb-federal-court-cuts-could-hamper-cases/-/9674510/19720818/-/vbgiq6z/-/index.html" type="external">Omaha</a>: Public defender&#8217;s office laid off four employees.</p> <p><a href="http://www.starherald.com/news/regional_statewide/nebraska-air-show-cut/article_f73c3a28-9d74-11e2-b032-001a4bcf887a.html" type="external">Bellevue</a>: Defenders of Freedom Open House and Air Show, which normally draws 150,000 people to Offutt Air Force Base, has been canceled.</p> <p><a href="http://nebraskaradionetwork.com/2013/03/27/federal-facility-in-se-nebraska-copes-with-sequester-cuts/" type="external">Beatrice</a>: 5 percent cuts at Homestead National Monument have forced the park to cut youth staff and eliminate summer ranger positions. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2013/03/25/news/budget-axe-nicks-blm-wild-horse-adoption-center.html" type="external">Reno</a>: National Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Center scaling back weekend hours.</p> <p><a href="http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2013/03/19/nellis-will-feel-affects-of-sequestration/" type="external">Nellis Air Force Base</a>: 600 civilian technicians to be furloughed in April.</p> <p><a href="http://www.mynews4.com/news/story/Parents-speak-out-against-cutting-special-educatio/sQXTDWlnOUeqb9iQt9kfaQ.cspx" type="external">Reno</a>: Washoe County School District laying off five special education staffers. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://portsmouth-nh.patch.com/articles/sequestration-cuts-shipyard-s-stem-outreach" type="external">Portsmouth</a>: Funding for the Naval shipyard&#8217;s STEM outreach program to middle- and high school girls has been eliminated.</p> <p><a href="http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20130317-NEWS-303170361" type="external">Berlin</a>: National Guard civilian technicians here among 700 who will receive a 22 percent pay cut from now until September.</p> <p><a href="http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20130422-NEWS-130429942" type="external">Concord</a>: Emergency unemployment benefits will be cut by 17 percent starting April 28. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.nj.com/warrenreporter/index.ssf/2013/04/sequestration_cuts_impact_nati.html" type="external">Layton</a>: Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area hiring 17 fewer people during summer months.</p> <p><a href="http://www.northjersey.com/paterson/Sequestration_cuts_may_push_Paterson_tenants_off_rent_subsidy_program.html" type="external">Paterson</a>: Froze Section 8 housing voucher program, dipped into reserves to offset $232,000 in cuts.</p> <p><a href="http://mendham-chester.patch.com/articles/sequestration-cuts-may-force-morris-head-start-to-turn-away-kids" type="external">Morristown</a>: Morris County Head Start program considering laying off five teachers and reducing the number of students served by as many as 34. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.koat.com/news/new-mexico/albuquerque/Cancer-Center-facing-sequester-cuts/-/9153728/19695320/-/sqh27/-/index.html" type="external">Albuquerque</a>: 300 patients at Cancer Center informed they&#8217;ll have to go elsewhere due to Medicare cuts.</p> <p><a href="http://www.daily-times.com/farmington-news/ci_22931109/sequestration-forces-empty-positions-at-bureau-land-management" type="external">Farmington</a>: 15 vacant positions at the Bureau of Land Management will go unfilled.</p> <p><a href="http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/article_9de00b27-78c9-5895-bdc9-a56195402653.html" type="external">Los Alamos</a>: 14 of 60 employees at Bandelier National Monument received furlough notices. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130407/CITYANDREGION/130409327/1109" type="external">Buffalo</a>: US District Court for the Western District of New York no longer hearing criminal cases on Fridays; staffers at public defender&#8217;s office will receive staggered 22-day furloughs.</p> <p><a href="http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/653619/sequester-cuts-impact-housing-authority/" type="external">Rochester</a>: Housing authority cutting 600 vouchers after losing $2.5 million in funding.</p> <p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/03/cancer-clinics-are-turning-away-thousands-of-medicare-patients-blame-the-sequester/?hpid=z1" type="external">Suffolk County</a>: North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates reduced the number of Medicare patients it treated by 1/3. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.wellsvilledaily.com/news/x609795289/Allegany-County-Head-Start-absorbs-167-000-in-federal-cuts" type="external">Belmont</a>: Allegany County Head Start program ending one week early, staff losing between a week and a month of work.</p> <p><a href="http://www.witn.com/news/headlines/Seymour-Johnson-Squadron-Cant-Fly-Because-Of-Sequestration-Cuts-202699451.html?ref=451" type="external">Goldsboro</a>: F-15E squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base grounded.</p> <p><a href="http://www.digtriad.com/rss/article/279376/57/Federal-Budget-Cuts-Hit-Industries-Of-The-Blind" type="external">Greensboro</a>: Industries for the Blind, which gets 98 percent of its business from the government and has a mostly blind workforce, laid off 40 employees. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/sequester-cuts-off-famous-north-dakota-view/article_5d0a1160-9328-11e2-b959-0019bb2963f4.html" type="external">Medora</a>: Painted Canyon Overlook, one of the most popular sites at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, is closed indefinitely.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/77369/group/homepage/" type="external">Devils Lake</a>: 70 Air National Guard civilian technicians to be furloughed in May.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/78313/" type="external">Fargo</a>: The Fargo AirSho, which draws 30,000 visitors annually, may be canceled after the Blue Angels were grounded for the summer. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.advertiser-tribune.com/page/content.detail/id/554122/Head-Start-gets-early-end-this-year.html?nav=5005" type="external">Tiffin</a>: Head Start program closing one week early; 140 staff to be laid off over four-county area; 1,100 kids affected.</p> <p><a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2013/04/11/sequester-causes-blind-employees-to-be.html" type="external">Cincinnati</a>: Cuts to the General Services Administration led to 28 layoffs at the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired&#8217;s Industries Progam.</p> <p><a href="http://www.fox19.com/story/21823396/sequester-cuts-nearly-200-kids-from-local-head-start-program" type="external">Cincinnati</a>: 200 kids are being dropped from the city&#8217;s Head Start program. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://kfor.com/2013/03/22/head-start-program-cuts-due-to-sequester/" type="external">Oklahoma City</a>: Six Head Start employees laid off.</p> <p><a href="http://newsok.com/oklahoma-labor-department-will-close-tulsa-office/article/3771575" type="external">Tulsa</a>: State department of labor closing its city office, leaving 11 employees the choice of taking a buyout or relocating.</p> <p><a href="http://www.swoknews.com/news-top/local/item/6038-almost-300-jobs-in-danger" type="external">Lawton</a>: 26 Northrop Grumman employees received layoff notices in March due to the impending expiration of a DoD contract. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.katu.com/news/local/No-Navy-fleet-during-Rose-Festival-because-of-sequester-202229581.html" type="external">Portland</a>: Navy announces it&#8217;s skipping the city&#8217;s annual Rose Festival.</p> <p><a href="http://www.kobi5.com/component/zoo/item/local-recreation-spot-opening-delayed.html" type="external">Hyatt Lake</a>: Bureau of Land Management recreation area opening late because it can&#8217;t afford to clear the snow.</p> <p><a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/03/sequester_cuts_yaquina_head_li.html" type="external">Newport</a>: Yaquina Head Lighthouse closed to tours, due to cuts at the Bureau of Land Management. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news/407637/Sequester-is-a-scary-story" type="external">Wilkes-Barre</a>: $400,000 cut to local Head Start program will reduce the rolls by 49 kids.</p> <p><a href="http://articles.mcall.com/2013-03-11/news/mc-tobyhanna-army-depot-layoffs-20130311_1_tobyhanna-army-depot-depot-commander-layoffs" type="external">Tobyhanna</a>: 418 people laid off at Army munitions depot.</p> <p><a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/morning-edition/2013/03/flight-93-memorial-impacted-by.html" type="external">Stoystown</a>: 9/11 memorial starting summer tour hours one month late. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.turnto10.com/story/21770056/money-watchers-ri-head-start-programs-set-back" type="external">Johnston</a>: Head Start program on Hartford Avenue closing. Others shutting down a month early.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/03/federal-defenders-face-deep-cuts-delays-in-cases-86616.html" type="external">Providence</a>: Federal public defenders facing three-week furloughs, leading some to request permission to take second jobs.</p> <p><a href="http://portsmouth.patch.com/articles/quonset-air-show-canceled-due-to-federal-budget-cuts-0942db22" type="external">Quonset</a>: Annual air show, a major commercial boon and fundraising tool, has been canceled. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.thetakeaway.org/2013/apr/09/airports-and-medicare-patients-impacted-as-sequestration-cuts-take-hold/" type="external">Charleston</a>: Charleston Cancer Center having difficulty treating patients.</p> <p><a href="http://www.thestate.com/2013/04/09/2715194/budget-cuts-ground-sc-military.html" type="external">Sumter</a>: 20 F-16s at Shaw Air Force Base have been grounded.</p> <p><a href="http://thetandd.com/news/local/state-and-regional/sequestration-hits-home-army-band-concert-here-canceled/article_d2f97fae-975c-11e2-a3f3-001a4bcf887a.html" type="external">Orangeburg</a>: US Army Field Band cancels outdoor concert. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/03/national-park-service-sequestration-update-closed-campgrounds-fewer-seasonal-employees-sunday-closur22903" type="external">Scenic</a>: Season staff reduced by 24 percent at Badlands National Park.</p> <p><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/21/usace-may-have-to-dole-out-overtime-to-cover-for-furloughed-power-plant/" type="external">Fort Thompson</a>: Workers at Army Corps of Engineers power plant received emails notifying them they&#8217;d be forced to take unpaid leave.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/03/national-park-service-sequestration-update-closed-campgrounds-fewer-seasonal-employees-sunday-closur22903" type="external">Custer</a>: Elk Mountain campground closed at Wind Cave National Park, eliminating 64 sites and two seasonal employees. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://utdailybeacon.com/news/2013/apr/1/sequestration-impact-university-funding/" type="external">Knoxville</a>: A 5 percent drop in federal financial aid funding means the University of Tennessee will offer 33 fewer scholarship awards next fall.</p> <p><a href="http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/28/testing-facility-feels-pains-of-sequester/" type="external">Tullahoma</a>: Aerospace Testing Alliance cutting 128 positions, giving employees until April 19 to find a new job. About 2,200 workers will see their pay docked 20 percent.</p> <p><a href="http://www.advocateanddemocrat.com/story/26041" type="external">Tellico Plains</a>: Army contractor Tellico Services Inc. furloughs 85 of 200 employees indefinitely, due to lack of orders from the Department of Defense. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20130329-federal-public-defender-to-close-office-every-friday.ece" type="external">Dallas</a>: Public defender&#8217;s office will be closed every Friday for six months.</p> <p><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/26/news/economy/federal-worker-layoff/index.html?hpt=hp_t1" type="external">Texarkana</a>: 414 workers at Red River Army Depot laid off in March.</p> <p><a href="http://www.hillcountrynews.com/news/article_416a2682-90dc-11e2-b6c8-001a4bcf887a.html" type="external">Leander</a>: Massive funding cuts will lead to a reduction of between 4,800 to 7,700 meals for seniors. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865575006/All-workers-in-2-Tooele-County-departments-laid-off-due-to-budget-cuts.html?pg=all" type="external">Tooele</a>: Two entire county departments, totaling 23 people, were laid off.</p> <p><a href="http://fox13now.com/2013/03/29/sequestration-forces-food-pantry-closure/" type="external">Murray</a>: Salt Lake Community Action Program closed a food pantry, which worked with four other branches to serve 1,000 people.</p> <p><a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865577028/Emergency-unemployment-benefits-will-be-cut-due-to-sequestration.html" type="external">Salt Lake City</a>: Unemployment assistance cut by 12.8 percent, beginning April 28, affecting 4,000 people. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.fox44abc22yourvoice.com/story/21647618/sequestration-cuts-hit-vermont" type="external">Burlington</a>: School district considering eliminating up to 40 positions due to massive budget cuts.</p> <p><a href="http://www.benningtonbanner.com/news/ci_22943742/fed-cuts-having-local-impact" type="external">North Bennington</a>: AmeriCorps VISTA position eliminated, putting on ice plans to expand summer camp program.</p> <p><a href="http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_22975929/sequester-hits-home-cuts-bha" type="external">Brattleboro</a>: Housing authority informed tenants it will cut low-income subsidies. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20130315/OUTDOORS/303150007/Cuts-will-hit-WNC-parks-hard?nclick_check=1" type="external">Fancy Gap</a>: 400 campsites closed on the Blue Ridge Parkway; 40 seasonal positions eliminated.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wset.com/story/21818022/blue-ridge-pbs-to-shut-down-two-transmitters" type="external">Roanoke</a>: Blue Ridge Public Broadcasting shuts down two transmitters, reducing local access to public radio in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee.</p> <p><a href="http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/04/virginia-contractor-sends-warn-act-layoff-notices/62347/?oref=dropdown" type="external">Reston</a>: Serco Inc. sent out potential layoff notices to 770 employees in Northern Virginia and Maryland. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020655412_sequesterdefendersxml.html" type="external">Seattle</a>: Federal public defenders began serving up to 14 days of furloughs in March; will be closed on Fridays.</p> <p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/sequestration-unemployment_n_3008020.html?utm_hp_ref=politics" type="external">Hanford</a>: 200 members of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council&#8212;whose work involves cleaning up the nation&#8217;s worst nuclear site&#8212;have received layoff notices.</p> <p><a href="http://www.govexec.com/defense/2013/03/military-services-start-outline-furlough-exemptions/61885/" type="external">Walla Walla</a>: Army Corps of Engineers employees received furlough notices in February. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=29100" type="external">Davis</a>: Youth Conservation Corps program at Canaan Valley Wildlife Refuge canceled, eliminating six to eight student positions.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=29361" type="external">Alderson</a>: Main Street program is one of five VISTA anti-poverty programs that has been put on hold in West Virginia. 47 positions will be lost in the state unless funding is restored.</p> <p><a href="http://articles.herald-mail.com/2013-04-11/news/38471860_1_sequestration-cuts-justice-department-contractors" type="external">Martinsburg</a>: 98 contractors at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were laid off in April. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/latest-news/2013/apr/10/military-jets-pulling-out-wisconsin-air-show/" type="external">Manitowoc</a>: US Air Force Thunderbird jets pulled out of Lakeshore Airshow.</p> <p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/oshkosh-cut-900-jobs-defense-unit-185136134--sector.html" type="external">Oshkosh</a>: Defense contractor Oshkosh Corp. cutting 900 jobs due to sequestration cuts.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/Pages/General-Article.aspx?ArticleID=10716" type="external">Madison</a>: Public defender&#8217;s offices in the state capital and two other cities to begin furloughs. &amp;#160;</p> <p><a href="http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/stories/Legislators-fight-back-on-money-theft,89238?category_id=93&amp;amp;content_class=1&amp;amp;sub_type=stories,maps" type="external">Cheyenne</a>: State losing $53 million in mineral payments from the federal government.</p> <p><a href="http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/federal-budget-cuts-hit-wyoming-counties/article_d418c34c-af11-5bc6-8296-fdb5e391863b.html?comment_form=true" type="external">Camp Guernsey</a>: Civilian technicians with the Wyoming National Guard receiving 14-day furloughs.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2013/04/08/news/20local_04-08-13.txt" type="external">Cheyenne</a>: US Geological Survey shutting down drought and flood detectors on the Bighorn, Belle Fourche, North Platte, and Green River basins.</p> <p />

The United States of Sequestration

https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/sequestration-cuts-in-united-states/

2013-04-30

4left

amplta hrefhttpwwwshutterstockcomcatmhtmllangenampampsearch_sourcesearch_formampampversionllv1ampampanyorallallampampsafesearch1ampampsearchtermUnitedStatesampampsearch_groupid77507947ampampsrc1QnUCMSvgNRv8yshIWr4NA291ampgtMaximus256ampltaampgtShutterstock amplta hrefhttpwwwshutterstockcomcatmhtmllangenampampsearch_sourcesearch_formampampversionllv1ampampanyorallallampampsafesearch1ampampsearchtermclosedampampsearch_groupid119825899ampampsrc5bHUEOIJY3iazTfIkKfsDA13ampgtFrancesco CorticchiaampltaampgtShutterstock Starting March 1 federal programs and their state and local beneficiaries began grappling with 854 billion in cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 Some programs have been spared8212Congress voted to restore tuition assistance for members of the armed services and just last week restored funding to the Federal Aviation Administration to forestall flightdelaying furloughs But for the most part the cuts have remained intact Six weeks in we took a look at how sequestration is has impacted 50 states from canceled festivals to shuttered Head Start programs to massive layoffs Birmingham North Albama public defenders office furloughing 11 of 15 employees Huntsville Huntsville Housing Authority which provides heating plumbing and financial assistance to serve 300 fewer people Jefferson County Head Start program closing for 10 weeks affecting 276 kids Fifteen staffers will be furloughed Sitka Bill Brady Healing Center which treats Native Alaskans for drug and alcohol addiction closed as part of 35 million in cuts to the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Corporation Fairbanks Alaska Volcano Observatory is cutting back on volcano and earthquake monitoring Eielson Air Force Base 18th Aggressor Squadron will be grounded until the end of the fiscal year amp160 Window Rock School district eliminated 40 positions due to budget cuts considering eliminating 65 more and closing three schools Holbrook Hiring freeze at Petrified Forest National Park delays filling five spots Phoenix 30 research engineers at a defense contractor laid off amp160 Fayetteville Head Start program ends 13 days early Hot Springs Campgrounds at Hot Springs National Park are closed for the summer hours of operation will be scaled back and rangers won8217t plant any trees despite losing thousands of them in the park in last winter8217s storms Forrest City Federal prison curtailing drug treatment and vocational programs furloughing employees amp160 Bakersfield Community Action Partnership of Kern which receives 77 percent of its funding from Washington forced to shut down its 44 Head Start programs two weeks early Eureka Federal courts will begin mandating one furlough per month at locations in San Francisco San Jose and the Lost Coast San Diego Shipbuilder Continental Maritime laid off 185 employees amp160 Estes Park More than 600000 in cuts forces Rocky Mountain National Park to close Glacier Basin Campground for the summer and leave the famous Trail Ridge Road inaccessible Denver US District Court announced mandatory furloughs in April Colorado Springs Intelligent Software Solutions Inc laid off 40 employees in March after its Air Force contract was put on ice amp160 Bristol Housing authority reduces funding for Section 8 vouchers by 8 percent lengthening the waiting list Manchester Private medical practice informs patients it can no longer treat people who are on Medicare Hartford Employees at public defenders office furloughed 28 days between April 1 and September 30 amp160 Dover Sequester cuts limiting the number of grants available to incoming students at Delaware State University Dover 700 civilian employees at Dover Air Force Base to be furloughed beginning in April Wilmington 52 employees of Delaware Hospice laid off in part due to cuts to Medicare reimbursements amp160 Seville Head Start program closing for summer two weeks early Brooksville Head Start program won8217t reduce the number of kids it serves8212but it8217ll stop paying into employees8217 retirement accounts beginning in April affecting 225 people Fort Myers Lee County school district to lay off 100 employees including 15 teachers amp160 Atlanta MLK National Historic Site reducing number of student employees and freezing hiring for key spots Atlanta Funding for a cancer research project at Emory University reduced from 12 months to 6 Albany 10 disability aides and three family service workers will be laid off due to cuts to the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council amp160 Volcano Hawaii Volcanoes National Park canceling teacher workshops not hiring summer staff Honolulu Hawaii Air National Guard grounded flying exercises for two weeks Honolulu Rail project loses 14 million in funding amp160 Mountain Home F15E Strike Eagle planes at Mountain Home Air Force Base are grounded until October 1 Lapwai Water gauge on Lapwai Creek one of three USGS gauges being closed in the state affecting agriculture industries and flood control Boise 800 civilian technicians at Gowen Field Air National Guard Base will take twoweek furloughs amp160 Belleville 1300 civilian employees of the Illinois National Guard and Air National Guard to take unpaid twoweek furloughs in June Rock Island 175 employees of the Army8217s Rock Island Arsenal being laid off or seeing their contracts expire Granite City School board lays off nine teachers due to budget cuts amp160 Bloomington Head Start program in Monroe County ending one month early eliminating 12 spots and laying off 15 employees Columbus Holding a lottery to determine who will remain in the local Head Start program after 36 slots were cut in two cities Indianapolis 1000 military technicians to take onceaweek furloughs amp160 Sioux City Five specialed staffers 12 reading staffers and 15 staffers with the Early Intervention Block Grant program were laid off Dubuque New Section 8 housing vouchers put on hold Muscatine Head Start programs closing 12 days early in Scott Clinton Cedar and Muscatine Counties affecting 420 kids amp160 Wichita Head Start services stopped for 71 kids and 10 staff positions have been eliminated Topeka A 14 percent drop in funding for Kansas8217 federal court is creating a backlog in cases and longer delays before defendants can meet with their lawyers Eureka Head Start program closed for good amp160 Henderson Head Start ending its program a month early Lexington Ceradyne which manufactures ceramics for body armor laid off nearly 100 workers Newport Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission is closing its eight locations for lowincome families on Fridays amp160 Barksdale Air Force Base 10 employees of the STEM outreach program Starbase Louisiana facing layoffs unless funding is restored Natchitoches Staff reduced at Cane River Creole National Historical Park New Orleans New Orleans Housing Authority recalling 700 Section 8 vouchers for lowincome families amp160 Bath Head Start program closing eight days early Portland Maine Public Broadcasting to lay off 10 employees in part due to sequestration Rockland Meals on Wheels program for seniors serving fewer meals and implementing a waiting list Methodist Conference Home eliminating noontime meal program amp160 Baltimore Public defenders began serving twoweek furloughs in April after seeing budget slashed 500000 Adelphi 2000 civilian technicians received onedayaweek furloughs starting in April Fort Meade 900 civilian technicians scheduled to receive 22day furloughs amp160 Martha8217s Vineyard Ended Head Start one month early plans on starting it one month late Boston Employees in public defender8217s offices furloughed for 165 days Natick 1500 employees at US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center will see their put cut by 20 percent will release 57 student employees and let 71 contracts expire amp160 Escanaba Head Start programs closing three and a half weeks early in Menominee Delta and Schoolcraft counties affecting 245 families Glen Arbor Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore seasonal staff reduced by five Marquette Head Start programs closing three weeks early in Marquette and Alger county amp160 Cloquet Fon du Lac Objiwe School laid off five teachers including two specialeducation staffers made three teachers part time and increased class sizes after losing 410000 in funding International Falls Delays in snow removal at Voyageurs National Park Red Lake White Earth Reservation forced to lay off security guards in district that was the site of a 2005 school shooting that left seven students dead in 2005 amp160 Jackson County Head Start closing two weeks early affecting 717 kids Oxford Public defenders accepting furloughs and pay cuts Tupelo Natchez Trace Parkway not hiring 15 seasonal employees or filling five fulltime vacancies amp160 St Charles Head Start facility closed on April 12 while reducing the number of kids served by 65 and laying off 18 staffers Ironton Iron County Head Start closing three weeks early due to budget cuts Brookline Wilson8217s Creek National Battlefield eliminating its Youth Conservation Corps program for innercity kids amp160 Poplar Fort Peck Indian Reservation can8217t hire a reading teacher although half the kids ride below grade level it can8217t hire a second guidance counselor despite 20 suicide attempts Fort Peck Workers at Army Corps of Engineers dam notified by email that they will be forced to take unpaid leave Kalispell Glacier Oncology the state8217s only private cancer clinic says patients will have to travel to Washington DC for treatment amp160 Omaha Public defender8217s office laid off four employees Bellevue Defenders of Freedom Open House and Air Show which normally draws 150000 people to Offutt Air Force Base has been canceled Beatrice 5 percent cuts at Homestead National Monument have forced the park to cut youth staff and eliminate summer ranger positions amp160 Reno National Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Center scaling back weekend hours Nellis Air Force Base 600 civilian technicians to be furloughed in April Reno Washoe County School District laying off five special education staffers amp160 Portsmouth Funding for the Naval shipyard8217s STEM outreach program to middle and high school girls has been eliminated Berlin National Guard civilian technicians here among 700 who will receive a 22 percent pay cut from now until September Concord Emergency unemployment benefits will be cut by 17 percent starting April 28 amp160 Layton Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area hiring 17 fewer people during summer months Paterson Froze Section 8 housing voucher program dipped into reserves to offset 232000 in cuts Morristown Morris County Head Start program considering laying off five teachers and reducing the number of students served by as many as 34 amp160 Albuquerque 300 patients at Cancer Center informed they8217ll have to go elsewhere due to Medicare cuts Farmington 15 vacant positions at the Bureau of Land Management will go unfilled Los Alamos 14 of 60 employees at Bandelier National Monument received furlough notices amp160 Buffalo US District Court for the Western District of New York no longer hearing criminal cases on Fridays staffers at public defender8217s office will receive staggered 22day furloughs Rochester Housing authority cutting 600 vouchers after losing 25 million in funding Suffolk County North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates reduced the number of Medicare patients it treated by 13 amp160 Belmont Allegany County Head Start program ending one week early staff losing between a week and a month of work Goldsboro F15E squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base grounded Greensboro Industries for the Blind which gets 98 percent of its business from the government and has a mostly blind workforce laid off 40 employees amp160 Medora Painted Canyon Overlook one of the most popular sites at Theodore Roosevelt National Park is closed indefinitely Devils Lake 70 Air National Guard civilian technicians to be furloughed in May Fargo The Fargo AirSho which draws 30000 visitors annually may be canceled after the Blue Angels were grounded for the summer amp160 Tiffin Head Start program closing one week early 140 staff to be laid off over fourcounty area 1100 kids affected Cincinnati Cuts to the General Services Administration led to 28 layoffs at the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired8217s Industries Progam Cincinnati 200 kids are being dropped from the city8217s Head Start program amp160 Oklahoma City Six Head Start employees laid off Tulsa State department of labor closing its city office leaving 11 employees the choice of taking a buyout or relocating Lawton 26 Northrop Grumman employees received layoff notices in March due to the impending expiration of a DoD contract amp160 Portland Navy announces it8217s skipping the city8217s annual Rose Festival Hyatt Lake Bureau of Land Management recreation area opening late because it can8217t afford to clear the snow Newport Yaquina Head Lighthouse closed to tours due to cuts at the Bureau of Land Management amp160 WilkesBarre 400000 cut to local Head Start program will reduce the rolls by 49 kids Tobyhanna 418 people laid off at Army munitions depot Stoystown 911 memorial starting summer tour hours one month late amp160 Johnston Head Start program on Hartford Avenue closing Others shutting down a month early Providence Federal public defenders facing threeweek furloughs leading some to request permission to take second jobs Quonset Annual air show a major commercial boon and fundraising tool has been canceled amp160 Charleston Charleston Cancer Center having difficulty treating patients Sumter 20 F16s at Shaw Air Force Base have been grounded Orangeburg US Army Field Band cancels outdoor concert amp160 Scenic Season staff reduced by 24 percent at Badlands National Park Fort Thompson Workers at Army Corps of Engineers power plant received emails notifying them they8217d be forced to take unpaid leave Custer Elk Mountain campground closed at Wind Cave National Park eliminating 64 sites and two seasonal employees amp160 Knoxville A 5 percent drop in federal financial aid funding means the University of Tennessee will offer 33 fewer scholarship awards next fall Tullahoma Aerospace Testing Alliance cutting 128 positions giving employees until April 19 to find a new job About 2200 workers will see their pay docked 20 percent Tellico Plains Army contractor Tellico Services Inc furloughs 85 of 200 employees indefinitely due to lack of orders from the Department of Defense amp160 Dallas Public defender8217s office will be closed every Friday for six months Texarkana 414 workers at Red River Army Depot laid off in March Leander Massive funding cuts will lead to a reduction of between 4800 to 7700 meals for seniors amp160 Tooele Two entire county departments totaling 23 people were laid off Murray Salt Lake Community Action Program closed a food pantry which worked with four other branches to serve 1000 people Salt Lake City Unemployment assistance cut by 128 percent beginning April 28 affecting 4000 people amp160 Burlington School district considering eliminating up to 40 positions due to massive budget cuts North Bennington AmeriCorps VISTA position eliminated putting on ice plans to expand summer camp program Brattleboro Housing authority informed tenants it will cut lowincome subsidies amp160 Fancy Gap 400 campsites closed on the Blue Ridge Parkway 40 seasonal positions eliminated Roanoke Blue Ridge Public Broadcasting shuts down two transmitters reducing local access to public radio in southwest Virginia and east Tennessee Reston Serco Inc sent out potential layoff notices to 770 employees in Northern Virginia and Maryland amp160 Seattle Federal public defenders began serving up to 14 days of furloughs in March will be closed on Fridays Hanford 200 members of the Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council8212whose work involves cleaning up the nation8217s worst nuclear site8212have received layoff notices Walla Walla Army Corps of Engineers employees received furlough notices in February amp160 Davis Youth Conservation Corps program at Canaan Valley Wildlife Refuge canceled eliminating six to eight student positions Alderson Main Street program is one of five VISTA antipoverty programs that has been put on hold in West Virginia 47 positions will be lost in the state unless funding is restored Martinsburg 98 contractors at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives were laid off in April amp160 Manitowoc US Air Force Thunderbird jets pulled out of Lakeshore Airshow Oshkosh Defense contractor Oshkosh Corp cutting 900 jobs due to sequestration cuts Madison Public defender8217s offices in the state capital and two other cities to begin furloughs amp160 Cheyenne State losing 53 million in mineral payments from the federal government Camp Guernsey Civilian technicians with the Wyoming National Guard receiving 14day furloughs Cheyenne US Geological Survey shutting down drought and flood detectors on the Bighorn Belle Fourche North Platte and Green River basins

amplta/PROPN hrefhttpwwwshutterstockcomcatmhtmllangenampampsearch_sourcesearch_formampampversionllv1ampampanyorallallampampsafesearch1ampampsearchtermUnitedStatesampampsearch_groupid77507947ampampsrc1QnUCMSvgNRv8yshIWr4NA291ampgtMaximus256ampltaampgtShutterstock/NOUN amplta/NOUN hrefhttpwwwshutterstockcomcatmhtmllangenampampsearch_sourcesearch_formampampversionllv1ampampanyorallallampampsafesearch1ampampsearchtermclosedampampsearch_groupid119825899ampampsrc5bHUEOIJY3iazTfIkKfsDA13ampgtFrancesco/PROPN CorticchiaampltaampgtShutterstock/PROPN Starting/PROPN March/PROPN 1/NUM federal/ADJ programs/NOUN and/CCONJ their/PRON state/NOUN and/CCONJ local/ADJ beneficiaries/NOUN began/VERB grappling/VERB with/ADP 854/NUM billion/NUM in/ADP cuts/NOUN mandated/VERB by/ADP the/DET Budget/PROPN Control/PROPN Act/PROPN of/ADP 2011/NUM Some/DET programs/NOUN have/AUX been/AUX spared8212Congress/NUM voted/VERB to/PART restore/VERB tuition/NOUN assistance/NOUN for/ADP members/NOUN of/ADP the/DET armed/ADJ services/NOUN and/CCONJ just/ADV last/ADJ week/NOUN restored/VERB funding/NOUN to/ADP the/DET Federal/PROPN Aviation/PROPN Administration/PROPN to/PART forestall/VERB flightdelaying/NOUN furloughs/NOUN But/CCONJ for/ADP the/DET most/ADJ part/NOUN the/DET cuts/NOUN have/AUX remained/VERB intact/ADJ Six/NUM weeks/NOUN in/SCONJ we/PRON took/VERB a/DET look/NOUN at/ADP how/SCONJ sequestration/NOUN is/AUX has/AUX impacted/VERB 50/NUM states/NOUN from/ADP canceled/VERB festivals/NOUN to/PART shuttered/VERB Head/PROPN Start/PROPN programs/NOUN to/ADP massive/ADJ layoffs/NOUN Birmingham/PROPN North/PROPN Albama/PROPN public/ADJ defenders/NOUN office/NOUN furloughing/VERB 11/NUM of/ADP 15/NUM employees/NOUN Huntsville/PROPN Huntsville/PROPN Housing/PROPN Authority/PROPN which/PRON provides/VERB heating/NOUN plumbing/NOUN and/CCONJ financial/ADJ assistance/NOUN to/PART serve/VERB 300/NUM fewer/ADJ people/NOUN Jefferson/PROPN County/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN closing/VERB for/ADP 10/NUM weeks/NOUN affecting/VERB 276/NUM kids/NOUN Fifteen/NUM staffers/NOUN will/AUX be/AUX furloughed/VERB Sitka/PROPN Bill/PROPN Brady/PROPN Healing/PROPN Center/PROPN which/PRON treats/VERB Native/PROPN Alaskans/PROPN for/ADP drug/NOUN and/CCONJ alcohol/NOUN addiction/NOUN closed/VERB as/ADP part/NOUN of/ADP 35/NUM million/NUM in/ADP cuts/NOUN to/ADP the/DET Southeast/PROPN Alaska/PROPN Regional/PROPN Health/PROPN Corporation/PROPN Fairbanks/PROPN Alaska/PROPN Volcano/PROPN Observatory/PROPN is/AUX cutting/VERB back/ADP on/ADP volcano/NOUN and/CCONJ earthquake/NOUN monitoring/VERB Eielson/PROPN Air/PROPN Force/PROPN Base/PROPN 18th/NOUN Aggressor/PROPN Squadron/PROPN will/AUX be/AUX grounded/VERB until/ADP the/DET end/NOUN of/ADP the/DET fiscal/ADJ year/NOUN amp160/PROPN Window/PROPN Rock/PROPN School/PROPN district/NOUN eliminated/VERB 40/NUM positions/NOUN due/ADP to/ADP budget/NOUN cuts/NOUN considering/VERB eliminating/VERB 65/NUM more/ADJ and/CCONJ closing/VERB three/NUM schools/NOUN Holbrook/PROPN Hiring/PROPN freeze/NOUN at/ADP Petrified/PROPN Forest/PROPN National/PROPN Park/PROPN delays/NOUN filling/VERB five/NUM spots/NOUN Phoenix/PROPN 30/NUM research/NOUN engineers/NOUN at/ADP a/DET defense/NOUN contractor/NOUN laid/VERB off/ADP amp160/PROPN Fayetteville/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN ends/VERB 13/NUM days/NOUN early/ADJ Hot/PROPN Springs/PROPN Campgrounds/PROPN at/ADP Hot/PROPN Springs/PROPN National/PROPN Park/PROPN are/AUX closed/VERB for/SCONJ the/DET summer/NOUN hours/NOUN of/ADP operation/NOUN will/AUX be/AUX scaled/VERB back/ADP and/CCONJ rangers/VERB won8217/NOUN t/PROPN plant/NOUN any/DET trees/NOUN despite/SCONJ losing/VERB thousands/NOUN of/ADP them/PRON in/ADP the/DET park/NOUN in/ADP last/ADJ winter8217s/PROPN storms/NOUN Forrest/PROPN City/PROPN Federal/PROPN prison/NOUN curtailing/VERB drug/NOUN treatment/NOUN and/CCONJ vocational/ADJ programs/NOUN furloughing/VERB employees/NOUN amp160/VERB Bakersfield/PROPN Community/PROPN Action/PROPN Partnership/PROPN of/ADP Kern/PROPN which/PRON receives/VERB 77/NUM percent/NOUN of/ADP its/PRON funding/NOUN from/ADP Washington/PROPN forced/VERB to/PART shut/VERB down/ADP its/PRON 44/NUM Head/PROPN Start/PROPN programs/NOUN two/NUM weeks/NOUN early/ADJ Eureka/PROPN Federal/PROPN courts/NOUN will/AUX begin/VERB mandating/VERB one/NUM furlough/ADV per/ADP month/NOUN at/ADP locations/NOUN in/ADP San/PROPN Francisco/PROPN San/PROPN Jose/PROPN and/CCONJ the/DET Lost/PROPN Coast/PROPN San/PROPN Diego/PROPN Shipbuilder/PROPN Continental/PROPN Maritime/PROPN laid/VERB off/ADP 185/NUM employees/NOUN amp160/VERB Estes/PROPN Park/PROPN More/ADJ than/ADP 600000/NUM in/ADP cuts/NOUN forces/NOUN Rocky/PROPN Mountain/PROPN National/PROPN Park/PROPN to/PART close/VERB Glacier/PROPN Basin/PROPN Campground/PROPN for/ADP the/DET summer/NOUN and/CCONJ leave/VERB the/DET famous/ADJ Trail/PROPN Ridge/PROPN Road/PROPN inaccessible/ADJ Denver/PROPN US/PROPN District/PROPN Court/PROPN announced/VERB mandatory/ADJ furloughs/NOUN in/ADP April/PROPN Colorado/PROPN Springs/PROPN Intelligent/PROPN Software/PROPN Solutions/PROPN Inc/PROPN laid/VERB off/ADP 40/NUM employees/NOUN in/ADP March/PROPN after/SCONJ its/PRON Air/PROPN Force/PROPN contract/NOUN was/AUX put/VERB on/ADP ice/NOUN amp160/PROPN Bristol/PROPN Housing/PROPN authority/NOUN reduces/VERB funding/NOUN for/ADP Section/NOUN 8/NUM vouchers/NOUN by/ADP 8/NUM percent/NOUN lengthening/VERB the/DET waiting/NOUN list/NOUN Manchester/PROPN Private/ADJ medical/ADJ practice/NOUN informs/VERB patients/NOUN it/PRON can/AUX no/ADV longer/ADV treat/VERB people/NOUN who/PRON are/AUX on/ADP Medicare/PROPN Hartford/PROPN Employees/NOUN at/ADP public/ADJ defenders/NOUN office/NOUN furloughed/VERB 28/NUM days/NOUN between/ADP April/PROPN 1/NUM and/CCONJ September/PROPN 30/NUM amp160/PROPN Dover/PROPN Sequester/PROPN cuts/VERB limiting/VERB the/DET number/NOUN of/ADP grants/NOUN available/ADJ to/ADP incoming/ADJ students/NOUN at/ADP Delaware/PROPN State/PROPN University/PROPN Dover/PROPN 700/NUM civilian/ADJ employees/NOUN at/ADP Dover/PROPN Air/PROPN Force/PROPN Base/PROPN to/PART be/AUX furloughed/VERB beginning/VERB in/ADP April/PROPN Wilmington/PROPN 52/NUM employees/NOUN of/ADP Delaware/PROPN Hospice/PROPN laid/VERB off/ADP in/ADP part/NOUN due/ADP to/ADP cuts/NOUN to/ADP Medicare/PROPN reimbursements/NOUN amp160/VERB Seville/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN closing/VERB for/ADP summer/NOUN two/NUM weeks/NOUN early/ADJ Brooksville/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN won8217/NOUN t/NOUN reduce/VERB the/DET number/NOUN of/ADP kids/NOUN it/PRON serves8212but/VERB it8217ll/PROPN stop/VERB paying/VERB into/ADP employees8217/NOUN retirement/NOUN accounts/NOUN beginning/VERB in/ADP April/PROPN affecting/VERB 225/NUM people/NOUN Fort/PROPN Myers/PROPN Lee/PROPN County/PROPN school/NOUN district/NOUN to/PART lay/VERB off/ADP 100/NUM employees/NOUN including/VERB 15/NUM teachers/NOUN amp160/VERB Atlanta/PROPN MLK/PROPN National/PROPN Historic/PROPN Site/PROPN reducing/VERB number/NOUN of/ADP student/NOUN employees/NOUN and/CCONJ freezing/VERB hiring/VERB for/ADP key/ADJ spots/NOUN Atlanta/PROPN Funding/PROPN for/ADP a/DET cancer/NOUN research/NOUN project/NOUN at/ADP Emory/PROPN University/PROPN reduced/VERB from/ADP 12/NUM months/NOUN to/ADP 6/NUM Albany/PROPN 10/NUM disability/NOUN aides/NOUN and/CCONJ three/NUM family/NOUN service/NOUN workers/NOUN will/AUX be/AUX laid/VERB off/ADP due/ADP to/ADP cuts/NOUN to/ADP the/DET Southwest/PROPN Georgia/PROPN Community/PROPN Action/PROPN Council/PROPN amp160/PROPN Volcano/PROPN Hawaii/PROPN Volcanoes/PROPN National/PROPN Park/PROPN canceling/VERB teacher/NOUN workshops/NOUN not/PART hiring/VERB summer/NOUN staff/NOUN Honolulu/PROPN Hawaii/PROPN Air/PROPN National/PROPN Guard/PROPN grounded/VERB flying/VERB exercises/NOUN for/ADP two/NUM weeks/NOUN Honolulu/PROPN Rail/PROPN project/NOUN loses/VERB 14/NUM million/NUM in/ADP funding/NOUN amp160/PROPN Mountain/PROPN Home/PROPN F15E/PROPN Strike/PROPN Eagle/PROPN planes/NOUN at/ADP Mountain/PROPN Home/PROPN Air/PROPN Force/PROPN Base/PROPN are/AUX grounded/VERB until/SCONJ October/PROPN 1/NUM Lapwai/PROPN Water/PROPN gauge/NOUN on/ADP Lapwai/PROPN Creek/PROPN one/NUM of/ADP three/NUM USGS/PROPN gauges/NOUN being/AUX closed/VERB in/ADP the/DET state/NOUN affecting/VERB agriculture/NOUN industries/NOUN and/CCONJ flood/NOUN control/NOUN Boise/PROPN 800/NUM civilian/ADJ technicians/NOUN at/ADP Gowen/PROPN Field/PROPN Air/PROPN National/PROPN Guard/PROPN Base/PROPN will/AUX take/VERB twoweek/NOUN furloughs/NOUN amp160/PROPN Belleville/PROPN 1300/NUM civilian/ADJ employees/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Illinois/PROPN National/PROPN Guard/PROPN and/CCONJ Air/PROPN National/PROPN Guard/PROPN to/PART take/VERB unpaid/ADJ twoweek/NOUN furloughs/NOUN in/ADP June/PROPN Rock/PROPN Island/PROPN 175/NUM employees/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Army8217s/PROPN Rock/PROPN Island/PROPN Arsenal/PROPN being/AUX laid/VERB off/ADP or/CCONJ seeing/VERB their/PRON contracts/NOUN expire/VERB Granite/PROPN City/PROPN School/PROPN board/NOUN lays/VERB off/ADP nine/NUM teachers/NOUN due/ADP to/ADP budget/NOUN cuts/NOUN amp160/VERB Bloomington/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN in/ADP Monroe/PROPN County/PROPN ending/VERB one/NUM month/NOUN early/ADV eliminating/VERB 12/NUM spots/NOUN and/CCONJ laying/VERB off/ADP 15/NUM employees/NOUN Columbus/PROPN Holding/PROPN a/DET lottery/NOUN to/PART determine/VERB who/PRON will/AUX remain/VERB in/ADP the/DET local/ADJ Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN after/SCONJ 36/NUM slots/NOUN were/AUX cut/VERB in/ADP two/NUM cities/NOUN Indianapolis/PROPN 1000/NUM military/ADJ technicians/NOUN to/PART take/VERB onceaweek/NOUN furloughs/NOUN amp160/PROPN Sioux/PROPN City/PROPN Five/PROPN specialed/VERB staffers/NOUN 12/NUM reading/VERB staffers/NOUN and/CCONJ 15/NUM staffers/NOUN with/ADP the/DET Early/PROPN Intervention/PROPN Block/PROPN Grant/PROPN program/NOUN were/AUX laid/VERB off/ADP Dubuque/PROPN New/PROPN Section/PROPN 8/NUM housing/NOUN vouchers/NOUN put/VERB on/ADP hold/NOUN Muscatine/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN programs/NOUN closing/VERB 12/NUM days/NOUN early/ADV in/ADP Scott/PROPN Clinton/PROPN Cedar/PROPN and/CCONJ Muscatine/PROPN Counties/PROPN affecting/VERB 420/NUM kids/NOUN amp160/VERB Wichita/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN services/NOUN stopped/VERB for/ADP 71/NUM kids/NOUN and/CCONJ 10/NUM staff/NOUN positions/NOUN have/AUX been/AUX eliminated/VERB Topeka/PROPN A/DET 14/NUM percent/NOUN drop/NOUN in/ADP funding/NOUN for/ADP Kansas8217/PROPN federal/ADJ court/NOUN is/AUX creating/VERB a/DET backlog/NOUN in/ADP cases/NOUN and/CCONJ longer/ADJ delays/NOUN before/SCONJ defendants/NOUN can/AUX meet/VERB with/ADP their/PRON lawyers/NOUN Eureka/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN program/NOUN closed/VERB for/ADP good/ADJ amp160/PROPN Henderson/PROPN Head/PROPN Start/PROPN ending/VERB its/PRON program/NOUN a/DET 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<p>In this second of our "Court Watch" series, we return to what&#8217;s become a racially charged campaign in Wisconsin to replace Louis Butler, the only black justice on the state Supreme Court, with a white, business-backed lower court judge, Mike Gableman. We look at two ads that attack Butler and find both to be misleading.</p> <p>We also lay out the facts behind a radio ad by a liberal group attacking Gableman. We leave it to our readers to judge whether or not those facts add up to a political "scandal" as the ad claims.</p> <p>The Gableman ad began airing March 14. The spot by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce started running this week, as did a radio ad by the Greater Wisconsin Committee.</p> <p>In Wisconsin, judges don&#8217;t run with political party labels attached. They&#8217;re officially nonpartisan. However, it&#8217;s useful to know that Butler was appointed by a Democratic governor, while Gableman was picked by a Republican.</p> <p>Loophole Louie?</p> <p>Gableman&#8217;s ad opens in black-and-white as a female narrator intones that "shadowy special interests supporting Louis Butler" are attacking Gableman. She doesn&#8217;t tell us who they are or what they&#8217;re saying, but whatever it is, "It&#8217;s not true," she claims, as we&#8217;re shown a grainy photo of Butler.</p> <p>Flash to vivid color pictures of Gableman in his judge&#8217;s robes. We&#8217;re told that he put many child molesters behind bars, keeping our families safe.</p> <p>Fade back to creepy black-and-white with eerie music. "Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street," the narrator tells us. "Like Reuben Mitchell, who raped an 11-year-old girl with learning disabilities. Butler found a loophole. Mitchell went on to molest another child."</p> <p>&amp;lt;iframe height="390" width="480" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="https://video.factcheck.org/play/hIUWgeqdGgI"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/iframe&amp;gt;</p> <p>[TET ]</p> <p>Gableman for Supreme Court Ad: "Prosecutor"</p> <p>Narrator: Unbelievable. Shadowy special interests supporting Louis Butler are attacking Judge Michael Gableman. It&#8217;s not true.</p> <p>Judge, District Attorney Michael Gableman has committed his life to locking up criminals to keep families safe. Putting child molesters behind bars for over a hundred years.</p> <p>Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street. Like Reuben Lee Mitchell, who raped an 11-year-old girl with learning disabilities. Butler found a loophole. Mitchell went on to molest another child.</p> <p>Can Wisconsin families feel safe with Louis Butler on the Supreme Court? [/TET]&amp;#160;</p> <p>Some of the ad&#8217;s statements are true. But the conclusion a viewer would naturally draw from the construction of the ad&amp;#160;&#8211; that Mitchell was freed as a result of Butler&#8217;s legal finagling (or maybe a decision he made since he became a judge), and used that freedom to commit more crimes &#8211; is not.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Butler was a public defender for part of his career. His job as a defense lawyer was to protect the rights of the accused. His job now as a judge is different. To say he "worked to put criminals on the street" while showing him in a judge&#8217;s robes hoodwinks the viewer on two counts.</p> <p>In 1987, Butler was assigned to represent Mitchell in an appeal of his conviction for raping the girl.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s what happened: In most states, including Wisconsin, evidence of a complainant&#8217;s prior sexual conduct is generally not admissible at trial. The theory is that sexual assault victims shouldn&#8217;t be subjected to embarrassing and detailed examination of their prior sexual conduct unless it is relevant to a particular set of circumstances.</p> <p>Sometimes, though, the rape shield law can be used to the defendant&#8217;s advantage, and that&#8217;s what happened here. At the trial, Mitchell&#8217;s lawyer didn&#8217;t want members of the jury to hear that the victim was a virgin, because he was afraid it would prejudice them against his client. The judge allowed it anyway. Butler then raised the same issue when he was assigned to the appeal, and the three-member appellate panel agreed with him: Not only should the jury not have heard that information, the panel said, but there was a good chance it might have affected the outcome. The judges reversed the verdict and ordered a new trial.</p> <p>So Butler didn&#8217;t "find a loophole" as this ad claims. He convinced the appeals court that the trial judge had allowed the jury to hear prejudicial information, which is just what appeals lawyers are supposed to do.</p> <p>Furthermore, Mitchell didn&#8217;t get his new trial, and he wasn&#8217;t released. The state took the case to the next level, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which reversed the appellate court. It was true, said the high court, that the trial judge shouldn&#8217;t have allowed the jury to hear about the victim&#8217;s virginity, but, said Justice Shirley Abrahamson, writing for the majority, it didn&#8217;t make any difference. "[W]e can conclude that there is no reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the conviction," wrote Abrahamson.</p> <p>Butler, then, had nothing to do with Mitchell&#8217;s eventual release. Mitchell stayed in prison until he was paroled in 1992. In 1995, he was convicted for twice raping a 14-year-old. He was sentenced to 40 years behind bars, where he remains today.</p> <p>The misleading message of this ad would be bad enough on its own, but its dominant visual image has drawn condemnation from many quarters. In that image, which remains on the screen longer than any other in this ad, a black-and-white photo of Butler is paired with Mitchell&#8217;s police mug shot. Mitchell is black. Butler is the only black justice on Wisconsin&#8217;s Supreme Court. The picture, at the very least, serves to remind viewers of Butler&#8217;s race.</p> <p>The independent Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee, which is monitoring ads in the race, called the spot "highly offensive and deliberately misleading," saying its race-baiting was reminiscent of the infamous Willlie Horton ad that attacked 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis over prison furloughs granted when he was governor. The panel called for Gableman to take the ad down, as have some Wisconsin editorial boards. But Gableman&#8217;s campaign hasn&#8217;t done so, and his campaign maintains the ad presents a fair comparison between the candidates.&amp;#160;</p> <p>On Dec. 3, 1998, 40-year-old Julie Jensen was found dead in her home, poisoned by ethylene glycol (commonly found in antifreeze). Her then-husband, Mark Jensen, was charged with her murder in 2002.</p> <p>Julie Jensen had told a neighbor and others that she thought her husband was trying to poison her. And she left a sealed letter with the neighbor, asking him to give it to the police if anything happened to her. The handwritten missive, which was delivered as instructed, described her fears about her husband and said&amp;#160;that she was not suicidal. She wrote, in part: "I pray I&#8217;m wrong + nothing happens &#8230; but I am suspicious of Mark&#8217;s suspicious behaviors + fear for my early demise. However, I will not leave David + Douglas." (David and Douglas were her sons.)</p> <p>&amp;#160; &amp;lt;iframe height="390" width="480" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="https://video.factcheck.org/play/hIUWge3dDwI"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/iframe&amp;gt;</p> <p>[TET ]</p> <p>Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Ad: "Jensen"</p> <p>Narrator: We count on judges to use practical common sense to keep violent criminals behind bars.</p> <p>But faced with an unspeakable crime, Justice Louis Butler almost jeopardized the prosecution of a murderer because he saw a technicality.</p> <p>When prosecutors needed to show critical evidence, Butler dissented. Going against six other justices. Thankfully, he didn&#8217;t get his way.</p> <p>Jurors said it was the most important piece of evidence they saw.</p> <p>Call Louis Butler. Tell him to stand up for victims &#8211; not technicalities. [/TET]&amp;#160;</p> <p>The fact that the letter was addressed to police made it, in legal terms, "testimonial evidence," or evidence similar to testimony given by a witness in court. And the confrontation clauses of the U.S. and Wisconsin constitutions guarantee the right of an accused to confront the witnesses against him or her. Things get complicated when, as in this case, the witness is unavailable &#8211; dead, for example. And not only dead, but possibly dead by the defendant&#8217;s own hand. In fact, the alleged cause of the unavailability of this witness was the very crime for which Mark Jensen was being tried.</p> <p>Whether such evidence can be admitted and presented to a jury is&amp;#160;not an open-and-shut legal question. The "forfeiture by wrongdoing" doctrine &#8211; whereby a defendant is considered to have forfeited his right to confront an unfriendly witness if his own wrongdoing caused the witness to be unable to appear &#8211; is by no means settled law. In the Jensen case,&amp;#160;the trial judge declared the letter inadmissible on the basis of a 2004 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.&amp;#160;</p> <p>The prosecutor&amp;#160;appealed to the state Supreme Court. And six of the justices <a href="http://www.wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&amp;amp;seqNo=28227" type="external">ruled</a> his way &#8211; but they made clear they were forging a new legal path as they did so:&amp;#160;</p> <p>Justice Jon P. Wilcox, for the majority: [W]e reverse the circuit court&#8217;s decision as to the applicability of the forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine. Today, we explicitly adopt this doctrine whereby a defendant is deemed to have lost the right to object on confrontation grounds to the admissibility of out-of-court statements of a declarant whose unavailability the defendant has caused. As such, the case must be remanded to the circuit court for a determination of whether, by a preponderance of the evidence, Jensen caused Julie&#8217;s unavailability, thereby forfeiting his right to confrontation.</p> <p>It was Butler, in his dissent, who took the narrower view, arguing for a stricter interpretation of the U.S. Constitution:</p> <p>Butler: The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not state that, "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right &#8230; to be confronted with the witnesses against him [or her], except in homicide cases." While other courts may feel free to disregard the very principles upon which the Confrontation Clause rests, our decision must be limited by the Constitution and the United States Supreme Court decisions interpreting it. &#8230;</p> <p>Jensen, after a seven-week trial that was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/21/jensen.verdict/" type="external">followed</a> by the national media (which dubbed it the "letter from the grave" case), was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. But he could get a chance for a new trial. The U.S. Supreme Court, still grappling with the issue of forfeiture by wrongdoing, will hear a case next month in which the accused, charged with murdering his ex-girlfriend, claims that the use of evidence of a police conversation with the victim before her death violates his Sixth Amendment confrontation clause right. The court&#8217;s ruling in <a href="http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2007/2007_07_6053/" type="external">Giles v. California</a> is expected by the end of June.</p> <p>Perhaps ironically, the prosecutor of the Jensen case, Robert Jambois, is a Butler supporter. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce "is being completely hypocritical here," he said, "going after Justice Butler as being too liberal, when he did in this case what they say they want all justices to do, which is follow the Constitution."</p> <p>"Shadowy Group" Reemerges!</p> <p>Remember the "shadowy groups" condemned by the Gableman ad earlier in this article? This is most likely a reference to the Greater Wisconsin Committee, which is out with a new radio ad once again questioning Gableman&#8217;s ethics. (We&#8217;ve already <a href="" type="internal">reviewed</a> one of its earlier TV offerings.)</p> <p>First, we should say that this group is no more shadowy than the outside groups, like Coalition for America&#8217;s Families, that have supported Gableman. They don&#8217;t disclose their donors, but they&#8217;re not required to. For that matter, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce doesn&#8217;t either. The only real difference we can see is that GWC doesn&#8217;t maintain a Web site. But finding the group isn&#8217;t difficult. <a href="http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml" type="external">Wispolitics.com</a>, a popular political Web site in the land of the cheeseheads, has a <a href="http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=66536" type="external">page</a> on it and carries its press releases.</p> <p><a href="" type="internal" /></p> <p>(Click to play audio)</p> <p>[TET ]</p> <p>Greater Wisconsin Committee Radio Ad: "Scandal"</p> <p>Wisconsin scandal update: New troubling revelations about Judge Mike Gableman.</p> <p>First: An investigation uncovered evidence that Gableman was selected as a judge by Gov. McCallum just weeks after he hosted a fundraiser and contributed $1,250 to McCallum&#8217;s campaign.</p> <p>Next, media reports disclosed that Gableman actually charged taxpayers for working while he traveled over 500 miles to host the fundraiser.</p> <p>But now, the most disturbing of all: Newly released records show that Gableman&#8217;s district attorney&#8217;s office was a virtual political campaign headquarters.</p> <p>In just two months, before the fundraiser, more than 50 long-distance telephone calls were made from his office to campaign fundraising staff, other big campaign contributors, and political campaigns. All at taxpayers&#8217; expense. All while taxpayers were paying Gableman to fight crime.</p> <p>Call Mike Gableman at xxx-xxx-xxxx and tell him we need higher ethical standards for our judges.</p> <p>Paid for by Greater Wisconsin Committee. [/TET]</p> <p>GWC&#8217;s latest ad alleges, first, that then-Gov. Scott McCallum appointed Gableman to his judgeship just weeks after Gableman hosted a fundraiser for him and gave his campaign a check. That&#8217;s true, as we&#8217;ve <a href="" type="internal">written</a> previously.</p> <p>Next, the ad claims that Gableman "charged taxpayers for working" while he traveled to the June 12, 2002, fundraiser. It&#8217;s true that it would have been impossible for Gableman to get from his office to the evening fundraiser, several hundred miles away, without using part of what are normally considered working hours. Gableman&#8217;s campaign responded to our questions about this in an e-mail:</p> <p>According to the campaign, Gableman received permission from Sandra Schultz, who it identifies as "his supervisor."</p> <p>The ad&#8217;s final charge is that during two months leading up to the fundraiser, more than 50 calls were placed from Gableman&#8217;s office to persons who, it appears, were likely being contacted about the upcoming event. GWC received the telephone records using state open records laws, and we have posted the records as supporting documents to this article. We have also posted GWC&#8217;s analysis of them.</p> <p>The Gableman campaign has not clarified this matter, although it did release to Madison&#8217;s Wisconsin State Journal two pages of documents showing that Gableman reimbursed Ashland County for some personal calls in the months before and after the fundraiser. But the campaign wouldn&#8217;t say whether the calls were connected to fundraising, nor would it explain how the reimbursements matched up with the calls cited by GWC, which wasn&#8217;t at all clear from the records themselves.</p> <p>Even if the reimbursements do match the outgoing calls, the calls could raise questions for Gableman. As the Wisconsin State Journal notes, under Wisconsin Ethics Board <a href="http://ethics.state.wi.us/Forms-Publications/Guidelines/234-telephonecalls.pdf" type="external">rules</a>, "it is improper and illegal for a state public official to charge the State of Wisconsin for a telephone call if the call is not primarily related to the person&#8217;s official responsibility &#8211; even if the official later reimburses the State for its costs."</p> <p>We&#8217;ll leave it to readers to decide if these facts, to the degree we&#8217;ve been able to ascertain them, add up to an ethical "scandal," as the ad charges.</p> <p>This week the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law <a href="http://brennan.3cdn.net/6dd3e14a629d0584f3_d3m6bhjqu.pdf" type="external">calculated</a> that Wisconsin voters were subjected to 4,789 televised Supreme Court campaign ads between Feb. 20 and March 16. The vast majority have come from third-party groups.</p> <p>We&#8217;d chime in that a large number of them have been misleading.</p> <p>The Gableman-Butler face-off is April 1.</p> <p>&#8211; by Viveca Novak&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Callender, David. "Butler Rips Gableman&#8217;s Ads." The Capital Times, 20 March 2008.</p> <p>"Remove the TV ad," editorial. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 20 March 2008.</p> <p>Bauer, Scott. "Monitoring group slams Gabelman ad featuring convicted rapist." The Associated Press, 17 March 2008.</p> <p>Forster, Stacy, Patrick Marler and Steven Walters. "TV ad by Gableman comes out swinging." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 15 March 2008.</p> <p>Thomas-Lynn, Felicia. "NAACP decries campaign ad." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 March 2008.</p> <p>State v. Mitchell, 139 Wis.2d 856, 407 N.W.2d 566</p> <p>State v. Mitchell, 144 Wis.2d 596, 424 N.W.2d 698&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Wisconsin Judgment Day, the Sequel

https://factcheck.org/2008/03/wisconsin-judgment-day-the-sequel/

2008-03-21

2least

In this second of our Court Watch series we return to what8217s become a racially charged campaign in Wisconsin to replace Louis Butler the only black justice on the state Supreme Court with a white businessbacked lower court judge Mike Gableman We look at two ads that attack Butler and find both to be misleading We also lay out the facts behind a radio ad by a liberal group attacking Gableman We leave it to our readers to judge whether or not those facts add up to a political scandal as the ad claims The Gableman ad began airing March 14 The spot by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce started running this week as did a radio ad by the Greater Wisconsin Committee In Wisconsin judges don8217t run with political party labels attached They8217re officially nonpartisan However it8217s useful to know that Butler was appointed by a Democratic governor while Gableman was picked by a Republican Loophole Louie Gableman8217s ad opens in blackandwhite as a female narrator intones that shadowy special interests supporting Louis Butler are attacking Gableman She doesn8217t tell us who they are or what they8217re saying but whatever it is It8217s not true she claims as we8217re shown a grainy photo of Butler Flash to vivid color pictures of Gableman in his judge8217s robes We8217re told that he put many child molesters behind bars keeping our families safe Fade back to creepy blackandwhite with eerie music Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street the narrator tells us Like Reuben Mitchell who raped an 11yearold girl with learning disabilities Butler found a loophole Mitchell went on to molest another child ampltiframe height390 width480 allowfullscreentrue allowscriptaccessalways typeapplicationxshockwaveflash srchttpsvideofactcheckorgplayhIUWgeqdGgIampgtampltiframeampgt TET Gableman for Supreme Court Ad Prosecutor Narrator Unbelievable Shadowy special interests supporting Louis Butler are attacking Judge Michael Gableman It8217s not true Judge District Attorney Michael Gableman has committed his life to locking up criminals to keep families safe Putting child molesters behind bars for over a hundred years Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street Like Reuben Lee Mitchell who raped an 11yearold girl with learning disabilities Butler found a loophole Mitchell went on to molest another child Can Wisconsin families feel safe with Louis Butler on the Supreme Court TETamp160 Some of the ad8217s statements are true But the conclusion a viewer would naturally draw from the construction of the adamp1608211 that Mitchell was freed as a result of Butler8217s legal finagling or maybe a decision he made since he became a judge and used that freedom to commit more crimes 8211 is notamp160 Butler was a public defender for part of his career His job as a defense lawyer was to protect the rights of the accused His job now as a judge is different To say he worked to put criminals on the street while showing him in a judge8217s robes hoodwinks the viewer on two counts In 1987 Butler was assigned to represent Mitchell in an appeal of his conviction for raping the girl Here8217s what happened In most states including Wisconsin evidence of a complainant8217s prior sexual conduct is generally not admissible at trial The theory is that sexual assault victims shouldn8217t be subjected to embarrassing and detailed examination of their prior sexual conduct unless it is relevant to a particular set of circumstances Sometimes though the rape shield law can be used to the defendant8217s advantage and that8217s what happened here At the trial Mitchell8217s lawyer didn8217t want members of the jury to hear that the victim was a virgin because he was afraid it would prejudice them against his client The judge allowed it anyway Butler then raised the same issue when he was assigned to the appeal and the threemember appellate panel agreed with him Not only should the jury not have heard that information the panel said but there was a good chance it might have affected the outcome The judges reversed the verdict and ordered a new trial So Butler didn8217t find a loophole as this ad claims He convinced the appeals court that the trial judge had allowed the jury to hear prejudicial information which is just what appeals lawyers are supposed to do Furthermore Mitchell didn8217t get his new trial and he wasn8217t released The state took the case to the next level the Wisconsin Supreme Court which reversed the appellate court It was true said the high court that the trial judge shouldn8217t have allowed the jury to hear about the victim8217s virginity but said Justice Shirley Abrahamson writing for the majority it didn8217t make any difference We can conclude that there is no reasonable possibility that the error contributed to the conviction wrote Abrahamson Butler then had nothing to do with Mitchell8217s eventual release Mitchell stayed in prison until he was paroled in 1992 In 1995 he was convicted for twice raping a 14yearold He was sentenced to 40 years behind bars where he remains today The misleading message of this ad would be bad enough on its own but its dominant visual image has drawn condemnation from many quarters In that image which remains on the screen longer than any other in this ad a blackandwhite photo of Butler is paired with Mitchell8217s police mug shot Mitchell is black Butler is the only black justice on Wisconsin8217s Supreme Court The picture at the very least serves to remind viewers of Butler8217s race The independent Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee which is monitoring ads in the race called the spot highly offensive and deliberately misleading saying its racebaiting was reminiscent of the infamous Willlie Horton ad that attacked 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis over prison furloughs granted when he was governor The panel called for Gableman to take the ad down as have some Wisconsin editorial boards But Gableman8217s campaign hasn8217t done so and his campaign maintains the ad presents a fair comparison between the candidatesamp160 On Dec 3 1998 40yearold Julie Jensen was found dead in her home poisoned by ethylene glycol commonly found in antifreeze Her thenhusband Mark Jensen was charged with her murder in 2002 Julie Jensen had told a neighbor and others that she thought her husband was trying to poison her And she left a sealed letter with the neighbor asking him to give it to the police if anything happened to her The handwritten missive which was delivered as instructed described her fears about her husband and saidamp160that she was not suicidal She wrote in part I pray I8217m wrong nothing happens 8230 but I am suspicious of Mark8217s suspicious behaviors fear for my early demise However I will not leave David Douglas David and Douglas were her sons amp160 ampltiframe height390 width480 allowfullscreentrue allowscriptaccessalways typeapplicationxshockwaveflash srchttpsvideofactcheckorgplayhIUWge3dDwIampgtampltiframeampgt TET Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Ad Jensen Narrator We count on judges to use practical common sense to keep violent criminals behind bars But faced with an unspeakable crime Justice Louis Butler almost jeopardized the prosecution of a murderer because he saw a technicality When prosecutors needed to show critical evidence Butler dissented Going against six other justices Thankfully he didn8217t get his way Jurors said it was the most important piece of evidence they saw Call Louis Butler Tell him to stand up for victims 8211 not technicalities TETamp160 The fact that the letter was addressed to police made it in legal terms testimonial evidence or evidence similar to testimony given by a witness in court And the confrontation clauses of the US and Wisconsin constitutions guarantee the right of an accused to confront the witnesses against him or her Things get complicated when as in this case the witness is unavailable 8211 dead for example And not only dead but possibly dead by the defendant8217s own hand In fact the alleged cause of the unavailability of this witness was the very crime for which Mark Jensen was being tried Whether such evidence can be admitted and presented to a jury isamp160not an openandshut legal question The forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine 8211 whereby a defendant is considered to have forfeited his right to confront an unfriendly witness if his own wrongdoing caused the witness to be unable to appear 8211 is by no means settled law In the Jensen caseamp160the trial judge declared the letter inadmissible on the basis of a 2004 decision by the US Supreme Courtamp160 The prosecutoramp160appealed to the state Supreme Court And six of the justices ruled his way 8211 but they made clear they were forging a new legal path as they did soamp160 Justice Jon P Wilcox for the majority We reverse the circuit court8217s decision as to the applicability of the forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine Today we explicitly adopt this doctrine whereby a defendant is deemed to have lost the right to object on confrontation grounds to the admissibility of outofcourt statements of a declarant whose unavailability the defendant has caused As such the case must be remanded to the circuit court for a determination of whether by a preponderance of the evidence Jensen caused Julie8217s unavailability thereby forfeiting his right to confrontation It was Butler in his dissent who took the narrower view arguing for a stricter interpretation of the US Constitution Butler The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not state that in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right 8230 to be confronted with the witnesses against him or her except in homicide cases While other courts may feel free to disregard the very principles upon which the Confrontation Clause rests our decision must be limited by the Constitution and the United States Supreme Court decisions interpreting it 8230 Jensen after a sevenweek trial that was followed by the national media which dubbed it the letter from the grave case was convicted and sentenced to life without parole But he could get a chance for a new trial The US Supreme Court still grappling with the issue of forfeiture by wrongdoing will hear a case next month in which the accused charged with murdering his exgirlfriend claims that the use of evidence of a police conversation with the victim before her death violates his Sixth Amendment confrontation clause right The court8217s ruling in Giles v California is expected by the end of June Perhaps ironically the prosecutor of the Jensen case Robert Jambois is a Butler supporter Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce is being completely hypocritical here he said going after Justice Butler as being too liberal when he did in this case what they say they want all justices to do which is follow the Constitution Shadowy Group Reemerges Remember the shadowy groups condemned by the Gableman ad earlier in this article This is most likely a reference to the Greater Wisconsin Committee which is out with a new radio ad once again questioning Gableman8217s ethics We8217ve already reviewed one of its earlier TV offerings First we should say that this group is no more shadowy than the outside groups like Coalition for America8217s Families that have supported Gableman They don8217t disclose their donors but they8217re not required to For that matter Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce doesn8217t either The only real difference we can see is that GWC doesn8217t maintain a Web site But finding the group isn8217t difficult Wispoliticscom a popular political Web site in the land of the cheeseheads has a page on it and carries its press releases Click to play audio TET Greater Wisconsin Committee Radio Ad Scandal Wisconsin scandal update New troubling revelations about Judge Mike Gableman First An investigation uncovered evidence that Gableman was selected as a judge by Gov McCallum just weeks after he hosted a fundraiser and contributed 1250 to McCallum8217s campaign Next media reports disclosed that Gableman actually charged taxpayers for working while he traveled over 500 miles to host the fundraiser But now the most disturbing of all Newly released records show that Gableman8217s district attorney8217s office was a virtual political campaign headquarters In just two months before the fundraiser more than 50 longdistance telephone calls were made from his office to campaign fundraising staff other big campaign contributors and political campaigns All at taxpayers8217 expense All while taxpayers were paying Gableman to fight crime Call Mike Gableman at xxxxxxxxxx and tell him we need higher ethical standards for our judges Paid for by Greater Wisconsin Committee TET GWC8217s latest ad alleges first that thenGov Scott McCallum appointed Gableman to his judgeship just weeks after Gableman hosted a fundraiser for him and gave his campaign a check That8217s true as we8217ve written previously Next the ad claims that Gableman charged taxpayers for working while he traveled to the June 12 2002 fundraiser It8217s true that it would have been impossible for Gableman to get from his office to the evening fundraiser several hundred miles away without using part of what are normally considered working hours Gableman8217s campaign responded to our questions about this in an email According to the campaign Gableman received permission from Sandra Schultz who it identifies as his supervisor The ad8217s final charge is that during two months leading up to the fundraiser more than 50 calls were placed from Gableman8217s office to persons who it appears were likely being contacted about the upcoming event GWC received the telephone records using state open records laws and we have posted the records as supporting documents to this article We have also posted GWC8217s analysis of them The Gableman campaign has not clarified this matter although it did release to Madison8217s Wisconsin State Journal two pages of documents showing that Gableman reimbursed Ashland County for some personal calls in the months before and after the fundraiser But the campaign wouldn8217t say whether the calls were connected to fundraising nor would it explain how the reimbursements matched up with the calls cited by GWC which wasn8217t at all clear from the records themselves Even if the reimbursements do match the outgoing calls the calls could raise questions for Gableman As the Wisconsin State Journal notes under Wisconsin Ethics Board rules it is improper and illegal for a state public official to charge the State of Wisconsin for a telephone call if the call is not primarily related to the person8217s official responsibility 8211 even if the official later reimburses the State for its costs We8217ll leave it to readers to decide if these facts to the degree we8217ve been able to ascertain them add up to an ethical scandal as the ad charges This week the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law calculated that Wisconsin voters were subjected to 4789 televised Supreme Court campaign ads between Feb 20 and March 16 The vast majority have come from thirdparty groups We8217d chime in that a large number of them have been misleading The GablemanButler faceoff is April 1 8211 by Viveca Novakamp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 Callender David Butler Rips Gableman8217s Ads The Capital Times 20 March 2008 Remove the TV ad editorial The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 20 March 2008 Bauer Scott Monitoring group slams Gabelman ad featuring convicted rapist The Associated Press 17 March 2008 Forster Stacy Patrick Marler and Steven Walters TV ad by Gableman comes out swinging The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 15 March 2008 ThomasLynn Felicia NAACP decries campaign ad Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 18 March 2008 State v Mitchell 139 Wis2d 856 407 NW2d 566 State v Mitchell 144 Wis2d 596 424 NW2d 698amp160 amp160

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<p>HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe has given illegal vendors and pirate taxis 48 hours to leave Harare&#8217;s streets, failing which it will forcibly remove them with the military&#8217;s help, a cabinet minister said, as President Emmerson Mnangagwa seeks to restore order in cities.</p> A man walks past street vendors selling vegetables in Harare, Zimbabwe, November 25, 2017. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko <p>Once prided as the &#8220;sunshine city&#8221; of the southern African nation, Harare is home to thousands of hakwers who sell everything from fruits, roasted food and clothes on pavements, which authorities say causes a health hazard.</p> <p>July Moyo, minister of local government, was quoted by the official Herald newspaper saying he spoke to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, a retired general, &#8220;to seek his assistance so that security agencies can work with the municipalities&#8221; to end the illegal activities.</p> <p>&#8220;You are directed to cease forthwith your activities within the next 48 hours, failure of which you have no one but yourselves to blame,&#8221; Moyo said, referring to illegal vendors and unregistered taxis.</p> <p>Army spokesman Colonel Overson Mugwisi said he could not immediately comment, while Chiwenga was unreachable for comment.</p> <p>The military, under Chiwenga&#8217;s command, in November staged a defacto coup that it dubbed &#8220;Operation Restore Legacy&#8221;, which forced former president Robert Mugabe to resign and paved the way for the rise of Mnangagwa.</p> <p>Under Mugabe&#8217;s 37-year rule, the rate of unemployment rose to more than 80 percent, forcing many people to eke out a living by hawking on the streets.</p> <p>With the unpopular police under orders not to harass citizens, pirate taxis have taken advantage and daily flout traffic regulations and endanger other road users. Moyo said pirate taxis had turned Harare into a &#8220;hazardous jungle.&#8221;</p> <p>In the midst of the rainy season, the local authority fears that illegal vending of food and fruits could lead to an outbreak of cholera. Four people died this week from cholera in Chegutu town, 100 km (62 miles) west of Harare.</p> <p>Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Editing by William Maclean</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LIMA (Reuters) - Peru&#8217;s new foreign minister said on Tuesday that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was still not welcome to attend a regional summit in Lima next week, upholding a decision by Peru&#8217;s disgraced former president.</p> Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting with the ministers responsible for the economic sector at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Marco Bello <p>U.S. President Donald Trump and heads of state from across the Western Hemisphere plan to travel to Peru for the Summit of the Americas, which will celebrate the theme &#8220;democratic governance fighting corruption&#8221; from April 13-14.</p> <p>In his first speech as Peru&#8217;s foreign minister, Nestor Popolizio said Peru&#8217;s decision not to invite Maduro to the event reflects the view of a dozen countries that have been pressuring Venezuela to hold free and fair elections.</p> <p>Maduro&#8217;s refusal to heed calls for democratic reforms &#8220;negates even the slightest notion of democracy and represents an insurmountable impediment to taking part in the Summit of the Americas,&#8221; Popolizio said before a crowd of diplomats and journalists in the foreign ministry.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a firm decision that is not up for revision,&#8221; Popolizio said.</p> <p>Maduro has vowed to attend the Summit of the Americas despite Peru&#8217;s ban, which the center-right government of former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced in February. Maduro says Latin America&#8217;s right-leaning governments are part of a U.S.-led international conspiracy to topple him and take control of Venezuela&#8217;s oil resources.</p> <p>Kuczynski had been one of Maduro&#8217;s most outspoken critics, calling him a &#8220;dictator&#8221; and demanding he step down.</p> <p>But Kuczynski resigned after a scandal last month and was replaced by his vice president, Martin Vizcarra. Vizcarra declined to weigh in on Maduro and the summit last week, saying he would leave it up to the foreign ministry.</p> <p>Reporting By Reuters TV and Mitra Taj, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he was cancelling an agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants, bowing to right-wing pressure to scrap the deal.</p> <p>The agency, the UNHCR, said it hoped Israel would reconsider the decision soon and offered to work with it to identify and &#8220;respond to the protection needs&#8221; of asylum seekers in the country.</p> <p>Netanyahu&#8217;s critics seized on his backtracking on the arrangement - under which thousands of other migrants would have won the right to remain in Israel - as a sign of political weakness. The prime minister is the subject of police investigations into suspected corruption, which he denies.</p> <p>For the estimated 37,000 African migrants in Israel, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan, a whirlwind of announcements about their future has swept their status even deeper into limbo.</p> <p>Outside a government complex in Tel Aviv where Netanyahu said he was scrapping the deal, several African men wrapped themselves in chains in a protest that put their sense of powerlessness on display.</p> <p>On Monday Netanyahu announced an arrangement with the UNHCR that would have relocated about 16,250 migrants to Western countries.</p> <p>But the fact that thousands more would be allowed to stay raised an outcry from right-wing politicians and on social media from Netanyahu&#8217;s nationalist voter base, which wants the migrants expelled. He then posted on Facebook he was putting the agreement&#8217;s implementation on hold.</p> <p>By Tuesday, the deal was dead.</p> <p>&#8220;I have listened carefully to the many comments on the agreement. As a result, and after I again weighed the advantages and disadvantages, I decided to cancel the deal,&#8221; a statement from the prime minister&#8217;s office quoted Netanyahu as saying.</p> <p>He made the remarks at a meeting with representatives of residents of south Tel Aviv, a poor area that has attracted the largest migrant community and where many of its inhabitants want the Africans out.</p> <p>The fate of migrants who entered Israel illegally by trekking across a desert border with Egypt, has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home.</p> <p>In a statement, Israeli human rights groups condemned the decision to cancel the agreement, accusing Netanyahu of playing &#8220;political games&#8221;. The groups said Israel is capable of absorbing all of the migrants, describing them as &#8220;asylum-seekers who came knocking on its door&#8221;.</p> <p>Before announcing the deal, Israel had been moving ahead with plans to deport many of the Africans to Rwanda. But the Supreme Court intervened, freezing such deportations in March, and Netanyahu said Rwanda had buckled to international pressure and reneged on the deal.</p> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun <p>&#8220;Despite legal restraints and international difficulties that are piling up, we will continue to act with determination to explore all of the options at our disposal to remove the infiltrators,&#8221; Netanyahu said in his statement on Tuesday.</p> NETANYAHU BLAMES NGO <p>Netanyahu blamed the New Israel Fund (NIF), a U.S.-based non-governmental organization, for causing the deal with Rwanda to be scuppered, saying that through European states, it had persuaded the African nation to refuse to take in the migrants.</p> <p>In a Facebook post in Hebrew, he added that &#8220;for decades, the Fund contributes to anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian organizations&#8221; and called for a parliamentary committee to investigate it.</p> <p>The NIF denied Netanyahu&#8217;s allegation and said on its Facebook page that it had not influenced Rwanda&#8217;s decision and that he had &#8220;once again resorted to lies about the New Israel Fund in order to score cheap political points.&#8221;</p> African migrants and Israeli activists demonstrate in support of the new agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants, outside Israeli Prime Minister office in Jerusalem April 3, 2018. The placard in Hebrew reads "Not Playing with Human Life, Yes to the deal". REUTERS/Ammar Awad <p>&#8220;The New Israel Fund had nothing to do with Rwanda&#8217;s decision to refuse to participate in the Prime Minister&#8217;s cruel mass deportation plan.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Ori Lewis and by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; editing by David Stamp and Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - London police investigated more murders than their New York counterparts did over the last two months, statistics show, as the British capital&#8217;s mayor vowed to fight a &#8220;violent scourge&#8221; on the streets.</p> <p>There were 15 murders in London in February against 14 in New York, according to London&#8217;s Metropolitan Police Service and the New York Police Department. For March, 22 murders were investigated in London, with 21 reports in New York.</p> <p>In the latest bloodshed, a 17-year-old girl died on Monday after she was found with gunshot wounds in Tottenham, north London, a day after a man was fatally stabbed in south London.</p> <p>&#8220;The Mayor is deeply concerned by violent crime in the capital - every&amp;#160;life lost to violent crime is a tragedy,&#8221; a spokeswoman for Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a statement on Tuesday.</p> <p>&#8220;Our city remains one of the safest in the world ... but Sadiq wants it to be even safer and is working hard to bring an end to this violent scourge.&#8221;</p> <p>Including January&#8217;s figures, New York had still experienced more murders so far this year than London. The cities have a similar-sized population.</p> <p>Gun violence is much less of a problem in Britain, which has strict gun control laws, than in the United States, and most British police are not equipped with firearms.</p> <p>But British politicians and police are increasingly expressing concern about London&#8217;s rising murder rate, which is driven by a surge in knife crime. Of the 47 murders in London so far this year, 31 have been committed with knives.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s interior ministry said it was consulting on new laws to further restrict dangerous weapons, including banning online stores from delivering knives to residential addresses and making it an offence to possess certain weapons in public.</p> <p>&#8220;This government is taking action to restrict access to offensive weapons as well as working to break the deadly cycle of violence and protect our children, families and communities,&#8221; a Home Office spokesman said.</p> Forensic investigators examine a car on Chalgrove Road, where a teenage girl was murdered, in Tottenham, Britain, April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville <p>Khan, who has been in office since May 2016, is from the opposition Labour Party. Before him, Conservative Boris Johnson was mayor for eight years. The national government has been run by the Conservatives since 2010, with Prime Minister Theresa May previously serving as interior minister from 2010 to 2016.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s most senior officer, London police chief Cressida Dick, said gangs were using online platforms to glamorize violence, adding that disputes between young people could escalate within minutes on social media.</p> <p>The Ben Kinsella Trust, an anti-knife crime charity named after a young victim, said social media amplified a range of other factors that have contributed to the crisis.</p> <p>The charity&#8217;s CEO Patrick Green said there had been extra funding to tackle knife crime, which he welcomed, but added that the government needed to act with more urgency and that budget cuts affecting youth services had played a part.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>&#8220;This has been a horrendous year. It&#8217;s looking like it&#8217;ll be worse that last year, which was worse than the year before,&#8221; he told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;The response so far has been too slow... It feels like we&#8217;re in a crisis and we need to respond in that way.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison and Estelle Shirbon</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Three foreign powers who have shaped Syria&#8217;s civil war - Iran, Russia and Turkey - will discuss ways to wind down the fighting on Wednesday despite their involvement in rival military campaigns on the ground.</p> <p>The leaders of the three countries will meet in Ankara for talks on a new constitution for Syria and increasing security in &#8220;de-escalation&#8221; zones across the country, Turkish officials say.</p> <p>The Syria summit brings together two powers which have been President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s most forceful supporters, Iran and Russia, with one of his strongest opponents, Turkey.</p> <p>Cooperation between the rival camps raised hopes of stabilizing Syria after seven years of conflict in which 500,000 people have been killed and half the population displaced.</p> <p>But the violence has raged on, highlighting strategic rifts between the three countries who, in the absence of decisive Western intervention, hold Syria&#8217;s fate largely in their hands.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-iran-syria/u-s-and-israel-interfere-in-syria-says-iran-president-idUSKCN1HA1X6" type="external">U.S. and Israel interfere in Syria, says Iran president</a> <p>Syria&#8217;s army and Iran-backed militias, with Russian air power, have crushed insurgents near Damascus in eastern Ghouta - one of the four mooted &#8220;de-escalation zones&#8221;.</p> <p>Turkey, which sharply criticized the Ghouta offensive, waged its own military operation to drive Kurdish YPG fighters from the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin. It has pledged to take the town of Tel Rifaat and push further east, angering Iran.</p> <p>&#8220;Whatever the intentions are, Turkey&#8217;s moves in Syria, whether in Afrin, Tel Rifaat or any other part of Syria, should be halted as soon as possible,&#8221; a senior Iranian official said.</p> <p>Iran has been Assad&#8217;s most supportive ally throughout the conflict. Iran-backed militias first helped his army stem rebel advances and, following Russia&#8217;s entry into the war in 2015, turn the tide decisively in Assad&#8217;s favor.</p> <p>A Turkish official said Ankara will ask Moscow to press Assad to grant more humanitarian access in Ghouta, and to rein in air strikes on rebel-held areas. &#8220;We expect ... Russia to control the regime more,&#8221; the official told reporters this week.</p> RIFTS OVER ASSAD <p>Ankara&#8217;s relations with Moscow collapsed in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane but have recovered since then - to the concern of Turkey&#8217;s Western allies.</p> <p>Turkey was one of the few NATO partners not to expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack on a former Russian agent which Britain blamed on Moscow - an allegation which Turkey said was not proven.</p> <p>Improved political ties have been reflected in Turkey&#8217;s agreement to buy a Russian missile defence system and plans for Russia&#8217;s ROSATOM to build Turkey&#8217;s first nuclear power plant.</p> <p>Turkey has also expanded relations with Iran, exchanging visits by military chiefs of staff, although its deepening ties with Tehran and Moscow have not translated into broader agreement on Syria&#8217;s future.</p> <p>Iran remains determined that Assad stay in power, while Russia is less committed to keeping him in office, a regional diplomat said. Turkey says Assad has lost legitimacy, although it no longer demands his immediate departure.</p> <p>At a meeting in Russia two months ago, boycotted by the leadership of Syria&#8217;s opposition, delegates agreed to set up a committee to rewrite Syria&#8217;s constitution and called for democratic elections.</p> <p>Turkey says Wednesday&#8217;s meeting will discuss setting up the constitutional committee, humanitarian issues and developments in Syria&#8217;s northern Idlib region, which is under the control of rival rebel factions and jihadi groups, and where Turkey has set up seven military observation posts.</p> Syrian and Russian soldiers are seen at a checkpoint near Wafideen camp in Damascus, Syria March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki <p>&#8220;There are issues where all three countries have different policies in Syria,&#8221; another Turkish official said. &#8220;In this regard, an aim is to find middle ground and create policies to improve the current situation.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Writing by Dominic Evans, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Zimbabwe tells illegal vendors to quit Harare streets, may use army to clear them Peru to Maduro: You're still not welcome at Summit of Americas Israel's Netanyahu scraps African migrant relocation deal with U.N. London murder rate overtakes New York as knife crime rises Russia, Iran and Turkey struggle to find common ground on Syria

https://reuters.com/article/zimbabwe-politics/zimbabwe-tells-illegal-vendors-to-quit-harare-streets-may-use-army-to-clear-them-idUSL8N1PF09Q

2018-01-20

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HARARE Reuters Zimbabwe has given illegal vendors and pirate taxis 48 hours to leave Harare8217s streets failing which it will forcibly remove them with the military8217s help a cabinet minister said as President Emmerson Mnangagwa seeks to restore order in cities A man walks past street vendors selling vegetables in Harare Zimbabwe November 25 2017 REUTERSSiphiwe Sibeko Once prided as the 8220sunshine city8221 of the southern African nation Harare is home to thousands of hakwers who sell everything from fruits roasted food and clothes on pavements which authorities say causes a health hazard July Moyo minister of local government was quoted by the official Herald newspaper saying he spoke to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga a retired general 8220to seek his assistance so that security agencies can work with the municipalities8221 to end the illegal activities 8220You are directed to cease forthwith your activities within the next 48 hours failure of which you have no one but yourselves to blame8221 Moyo said referring to illegal vendors and unregistered taxis Army spokesman Colonel Overson Mugwisi said he could not immediately comment while Chiwenga was unreachable for comment The military under Chiwenga8217s command in November staged a defacto coup that it dubbed 8220Operation Restore Legacy8221 which forced former president Robert Mugabe to resign and paved the way for the rise of Mnangagwa Under Mugabe8217s 37year rule the rate of unemployment rose to more than 80 percent forcing many people to eke out a living by hawking on the streets With the unpopular police under orders not to harass citizens pirate taxis have taken advantage and daily flout traffic regulations and endanger other road users Moyo said pirate taxis had turned Harare into a 8220hazardous jungle8221 In the midst of the rainy season the local authority fears that illegal vending of food and fruits could lead to an outbreak of cholera Four people died this week from cholera in Chegutu town 100 km 62 miles west of Harare Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe Editing by William Maclean Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LIMA Reuters Peru8217s new foreign minister said on Tuesday that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was still not welcome to attend a regional summit in Lima next week upholding a decision by Peru8217s disgraced former president Venezuelas President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting with the ministers responsible for the economic sector at Miraflores Palace in Caracas Venezuela March 22 2018 REUTERSMarco Bello US President Donald Trump and heads of state from across the Western Hemisphere plan to travel to Peru for the Summit of the Americas which will celebrate the theme 8220democratic governance fighting corruption8221 from April 1314 In his first speech as Peru8217s foreign minister Nestor Popolizio said Peru8217s decision not to invite Maduro to the event reflects the view of a dozen countries that have been pressuring Venezuela to hold free and fair elections Maduro8217s refusal to heed calls for democratic reforms 8220negates even the slightest notion of democracy and represents an insurmountable impediment to taking part in the Summit of the Americas8221 Popolizio said before a crowd of diplomats and journalists in the foreign ministry 8220This is a firm decision that is not up for revision8221 Popolizio said Maduro has vowed to attend the Summit of the Americas despite Peru8217s ban which the centerright government of former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced in February Maduro says Latin America8217s rightleaning governments are part of a USled international conspiracy to topple him and take control of Venezuela8217s oil resources Kuczynski had been one of Maduro8217s most outspoken critics calling him a 8220dictator8221 and demanding he step down But Kuczynski resigned after a scandal last month and was replaced by his vice president Martin Vizcarra Vizcarra declined to weigh in on Maduro and the summit last week saying he would leave it up to the foreign ministry Reporting By Reuters TV and Mitra Taj Editing by Rosalba OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he was cancelling an agreement with the UN refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants bowing to rightwing pressure to scrap the deal The agency the UNHCR said it hoped Israel would reconsider the decision soon and offered to work with it to identify and 8220respond to the protection needs8221 of asylum seekers in the country Netanyahu8217s critics seized on his backtracking on the arrangement under which thousands of other migrants would have won the right to remain in Israel as a sign of political weakness The prime minister is the subject of police investigations into suspected corruption which he denies For the estimated 37000 African migrants in Israel most of them from Eritrea and Sudan a whirlwind of announcements about their future has swept their status even deeper into limbo Outside a government complex in Tel Aviv where Netanyahu said he was scrapping the deal several African men wrapped themselves in chains in a protest that put their sense of powerlessness on display On Monday Netanyahu announced an arrangement with the UNHCR that would have relocated about 16250 migrants to Western countries But the fact that thousands more would be allowed to stay raised an outcry from rightwing politicians and on social media from Netanyahu8217s nationalist voter base which wants the migrants expelled He then posted on Facebook he was putting the agreement8217s implementation on hold By Tuesday the deal was dead 8220I have listened carefully to the many comments on the agreement As a result and after I again weighed the advantages and disadvantages I decided to cancel the deal8221 a statement from the prime minister8217s office quoted Netanyahu as saying He made the remarks at a meeting with representatives of residents of south Tel Aviv a poor area that has attracted the largest migrant community and where many of its inhabitants want the Africans out The fate of migrants who entered Israel illegally by trekking across a desert border with Egypt has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home In a statement Israeli human rights groups condemned the decision to cancel the agreement accusing Netanyahu of playing 8220political games8221 The groups said Israel is capable of absorbing all of the migrants describing them as 8220asylumseekers who came knocking on its door8221 Before announcing the deal Israel had been moving ahead with plans to deport many of the Africans to Rwanda But the Supreme Court intervened freezing such deportations in March and Netanyahu said Rwanda had buckled to international pressure and reneged on the deal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Prime Ministers office in Jerusalem April 2 2018 REUTERSRonen Zvulun 8220Despite legal restraints and international difficulties that are piling up we will continue to act with determination to explore all of the options at our disposal to remove the infiltrators8221 Netanyahu said in his statement on Tuesday NETANYAHU BLAMES NGO Netanyahu blamed the New Israel Fund NIF a USbased nongovernmental organization for causing the deal with Rwanda to be scuppered saying that through European states it had persuaded the African nation to refuse to take in the migrants In a Facebook post in Hebrew he added that 8220for decades the Fund contributes to antiZionist proPalestinian organizations8221 and called for a parliamentary committee to investigate it The NIF denied Netanyahu8217s allegation and said on its Facebook page that it had not influenced Rwanda8217s decision and that he had 8220once again resorted to lies about the New Israel Fund in order to score cheap political points8221 African migrants and Israeli activists demonstrate in support of the new agreement with the UN refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants outside Israeli Prime Minister office in Jerusalem April 3 2018 The placard in Hebrew reads Not Playing with Human Life Yes to the deal REUTERSAmmar Awad 8220The New Israel Fund had nothing to do with Rwanda8217s decision to refuse to participate in the Prime Minister8217s cruel mass deportation plan8221 Additional reporting by Ori Lewis and by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva editing by David Stamp and Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters London police investigated more murders than their New York counterparts did over the last two months statistics show as the British capital8217s mayor vowed to fight a 8220violent scourge8221 on the streets There were 15 murders in London in February against 14 in New York according to London8217s Metropolitan Police Service and the New York Police Department For March 22 murders were investigated in London with 21 reports in New York In the latest bloodshed a 17yearold girl died on Monday after she was found with gunshot wounds in Tottenham north London a day after a man was fatally stabbed in south London 8220The Mayor is deeply concerned by violent crime in the capital everyamp160life lost to violent crime is a tragedy8221 a spokeswoman for Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a statement on Tuesday 8220Our city remains one of the safest in the world but Sadiq wants it to be even safer and is working hard to bring an end to this violent scourge8221 Including January8217s figures New York had still experienced more murders so far this year than London The cities have a similarsized population Gun violence is much less of a problem in Britain which has strict gun control laws than in the United States and most British police are not equipped with firearms But British politicians and police are increasingly expressing concern about London8217s rising murder rate which is driven by a surge in knife crime Of the 47 murders in London so far this year 31 have been committed with knives Britain8217s interior ministry said it was consulting on new laws to further restrict dangerous weapons including banning online stores from delivering knives to residential addresses and making it an offence to possess certain weapons in public 8220This government is taking action to restrict access to offensive weapons as well as working to break the deadly cycle of violence and protect our children families and communities8221 a Home Office spokesman said Forensic investigators examine a car on Chalgrove Road where a teenage girl was murdered in Tottenham Britain April 3 2018 REUTERSToby Melville Khan who has been in office since May 2016 is from the opposition Labour Party Before him Conservative Boris Johnson was mayor for eight years The national government has been run by the Conservatives since 2010 with Prime Minister Theresa May previously serving as interior minister from 2010 to 2016 Britain8217s most senior officer London police chief Cressida Dick said gangs were using online platforms to glamorize violence adding that disputes between young people could escalate within minutes on social media The Ben Kinsella Trust an antiknife crime charity named after a young victim said social media amplified a range of other factors that have contributed to the crisis The charity8217s CEO Patrick Green said there had been extra funding to tackle knife crime which he welcomed but added that the government needed to act with more urgency and that budget cuts affecting youth services had played a part Slideshow 6 Images 8220This has been a horrendous year It8217s looking like it8217ll be worse that last year which was worse than the year before8221 he told Reuters 8220The response so far has been too slow It feels like we8217re in a crisis and we need to respond in that way8221 Reporting by Alistair Smout editing by Stephen Addison and Estelle Shirbon Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ANKARAISTANBUL Reuters Three foreign powers who have shaped Syria8217s civil war Iran Russia and Turkey will discuss ways to wind down the fighting on Wednesday despite their involvement in rival military campaigns on the ground The leaders of the three countries will meet in Ankara for talks on a new constitution for Syria and increasing security in 8220deescalation8221 zones across the country Turkish officials say The Syria summit brings together two powers which have been President Bashar alAssad8217s most forceful supporters Iran and Russia with one of his strongest opponents Turkey Cooperation between the rival camps raised hopes of stabilizing Syria after seven years of conflict in which 500000 people have been killed and half the population displaced But the violence has raged on highlighting strategic rifts between the three countries who in the absence of decisive Western intervention hold Syria8217s fate largely in their hands Related Coverage US and Israel interfere in Syria says Iran president Syria8217s army and Iranbacked militias with Russian air power have crushed insurgents near Damascus in eastern Ghouta one of the four mooted 8220deescalation zones8221 Turkey which sharply criticized the Ghouta offensive waged its own military operation to drive Kurdish YPG fighters from the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin It has pledged to take the town of Tel Rifaat and push further east angering Iran 8220Whatever the intentions are Turkey8217s moves in Syria whether in Afrin Tel Rifaat or any other part of Syria should be halted as soon as possible8221 a senior Iranian official said Iran has been Assad8217s most supportive ally throughout the conflict Iranbacked militias first helped his army stem rebel advances and following Russia8217s entry into the war in 2015 turn the tide decisively in Assad8217s favor A Turkish official said Ankara will ask Moscow to press Assad to grant more humanitarian access in Ghouta and to rein in air strikes on rebelheld areas 8220We expect Russia to control the regime more8221 the official told reporters this week RIFTS OVER ASSAD Ankara8217s relations with Moscow collapsed in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane but have recovered since then to the concern of Turkey8217s Western allies Turkey was one of the few NATO partners not to expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack on a former Russian agent which Britain blamed on Moscow an allegation which Turkey said was not proven Improved political ties have been reflected in Turkey8217s agreement to buy a Russian missile defence system and plans for Russia8217s ROSATOM to build Turkey8217s first nuclear power plant Turkey has also expanded relations with Iran exchanging visits by military chiefs of staff although its deepening ties with Tehran and Moscow have not translated into broader agreement on Syria8217s future Iran remains determined that Assad stay in power while Russia is less committed to keeping him in office a regional diplomat said Turkey says Assad has lost legitimacy although it no longer demands his immediate departure At a meeting in Russia two months ago boycotted by the leadership of Syria8217s opposition delegates agreed to set up a committee to rewrite Syria8217s constitution and called for democratic elections Turkey says Wednesday8217s meeting will discuss setting up the constitutional committee humanitarian issues and developments in Syria8217s northern Idlib region which is under the control of rival rebel factions and jihadi groups and where Turkey has set up seven military observation posts Syrian and Russian soldiers are seen at a checkpoint near Wafideen camp in Damascus Syria March 2 2018 REUTERSOmar Sanadiki 8220There are issues where all three countries have different policies in Syria8221 another Turkish official said 8220In this regard an aim is to find middle ground and create policies to improve the current situation8221 Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara Writing by Dominic Evans Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p><a href="" type="internal">Matthew Corley</a>&amp;#160;|&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Shutterstock.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>This week Bernie Sanders started moonlighting as a <a href="" type="internal">traveling used car salesman</a>. A&amp;#160;month ago, the neophyte salesman volunteered to handle the problematic Clinton account, featuring the Hillary model, which, like the Edsel of old, had previously gone unsold during its initial rollout in 2008.</p> <p>Sanders, who has perfected his pitches to younger and blue-color buyers with questionable credit, is emphasizing the value and durability of the Hillary model, noting that despite the heavy mileage, the engine continues to fire consistently, with only occasional coughing from the tailpipes.</p> <p>The car is something of a gas-guzzler and seems to run best on fuel refined from sweet crude extracted from the Libyan oil fields. For the environmentally conscious consumer, Sanders noted that the Hillary model can be modified to run on Ethanol, though the carburetor often proves to be a little finicky unless the Ethanol is made from a specific variety of corn genetically engineered by Monsanto.</p> <p>At one showroom event in Sheboygan, Sanders boasted enthusiastically about the trans-Pacific trade-in value of the Hillary, which remains especially high against Korean and Chinese models.</p> <p>Under questioning from a prospective buyer, Sanders did admit that, according to a report from a Ralph Nader-affiliated group, the Hillary model has developed a minor issue with the power steering, which causes the car to veer uncontrollably to the right.</p> <p>As with all Clinton models, financing for the Hillary is available through Goldman Sachs.</p> <p>Our Revolution, Incorporated</p> <p>Back in Burlington, Vermont, the roll out of Our Revolution, Inc., got off to a sputtering start. Our Revolution, Inc. was meant to serve as the vanguard for the war on economic inequality and political corruption, which Sanders vowed to keep waging after his defeat in the Democratic primaries. But the organization has been crippled by internal power plays, purges and squabbling over money.</p> <p>On Monday, more than <a href="" type="internal">half of the staff resigned en masse,</a> only days before the organization&#8217;s prime time debut during a webcast on Wednesday night. Apparently, the final straw was the decision by Bernie and Jane Sanders to appoint Jeff Weaver, former manager of Bernie&#8217;s presidential campaign, to head Our Revolution, Inc. The animus of the Sandernistas toward Weaver and his buddy Tad Davine, another hired political hack who soaked the Sanders campaign for huge consulting fees, is visceral. And with good reason. While pocketing huge fees, Davine and Weaver made fatal tactical blunders during the campaign, such as refusing to contest the southern primaries, that effectively doomed Sanders&#8217; remote chances from the very beginning.</p> <p>Our Revolution, Inc. has other problems. Namely money. At this point the group has raised only $300,000 toward its mission of helping to get &#8220;progressive&#8221; (Democratic) candidates elected in November and beyond. That&#8217;s less than the Sanders campaign was raking on an average day of online fundraising in March. How much of that amount is being chewed up by staff salaries is unknown. Some of Bernie&#8217;s most ardent devotees have pointed the finger at Jane Sanders for the <a href="" type="internal">financial troubles</a> at Our Revolution, Inc., which strikes me as&amp;#160;petty given all the other vultures circling the carcass of the Sanders campaign. But the smaller the pot, the more intense the money-grubbing. (See: Erich Von Stroheim&#8217;s film of Frank Norris&#8217; novel &#8220; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4X2NdQQ83s" type="external">Greed</a>&#8221;.)</p> <p>Welcome to revolution on the installment plan.</p> <p>The Bang for Their Buck</p> <p>Hillary Clinton is experiencing no such troubling issues with her fundraising. In fact, the money is pouring in from all quarters, left and right. In recent weeks, Clinton&#8217;s campaign coffers have been filled to the brim by a gusher of funds from defense contractors and weapons manufacturers. Indeed, Clinton has raised twice as much money from the <a href="" type="internal">defense sector</a>as her non-interventionist rival Donald Trump.</p> <p>Over the course of the summer months, executives from defense companies have showered Clinton with $93,000, compared to Trump&#8217;s meager pickings of only $46,000. Among the corporate bigwigs to show their faith in Hillary to advance their cause by waging new wars are top executives from Lockheed, General Atomics, Raytheon, United Technologies, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics and Booz Allen Hamilton, which has the mega-contract to act as the Pentagon&#8217;s comptroller. (Aside: an audit this week by the Inspector General for the Pentagon revealed that the US Army made accounting errors of $9.3 trillion in the last two years alone.)</p> <p>The politics of war is a racket, as General Butler observed, and political contributions are an investment to insure that that racket continues in perpetuity.</p> <p>Still Hasn&#8217;t Found What He&#8217;s Looking For</p> <p>I don&#8217;t understand why the task of unearthing Hillary&#8217;s emails has fallen to the scrappy rightwing outfit Judicial Watch and not to the New York Times or the ACLU. Don&#8217;t liberals care about preserving the integrity of the Freedom of Information Act? Perhaps they&#8217;re numbed from listening&amp;#160;to the &#8220;Joshua Tree&#8221; album on endless loop.</p> <p>One of the most ludicrous emails to be excavated from the latest dump of missives involving fat cats donors to the Clinton Foundation seeking favors from Hillary and the State Department concerns the sad case of Bono, the puerile <a href="" type="internal">frontman</a> for U2.</p> <p>On May 27, 2009, just a few months after Hillary took office as Secretary of State, Ben Schwerin, a Bill Clinton aide, wrote an email to Huma Abedeen at the State Department on behalf of Bono, a donor to the Clinton Foundation. &#8220;Bono wants to do a linkup with the International Space Station on every show during the tour this year,&#8221; Schwerin wrote. &#8220;I&#8217;m trying to figure out who the best contact is to talk to at NASA or the congressional committee on science and technology. Any ideas? Thks.&#8221;</p> <p>Abedeen responded quickly, &#8220;No clue.&#8221; But within a few weeks Bono had his &#8220;link up&#8221; from NASA for one of the most banal rock tours of the decade. NASA could have done the world a favor by simply launching Bono into deep space.</p> <p>The Ghost of Tipper Haunts Hipsterville</p> <p>Speaking of music, ever wonder what became of the censorious Tipper Gore, who was frightened that the children of America might get their sex and political education by listening to rap music and heavy metal? Apparently, Tipper is now secret advisor to the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools. How else can we explain the recent decision by the school executives in Hipsterville to ban the playing of rap music on school buses this fall?</p> <p>While forbidding the playing of rap music as &#8220;inappropriate,&#8221; Teri Brady, senior director of transportation at Portland Public Schools, helpfully provided <a href="" type="internal">a list of radio stations</a> that played the three permissible genres: pop, country and jazz.</p> <p>Despite its progressive image, Portland may be the most racist city in the nation. It&#8217;s certainly the whitest. And its getting whiter every day as hipster hordes from Brooklyn and the Bay Area flood north Portland forcing out economically stressed blacks.</p> <p>The school district could better service its students by banning the teaching of American history until it begins to tell a more accurate account of the origins of Oregon statehood, including the race exclusion laws enacted between 1847 and 1855, which banned blacks from settling in the state. Until that unlikely day, rap music may provide the only history that really matters.</p> <p>Travel Advisory From the Highway to Hell&#8230;.</p> <p>Last week temperatures in the Pacific Northwest topped 100 degrees for three consecutive days. This week the once-soggy quadrant of the nation sizzles under temperatures in the mid-90s. Wildfire rage across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, northern California and Montana. Down in the Delta, Baton Rouge just got swamped by another 1000-year flood, which seems to happen once every decade now.</p> <p>Thus it came as little surprise to learn that <a href="" type="internal">July 2016 was the hottest month</a> ever recorded. In fact, the last 12 months have each broken temperature records. According to data from NASA, which combine sea surface temperature and air temperature on land, July 2016 was 0.84C hotter than the 1951 to 1980 average for July, and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015. 2016 shows every sign of being the hottest year since record keeping began.</p> <p>It&#8217;s all downhill from here. How do you want to go? By water or fire?</p> <p>Going Once, Going Twice</p> <p>The flaming planet and the Bayou floods did not deter the Interior Department from its mission to auction off 23.8 million acres of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest such sale since the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.</p> <p>That&#8217;s not to say that the Interior Department hasn&#8217;t learned some valuable lessons from the environmental movement over the past few years. Anticipating angry protesters and perhaps undercover bidders who might choose, like <a href="http://billmoyers.com/segment/why-tim-dechristopher-went-to-prison-for-his-protest/" type="external">Tim DeChristopher</a> and <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/news/3544161-155/auction-of-utah-oil-gas" type="external">Terry Tempest Williams</a>, to buy the drilling rights yet not actually sink their drills into virgin ground, the Interior Department held their auction in an <a href="http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/feds_move_oil_gas_lease_auctions_online/" type="external">online livestream event</a>, safe from pesky greens bent on disrupting one of the last sacred rituals of the fossil fuels industry.</p> <p>This sums up Obama&#8217;s environmental policy for me.</p> <p>Hey Joe</p> <p>Joe Arpaio is the bigoted buffoon who has been the sheriff for Maricopa County, Arizona since 1983. Arpaio, one of Donald Trump&#8217;s most trusted advisers, is a bully and thug who has overseen the most outrageous system of racial profiling in country in his insane quest to cleanse the greater Phoenix area of suspected undocumented immigrants. Arpaio has starved inmates at the county jail, denied them reading materials and refused to provide basic medical care. He has housed inmates in tent cities in the desert, made them wear pink uniforms and reconstituted the use of chain gang labor. Arpaio has also compelled all of the inmates in Maricopa&#8217;s jails to register for the selective service.</p> <p>On August 20, federal Judge Murray Snow, who is overseeing the investigation into illegal racial profiling by Arpaio and his deputies, took the very rare step of asking that the Justice Department to file criminal contempt of court charges against the sheriff for continually violating court orders designed to keep the Maricopa County Sheriff&#8217;s Office from racially profiling Latinos.</p> <p>Just drop him off in the middle of the <a href="https://www.fws.gov/refuge/cabeza_prieta/" type="external">Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge</a> in a pair of sandals and pink jail clothes and let the sidewinders do the rest&#8230;.</p> <p>Dianne, Warren Hinkle Calling</p> <p>Last week, the hacker known as Gufficer 2.0 dropped another bombshell on the Democratic Party elites by posting online the private cellphone numbers and email address of high-ranking members of congress. Nancy Pelosi was apparently irate that her attempt to shakedown money from Bay Area tycoons was repeatedly interrupted by dozens of angry calls from constituents whose past grievances had gone unaddressed.</p> <p>But Nancy&#8217;s miserable night was nothing compared to the righteous havoc that descended on her San Francisco compatriot Dianne Feinstein (Net worth: $43 million) back in the early 1980s at the hands of Hunter S. Thompson and Warren Hinkle. When Feinstein was mayor, she authorized police raids on the O&#8217;Farrell Theater, a strip club in the Tenderloin owned by the Mitchel Brothers, producers of Beyond the Green Door and other porn films of the 1970s. It so happened that the O&#8217;Farrell Theater was a favorite hangout for Thompson and Hinkle, who peeved Feinstein&#8217;s assault on their First Amendment right to observe the artistic performances of some of the Bay Areas most accomplished strippers. Thompson, who claimed to the be the &#8220;night manager&#8221; of the O&#8217;Farrell, once called the club the &#8220;Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.&#8221; In retaliation for Feinstein&#8217;s vice raids, Thompson and Hinkle acquired the mayor&#8217;s home telephone number and had it posted on the billboard at the O&#8217;Farrell with the message: &#8220;For a good time, call Dianne at&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>Warren Hinkle died this week at the age of 77. He was one of the last of his breed, a wild man of American journalism, whose tenure as editor of Ramparts and Scanlan&#8217;s magazines helped define radical journalism in America. Among other things, Warren played midwife to the birth of gonzo journalism when he assigned Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman to cover the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan&#8217;s in 1971. (An episode which is now the subject an excellent short film, <a href="" type="internal">Gonzo @ the Derby</a>, which features a brief&amp;#160;interview with Hinkle.)</p> <p>My friend Fred Gardner worked for Hinkle at Ramparts in the late 1960s. When I told Fred yesterday that Hinkle had died, Fred said: &#8220;He fired me twice, but hired me three times. Four, if you count &#8216;War News.&#8217; He slandered me twice &#8212;not in writing, things he was telling people&#8212; and I never held it against him, for some reason. Neither time was it malicious, he was just playing up a plausible story. He had great taste in women.&#8221; Last week, we ran Fred&#8217;s <a href="" type="internal">vivid account</a> of working for Ramparts during the raucous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.</p> <p>Alexander Cockburn and I met Hinkle at a dark bar in Chinatown in the spring of 2001. Warren began ordering mysterious drinks of iridescent colors and names that seemed to derive from the Tibetan Book of the Dead.</p> <p>&#8220;Look,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You should both come write for the Examiner.&#8221; This was once William Randolph Hearst&#8217;s flagship paper, which had fallen into the hands of a Chinese family called the Fangs for the princely sum of $100. The Fangs had hired Warren to run the editorial department. &#8220;Write about whatever you want. Just keep it under 700 words. As long as I get paid, you&#8217;ll get paid.&#8221; &amp;#160;We agreed. Alex and I&amp;#160;each wrote a column a week. The gig went on for a few enjoyable months before coming to a predictable end.</p> <p>Hinkle drank us both under the table that day and, deal concluded, walked briskly away down Grant Street, as if he&#8217;d just spent the afternoon sipping cappuccino.</p> <p>Love and War</p> <p>Lee Ballinger, of Rock &amp;amp; Rap Confidential and CounterPunch fame, becomes the last living American to debut his own podcast: Love and War. Check it out <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqXykL4xtrE" type="external">here.</a></p> <p>Oh Say Can You See the Slave Breeders?</p> <p>Word comes from Ned and Constance Sublette, longtime friends of CounterPunch, that their magisterial book, <a href="" type="internal">The American Slave Coast: a History of the Slave Breeding Industry</a>, has just won the American Book Award for nonfiction. Congratulations to the Sublettes on a project of deep history that was years&amp;#160;in the making.&amp;#160;This sprawling and unsparing history of the American slave-breeding industry may be the most important book of the last decade. It is a vividly written, painfully documented alternative history of the grim origins of the political economy of the American republic. As the Sublettes convincingly demonstrate, the heinous truth is that from the earliest days the American economy was driven by slavery and the most profitable business in that abominable enterprise derived from the manufacturing and sale of new slaves.</p> <p>Sound Grammar</p> <p>What I&#8217;m listening to this week&#8230;</p> <p>Willie Wight: <a href="" type="internal">Telling the Truth</a></p> <p>Betty Davis: <a href="" type="internal">They Say I&#8217;m Different</a></p> <p>The Velvet Underground: <a href="" type="internal">The Complete Matrix Tapes</a></p> <p>Esperanza Spalding: <a href="" type="internal">Emily&#8217;s D+Evolution</a></p> <p>Blood Orange: <a href="" type="internal">Freetown Sound</a></p> <p>A Poker Up the Rear End of the Establishment</p> <p>&#8220;It takes a lot of moola to fool around with national magazines, regardless of their politics. It takes even more if the paper is hell bent on shoving a hot poker up the rear end of the Establishment, as that editorial posture is not conducive to a massive influx of advertising dollars&#8230;a lot of people on the left still cherish the idea that Ramparts went under because I bought people drinks.&#8221; &#8211; Warren Hinkle</p>

Roaming Charges: Bernie’s Used Cars

https://counterpunch.org/2016/08/26/roaming-charges-bernies-used-cars/

2016-08-26

4left

Matthew Corleyamp160amp160 Shutterstockcom amp160 This week Bernie Sanders started moonlighting as a traveling used car salesman Aamp160month ago the neophyte salesman volunteered to handle the problematic Clinton account featuring the Hillary model which like the Edsel of old had previously gone unsold during its initial rollout in 2008 Sanders who has perfected his pitches to younger and bluecolor buyers with questionable credit is emphasizing the value and durability of the Hillary model noting that despite the heavy mileage the engine continues to fire consistently with only occasional coughing from the tailpipes The car is something of a gasguzzler and seems to run best on fuel refined from sweet crude extracted from the Libyan oil fields For the environmentally conscious consumer Sanders noted that the Hillary model can be modified to run on Ethanol though the carburetor often proves to be a little finicky unless the Ethanol is made from a specific variety of corn genetically engineered by Monsanto At one showroom event in Sheboygan Sanders boasted enthusiastically about the transPacific tradein value of the Hillary which remains especially high against Korean and Chinese models Under questioning from a prospective buyer Sanders did admit that according to a report from a Ralph Naderaffiliated group the Hillary model has developed a minor issue with the power steering which causes the car to veer uncontrollably to the right As with all Clinton models financing for the Hillary is available through Goldman Sachs Our Revolution Incorporated Back in Burlington Vermont the roll out of Our Revolution Inc got off to a sputtering start Our Revolution Inc was meant to serve as the vanguard for the war on economic inequality and political corruption which Sanders vowed to keep waging after his defeat in the Democratic primaries But the organization has been crippled by internal power plays purges and squabbling over money On Monday more than half of the staff resigned en masse only days before the organization8217s prime time debut during a webcast on Wednesday night Apparently the final straw was the decision by Bernie and Jane Sanders to appoint Jeff Weaver former manager of Bernie8217s presidential campaign to head Our Revolution Inc The animus of the Sandernistas toward Weaver and his buddy Tad Davine another hired political hack who soaked the Sanders campaign for huge consulting fees is visceral And with good reason While pocketing huge fees Davine and Weaver made fatal tactical blunders during the campaign such as refusing to contest the southern primaries that effectively doomed Sanders8217 remote chances from the very beginning Our Revolution Inc has other problems Namely money At this point the group has raised only 300000 toward its mission of helping to get 8220progressive8221 Democratic candidates elected in November and beyond That8217s less than the Sanders campaign was raking on an average day of online fundraising in March How much of that amount is being chewed up by staff salaries is unknown Some of Bernie8217s most ardent devotees have pointed the finger at Jane Sanders for the financial troubles at Our Revolution Inc which strikes me asamp160petty given all the other vultures circling the carcass of the Sanders campaign But the smaller the pot the more intense the moneygrubbing See Erich Von Stroheim8217s film of Frank Norris8217 novel 8220 Greed8221 Welcome to revolution on the installment plan The Bang for Their Buck Hillary Clinton is experiencing no such troubling issues with her fundraising In fact the money is pouring in from all quarters left and right In recent weeks Clinton8217s campaign coffers have been filled to the brim by a gusher of funds from defense contractors and weapons manufacturers Indeed Clinton has raised twice as much money from the defense sectoras her noninterventionist rival Donald Trump Over the course of the summer months executives from defense companies have showered Clinton with 93000 compared to Trump8217s meager pickings of only 46000 Among the corporate bigwigs to show their faith in Hillary to advance their cause by waging new wars are top executives from Lockheed General Atomics Raytheon United Technologies Boeing BAE Systems General Dynamics and Booz Allen Hamilton which has the megacontract to act as the Pentagon8217s comptroller Aside an audit this week by the Inspector General for the Pentagon revealed that the US Army made accounting errors of 93 trillion in the last two years alone The politics of war is a racket as General Butler observed and political contributions are an investment to insure that that racket continues in perpetuity Still Hasn8217t Found What He8217s Looking For I don8217t understand why the task of unearthing Hillary8217s emails has fallen to the scrappy rightwing outfit Judicial Watch and not to the New York Times or the ACLU Don8217t liberals care about preserving the integrity of the Freedom of Information Act Perhaps they8217re numbed from listeningamp160to the 8220Joshua Tree8221 album on endless loop One of the most ludicrous emails to be excavated from the latest dump of missives involving fat cats donors to the Clinton Foundation seeking favors from Hillary and the State Department concerns the sad case of Bono the puerile frontman for U2 On May 27 2009 just a few months after Hillary took office as Secretary of State Ben Schwerin a Bill Clinton aide wrote an email to Huma Abedeen at the State Department on behalf of Bono a donor to the Clinton Foundation 8220Bono wants to do a linkup with the International Space Station on every show during the tour this year8221 Schwerin wrote 8220I8217m trying to figure out who the best contact is to talk to at NASA or the congressional committee on science and technology Any ideas Thks8221 Abedeen responded quickly 8220No clue8221 But within a few weeks Bono had his 8220link up8221 from NASA for one of the most banal rock tours of the decade NASA could have done the world a favor by simply launching Bono into deep space The Ghost of Tipper Haunts Hipsterville Speaking of music ever wonder what became of the censorious Tipper Gore who was frightened that the children of America might get their sex and political education by listening to rap music and heavy metal Apparently Tipper is now secret advisor to the Portland Oregon Public Schools How else can we explain the recent decision by the school executives in Hipsterville to ban the playing of rap music on school buses this fall While forbidding the playing of rap music as 8220inappropriate8221 Teri Brady senior director of transportation at Portland Public Schools helpfully provided a list of radio stations that played the three permissible genres pop country and jazz Despite its progressive image Portland may be the most racist city in the nation It8217s certainly the whitest And its getting whiter every day as hipster hordes from Brooklyn and the Bay Area flood north Portland forcing out economically stressed blacks The school district could better service its students by banning the teaching of American history until it begins to tell a more accurate account of the origins of Oregon statehood including the race exclusion laws enacted between 1847 and 1855 which banned blacks from settling in the state Until that unlikely day rap music may provide the only history that really matters Travel Advisory From the Highway to Hell8230 Last week temperatures in the Pacific Northwest topped 100 degrees for three consecutive days This week the oncesoggy quadrant of the nation sizzles under temperatures in the mid90s Wildfire rage across Oregon Washington Idaho northern California and Montana Down in the Delta Baton Rouge just got swamped by another 1000year flood which seems to happen once every decade now Thus it came as little surprise to learn that July 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded In fact the last 12 months have each broken temperature records According to data from NASA which combine sea surface temperature and air temperature on land July 2016 was 084C hotter than the 1951 to 1980 average for July and 011C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015 2016 shows every sign of being the hottest year since record keeping began It8217s all downhill from here How do you want to go By water or fire Going Once Going Twice The flaming planet and the Bayou floods did not deter the Interior Department from its mission to auction off 238 million acres of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico the largest such sale since the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe That8217s not to say that the Interior Department hasn8217t learned some valuable lessons from the environmental movement over the past few years Anticipating angry protesters and perhaps undercover bidders who might choose like Tim DeChristopher and Terry Tempest Williams to buy the drilling rights yet not actually sink their drills into virgin ground the Interior Department held their auction in an online livestream event safe from pesky greens bent on disrupting one of the last sacred rituals of the fossil fuels industry This sums up Obama8217s environmental policy for me Hey Joe Joe Arpaio is the bigoted buffoon who has been the sheriff for Maricopa County Arizona since 1983 Arpaio one of Donald Trump8217s most trusted advisers is a bully and thug who has overseen the most outrageous system of racial profiling in country in his insane quest to cleanse the greater Phoenix area of suspected undocumented immigrants Arpaio has starved inmates at the county jail denied them reading materials and refused to provide basic medical care He has housed inmates in tent cities in the desert made them wear pink uniforms and reconstituted the use of chain gang labor Arpaio has also compelled all of the inmates in Maricopa8217s jails to register for the selective service On August 20 federal Judge Murray Snow who is overseeing the investigation into illegal racial profiling by Arpaio and his deputies took the very rare step of asking that the Justice Department to file criminal contempt of court charges against the sheriff for continually violating court orders designed to keep the Maricopa County Sheriff8217s Office from racially profiling Latinos Just drop him off in the middle of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in a pair of sandals and pink jail clothes and let the sidewinders do the rest8230 Dianne Warren Hinkle Calling Last week the hacker known as Gufficer 20 dropped another bombshell on the Democratic Party elites by posting online the private cellphone numbers and email address of highranking members of congress Nancy Pelosi was apparently irate that her attempt to shakedown money from Bay Area tycoons was repeatedly interrupted by dozens of angry calls from constituents whose past grievances had gone unaddressed But Nancy8217s miserable night was nothing compared to the righteous havoc that descended on her San Francisco compatriot Dianne Feinstein Net worth 43 million back in the early 1980s at the hands of Hunter S Thompson and Warren Hinkle When Feinstein was mayor she authorized police raids on the O8217Farrell Theater a strip club in the Tenderloin owned by the Mitchel Brothers producers of Beyond the Green Door and other porn films of the 1970s It so happened that the O8217Farrell Theater was a favorite hangout for Thompson and Hinkle who peeved Feinstein8217s assault on their First Amendment right to observe the artistic performances of some of the Bay Areas most accomplished strippers Thompson who claimed to the be the 8220night manager8221 of the O8217Farrell once called the club the 8220Carnegie Hall of public sex in America8221 In retaliation for Feinstein8217s vice raids Thompson and Hinkle acquired the mayor8217s home telephone number and had it posted on the billboard at the O8217Farrell with the message 8220For a good time call Dianne at82308221 Warren Hinkle died this week at the age of 77 He was one of the last of his breed a wild man of American journalism whose tenure as editor of Ramparts and Scanlan8217s magazines helped define radical journalism in America Among other things Warren played midwife to the birth of gonzo journalism when he assigned Hunter S Thompson and Ralph Steadman to cover the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan8217s in 1971 An episode which is now the subject an excellent short film Gonzo the Derby which features a briefamp160interview with Hinkle My friend Fred Gardner worked for Hinkle at Ramparts in the late 1960s When I told Fred yesterday that Hinkle had died Fred said 8220He fired me twice but hired me three times Four if you count 8216War News8217 He slandered me twice 8212not in writing things he was telling people8212 and I never held it against him for some reason Neither time was it malicious he was just playing up a plausible story He had great taste in women8221 Last week we ran Fred8217s vivid account of working for Ramparts during the raucous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago Alexander Cockburn and I met Hinkle at a dark bar in Chinatown in the spring of 2001 Warren began ordering mysterious drinks of iridescent colors and names that seemed to derive from the Tibetan Book of the Dead 8220Look8221 he said 8220You should both come write for the Examiner8221 This was once William Randolph Hearst8217s flagship paper which had fallen into the hands of a Chinese family called the Fangs for the princely sum of 100 The Fangs had hired Warren to run the editorial department 8220Write about whatever you want Just keep it under 700 words As long as I get paid you8217ll get paid8221 amp160We agreed Alex and Iamp160each wrote a column a week The gig went on for a few enjoyable months before coming to a predictable end Hinkle drank us both under the table that day and deal concluded walked briskly away down Grant Street as if he8217d just spent the afternoon sipping cappuccino Love and War Lee Ballinger of Rock ampamp Rap Confidential and CounterPunch fame becomes the last living American to debut his own podcast Love and War Check it out here Oh Say Can You See the Slave Breeders Word comes from Ned and Constance Sublette longtime friends of CounterPunch that their magisterial book The American Slave Coast a History of the Slave Breeding Industry has just won the American Book Award for nonfiction Congratulations to the Sublettes on a project of deep history that was yearsamp160in the makingamp160This sprawling and unsparing history of the American slavebreeding industry may be the most important book of the last decade It is a vividly written painfully documented alternative history of the grim origins of the political economy of the American republic As the Sublettes convincingly demonstrate the heinous truth is that from the earliest days the American economy was driven by slavery and the most profitable business in that abominable enterprise derived from the manufacturing and sale of new slaves Sound Grammar What I8217m listening to this week8230 Willie Wight Telling the Truth Betty Davis They Say I8217m Different The Velvet Underground The Complete Matrix Tapes Esperanza Spalding Emily8217s DEvolution Blood Orange Freetown Sound A Poker Up the Rear End of the Establishment 8220It takes a lot of moola to fool around with national magazines regardless of their politics It takes even more if the paper is hell bent on shoving a hot poker up the rear end of the Establishment as that editorial posture is not conducive to a massive influx of advertising dollars8230a lot of people on the left still cherish the idea that Ramparts went under because I bought people drinks8221 8211 Warren Hinkle

Matthew/PROPN Corleyamp160amp160/NOUN Shutterstockcom/PROPN amp160/NOUN This/DET week/NOUN Bernie/PROPN Sanders/PROPN started/AUX moonlighting/VERB as/ADP a/DET traveling/VERB used/VERB car/NOUN salesman/NOUN Aamp160month/NOUN ago/ADV the/DET neophyte/ADJ salesman/NOUN volunteered/VERB to/PART handle/VERB the/DET problematic/ADJ Clinton/PROPN account/NOUN featuring/VERB the/DET Hillary/PROPN model/NOUN which/PRON like/ADP the/DET Edsel/PROPN of/ADP old/ADJ had/AUX previously/ADV gone/VERB unsold/ADJ during/ADP its/PRON initial/ADJ rollout/NOUN in/ADP 2008/NUM Sanders/NOUN who/PRON has/AUX perfected/VERB his/PRON pitches/NOUN to/ADP younger/ADJ and/CCONJ bluecolor/NOUN buyers/NOUN with/ADP questionable/ADJ credit/NOUN is/AUX emphasizing/VERB the/DET value/NOUN and/CCONJ durability/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Hillary/PROPN model/NOUN noting/VERB that/SCONJ despite/SCONJ the/DET heavy/ADJ mileage/NOUN the/DET engine/NOUN continues/VERB to/PART fire/VERB consistently/ADV with/ADP only/ADJ 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<p>No longer is it good enough for the Kochs to spend unlimited money influencing elections. They are also touting candidates to employees while creating policies that have a chilling effect on employees' freedom of speech.</p> <p>Update: See Koch Industries' response to this story at bottom.</p> <p>Much <a href="http://leanforward.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/23/14044951-hayes-this-is-what-plutocracy-looks-like" type="external">has</a> <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/right-wing-billionaires-behind-mitt-romney-20120524" type="external">been</a> <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer" type="external">written</a> about the owners of Koch Industries, brothers David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch, trying to control the political process through hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to right-wing causes and candidates. Now, an In These Times investigation reveals that the billionaires have broken out another tactic to influence the 2012 elections: attempting to control their workers&#8217; votes.</p> <p>In a voter information packet obtained by In These Times, the Koch Industries corporate leadership informed tens of thousands of employees at its subsidiary, Georgia Pacific, that their livelihood could depend on the 2012 election and that the company supports Mitt Romney for president. The guide was similar to one the company distributed before the 2010 midterm elections, which Mark Ames and I <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/160062/big-brothers-thought-control-koch#" type="external">reported on</a> in The Nation last year.</p> <p>The packet arrived in the mailboxes of all 45,000 Georgia Pacific employees earlier this month. The cover letter&amp;#160;[ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>], by Koch Industries President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Robertson, read:</p> <p>While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.</p> <p>If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.</p> <p>Enclosed with the letter was a flyer&amp;#160;[ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>]&amp;#160;listing Koch-endorsed candidates, beginning with Romney. Robertson&#8217;s letter explained: &#8220;At the request of many employees, we have also provided a list of candidates in your state that have been supported by Koch companies or by KOCHPAC, our employee political action committee.&#8221;</p> <p>The packet also included an anti-Obama editorial by Charles Koch [ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>] and a pro-Romney editorial by David Koch [ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>]. The letter went on to say, &#8220;We believe any decision about which candidates to support is&#8212;as always&#8212;yours and yours alone, based on the factors that are most important to you. Second, we do not support candidates based on their political affiliation.&#8221;</p> <p>In the flyer sent to Oregon employees, all 14 Koch-backed state candidates were Republicans.</p> <p>The Koch&#8217;s in-house campaigning for the GOP is part of a larger trend of corporations exercising new freedoms under Citizens United. The Supreme Court decision overturned previous FEC laws prohibiting employers from expressing electoral opinions directly to their employees.</p> <p><a href="https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/InTheseTimes/OnlineDonation.html" type="external" /></p> <p>A culture of fear</p> <p>Ironically, while the Kochs have been taking advantage of Citizens United to expand political communications to employees, they have also capitalized on weak labor laws to limit the political speech of those employees.</p> <p>In September, a number of unionized employees at Georgia Pacific&#8217;s Toledo, Ore. plant posed for a photo in front of their union hall with Democratic state Senate candidate Arnie Roblan. When the Koch Industries voter information packet arrived in the workers&#8217; mailboxes a few weeks later, they saw that Roblan was not on the list of Koch-endorsed candidates in Oregon.</p> <p>It was then, says Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) Vice President Greg Pallesen, that he started receiving some of the strangest phone calls from workers he&#8217;s fielded in his 30-plus years of union involvement. The unionized workers in the photo were worried that they might be fired from their jobs if the image got out on the Internet, because in the backdrop of the photo, the Georgia Pacific plant could be seen.</p> <p>Their fear comes not only from the mailing, but also from a new Georgia Pacific social media policy [ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>] implemented earlier this year that warns, &#8220;Even if your social media conduct is outside of the workplace and/or non-work related, it must not reflect negatively on GP&#8217;s reputation, its products, or its brands.&#8221; Given the policy, the workers were scared to appear next to a candidate the Kochs do not support with the plant in the background.</p> <p>Georgia Pacific workers say that in general, they are not sure where the boundaries of the social media policy lie. AWPPW Local 5 President Jim Pierce, who works at Georgia Pacific paper mill, in Camas, Washington, is wary of commenting online about the outspoken Koch Brothers&#8217; political beliefs.</p> <p>&#8220;Even if I was at my own home, I can&#8217;t put something up [on Facebook] against the Koch Brothers,&#8221; says Pierce. &#8220;I don&#8217;t post anything about the Koch Brothers. I could lose my job.&#8221;</p> <p>AWPPW has filed two unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the Georgia Pacific social media policy. One alleges that the policy violates employees&#8217; right to &#8220; <a href="http://www.nlrb.gov/concerted-activity" type="external">mutual aid and protection</a>,&#8221; which allows workers to join together to advocate better pay and working conditions. The other contends that the social media policy is a mandatory subject of bargaining that was not negotiated with the union, but imposed unilaterally, in violation of federal labor law.</p> <p>While some of their political speech might be protected by these laws, few workers at Georgia Pacific&#8217;s Camas facility are willing to risk losing their jobs. The plant was downsized from 1,200 workers in 2005, when the Kochs took over Georgia Pacific, to a staff of 450 today. NLRB hearings and appeals can take over a year.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just they can intimidate people this way and they can make life miserable for you. The law would be strong enough to protect them probably, but you could be looking at being without your job for nearly a year,&#8221; says Pierce.</p> <p>In August, Portland-based Georgia Pacific worker Travis McKinney, a member of the <a href="http://www.ibu.org/" type="external">Inlandboatmen&#8217;s Union of the Pacific</a> (an affiliate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union), learned about the social media policy the hard way during his yearly evaluation.</p> <p>When McKinney applied for a foreman job at the plant in May, he says, his supervisor informed him that a higher-up said he wouldn&#8217;t get the job because he was &#8220;too political.&#8221; &#8220;They said I should be aware of what I am posting online,&#8221; says McKinney. A subsequent August evaluation of McKinney [ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>] noted that &#8220;supervisors feel Travis gets caught up in the politics of the day which can be distraction.&#8221;</p> <p>McKinney says it wasn&#8217;t hard to deduce what they meant. He was quoted in the 2011 Nation article I wrote with Mark Ames, talking about how the Kochs pushed their libertarian &#8220;Market Based Management&#8221; principles on their workers to such an extent that the dictums were even printed on employee time cards. He had posted that article and other political articles about the Koch brothers online.</p> <p>While Charles Koch has often referred to the Market Based Management system used to run Georgia Pacific as &#8220;the science of liberty,&#8221; many employees, such as McKinney, feel that their own liberties have been taken away by the company.</p> <p>In addition to the social media policy, Georgia Pacific also demands that workers seek approval from supervisors before running for local elected office&amp;#160;[ <a href="" type="internal">PDF</a>]&amp;#160;or serving on the boards of nonprofits. Koch Industries claims such approval is necessary to prevent conflicts of interest. These policies could prohibit Georgia Pacific employees from running for local office in communities that seek to more strictly regulate the company.</p> <p>&#8220;I was kind of disturbed that they would infringe on my personal right to run for office,&#8221; says Georgia Pacific employee Larry Wagoner of Washougal, Wash. &#8220; I was in the running for City Council this year. I asked someone in the HR department, &#8216;What if I wanted to run for Congress?&#8217; She said you would just have to stop working here.&#8221; Wagoner adds that he is pretty sure this was a misinterpretation of company policy. But it serves as an example of the fuzzy boundaries of the policies and their potential chilling effect.</p> <p><a href="https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/InTheseTimes/OnlineDonation.html" type="external" /></p> <p>Corporate free speech</p> <p>In the new era ushered in by Citizens United, Koch Industries is not the only company seeking to control its employees&#8217; political activities, including speech, lobbying efforts, donations and votes.</p> <p>This week, <a href="" type="internal">Gawker obtained</a> an email from the CEO of Westgate Resorts, Florida billionaire David Siegel, informing his 7,000 employees that a vote for Obama would endanger their jobs. Like Dave Robertson of Koch Industries, he couched this as an economic analysis rather than a threat.</p> <p>Meanwhile, a new <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/108140/coal-miners-donor-mitt-romney-benefactor" type="external">expose</a> by Alec MacGillis of The New Republic reveals that the largest privately held coal company in the nation, Murray Energy, has routinely coerced its employees in to giving to GOP candidates. In the process, Murray Energy workers became the second largest block of donors to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner&#8217;s 2009-2010 campaign. &#8220;We have been insulted by every salaried employee who does not support our efforts,&#8221; wrote company CEO Robert Murray in a March 2012 letter to employees obtained by The New Republic; attached was a list of employees who had not yet attended fundraisers.</p> <p>And last year, <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/anti-union-push-picks-up-steam-on-capitol-hill.php" type="external">Talking Points Memo reported</a> that Delta offered free rides, even bumping paying customers, for its flight attendants to fly to Washington, D.C. to lobby for an FAA bill that would make it more difficult for airline workers to organize a union. &#8220;A lot of flight attendants told me that their supervisors would encourage them to book a flight to Washington to go lobby,&#8221; says Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) spokesperson Corey Caldwell.</p> <p>The value of courage</p> <p>The growing politicization of the workplace is yet another manifestation of increasing corporate power over politics in the United States. The Koch brothers are proudly leading this movement. As part of the packet that went out to employees, Charles Koch wrote a letter titled &#8220; <a href="http://www.kochind.com/perspectives/perspectives_detail.aspx?id=37" type="external">The Value of Courage</a>&#8221;:</p> <p>One of my greatest frustrations in recent years stems from the lack of courage shown by many businesses. Rather than set a good example and stand on principle, far too many successful companies have decided to cave when faced with criticism from the media or the government. &#8230; For example, last March, left-wing publications and a cable &#8220;news&#8221; channel began spreading malicious lies about the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC]. &#8230; The bogus charges against ALEC were quickly echoed by various media outlets, bloggers, a labor leader, and other activists, none of whom seemed fully aware of the fact. As result of this ginned up outcry, a few high profile corporate members of ALEC either cancelled their memberships or announced they would let them expire.</p> <p>(Ironically, many corporations abandoned ALEC, which crafts model legislation for right-wing state legislatures, over the group&#8217;s support of anti-gun control &#8220;Stand Your Ground&#8221; law. Yet many corporate policies, such as Georgia Pacific&#8217;s Code of Conduct, strictly prohibit employees from bringing guns onto company property). &#8220;Several corporations couldn&#8217;t throw in the towel fast enough,&#8221; Koch continued. &#8220;Such lack of courage has become symptomatic&#8221;.</p> <p>But Charles Koch reassures his audience that he is not of those weak-kneed corporate leaders.</p> <p>&#8220;[Our opposition] figure that if they apply enough pressure, we will cave in,&#8220; writes Koch. &#8220;I realize, as do my brother David, our board and other shareholders, that if we slink away, ultimately we won&#8217;t have a business. And neither will anyone else&#8212;at least one worth having&#8221;.</p> <p>Georgia Pacific&#8217;s employees don&#8217;t find the Koch&#8217;s courage so inspiring.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t even put down on my Facebook that I work at Georgia Pacific. I put that I work for the Camas Paper mill. It&#8217;s embarrassing to let people know that you work for Georgia Pacific because of what the Koch brothers are doing,&#8221; says one employee who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being fired. &#8220;They are destroying the planet. They are trying to buy the votes. They think they are so high and mighty. They have their principles. They just think their way is the only way and they think everyone else is wrong.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;If you don't believe in their philosophy, you can find a job somewhere else. I have worked there for 30-plus years. I have no training; I have worked in a factory. What am I going to do?&#8221;</p> <p>UPDATE 10/14/12: Koch Industries issued a statement in response to the story:</p> <p>Regarding the recent mailing to employees,</p> <p>The mailing contained various pieces of information we believe are important for employees to know about, most importantly, our companywide employee newsletter that contained important information about our Guiding Principles.</p> <p>Based on requests from many employees, the packet also contained information employees commonly ask about, such as voter registration deadlines and early voting options for their state of residence. And, also based on frequent requests, it provided a list of candidates in their state who are among those that have been supported by the Koch companies and KOCHPAC, our employee political action committee.</p> <p>As stated in the cover letter and in follow-up one-on-one conversations for employees who ask, the information is purely intended to be considered among all the other information employees may be reading or receiving as an informed voter. We make it clear that any decision about which candidates to support belongs solely to our employees based on the factors that are most important to them, and this is in no way an attempt to &#8220;intimidate&#8221; employees. Any such claim to the contrary is completely untrue.</p> <p>It is also important to note that many companies, as well as organizations such as labor unions, also provide similar information to their members and fellow employees. Indeed, unions and newspapers go further than this and actually endorse candidates to their members and readers.</p> <p>As we regularly point out, Koch companies and KOCHPAC support candidates based on their support for market-based policies and economic freedom, which benefits society as a whole. Our support is not based on party affiliation, and we support both Republicans and Democrats who support market-based policies and solutions.</p> <p>Regarding the social media policy,</p> <p>The policy exists to inform employees about their responsibilities for what they post on social media sites and the laws that govern any claims or endorsements made by employees. The policy encourages employees to make only truthful social media comments whether workplace and/or non-work related, and to follow Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules on disclosing that they work for the company when making any commentary about the company or its products.</p> <p>Koch companies strive to create safe, respectful and discrimination-free workplaces, and do not allow any unlawful discrimination and discriminatory harassment (including verbal, visual displays, physical harassment) in our workplaces. We do not retaliate against any employee who voices their personal political opinions, and any claims to the contrary are totally untrue.</p> <p>Greg Guest</p> <p>Senior Director, Corporate Communications</p> <p>Georgia-Pacific</p> <p>The company declined to comment on Travis McKinney's evaluation.</p> <p>Late Sunday night (October 14), @kochfacts, the company's public-relations Twitter, posted the following:</p> <p /> <p>However, the mailing includes a list of Koch-endorsed candidates:</p> <p /> <p><a href="https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/InTheseTimes/OnlineDonation.html" type="external">Want to see more investigative reporting that holds corporations like Koch Industries accountable? Support&amp;#160;</a> <a href="https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/InTheseTimes/OnlineDonation.html" type="external">In These Times&amp;#160;with a donation today.</a></p> <p>Like what you&#8217;ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p> <p>Mike Elk wrote for In These Times and its labor blog, <a href="" type="internal">Working In These Times</a>, from 2010 to 2014. He is currently a labor reporter at Politico.</p>

Koch Sends Pro-Romney Mailing to 45,000 Employees While Stifling Workplace Political Speech (Update)

http://inthesetimes.com/article/14017/koch_industries_sends_45000_employees_pro_romney_mailing

2012-10-14

4left

No longer is it good enough for the Kochs to spend unlimited money influencing elections They are also touting candidates to employees while creating policies that have a chilling effect on employees freedom of speech Update See Koch Industries response to this story at bottom Much has been written about the owners of Koch Industries brothers David H Koch and Charles G Koch trying to control the political process through hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to rightwing causes and candidates Now an In These Times investigation reveals that the billionaires have broken out another tactic to influence the 2012 elections attempting to control their workers8217 votes In a voter information packet obtained by In These Times the Koch Industries corporate leadership informed tens of thousands of employees at its subsidiary Georgia Pacific that their livelihood could depend on the 2012 election and that the company supports Mitt Romney for president The guide was similar to one the company distributed before the 2010 midterm elections which Mark Ames and I reported on in The Nation last year The packet arrived in the mailboxes of all 45000 Georgia Pacific employees earlier this month The cover letteramp160 PDF by Koch Industries President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Robertson read While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses prevent or delay important new construction projects and excessively hinder free trade then many of our more than 50000 US employees and contractors may suffer the consequences including higher gasoline prices runaway inflation and other ills Enclosed with the letter was a flyeramp160 PDFamp160listing Kochendorsed candidates beginning with Romney Robertson8217s letter explained 8220At the request of many employees we have also provided a list of candidates in your state that have been supported by Koch companies or by KOCHPAC our employee political action committee8221 The packet also included an antiObama editorial by Charles Koch PDF and a proRomney editorial by David Koch PDF The letter went on to say 8220We believe any decision about which candidates to support is8212as always8212yours and yours alone based on the factors that are most important to you Second we do not support candidates based on their political affiliation8221 In the flyer sent to Oregon employees all 14 Kochbacked state candidates were Republicans The Koch8217s inhouse campaigning for the GOP is part of a larger trend of corporations exercising new freedoms under Citizens United The Supreme Court decision overturned previous FEC laws prohibiting employers from expressing electoral opinions directly to their employees A culture of fear Ironically while the Kochs have been taking advantage of Citizens United to expand political communications to employees they have also capitalized on weak labor laws to limit the political speech of those employees In September a number of unionized employees at Georgia Pacific8217s Toledo Ore plant posed for a photo in front of their union hall with Democratic state Senate candidate Arnie Roblan When the Koch Industries voter information packet arrived in the workers8217 mailboxes a few weeks later they saw that Roblan was not on the list of Kochendorsed candidates in Oregon It was then says Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers AWPPW Vice President Greg Pallesen that he started receiving some of the strangest phone calls from workers he8217s fielded in his 30plus years of union involvement The unionized workers in the photo were worried that they might be fired from their jobs if the image got out on the Internet because in the backdrop of the photo the Georgia Pacific plant could be seen Their fear comes not only from the mailing but also from a new Georgia Pacific social media policy PDF implemented earlier this year that warns 8220Even if your social media conduct is outside of the workplace andor nonwork related it must not reflect negatively on GP8217s reputation its products or its brands8221 Given the policy the workers were scared to appear next to a candidate the Kochs do not support with the plant in the background Georgia Pacific workers say that in general they are not sure where the boundaries of the social media policy lie AWPPW Local 5 President Jim Pierce who works at Georgia Pacific paper mill in Camas Washington is wary of commenting online about the outspoken Koch Brothers8217 political beliefs 8220Even if I was at my own home I can8217t put something up on Facebook against the Koch Brothers8221 says Pierce 8220I don8217t post anything about the Koch Brothers I could lose my job8221 AWPPW has filed two unfair labor practices charges with the National Labor Relations Board NLRB over the Georgia Pacific social media policy One alleges that the policy violates employees8217 right to 8220 mutual aid and protection8221 which allows workers to join together to advocate better pay and working conditions The other contends that the social media policy is a mandatory subject of bargaining that was not negotiated with the union but imposed unilaterally in violation of federal labor law While some of their political speech might be protected by these laws few workers at Georgia Pacific8217s Camas facility are willing to risk losing their jobs The plant was downsized from 1200 workers in 2005 when the Kochs took over Georgia Pacific to a staff of 450 today NLRB hearings and appeals can take over a year 8220It8217s just they can intimidate people this way and they can make life miserable for you The law would be strong enough to protect them probably but you could be looking at being without your job for nearly a year8221 says Pierce In August Portlandbased Georgia Pacific worker Travis McKinney a member of the Inlandboatmen8217s Union of the Pacific an affiliate of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union learned about the social media policy the hard way during his yearly evaluation When McKinney applied for a foreman job at the plant in May he says his supervisor informed him that a higherup said he wouldn8217t get the job because he was 8220too political8221 8220They said I should be aware of what I am posting online8221 says McKinney A subsequent August evaluation of McKinney PDF noted that 8220supervisors feel Travis gets caught up in the politics of the day which can be distraction8221 McKinney says it wasn8217t hard to deduce what they meant He was quoted in the 2011 Nation article I wrote with Mark Ames talking about how the Kochs pushed their libertarian 8220Market Based Management8221 principles on their workers to such an extent that the dictums were even printed on employee time cards He had posted that article and other political articles about the Koch brothers online While Charles Koch has often referred to the Market Based Management system used to run Georgia Pacific as 8220the science of liberty8221 many employees such as McKinney feel that their own liberties have been taken away by the company In addition to the social media policy Georgia Pacific also demands that workers seek approval from supervisors before running for local elected officeamp160 PDFamp160or serving on the boards of nonprofits Koch Industries claims such approval is necessary to prevent conflicts of interest These policies could prohibit Georgia Pacific employees from running for local office in communities that seek to more strictly regulate the company 8220I was kind of disturbed that they would infringe on my personal right to run for office8221 says Georgia Pacific employee Larry Wagoner of Washougal Wash 8220 I was in the running for City Council this year I asked someone in the HR department 8216What if I wanted to run for Congress8217 She said you would just have to stop working here8221 Wagoner adds that he is pretty sure this was a misinterpretation of company policy But it serves as an example of the fuzzy boundaries of the policies and their potential chilling effect Corporate free speech In the new era ushered in by Citizens United Koch Industries is not the only company seeking to control its employees8217 political activities including speech lobbying efforts donations and votes This week Gawker obtained an email from the CEO of Westgate Resorts Florida billionaire David Siegel informing his 7000 employees that a vote for Obama would endanger their jobs Like Dave Robertson of Koch Industries he couched this as an economic analysis rather than a threat Meanwhile a new expose by Alec MacGillis of The New Republic reveals that the largest privately held coal company in the nation Murray Energy has routinely coerced its employees in to giving to GOP candidates In the process Murray Energy workers became the second largest block of donors to Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner8217s 20092010 campaign 8220We have been insulted by every salaried employee who does not support our efforts8221 wrote company CEO Robert Murray in a March 2012 letter to employees obtained by The New Republic attached was a list of employees who had not yet attended fundraisers And last year Talking Points Memo reported that Delta offered free rides even bumping paying customers for its flight attendants to fly to Washington DC to lobby for an FAA bill that would make it more difficult for airline workers to organize a union 8220A lot of flight attendants told me that their supervisors would encourage them to book a flight to Washington to go lobby8221 says Association of Flight Attendants AFACWA spokesperson Corey Caldwell The value of courage The growing politicization of the workplace is yet another manifestation of increasing corporate power over politics in the United States The Koch brothers are proudly leading this movement As part of the packet that went out to employees Charles Koch wrote a letter titled 8220 The Value of Courage8221 One of my greatest frustrations in recent years stems from the lack of courage shown by many businesses Rather than set a good example and stand on principle far too many successful companies have decided to cave when faced with criticism from the media or the government 8230 For example last March leftwing publications and a cable 8220news8221 channel began spreading malicious lies about the American Legislative Exchange Council ALEC 8230 The bogus charges against ALEC were quickly echoed by various media outlets bloggers a labor leader and other activists none of whom seemed fully aware of the fact As result of this ginned up outcry a few high profile corporate members of ALEC either cancelled their memberships or announced they would let them expire Ironically many corporations abandoned ALEC which crafts model legislation for rightwing state legislatures over the group8217s support of antigun control 8220Stand Your Ground8221 law Yet many corporate policies such as Georgia Pacific8217s Code of Conduct strictly prohibit employees from bringing guns onto company property 8220Several corporations couldn8217t throw in the towel fast enough8221 Koch continued 8220Such lack of courage has become symptomatic8221 But Charles Koch reassures his audience that he is not of those weakkneed corporate leaders 8220Our opposition figure that if they apply enough pressure we will cave in8220 writes Koch 8220I realize as do my brother David our board and other shareholders that if we slink away ultimately we won8217t have a business And neither will anyone else8212at least one worth having8221 Georgia Pacific8217s employees don8217t find the Koch8217s courage so inspiring 8220I don8217t even put down on my Facebook that I work at Georgia Pacific I put that I work for the Camas Paper mill It8217s embarrassing to let people know that you work for Georgia Pacific because of what the Koch brothers are doing8221 says one employee who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being fired 8220They are destroying the planet They are trying to buy the votes They think they are so high and mighty They have their principles They just think their way is the only way and they think everyone else is wrong8221 8220If you dont believe in their philosophy you can find a job somewhere else I have worked there for 30plus years I have no training I have worked in a factory What am I going to do8221 UPDATE 101412 Koch Industries issued a statement in response to the story Regarding the recent mailing to employees The mailing contained various pieces of information we believe are important for employees to know about most importantly our companywide employee newsletter that contained important information about our Guiding Principles Based on requests from many employees the packet also contained information employees commonly ask about such as voter registration deadlines and early voting options for their state of residence And also based on frequent requests it provided a list of candidates in their state who are among those that have been supported by the Koch companies and KOCHPAC our employee political action committee As stated in the cover letter and in followup oneonone conversations for employees who ask the information is purely intended to be considered among all the other information employees may be reading or receiving as an informed voter We make it clear that any decision about which candidates to support belongs solely to our employees based on the factors that are most important to them and this is in no way an attempt to 8220intimidate8221 employees Any such claim to the contrary is completely untrue It is also important to note that many companies as well as organizations such as labor unions also provide similar information to their members and fellow employees Indeed unions and newspapers go further than this and actually endorse candidates to their members and readers As we regularly point out Koch companies and KOCHPAC support candidates based on their support for marketbased policies and economic freedom which benefits society as a whole Our support is not based on party affiliation and we support both Republicans and Democrats who support marketbased policies and solutions Regarding the social media policy The policy exists to inform employees about their responsibilities for what they post on social media sites and the laws that govern any claims or endorsements made by employees The policy encourages employees to make only truthful social media comments whether workplace andor nonwork related and to follow Federal Trade Commission FTC rules on disclosing that they work for the company when making any commentary about the company or its products Koch companies strive to create safe respectful and discriminationfree workplaces and do not allow any unlawful discrimination and discriminatory harassment including verbal visual displays physical harassment in our workplaces We do not retaliate against any employee who voices their personal political opinions and any claims to the contrary are totally untrue Greg Guest Senior Director Corporate Communications GeorgiaPacific The company declined to comment on Travis McKinneys evaluation Late Sunday night October 14 kochfacts the companys publicrelations Twitter posted the following However the mailing includes a list of Kochendorsed candidates Want to see more investigative reporting that holds corporations like Koch Industries accountable Supportamp160 In These Timesamp160with a donation today Like what you8217ve read Subscribe to In These Times magazine or make a taxdeductible donation to fund this reporting Mike Elk wrote for In These Times and its labor blog Working In These Times from 2010 to 2014 He is currently a labor reporter at Politico

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<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - Gameone Holdings Ltd:</p> <p>* &#8205;GROUP IS EXPECTED TO RECORD A NET LOSS FOR FY2017 OF APPROXIMATELY HK$17 MILLION&#8203;</p> <p>* &#8205;EXPECTED RESULT DUE TO INCREASE IN PROMOTION EXPENSES OF NEW GAMES WHICH WERE LAUNCHED IN Q4 OF 2017&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - About 200 people demonstrated in Sacramento on Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark, in the latest of nearly two weeks of mostly peaceful rallies since the unarmed black man was gunned down in his grandmother&#8217;s yard.</p> <p>The death of the 22-year-old father of two was the latest in a string of killings of black men by police that have triggered street protests and fueled a renewed national debate about bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.</p> <p>Saturday&#8217;s demonstration brought together a multi-racial crowd, many holding signs such as &#8220;Stop Police Rage&#8221; and &#8220;Power to the People.&#8221; It was led by retired National Basketball Association player Matt Barnes, who grew up in the area and had two stints with the Sacramento Kings franchise.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here today to raise awareness, to come together peacefully and to have some accountability for the officers, not only in Sacramento but across the country, who have been doing this,&#8221; Barnes told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.</p> <p>Some of Clark&#8217;s relatives attended the gathering in a city plaza. It followed a more heated protest overnight, during which demonstrators yelled expletives at police clad in riot gear.</p> <p>Clark was shot on the night of March 18 by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows. Police said the officers feared he had a gun, but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone.</p> <p>Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way. The shooting was captured on a body cam video released by police.</p> Salena Manni (L), fiancee of Stephon Clark, holds their son Cairo and an unidentified man holds son Aiden (2nd R) while Basim Elkarra speaks and Rev Shane Harris listens at a rally in Sacramento, California, U.S., March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES <p>On Friday, an attorney for Clark&#8217;s family released a private autopsy showing most of the eight bullets that hit Clark struck him in the back, contradicting the police version of events.</p> <p>Clark was shot six times in the back, once in the side and once in the leg, said the attorney, Benjamin Crump.</p> <p>&#8220;This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,&#8221; Crump said.</p> Slideshow (14 Images) <p>The Sacramento Police Department said it would have no further comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner, and a review by state and local prosecutors.</p> <p>In several days of sporadic protests, protesters have blocked traffic and twice delayed fans from reaching games played by the Kings at the Golden 1 Center.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>The U.S. government&#8217;s Supreme Court battle with Microsoft Corp over whether technology companies can be forced to hand over data stored overseas could be nearing its end, after federal prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo <p>President Donald Trump on March 22 signed a provision into law making it clear that U.S. judges can issue warrants for such data, while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law.</p> <p>&#8220;This case is now moot,&#8221; the U.S. Department of Justice said, citing the newly passed legislation, in a 16-page court filing on Friday that requested the dismissal.</p> <p>The Supreme Court on Feb. 27 heard arguments in the case, which had been one of the most closely watched of the high court&#8217;s current term. Some justices urged Congress to pass a law to resolve the matter.</p> FILE PHOTO: Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith (R) makes a statement to the news media with his lawyer Josh Rosenkranz outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis <p>Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how U.S. prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by American companies. The case involved Microsoft&#8217;s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a U.S. judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drug-trafficking investigation.</p> <p>The bipartisan new law, known as the Cloud Act, was supported by Microsoft, other major technology companies and the Trump administration. But civil liberties groups opposed it, saying it lacked sufficient privacy protections.</p> <p>Microsoft, which has 100 data centers in 40 countries, was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States. The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account.</p> <p>A representative for Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment on the Justice Department&#8217;s filing.</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Alex Dobuzinskis; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ATLANTA (Reuters) - Atlanta&#8217;s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a nine-day-old cyber attack that plunged the Southeastern U.S. metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper.</p> A view of Atlanta's City Hall, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Laila Kearney <p>On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend, city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come.</p> <p>Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives, recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating &#8220;ransomware&#8221; virus attacks to hit an American city.</p> <p>Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta&#8217;s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s extraordinarily frustrating,&#8221; said Councilman Howard Shook, whose office lost 16 years of digital records.</p> <p>One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with &#8220;weapologize&#8221; and &#8220;imsorry&#8221; added to file names.</p> <p>Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyber extortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations, including businesses, healthcare organizations and government agencies. Previous high-profile attacks have shut down factories, prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations.</p> <p>Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it. The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents&#8217; information is in the hands of hackers, but they do not know for sure.</p> <p>City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices, including courts and the water department.</p> <p>Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450,000 people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.</p> <p>City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded $51,000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files.</p> <p>&#8220;Everything on my hard drive is gone,&#8221; City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall&#8217;s ornate tower.</p> <p>City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom.</p> <p>Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish.</p> <p>&#8220;I said, &#8216;This is wrong,&#8217;&#8221; she recalled.</p> <p>City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building.</p> <p>Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device.</p> <p>Not all computers were compromised. Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected, Noble said.</p> <p>OLD-SCHOOL ANALOG</p> <p>Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases, department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters. He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files.</p> <p>&#8220;Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future,&#8221; he said. By the weekend, he added, officers were returning to digital police reports.</p> <p>Meanwhile, some city employees complained they have been left in the dark, unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know anything,&#8221; said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday.</p> FEEBLE <p>Like City Hall, whose 1930 neo-Gothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing, the city&#8217;s computer system is a combination of old and new.&amp;#160;</p> A view of Atlanta's City Hall, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Laila Kearney <p>&#8220;One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems,&#8221; Noble said.&amp;#160;</p> <p>The city published results from a recent cyber-security audit in January, and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit. The audit called for better record-keeping and hiring more technology workers.</p> <p>Councilman Shook said he is worried about how much the recovery will cost the city, but that he supports funding a cyber-security overhaul to counter future attacks.</p> <p>For now his staff are temporarily sharing one aging laptop.</p> <p>&#8220;Things are very slow,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that.&#8221;</p> <p>Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who took office in January, has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station.</p> <p>Shook, who chairs the city council&#8217;s finance subcommittee, said he did not know whether the city is negotiating with the hackers, but that it appears no ransom has been paid to date.</p> <p>The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is helping Atlanta respond, typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up.</p> <p>FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency is helping Atlanta respond to the attack, but declined to comment further.</p> <p>Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid, said Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyber official.</p> <p>Weatherford, who previously served as California&#8217;s chief information security officer, said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment.</p> <p>&#8220;The longer it goes, the worse it gets,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Laila Kearney; additional reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Daniel Bases and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than $35 million, in one of the highest-profile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years.</p> Magomed Magomedov, a business partner and brother of co-owner of Russia's Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov, attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow, Russia March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva <p>Magomedov denied the charges at a pre-trial hearing, where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30.</p> <p>One of Russia&#8217;s richest men, the 49-year-old Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group. He also has investments in U.S. tech ventures, including the Virgin One Hyperloop project.</p> <p>He was detained along with his business partner and brother, Magomed Magomedov, and Artur Maksidov, the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.</p> <p>Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30, the court ruled.</p> <p>At a hearing in Moscow&#8217;s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial, Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses. She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a $35 million bail bond, and ordered he be detained.</p> <p>Citing the arguments against granting bail, the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft, and assets abroad. The day before he was detained, he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami, the judge said.</p> <p>Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation.</p> MUSCULAR STATE <p>Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom, Magomedov, dressed in a dark-blue jogging suit, said: &#8220;I categorically disagree with the charges presented ... The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem, and offered to put up the $35 million bail. &#8220;I&#8217;m willing to pull together this money, so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run,&#8221; Magomedov said.</p> <p>Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multi-millionaires who, while publicly loyal to the Kremlin, are not in President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s inner circle.</p> <p>Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy, Western sanctions on Russia, and powerful state-run companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy.</p> <p>In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted, some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals - though the authorities deny that.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO</a> 7.765 NMTP.MM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange -0.19 (-2.33%) NMTP.MM TRNF_p.MM FESH.MM <p>People familiar with the Russian judicial system say high-profile corruption cases are rarely fabricated, but that the law is applied selectively, and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors.</p> <p>Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with $1.4 billion. In January, he was listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as one of 96 &#8220;oligarchs&#8221; close to Putin.</p> <p>His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ride-hailing service Uber UBER.UL; Diamond Foundry, a company that produces man-made diamonds; and Peek, an online leisure activities company.</p> <p>Magomedov is also co-executive chairman of Los Angeles-based tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One, which is chaired by Richard Branson. It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes.</p> <p>He also co-owns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">NMTP.MM</a>) with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRNF_p.MM" type="external">TRNF_p.MM</a>) and transportation group Fesco ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FESH.MM" type="external">FESH.MM</a>).</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Christian Lowe; Editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Gameone Holdings Expects To Record Net Loss For FY17 Of About Hk$17 Mln Autopsy prompts more protests over killing of black man in California U.S. government seeks end to Supreme Court privacy fight with Microsoft With paper and phones, Atlanta struggles to recover from cyber attack Russian tycoon Magomedov arrested on embezzlement charges

https://reuters.com/article/brief-gameone-holdings-expects-to-record/brief-gameone-holdings-expects-to-record-net-loss-for-fy17-of-about-hk17-mln-idUSFWN1PH0EP

2018-01-22

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Jan 22 Reuters Gameone Holdings Ltd 8205GROUP IS EXPECTED TO RECORD A NET LOSS FOR FY2017 OF APPROXIMATELY HK17 MILLION8203 8205EXPECTED RESULT DUE TO INCREASE IN PROMOTION EXPENSES OF NEW GAMES WHICH WERE LAUNCHED IN Q4 OF 20178203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SACRAMENTO Calif Reuters About 200 people demonstrated in Sacramento on Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark in the latest of nearly two weeks of mostly peaceful rallies since the unarmed black man was gunned down in his grandmother8217s yard The death of the 22yearold father of two was the latest in a string of killings of black men by police that have triggered street protests and fueled a renewed national debate about bias in the US criminal justice system Saturday8217s demonstration brought together a multiracial crowd many holding signs such as 8220Stop Police Rage8221 and 8220Power to the People8221 It was led by retired National Basketball Association player Matt Barnes who grew up in the area and had two stints with the Sacramento Kings franchise 8220We8217re here today to raise awareness to come together peacefully and to have some accountability for the officers not only in Sacramento but across the country who have been doing this8221 Barnes told the Sacramento Bee newspaper Some of Clark8217s relatives attended the gathering in a city plaza It followed a more heated protest overnight during which demonstrators yelled expletives at police clad in riot gear Clark was shot on the night of March 18 by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows Police said the officers feared he had a gun but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way The shooting was captured on a body cam video released by police Salena Manni L fiancee of Stephon Clark holds their son Cairo and an unidentified man holds son Aiden 2nd R while Basim Elkarra speaks and Rev Shane Harris listens at a rally in Sacramento California US March 31 2018 REUTERSBob Strong NO RESALES NO ARCHIVES On Friday an attorney for Clark8217s family released a private autopsy showing most of the eight bullets that hit Clark struck him in the back contradicting the police version of events Clark was shot six times in the back once in the side and once in the leg said the attorney Benjamin Crump 8220This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances8221 Crump said Slideshow 14 Images The Sacramento Police Department said it would have no further comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner and a review by state and local prosecutors In several days of sporadic protests protesters have blocked traffic and twice delayed fans from reaching games played by the Kings at the Golden 1 Center Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York Editing Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles The US government8217s Supreme Court battle with Microsoft Corp over whether technology companies can be forced to hand over data stored overseas could be nearing its end after federal prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed FILE PHOTO The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles California US June 13 2017 REUTERSMike BlakeFile Photo President Donald Trump on March 22 signed a provision into law making it clear that US judges can issue warrants for such data while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law 8220This case is now moot8221 the US Department of Justice said citing the newly passed legislation in a 16page court filing on Friday that requested the dismissal The Supreme Court on Feb 27 heard arguments in the case which had been one of the most closely watched of the high court8217s current term Some justices urged Congress to pass a law to resolve the matter FILE PHOTO Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith R makes a statement to the news media with his lawyer Josh Rosenkranz outside of the US Supreme Court in Washington US February 27 2018 REUTERSLeah Millis Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how US prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by American companies The case involved Microsoft8217s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a US judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drugtrafficking investigation The bipartisan new law known as the Cloud Act was supported by Microsoft other major technology companies and the Trump administration But civil liberties groups opposed it saying it lacked sufficient privacy protections Microsoft which has 100 data centers in 40 countries was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account A representative for Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment on the Justice Department8217s filing Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Alex Dobuzinskis Additional reporting by Dustin Volz Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ATLANTA Reuters Atlanta8217s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a ninedayold cyber attack that plunged the Southeastern US metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper A view of Atlantas City Hall in Atlanta Georgia US March 31 2018 REUTERSLaila Kearney On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating 8220ransomware8221 virus attacks to hit an American city Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta8217s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems 8220It8217s extraordinarily frustrating8221 said Councilman Howard Shook whose office lost 16 years of digital records One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with 8220weapologize8221 and 8220imsorry8221 added to file names Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyber extortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations including businesses healthcare organizations and government agencies Previous highprofile attacks have shut down factories prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents8217 information is in the hands of hackers but they do not know for sure City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices including courts and the water department Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450000 people according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded 51000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files 8220Everything on my hard drive is gone8221 City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall8217s ornate tower City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish 8220I said 8216This is wrong82178221 she recalled City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device Not all computers were compromised Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected Noble said OLDSCHOOL ANALOG Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files 8220Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future8221 he said By the weekend he added officers were returning to digital police reports Meanwhile some city employees complained they have been left in the dark unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers 8220We don8217t know anything8221 said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday FEEBLE Like City Hall whose 1930 neoGothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing the city8217s computer system is a combination of old and newamp160 A view of Atlantas City Hall in Atlanta Georgia US March 31 2018 REUTERSLaila Kearney 8220One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems8221 Noble saidamp160 The city published results from a recent cybersecurity audit in January and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit The audit called for better recordkeeping and hiring more technology workers Councilman Shook said he is worried about how much the recovery will cost the city but that he supports funding a cybersecurity overhaul to counter future attacks For now his staff are temporarily sharing one aging laptop 8220Things are very slow8221 he said 8220It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that8221 Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms who took office in January has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station Shook who chairs the city council8217s finance subcommittee said he did not know whether the city is negotiating with the hackers but that it appears no ransom has been paid to date The Federal Bureau of Investigation which is helping Atlanta respond typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency is helping Atlanta respond to the attack but declined to comment further Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid said Mark Weatherford a former senior DHS cyber official Weatherford who previously served as California8217s chief information security officer said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment 8220The longer it goes the worse it gets8221 he said 8220This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back8221 Reporting by Laila Kearney additional reporting by Jim Finkle editing by Daniel Bases and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than 35 million in one of the highestprofile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years Magomed Magomedov a business partner and brother of coowner of Russias Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow Russia March 31 2018 REUTERSTatyana Makeyeva Magomedov denied the charges at a pretrial hearing where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30 One of Russia8217s richest men the 49yearold Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group He also has investments in US tech ventures including the Virgin One Hyperloop project He was detained along with his business partner and brother Magomed Magomedov and Artur Maksidov the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30 the court ruled At a hearing in Moscow8217s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a 35 million bail bond and ordered he be detained Citing the arguments against granting bail the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft and assets abroad The day before he was detained he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami the judge said Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation MUSCULAR STATE Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom Magomedov dressed in a darkblue jogging suit said 8220I categorically disagree with the charges presented The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny8221 Slideshow 7 Images He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem and offered to put up the 35 million bail 8220I8217m willing to pull together this money so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run8221 Magomedov said Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multimillionaires who while publicly loyal to the Kremlin are not in President Vladimir Putin8217s inner circle Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy Western sanctions on Russia and powerful staterun companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals though the authorities deny that Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO 7765 NMTPMM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange 019 233 NMTPMM TRNF_pMM FESHMM People familiar with the Russian judicial system say highprofile corruption cases are rarely fabricated but that the law is applied selectively and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with 14 billion In January he was listed by the US Treasury Department as one of 96 8220oligarchs8221 close to Putin His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ridehailing service Uber UBERUL Diamond Foundry a company that produces manmade diamonds and Peek an online leisure activities company Magomedov is also coexecutive chairman of Los Angelesbased tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One which is chaired by Richard Branson It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes He also coowns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port NMTPMM with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft TRNF_pMM and transportation group Fesco FESHMM Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov Writing by Gabrielle TetraultFarber and Christian Lowe Editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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together/ADV this/DET money/NOUN so/SCONJ no/DET one/NOUN has/VERB any/DET thoughts/NOUN that/PRON I/PRON might/AUX go/VERB on/ADP the/DET run8221/NOUN Magomedov/PROPN said/VERB Magomedov/PROPN is/AUX part/NOUN of/ADP a/DET group/NOUN of/ADP Russian/ADJ multimillionaires/NOUN who/PRON while/SCONJ publicly/ADV loyal/ADJ to/ADP the/DET Kremlin/PROPN are/AUX not/PART in/ADP President/PROPN Vladimir/PROPN Putin8217s/PROPN inner/ADJ circle/NOUN Some/DET members/NOUN of/ADP the/DET group/NOUN say/VERB they/PRON are/AUX being/AUX squeezed/VERB by/ADP a/DET tough/ADJ economy/NOUN Western/ADJ sanctions/NOUN on/ADP Russia/PROPN and/CCONJ powerful/ADJ staterun/NOUN companies/NOUN that/PRON are/AUX muscling/VERB in/ADP on/ADP nearly/ADV all/PRON sectors/NOUN of/ADP the/DET economy/NOUN In/ADP past/ADJ cases/NOUN when/SCONJ magnates/NOUN have/AUX been/AUX prosecuted/VERB some/PRON in/ADP the/DET Russia/PROPN business/NOUN community/NOUN have/AUX said/VERB the/DET tycoons/NOUN were/AUX victims/NOUN of/ADP a/DET plot/NOUN by/ADP the/DET Kremlin/PROPN or/CCONJ by/ADP politically/ADV connected/VERB business/NOUN rivals/NOUN though/SCONJ the/DET authorities/NOUN deny/VERB that/SCONJ Novorossiyskiy/PROPN Morskoy/PROPN Torgovyi/PROPN Port/PROPN PAO/PROPN 7765/NUM NMTPMM/NOUN Moscow/PROPN Interbank/PROPN Currency/PROPN Exchange/PROPN 019/NUM 233/NUM NMTPMM/PROPN TRNF_pMM/PROPN FESHMM/PROPN People/NOUN familiar/ADJ with/ADP the/DET Russian/ADJ judicial/ADJ system/NOUN say/VERB highprofile/ADJ corruption/NOUN cases/NOUN are/AUX rarely/ADV fabricated/VERB but/CCONJ that/SCONJ the/DET law/NOUN is/AUX applied/VERB selectively/ADV and/CCONJ that/SCONJ prosecutions/NOUN can/AUX be/AUX influenced/VERB by/ADP outside/ADJ factors/NOUN Ziyavudin/PROPN Magomedov/PROPN ranked/VERB 63rd/ADJ last/ADJ year/NOUN on/ADP the/DET Forbes/PROPN list/NOUN of/ADP the/DET richest/ADJ business/NOUN people/NOUN in/ADP Russia/PROPN with/ADP 14/NUM billion/NUM In/ADP January/PROPN he/PRON was/AUX listed/VERB by/ADP the/DET US/PROPN Treasury/PROPN Department/PROPN as/SCONJ one/NUM of/ADP 96/NUM 8220oligarchs8221/NUM close/ADJ to/ADP Putin/PROPN His/PRON Caspian/PROPN Venture/PROPN Capital/PROPN fund/NOUN has/VERB investments/NOUN in/ADP ridehailing/VERB service/NOUN Uber/PROPN UBERUL/PROPN Diamond/PROPN Foundry/PROPN a/DET company/NOUN that/PRON produces/VERB manmade/NOUN diamonds/NOUN and/CCONJ Peek/VERB an/DET online/ADJ leisure/NOUN activities/NOUN company/NOUN Magomedov/PROPN is/AUX also/ADV coexecutive/ADJ chairman/NOUN of/ADP Los/PROPN Angelesbased/VERB tech/NOUN firm/NOUN Virgin/PROPN Hyperloop/PROPN One/PROPN which/PRON is/AUX chaired/VERB by/ADP Richard/PROPN Branson/PROPN It/PRON is/AUX one/NUM of/ADP several/ADJ firms/NOUN developing/VERB a/DET futuristic/ADJ transport/NOUN system/NOUN that/PRON involves/VERB propelling/VERB people/NOUN at/ADP high/ADJ speed/NOUN through/ADP sealed/VERB tubes/NOUN He/PRON also/ADV coowns/VERB the/DET Novorossiysk/PROPN Commercial/PROPN Sea/PROPN Port/PROPN NMTPMM/PROPN with/ADP Russian/ADJ oil/NOUN pipeline/NOUN monopoly/NOUN Transneft/PROPN TRNF_pMM/PROPN and/CCONJ transportation/NOUN group/NOUN Fesco/PROPN FESHMM/PROPN Additional/ADJ reporting/NOUN by/ADP Gleb/PROPN Stolyarov/PROPN Writing/NOUN by/ADP Gabrielle/PROPN TetraultFarber/PROPN and/CCONJ Christian/PROPN Lowe/PROPN Editing/PROPN by/ADP Larry/PROPN King/PROPN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN

<p>Background</p> <p>Washington&#8217;s long-term plan has been to&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.theecologist.org/essays/2987346/resisting_the_corporate_stranglehold_on_food_and_farming_is_agroecology_enough.html" type="external">restructure indigenous agriculture</a>&amp;#160;across the world and tie it to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for the international market and indebtedness to international&amp;#160;financial institutions.&amp;#160;The result has been food surplus and food deficit areas, of which the latter have become dependent on agricultural imports and strings-attached aid.</p> <p>Food deficits in the Global South mirror food surpluses in the North.&amp;#160;Whether through IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programmes, as occurred <a href="https://fpif.org/destroying_african_agriculture/" type="external">&amp;#160;in Africa</a>, trade agreements like NAFTA and&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">its impact</a>&amp;#160;on Mexico or, more generally,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">deregulated global trade</a>&amp;#160;rules, the outcome has been similar: the devastation of traditional, indigenous agriculture for the benefit of transnational agribusiness and the undermining of both regional and global food security.&amp;#160;The future of our food is&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.worldhunger.org/world-food-crisis/" type="external">being decided by unregulated global markets, financial speculators and global monopolies</a>.</p> <p>In the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture. India&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/1999/jun/19/food.food?CMP=share_btn_tw" type="external">was advised to</a>&amp;#160;dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies and run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops. As the&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">largest recipient</a>&amp;#160;of loans from the World Bank in the history of that institution, India has been quite obliging and has been opening up its agriculture to foreign corporations.</p> <p>Neoliberal ideology: destruction of Indian farming to be welcomed&amp;#160;</p> <p>A fellow at the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) in London, Tim Worstall recently argued on the&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Forbes website</a>&amp;#160;that India&#8217;s farmers should be allowed to go bust because that is how economic development works. Arguing that loan waivers and support price guarantees for farmers help to undermine India&#8217;s growth and prosperity, he stated that farmers should go and do something that is more productive.</p> <p>Central to his argument is productivity: India&#8217;s farmers are not productive and therefore do not earn sufficient to make a living. Moreover, he argues, if prices are below the combined costs of the inputs then the business or activity is making a loss, which in turn subtracts value from the economy and makes everyone else poorer.</p> <p>Worstall believes labour would be&amp;#160;paid better by moving out of agriculture and into productive industry and services. He wants fewer people being farmers and more people doing other things. Then, farmers would not have to be subsidised to continue being farmers.&#8221;</p> <p>He argues:</p> <p>&#8220;A thumbnail sketch of how a country, a people, gets rich is that we all move from that labour intensive and low productivity agriculture over to other things which are more productive. Currently rich countries like the US or Britain have 1 and 2% of the population in farming. Agriculture also provides some 1 or 2% of the GDP of each place. Those few still in farming are about as productive with their labour as is the average across the entire economy therefore.&#8221;</p> <p>Worstall continues:</p> <p>&#8220;Both what will mark out India as a rich country, and what will make it one, is when the labour and output profiles of agriculture are similar to those other rich countries. Because that&#8217;s just what getting richer as a whole means. That the vast majority of the population stops standing around in muddy fields and goes off to do something more productive instead.&#8221;</p> <p>Agriculture in India certainly does have problems. Poor logistics, corrupt middlemen, the lack of cheap credit, the lack of investment in the sector and the ongoing adverse impacts of the Green Revolution have led to an agrarian crisis. Farmers are in debt and yields per hectare often do not match those of other countries.</p> <p>Rather than improve poor management, inept bureaucracies and deficiencies in food logistics, however, the mantra is to let &#8216;the market&#8217; intervene: a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control; the very transnational corporations that receive massive taxpayer subsidies, manipulate markets, write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the &#8216;free&#8217; market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clich&#233;s about letting the market decide.</p> <p>Instead of investing in agroecological/regenerative agriculture that once applied&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/agroecology-case-studies" type="external">can and often does match productivity</a>&amp;#160;elsewhere, neoliberal ideologues think the solution is to continue running down the sector and restructure it to mimic the industrial system of corporate-controlled, heavily subsidised, chemical-intensive farming in the US.</p> <p>The aim is to replace the current system of production with a system of agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness, food processing and retail concerns. This is to be facilitated by the World Bank&#8217;s &#8216; <a href="" type="internal">Enabling the Business of Agriculture</a>&#8217; strategy, which entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers, pesticides, weedicides and patented seeds. It is a process outlined by Michel Chossudovsky in his book &#8216;The Globalization of Poverty&#8217;: economies are opened up through the concurrent displacement of a pre-existing productive system; small and medium-sized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor; state enterprises are privatised or closed down; and independent agricultural producers are impoverished &#8211; which is exactly what we are seeing in India.</p> <p>A massive heist</p> <p>We should consider the US system of agriculture advocated by Worstall. Aside from&amp;#160;massive&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/hidden-costs-of-industrial.html#.V9qTwB597IV" type="external">social, health and environmental costs</a>&amp;#160;incurred by the public,&amp;#160;it is a highly&amp;#160; <a href="https://helenaglass.net/tag/farm-subsidies-in-us/" type="external">subsidised system</a>&amp;#160;that squeezes the farmer and where profitability (value in the chain) is secured by dominant agribusiness corporation like Monsanto and retailers such as Wal-Mart. It is not a &#8216;free market&#8217;; it amounts to a system of corporate welfare that keeps farmers afloat for the benefit of the large corporations. A situation that is true for capitalism in general as free market preachers have&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">long practised state welfare for the rich</a>.</p> <p>The business model of big agribusiness in the US is based on&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">overproduction and huge taxpayer subsidies</a>&amp;#160;which allow it to rake in huge profits. However, it drives a model of agriculture that merely serves to produce&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">bad food</a>,&amp;#160; <a href="http://fpif.org/destroying_african_agriculture/" type="external">creates food deficit</a>&amp;#160;regions globally,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">destroys health</a>,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">impoverishes small farms</a>, leads to&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">less diverse</a>&amp;#160;diets and&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/" type="external">less nutritious</a>&amp;#160;food, is&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Economics/SmallFarms.html" type="external">less productive&amp;#160;</a>than small farms, creates&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/vandana-shiva-climate-change-drought-and-indias-looming-food-and-water-crisis" type="external">water scarcity</a>,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">destroys soil</a>&amp;#160;and fuels/benefits from World Bank/WTO policies that&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/3/structural-adjustment-a-major-cause-of-poverty" type="external">create dependency and debt</a>.</p> <p>If we want to discuss &#8216;productivity&#8217;, we should consider that small-medium size farms are actually more productive that the large monocropping concerns that have come to dominate the US. Just because productivity might be lagging in India, it is no excuse for supplanting it with a corporate model that will be dominated by foreign agribusiness. Moreover, to produce diverse crop production and provide a healthy, nutrient-dense diet based on sustainable practices,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">labour-intensive, low input agroecological farming</a>&amp;#160;is a perquisite.</p> <p>Bhaskar Save&#8217;s&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">analysis</a>&amp;#160;of what the Green Revolution did for India makes for interesting reading and adds weight to the fact that policy makers should follow the recommendations of&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">various reports</a>&amp;#160;that conclude agro-ecological approaches and/or low input farming strategies are more suitable for low(er) income countries. It is vital to invest in and prioritise small farms. They are after all, despite the commonly-held perception, more productive per unit land area than large-scale industrial farms.</p> <p>Whatever measures are used,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">small farms tend to outperform large industrial farms</a>, despite the latter&#8217;s access to various expensive technologies.&amp;#160;With soil fertility degraded, plummeting underground water tables, environmental contamination from the excessive use of chemical pesticides, it is time to shift the ethos of farming in India (and elsewhere) away from Green Revolution ideology.</p> <p>Worstall is against loans for farmers to keep them afloat. Yet US farmers are heavily subsidised and are therefore able to secure prices for certain important crops that are&amp;#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-_tEHs4_4" type="external">lower than the cost of production</a>. In the EU, for instance, each cow&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/global/Sharma.htm" type="external">is subsidised</a>&amp;#160;to an amount that exceeds the daily income of an Indian farmer. Add to this unfair global trade rules, is it any wonder that many Indian farmers are unable to acquire sufficient prices? Indeed, researchers from Cambridge University in the UK&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-evidence-of-suicide-epidemic-among-indias-marginalised-farmers" type="external">have noted</a>&amp;#160;that Indian farmers&#8217; financial distress results from a combination of neoliberal policies and a shift to cash crops as well as debt incurred partly as a result of high input costs (for instance, proprietary seeds and chemicals). Productivity is not the main cause of India&#8217;s agrarian crisis. Even when farmers are highly productive (as in Punjab), they are still indebted and are committing suicide.</p> <p>In his piece, Worstall criticises the notion that agriculture is being deliberately run down in order to shift the rural population to cities to work in industry and services. He implies this should not be regarded negatively and says the whole point is to have labour moving into these sectors.</p> <p>A cursory look at the global economic scenario will make it amply clear that Worstall&#8217;s&amp;#160;advice is totally misguided. The world economy is stagnant or contracting. Real wages have been stagnant for decades. Consumption is at an all-time low. How will India employ almost a billion in industrial production? The Narendra Modi-led government came to power in 2014 promising&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">10 million new jobs</a>. That has not materialised. In fact, the unemployment rate is growing.</p> <p>Tim Worstall&#8217;s advice is not unique, however. He follows the same pattern of thinking of other neoliberal economic policy promoters. In 2012, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the then deputy chairperson of Planning Commission of India,&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/abandon-paddy-build-it-hubs-montek--39144" type="external">had advised</a>&amp;#160;farmers in Kerala to abandon paddy cultivation and advocated the building of IT hubs and tourist resorts. Not surprisingly, he was an employee of the World Bank and director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the IMF.</p> <p>Worstall and Ahlwalia&#8217;s thinking stems from a neoliberal economic agenda that aims to funnel income from the poor to the super rich, which has created a&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">widening gap</a>&amp;#160;between rich and poor in India. In fact, today,&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Politics/E3n5ANHQL1ywMOdNxm6igK/Indias-1-superrich-own-58-of-the-countrys-total-wealth.html" type="external">1% of the population now own 58%</a>&amp;#160;of the wealth. Is this &#8216;development&#8217; or merely a heist?&amp;#160;If we follow Tim Worstall&#8217;s prescription the income disparity will only increase. In the last three decades 300,000 farmers have committed suicide. Following such advice, will mean things will only get worse.</p> <p>Since Ahluwali&#8217;s advice, many IT hubs that Kerala built are lying vacant with no takers. With Artificial Intelligence and robotics taking over the IT industry many professionals are being made redundant. Tourism too is shrinking in Kerala.&amp;#160;The neoliberal agenda is not about giving farmers jobs or giving them better income. It is simply about taking over their land for the super-rich to build industrial parks and turn Indian agriculture into a US model of agriculture.</p> <p>Support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced and farmers suffer yet it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year. On the other hand, corporate-industrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs, despite the hand outs and tax exemptions given to it [see&amp;#160; <a href="http://indiatogether.org/articles/sez-failure-implications-for-land-acquisition-and-industry-growth-economy" type="external">this</a>&amp;#160;and&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.im4change.org.previewdns.com/latest-news-updates/where-are-the-jobs-devinder-sharma-4674728.html" type="external">this</a>].</p> <p>The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 2.7 million (the years of high GDP growth). According to&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">International Business Times</a>, 15 million enter the workforce every year. And data released by the Labour Bureau shows that in 2015,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">jobless &#8216;growth&#8217;</a>&amp;#160;had finally arrived in India.&amp;#160;A speech last year by the governor of the Bank of England set out a scenario where&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/robots-steal-15-million-british-9399518" type="external">15 million jobs</a>&amp;#160;in the UK could eventually be lost due to automation.</p> <p>It is worth considering that the loans provided to just&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">five large corporations</a>&amp;#160;in India are equal to the entire farm debt. Where have those loans gone? Have they increased &#8216;value&#8217; in the economy. No, loans to corporate houses left the banks without liquidity. &#8216;Demonetisation&#8217; was in effect&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">a bail-out for the banks and the corporates</a>, which farmers and other ordinary folk paid the price for. It was a symptom of a country whose GDP growth was based on a debt-inflated economy. While farmers commit suicide and are heavily indebted, a handful of millionaires get access to cheap money with no pressure to pay it back and with little &#8216;added value&#8217; for society as a whole.</p> <p>Is this the type of non-subsidised &#8216;productivity&#8217; neoliberal apologists imply whereby business &#8216;stands on its own two feet&#8217; and lives and dies according to productivity?</p> <p>Worstall&#8217;s piece was written in the wake of the Mandasur farmer&#8217;s uprising in Central India, in which six farmers were shot dead. The&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/mandsaur-agitation-how-demonetisation-brought-mp-farmers-onto-streets/story-fD9hc9HkXhHEmFPgZqXduK.html" type="external">triggering point of this agitation</a>&amp;#160;was Modi&#8217;s&amp;#160;8 November&amp;#160;demonetisation action. It meant that farmers faced a severe crash-crunch on top of all the misery they faced. This was the last straw for them.</p> <p>While Worstall argues that unproductive agriculture is a burden on society, it is not agriculture that has been the subsidy-sucking failure he imagines it to be. It has been&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/capitalisms-great-indian-con-trick-feeding-the-economic-vultures-while-starving-agriculture/5435938" type="external">starved of investment while the corporates secure the handouts</a>. If anything, farmers have been sacrificed for the benefit of the urban middle classes whose food has been kept cheap and whose disposable income and consumer spending provides the illusion of growth.</p> <p>Ideology masquerading as economic theory</p> <p>Tim Worstall is a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute based in London. The ASI was a major intellectual driving force that underpinned Margaret Thatcher&#8217;s ideological&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/britains-de-industralization-and-privatization-the-economic-and-social-legacy-of-margaret-thatcher-the-iron-lady/5329683" type="external">assault on ordinary people</a>&amp;#160;in the UK and its manufacturing base. And three decades on, what is the outcome?</p> <p>The UK is now&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/can-jeremy-corbyn-stem-the-tide-of-neoliberalism-and-militarism/5475948" type="external">blighted by the neoliberal agenda</a>, which is increasingly reliant on the plundering of public budgets, financial speculation and debt. We see food poverty rising, a reliance on food banks, increasing inequality and the devastating impacts of austerity.&amp;#160;See&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">this</a>&amp;#160;about rising food poverty and increasing reliance on food banks in Britain.&amp;#160;See&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">this</a>&amp;#160;about the five richest families in Britain being worth more than the poorest 20%.&amp;#160;See&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">this</a>&amp;#160;about one third of Britain&#8217;s population being in poverty.</p> <p>According to&amp;#160; <a href="http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=27579" type="external">this report</a>, almost 18 million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions; 12 million are too poor to engage in common social activities; one in three cannot afford to heat their homes adequately in winter; and four million children and adults are not properly fed (Britain&#8217;s population is estimated at 63 to 64 million).</p> <p>Welfare cuts have&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">pushed hundreds of thousands below the poverty line</a>&amp;#160;since 2012 alone, including more than 300,000 children.&amp;#160;A good deal of manufacturing has been offshored, the national debt is out of control and personal (and student) debt is huge but has been used to sustain demand in the economy.</p> <p>But it is a case of rolling-out the agenda across the world and carry on regardless. Worstall argues that once India and other countries begin to follow the &#8216;development&#8217; path of the &#8216;rich&#8217; countries and become more productive, workers could then begin to &#8220;get US wages.&#8221; Although the experiences of tens of millions in the US and Europe would take issue with that as they collect their welfare or toil on zero-hour contracts or in insecure employment, it is highly convenient to ignore the&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/from-syria-to-monsanto-a-moribund-system-of-deceit-and-destruction/5583837" type="external">imperialism</a>&amp;#160;that Washington has engaged in and which has secured its wealth as a &#8216;rich country&#8217; and a free-ride courtesy of the rest of the world.</p> <p>in India, about 60% of citizens depend on agriculture for a living. However meagre their incomes are, it sustains their lives. Hundreds of millions of people find sustenance from farming. Given the&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">global crisis of capitalism</a>, driving them away from their only source of income and their only source of wealth is a way of driving them to suicide.</p> <p>If anything, India, the US and the &#8216;rich&#8217; countries should be looking towards implementing and scaling-up sustainable,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">climate-friendly</a>&amp;#160;agriculture (see&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">this</a>) that creates jobs and living within the limits imposed by the environment. The fixation on GDP and&amp;#160; <a href="https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/tag/infinite-growth-paradigm/" type="external">the wholly misguided infinite growth paradigm</a>&amp;#160;is outdated, unrealistic and was always destined to be a &#8216;nine-day wonder&#8217; given its destructive impact on the environment.</p>

Forbes’ ‘Go Bust’ Prescription For Indian Farmers Is A Death Warrant

https://counterpunch.org/2017/06/15/forbes-go-bust-prescription-for-indian-farmers-is-a-death-warrant/

2017-06-15

4left

Background Washington8217s longterm plan has been toamp160 restructure indigenous agricultureamp160across the world and tie it to an international system of trade based on exportoriented monocropping commodity production for the international market and indebtedness to internationalamp160financial institutionsamp160The result has been food surplus and food deficit areas of which the latter have become dependent on agricultural imports and stringsattached aid Food deficits in the Global South mirror food surpluses in the Northamp160Whether through IMFWorld Bank structural adjustment programmes as occurred amp160in Africa trade agreements like NAFTA andamp160 its impactamp160on Mexico or more generallyamp160 deregulated global tradeamp160rules the outcome has been similar the devastation of traditional indigenous agriculture for the benefit of transnational agribusiness and the undermining of both regional and global food securityamp160The future of our food isamp160 being decided by unregulated global markets financial speculators and global monopolies In the 1990s the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture Indiaamp160 was advised toamp160dismantle its stateowned seed supply system reduce subsidies and run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops As theamp160 largest recipientamp160of loans from the World Bank in the history of that institution India has been quite obliging and has been opening up its agriculture to foreign corporations Neoliberal ideology destruction of Indian farming to be welcomedamp160 A fellow at the Adam Smith Institute ASI in London Tim Worstall recently argued on theamp160 Forbes websiteamp160that India8217s farmers should be allowed to go bust because that is how economic development works Arguing that loan waivers and support price guarantees for farmers help to undermine India8217s growth and prosperity he stated that farmers should go and do something that is more productive Central to his argument is productivity India8217s farmers are not productive and therefore do not earn sufficient to make a living Moreover he argues if prices are below the combined costs of the inputs then the business or activity is making a loss which in turn subtracts value from the economy and makes everyone else poorer Worstall believes labour would beamp160paid better by moving out of agriculture and into productive industry and services He wants fewer people being farmers and more people doing other things Then farmers would not have to be subsidised to continue being farmers8221 He argues 8220A thumbnail sketch of how a country a people gets rich is that we all move from that labour intensive and low productivity agriculture over to other things which are more productive Currently rich countries like the US or Britain have 1 and 2 of the population in farming Agriculture also provides some 1 or 2 of the GDP of each place Those few still in farming are about as productive with their labour as is the average across the entire economy therefore8221 Worstall continues 8220Both what will mark out India as a rich country and what will make it one is when the labour and output profiles of agriculture are similar to those other rich countries Because that8217s just what getting richer as a whole means That the vast majority of the population stops standing around in muddy fields and goes off to do something more productive instead8221 Agriculture in India certainly does have problems Poor logistics corrupt middlemen the lack of cheap credit the lack of investment in the sector and the ongoing adverse impacts of the Green Revolution have led to an agrarian crisis Farmers are in debt and yields per hectare often do not match those of other countries Rather than improve poor management inept bureaucracies and deficiencies in food logistics however the mantra is to let 8216the market8217 intervene a euphemism for letting powerful corporations take control the very transnational corporations that receive massive taxpayer subsidies manipulate markets write trade agreements and institute a regime of intellectual property rights thereby indicating that the 8216free8217 market only exists in the warped delusions of those who churn out clich233s about letting the market decide Instead of investing in agroecologicalregenerative agriculture that once appliedamp160 can and often does match productivityamp160elsewhere neoliberal ideologues think the solution is to continue running down the sector and restructure it to mimic the industrial system of corporatecontrolled heavily subsidised chemicalintensive farming in the US The aim is to replace the current system of production with a system of agriculture suited to the needs of Western agribusiness food processing and retail concerns This is to be facilitated by the World Bank8217s 8216 Enabling the Business of Agriculture8217 strategy which entails opening up markets to Western agribusiness and their fertilisers pesticides weedicides and patented seeds It is a process outlined by Michel Chossudovsky in his book 8216The Globalization of Poverty8217 economies are opened up through the concurrent displacement of a preexisting productive system small and mediumsized enterprises are pushed into bankruptcy or obliged to produce for a global distributor state enterprises are privatised or closed down and independent agricultural producers are impoverished 8211 which is exactly what we are seeing in India A massive heist We should consider the US system of agriculture advocated by Worstall Aside fromamp160massiveamp160 social health and environmental costsamp160incurred by the publicamp160it is a highlyamp160 subsidised systemamp160that squeezes the farmer and where profitability value in the chain is secured by dominant agribusiness corporation like Monsanto and retailers such as WalMart It is not a 8216free market8217 it amounts to a system of corporate welfare that keeps farmers afloat for the benefit of the large corporations A situation that is true for capitalism in general as free market preachers haveamp160 long practised state welfare for the rich The business model of big agribusiness in the US is based onamp160 overproduction and huge taxpayer subsidiesamp160which allow it to rake in huge profits However it drives a model of agriculture that merely serves to produceamp160 bad foodamp160 creates food deficitamp160regions globallyamp160 destroys healthamp160 impoverishes small farms leads toamp160 less diverseamp160diets andamp160 less nutritiousamp160food isamp160 less productiveamp160than small farms createsamp160 water scarcityamp160 destroys soilamp160and fuelsbenefits from World BankWTO policies thatamp160 create dependency and debt If we want to discuss 8216productivity8217 we should consider that smallmedium size farms are actually more productive that the large monocropping concerns that have come to dominate the US Just because productivity might be lagging in India it is no excuse for supplanting it with a corporate model that will be dominated by foreign agribusiness Moreover to produce diverse crop production and provide a healthy nutrientdense diet based on sustainable practicesamp160 labourintensive low input agroecological farmingamp160is a perquisite Bhaskar Save8217samp160 analysisamp160of what the Green Revolution did for India makes for interesting reading and adds weight to the fact that policy makers should follow the recommendations ofamp160 various reportsamp160that conclude agroecological approaches andor low input farming strategies are more suitable for lower income countries It is vital to invest in and prioritise small farms They are after all despite the commonlyheld perception more productive per unit land area than largescale industrial farms Whatever measures are usedamp160 small farms tend to outperform large industrial farms despite the latter8217s access to various expensive technologiesamp160With soil fertility degraded plummeting underground water tables environmental contamination from the excessive use of chemical pesticides it is time to shift the ethos of farming in India and elsewhere away from Green Revolution ideology Worstall is against loans for farmers to keep them afloat Yet US farmers are heavily subsidised and are therefore able to secure prices for certain important crops that areamp160 lower than the cost of production In the EU for instance each cowamp160 is subsidisedamp160to an amount that exceeds the daily income of an Indian farmer Add to this unfair global trade rules is it any wonder that many Indian farmers are unable to acquire sufficient prices Indeed researchers from Cambridge University in the UKamp160 have notedamp160that Indian farmers8217 financial distress results from a combination of neoliberal policies and a shift to cash crops as well as debt incurred partly as a result of high input costs for instance proprietary seeds and chemicals Productivity is not the main cause of India8217s agrarian crisis Even when farmers are highly productive as in Punjab they are still indebted and are committing suicide In his piece Worstall criticises the notion that agriculture is being deliberately run down in order to shift the rural population to cities to work in industry and services He implies this should not be regarded negatively and says the whole point is to have labour moving into these sectors A cursory look at the global economic scenario will make it amply clear that Worstall8217samp160advice is totally misguided The world economy is stagnant or contracting Real wages have been stagnant for decades Consumption is at an alltime low How will India employ almost a billion in industrial production The Narendra Modiled government came to power in 2014 promisingamp160 10 million new jobs That has not materialised In fact the unemployment rate is growing Tim Worstall8217s advice is not unique however He follows the same pattern of thinking of other neoliberal economic policy promoters In 2012 Montek Singh Ahluwalia the then deputy chairperson of Planning Commission of Indiaamp160 had advisedamp160farmers in Kerala to abandon paddy cultivation and advocated the building of IT hubs and tourist resorts Not surprisingly he was an employee of the World Bank and director of the Independent Evaluation Office at the IMF Worstall and Ahlwalia8217s thinking stems from a neoliberal economic agenda that aims to funnel income from the poor to the super rich which has created aamp160 widening gapamp160between rich and poor in India In fact todayamp160 1 of the population now own 58amp160of the wealth Is this 8216development8217 or merely a heistamp160If we follow Tim Worstall8217s prescription the income disparity will only increase In the last three decades 300000 farmers have committed suicide Following such advice will mean things will only get worse Since Ahluwali8217s advice many IT hubs that Kerala built are lying vacant with no takers With Artificial Intelligence and robotics taking over the IT industry many professionals are being made redundant Tourism too is shrinking in Keralaamp160The neoliberal agenda is not about giving farmers jobs or giving them better income It is simply about taking over their land for the superrich to build industrial parks and turn Indian agriculture into a US model of agriculture Support given to agriculture is portrayed as a drain on the economy and is reduced and farmers suffer yet it still manages to deliver bumper harvests year after year On the other hand corporateindustrial India has failed to deliver in terms of boosting exports or creating jobs despite the hand outs and tax exemptions given to it seeamp160 thisamp160andamp160 this The number of jobs created in India between 2005 and 2010 was 27 million the years of high GDP growth According toamp160 International Business Times 15 million enter the workforce every year And data released by the Labour Bureau shows that in 2015amp160 jobless 8216growth8217amp160had finally arrived in Indiaamp160A speech last year by the governor of the Bank of England set out a scenario whereamp160 15 million jobsamp160in the UK could eventually be lost due to automation It is worth considering that the loans provided to justamp160 five large corporationsamp160in India are equal to the entire farm debt Where have those loans gone Have they increased 8216value8217 in the economy No loans to corporate houses left the banks without liquidity 8216Demonetisation8217 was in effectamp160 a bailout for the banks and the corporates which farmers and other ordinary folk paid the price for It was a symptom of a country whose GDP growth was based on a debtinflated economy While farmers commit suicide and are heavily indebted a handful of millionaires get access to cheap money with no pressure to pay it back and with little 8216added value8217 for society as a whole Is this the type of nonsubsidised 8216productivity8217 neoliberal apologists imply whereby business 8216stands on its own two feet8217 and lives and dies according to productivity Worstall8217s piece was written in the wake of the Mandasur farmer8217s uprising in Central India in which six farmers were shot dead Theamp160 triggering point of this agitationamp160was Modi8217samp1608 Novemberamp160demonetisation action It meant that farmers faced a severe crashcrunch on top of all the misery they faced This was the last straw for them While Worstall argues that unproductive agriculture is a burden on society it is not agriculture that has been the subsidysucking failure he imagines it to be It has beenamp160 starved of investment while the corporates secure the handouts If anything farmers have been sacrificed for the benefit of the urban middle classes whose food has been kept cheap and whose disposable income and consumer spending provides the illusion of growth Ideology masquerading as economic theory Tim Worstall is a fellow of the Adam Smith Institute based in London The ASI was a major intellectual driving force that underpinned Margaret Thatcher8217s ideologicalamp160 assault on ordinary peopleamp160in the UK and its manufacturing base And three decades on what is the outcome The UK is nowamp160 blighted by the neoliberal agenda which is increasingly reliant on the plundering of public budgets financial speculation and debt We see food poverty rising a reliance on food banks increasing inequality and the devastating impacts of austerityamp160Seeamp160 thisamp160about rising food poverty and increasing reliance on food banks in Britainamp160Seeamp160 thisamp160about the five richest families in Britain being worth more than the poorest 20amp160Seeamp160 thisamp160about one third of Britain8217s population being in poverty According toamp160 this report almost 18 million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions 12 million are too poor to engage in common social activities one in three cannot afford to heat their homes adequately in winter and four million children and adults are not properly fed Britain8217s population is estimated at 63 to 64 million Welfare cuts haveamp160 pushed hundreds of thousands below the poverty lineamp160since 2012 alone including more than 300000 childrenamp160A good deal of manufacturing has been offshored the national debt is out of control and personal and student debt is huge but has been used to sustain demand in the economy But it is a case of rollingout the agenda across the world and carry on regardless Worstall argues that once India and other countries begin to follow the 8216development8217 path of the 8216rich8217 countries and become more productive workers could then begin to 8220get US wages8221 Although the experiences of tens of millions in the US and Europe would take issue with that as they collect their welfare or toil on zerohour contracts or in insecure employment it is highly convenient to ignore theamp160 imperialismamp160that Washington has engaged in and which has secured its wealth as a 8216rich country8217 and a freeride courtesy of the rest of the world in India about 60 of citizens depend on agriculture for a living However meagre their incomes are it sustains their lives Hundreds of millions of people find sustenance from farming Given theamp160 global crisis of capitalism driving them away from their only source of income and their only source of wealth is a way of driving them to suicide If anything India the US and the 8216rich8217 countries should be looking towards implementing and scalingup sustainableamp160 climatefriendlyamp160agriculture seeamp160 this that creates jobs and living within the limits imposed by the environment The fixation on GDP andamp160 the wholly misguided infinite growth paradigmamp160is outdated unrealistic and was always destined to be a 8216nineday wonder8217 given its destructive impact on the environment

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seed/NOUN supply/NOUN system/NOUN reduce/VERB subsidies/NOUN and/CCONJ run/VERB down/ADP public/ADJ agriculture/NOUN institutions/NOUN and/CCONJ offer/VERB incentives/NOUN for/ADP the/DET growing/NOUN of/ADP cash/NOUN crops/NOUN As/ADP theamp160/NUM largest/ADJ recipientamp160of/ADJ loans/NOUN from/ADP the/DET World/PROPN Bank/PROPN in/ADP the/DET history/NOUN of/ADP that/DET institution/NOUN India/PROPN has/AUX been/AUX quite/ADV obliging/ADJ and/CCONJ has/AUX been/AUX opening/VERB up/ADP its/PRON agriculture/NOUN to/ADP foreign/ADJ corporations/NOUN Neoliberal/ADJ ideology/NOUN destruction/NOUN of/ADP Indian/ADJ farming/NOUN to/PART be/AUX welcomedamp160/X A/DET fellow/NOUN at/ADP the/DET Adam/PROPN Smith/PROPN Institute/PROPN ASI/PROPN in/ADP London/PROPN Tim/PROPN Worstall/PROPN recently/ADV argued/VERB on/ADP theamp160/PROPN Forbes/PROPN websiteamp160that/PRON India8217s/PROPN farmers/NOUN should/AUX be/AUX allowed/VERB to/PART go/VERB bust/ADJ because/SCONJ that/PRON is/AUX 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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - S&amp;amp;P:</p> <p>* S&amp;amp;P SAYS OUTLOOK ON HOUSTON, TX GENERAL OBLIGATION BONDS REVISED TO STABLE FROM NEGATIVE ON PENSION CHANGES; &#8216;AA&#8217; RATING AFFIRMED&#8205;&#8203;</p> <p>* S&amp;amp;P SAYS HOUSTON GO BONDS OUTLOOK CHANGE REFLECTS VIEW THAT CHANGES TO PENSION PLANS LIKELY TO HAVE POSITIVE EFFECT ON ABILITY TO ADDRESS UNFUNDED LIABILITY Source text: ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2DoO8UQ" type="external">bit.ly/2DoO8UQ</a>)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - President Donald Trump and his national security aides on Thursday discussed U.S. options on Syria, where he has threatened missile strikes in response to a suspected poison gas attack, as a Russian envoy voiced fears of wider conflict between Washington and Moscow.</p> <p>Worries about a confrontation between Russia, Syria&#8217;s big ally, and the West have been running high since Trump said on Wednesday that missiles &#8220;will be coming&#8221; in response to the attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7, and lambasted Moscow for standing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.</p> <p>Trump tempered those remarks on Thursday and even as he consulted with allies such and Britain and France, who could join in any U.S.-led strikes on Syria, there were signs of efforts to prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control.</p> <p>&#8220;Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!&#8221; Trump wrote on Twitter, raising the prospect that an attack might not be as imminent as he seemed to suggest the day before.</p> <p>Trump met with his national security team on the situation in Syria later in the day and &#8220;no final decision has been made,&#8221; the White House said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies,&#8221; the statement said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-allies-factbox/factbox-assads-foreign-backers-in-syrias-war-idUSKBN1HJ2DE" type="external">Factbox: Assad's foreign backers in Syria's war</a> <p>That did not necessarily signal, however, that Trump was cooling to the idea of military action, especially given the high stakes in Syria. U.S. officials noted that Washington was still assessing intelligence and coordinating allies.</p> <p>Trump spoke to British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday, and the two agreed &#8220;on the need to deter the further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime,&#8221; May&#8217;s office said.</p> <p>He was also due to speak with French President Emmanuel Macron, who said France had proof the Syrian government carried out the attack near Damascus, which aid groups have said killed dozens of people, and will decide whether to strike back when all the necessary information has been gathered.</p> <p>&#8220;We have proof that last week ... chemical weapons were used, at least with chlorine, and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad,&#8221; Macron said, without offering details of any evidence.</p> <p>Two U.S. officials familiar with an investigation of samples from Douma and the symptoms of victims said initial indications that a mix of weaponized chlorine gas and sarin were used in the attack appeared to be correct. But U.S. intelligence agencies have not completed their assessment or reached a final conclusion, the officials said.</p> <p>Russia, Syria and its other main backer, Iran, have said reports of the Douma attack were fabricated by rebels and rescue workers and have accused the United States of seeking to use it as a pretext to attack the Syrian government.</p> <p>Russia said it deployed military police in Douma on Thursday after the town was taken over by government forces.</p> <p>&#8220;They are the guarantors of law and order in the town,&#8221; RIA news agency quoted Russia&#8217;s defense ministry as saying.</p> <p>There were signs of a global effort to head off a direct confrontation between Russia and the West. The Kremlin said a crisis communications link with the United States, created to avoid an accidental clash over Syria, was in use.</p> FEARS OF WAR <p>Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow&#8217;s ambassador to the United Nations, said he &#8220;cannot exclude&#8221; war between the United States and Russia and urged Washington and its allies to refrain from military action against Syria.</p> <p>&#8220;The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war,&#8221; he told reporters. &#8220;We hope there will be no point of no return,&#8221; the envoy said.</p> <p>A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations on Saturday, the Netherlands-based agency said.</p> <p>It was not clear whether Trump and U.S. allies would wait for the results of the investigation before deciding on a possible strike.</p> <p>U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he believed there was a chemical attack in Syria, but added a short while later that the United States had not made any decision to launch military action. He also suggested he was examining ways to prevent any strikes from triggering a broader conflict.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to talk about a specific attack that is not yet in the offing. ... This would be pre-decisional,&#8221; Mattis told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with governors and members of Congress at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>Moscow is estimated to have dozens of aircraft at its Hmeymim air base in Syria including fighters and bombers, as well as 10 to 15 warships and support vessels in the Mediterranean.</p> <p>The Syrian government and Russian forces in Syria possess truck-mounted surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapons systems.</p> <p>Nervous world stock markets showed signs of recovery after Trump&#8217;s signal that military strikes might not be imminent.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s May won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria.</p> <p>May had recalled the ministers from their Easter holiday for the meeting to discuss Britain&#8217;s response to what she has cast as a barbaric attack that cannot go unchallenged.</p> <p>Russian ships had left the Tartus naval base in Syria, Interfax news agency quoted a Russian lawmaker as saying. Vladimir Shamanov, who chairs the defense committee of the lower house, said the vessels had departed the base for their own safety, which was &#8220;normal practice&#8221; when there were threats of attack.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Any U.S. strike would probably involve the Navy, given the risk to aircraft from Russian and Syrian air defenses. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, is in the Mediterranean.</p> <p>Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut, William James, Guy Faulconbridge and David Milliken in London, Andrew Osborn, Maria Kiselyova and Jack Stubbs in Moscow, John Irish in Paris, Graham Fahy in Dublin and John Walcott, Phil Stewart, Matt Spetalnick and Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Alistair Bell and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma&#8217;s largest teachers union on Thursday called off a nearly two-week walkout that shut public schools statewide, saying it had secured historic gains in education funding after school budgets were devastated by a decade of cuts.</p> <p>The move came after the Republican-dominated legislature passed its first major tax hikes in a quarter century that raised about $450 million in revenue for education. Republican leaders said they had no plans to go as high as the $600 million being sought by educators.</p> <p>&#8220;We absolutely have a victory for teachers,&#8221; Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, told a news conference.</p> <p>&#8220;Our members are saying they want to go back to the classroom,&#8221; said Priest, whose union has about 40,000 members.</p> <p>Some major districts have said they will resume classes on Monday.</p> <p>The strike was part of a wave of actions by teachers in states that have some of the lowest per-student spending in the country. A West Virginia strike ended last month with a pay raise for teachers, and educators in Arizona protested before classes on Wednesday, without skipping work, to seek enhanced education funding.</p> <p>The Oklahoma walkout began on April 2 and affected about 500,000 of the state&#8217;s 700,000 public school students.</p> Protester march during a strike by Oklahoma educators demanding more school funding near the Oklahoma state Capitol in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., April 9, 2018. Picture taken on April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Heide Brandes <p>Opinion surveys showed it had garnered wide support among Oklahoma voters, many of whom had seen firsthand how students at struggling schools had to share outdated and tattered textbooks and sometimes go to a four-day school week to help save districts money.</p> <p>Oklahoma teachers, who were seeking a $10,000 annual wage hike over three years, will see an average annual pay raise of about $6,100 from the increased funding, lawmakers said.</p> <p>In May 2017, their annual mean wage was $41,880, among the lowest in the country, compared with neighboring states such as Texas at $57,830 and Kansas at $50,470, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p> A protester holds up a sign during a strike by Oklahoma educators demanding more school funding near the Oklahoma state Capitol in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., April 9, 2018. Picture taken on April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Heide Brandes <p>School districts for the most part supported the teacher walk-out. But they began to run out of wiggle room to make up for lost time when the labor action threatened to extend the school year, piling pressure on teachers to return.</p> <p>Low wages have created an exodus of educators, causing a teacher shortage in Oklahoma. As a result, school districts had to cut curricula and deploy nearly 2,000 emergency-certified instructors as a stop-gap measure.</p> <p>Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City and Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton in Tulsa; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump denied allegations of lewd behavior made in an intelligence dossier and asked whether the FBI would consider proving it was a lie, former FBI Director James Comey wrote in an upcoming memoir, according to the Washington Post.</p> FILE PHOTO: Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on "Russian Federation Efforts to Interfere in the 2016 U.S. Elections" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo <p>&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Comey, fired by Trump in May 2017, wrote in &#8220;A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership&#8221; that Trump raised the dossier with him at least four times during meetings, the Post said. The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele about Trump&#8217;s ties to Russia, and included an allegation that involved prostitutes.</p> <p>&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Comey&#8217;s publicist also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.</p> <p>The newspaper said it obtained a copy of the 304-page book, scheduled to be released on Tuesday, and that Comey detailed in it his private interactions with Trump.</p> After defiant exit, Trump reconsiders TPP <p>&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Comey&#8217;s firing led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign.</p> <p>&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Russia has denied interfering in the election. Trump has said there was no collusion.</p> <p>Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An interview of U.S. President Donald Trump by special counsel Robert Mueller was less likely after this week&#8217;s FBI raids on Trump&#8217;s personal lawyer, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.</p> Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>Trump was infuriated by Federal Bureau of Investigation raids on Monday on the New York law office and home of Michael Cohen, which followed a referral by Mueller.</p> <p>Still, the president&#8217;s tendency to change his mind added to uncertainty about whether an interview would ultimately take place.</p> <p>In a tweet early on Thursday, Trump said that he backed a &#8220;cooperative&#8221; approach to Mueller&#8217;s investigation of possible collusion between Moscow and Trump&#8217;s presidential campaign.</p> <p>&#8220;I have agreed with the historically cooperative, disciplined approach that we have engaged in with Robert Mueller,&#8221; Trump said on Twitter.</p> <p>Further suggesting that tensions could blow over, a third source familiar with the matter said the relationship with Mueller remained strong and constructive and discussions were expected to recommence soon.</p> <p>Russia has denied U.S. intelligence agencies&#8217; findings that it interfered in the 2016 campaign to try to tilt the vote in Trump&#8217;s favor. Trump has denied any collusion and has repeatedly attacked Mueller&#8217;s investigation as a politically motivated &#8220;witch hunt.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s outburst after the FBI searches raised concerns among critics and lawmakers, including some in Trump&#8217;s own Republican Party, that he might try to have Mueller removed.</p> <p>The president denied a New York Times report on Tuesday that he had sought to fire Mueller in December. &#8220;If I wanted to fire Robert Mueller in December, as reported by the Failing New York Times, I would have fired him,&#8221; he said on Twitter early on Thursday.</p> <p>White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Donald McGahn have told Trump that firing Mueller would leave him vulnerable to charges of obstruction of justice, two officials told Reuters on Tuesday. They said Trump must have &#8220;good cause&#8221; to order the Justice Department official overseeing the Russia probe, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to oust Mueller.</p> ADVICE FROM FORMER AIDE <p>One of the sources familiar with the matter and another person said on Thursday that Rosenstein is on shaky ground. The second person said the feeling among White House and Justice Department officials was that Rosenstein was abdicating authority and not putting constraints on the investigation.</p> <p>Rosenstein was at the White House on Thursday discussing the status of congressional requests, another of the sources said.</p> <p>Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to Trump, has encouraged White House aides to advise Trump to fire Rosenstein, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified sources. It also said Bannon wanted the White House to stop cooperating with the Mueller investigation and fire Cobb.</p> <p>Cobb, the lawyer in charge of the White House response to the Russia investigation, has stressed cooperation with Mueller. The White House has said it has turned over tens of thousands of pages of documents to the special counsel&#8217;s team.</p> <p>Trump said in one of his Twitter messages on Thursday that he had full confidence in Cobb.</p> <p>A bipartisan group of senators put forward legislation on Wednesday to protect Mueller and his investigation, which the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to consider next week.</p> <p>If passed, the legislation would allow the special counsel to be fired only &#8220;for good cause&#8221; by a senior Justice Department official, with a reason given in writing; provide recourse if the special counsel was fired without good cause; and preserve the staffing and materials of a pending investigation.</p> <p>&#8220;Anyone advising the President - in public or over the airwaves - to fire Bob Mueller does not have the President or the nation&#8217;s best interest at heart. Full stop,&#8221; Republican Senator Orrin Hatch wrote on Twitter on Thursday.</p> <p>Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by Makini Brice and John Walcott; Writing by Tim Ahmann and Karen Freifeld; Editing by Frances Kerry, Leslie Adler, Toni Reinhold</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-S&P Revises Outlook On Houston General Obligation Bonds To Stable From Negative Trump weighs Syria options, Russia envoy says he 'cannot exclude' war Oklahoma teachers end nearly two-week walkout that shut schools Comey says in book Trump denied allegations of lewd behavior: Washington Post Trump now less likely to sit for Mueller interview: sources

https://reuters.com/article/brief-sp-revises-outlook-on-houston-gene/brief-sp-revises-outlook-on-houston-general-obligation-bonds-to-stable-from-negative-idUSFWN1PD1DO

2018-01-18

2least

Jan 18 Reuters SampampP SampampP SAYS OUTLOOK ON HOUSTON TX GENERAL OBLIGATION BONDS REVISED TO STABLE FROM NEGATIVE ON PENSION CHANGES 8216AA8217 RATING AFFIRMED82058203 SampampP SAYS HOUSTON GO BONDS OUTLOOK CHANGE REFLECTS VIEW THAT CHANGES TO PENSION PLANS LIKELY TO HAVE POSITIVE EFFECT ON ABILITY TO ADDRESS UNFUNDED LIABILITY Source text bitly2DoO8UQ Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONUNITED NATIONS Reuters President Donald Trump and his national security aides on Thursday discussed US options on Syria where he has threatened missile strikes in response to a suspected poison gas attack as a Russian envoy voiced fears of wider conflict between Washington and Moscow Worries about a confrontation between Russia Syria8217s big ally and the West have been running high since Trump said on Wednesday that missiles 8220will be coming8221 in response to the attack in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7 and lambasted Moscow for standing by Syrian President Bashar alAssad Trump tempered those remarks on Thursday and even as he consulted with allies such and Britain and France who could join in any USled strikes on Syria there were signs of efforts to prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control 8220Never said when an attack on Syria would take place Could be very soon or not so soon at all8221 Trump wrote on Twitter raising the prospect that an attack might not be as imminent as he seemed to suggest the day before Trump met with his national security team on the situation in Syria later in the day and 8220no final decision has been made8221 the White House said in a statement 8220We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies8221 the statement said Related Coverage Factbox Assads foreign backers in Syrias war That did not necessarily signal however that Trump was cooling to the idea of military action especially given the high stakes in Syria US officials noted that Washington was still assessing intelligence and coordinating allies Trump spoke to British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday and the two agreed 8220on the need to deter the further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime8221 May8217s office said He was also due to speak with French President Emmanuel Macron who said France had proof the Syrian government carried out the attack near Damascus which aid groups have said killed dozens of people and will decide whether to strike back when all the necessary information has been gathered 8220We have proof that last week chemical weapons were used at least with chlorine and that they were used by the regime of Bashar alAssad8221 Macron said without offering details of any evidence Two US officials familiar with an investigation of samples from Douma and the symptoms of victims said initial indications that a mix of weaponized chlorine gas and sarin were used in the attack appeared to be correct But US intelligence agencies have not completed their assessment or reached a final conclusion the officials said Russia Syria and its other main backer Iran have said reports of the Douma attack were fabricated by rebels and rescue workers and have accused the United States of seeking to use it as a pretext to attack the Syrian government Russia said it deployed military police in Douma on Thursday after the town was taken over by government forces 8220They are the guarantors of law and order in the town8221 RIA news agency quoted Russia8217s defense ministry as saying There were signs of a global effort to head off a direct confrontation between Russia and the West The Kremlin said a crisis communications link with the United States created to avoid an accidental clash over Syria was in use FEARS OF WAR Vassily Nebenzia Moscow8217s ambassador to the United Nations said he 8220cannot exclude8221 war between the United States and Russia and urged Washington and its allies to refrain from military action against Syria 8220The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war8221 he told reporters 8220We hope there will be no point of no return8221 the envoy said A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations on Saturday the Netherlandsbased agency said It was not clear whether Trump and US allies would wait for the results of the investigation before deciding on a possible strike US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress he believed there was a chemical attack in Syria but added a short while later that the United States had not made any decision to launch military action He also suggested he was examining ways to prevent any strikes from triggering a broader conflict 8220I don8217t want to talk about a specific attack that is not yet in the offing This would be predecisional8221 Mattis told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with governors and members of Congress at the White House in Washington US April 12 2018 REUTERSKevin Lamarque Moscow is estimated to have dozens of aircraft at its Hmeymim air base in Syria including fighters and bombers as well as 10 to 15 warships and support vessels in the Mediterranean The Syrian government and Russian forces in Syria possess truckmounted surfacetoair missile and antiaircraft artillery weapons systems Nervous world stock markets showed signs of recovery after Trump8217s signal that military strikes might not be imminent Britain8217s May won backing from her senior ministers to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria May had recalled the ministers from their Easter holiday for the meeting to discuss Britain8217s response to what she has cast as a barbaric attack that cannot go unchallenged Russian ships had left the Tartus naval base in Syria Interfax news agency quoted a Russian lawmaker as saying Vladimir Shamanov who chairs the defense committee of the lower house said the vessels had departed the base for their own safety which was 8220normal practice8221 when there were threats of attack Slideshow 3 Images Any US strike would probably involve the Navy given the risk to aircraft from Russian and Syrian air defenses A US guidedmissile destroyer the USS Donald Cook is in the Mediterranean Reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut William James Guy Faulconbridge and David Milliken in London Andrew Osborn Maria Kiselyova and Jack Stubbs in Moscow John Irish in Paris Graham Fahy in Dublin and John Walcott Phil Stewart Matt Spetalnick and Idrees Ali in Washington Writing by Alistair Bell and Matt Spetalnick Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles OKLAHOMA CITY Reuters Oklahoma8217s largest teachers union on Thursday called off a nearly twoweek walkout that shut public schools statewide saying it had secured historic gains in education funding after school budgets were devastated by a decade of cuts The move came after the Republicandominated legislature passed its first major tax hikes in a quarter century that raised about 450 million in revenue for education Republican leaders said they had no plans to go as high as the 600 million being sought by educators 8220We absolutely have a victory for teachers8221 Alicia Priest president of the Oklahoma Education Association told a news conference 8220Our members are saying they want to go back to the classroom8221 said Priest whose union has about 40000 members Some major districts have said they will resume classes on Monday The strike was part of a wave of actions by teachers in states that have some of the lowest perstudent spending in the country A West Virginia strike ended last month with a pay raise for teachers and educators in Arizona protested before classes on Wednesday without skipping work to seek enhanced education funding The Oklahoma walkout began on April 2 and affected about 500000 of the state8217s 700000 public school students Protester march during a strike by Oklahoma educators demanding more school funding near the Oklahoma state Capitol in Oklahoma City Oklahoma US April 9 2018 Picture taken on April 9 2018 REUTERSHeide Brandes Opinion surveys showed it had garnered wide support among Oklahoma voters many of whom had seen firsthand how students at struggling schools had to share outdated and tattered textbooks and sometimes go to a fourday school week to help save districts money Oklahoma teachers who were seeking a 10000 annual wage hike over three years will see an average annual pay raise of about 6100 from the increased funding lawmakers said In May 2017 their annual mean wage was 41880 among the lowest in the country compared with neighboring states such as Texas at 57830 and Kansas at 50470 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics A protester holds up a sign during a strike by Oklahoma educators demanding more school funding near the Oklahoma state Capitol in Oklahoma City Oklahoma US April 9 2018 Picture taken on April 9 2018 REUTERSHeide Brandes School districts for the most part supported the teacher walkout But they began to run out of wiggle room to make up for lost time when the labor action threatened to extend the school year piling pressure on teachers to return Low wages have created an exodus of educators causing a teacher shortage in Oklahoma As a result school districts had to cut curricula and deploy nearly 2000 emergencycertified instructors as a stopgap measure Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City and Lenzy KrehbielBurton in Tulsa Writing by Jon Herskovitz Editing by Bill Tarrant and Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump denied allegations of lewd behavior made in an intelligence dossier and asked whether the FBI would consider proving it was a lie former FBI Director James Comey wrote in an upcoming memoir according to the Washington Post FILE PHOTO Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian Federation Efforts to Interfere in the 2016 US Elections on Capitol Hill in Washington US June 8 2017 REUTERSJonathan ErnstFile Photo amp160amp160amp160 Comey fired by Trump in May 2017 wrote in 8220A Higher Loyalty Truth Lies and Leadership8221 that Trump raised the dossier with him at least four times during meetings the Post said The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele about Trump8217s ties to Russia and included an allegation that involved prostitutes amp160amp160amp160 The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters Comey8217s publicist also did not immediately respond to a request for comment The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment The newspaper said it obtained a copy of the 304page book scheduled to be released on Tuesday and that Comey detailed in it his private interactions with Trump After defiant exit Trump reconsiders TPP amp160amp160amp160 Comey8217s firing led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to investigate allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign amp160amp160amp160 Russia has denied interfering in the election Trump has said there was no collusion Reporting by Eric Beech Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters An interview of US President Donald Trump by special counsel Robert Mueller was less likely after this week8217s FBI raids on Trump8217s personal lawyer two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the US Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington US June 21 2017 REUTERSJoshua Roberts Trump was infuriated by Federal Bureau of Investigation raids on Monday on the New York law office and home of Michael Cohen which followed a referral by Mueller Still the president8217s tendency to change his mind added to uncertainty about whether an interview would ultimately take place In a tweet early on Thursday Trump said that he backed a 8220cooperative8221 approach to Mueller8217s investigation of possible collusion between Moscow and Trump8217s presidential campaign 8220I have agreed with the historically cooperative disciplined approach that we have engaged in with Robert Mueller8221 Trump said on Twitter Further suggesting that tensions could blow over a third source familiar with the matter said the relationship with Mueller remained strong and constructive and discussions were expected to recommence soon Russia has denied US intelligence agencies8217 findings that it interfered in the 2016 campaign to try to tilt the vote in Trump8217s favor Trump has denied any collusion and has repeatedly attacked Mueller8217s investigation as a politically motivated 8220witch hunt8221 Trump8217s outburst after the FBI searches raised concerns among critics and lawmakers including some in Trump8217s own Republican Party that he might try to have Mueller removed The president denied a New York Times report on Tuesday that he had sought to fire Mueller in December 8220If I wanted to fire Robert Mueller in December as reported by the Failing New York Times I would have fired him8221 he said on Twitter early on Thursday White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Donald McGahn have told Trump that firing Mueller would leave him vulnerable to charges of obstruction of justice two officials told Reuters on Tuesday They said Trump must have 8220good cause8221 to order the Justice Department official overseeing the Russia probe Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oust Mueller ADVICE FROM FORMER AIDE One of the sources familiar with the matter and another person said on Thursday that Rosenstein is on shaky ground The second person said the feeling among White House and Justice Department officials was that Rosenstein was abdicating authority and not putting constraints on the investigation Rosenstein was at the White House on Thursday discussing the status of congressional requests another of the sources said Steve Bannon a former senior adviser to Trump has encouraged White House aides to advise Trump to fire Rosenstein the Washington Post reported on Wednesday citing unidentified sources It also said Bannon wanted the White House to stop cooperating with the Mueller investigation and fire Cobb Cobb the lawyer in charge of the White House response to the Russia investigation has stressed cooperation with Mueller The White House has said it has turned over tens of thousands of pages of documents to the special counsel8217s team Trump said in one of his Twitter messages on Thursday that he had full confidence in Cobb A bipartisan group of senators put forward legislation on Wednesday to protect Mueller and his investigation which the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to consider next week If passed the legislation would allow the special counsel to be fired only 8220for good cause8221 by a senior Justice Department official with a reason given in writing provide recourse if the special counsel was fired without good cause and preserve the staffing and materials of a pending investigation 8220Anyone advising the President in public or over the airwaves to fire Bob Mueller does not have the President or the nation8217s best interest at heart Full stop8221 Republican Senator Orrin Hatch wrote on Twitter on Thursday Reporting by Karen Freifeld Additional reporting by Makini Brice and John Walcott Writing by Tim Ahmann and Karen Freifeld Editing by Frances Kerry Leslie Adler Toni Reinhold Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

Jan/PROPN 18/NUM Reuters/PROPN SampampP/PUNCT SampampP/PROPN SAYS/VERB OUTLOOK/VERB ON/PROPN HOUSTON/PROPN TX/PROPN GENERAL/PROPN OBLIGATION/PROPN BONDS/NOUN REVISED/VERB TO/ADP STABLE/NOUN FROM/ADP NEGATIVE/PROPN ON/PROPN PENSION/NOUN CHANGES/VERB 8216AA8217/NUM RATING/NOUN AFFIRMED82058203/PROPN SampampP/PUNCT SAYS/VERB HOUSTON/PROPN GO/PROPN BONDS/PROPN OUTLOOK/VERB CHANGE/NOUN REFLECTS/PROPN VIEW/PROPN THAT/SCONJ CHANGES/VERB TO/ADP PENSION/NOUN PLANS/NOUN LIKELY/PROPN TO/PART HAVE/VERB POSITIVE/ADJ EFFECT/NOUN ON/ADP ABILITY/NOUN TO/AUX ADDRESS/VERB UNFUNDED/PROPN LIABILITY/NOUN Source/PROPN text/NOUN bitly2DoO8UQ/NOUN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN WASHINGTONUNITED/VERB NATIONS/PROPN Reuters/PROPN President/PROPN Donald/PROPN Trump/PROPN and/CCONJ his/PRON national/ADJ security/NOUN aides/NOUN on/ADP Thursday/PROPN discussed/VERB US/PROPN options/NOUN on/ADP Syria/PROPN where/SCONJ he/PRON has/AUX threatened/VERB 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<p>(Refiles to clarify upgrade would be first to &#8220;A&#8221; since crisis.)</p> <p>* Spain/Germany yield spread at tightest in 5 1/2 months</p> <p>* Other euro zone yields track U.S. Treasuries higher</p> <p>* Euro zone periphery govt bond yields <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr</a></p> <p>By Abhinav Ramnarayan</p> <p>LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Spanish government bonds outperformed the market on Friday on expectations of an upgrade to its debt rating to &#8220;A&#8221; for the first time since the euro zone debt crisis.</p> <p>Fitch Ratings is due to review Spain&#8217;s sovereign credit rating later on Friday, and analysts expect a strengthening economy and declining political risk will lead it to upgrade the rating from &#8220;BBB+&#8221; to &#8220;A&#8221;.</p> <p>That would restore the &#8220;A&#8221; rating for the first time since early 2012, the height of the euro zone debt crisis, when Spain was downgraded by all three of the main ratings agencies.</p> <p>On Friday, when most euro zone bond yields were pushed higher by a move in U.S. Treasuries, Spain&#8217;s 10-year borrowing costs edged lower to 1.48 percent. That narrowed the gap between Spanish and German 10-year yields to 95 basis points, its tightest since August last year .</p> <p>&#8220;We now consider that there exists a slightly higher probability that Fitch will upgrade Spain by one notch than that it will reaffirm the BBB+ rating,&#8221; said BBVA strategist Jaime Costero Denche. &#8220;It is only a question of time before all the main rating agencies upgrade their ratings on Spain.&#8221;</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s rates Spain &#8220;Baa2&#8221;; S&amp;amp;P Global at &#8220;BBB+&#8221;.</p> <p>Spanish gross domestic product grew 3.1 percent in 2017, making it one of the best-performing economies in Europe, but concern over an independence bid by the region of Catalonia, kept it from being upgraded.</p> <p>U.S. 10-year Treasury yields climbed to 2.64 percent early on Friday, their highest in more than three years, as legislation to keep the federal government running ran into obstacles in the U.S. Senate late on Thursday.</p> <p>Soon after, Germany&#8217;s 10-year government bond yield, the benchmark for the euro zone, rose 2 basis points to 0.53 percent, just a basis point below the 5 1/2-month high reached last week. Most other high-grade euro zone bond yields were up 1 to 2 bps.</p> <p>An improving global economy and expectations of central bank tightening have been pushing up the yields of most major developed country debt. The latest trigger has been faster-than-expected Chinese growth in the fourth quarter of 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;The market seems keen to test the 2.64 percent level in 10-year US Treasury yields, which has held repeatedly in recent years and is seen by some commentators as the dividing line to a bear market in bonds,&#8221; Commerzbank analysts said in a note.</p> <p>Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan, editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China&#8217;s foreign exchange reserves rose slightly in March as broad U.S. dollar weakness continued and escalating trade tensions between the world&#8217;s two largest economies bolstered expectations of a firmer Chinese currency.</p> U.S. Dollar and China Yuan notes are seen in this picture illustration June 2, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration <p>Reserves rose $9 billion in March to $3.143 trillion, compared with a drop of $27 billion in February, central bank data showed on Sunday.</p> <p>Economists polled by Reuters had expected reserves to increase by around $6 billion in March to $3.14 trillion.</p> <p>Capital flight was seen as a major risk for China at the start of 2017, but a combination of tighter capital controls and a faltering dollar helped the yuan stage a strong turnaround, bolstering confidence in the economy.</p> <p>Last year China&#8217;s reserves rose for the first time since 2014 and its cross-border capital flows went from net outflows to basically stable.</p> <p>China&#8217;s foreign exchange regulator said in late March it expected cross-border capital flows to remain basically stable this year.</p> <p>The Chinese currency rose 0.8 percent versus the U.S. dollar in March and posted its biggest quarterly gain in a decade during the January-March period.</p> <p>Caitong International attributed the recent yuan strength partly to the newly launched crude oil futures in Shanghai, which the brokerage said triggered demand for the yuan from foreign investors.</p> <p>In 2017, the yuan rose around 6.8 percent against the greenback, reversing three straight years of depreciation.</p> <p>The Trump administration slapped hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports last week and then announced 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial technology, transport and medical products this week in an attempt to force changes in Beijing&#8217;s intellectual property practices.</p> <p>In response, China has slapped extra tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 U.S. products including frozen pork, as well as on wine and certain fruits and nuts, and said it would soon announce more measures of equal intensity and scale against U.S. goods.</p> <p>The looming specter of a trade war between the two countries fueled expectations that Beijing may be happy to see a stronger yuan at this stage to defuse tensions with Washington.</p> <p>The value of China&#8217;s gold reserves rose to $78.419 billion at the end of March, from $78.064 billion at the end of February.</p> <p>Reporting by Cate Cadell</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The rockiest U.S. stock market in two years will meet a major test in the coming weeks as first-quarter earnings pour in, with expectations that tax cuts will help Corporate America show its biggest quarterly profit growth in seven years. Any disappointments could further upset the fragile market.</p> FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>Hopes among stock investors are running high for corporate earnings season, which kicks off in earnest on Thursday and Friday with reports from several large financial institutions including BlackRock ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BLK.N</a>) and JP Morgan ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>).</p> <p>Investors have counted on corporate profits to provide bedrock support as the market endured sharp swings in recent weeks over concerns about a trade war with China and tougher regulations for high-flying technology companies.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> has recovered some after swooning more than 10 percent in February from its Jan. 26 record high, confirming a market correction for the first time in just over two years. The benchmark index remains more than 7 percent off its all-time peak.</p> <p>&#8220;There is an awful lot of pressure for corporate profits in this first quarter and especially the guidance the companies are going to give to really get this market back on its upward track,&#8221; said Chuck Carlson, chief executive officer at Horizon Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana.</p> <p>Analysts expect S&amp;amp;P 500 profits to rise 18.4 percent in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, the first full quarter since passage of President Donald Trump&#8217;s tax cuts, which slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. That would be the biggest profit rise since the first quarter of 2011.</p> <p>Credit Suisse analysts calculated that more than one third of that growth in the first quarter can be attributed to tax benefits.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: Big first quarter seen for Corporate America - <a href="https://reut.rs/2q8lxdE" type="external">reut.rs/2q8lxdE</a>)</p> <a href="https://reut.rs/2q8lxdE" type="external" /> <p>Given the tendency of companies to report results above Wall Street estimates, those numbers might be expected to come in even higher. For example, first-quarter profits should rise by 24 percent if results achieve the median out-performance of the past eight quarters, according to Thomson Reuters analyst David Aurelio.</p> <p>&#8220;A downside risk is that everyone is hoping for the earnings to come through and that is really a main pillar for the bull case,&#8221; said Keith Lerner, chief market strategist with SunTrust Advisory Services in Atlanta. &#8220;And if earnings surprise to the downside then you have to say, what is the bull case hanging onto at this point?&#8221;</p> <p>Expectations for first quarter profits have risen from an expectation of 12.2 percent growth on Jan. 1 to 18.4 percent now, an increase of 6.2 percentage points as analysts have factored in the new tax law.</p> <p>That is unusual: In general, estimates decline by about 4 percentage points from the start of a quarter to the beginning of earnings season, according to Thomson Reuters data, which strategists say tends to help companies to post earnings &#8220;beats&#8221; when they ultimately report results.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BLK.N" type="external">BlackRock Inc</a> 519.92 BLK.N New York Stock Exchange -18.48 (-3.43%) BLK.N JPM.N .SPX C.N WFC.N <p>&#8220;The expectation bar is a little bit higher this quarter because you didn&#8217;t see that cut ahead of time,&#8221; Lerner said.</p> <p>The very early returns indicate first-quarter results show similar positive surprises to past quarters. Of 23 S&amp;amp;P 500 companies reported so far, 74 percent have reported profits ahead of estimates, according to Thomson Reuters data.</p> <p>Historically, 64 percent of companies beat estimates in a quarter. More recently, performance versus expectations has been better: over the past four quarters, 75 percent of companies beat earnings estimates.</p> <p>Seven more S&amp;amp;P 500 companies are expected to report next week including BlackRock, which is the world&#8217;s largest asset manager, and three big banks: JP Morgan, Citigroup ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=C.N" type="external">C.N</a>) and Wells Fargo ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>). More than 60 S&amp;amp;P 500 reports are due the following week.</p> <p>One cushion for investors is that stocks are generally trading at less expensive valuations following the market&#8217;s slide. The S&amp;amp;P 500 recently traded at 16.3 times earnings estimates for the next 12 months, down from 18.6 times in January, according to Thomson Reuters Datastream.</p> <p>S&amp;amp;P 500 companies are expected to increase profits by 19.7 percent in 2018, which would be the biggest annual rise since 2010. In their quarterly reports, corporate executives will give forecasts or insight into prospects for the year. Some strategists said recent policy and market turbulence could lead companies to temper their views.</p> <p>&#8220;Given the uncertainty that is in the market, especially regarding trade and potential tech regulation, we could see management teams be a little more cautious,&#8221; said Lindsey Bell, investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York.</p> <p>Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany&#8217;s public debt is falling faster than expected thanks to high tax revenues and should drop below the European Union&#8217;s target threshold next year, a year earlier than previously expected, magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.</p> FILE PHOTO - The Frankfurt skyline with its financial district is photographed on early evening in Frankfurt, Germany, March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach <p>Citing the government&#8217;s new stability program, due to be agreed by the cabinet next Wednesday, Spiegel said the debt ratio was now projected to fall to just over 58 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 from 61 percent this year.</p> <p>That would see the debt ratio drop below the EU Stability and Growth Pact threshold of 60 percent of GDP a year earlier than previously forecast.</p> <p>Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Hugh Lawson</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DBKGn.DE" type="external">DBKGn.DE</a>) supervisory board intends to &#8220;take a decision&#8221; on Sunday after discussing John Cryan&#8217;s job at the helm of the bank, the German lender said late on Saturday.</p> Deutsche Bank building before the bank's annual news conference in Frankfurt, Germany, February 2, 2018. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski <p>In a brief statement, the bank confirmed earlier reports that Chairman Paul Achleitner had invited the supervisory board to an &#8220;update call&#8221;. Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that a replacement for Cryan could be discussed at the meeting.</p> <p>&#8220;Deutsche Bank&#8217;s Supervisory Board will have a discussion on the bank&#8217;s CEO position on Sunday evening,&#8221; the bank said. &#8220;It is planned to take a decision in this context on the same day.&#8221;</p> <p>A representative for the bank was not immediately available to elaborate, but the two sources said earlier on Saturday that they could not rule out the possibility of a major announcement.</p> <p>An external candidate to succeed Cryan was more likely than an internal candidate, one of the sources said.</p> <p>Achleitner will act quickly to resolve the situation, said a third person who is a major investor in the bank, also speaking on condition of anonymity.</p> <p>The Sunday discussion by the board follows two weeks of turmoil over the bank&#8217;s leadership.</p> <p>Achleitner had initiated a search to replace Cryan, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on March 27, following a flurry of negative headlines after the bank reported a third consecutive annual loss.</p> <p>Cryan, who has been in office less than three years, responded by writing a memo to staff in which he said he remained &#8220;absolutely committed&#8221; to the bank. But Achleitner stayed silent, to the chagrin of major investors seeking clarity.</p> <p>In recent days, Achleitner has broken his silence and reached out to some major investors, according to two other people with knowledge of the matter.</p> <p>Achleitner was criticized by two major investors this week over the bank&#8217;s performance and his handling of the search for a new chief executive.</p> <p>The leadership debate underscores the continued fragility of the 148-year-old bank after speculation of a possible government bailout just over a year ago.</p> Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan during the bank's annual news conference in Frankfurt, Germany, February 2, 2018. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski INVESTMENT BANK WOES <p>The debate also parallels concern about the path forward for Deutsche&#8217;s investment bank, whose swift expansion in the years leading up to the financial crisis is blamed for many of the bank&#8217;s current woes.</p> <p>Revenue at the investment bank in 2017 was down 25 percent compared with 2015, a steeper fall than those suffered by its competitors. The division employed more than 41,000 staff at the end of 2017, up 4 percent from 2015, but key staff have left.</p> <p>Cryan is conducting a global review of the investment bank, known internally as Project Colombo, a person with direct knowledge of the matter has said.</p> <p>Cryan, the son of a jazz musician, is married into the wealthy Du Pont family of the United States. He was appointed to the helm of Deutsche in 2015 to overhaul the bank after years of rapid growth under investment bankers.</p> <p>But his tumultuous tenure as CEO highlights many of the bank&#8217;s underlying issues.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DBKGn.DE" type="external">Deutsche Bank AG</a> 11.352 DBKGn.DE Xetra -0.31 (-2.64%) DBKGn.DE <p>Early on, Cryan quickly announced thousands of job cuts to trim costs but reversed the bank&#8217;s plans to sell its Postbank retail unit after tepid interest from buyers.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the bank announced earlier this year that it would post its third consecutive annual loss for 2017.</p> <p>The German government and some of the nation&#8217;s most senior politicians criticized Cryan for paying 2.3 billion euros ($2.82 billion) in staff bonuses despite those losses, four times higher than the previous year.</p> <p>One board member, Kim Hammonds, told leadership at a recent meeting that the bank was &#8220;the most dysfunctional company&#8221; she had ever worked for, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.</p> <p>Over the past weeks, a number of names have surfaced in the media as possible replacements for Cryan. But some analysts wonder whether anyone would be able to do a better job on turning the bank around.</p> <p>&#8220;There has been actually a disciplined execution in a tough environment by this team,&#8221; said Peter Nerby, who analyses the bank for Moody&#8217;s. &#8220;I wonder if anyone really has a better way to get there. It&#8217;s not obvious to me what that way would be.&#8221;</p> <p>($1 = 0.8143 euros)</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Sims and Hans Seidenstuecker; additional reporting by Christoph Steitz and Oliver Hirt; editing by Jason Neely and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

REFILE-Spanish bonds outperform as ratings upgrade eyed China forex reserves rise slightly as U.S. dollar weakness continues High stakes, high expectations as earnings season heats up German public debt falling faster than expected - Spiegel Deutsche Bank board to discuss CEO and make decision on Sunday

https://reuters.com/article/eurozone-bonds/refile-spanish-bonds-outperform-as-ratings-upgrade-eyed-idUSL8N1PE12A

2018-01-19

2least

Refiles to clarify upgrade would be first to 8220A8221 since crisis SpainGermany yield spread at tightest in 5 12 months Other euro zone yields track US Treasuries higher Euro zone periphery govt bond yields tmsnrtrs2ii2Bqr By Abhinav Ramnarayan LONDON Jan 19 Reuters Spanish government bonds outperformed the market on Friday on expectations of an upgrade to its debt rating to 8220A8221 for the first time since the euro zone debt crisis Fitch Ratings is due to review Spain8217s sovereign credit rating later on Friday and analysts expect a strengthening economy and declining political risk will lead it to upgrade the rating from 8220BBB8221 to 8220A8221 That would restore the 8220A8221 rating for the first time since early 2012 the height of the euro zone debt crisis when Spain was downgraded by all three of the main ratings agencies On Friday when most euro zone bond yields were pushed higher by a move in US Treasuries Spain8217s 10year borrowing costs edged lower to 148 percent That narrowed the gap between Spanish and German 10year yields to 95 basis points its tightest since August last year 8220We now consider that there exists a slightly higher probability that Fitch will upgrade Spain by one notch than that it will reaffirm the BBB rating8221 said BBVA strategist Jaime Costero Denche 8220It is only a question of time before all the main rating agencies upgrade their ratings on Spain8221 Moody8217s rates Spain 8220Baa28221 SampampP Global at 8220BBB8221 Spanish gross domestic product grew 31 percent in 2017 making it one of the bestperforming economies in Europe but concern over an independence bid by the region of Catalonia kept it from being upgraded US 10year Treasury yields climbed to 264 percent early on Friday their highest in more than three years as legislation to keep the federal government running ran into obstacles in the US Senate late on Thursday Soon after Germany8217s 10year government bond yield the benchmark for the euro zone rose 2 basis points to 053 percent just a basis point below the 5 12month high reached last week Most other highgrade euro zone bond yields were up 1 to 2 bps An improving global economy and expectations of central bank tightening have been pushing up the yields of most major developed country debt The latest trigger has been fasterthanexpected Chinese growth in the fourth quarter of 2017 8220The market seems keen to test the 264 percent level in 10year US Treasury yields which has held repeatedly in recent years and is seen by some commentators as the dividing line to a bear market in bonds8221 Commerzbank analysts said in a note Reporting by Abhinav Ramnarayan editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China8217s foreign exchange reserves rose slightly in March as broad US dollar weakness continued and escalating trade tensions between the world8217s two largest economies bolstered expectations of a firmer Chinese currency US Dollar and China Yuan notes are seen in this picture illustration June 2 2017 REUTERSThomas WhiteIllustration Reserves rose 9 billion in March to 3143 trillion compared with a drop of 27 billion in February central bank data showed on Sunday Economists polled by Reuters had expected reserves to increase by around 6 billion in March to 314 trillion Capital flight was seen as a major risk for China at the start of 2017 but a combination of tighter capital controls and a faltering dollar helped the yuan stage a strong turnaround bolstering confidence in the economy Last year China8217s reserves rose for the first time since 2014 and its crossborder capital flows went from net outflows to basically stable China8217s foreign exchange regulator said in late March it expected crossborder capital flows to remain basically stable this year The Chinese currency rose 08 percent versus the US dollar in March and posted its biggest quarterly gain in a decade during the JanuaryMarch period Caitong International attributed the recent yuan strength partly to the newly launched crude oil futures in Shanghai which the brokerage said triggered demand for the yuan from foreign investors In 2017 the yuan rose around 68 percent against the greenback reversing three straight years of depreciation The Trump administration slapped hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports last week and then announced 25 percent tariffs on some 1300 Chinese industrial technology transport and medical products this week in an attempt to force changes in Beijing8217s intellectual property practices In response China has slapped extra tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 US products including frozen pork as well as on wine and certain fruits and nuts and said it would soon announce more measures of equal intensity and scale against US goods The looming specter of a trade war between the two countries fueled expectations that Beijing may be happy to see a stronger yuan at this stage to defuse tensions with Washington The value of China8217s gold reserves rose to 78419 billion at the end of March from 78064 billion at the end of February Reporting by Cate Cadell Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters The rockiest US stock market in two years will meet a major test in the coming weeks as firstquarter earnings pour in with expectations that tax cuts will help Corporate America show its biggest quarterly profit growth in seven years Any disappointments could further upset the fragile market FILE PHOTO Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US March 29 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid Hopes among stock investors are running high for corporate earnings season which kicks off in earnest on Thursday and Friday with reports from several large financial institutions including BlackRock BLKN and JP Morgan JPMN Investors have counted on corporate profits to provide bedrock support as the market endured sharp swings in recent weeks over concerns about a trade war with China and tougher regulations for highflying technology companies The SampampP 500 SPX has recovered some after swooning more than 10 percent in February from its Jan 26 record high confirming a market correction for the first time in just over two years The benchmark index remains more than 7 percent off its alltime peak 8220There is an awful lot of pressure for corporate profits in this first quarter and especially the guidance the companies are going to give to really get this market back on its upward track8221 said Chuck Carlson chief executive officer at Horizon Investment Services in Hammond Indiana Analysts expect SampampP 500 profits to rise 184 percent in the first quarter according to Thomson Reuters IBES the first full quarter since passage of President Donald Trump8217s tax cuts which slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent That would be the biggest profit rise since the first quarter of 2011 Credit Suisse analysts calculated that more than one third of that growth in the first quarter can be attributed to tax benefits GRAPHIC Big first quarter seen for Corporate America reutrs2q8lxdE Given the tendency of companies to report results above Wall Street estimates those numbers might be expected to come in even higher For example firstquarter profits should rise by 24 percent if results achieve the median outperformance of the past eight quarters according to Thomson Reuters analyst David Aurelio 8220A downside risk is that everyone is hoping for the earnings to come through and that is really a main pillar for the bull case8221 said Keith Lerner chief market strategist with SunTrust Advisory Services in Atlanta 8220And if earnings surprise to the downside then you have to say what is the bull case hanging onto at this point8221 Expectations for first quarter profits have risen from an expectation of 122 percent growth on Jan 1 to 184 percent now an increase of 62 percentage points as analysts have factored in the new tax law That is unusual In general estimates decline by about 4 percentage points from the start of a quarter to the beginning of earnings season according to Thomson Reuters data which strategists say tends to help companies to post earnings 8220beats8221 when they ultimately report results BlackRock Inc 51992 BLKN New York Stock Exchange 1848 343 BLKN JPMN SPX CN WFCN 8220The expectation bar is a little bit higher this quarter because you didn8217t see that cut ahead of time8221 Lerner said The very early returns indicate firstquarter results show similar positive surprises to past quarters Of 23 SampampP 500 companies reported so far 74 percent have reported profits ahead of estimates according to Thomson Reuters data Historically 64 percent of companies beat estimates in a quarter More recently performance versus expectations has been better over the past four quarters 75 percent of companies beat earnings estimates Seven more SampampP 500 companies are expected to report next week including BlackRock which is the world8217s largest asset manager and three big banks JP Morgan Citigroup CN and Wells Fargo WFCN More than 60 SampampP 500 reports are due the following week One cushion for investors is that stocks are generally trading at less expensive valuations following the market8217s slide The SampampP 500 recently traded at 163 times earnings estimates for the next 12 months down from 186 times in January according to Thomson Reuters Datastream SampampP 500 companies are expected to increase profits by 197 percent in 2018 which would be the biggest annual rise since 2010 In their quarterly reports corporate executives will give forecasts or insight into prospects for the year Some strategists said recent policy and market turbulence could lead companies to temper their views 8220Given the uncertainty that is in the market especially regarding trade and potential tech regulation we could see management teams be a little more cautious8221 said Lindsey Bell investment strategist at CFRA Research in New York Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BERLIN Reuters Germany8217s public debt is falling faster than expected thanks to high tax revenues and should drop below the European Union8217s target threshold next year a year earlier than previously expected magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday FILE PHOTO The Frankfurt skyline with its financial district is photographed on early evening in Frankfurt Germany March 25 2018 REUTERSKai Pfaffenbach Citing the government8217s new stability program due to be agreed by the cabinet next Wednesday Spiegel said the debt ratio was now projected to fall to just over 58 percent of gross domestic product GDP in 2019 from 61 percent this year That would see the debt ratio drop below the EU Stability and Growth Pact threshold of 60 percent of GDP a year earlier than previously forecast Writing by Paul Carrel Editing by Hugh Lawson Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles FRANKFURT Reuters Deutsche Bank8217s DBKGnDE supervisory board intends to 8220take a decision8221 on Sunday after discussing John Cryan8217s job at the helm of the bank the German lender said late on Saturday Deutsche Bank building before the banks annual news conference in Frankfurt Germany February 2 2018 REUTERSRalph Orlowski In a brief statement the bank confirmed earlier reports that Chairman Paul Achleitner had invited the supervisory board to an 8220update call8221 Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that a replacement for Cryan could be discussed at the meeting 8220Deutsche Bank8217s Supervisory Board will have a discussion on the bank8217s CEO position on Sunday evening8221 the bank said 8220It is planned to take a decision in this context on the same day8221 A representative for the bank was not immediately available to elaborate but the two sources said earlier on Saturday that they could not rule out the possibility of a major announcement An external candidate to succeed Cryan was more likely than an internal candidate one of the sources said Achleitner will act quickly to resolve the situation said a third person who is a major investor in the bank also speaking on condition of anonymity The Sunday discussion by the board follows two weeks of turmoil over the bank8217s leadership Achleitner had initiated a search to replace Cryan two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on March 27 following a flurry of negative headlines after the bank reported a third consecutive annual loss Cryan who has been in office less than three years responded by writing a memo to staff in which he said he remained 8220absolutely committed8221 to the bank But Achleitner stayed silent to the chagrin of major investors seeking clarity In recent days Achleitner has broken his silence and reached out to some major investors according to two other people with knowledge of the matter Achleitner was criticized by two major investors this week over the bank8217s performance and his handling of the search for a new chief executive The leadership debate underscores the continued fragility of the 148yearold bank after speculation of a possible government bailout just over a year ago Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan during the banks annual news conference in Frankfurt Germany February 2 2018 REUTERSRalph Orlowski INVESTMENT BANK WOES The debate also parallels concern about the path forward for Deutsche8217s investment bank whose swift expansion in the years leading up to the financial crisis is blamed for many of the bank8217s current woes Revenue at the investment bank in 2017 was down 25 percent compared with 2015 a steeper fall than those suffered by its competitors The division employed more than 41000 staff at the end of 2017 up 4 percent from 2015 but key staff have left Cryan is conducting a global review of the investment bank known internally as Project Colombo a person with direct knowledge of the matter has said Cryan the son of a jazz musician is married into the wealthy Du Pont family of the United States He was appointed to the helm of Deutsche in 2015 to overhaul the bank after years of rapid growth under investment bankers But his tumultuous tenure as CEO highlights many of the bank8217s underlying issues Deutsche Bank AG 11352 DBKGnDE Xetra 031 264 DBKGnDE Early on Cryan quickly announced thousands of job cuts to trim costs but reversed the bank8217s plans to sell its Postbank retail unit after tepid interest from buyers Meanwhile the bank announced earlier this year that it would post its third consecutive annual loss for 2017 The German government and some of the nation8217s most senior politicians criticized Cryan for paying 23 billion euros 282 billion in staff bonuses despite those losses four times higher than the previous year One board member Kim Hammonds told leadership at a recent meeting that the bank was 8220the most dysfunctional company8221 she had ever worked for according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter Over the past weeks a number of names have surfaced in the media as possible replacements for Cryan But some analysts wonder whether anyone would be able to do a better job on turning the bank around 8220There has been actually a disciplined execution in a tough environment by this team8221 said Peter Nerby who analyses the bank for Moody8217s 8220I wonder if anyone really has a better way to get there It8217s not obvious to me what that way would be8221 1 08143 euros Reporting by Tom Sims and Hans Seidenstuecker additional reporting by Christoph Steitz and Oliver Hirt editing by Jason Neely and Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>With that in mind, there could be a lot to cheer about in Kansas City on Sunday for Chiefs fans, for their favorite team figures to administer a good butt-kicking to the hapless Broncos.</p> <p>Also, look for the 49ers to go into the deep freeze for good with a big loss in Green Bay.Moving forward, here&#8217;s a capsule look at the NFL games for Week 13:</p> <p /> <p>SUNDAY&#8217;S GAMES</p> <p /> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Denver (3-8) at Kansas City (7-4)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Chiefs by 9.5Facts: KC hasn&#8217;t been this big a favorite since the 2005 finale, when it beat a nothing-to-play-for, playoff-bound Cincinnati squad 37-3 as a 10-point choice. &#8230; Denver sure has missed LB/DE Elvis Dumervil (IR) this season. He had a league-leading 17 sacks in 2009. Through 11 games this year, the Broncos have totaled 16, the second fewest in the league. &#8230; Three weeks ago, the Broncos came off their bye to beat KC 49-29 as a one-point underdog.Analysis: No team the past four seasons has run the ball as well as the Chiefs, behind RBs Jamaal Charles (6.3 a carry) and Thomas Jones, who are averaging 174.3 yards a game. And with bitter feelings no doubt festering from that Week 10 rout, KC might just pour it on against beleaguered coach Josh McDaniels and his Broncos.Forecast: Chiefs 38, Broncos 16Dallas (3-8) at Indianapolis (6-5)Time: 1:15 p.m.Line: Colts by 5.5Facts: In their last meeting, in Dallas in 2006, Bill Parcells&#8217; Cowboys won 21-14 in a pick-em game against a 9-0 Colts team. &#8230; Indy QB Peyton Manning has thrown seven INTs the past two weeks, which is two more he had the first nine games. &#8230; Two of Dallas&#8217; three TDs on Thanksgiving ast week in its 30-27 home loss to the Saints came after taking possession on New Orleans&#8217; 15 and 39 &#8230; Cowboys QB Jon Kitna is completing 65 percent of his passes, his best mark since going 68.9 in a three-game cameo in his 1997 rookie season with Seattle. Analysis: The Cowboys will be getting a jolt of fresh legs with Tashard Choice this week as a replacement for Dallas RB Marion Barber (doubtful, calf). And with Manning and the Colts no longer having an invincible aura, coach Jason Garrett&#8217;s collection of ex-Pro Bowlers have what it takes to pull the upset.Forecast: Cowboys 27, Colts 21</p> <p>New Orleans (8-3) at Cincinnati (2-9)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Saints by 7Facts: During Cincinnati&#8217;s &#8220;comeback attempt&#8221; against the Jets last week, the Bengals had minus-4 yards their final 11 plays, not to mention a safety. &#8230; New Orleans is getting healthier: RB Reggie Bush came back on Thanksgiving, TE Jeremy Shockey (probable, ribs) has returned to work and safety Darren Sharper (probable, hamstring), who had nine INTs last year, seems likely to return. &#8230; If you wagered that the defending AFC North champ Bengals would win the Super Bowl, go ahead and shred that ticket.Analysis: The Bengals have too much veteran star power to enjoy playing the spoiler. And since the Saints have a buzz-saw closing schedule (Baltimore, Atlanta, Tampa Bay), they won&#8217;t miss a chance to quickly demoralize these guys behind Drew Brees&#8217; precision throws against a beat-up secondary.Forecast: Saints 35, Bengals 14</p> <p>Chicago (8-3) at Detroit (2-9)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Bears by 5.5Facts: Detroit&#8217;s QB du joir is Drew Stanton, who will be filling in for fill-in Shaun Hill (doubtful, finger), who replaced Matthew Stafford (out, shoulder). &#8230; The Lions are fresh off a 45-24 Turkey Day loss to New England in which they blew a 14-3 lead. But the good news: Teams are 4-0 against the spread (ATS) this year after midseason Thursday games. Also, over the past two years, teams coming off the extended hanksgiving break are 9-1 ATS the next week against teams without that break. &#8230; Chicago beat visiting Detroit 19-14 in the season opener as a 6.5-point pick, but largely because Lions WR Calvin Johnson started celebrating a late TD &#8220;catch&#8221; before securing the ball long enough to suit the NFL. Analysis: It&#8217;s unlikely the Lions will have much of a home-field advantage, especially if Chicago fans elect to make the short trek to Ford Field. Plus, Chicago showed its worth last week in beating the Eagles and causing QB Michael Vick to fumble four times and throw an INT. At one point, the Bears played keep-away with a 17-play TD drive that lasted more than 10 minutesForecast: Bears 21, Lions 7</p> <p>San Francisco (4-7) at Green Bay (7-4)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Packers by 10Facts: With temps expected in the 20s, this shapes up as the nippiest game of the year to date. Last regular season, home teams were 11-3 ATS when the temperature at kickoff was 32 degrees or colder. &#8230; Despite their disparate records, the 49ers and Packers are both one game out of first in their divisions. &#8230; Before San Francisco RB Frank Gore (out, broken hip) left the field Monday at Arizona, he had rushed for 853 of the team&#8217;s 885 ground yards this season. Backup Brian Westbrook came through with 136 yards on 23 carries Monday. &#8230; The Packers have had four different leading rushers their past four games. On Sunday, it was QB Aaron Rodgers with 51 yards in a 20-17 loss in Atlanta.Analysis: The Packers deserved a better fate against NFC South-leading Atlanta. Early on, they had dominating drives of 80 and 83 yards (good for only three points total) against a unit that&#8217;s better than San Francisco&#8217;s. And good luck to 49ers QB Troy Smith getting a grip on a frosty ball. Plus, San Fran PK Joe Nedney remains questionable (knee).Forecast: Packers 28, 49ers 13Jacksonville (6-5) at Tennessee (5-6)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Jaguars by 3Facts: For the second straight week, the Titans will be facing the league&#8217;s worst-rated pass defense. On Sunday, behind rookie QB Rusty Smith, they were shut out by Houston. This week Kerry Collins (questionable, calf) is expected back. &#8230; The Titans won their Week 6 meeting with the Jaguars in Nashville, 30-3. Jacksonville QB David Garrard (questionable, left wrist) was knocked out with a concussion. &#8230; Titans RB Chris Johnson, who had 5 yards on seven carries against the Texans, had 111 yards in that previous encounter with Tennessee.Analysis: The Jaguars have made a charge behind Maurice Jones-Drew&#8217;s four consecutive 100-yard rushing games, but they still have the league&#8217;s worst turnover margin at minus-14 and are hard to trust. Collins, now playing with WR Randy Moss, should further expose Jacksonville&#8217;s weak secondary.Forecast: Titans 26, Jaguars 14</p> <p>Cleveland (4-7) at Miami (6-5)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Dolphins by 5Facts: The Browns haven&#8217;t won in South Florida since 1970, Don Shula&#8217;s sixth game with Miami. &#8230; Hard to believe: Cleveland has given the powerhouse Patriots (34-14) and Saints (30-17) their most lopsided losses of the season. &#8230; The Dolphins had a 14-yard edge in average starting field position (40-26) in their 33-17 victory in Oakland last week. Miami ran 37 more offensive plays than Oakland, too, the third-biggest gap in any game this year. &#8230; Look for the Browns&#8217; Jake Delhomme to start again at QB in place of rookie Colt McCoy (questionable, concussion).Analysis: Delhomme might not be such a bad choice now that he has a horse like Peyton Hillis to hand the ball. And although the Dolphins didn&#8217;t miss WR Brandon Marshall (questionable, hamstring) last week, he probably will be needed Sunday. If he&#8217;s only three-quarters speed, that might be good enough to win, but not cover.Forecast: Dolphins 21, Browns 20</p> <p>Buffalo (2-9) at Minnesota (4-7)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Vikings by 5.5Facts: Vikings RB Adrian Peterson (questionable, ankle), the league&#8217;s third-leading rusher who already has reached 1,000 yards for the fourth straight season, likely will be a game-day decision. &#8230; Buffalo is giving up a league-high 167.4 rushing yards a game, the worst mark in the league since the Colts gave up 173.1 in their 2006 Super season. &#8230;. In last week&#8217;s 17-13 victory at Washington, which was interim coach Leslie Frazier&#8217;s debut, Minnesota went without a turnover for the first time this season.Analysis: That was a nasty injury Peterson suffered last week, and it kept him out of practice Wednesday and Thursday. It would be wise if the Vikings give their meal ticket a rest in a game that means little. And if that happens, Buffalo, which is on a 2-1 tear, should have little trouble tracking down backup RB Toby Gerhart, who had a long of 6 yards on 22 carries last week.Forecast: Bills 23, Vikings 17</p> <p>Washington (5-6) at N.Y. Giants (7-4)Time: 11 a.m.Line: Giants by 7Facts: Last week against Jacksonville, the Giants became the last team this season to score on its opening drive of a game, getting a field goal. Their defense, meanwhile, has yielded four opening TD drives. &#8230; Washington&#8217;s Donovan McNabb has thrown a TD pass in 10 consecutive games. But he&#8217;s also heaved an INT in nine straight, which is a league high. &#8230; Washington is the only team that twice didn&#8217;t reach 30 rushing yards in a game this year, including 29 last week against Minnesota.Analysis: The Giants are coming off a four-game stretch in which their patchwork offensive line hasn&#8217;t allowed a sack. No team can match that. Plus, Osi Umenyiora and other guys wearing Super Bowl rings seemed to get the team&#8217;s attention during a halftime pep talk last week. That spirit carries over against a club dealing with injuries to its top two RBs (Clinton Portis, IR) and Ryan Torain (questionable, hamstring).Forecast: Giants 27, Redskins 14</p> <p>Oakland (5-6) at San Diego (6-5)Time: 2:05 p.m.Line: Chargers by 13Facts: In Week 5, the Raiders jump-started their season when they broke a 13-game losing streak to the visiting Chargers with a 35-27 victory. Two of Oakland&#8217;s scores came on a blocked punt and a fumble return. &#8230; Oakland is giving up a league-high 13.6 yards a reception. In that Week 5 meeting with San Diego, the Chargers averaged 16 yards on 27 receptions as Philip Rivers threw for 431 yards. &#8230; San Diego is the heaviest favorite on the board this week. In the previous 12 weeks, the biggest favorite has gone 4-8 against the line.Analysis: Rivers is getting many of his receiving weapons back, including Malcom Floyd (probable, hamstring), who had 213 receiving yards in the teams&#8217; previous meeting. And that was with Oakland standout CB Nnamdi Asomugha (questionable, ankle), who struggled last week against Miami.Forecast: Chargers 41, Raiders 20St. Louis (5-6) at Arizona (3-8)Time: 2:15 p.m.Line: Rams by 3.5Facts: This marks the second time in 48 games that St. Louis has been a favorite. &#8230; In 2008-09, the Cardinals were 14.5- and 16.5-point home picks against the Rams and easily covered both times. &#8230; St. Louis is in first in the NFC West. The last time a major sports team won a league title despite a losing regular season was when the 1949 Maple Leafs took the Stanley Cup. &#8230; QB &#8220;Chuckles&#8221; Anderson guided the Cardinals to only eight first downs in Monday&#8217;s 27-6 home loss to San Francisco, their worst total the past two seasons. &#8230; Arizona has won eight in a row in this series, including this season&#8217;s opener 17-13 in St. Louis. It&#8217;s the second longest streak for the Cardinals against anyone. From 1973-78, they beat the Eagles nine straight.Analysis: Last week, the Rams showed they can win on the road in their 36-33 upset victory over Denver. Their confidence is thus boosted. Arizona, meanwhile, is getting worse, if that&#8217;s possible. You&#8217;d think a team with the 31st-rated QB might give the running game a try, yet the Cardinals had a league season-low 11 rushes last week for 13 yards.Forecast: Rams 34, Cardinals 14</p> <p>Carolina (1-10) at Seattle (5-6)Time: 2:15 p.m.Line: Seahawks by 6Weather: Mid-40s, 20 percent chance of rainFacts: Since 2004 under coach John Fox, the Panthers are 6-2 west of the Rockies (8-0 ATS) in the regular season, including a 34-21 victory in Arizona last year as a 10-point &#8216;dog. But Carolina lost at Seattle 34-14 in the 2005 NFC title game. &#8230; The Seahawks have yielded 500-plus yards of total offense three times this season, more than anyone else. &#8230; Dating to 2007, the Panthers have failed to score a TD the past 43 times starting a possession inside their 10, the longest drought in the league. &#8230; No team rushes for fewer yards a game than Seattle at 77.9.Analysis: It&#8217;s a battle of the have-nots, although Seattle shares the NFC West lead despite being outscored by 66 points. Carolina, meanwhile, showed fire last week with the return of RB Jonathan Stewart in a close-call 24-23 loss in Cleveland.Forecast: Panthers 23, Seahawks 20</p> <p>Atlanta (9-2) at Tampa Bay (7-4)Time: 2:15 p.m.Line: Falcons by 3Facts: Tampa Bay had a league-low eight sacks through nine games this season, but has had 10 in the past two, including six at San Francisco in its 21-0 shutout victory in Week 11. &#8230; When Atlanta QB Matt Ryan led the Falcons to the 2008 postseason as a rookie, the Falcons had the 25th-rated run defense. Now they&#8217;re seventh, giving up 93.7 ground yards a game. &#8230; Tampa Bay will break out its original creamsickle jerseys for this one.Analysis: The road warrior Buccaneers are 6-0 ATS away from home, but only 1-3-1 at home. But now that Tampa Bay rookie DT Gerald McCoy is making the Buccaneers&#8217; defensive front something to fear, there&#8217;s been a significant uptick in performance.Forecast: Buccaneers 24, Falcons 20</p> <p>Pittsburgh (8-3) at Baltimore (8-3)Time: 6:20 p.m.Line: Ravens by 3Facts: The Ravens won in Pittsburgh in Week 4 by 17-14 as a two-point underdog, but last-resort QB Charlie Batch was in charge for the Steelers. In the teams&#8217; 16 meetings before that, the home team is 14-2. &#8230; Last week against Buffalo, and for the second time in three games, Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger (questionable, foot) was sacked five times. &#8230; Baltimore safety Ed Reed has 50 career INTs, but none against Big Ben. &#8230; The Steelers have won their past two games despite having a cumulative minus 195-yard differential in penalty yards.Analysis: Pittsburgh, with its two original starting offensive tackles on injured reserve, have been awful protecting the passer over the past weeks and haven&#8217;t come close to obeying football rules. Baltimore appears to be far more disciplined and has a relatively healthy QB in Joe Flacco.Forecast: Ravens 23, Steelers 14</p> <p>MONDAY</p> <p>N.Y. Jets (9-2) at New England (9-2)Time: 6:35 p.m.Line: Patriots by 3.5Facts: New England has yielded more than 400 yards in each of its past five games, but still went 4-1. During their perfect 2007 regular season, the Patriots never allowed 400. &#8230; In the Jets&#8217; 28-14 Week 2 victory over New England, they had only 336 yards, the fewest yielded in a game by the Patriots this year. &#8230; New England had thr ee TD drives of 83-plus yards last week in Detroit. No other team has had that many touchdown marches that long in an outing in 2010.Analysis: The teams with the two best records in the AFC collide with home-field advantage through the playoffs at stake, and who better to trust than the league&#8217;s second-rated passer, Patriots QB Tom Brady. Over the past six weeks, he has thrown 13 TD passes and zero INTs and hasn&#8217;t lost a regular-season home game since 2006 &#8212; to the Jets.Forecast: Patriots 34, Jets 27</p> <p>Last week: 9-7 vs. spread; 11-5 straight upSeason total: 94-75-6 (.556) vs. spread; 110-65 (.632) straight up</p>

Chiefs Cheerleaders Are Going to Be Ecstatic Sunday

https://abqjournal.com/233257/chiefs-cheerleaders-are-going-to-be-ecstatic-sunday.html

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With that in mind there could be a lot to cheer about in Kansas City on Sunday for Chiefs fans for their favorite team figures to administer a good buttkicking to the hapless Broncos Also look for the 49ers to go into the deep freeze for good with a big loss in Green BayMoving forward here8217s a capsule look at the NFL games for Week 13 SUNDAY8217S GAMES ADVERTISEMENT Denver 38 at Kansas City 74Time 11 amLine Chiefs by 95Facts KC hasn8217t been this big a favorite since the 2005 finale when it beat a nothingtoplayfor playoffbound Cincinnati squad 373 as a 10point choice 8230 Denver sure has missed LBDE Elvis Dumervil IR this season He had a leagueleading 17 sacks in 2009 Through 11 games this year the Broncos have totaled 16 the second fewest in the league 8230 Three weeks ago the Broncos came off their bye to beat KC 4929 as a onepoint underdogAnalysis No team the past four seasons has run the ball as well as the Chiefs behind RBs Jamaal Charles 63 a carry and Thomas Jones who are averaging 1743 yards a game And with bitter feelings no doubt festering from that Week 10 rout KC might just pour it on against beleaguered coach Josh McDaniels and his BroncosForecast Chiefs 38 Broncos 16Dallas 38 at Indianapolis 65Time 115 pmLine Colts by 55Facts In their last meeting in Dallas in 2006 Bill Parcells8217 Cowboys won 2114 in a pickem game against a 90 Colts team 8230 Indy QB Peyton Manning has thrown seven INTs the past two weeks which is two more he had the first nine games 8230 Two of Dallas8217 three TDs on Thanksgiving ast week in its 3027 home loss to the Saints came after taking possession on New Orleans8217 15 and 39 8230 Cowboys QB Jon Kitna is completing 65 percent of his passes his best mark since going 689 in a threegame cameo in his 1997 rookie season with Seattle Analysis The Cowboys will be getting a jolt of fresh legs with Tashard Choice this week as a replacement for Dallas RB Marion Barber doubtful calf And with Manning and the Colts no longer having an invincible aura coach Jason Garrett8217s collection of exPro Bowlers have what it takes to pull the upsetForecast Cowboys 27 Colts 21 New Orleans 83 at Cincinnati 29Time 11 amLine Saints by 7Facts During Cincinnati8217s 8220comeback attempt8221 against the Jets last week the Bengals had minus4 yards their final 11 plays not to mention a safety 8230 New Orleans is getting healthier RB Reggie Bush came back on Thanksgiving TE Jeremy Shockey probable ribs has returned to work and safety Darren Sharper probable hamstring who had nine INTs last year seems likely to return 8230 If you wagered that the defending AFC North champ Bengals would win the Super Bowl go ahead and shred that ticketAnalysis The Bengals have too much veteran star power to enjoy playing the spoiler And since the Saints have a buzzsaw closing schedule Baltimore Atlanta Tampa Bay they won8217t miss a chance to quickly demoralize these guys behind Drew Brees8217 precision throws against a beatup secondaryForecast Saints 35 Bengals 14 Chicago 83 at Detroit 29Time 11 amLine Bears by 55Facts Detroit8217s QB du joir is Drew Stanton who will be filling in for fillin Shaun Hill doubtful finger who replaced Matthew Stafford out shoulder 8230 The Lions are fresh off a 4524 Turkey Day loss to New England in which they blew a 143 lead But the good news Teams are 40 against the spread ATS this year after midseason Thursday games Also over the past two years teams coming off the extended hanksgiving break are 91 ATS the next week against teams without that break 8230 Chicago beat visiting Detroit 1914 in the season opener as a 65point pick but largely because Lions WR Calvin Johnson started celebrating a late TD 8220catch8221 before securing the ball long enough to suit the NFL Analysis It8217s unlikely the Lions will have much of a homefield advantage especially if Chicago fans elect to make the short trek to Ford Field Plus Chicago showed its worth last week in beating the Eagles and causing QB Michael Vick to fumble four times and throw an INT At one point the Bears played keepaway with a 17play TD drive that lasted more than 10 minutesForecast Bears 21 Lions 7 San Francisco 47 at Green Bay 74Time 11 amLine Packers by 10Facts With temps expected in the 20s this shapes up as the nippiest game of the year to date Last regular season home teams were 113 ATS when the temperature at kickoff was 32 degrees or colder 8230 Despite their disparate records the 49ers and Packers are both one game out of first in their divisions 8230 Before San Francisco RB Frank Gore out broken hip left the field Monday at Arizona he had rushed for 853 of the team8217s 885 ground yards this season Backup Brian Westbrook came through with 136 yards on 23 carries Monday 8230 The Packers have had four different leading rushers their past four games On Sunday it was QB Aaron Rodgers with 51 yards in a 2017 loss in AtlantaAnalysis The Packers deserved a better fate against NFC Southleading Atlanta Early on they had dominating drives of 80 and 83 yards good for only three points total against a unit that8217s better than San Francisco8217s And good luck to 49ers QB Troy Smith getting a grip on a frosty ball Plus San Fran PK Joe Nedney remains questionable kneeForecast Packers 28 49ers 13Jacksonville 65 at Tennessee 56Time 11 amLine Jaguars by 3Facts For the second straight week the Titans will be facing the league8217s worstrated pass defense On Sunday behind rookie QB Rusty Smith they were shut out by Houston This week Kerry Collins questionable calf is expected back 8230 The Titans won their Week 6 meeting with the Jaguars in Nashville 303 Jacksonville QB David Garrard questionable left wrist was knocked out with a concussion 8230 Titans RB Chris Johnson who had 5 yards on seven carries against the Texans had 111 yards in that previous encounter with TennesseeAnalysis The Jaguars have made a charge behind Maurice JonesDrew8217s four consecutive 100yard rushing games but they still have the league8217s worst turnover margin at minus14 and are hard to trust Collins now playing with WR Randy Moss should further expose Jacksonville8217s weak secondaryForecast Titans 26 Jaguars 14 Cleveland 47 at Miami 65Time 11 amLine Dolphins by 5Facts The Browns haven8217t won in South Florida since 1970 Don Shula8217s sixth game with Miami 8230 Hard to believe Cleveland has given the powerhouse Patriots 3414 and Saints 3017 their most lopsided losses of the season 8230 The Dolphins had a 14yard edge in average starting field position 4026 in their 3317 victory in Oakland last week Miami ran 37 more offensive plays than Oakland too the thirdbiggest gap in any game this year 8230 Look for the Browns8217 Jake Delhomme to start again at QB in place of rookie Colt McCoy questionable concussionAnalysis Delhomme might not be such a bad choice now that he has a horse like Peyton Hillis to hand the ball And although the Dolphins didn8217t miss WR Brandon Marshall questionable hamstring last week he probably will be needed Sunday If he8217s only threequarters speed that might be good enough to win but not coverForecast Dolphins 21 Browns 20 Buffalo 29 at Minnesota 47Time 11 amLine Vikings by 55Facts Vikings RB Adrian Peterson questionable ankle the league8217s thirdleading rusher who already has reached 1000 yards for the fourth straight season likely will be a gameday decision 8230 Buffalo is giving up a leaguehigh 1674 rushing yards a game the worst mark in the league since the Colts gave up 1731 in their 2006 Super season 8230 In last week8217s 1713 victory at Washington which was interim coach Leslie Frazier8217s debut Minnesota went without a turnover for the first time this seasonAnalysis That was a nasty injury Peterson suffered last week and it kept him out of practice Wednesday and Thursday It would be wise if the Vikings give their meal ticket a rest in a game that means little And if that happens Buffalo which is on a 21 tear should have little trouble tracking down backup RB Toby Gerhart who had a long of 6 yards on 22 carries last weekForecast Bills 23 Vikings 17 Washington 56 at NY Giants 74Time 11 amLine Giants by 7Facts Last week against Jacksonville the Giants became the last team this season to score on its opening drive of a game getting a field goal Their defense meanwhile has yielded four opening TD drives 8230 Washington8217s Donovan McNabb has thrown a TD pass in 10 consecutive games But he8217s also heaved an INT in nine straight which is a league high 8230 Washington is the only team that twice didn8217t reach 30 rushing yards in a game this year including 29 last week against MinnesotaAnalysis The Giants are coming off a fourgame stretch in which their patchwork offensive line hasn8217t allowed a sack No team can match that Plus Osi Umenyiora and other guys wearing Super Bowl rings seemed to get the team8217s attention during a halftime pep talk last week That spirit carries over against a club dealing with injuries to its top two RBs Clinton Portis IR and Ryan Torain questionable hamstringForecast Giants 27 Redskins 14 Oakland 56 at San Diego 65Time 205 pmLine Chargers by 13Facts In Week 5 the Raiders jumpstarted their season when they broke a 13game losing streak to the visiting Chargers with a 3527 victory Two of Oakland8217s scores came on a blocked punt and a fumble return 8230 Oakland is giving up a leaguehigh 136 yards a reception In that Week 5 meeting with San Diego the Chargers averaged 16 yards on 27 receptions as Philip Rivers threw for 431 yards 8230 San Diego is the heaviest favorite on the board this week In the previous 12 weeks the biggest favorite has gone 48 against the lineAnalysis Rivers is getting many of his receiving weapons back including Malcom Floyd probable hamstring who had 213 receiving yards in the teams8217 previous meeting And that was with Oakland standout CB Nnamdi Asomugha questionable ankle who struggled last week against MiamiForecast Chargers 41 Raiders 20St Louis 56 at Arizona 38Time 215 pmLine Rams by 35Facts This marks the second time in 48 games that St Louis has been a favorite 8230 In 200809 the Cardinals were 145 and 165point home picks against the Rams and easily covered both times 8230 St Louis is in first in the NFC West The last time a major sports team won a league title despite a losing regular season was when the 1949 Maple Leafs took the Stanley Cup 8230 QB 8220Chuckles8221 Anderson guided the Cardinals to only eight first downs in Monday8217s 276 home loss to San Francisco their worst total the past two seasons 8230 Arizona has won eight in a row in this series including this season8217s opener 1713 in St Louis It8217s the second longest streak for the Cardinals against anyone From 197378 they beat the Eagles nine straightAnalysis Last week the Rams showed they can win on the road in their 3633 upset victory over Denver Their confidence is thus boosted Arizona meanwhile is getting worse if that8217s possible You8217d think a team with the 31strated QB might give the running game a try yet the Cardinals had a league seasonlow 11 rushes last week for 13 yardsForecast Rams 34 Cardinals 14 Carolina 110 at Seattle 56Time 215 pmLine Seahawks by 6Weather Mid40s 20 percent chance of rainFacts Since 2004 under coach John Fox the Panthers are 62 west of the Rockies 80 ATS in the regular season including a 3421 victory in Arizona last year as a 10point 8216dog But Carolina lost at Seattle 3414 in the 2005 NFC title game 8230 The Seahawks have yielded 500plus yards of total offense three times this season more than anyone else 8230 Dating to 2007 the Panthers have failed to score a TD the past 43 times starting a possession inside their 10 the longest drought in the league 8230 No team rushes for fewer yards a game than Seattle at 779Analysis It8217s a battle of the havenots although Seattle shares the NFC West lead despite being outscored by 66 points Carolina meanwhile showed fire last week with the return of RB Jonathan Stewart in a closecall 2423 loss in ClevelandForecast Panthers 23 Seahawks 20 Atlanta 92 at Tampa Bay 74Time 215 pmLine Falcons by 3Facts Tampa Bay had a leaguelow eight sacks through nine games this season but has had 10 in the past two including six at San Francisco in its 210 shutout victory in Week 11 8230 When Atlanta QB Matt Ryan led the Falcons to the 2008 postseason as a rookie the Falcons had the 25thrated run defense Now they8217re seventh giving up 937 ground yards a game 8230 Tampa Bay will break out its original creamsickle jerseys for this oneAnalysis The road warrior Buccaneers are 60 ATS away from home but only 131 at home But now that Tampa Bay rookie DT Gerald McCoy is making the Buccaneers8217 defensive front something to fear there8217s been a significant uptick in performanceForecast Buccaneers 24 Falcons 20 Pittsburgh 83 at Baltimore 83Time 620 pmLine Ravens by 3Facts The Ravens won in Pittsburgh in Week 4 by 1714 as a twopoint underdog but lastresort QB Charlie Batch was in charge for the Steelers In the teams8217 16 meetings before that the home team is 142 8230 Last week against Buffalo and for the second time in three games Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger questionable foot was sacked five times 8230 Baltimore safety Ed Reed has 50 career INTs but none against Big Ben 8230 The Steelers have won their past two games despite having a cumulative minus 195yard differential in penalty yardsAnalysis Pittsburgh with its two original starting offensive tackles on injured reserve have been awful protecting the passer over the past weeks and haven8217t come close to obeying football rules Baltimore appears to be far more disciplined and has a relatively healthy QB in Joe FlaccoForecast Ravens 23 Steelers 14 MONDAY NY Jets 92 at New England 92Time 635 pmLine Patriots by 35Facts New England has yielded more than 400 yards in each of its past five games but still went 41 During their perfect 2007 regular season the Patriots never allowed 400 8230 In the Jets8217 2814 Week 2 victory over New England they had only 336 yards the fewest yielded in a game by the Patriots this year 8230 New England had thr ee TD drives of 83plus yards last week in Detroit No other team has had that many touchdown marches that long in an outing in 2010Analysis The teams with the two best records in the AFC collide with homefield advantage through the playoffs at stake and who better to trust than the league8217s secondrated passer Patriots QB Tom Brady Over the past six weeks he has thrown 13 TD passes and zero INTs and hasn8217t lost a regularseason home game since 2006 8212 to the JetsForecast Patriots 34 Jets 27 Last week 97 vs spread 115 straight upSeason total 94756 556 vs spread 11065 632 straight up

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<p>By Jeremiah GoulkaThis article was produced and published by <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175793/" type="external">TomDispatch</a>.</p> <p>Every once in a while a small controversy comes along that helps explain a big problem.&amp;#160; This National Football League season has provided such a controversy.&amp;#160; The name of Washington D.C.&#8217;s football team, the Redskins, is under fire.&amp;#160; &#8220;Redskins&#8221; is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation&#8217;s capital.&amp;#160; That&#8217;s kind of obvious, right?</p> <p>Most Republicans don&#8217;t think so.&amp;#160; They defend the name, as they do other Native American-based team names, such as the college football champion <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/177800/florida-state-seminoles-champions-racist-mascoting" type="external">Florida State Seminoles</a>, calling them tokens of &#8220;honor.&#8221;&amp;#160; They claim that the names celebrate a &#8220;heritage&#8221; and &#8220;tradition&#8221; of &#8220;bravery&#8221; and &#8220;warrior-spirit,&#8221; and they publicly wonder: What&#8217;s the problem?</p> <p><a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-redskins-name-only-offensive-if-you-think-a,33449/" type="external">The Onion</a>, that fine news source, captured it in one neat, snide sentence: &#8220;A new study&#8230; confirmed that the name of the Washington Redskins is only offensive if you take any amount of time whatsoever to think about its actual meaning.&#8221;&amp;#160; So what&#8217;s keeping Republicans from thinking about it?</p> <p /> <p>For one thing, Republicans tend to wear a set of blinders, crafted and actively maintained by the party&#8217;s functionaries and its media priesthood.&amp;#160; They also suffer from mental roadblocks shared by American whites more generally, including a thin, often myth-based &#8220;knowledge&#8221; about Native Americans.&amp;#160; Collectively, all of this blinds Republicans to what it&#8217;s like to be on the receiving end of power at home and abroad.</p> <p>That said, the GOP&#8217;s power brokers know the party is facing a demographic time bomb, so why do they let their media minions form an offensive line to protect the Redskins name? &amp;#160;Nationally, the Republicans&#8217; short-term hopes and long-term survival may hinge on whether they can manage to make the party welcoming to non-whites.&amp;#160; Yet they proudly wear these blinders, as I once did, continuing to &#8220;honor&#8221; American Indians &#8212; as they never would a team called the Whiteskins, the Brownskins, the Blackskins, or the Yellowskins.&amp;#160; Here&#8217;s a little breakdown on why.</p> <p>Republican Blinders</p> <p>Blinder 1: Intent Is Everything</p> <p>As I have <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175590/tomgram%3A_jeremiah_goulka,_confessions_of_a_former_republican" type="external">written previously</a>, Republicans have a convenient belief that when it comes to racism, it&#8217;s all about intent <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175590/tomgram%3A_jeremiah_goulka,_confessions_of_a_former_republican" type="external" />. &amp;#160;With the Redskins name, this is a particularly powerful blinder because, as one <a href="http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/11/defending-dan-snyder/" type="external">sportscaster</a> said, &#8220;I strongly believe that there is zero intent to offend Native Americans among Redskins fans or football fans in general.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>In the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360614/liberals-fabricate-outrage-over-redskins-rich-lowry" type="external">words</a> of a National Review writer, &#8220;No one picks a team name as a means of disparagement.&#8221;&amp;#160; Similarly, <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/11/the-honor-of-the-redskins/" type="external">Human Events</a> columnist John Hayward claimed that &#8220;[n]obody names their football team the Losers or the Wimps.&#8221; &amp;#160;Again and again, Republicans in the media sound this chord, effectively saying that if there is no intent to harm, then there&#8217;s no foul.</p> <p>Blinder 2: The Messengers</p> <p>A big reason why conservatives don&#8217;t like change is the people who push for it.&amp;#160; Just look at who&#8217;s complaining about the Redskins name.</p> <p>There are Native Americans protesting the name, like the Oneida Tribe&#8217;s &#8220; <a href="http://www.changethemascot.org/" type="external">Change the Mascot</a>&#8221; campaign. &amp;#160;To a Republican, that means this is, ipso facto, the usual, tedious, &#8220;race-card&#8221; stuff and another instance of the obsession with identity and victimization. &amp;#160;In my Republican days, I would have asked, &#8220;Can&#8217;t you Indians or Native Americans or whatever you want to be called these days see that making your group identity the most important part of your existence denies your individuality?&amp;#160; You sink or swim on your own in our meritocracy.&amp;#160; How can you thrive if your mind&#8217;s on the reservation?&#8221;&amp;#160; (Not that I knew any Native Americans to ask, of course.)</p> <p>Then there are the cadres of academics (liberals!), foaming at the mouth about &#8220;narratives&#8221; and &#8220;oppression,&#8221; glorifying relativism, preaching white guilt and feel-bad history, and denying Objective Truth.&amp;#160; The <a href="http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/indian-mascots.aspx" type="external">American Psychological Association</a> says that such team names promote negative stereotypes, making little Indian kids feel bad about themselves.&amp;#160; Boo hoo!</p> <p>There are also the activists, those unwashed Occupy longhairs who get off on feeling offended for other people, &#8220; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360614/liberals-fabricate-outrage-over-redskins-rich-lowry" type="external">fabricat[ing</a>] outrage,&#8221; creating a &#8220; <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/redskins-manufactured-controversy-9395" type="external">manufactured</a> controversy.&#8221;</p> <p>There&#8217;s the feared &#8220;Liberal Media.&#8221;&amp;#160; A handful of newspapers, the alternative rag <a href="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/43611/hail-to-the-pigskins-fight-for-old-dcmdashwith-a-less/" type="external">Washington City Paper</a>, and several liberal outlets like <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/08/washington_redskins_nickname_why_slate_will_stop_referring_to_the_nfl_team.html" type="external">Slate</a>, the <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the-new-republic-joins-slate-will-stop-using-redskins_b90998" type="external">New Republic</a>, and <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/08/ditching-redskins-nfl-dan-snyder-slate?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+%7C+MoJoBlog%29" type="external">Mother Jones</a> now refuse to use the Redskins name, instead inelegantly referring to &#8220;Washington&#8217;s football team.&#8221;&amp;#160; Most don&#8217;t even cover sports, but they can&#8217;t miss a chance to pontificate!</p> <p>Singled out for the most angst was sportscaster Bob Costas &#8212; for speaking out against the name during a Sunday Night Football broadcast.&amp;#160; Glenn Beck&#8217;s response was to <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/14/entertainment/la-et-st-bob-costas-versus-glenn-beck-in-washington-redskins-nickname-flap-20131014" type="external">call</a> him &#8220;senile&#8221; and a &#8220;sanctimonious piece of crap.&#8221;</p> <p>And then there are the politicians.&amp;#160; Guess which team&#8217;s jersey they&#8217;re wearing?&amp;#160; There&#8217;s the Washington city council (no Republicans there, of course!) getting all righteous with a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-council-calls-on-washington-redskins-to-ditch-racist-and-derogatory-name/2013/11/05/17cbbd66-4646-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html" type="external">unanimous</a> resolution urging that the team be renamed something non-offensive.&amp;#160; There are Democrats in Congress lining up to do their bit by pushing a bill to strip the very right of a team to trademark its name if it&#8217;s offensive to Indians!</p> <p>Worst of all is the &#8220; <a href="http://millenniumtimes.blogspot.com/2009/11/trinity-of-evil-obama-reid-pelosi.html" type="external">Trinity of Evil</a>,&#8221; the &#8220; <a href="http://politicalbeachgirl.blogspot.com/2009/02/obama-pelosi-reid-socialist-trifecta.html" type="external">Socialist Trifecta</a>&#8220;: Senate Majority Leader <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/193585-harry-reid-redskins-should-change-their-name" type="external">Harry Reid</a>, House Minority Leader <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/188317-redskins-should-change-name-pelosi-says" type="external">Nancy Pelosi</a>, and above all <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/10/05/obama-associated-press-interview-washington-redskins/2927351/" type="external">President Obama</a>.&amp;#160; They&#8217;ve all come out against the Redskins name.</p> <p>See a common thread here? Democrats. Liberals. Progressives. Minorities. The Left.</p> <p>The other team.</p> <p>These messengers could say that the sky is blue, and the natural Republican inclination would be to think that they were lying for partisan gain. The Enemy is relentless, implacable, and vast. It must be stopped.</p> <p>Blinder 3: The First Amendment Right to Offend</p> <p>No need to think about why a name or epithet might offend, when you can spring straight to the defense of the &#8220;right to offend.&#8221;&amp;#160; Poke around Republican media and you will see many articles defending this &#8220; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/media-blog/31289/right-offend-sacred/greg-pollowitz" type="external">sacred</a>&#8221; right.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s the rhetorical formula: Sure, some people offend others on purpose, and yes they&#8217;re jerks, but most people don&#8217;t.&amp;#160; It&#8217;s too bad if you&#8217;re offended, but what&#8217;s important is to protect the constitutional right to offend &#8212; because isn&#8217;t that what the First Amendment is actually all about? &amp;#160;&amp;#160;The real danger in this: letting some thin-skinned crowd destroy our collective liberties through intimidation.&amp;#160; (Optional: insert comment about PC or liberal &#8220;fascism&#8221; here, or the slippery slope to Nazi Germany.) &amp;#160;So toughen up.&amp;#160; Sticks and stones, etc&#8230;</p> <p>(This one&#8217;s easy for them because a <a href="http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/redskins-question-in-2004-annenberg-study-cited-anew-in-controversy/" type="external">2004 survey</a> <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/debate-over-redskins-name-intensifies-hard-tell-many-161533920--spt.html" type="external" /> suggested that a significant majority of Indians weren&#8217;t bothered by the name.&amp;#160; Of course they don&#8217;t mention that the main survey had only 768 <a href="http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/redskins-question-in-2004-annenberg-study-cited-anew-in-controversy/" type="external" /> respondents, or that the groups fighting the name in court include the National Congress of American Indians, the largest intertribal organization &#8212; which represents more than 250 groups with a combined enrolment of <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/debate-over-redskins-name-intensifies-hard-tell-many-161533920--spt.html" type="external">1.2 million</a> &#8212; as well as the Cherokee, Comanche, and Seminole tribes.&amp;#160; It&#8217;s not just the Oneida.)</p> <p>Blinder 4: Feelings are for Sissies</p> <p>There remains the frightening possibility that some Republican might try to imagine how a Native American might feel about teams or mascots appropriating (or insulting) his culture.&amp;#160; Lest that nice Republican go off the proverbial reservation, there is a ready-made prophylactic that can be stated in these simple words: &#8220;Don&#8217;t be a sissy.&#8221;</p> <p>This prophylactic is built into Republicans definitions of masculinity.&amp;#160; One of the first things you learn as a boy in a Republican community is that manhood is of the utmost importance, and the prime way to be a man is to avoid anything effeminate.&amp;#160; Feelings, emotions, and all that other irrational stuff like empathy are girly.</p> <p>Girls cry.</p> <p>Republicans love to knock Bill Clinton for saying, &#8220;I feel your pain.&#8221;&amp;#160; We are living in &#8220; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355628/left-vs-redskins-dennis-prager" type="external">The Age of Feelings</a>,&#8221; wrote National Review columnist Dennis Prager, making fun of people who might take issue with the Redskins name. &amp;#160;That magazine recently ran an article entitled &#8220; <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/334386/against-empathy" type="external">Against Empathy</a>.&#8221;&amp;#160; The implication is clear: Feelings are for losers &#8212; that is, liberals, those sensitivity-preaching, holier-than-thou, bleeding-heart, sad sacks of emotions.&amp;#160; Grow a pair.</p> <p>Shared Mental Roadblocks</p> <p>There are, of course, other reasons why so many Republicans are blind to the wrongness of the Redskins name that can&#8217;t be blamed on the GOP. &amp;#160;There are at least three big mental roadblocks in the way of Republicans coming to terms with the impact of &#8220;Redskins&#8221; (not to speak of racism itself).&amp;#160; Unlike the blinders, these roadblocks are shared by white Americans across the political spectrum.</p> <p>Roadblock 1: Naming Practices</p> <p>There have been <a href="http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/04/native-american-mascots-pride-or-prejudice/" type="external">more than 3,000</a> teams with Native American-based names and mascots in this country.&amp;#160; Of them, some 900 remain.&amp;#160; They&#8217;re common and they&#8217;ve been around a long time; the Redskins team name dates to the early 1930s. &amp;#160;Once something is in the vernacular, it becomes anodyne, and people don&#8217;t notice it&#8217;s wrong unless they feel the sting or someone makes a stink.&amp;#160; And even then, people may think that it&#8217;s okay to use a word like &#8220;redskin&#8221; as a team name while also knowing that it&#8217;s verboten in conversation. &amp;#160;(An article in <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360614/liberals-fabricate-outrage-over-redskins-rich-lowry" type="external">National Review</a> had this typical sub-headline: &#8220;The team name is an anachronism, but a harmless one.&#8221;)</p> <p>Roadblock 2: A Myth-Based &#8220;Education&#8221;</p> <p>It&#8217;s easy to say that a name honors a culture when you don&#8217;t know anything about that culture.</p> <p>What are we taught in school?&amp;#160; Children put on feathers and construction paper cut-outs in holiday plays that teach a mythology for Columbus Day and Thanksgiving.&amp;#160; We whites were taught as children that &#8220;we&#8221; were the Pilgrims, the stars of the story, and &#8220;they,&#8221; the Indians, were the nice supporting cast who helped us get through a rough winter so that we could do our beautiful colonial thing.&amp;#160; And so we said thanks over turkey.</p> <p>Later on, I can recall a segment in social studies class on the Trail of Tears, and I&#8217;m sure there was some talk of treaties and reservations, but that was about it for my education.&amp;#160; Did we delve into the size or nature of Native American communities here when &#8220;we&#8221; arrived?&amp;#160; I came away with the impression that the land the colonists found was pretty close to empty, and not just because of disease &#8212; nothing like the estimated <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/" type="external">millions</a> who lived in sophisticated civilizations in what became the United States.&amp;#160; Did we talk about the Indian Wars?&amp;#160; Not really, other than something about the battle of Little Bighorn and you-know-who.&amp;#160; (Hint: he had golden hair and died gallantly.)</p> <p>Not knowing anything other than this supporting-cast mythology, it&#8217;s all too easy to &#8220;celebrate&#8221; &#8220;our&#8221; Indian heritage. &amp;#160;I could exult in lovely Indian geographic names, thinking that a name like Sioux City, Iowa, meant &#8220;City in Honor of the Sioux.&#8221; &amp;#160;But it wasn&#8217;t until I scrapped my Republican blinders and stopped censoring myself from reading writers like <a href="http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/" type="external">James Loewen</a> that I learned the Sioux don&#8217;t even call themselves &#8220;Sioux.&#8221;&amp;#160; They&#8217;re the <a href="http://www.towahkon.org/MIACdraftresolution.html" type="external">Dakotas</a> (or Lakotas), meaning &#8220;allies&#8221; or &#8220;people.&#8221; &amp;#160;The word &#8220;Sioux&#8221; is an abbreviation of &#8220;Nadouessioux,&#8221; which was how Canadian French colonists pronounced a word used by the rival Ottawa or Ojibwe tribes.&amp;#160; It may have meant something like &#8220;foreigner&#8221; (as in &#8220;speaking a foreign language&#8221;), but the Dakotas think it meant &#8220;snake&#8221; or &#8220;enemy&#8221; and was a derogatory &#8220;term of hatred.&#8221;</p> <p>How about &#8220;City Where the Enemy Snakes Lived Before They Got Wiped Out and Pushed Onto Reservations by Whites and Their Diseases&#8221;?</p> <p>Some honor.</p> <p>Roadblock 3: Never Been a Loser</p> <p>How can a Republican keep a straight face and <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/11/the-honor-of-the-redskins/" type="external">write</a> that &#8220;[n]obody names their football team the Losers&#8221; when talking about Native American-based team names?&amp;#160; Even with our crummy educations on the subject, there&#8217;s no way anyone can claim that Indians have come through the past centuries as history&#8217;s winners.&amp;#160; But Republicans remain blind because they are almost all white, and white people &#8212; or at least non-immigrant white men &#8212; have never been a losing tribe in this country.</p> <p>Sure, plenty of whites may feel victimized one way or another when life doesn&#8217;t go their way, and it&#8217;s not only Republicans who attribute it to race.&amp;#160; Some feel excluded from the white establishment, but that&#8217;s a class issue.&amp;#160; Some believe that their failure to snag a job or a spot in college is due to affirmative action, but that&#8217;s because they believe they are being denied something that is already rightly theirs &#8212; an entitlement, if you will. &amp;#160;But this is nothing like being in a losing tribe.</p> <p>Whites don&#8217;t get pulled over by the police for driving in black neighborhoods, and where they do get pulled over, they seldom get dragged out of the car and shoved against the hood.&amp;#160; Whites don&#8217;t get their resumes chucked in the trash because of unfamiliar, group-pride-oriented names.&amp;#160; White men as a group have not had to fight for their basic rights in this country for generations.&amp;#160; (Universal white manhood suffrage dates to the 1820s.)</p> <p>This has massive ripple effects for Republican politics and policy.&amp;#160; Never having been a victim of history, Republicans have no intuitive understanding of victimhood or institutional racism or glass ceilings or other common experiences for people of color (and women).</p> <p>If more Republicans had an intuitive feel for the experience of American life as a minority (or a woman), they&#8217;d probably spend way less time making fun of &#8220;the politics of victimization&#8221; or promoting their version of &#8220;melting pot&#8221; America &#8212; a country where, no matter your color, you are supposed to dress, act, and aspire to be white.&amp;#160; And the GOP might actually stand a chance of figuring out how to attract more than a token number of non-white voters nationally.</p> <p>White Skin in the Game</p> <p>So why don&#8217;t Republicans just cave on this one and stop looking like jerks? &amp;#160;Even conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer recognizes that the name &#8220;Redskins&#8221; is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-redskins-and-reason/2013/10/17/cbb11eee-374f-11e3-ae46-e4248e75c8ea_story.html" type="external">defunct</a>.&amp;#160; What do they have to lose?</p> <p>To recognize that names matter, however, means recognizing that human experience matters &#8212; not just the experiences of approved people, but of all people. &amp;#160;Republican ideology is based on protecting its in-group, fighting off solidarity with out-groups, and claiming that success and failure in American life is a moral story of meritocracy alone &#8212; to the extent, of course, that government regulations don&#8217;t get in the way.&amp;#160;</p> <p>As much as Republicans may formulaically say that they care about everyone, the party is scared to death of empathy.&amp;#160; It could lead Republicans to get past their false moral narrative and see the many ways that their policies harm minorities, women, and the poor.&amp;#160; Empathy could even lead Republicans into embarrassing historical terrain where they might learn that, through germs and violence, whites killed off millions of Indians, and that &#8220;Manifest Destiny&#8221; is just a marketing catchphrase hiding the fact that the United States broke off from one empire and immediately started its own on this continent. &amp;#160;And once they recognize that, they might even start noticing our empire abroad or getting serious about equality at home. &amp;#160;Next thing you know, they might start pushing to increase taxes on the rich and funding for Food Stamps or Head Start or Medicaid&#8230; Republican Armageddon.</p> <p>Go, Sissies!</p> <p>Jeremiah Goulka, a&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175590/jeremiah_goulka_confessions_of_a_former_republican" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>&amp;#160;and former RAND Corporation analyst, writes about American politics and culture, focusing on security, race, and the&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175628/jeremiah_goulka_rearranging_the_deck_chairs" type="external">Republican Party</a>. You can follow him on Twitter @jeremiahgoulka or contact him through his website&amp;#160;jeremiahgoulka.com.</p> <p>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" type="external">Facebook</a> or <a href="http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/" type="external">Tumblr</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Ann Jones&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463710/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America&#8217;s Wars &#8212; The Untold Story</a>.</p> <p>Copyright 2014 Jeremiah Goulka</p>

Why Republicans Protect the 'Honor' of Offensive Team Names

https://truthdig.com/articles/why-republicans-protect-the-honor-of-offensive-team-names/

2014-01-15

4left

By Jeremiah GoulkaThis article was produced and published by TomDispatch Every once in a while a small controversy comes along that helps explain a big problemamp160 This National Football League season has provided such a controversyamp160 The name of Washington DC8217s football team the Redskins is under fireamp160 8220Redskins8221 is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation8217s capitalamp160 That8217s kind of obvious right Most Republicans don8217t think soamp160 They defend the name as they do other Native Americanbased team names such as the college football champion Florida State Seminoles calling them tokens of 8220honor8221amp160 They claim that the names celebrate a 8220heritage8221 and 8220tradition8221 of 8220bravery8221 and 8220warriorspirit8221 and they publicly wonder What8217s the problem The Onion that fine news source captured it in one neat snide sentence 8220A new study8230 confirmed that the name of the Washington Redskins is only offensive if you take any amount of time whatsoever to think about its actual meaning8221amp160 So what8217s keeping Republicans from thinking about it For one thing Republicans tend to wear a set of blinders crafted and actively maintained by the party8217s functionaries and its media priesthoodamp160 They also suffer from mental roadblocks shared by American whites more generally including a thin often mythbased 8220knowledge8221 about Native Americansamp160 Collectively all of this blinds Republicans to what it8217s like to be on the receiving end of power at home and abroad That said the GOP8217s power brokers know the party is facing a demographic time bomb so why do they let their media minions form an offensive line to protect the Redskins name amp160Nationally the Republicans8217 shortterm hopes and longterm survival may hinge on whether they can manage to make the party welcoming to nonwhitesamp160 Yet they proudly wear these blinders as I once did continuing to 8220honor8221 American Indians 8212 as they never would a team called the Whiteskins the Brownskins the Blackskins or the Yellowskinsamp160 Here8217s a little breakdown on why Republican Blinders Blinder 1 Intent Is Everything As I have written previously Republicans have a convenient belief that when it comes to racism it8217s all about intent amp160With the Redskins name this is a particularly powerful blinder because as one sportscaster said 8220I strongly believe that there is zero intent to offend Native Americans among Redskins fans or football fans in general8221amp160 In the words of a National Review writer 8220No one picks a team name as a means of disparagement8221amp160 Similarly Human Events columnist John Hayward claimed that 8220nobody names their football team the Losers or the Wimps8221 amp160Again and again Republicans in the media sound this chord effectively saying that if there is no intent to harm then there8217s no foul Blinder 2 The Messengers A big reason why conservatives don8217t like change is the people who push for itamp160 Just look at who8217s complaining about the Redskins name There are Native Americans protesting the name like the Oneida Tribe8217s 8220 Change the Mascot8221 campaign amp160To a Republican that means this is ipso facto the usual tedious 8220racecard8221 stuff and another instance of the obsession with identity and victimization amp160In my Republican days I would have asked 8220Can8217t you Indians or Native Americans or whatever you want to be called these days see that making your group identity the most important part of your existence denies your individualityamp160 You sink or swim on your own in our meritocracyamp160 How can you thrive if your mind8217s on the reservation8221amp160 Not that I knew any Native Americans to ask of course Then there are the cadres of academics liberals foaming at the mouth about 8220narratives8221 and 8220oppression8221 glorifying relativism preaching white guilt and feelbad history and denying Objective Truthamp160 The American Psychological Association says that such team names promote negative stereotypes making little Indian kids feel bad about themselvesamp160 Boo hoo There are also the activists those unwashed Occupy longhairs who get off on feeling offended for other people 8220 fabricating outrage8221 creating a 8220 manufactured controversy8221 There8217s the feared 8220Liberal Media8221amp160 A handful of newspapers the alternative rag Washington City Paper and several liberal outlets like Slate the New Republic and Mother Jones now refuse to use the Redskins name instead inelegantly referring to 8220Washington8217s football team8221amp160 Most don8217t even cover sports but they can8217t miss a chance to pontificate Singled out for the most angst was sportscaster Bob Costas 8212 for speaking out against the name during a Sunday Night Football broadcastamp160 Glenn Beck8217s response was to call him 8220senile8221 and a 8220sanctimonious piece of crap8221 And then there are the politiciansamp160 Guess which team8217s jersey they8217re wearingamp160 There8217s the Washington city council no Republicans there of course getting all righteous with a unanimous resolution urging that the team be renamed something nonoffensiveamp160 There are Democrats in Congress lining up to do their bit by pushing a bill to strip the very right of a team to trademark its name if it8217s offensive to Indians Worst of all is the 8220 Trinity of Evil8221 the 8220 Socialist Trifecta8220 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and above all President Obamaamp160 They8217ve all come out against the Redskins name See a common thread here Democrats Liberals Progressives Minorities The Left The other team These messengers could say that the sky is blue and the natural Republican inclination would be to think that they were lying for partisan gain The Enemy is relentless implacable and vast It must be stopped Blinder 3 The First Amendment Right to Offend No need to think about why a name or epithet might offend when you can spring straight to the defense of the 8220right to offend8221amp160 Poke around Republican media and you will see many articles defending this 8220 sacred8221 right Here8217s the rhetorical formula Sure some people offend others on purpose and yes they8217re jerks but most people don8217tamp160 It8217s too bad if you8217re offended but what8217s important is to protect the constitutional right to offend 8212 because isn8217t that what the First Amendment is actually all about amp160amp160The real danger in this letting some thinskinned crowd destroy our collective liberties through intimidationamp160 Optional insert comment about PC or liberal 8220fascism8221 here or the slippery slope to Nazi Germany amp160So toughen upamp160 Sticks and stones etc8230 This one8217s easy for them because a 2004 survey suggested that a significant majority of Indians weren8217t bothered by the nameamp160 Of course they don8217t mention that the main survey had only 768 respondents or that the groups fighting the name in court include the National Congress of American Indians the largest intertribal organization 8212 which represents more than 250 groups with a combined enrolment of 12 million 8212 as well as the Cherokee Comanche and Seminole tribesamp160 It8217s not just the Oneida Blinder 4 Feelings are for Sissies There remains the frightening possibility that some Republican might try to imagine how a Native American might feel about teams or mascots appropriating or insulting his cultureamp160 Lest that nice Republican go off the proverbial reservation there is a readymade prophylactic that can be stated in these simple words 8220Don8217t be a sissy8221 This prophylactic is built into Republicans definitions of masculinityamp160 One of the first things you learn as a boy in a Republican community is that manhood is of the utmost importance and the prime way to be a man is to avoid anything effeminateamp160 Feelings emotions and all that other irrational stuff like empathy are girly Girls cry Republicans love to knock Bill Clinton for saying 8220I feel your pain8221amp160 We are living in 8220 The Age of Feelings8221 wrote National Review columnist Dennis Prager making fun of people who might take issue with the Redskins name amp160That magazine recently ran an article entitled 8220 Against Empathy8221amp160 The implication is clear Feelings are for losers 8212 that is liberals those sensitivitypreaching holierthanthou bleedingheart sad sacks of emotionsamp160 Grow a pair Shared Mental Roadblocks There are of course other reasons why so many Republicans are blind to the wrongness of the Redskins name that can8217t be blamed on the GOP amp160There are at least three big mental roadblocks in the way of Republicans coming to terms with the impact of 8220Redskins8221 not to speak of racism itselfamp160 Unlike the blinders these roadblocks are shared by white Americans across the political spectrum Roadblock 1 Naming Practices There have been more than 3000 teams with Native Americanbased names and mascots in this countryamp160 Of them some 900 remainamp160 They8217re common and they8217ve been around a long time the Redskins team name dates to the early 1930s amp160Once something is in the vernacular it becomes anodyne and people don8217t notice it8217s wrong unless they feel the sting or someone makes a stinkamp160 And even then people may think that it8217s okay to use a word like 8220redskin8221 as a team name while also knowing that it8217s verboten in conversation amp160An article in National Review had this typical subheadline 8220The team name is an anachronism but a harmless one8221 Roadblock 2 A MythBased 8220Education8221 It8217s easy to say that a name honors a culture when you don8217t know anything about that culture What are we taught in schoolamp160 Children put on feathers and construction paper cutouts in holiday plays that teach a mythology for Columbus Day and Thanksgivingamp160 We whites were taught as children that 8220we8221 were the Pilgrims the stars of the story and 8220they8221 the Indians were the nice supporting cast who helped us get through a rough winter so that we could do our beautiful colonial thingamp160 And so we said thanks over turkey Later on I can recall a segment in social studies class on the Trail of Tears and I8217m sure there was some talk of treaties and reservations but that was about it for my educationamp160 Did we delve into the size or nature of Native American communities here when 8220we8221 arrivedamp160 I came away with the impression that the land the colonists found was pretty close to empty and not just because of disease 8212 nothing like the estimated millions who lived in sophisticated civilizations in what became the United Statesamp160 Did we talk about the Indian Warsamp160 Not really other than something about the battle of Little Bighorn and youknowwhoamp160 Hint he had golden hair and died gallantly Not knowing anything other than this supportingcast mythology it8217s all too easy to 8220celebrate8221 8220our8221 Indian heritage amp160I could exult in lovely Indian geographic names thinking that a name like Sioux City Iowa meant 8220City in Honor of the Sioux8221 amp160But it wasn8217t until I scrapped my Republican blinders and stopped censoring myself from reading writers like James Loewen that I learned the Sioux don8217t even call themselves 8220Sioux8221amp160 They8217re the Dakotas or Lakotas meaning 8220allies8221 or 8220people8221 amp160The word 8220Sioux8221 is an abbreviation of 8220Nadouessioux8221 which was how Canadian French colonists pronounced a word used by the rival Ottawa or Ojibwe tribesamp160 It may have meant something like 8220foreigner8221 as in 8220speaking a foreign language8221 but the Dakotas think it meant 8220snake8221 or 8220enemy8221 and was a derogatory 8220term of hatred8221 How about 8220City Where the Enemy Snakes Lived Before They Got Wiped Out and Pushed Onto Reservations by Whites and Their Diseases8221 Some honor Roadblock 3 Never Been a Loser How can a Republican keep a straight face and write that 8220nobody names their football team the Losers8221 when talking about Native Americanbased team namesamp160 Even with our crummy educations on the subject there8217s no way anyone can claim that Indians have come through the past centuries as history8217s winnersamp160 But Republicans remain blind because they are almost all white and white people 8212 or at least nonimmigrant white men 8212 have never been a losing tribe in this country Sure plenty of whites may feel victimized one way or another when life doesn8217t go their way and it8217s not only Republicans who attribute it to raceamp160 Some feel excluded from the white establishment but that8217s a class issueamp160 Some believe that their failure to snag a job or a spot in college is due to affirmative action but that8217s because they believe they are being denied something that is already rightly theirs 8212 an entitlement if you will amp160But this is nothing like being in a losing tribe Whites don8217t get pulled over by the police for driving in black neighborhoods and where they do get pulled over they seldom get dragged out of the car and shoved against the hoodamp160 Whites don8217t get their resumes chucked in the trash because of unfamiliar groupprideoriented namesamp160 White men as a group have not had to fight for their basic rights in this country for generationsamp160 Universal white manhood suffrage dates to the 1820s This has massive ripple effects for Republican politics and policyamp160 Never having been a victim of history Republicans have no intuitive understanding of victimhood or institutional racism or glass ceilings or other common experiences for people of color and women If more Republicans had an intuitive feel for the experience of American life as a minority or a woman they8217d probably spend way less time making fun of 8220the politics of victimization8221 or promoting their version of 8220melting pot8221 America 8212 a country where no matter your color you are supposed to dress act and aspire to be whiteamp160 And the GOP might actually stand a chance of figuring out how to attract more than a token number of nonwhite voters nationally White Skin in the Game So why don8217t Republicans just cave on this one and stop looking like jerks amp160Even conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer recognizes that the name 8220Redskins8221 is defunctamp160 What do they have to lose To recognize that names matter however means recognizing that human experience matters 8212 not just the experiences of approved people but of all people amp160Republican ideology is based on protecting its ingroup fighting off solidarity with outgroups and claiming that success and failure in American life is a moral story of meritocracy alone 8212 to the extent of course that government regulations don8217t get in the wayamp160 As much as Republicans may formulaically say that they care about everyone the party is scared to death of empathyamp160 It could lead Republicans to get past their false moral narrative and see the many ways that their policies harm minorities women and the pooramp160 Empathy could even lead Republicans into embarrassing historical terrain where they might learn that through germs and violence whites killed off millions of Indians and that 8220Manifest Destiny8221 is just a marketing catchphrase hiding the fact that the United States broke off from one empire and immediately started its own on this continent amp160And once they recognize that they might even start noticing our empire abroad or getting serious about equality at home amp160Next thing you know they might start pushing to increase taxes on the rich and funding for Food Stamps or Head Start or Medicaid8230 Republican Armageddon Go Sissies Jeremiah Goulka aamp160 TomDispatch regularamp160and former RAND Corporation analyst writes about American politics and culture focusing on security race and theamp160 Republican Party You can follow him on Twitter jeremiahgoulka or contact him through his websiteamp160jeremiahgoulkacom Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr Check out the newest Dispatch Book Ann Jones8217s They Were Soldiers How the Wounded Return From America8217s Wars 8212 The Untold Story Copyright 2014 Jeremiah Goulka

By/ADP Jeremiah/PROPN GoulkaThis/PROPN article/NOUN was/AUX produced/VERB and/CCONJ published/VERB by/ADP TomDispatch/PROPN Every/PRON once/ADV in/ADP a/DET while/NOUN a/DET small/ADJ controversy/NOUN comes/VERB along/ADP that/PRON helps/VERB explain/VERB a/DET big/ADJ problemamp160/NOUN This/DET National/PROPN Football/PROPN League/PROPN season/NOUN has/AUX provided/VERB such/DET a/DET controversyamp160/NOUN The/DET name/NOUN of/ADP Washington/PROPN DC8217s/PROPN football/NOUN team/NOUN the/DET Redskins/PROPN is/AUX under/ADP fireamp160/PROPN 8220Redskins8221/NUM is/AUX an/DET offensive/ADJ term/NOUN and/CCONJ therefore/ADV inappropriate/ADJ for/ADP the/DET team/NOUN representing/VERB our/PRON nation8217s/PROPN capitalamp160/NOUN That8217s/PROPN kind/NOUN of/ADP obvious/ADJ right/ADV Most/ADJ Republicans/PROPN don8217/ADP t/NOUN think/VERB soamp160/NOUN They/PRON defend/VERB the/DET name/NOUN as/SCONJ they/PRON do/VERB other/ADJ Native/PROPN Americanbased/PROPN team/NOUN names/NOUN 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asked/VERB 8220Can8217/PROPN t/NOUN you/PRON Indians/PROPN or/CCONJ Native/PROPN Americans/PROPN or/CCONJ whatever/PRON you/PRON want/VERB to/PART be/AUX called/VERB these/DET days/NOUN see/VERB that/SCONJ making/VERB your/PRON group/NOUN identity/NOUN the/DET most/ADV important/ADJ part/NOUN of/ADP your/PRON existence/NOUN denies/VERB your/PRON individualityamp160/NOUN You/PRON sink/VERB or/CCONJ swim/VERB on/ADP your/PRON own/ADJ in/ADP our/PRON meritocracyamp160/NUM How/SCONJ can/AUX you/PRON thrive/VERB if/SCONJ your/PRON mind8217s/PROPN on/ADP the/DET reservation8221amp160/NOUN Not/PART that/SCONJ I/PRON knew/VERB any/DET Native/PROPN Americans/PROPN to/PART ask/VERB of/ADP course/NOUN Then/ADV there/PRON are/VERB the/DET cadres/NOUN of/ADP academics/NOUN liberals/NOUN foaming/VERB at/ADP the/DET mouth/NOUN about/ADP 8220narratives8221/NUM and/CCONJ 8220oppression8221/NOUN glorifying/VERB relativism/NOUN preaching/VERB white/ADJ guilt/NOUN and/CCONJ feelbad/ADJ history/NOUN 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Stamps/PROPN or/CCONJ Head/PROPN Start/PROPN or/CCONJ Medicaid8230/PROPN Republican/PROPN Armageddon/PROPN Go/PROPN Sissies/PROPN Jeremiah/PROPN Goulka/PROPN aamp160/PUNCT TomDispatch/PROPN regularamp160and/NUM former/ADJ RAND/PROPN Corporation/PROPN analyst/NOUN writes/VERB about/ADP American/ADJ politics/NOUN and/CCONJ culture/NOUN focusing/VERB on/ADP security/NOUN race/NOUN and/CCONJ theamp160/NUM Republican/PROPN Party/PROPN You/PRON can/AUX follow/VERB him/PRON on/ADP Twitter/PROPN jeremiahgoulka/NOUN or/CCONJ contact/VERB him/PRON through/ADP his/PRON websiteamp160jeremiahgoulkacom/NOUN Follow/PROPN TomDispatch/PROPN on/ADP Twitter/PROPN and/CCONJ join/VERB us/PRON on/ADP Facebook/PROPN or/CCONJ Tumblr/PROPN Check/VERB out/ADP the/DET newest/ADJ Dispatch/PROPN Book/PROPN Ann/PROPN Jones8217s/PROPN They/PRON Were/AUX Soldiers/NOUN How/SCONJ the/DET Wounded/PROPN Return/PROPN From/ADP America8217s/PROPN Wars/PROPN 8212/NUM The/DET Untold/PROPN Story/PROPN Copyright/PROPN 2014/NUM Jeremiah/PROPN Goulka/PROPN

<p>Introduction by Tom Engelhardt</p> <p>Imagine if, on the day in early April when Jiverly Voong walked into the American Civic Association Building in Binghamton, New York, and gunned down 13 people, you read <a href="http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/building_cleared_after_a_day_o.html" type="external">this headline</a> in the news: &#8220;Binghamton in shock as police investigate what some critics call &#8216;mass murder.'&#8221; If American newspapers, as well as the TV and radio news were to adopt that as a form, we would, of course, find it absurd. Until proven guilty, a man with a gun may be called &#8220;a suspect,&#8221; but we know mass murder when we see it. And yet, in one of the Bush administration&#8217;s lingering linguistic triumphs, even as information on torture programs pours out, the word &#8220;torture&#8221; has generally suffered a similar fate.</p> <p>The agents of that administration, for instance, used what, in the Middle Ages, used to be known bluntly as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cure" type="external">&#8220;the water torture&#8221;</a>&#8212;we call it &#8220;waterboarding&#8221;&#8212; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html" type="external">183 times</a> in a single month on a single prisoner and yet the other morning I woke up to this formulation on National Public Radio&#8217;s Morning Edition: &#8220;&#8230;harsh interrogations that some consider torture.&#8221; And here&#8217;s how Gwen Ifill of the News Hour <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june09/memosreport_04-21.html" type="external">put it</a> the other night: &#8220;A tough Senate report out today raised new questions about drastic interrogations of terror suspects in the Bush years.&#8221; Or as USA Today typically <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/04/65857279/1" type="external">had it</a>: &#8220;Obama opened the door for possible investigation and prosecution of former Bush administration officials who authorized the &#8216;enhanced interrogation techniques&#8217; that critics call torture.&#8221; Or, for that matter, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/politics/24cong.html" type="external">New York Times</a>: &#8220;&#8230;the Bush administration&#8217;s use of waterboarding and other techniques that critiques say crossed the line into torture&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>Torture, as a word, except in documents or in the mouths of other people&#8212;those &#8220;critics&#8221;&#8212;has evidently lost its descriptive powers in our news world where almost any other formulation is preferred. Often these days the word of choice is &#8220;harsh,&#8221; or even <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26pubed.html" type="external">&#8220;brutal,&#8221;</a> both substitutes for the anodyne &#8220;enhanced&#8221; in the Bush administration&#8217;s own description of the package of torture &#8220;techniques&#8221; it institutionalized and justified after the fact in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/16/bush-torture-memos-releas_n_187867.html" type="external">those legal memos</a>. The phrase was, of course, meant to be law-evading, since torture is a crime, not just in international law, but <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/follow-the-evidence_b_190750.html" type="external">in this country</a>. The fact is that, if you can&#8217;t call something what it is, you&#8217;re going to have a tough time facing what you&#8217;ve done, no less prosecuting crimes committed not quite in its name.</p> <p>What we call things, the names we use, matters. How, for instance, we imagine our past affects how we see the present and future, as Andrew Bacevich makes clear below. It&#8217;s little wonder that Bacevich&#8217;s book, The Limits of Power, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805090169/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20" type="external">officially published</a> in paperback today, became a bestseller. He has a way of hacking through the verbiage of our world, always heading for reality; he also has a way, as the Chinese used to put it, of &#8220;rectifying names&#8221;&#8212;that is, bringing reality and naming practices back into sync. Here, for instance, is how, at the end of Limits, he frames Washington&#8217;s consensus urge to respond to two failed wars and a failing global mission by expanding the U.S. military:</p> <p>&#8220;America doesn&#8217;t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller&#8212;that is, more modest&#8212;foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise.&#8221;</p> <p>Now, let him go to work in the same fashion on our truncated &#8220;American Century&#8221; (and catch a video of him discussing the subject as well). Tom</p> <p>Rewriting the Past by Adding In What&#8217;s Been Left Out By Andrew J. Bacevich</p> <p>In a recent column, the Washington Post&#8217;s Richard Cohen wrote, &#8220;What Henry Luce called &#8216;the American Century&#8217; is over.&#8221; Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce&#8217;s pernicious creation, lest it come back to life. This promises to take some doing.</p> <p>When the Time-Life publisher coined his famous phrase, his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action. Appearing in the February 7, 1941 issue of Life, his essay, &#8220;The American Century,&#8221; hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis. A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry. A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East. Aggressors were on the march.</p> <p>With the fate of democracy hanging in the balance, Americans diddled. Luce urged them to get off the dime. More than that, he summoned them to &#8220;accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world&#8230; to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.&#8221;</p> <p>Read today, Luce&#8217;s essay, with its strange mix of chauvinism, religiosity, and bombast (&#8220;We must now undertake to be the Good Samaritan to the entire world&#8230;&#8221;), does not stand up well. Yet the phrase &#8220;American Century&#8221; stuck and has enjoyed a remarkable run. It stands in relation to the contemporary era much as &#8220;Victorian Age&#8221; does to the nineteenth century. In one pithy phrase, it captures (or at least seems to capture) the essence of some defining truth: America as alpha and omega, source of salvation and sustenance, vanguard of history, guiding spirit and inspiration for all humankind.</p> <p>In its classic formulation, the central theme of the American Century has been one of righteousness overcoming evil. The United States (above all the U.S. military) made that triumph possible. When, having been given a final nudge on December 7, 1941, Americans finally accepted their duty to lead, they saved the world from successive diabolical totalitarianisms. In doing so, the U.S. not only preserved the possibility of human freedom but modeled what freedom ought to look like.</p> <p>Thank You, Comrades</p> <p>So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century, as recounted by its celebrants.</p> <p>The problems with this account are two-fold. First, it claims for the United States excessive credit. Second, it excludes, ignores, or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal story-line.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805090169/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20" type="external" />The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that, whatever their value in prior decades, have long since outlived their usefulness. In short, the persistence of this self-congratulatory account deprives Americans of self-awareness, hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present. Bluntly, we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant. Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over, the American people&#8212;and especially the American political class&#8212;still remain in its thrall.</p> <p>Constructing a past usable to the present requires a willingness to include much that the American Century leaves out.</p> <p>For example, to the extent that the demolition of totalitarianism deserves to be seen as a prominent theme of contemporary history (and it does), the primary credit for that achievement surely belongs to the Soviet Union. When it came to defeating the Third Reich, the Soviets bore by far the preponderant burden, sustaining 65% of all Allied deaths in World War II.</p> <p>By comparison, the United States suffered 2% of those losses, for which any American whose father or grandfather served in and survived that war should be saying: Thank you, Comrade Stalin.</p> <p>For the United States to claim credit for destroying the Wehrmacht is the equivalent of Toyota claiming credit for inventing the automobile. We entered the game late and then shrewdly scooped up more than our fair share of the winnings. The true &#8220;Greatest Generation&#8221; is the one that willingly expended millions of their fellow Russians while killing millions of German soldiers.</p> <p>Hard on the heels of World War II came the Cold War, during which erstwhile allies became rivals. Once again, after a decades-long struggle, the United States came out on top.</p> <p>Yet in determining that outcome, the brilliance of American statesmen was far less important than the ineptitude of those who presided over the Kremlin. Ham-handed Soviet leaders so mismanaged their empire that it eventually imploded, permanently discrediting Marxism-Leninism as a plausible alternative to liberal democratic capitalism. The Soviet dragon managed to slay itself. So thank you, Comrades Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev.</p> <p>Screwing the Pooch</p> <p>What flag-wavers tend to leave out of their account of the American Century is not only the contributions of others, but the various missteps perpetrated by the United States&#8212;missteps, it should be noted, that spawned many of the problems bedeviling us today.</p> <p>The instances of folly and criminality bearing the label &#8220;made-in-Washington&#8221; may not rank up there with the Armenian genocide, the Bolshevik Revolution, the appeasement of Adolf Hitler, or the Holocaust, but they sure don&#8217;t qualify as small change. To give them their due is necessarily to render the standard account of the American Century untenable.</p> <p>Here are several examples, each one familiar, even if its implications for the problems we face today are studiously ignored:</p> <p>Cuba. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain for the proclaimed purpose of liberating the so-called Pearl of the Antilles. When that brief war ended, Washington reneged on its promise. If there actually has been an American Century, it begins here, with the U.S. government breaking a solemn commitment, while baldly insisting otherwise. By converting Cuba into a protectorate, the United States set in motion a long train of events leading eventually to the rise of Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even today&#8217;s Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The line connecting these various developments may not be a straight one, given the many twists and turns along the way, but the dots do connect.</p> <p>The Bomb. Nuclear weapons imperil our existence. Used on a large scale, they could destroy civilization itself. Even now, the prospect of a lesser power like North Korea or Iran acquiring nukes sends jitters around the world. American presidents&#8212;Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line&#8212;declare the abolition of these weapons to be an imperative. What they are less inclined to acknowledge is the role the United States played in afflicting humankind with this scourge.</p> <p>The United States invented the bomb. The United States&#8212;alone among members of the nuclear club&#8212;actually employed it as a weapon of war. The U.S. led the way in defining nuclear-strike capacity as the benchmark of power in the postwar world, leaving other powers like the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China scrambling to catch up. Today, the U.S. still maintains an enormous nuclear arsenal at the ready and adamantly refuses to commit itself to a no-first-use policy, even as it professes its horror at the prospect of some other nation doing as the United States itself has done.</p> <p>Iran. Extending his hand to Tehran, President Obama has invited those who govern the Islamic republic to &#8220;unclench their fists.&#8221; Yet to a considerable degree, those clenched fists are of our own making. For most Americans, the discovery of Iran dates from the time of the notorious hostage crisis of 1979-1981 when Iranian students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran, detained several dozen U.S. diplomats and military officers, and subjected the administration of Jimmy Carter to a 444-day-long lesson in abject humiliation.</p> <p>For most Iranians, the story of U.S.-Iranian relations begins somewhat earlier. It starts in 1953, when CIA agents collaborated with their British counterparts to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and return the Shah of Iran to his throne. The plot succeeded. The Shah regained power. The Americans got oil, along with a lucrative market for exporting arms. The people of Iran pretty much got screwed. Freedom and democracy did not prosper. The antagonism that expressed itself in November 1979 with the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran was not entirely without cause.</p> <p>Afghanistan. President Obama has wasted little time in making the Afghanistan War his own. Like his predecessor he vows to defeat the Taliban. Also like his predecessor he has yet to confront the role played by the United States in creating the Taliban in the first place. Washington once took pride in the success it enjoyed funneling arms and assistance to fundamentalist Afghans waging jihad against foreign occupiers. During the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, this was considered to represent the very acme of clever statecraft. U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen caused the Soviets fits. Yet it also fed a cancer that, in time, exacted a most grievous toll on Americans themselves&#8212;and has U.S. forces today bogged down in a seemingly endless war.</p> <p>Watch the video:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Act of Contrition</p> <p>Had the United States acted otherwise, would Cuba have evolved into a stable and prosperous democracy, a beacon of hope for the rest of Latin America? Would the world have avoided the blight of nuclear weapons? Would Iran today be an ally of the United States, a beacon of liberalism in the Islamic world, rather than a charter member of the &#8220;axis of evil?&#8221; Would Afghanistan be a quiet, pastoral land at peace with its neighbors? No one, of course, can say what might have been. All we know for sure is that policies concocted in Washington by reputedly savvy statesmen now look exceedingly ill-advised.</p> <p>What are we to make of these blunders? The temptation may be to avert our gaze, thereby preserving the reassuring tale of the American Century. We should avoid that temptation and take the opposite course, acknowledging openly, freely, and unabashedly where we have gone wrong. We should carve such acknowledgments into the face of a new monument smack in the middle of the Mall in Washington: We blew it. We screwed the pooch. We caught a case of the stupids. We got it ass-backwards.</p> <p>Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes.</p> <p>Indeed, we ought to apologize. When it comes to avoiding the repetition of sin, nothing works like abject contrition. We should, therefore, tell the people of Cuba that we are sorry for having made such a hash of U.S.-Cuban relations for so long. President Obama should speak on our behalf in asking the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for forgiveness. He should express our deep collective regret to Iranians and Afghans for what past U.S. interventionism has wrought.</p> <p>The United States should do these things without any expectations of reciprocity. Regardless of what U.S. officials may say or do, Castro won&#8217;t fess up to having made his own share of mistakes. The Japanese won&#8217;t liken Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor and call it a wash. Iran&#8217;s mullahs and Afghanistan&#8217;s jihadists won&#8217;t be offering to a chastened Washington to let bygones be bygones.</p> <p>No, we apologize to them, but for our own good&#8212;to free ourselves from the accumulated conceits of the American Century and to acknowledge that the United States participated fully in the barbarism, folly, and tragedy that defines our time. For those sins, we must hold ourselves accountable.</p> <p>To solve our problems requires that we see ourselves as we really are. And that requires shedding, once and for all, the illusions embodied in the American Century.</p> <p>Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805090169/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20" type="external">The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism</a>, is just out in paperback.</p> <p>Copyright 2009 Andrew J. Bacevich</p>

Whose Century Was That?

https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/whose-century-was/

2009-04-28

4left

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt Imagine if on the day in early April when Jiverly Voong walked into the American Civic Association Building in Binghamton New York and gunned down 13 people you read this headline in the news 8220Binghamton in shock as police investigate what some critics call 8216mass murder8221 If American newspapers as well as the TV and radio news were to adopt that as a form we would of course find it absurd Until proven guilty a man with a gun may be called 8220a suspect8221 but we know mass murder when we see it And yet in one of the Bush administration8217s lingering linguistic triumphs even as information on torture programs pours out the word 8220torture8221 has generally suffered a similar fate The agents of that administration for instance used what in the Middle Ages used to be known bluntly as 8220the water torture82218212we call it 8220waterboarding82218212 183 times in a single month on a single prisoner and yet the other morning I woke up to this formulation on National Public Radio8217s Morning Edition 82208230harsh interrogations that some consider torture8221 And here8217s how Gwen Ifill of the News Hour put it the other night 8220A tough Senate report out today raised new questions about drastic interrogations of terror suspects in the Bush years8221 Or as USA Today typically had it 8220Obama opened the door for possible investigation and prosecution of former Bush administration officials who authorized the 8216enhanced interrogation techniques8217 that critics call torture8221 Or for that matter the New York Times 82208230the Bush administration8217s use of waterboarding and other techniques that critiques say crossed the line into torture82308221 Torture as a word except in documents or in the mouths of other people8212those 8220critics82218212has evidently lost its descriptive powers in our news world where almost any other formulation is preferred Often these days the word of choice is 8220harsh8221 or even 8220brutal8221 both substitutes for the anodyne 8220enhanced8221 in the Bush administration8217s own description of the package of torture 8220techniques8221 it institutionalized and justified after the fact in those legal memos The phrase was of course meant to be lawevading since torture is a crime not just in international law but in this country The fact is that if you can8217t call something what it is you8217re going to have a tough time facing what you8217ve done no less prosecuting crimes committed not quite in its name What we call things the names we use matters How for instance we imagine our past affects how we see the present and future as Andrew Bacevich makes clear below It8217s little wonder that Bacevich8217s book The Limits of Power officially published in paperback today became a bestseller He has a way of hacking through the verbiage of our world always heading for reality he also has a way as the Chinese used to put it of 8220rectifying names82218212that is bringing reality and naming practices back into sync Here for instance is how at the end of Limits he frames Washington8217s consensus urge to respond to two failed wars and a failing global mission by expanding the US military 8220America doesn8217t need a bigger army It needs a smaller8212that is more modest8212foreign policy one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 911 gave rise8221 Now let him go to work in the same fashion on our truncated 8220American Century8221 and catch a video of him discussing the subject as well Tom Rewriting the Past by Adding In What8217s Been Left Out By Andrew J Bacevich In a recent column the Washington Post8217s Richard Cohen wrote 8220What Henry Luce called 8216the American Century8217 is over8221 Cohen is right All that remains is to drive a stake through the heart of Luce8217s pernicious creation lest it come back to life This promises to take some doing When the TimeLife publisher coined his famous phrase his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action Appearing in the February 7 1941 issue of Life his essay 8220The American Century8221 hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East Aggressors were on the march With the fate of democracy hanging in the balance Americans diddled Luce urged them to get off the dime More than that he summoned them to 8220accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world8230 to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit8221 Read today Luce8217s essay with its strange mix of chauvinism religiosity and bombast 8220We must now undertake to be the Good Samaritan to the entire world82308221 does not stand up well Yet the phrase 8220American Century8221 stuck and has enjoyed a remarkable run It stands in relation to the contemporary era much as 8220Victorian Age8221 does to the nineteenth century In one pithy phrase it captures or at least seems to capture the essence of some defining truth America as alpha and omega source of salvation and sustenance vanguard of history guiding spirit and inspiration for all humankind In its classic formulation the central theme of the American Century has been one of righteousness overcoming evil The United States above all the US military made that triumph possible When having been given a final nudge on December 7 1941 Americans finally accepted their duty to lead they saved the world from successive diabolical totalitarianisms In doing so the US not only preserved the possibility of human freedom but modeled what freedom ought to look like Thank You Comrades So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century as recounted by its celebrants The problems with this account are twofold First it claims for the United States excessive credit Second it excludes ignores or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal storyline The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that whatever their value in prior decades have long since outlived their usefulness In short the persistence of this selfcongratulatory account deprives Americans of selfawareness hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present Bluntly we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over the American people8212and especially the American political class8212still remain in its thrall Constructing a past usable to the present requires a willingness to include much that the American Century leaves out For example to the extent that the demolition of totalitarianism deserves to be seen as a prominent theme of contemporary history and it does the primary credit for that achievement surely belongs to the Soviet Union When it came to defeating the Third Reich the Soviets bore by far the preponderant burden sustaining 65 of all Allied deaths in World War II By comparison the United States suffered 2 of those losses for which any American whose father or grandfather served in and survived that war should be saying Thank you Comrade Stalin For the United States to claim credit for destroying the Wehrmacht is the equivalent of Toyota claiming credit for inventing the automobile We entered the game late and then shrewdly scooped up more than our fair share of the winnings The true 8220Greatest Generation8221 is the one that willingly expended millions of their fellow Russians while killing millions of German soldiers Hard on the heels of World War II came the Cold War during which erstwhile allies became rivals Once again after a decadeslong struggle the United States came out on top Yet in determining that outcome the brilliance of American statesmen was far less important than the ineptitude of those who presided over the Kremlin Hamhanded Soviet leaders so mismanaged their empire that it eventually imploded permanently discrediting MarxismLeninism as a plausible alternative to liberal democratic capitalism The Soviet dragon managed to slay itself So thank you Comrades Malenkov Khrushchev Brezhnev Andropov Chernenko and Gorbachev Screwing the Pooch What flagwavers tend to leave out of their account of the American Century is not only the contributions of others but the various missteps perpetrated by the United States8212missteps it should be noted that spawned many of the problems bedeviling us today The instances of folly and criminality bearing the label 8220madeinWashington8221 may not rank up there with the Armenian genocide the Bolshevik Revolution the appeasement of Adolf Hitler or the Holocaust but they sure don8217t qualify as small change To give them their due is necessarily to render the standard account of the American Century untenable Here are several examples each one familiar even if its implications for the problems we face today are studiously ignored Cuba In 1898 the United States went to war with Spain for the proclaimed purpose of liberating the socalled Pearl of the Antilles When that brief war ended Washington reneged on its promise If there actually has been an American Century it begins here with the US government breaking a solemn commitment while baldly insisting otherwise By converting Cuba into a protectorate the United States set in motion a long train of events leading eventually to the rise of Fidel Castro the Bay of Pigs Operation Mongoose the Cuban Missile Crisis and even today8217s Guantanamo Bay prison camp The line connecting these various developments may not be a straight one given the many twists and turns along the way but the dots do connect The Bomb Nuclear weapons imperil our existence Used on a large scale they could destroy civilization itself Even now the prospect of a lesser power like North Korea or Iran acquiring nukes sends jitters around the world American presidents8212Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line8212declare the abolition of these weapons to be an imperative What they are less inclined to acknowledge is the role the United States played in afflicting humankind with this scourge The United States invented the bomb The United States8212alone among members of the nuclear club8212actually employed it as a weapon of war The US led the way in defining nuclearstrike capacity as the benchmark of power in the postwar world leaving other powers like the Soviet Union Great Britain France and China scrambling to catch up Today the US still maintains an enormous nuclear arsenal at the ready and adamantly refuses to commit itself to a nofirstuse policy even as it professes its horror at the prospect of some other nation doing as the United States itself has done Iran Extending his hand to Tehran President Obama has invited those who govern the Islamic republic to 8220unclench their fists8221 Yet to a considerable degree those clenched fists are of our own making For most Americans the discovery of Iran dates from the time of the notorious hostage crisis of 19791981 when Iranian students occupied the US embassy in Tehran detained several dozen US diplomats and military officers and subjected the administration of Jimmy Carter to a 444daylong lesson in abject humiliation For most Iranians the story of USIranian relations begins somewhat earlier It starts in 1953 when CIA agents collaborated with their British counterparts to overthrow the democraticallyelected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and return the Shah of Iran to his throne The plot succeeded The Shah regained power The Americans got oil along with a lucrative market for exporting arms The people of Iran pretty much got screwed Freedom and democracy did not prosper The antagonism that expressed itself in November 1979 with the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran was not entirely without cause Afghanistan President Obama has wasted little time in making the Afghanistan War his own Like his predecessor he vows to defeat the Taliban Also like his predecessor he has yet to confront the role played by the United States in creating the Taliban in the first place Washington once took pride in the success it enjoyed funneling arms and assistance to fundamentalist Afghans waging jihad against foreign occupiers During the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan this was considered to represent the very acme of clever statecraft US support for the Afghan mujahideen caused the Soviets fits Yet it also fed a cancer that in time exacted a most grievous toll on Americans themselves8212and has US forces today bogged down in a seemingly endless war Watch the video Act of Contrition Had the United States acted otherwise would Cuba have evolved into a stable and prosperous democracy a beacon of hope for the rest of Latin America Would the world have avoided the blight of nuclear weapons Would Iran today be an ally of the United States a beacon of liberalism in the Islamic world rather than a charter member of the 8220axis of evil8221 Would Afghanistan be a quiet pastoral land at peace with its neighbors No one of course can say what might have been All we know for sure is that policies concocted in Washington by reputedly savvy statesmen now look exceedingly illadvised What are we to make of these blunders The temptation may be to avert our gaze thereby preserving the reassuring tale of the American Century We should avoid that temptation and take the opposite course acknowledging openly freely and unabashedly where we have gone wrong We should carve such acknowledgments into the face of a new monument smack in the middle of the Mall in Washington We blew it We screwed the pooch We caught a case of the stupids We got it assbackwards Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes Indeed we ought to apologize When it comes to avoiding the repetition of sin nothing works like abject contrition We should therefore tell the people of Cuba that we are sorry for having made such a hash of USCuban relations for so long President Obama should speak on our behalf in asking the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for forgiveness He should express our deep collective regret to Iranians and Afghans for what past US interventionism has wrought The United States should do these things without any expectations of reciprocity Regardless of what US officials may say or do Castro won8217t fess up to having made his own share of mistakes The Japanese won8217t liken Hiroshima to Pearl Harbor and call it a wash Iran8217s mullahs and Afghanistan8217s jihadists won8217t be offering to a chastened Washington to let bygones be bygones No we apologize to them but for our own good8212to free ourselves from the accumulated conceits of the American Century and to acknowledge that the United States participated fully in the barbarism folly and tragedy that defines our time For those sins we must hold ourselves accountable To solve our problems requires that we see ourselves as we really are And that requires shedding once and for all the illusions embodied in the American Century Andrew J Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University His most recent book The Limits of Power The End of American Exceptionalism is just out in paperback Copyright 2009 Andrew J Bacevich

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<p>(Reuters) - Apple Inc said on Thursday that it will not hold a bidding process when it chooses the site for a planned new U.S. campus, marking a stark difference from the public contest that Amazon.com Inc has held for its second headquarters.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Apple Campus 2 is seen under construction in Cupertino, California in this aerial photo taken January 13, 2017. REUTERS/Noah Berger/File Photo <p>An Apple spokesman confirmed that the company does not plan to hold a bidding process for the new campus, after Apple chief executive Tim Cook said on Wednesday that he did not want &#8220;an &#8220;auction kind of process.&#8221;</p> <p>Apple&#8217;s new campus is unlikely to be located in California, where the tech company&#8217;s headquarters are housed at its sleek &#8220;spaceship&#8221; Apple Park campus in Cupertino, or in Texas, where it has facilities in Austin that house customer service and some computer assembly operations, said Cook in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve narrowed the list a lot,&#8221; Cook said of potential sites. &#8220;We wanted to narrow it so we prevent this auction kind of process that we want to stay out of.&#8221;</p> <p>Apple announced plans for a new site on Wednesday, along with a 5-year, $30 billion U.S. spending plan that will generate 20,000 jobs and an expected payment of $38 billion in taxes on its foreign profits.</p> <p>The company said it plans to announce the location of the site later this year.</p> <p>Cities across the country have expressed an interest in hosting the new campus. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told reporters on Wednesday at a city hall press conference: &#8220;We&#8217;re going to go compete and we&#8217;re going to put our best foot forward.&#8221;</p> <p>Apple&#8217;s decision stands in contrast to Amazon, which has held a highly publicized process to select a second headquarters that the e-commerce giant says will generate as many as 50,000 jobs.</p> <p>On Thursday, Amazon narrowed its list of applicants to 20 cities, including Canada&#8217;s Toronto and smaller cities such as Raleigh, North Carolina and Columbus, Ohio.</p> <p>Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco, Additional reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Yahoo Japan Corp said on Friday it would buy a minority stake in a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange, becoming the latest major Japanese financial services provider to shrug off security concerns and join the digital money industry.</p> FILE PHOTO: A website of Yahoo Japan Corp is seen on a computer screen in Tokyo August 19, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Yahoo Japan, which is also the country&#8217;s biggest online auction site, said in a statement it would buy through a subsidiary a 40 percent stake in BitARG Exchange Tokyo, with services planned for launch in the autumn.</p> <p>Yahoo Japan did not give details of the value of the investment. But a person familiar with the matter said it would likely total 2 billion to 3 billion yen (13.06 million pounds to 19.59 million pounds).</p> <p>Shares in Yahoo Japan closed down 0.2 percent, against a 0.6 gain for the benchmark Nikkei average.</p> <p>The deal comes after Japanese online brokerage firm Monex Group Inc said last week it would buy hacked cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc for $34 million.</p> <p>That saw Monex join other mainstream financial services providers such as larger peer SBI Holdings Inc and messaging app operator Line Corp in looking to enter the cryptocurrency industry.</p> <p>Reporting by Thomas Wilson and Yoshiyasu Shida</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China has laid out national guidelines for testing self-driving cars as it looks to keep pace with the United States in a global race to develop autonomous vehicles, the China Daily newspaper reported on Friday, citing the country&#8217;s industry ministry.</p> FILE PHOTO: A Baidu's Apollo autonomous car is seen during a public road test for self-driving vehicles in Beijing, China March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer <p>The rules lay out requirements that vehicles must first be tested in non-public zones, that road tests can only be on designated streets and that a qualified person must always sit in the driver&#8217;s position, ready to take over control.</p> <p>China is making a major push into autonomous smart vehicles, keen to have its own national champions in self-driving to compete with global leaders such as Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc, and Tesla Inc.</p> <p>Xin Guobin, the country&#8217;s vice industry minister, said China would slip behind rivals like the United States if it did not &#8220;firmly seize&#8221; initiative in the sector, which he called a key plank of Beijing &#8220;Made in China 2025&#8221; push.</p> <p>&#8220;We will accelerate to build a strong manufacturing country, a strong country in science and technology with strong networks and transportation,&#8221; he said in comments posed on the Ministry of Industry of Information Technology website.</p> <p>Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai have previously announced local guidelines for self-driving tests, while internet giant Baidu Inc already has approval to test self-driving vehicles on city streets.</p> <p>In the wake of two high-profile crashes in the United States involving Uber Technologies [UBER.UL] and Tesla, MIIT vice minister Xin said China would emphasize safety as the &#8220;top priority&#8221; in testing for autonomous vehicles.</p> <p>&#8220;To ensure the safety of road tests, we will not only not only require that road tests take place on prescribed streets, but also that the test driver sits in the driver position throughout, monitoring the car and the surrounding environment and ready to take control of the car at any time,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a lesson that we have learned from the accidents faced by Uber and Tesla.&#8221;</p> <p>Fatal crashes last month involving the two U.S. firms have raised scrutiny on self-driving globally and ramped up pressure on the industry to prove its software and sensors are safe.</p> <p>Xin added China should also push forward other technologies needed to support smart vehicles, including next-generation 5G communications networks and intelligent roads.</p> <p>Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Cryptocurrency prices jumped on Thursday, led by a surge in bitcoin to two-week highs, with people active in the market citing a squeeze on traders who have bet against prices, given a lack of obvious news to trigger the gains.</p> FILE PHOTO: A token of the virtual currency Bitcoin is seen placed on a monitor that displays binary digits in this illustration picture, December 8, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo <p>On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=BTC&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">BTC=BTSP</a>, bitcoin rose as much as 17 percent at one point in mid-morning European trading. By 1250 GMT, it was up 11 percent at $7,705, its highest level since March 29.</p> <p>Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum .MVETH and Ripple .MVXRP also rose sharply, gaining more than 10 percent. EOS, another virtual currency, rose more than 30 percent, according to CoinMarketcap.com, which tracks the industry.</p> <p>After rocketing to almost $20,000 in December, bitcoin&#8217;s price has fallen this year on the back of worries about a regulatory clampdown and concerns it is a speculative bubble that is now deflating.</p> <p>That has prompted some traders to bet heavily against - to short - bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.</p> <p>After their prices stabilized in recent days and rose earlier on Thursday, those shorts were squeezed out of their positions, forcing the price upwards.</p> <p>Two people active in the cryptocurrency market said the biggest moves in trading of bitcoin had occurred on the Bitfinex exchange before spreading to other platforms.</p> <p>&#8220;People overshorting on Bitfinex so bit of a squeeze there,&#8221; said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency analysis website CryptoCompare.</p> <p>Sentiment towards cryptocurrencies has improved in recent days and prices were consolidating, which can lead the price to suddenly &#8220;explode&#8221; higher, said Naeem Aslam, an analyst at ThinkMarkets who owns and trades virtual currencies.</p> <p>Other analysts said there was no obvious news behind the move, although one cited recent reports prominent billionaire trader George Soros had decided to start trading cryptocurrencies.</p> <p>(This version of the story corrects the name of analyst in the penultimate paragraph)</p> <p>Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin; Editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The European Union&#8217;s top antitrust regulator, Margrethe Vestager, has made it her mission to stem alleged anti-competitive abuses by big American tech companies, threatening as recently as last month to break up Alphabet Inc&#8217;s Google.</p> FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of laptop and mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of Google logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration <p>But a decision in the most important of three antitrust cases against Google - this one aimed at loosening its stranglehold over Android-powered smartphones - is likely to show just how difficult it is, even for a committed trust-buster like Vestager, to dent the power of the U.S. giants.</p> <p>The final ruling, expected within the next few months, will likely involve a multi-billion-dollar fine and an end to clauses in licensing agreements that stop smartphone vendors from promoting alternatives to apps such as Google Search and Maps, people familiar with the European Commission&#8217;s thinking say.</p> <p>The decision, which is expected to hew closely to recommendations made in 2016 soon after the probe began, will almost certainly leave Google&#8217;s market dominance intact because the incentives to stick with the company are so strong, say industry executives, analysts and even its foes.</p> <p>Robert Marcus, a former member of Microsoft&#8217;s mobile strategy team and now general partner at investment firm Quantum Wave Capital, said it was &#8220;virtually impossible&#8221; that any EU penalty would &#8220;change anything massively for Google.&#8221;</p> <p>The case holds lessons for regulators in Europe and elsewhere as they pursue Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon over practices including anti-competitive conduct, tax avoidance and a cavalier approach to user data and hate speech.</p> <p>German regulators have shown that targeted measures can force changes in a company&#8217;s conduct, such as compelling social media companies to quickly remove hate speech. Tax authorities can close loopholes and change laws to collect more money.</p> <p>But stimulating competition in markets where products and services are free is a far more difficult undertaking.</p> <p>&#8220;Once someone is entrenched, you can&#8217;t say, &#8216;stop&#8217; and things get better,&#8221; said Mark Patterson, a Fordham University law professor who has researched Google antitrust issues.</p> <p>The Commission declined to comment on the case. Google did not respond to a request for comment.</p> FEW ALTERNATIVES <p>Google holds 90 percent of the European search market, meaning there are few plausible alternatives for handset makers or consumers who might want to opt out. Phone vendors will be reluctant to dump popular applications such as Google Maps even if they could do so freely. An executive at one major smartphone maker said European wireless carriers have told his company they would refuse to market phones without Google Search or the Google Play app store.</p> <p>Alternatives to Android remain scarce. And Google still has the option of going all-out with its own Pixel phones if new rules make licensing Android unappealing. Tom Moss, a former Google employee who wrote key parts of the first Android licensing agreements a decade ago, told Reuters tight control was necessary at the time, both to assure a standard platform for third-party software-makers to build Android apps and to guarantee customers a consistent experience.</p> <p>Moss, now with the gaming hardware company Razer, acknowledges that at this stage, however, &#8220;keeping all the same policies and approaches can seem heavy-handed, unfair and anticompetitive&#8221;.</p> <p>He added: &#8220;It&#8217;s not the end of the world&#8221; for Google that the EU is reassessing the arrangements.</p> <p>The EU&#8217;s Android investigation began in 2015 following a complaint two years earlier from lobbying group FairSearch, whose members at the time included competitors like Oracle, Nokia and Microsoft.</p> <p>Sources said Amazon also complained.</p> <p>A preliminary document from 2016, seen by Reuters, said regulators should levy a large fine and that Google should stop giving revenue sharing payments to smartphone makers to pre-install only Google Search, as well as stop requiring Google&#8217;s Chrome browser and other apps to be installed alongside Google&#8217;s Play store.</p> <p>The EU was not likely to go further than that recommendation, EU sources said. Ordering the company to divest its Android business altogether, for example, would be difficult to justify under European law, European Commission sources said.</p> <p>Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley said in January the EU &#8220;could require more onerous changes&#8221; than it did last year in its inquiry into whether Google was favoring its own online shopping service in search results.</p> <p>In that case, Google was fined $2.4 billion euros - a large amount for most companies, but barely 2 percent of the company&#8217;s 2017 sales.</p> <p>Changes made by Google in response to the EU&#8217;s order did stoke more competition for certain ad slots, but because of the way Google&#8217;s ad auction system works that resulted in more money for the company without giving competitors enough of a leg up to gain market share.</p> <p>There&#8217;s still a possibility the Commission could compel Google to work with manufacturing partners that want to use modified versions of Android, allowing what is known as &#8220;forking&#8221; of the operating system, EU sources said.</p> <p>But the ruling almost certainly will not be enough to break Google&#8217;s monopolistic hold, FairSearch lawyer Thomas Vinje said.</p> <p>&#8220;The Android case has taken too long, and ... Google has in large measure achieved the elimination of competition it sought,&#8221; Vinje said.</p> FILE PHOTO: European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir <p>Google is appealing the shopping verdict, and could also appeal any ruling in the Android case.</p> RIVALS <p>The big issue for Google is less what the EU might do than how the strategies of smartphone makers might evolve. Global leader Samsung Electronics has long pushed its own apps for messaging, Internet browsing and other functionality.</p> <p>Samsung could end its relationship with Google if it truly wanted to go in a different direction, Moss said. So far, however, Samsung has been unwilling to take that step. Among other things, doing so could drive customers to Google&#8217;s own Pixel smartphone because it comes with a full range of Google apps and often gets first access to new features.</p> <p>Other challenges could come from Amazon, Alibaba and other companies who might customize an &#8220;open source&#8221; version of Android that Google has made freely available for public use.</p> <p>There are few signs so far that any major smartphone vendors want to opt for a different operating system. Amazon tried to build its own phone with a modified version of Android several years ago, but it was a spectacular flop.</p> <p>Google&#8217;s rivals in searches and Internet browsers are holding out hope they&#8217;ll be better able to compete under a new EU regulatory regime.</p> <p>Guillaume Champeau, ethics and public relations officer at French search engine company Qwant, said an agreement it reached with a phone maker fell through last year because of Google&#8217;s rules.</p> <p>&#8220;We want to have a chance to compete, but we need to be able to have agreements with phone manufacturers,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Such deals would not be a big threat to Google.</p> <p>&#8220;Android is utterly dominant,&#8221; said technology analyst Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight. &#8220;Whatever the ruling, manufacturers are heavily reliant [on it] so nothing is going to change dramatically.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Sonya Hepinstall</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Apple says it will decide new campus site without an auction Yahoo Japan to buy minority stake in cryptocurrency exchange China lays out self-driving rules in global race: China Daily Bitcoin price jumps to two-week high, leads broad crypto surge Google poised to emerge unscathed from European antitrust crackdown

https://reuters.com/article/apple-campus/apple-says-it-will-decide-new-campus-site-without-an-auction-idUSL1N1PD260

2018-01-18

2least

Reuters Apple Inc said on Thursday that it will not hold a bidding process when it chooses the site for a planned new US campus marking a stark difference from the public contest that Amazoncom Inc has held for its second headquarters FILE PHOTO The Apple Campus 2 is seen under construction in Cupertino California in this aerial photo taken January 13 2017 REUTERSNoah BergerFile Photo An Apple spokesman confirmed that the company does not plan to hold a bidding process for the new campus after Apple chief executive Tim Cook said on Wednesday that he did not want 8220an 8220auction kind of process8221 Apple8217s new campus is unlikely to be located in California where the tech company8217s headquarters are housed at its sleek 8220spaceship8221 Apple Park campus in Cupertino or in Texas where it has facilities in Austin that house customer service and some computer assembly operations said Cook in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday 8220We8217ve narrowed the list a lot8221 Cook said of potential sites 8220We wanted to narrow it so we prevent this auction kind of process that we want to stay out of8221 Apple announced plans for a new site on Wednesday along with a 5year 30 billion US spending plan that will generate 20000 jobs and an expected payment of 38 billion in taxes on its foreign profits The company said it plans to announce the location of the site later this year Cities across the country have expressed an interest in hosting the new campus Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told reporters on Wednesday at a city hall press conference 8220We8217re going to go compete and we8217re going to put our best foot forward8221 Apple8217s decision stands in contrast to Amazon which has held a highly publicized process to select a second headquarters that the ecommerce giant says will generate as many as 50000 jobs On Thursday Amazon narrowed its list of applicants to 20 cities including Canada8217s Toronto and smaller cities such as Raleigh North Carolina and Columbus Ohio Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco Additional reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago Editing by Rosalba OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters Yahoo Japan Corp said on Friday it would buy a minority stake in a Tokyobased cryptocurrency exchange becoming the latest major Japanese financial services provider to shrug off security concerns and join the digital money industry FILE PHOTO A website of Yahoo Japan Corp is seen on a computer screen in Tokyo August 19 2009 REUTERSStringer Yahoo Japan which is also the country8217s biggest online auction site said in a statement it would buy through a subsidiary a 40 percent stake in BitARG Exchange Tokyo with services planned for launch in the autumn Yahoo Japan did not give details of the value of the investment But a person familiar with the matter said it would likely total 2 billion to 3 billion yen 1306 million pounds to 1959 million pounds Shares in Yahoo Japan closed down 02 percent against a 06 gain for the benchmark Nikkei average The deal comes after Japanese online brokerage firm Monex Group Inc said last week it would buy hacked cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc for 34 million That saw Monex join other mainstream financial services providers such as larger peer SBI Holdings Inc and messaging app operator Line Corp in looking to enter the cryptocurrency industry Reporting by Thomas Wilson and Yoshiyasu Shida Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SHANGHAI Reuters China has laid out national guidelines for testing selfdriving cars as it looks to keep pace with the United States in a global race to develop autonomous vehicles the China Daily newspaper reported on Friday citing the country8217s industry ministry FILE PHOTO A Baidus Apollo autonomous car is seen during a public road test for selfdriving vehicles in Beijing China March 22 2018 REUTERSStringer The rules lay out requirements that vehicles must first be tested in nonpublic zones that road tests can only be on designated streets and that a qualified person must always sit in the driver8217s position ready to take over control China is making a major push into autonomous smart vehicles keen to have its own national champions in selfdriving to compete with global leaders such as Waymo the selfdriving arm of Google parent Alphabet Inc and Tesla Inc Xin Guobin the country8217s vice industry minister said China would slip behind rivals like the United States if it did not 8220firmly seize8221 initiative in the sector which he called a key plank of Beijing 8220Made in China 20258221 push 8220We will accelerate to build a strong manufacturing country a strong country in science and technology with strong networks and transportation8221 he said in comments posed on the Ministry of Industry of Information Technology website Chinese cities including Beijing and Shanghai have previously announced local guidelines for selfdriving tests while internet giant Baidu Inc already has approval to test selfdriving vehicles on city streets In the wake of two highprofile crashes in the United States involving Uber Technologies UBERUL and Tesla MIIT vice minister Xin said China would emphasize safety as the 8220top priority8221 in testing for autonomous vehicles 8220To ensure the safety of road tests we will not only not only require that road tests take place on prescribed streets but also that the test driver sits in the driver position throughout monitoring the car and the surrounding environment and ready to take control of the car at any time8221 he added 8220This is a lesson that we have learned from the accidents faced by Uber and Tesla8221 Fatal crashes last month involving the two US firms have raised scrutiny on selfdriving globally and ramped up pressure on the industry to prove its software and sensors are safe Xin added China should also push forward other technologies needed to support smart vehicles including nextgeneration 5G communications networks and intelligent roads Reporting by Adam Jourdan Editing by Shri Navaratnam Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Cryptocurrency prices jumped on Thursday led by a surge in bitcoin to twoweek highs with people active in the market citing a squeeze on traders who have bet against prices given a lack of obvious news to trigger the gains FILE PHOTO A token of the virtual currency Bitcoin is seen placed on a monitor that displays binary digits in this illustration picture December 8 2017 REUTERSDado RuvicIllustrationFile Photo On the Luxembourgbased Bitstamp exchange BTCBTSP bitcoin rose as much as 17 percent at one point in midmorning European trading By 1250 GMT it was up 11 percent at 7705 its highest level since March 29 Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum MVETH and Ripple MVXRP also rose sharply gaining more than 10 percent EOS another virtual currency rose more than 30 percent according to CoinMarketcapcom which tracks the industry After rocketing to almost 20000 in December bitcoin8217s price has fallen this year on the back of worries about a regulatory clampdown and concerns it is a speculative bubble that is now deflating That has prompted some traders to bet heavily against to short bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies After their prices stabilized in recent days and rose earlier on Thursday those shorts were squeezed out of their positions forcing the price upwards Two people active in the cryptocurrency market said the biggest moves in trading of bitcoin had occurred on the Bitfinex exchange before spreading to other platforms 8220People overshorting on Bitfinex so bit of a squeeze there8221 said Charles Hayter founder of cryptocurrency analysis website CryptoCompare Sentiment towards cryptocurrencies has improved in recent days and prices were consolidating which can lead the price to suddenly 8220explode8221 higher said Naeem Aslam an analyst at ThinkMarkets who owns and trades virtual currencies Other analysts said there was no obvious news behind the move although one cited recent reports prominent billionaire trader George Soros had decided to start trading cryptocurrencies This version of the story corrects the name of analyst in the penultimate paragraph Reporting by Tommy Wilkes Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin Editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELSSAN FRANCISCO Reuters The European Union8217s top antitrust regulator Margrethe Vestager has made it her mission to stem alleged anticompetitive abuses by big American tech companies threatening as recently as last month to break up Alphabet Inc8217s Google FILE PHOTO Silhouettes of laptop and mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of Google logo in this picture illustration taken March 28 2018 REUTERSDado RuvicIllustration But a decision in the most important of three antitrust cases against Google this one aimed at loosening its stranglehold over Androidpowered smartphones is likely to show just how difficult it is even for a committed trustbuster like Vestager to dent the power of the US giants The final ruling expected within the next few months will likely involve a multibilliondollar fine and an end to clauses in licensing agreements that stop smartphone vendors from promoting alternatives to apps such as Google Search and Maps people familiar with the European Commission8217s thinking say The decision which is expected to hew closely to recommendations made in 2016 soon after the probe began will almost certainly leave Google8217s market dominance intact because the incentives to stick with the company are so strong say industry executives analysts and even its foes Robert Marcus a former member of Microsoft8217s mobile strategy team and now general partner at investment firm Quantum Wave Capital said it was 8220virtually impossible8221 that any EU penalty would 8220change anything massively for Google8221 The case holds lessons for regulators in Europe and elsewhere as they pursue Google Apple Facebook and Amazon over practices including anticompetitive conduct tax avoidance and a cavalier approach to user data and hate speech German regulators have shown that targeted measures can force changes in a company8217s conduct such as compelling social media companies to quickly remove hate speech Tax authorities can close loopholes and change laws to collect more money But stimulating competition in markets where products and services are free is a far more difficult undertaking 8220Once someone is entrenched you can8217t say 8216stop8217 and things get better8221 said Mark Patterson a Fordham University law professor who has researched Google antitrust issues The Commission declined to comment on the case Google did not respond to a request for comment FEW ALTERNATIVES Google holds 90 percent of the European search market meaning there are few plausible alternatives for handset makers or consumers who might want to opt out Phone vendors will be reluctant to dump popular applications such as Google Maps even if they could do so freely An executive at one major smartphone maker said European wireless carriers have told his company they would refuse to market phones without Google Search or the Google Play app store Alternatives to Android remain scarce And Google still has the option of going allout with its own Pixel phones if new rules make licensing Android unappealing Tom Moss a former Google employee who wrote key parts of the first Android licensing agreements a decade ago told Reuters tight control was necessary at the time both to assure a standard platform for thirdparty softwaremakers to build Android apps and to guarantee customers a consistent experience Moss now with the gaming hardware company Razer acknowledges that at this stage however 8220keeping all the same policies and approaches can seem heavyhanded unfair and anticompetitive8221 He added 8220It8217s not the end of the world8221 for Google that the EU is reassessing the arrangements The EU8217s Android investigation began in 2015 following a complaint two years earlier from lobbying group FairSearch whose members at the time included competitors like Oracle Nokia and Microsoft Sources said Amazon also complained A preliminary document from 2016 seen by Reuters said regulators should levy a large fine and that Google should stop giving revenue sharing payments to smartphone makers to preinstall only Google Search as well as stop requiring Google8217s Chrome browser and other apps to be installed alongside Google8217s Play store The EU was not likely to go further than that recommendation EU sources said Ordering the company to divest its Android business altogether for example would be difficult to justify under European law European Commission sources said Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley said in January the EU 8220could require more onerous changes8221 than it did last year in its inquiry into whether Google was favoring its own online shopping service in search results In that case Google was fined 24 billion euros a large amount for most companies but barely 2 percent of the company8217s 2017 sales Changes made by Google in response to the EU8217s order did stoke more competition for certain ad slots but because of the way Google8217s ad auction system works that resulted in more money for the company without giving competitors enough of a leg up to gain market share There8217s still a possibility the Commission could compel Google to work with manufacturing partners that want to use modified versions of Android allowing what is known as 8220forking8221 of the operating system EU sources said But the ruling almost certainly will not be enough to break Google8217s monopolistic hold FairSearch lawyer Thomas Vinje said 8220The Android case has taken too long and Google has in large measure achieved the elimination of competition it sought8221 Vinje said FILE PHOTO European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commissions headquarters in Brussels Belgium March 21 2018 REUTERSFrancois Lenoir Google is appealing the shopping verdict and could also appeal any ruling in the Android case RIVALS The big issue for Google is less what the EU might do than how the strategies of smartphone makers might evolve Global leader Samsung Electronics has long pushed its own apps for messaging Internet browsing and other functionality Samsung could end its relationship with Google if it truly wanted to go in a different direction Moss said So far however Samsung has been unwilling to take that step Among other things doing so could drive customers to Google8217s own Pixel smartphone because it comes with a full range of Google apps and often gets first access to new features Other challenges could come from Amazon Alibaba and other companies who might customize an 8220open source8221 version of Android that Google has made freely available for public use There are few signs so far that any major smartphone vendors want to opt for a different operating system Amazon tried to build its own phone with a modified version of Android several years ago but it was a spectacular flop Google8217s rivals in searches and Internet browsers are holding out hope they8217ll be better able to compete under a new EU regulatory regime Guillaume Champeau ethics and public relations officer at French search engine company Qwant said an agreement it reached with a phone maker fell through last year because of Google8217s rules 8220We want to have a chance to compete but we need to be able to have agreements with phone manufacturers8221 he said Such deals would not be a big threat to Google 8220Android is utterly dominant8221 said technology analyst Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight 8220Whatever the ruling manufacturers are heavily reliant on it so nothing is going to change dramatically8221 Additional reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco Editing by Jonathan Weber and Sonya Hepinstall Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Ahmed Was Arrested After His Clock Was Reported As A "Hoax Bomb." On September 14, a 14-year-old Sudanese-American teenager from Irving, Texas, was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to his school. School officials reported the clock as a "hoax bomb," and called the local police. Five police officers handcuffed the child and brought him to a juvenile detention center, where he was finger-printed and interrogated before being released to his parents. Two days later, the Irving Police Department announced that Ahmed was no longer facing criminal charges, but the boy continued to serve out a three-day suspension from school for the creation of a so-called "hoax bomb." The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is currently investigating the incident. [The Dallas Morning News, <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dallas-county/headlines/20150915-irving-ninth-grader-arrested-after-taking-homemade-clock-to-school.ece" type="external">9/16/15</a>;The Washington Post, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/09/16/they-thought-it-was-a-bomb-ahmed-mohamed-texas-9th-grader-arrested-after-bringing-a-home-built-clock-to-school/" type="external">9/16/15</a>]</p> <p>After His Arrest, Ahmed Gained Support From Many Public Figures, Including President Obama. After the story of Ahmed's arrest was reported, it gained widespread public attention on social media. President Obama tweeted Ahmed an invitation to the White House, Hillary Clinton, Arne Duncan, and Mark Zuckerberg expressed their support, and Ahmed was offered an internship at Twitter. Well-wishers tweeted their support for Ahmed using the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed. A question about Ahmed's arrest was also featured at the earlier GOP debate on CNN Wednesday night. As the New York Times reported:</p> <p>Ahmed Mohamed's homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb. By Wednesday, it had brought him an invitation to the White House, support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg, and a moment of head-spinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion.</p> <p>As a result, a 14-year-old freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., who is partial to tinkering, technology and NASA T-shirts and wants to go to M.I.T., found himself in a social media whirlwind that reflected the nation's charged debates on Islam, immigration and ethnicity. [The New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-is-under-police-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html?_r=0" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>MIT And Harvard Offered Ahmed Tours Of Their Astrophysics Facilities. On the September 17 edition of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, Ahmed was surprised during an interview about his arrest by astrophysicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and extended an invitation to tour the astrophysics facilities at both MIT, which he had described as his "dream school," and Harvard University. [MSNBC, All In with Chris Hayes, <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/mit-invites-ahmed-mohamed-to-visit-526929987562" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Ahmed Will Transfer Schools, Citing Previous Prejudice From School Officials. In an interview with Dallas-Fort Worth ABC affiliate WFAA 8, Ahmed said he initially was "scared" that "nobody was going to care about [his arrest]" because he is Muslim, and described a previous instance when he was "singled-out" by his middle school vice principal who "call[ed] him names," and "threatened to follow [him] until he graduate[d]." Toward the end of the interview, Ahmed noted that he chose MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas specifically because it offered engineering classed, but that he would not be returning to the school. [WFAA 8, <a href="http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/2015/09/17/ahmed-speaks-about-clock-incident-says-hes-eager-to-show-it-to-everyone/32545953/" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Fox Contributor Jonah Goldberg: Everyone Is Defending Ahmed "Because Of the Political Correctness Angle." On the September 17 edition of Fox's Outnumbered, Fox contributor and National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg argued that Ahmed's case received public attention "because of the political correctness angle," claiming that public attention would be different if Ahmed had been wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt:</p> <p /> <p>JONAH GOLDBERG: But what drives me crazy is-- first of all, if this kid had a Confederate flag t-shirt, and brought in the same clock, it'd be very interesting how the culture would flip on this. I think the school--</p> <p>HARRIS FAULKNER: How do you think the culture would flip on this?</p> <p>GOLDBERG: Well, then we'd be hearing about look, the school officials had to do what they had to do. In the days of mass shootings, and then the Colorado shooting, and blah blah blah, and South Carolina, and I would have sympathy for that. I don't think-- what drives me crazy, is that no one freaks out about the kids who are suspended for making a gun out of a Pop-Tart, or, you know, drawing something silly on a piece of paper. And everyone's rushing to defend this kid because of the political correctness angle. [Fox News, Outnumbered, <a href="/embed/static/clips/2015/09/18/42048/fnc-outnumbered-20150917-clockarrest" type="external">9/17/15</a>; Media Matters, <a href="/video/2015/09/17/fox-host-attacks-obama-for-supporting-the-tx-te/205622" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Fox's Gallagher: Ahmed Wasn't "Forthcoming" Enough With Police.&amp;#160;On the September 18 edition of Fox News'&amp;#160;The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson, Fox contributor Mike Gallagher repeatedly compared Ahmed's homemade clock to a bomb, and suggested that the student should have been more "forthcoming" when he was interrogated by the police:</p> <p /> <p>MIKE GALLAGHER: The ABC affiliate in Dallas reports that the kid wasn't particularly forthcoming when the police were called. Let me give him a word of advice. When he goes to the White House for his clock-building summit with President Obama, he might want to leave that contraption behind because the U.S. Secret Service would have big problems with it. Did you see it? The thing doesn't look like a clock.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>GALLAGHER: We're told: see something, say something. Now, I guess if you see something--</p> <p>ALAN COLMES: A clock?</p> <p>GALLAGHER: That looks like a clock?</p> <p>COLMES: A clock? A 14 year-old with a clock?</p> <p>GALLAGHER: Yeah, put that clock around your wrist, okay. Put it side by side by a real suitcase bomb, and it's hard to tell the difference. [Fox News, The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson, <a href="/embed/static/clips/2015/09/18/42054/fnc-trs-20150918-ahmedclock" type="external">9/18/15</a>]</p> <p>Limbaugh: Obama Is Using This To "Characterize The United States As A Racist And Bigoted Country." On the September 17 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh attacked President Obama for supposedly using Ahmed's experience to make his own "star shine a little bit brighter," and blamed Ahmed and "zero-tolerance" school policies for fueling the arrest:</p> <p>RUSH: So the point here is that the effort is being made to blame school officials and the cops for Islamophobia here, and that is not what is going on. Zero-tolerance policies at schools, which are the direct result of previous incidents -- the zero tolerance is out of control, such as pretending to shoot a gun with your finger (that gets you sent home) -- is what's responsible here. It's just the latest example, and it's made to order for Obama, because here we have once again backlash against Muslims, you see?</p> <p>That's what this really is. So Obama will be able to make a speech about how dangerous this is, how unfortunate it is, how sorry it is. Innocent little 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed has a brilliant science project, a brilliant clock, a new way of doing a clock. (Yeah, one looks just like a bomb in a briefcase.) Obama gets to bring him to the White House, make a star out of him, make Obama's star shine even brighter. And once again, the bottom line: Characterize the United States as a racist and bigoted country. [Premiere Radio Networks,The Rush Limbaugh Show, <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/09/17/the_clock_that_kid_brought_to_school_looked_like_a_freakin_bomb" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>National Review Online: "A Phony Case Of Islamophobia." National Review Online correspondent Kevin D. Williamson declared Ahmed's controversial arrest to be "a phony case of Islamophobia," and attacked President Obama and other public figures for expressing support for Ahmed, calling their actions "cheap moral preening," and arguing that the story only received attention because it "can be used to further a story" about racism in the United States:</p> <p>The story immediately became ubiquitous not because of what actually happened -- boneheaded as that was -- but because it can be used to further a story that the media already want to tell: that the United States is morally corrupt and irredeemably racist; that Muslims are under siege; that "white privilege" blinds the majority of Americans to the corruption at the heart of everything red, white, and blue. Muslim kid meets paranoia in Texas is A-1 copy; NRA-wearing kid meets paranoia in West Virginia, not so much.</p> <p>President Barack Obama, never one to miss an opportunity for cheap moral preening, invited Mohamed to the White House. [National Review Online, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424202/ahmed-mohamed-clock" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Breitbart Editor: "Race Grifters Unite." Breitbart.com Editor-At-Large John Nolte argued that the public attention given to the role of race in Ahmed's case was the work of "shameless opportunists," and compared Ahmed's experience to examples of "hysterical Zero Tolerance school policies," such as a student suspended for violating school dress code, praying, and saying "God bless you":</p> <p>Naturally, these shameless opportunists expressed zero outrage when a fifth-grader, a full four years younger than Ahmed, was arrested and charged with brandishing a weapon for bringing a toy gun on a school bus.</p> <p>Why would they? There's no political upside for the Left unless you can scream racism.</p> <p>Then there was the 7 year-old boy suspended for a Pop Tart Gun.</p> <p>Once again: No political upside, no media uproar, no White House invite.</p> <p>Then there was the 5th grade girl who was searched by school officials for possessing a paper gun.</p> <p>No political upside means no media uproar and no White House invite. [Breitbart.com, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/16/race-grifters-unite-14-year-old-ahmed-mohamed-arrested-over-suitcase-clock/" type="external">9/16/15</a>]</p> <p>The Federalist Editor: #IStandWithAhmed Is About "Pretend Islamaphobia." Senior editor of The Federalist, David Harsanyi, argued that public support for Ahmed was "selective concern trolling" to create the perception that discrimination against Muslims is a pervasive problem in American life:</p> <p>So a story that perfectly illustrated the tendencies of overbearing school administrators is now transformed into a teachable moment about "Islamophobia." And blowing up a nonevent is a way to create the perception that discrimination against Muslims is a pervasive problem in American life. In the real world, though, the preponderance of victims of jumpy teachers are not Muslims. But those cases do not provide Vox or the White House with the fodder they need for some self-satisfying lecturing. [The Federalist, <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/17/istandwithahmed-is-not-about-authoritarian-bureaucrats-its-about-pretend-islamophobia/" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Townhall Columnist: Ahmed "Created An Environment That Required The Teachers To Act." Townhall columnist Jim Hanson claimed the school was being unfairly "slurred as Islamophobic" and placed the blame on the 14-year-old Ahmed for "bring[ing] something to school that causes questions to be asked," and on "nanny state, zero tolerance policies." Hanson compared Ahmed's clock to pictures of an Iranian-made improvised explosive device (IED) trigger, calling it a "dead ringer" for triggers used on homemade bombs the author saw in Iraq:</p> <p>The latest outrage being used to promote the false narrative about unfair treatment of Muslims is the teenager, Ahmed Mohamed, in Irving Texas arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. If you just skimmed the surface and saw the picture of the skinny nerd in the NASA t-shirt in handcuffs it would be easy to see a problem.</p> <p>And there is one, but it's not discrimination against a Muslim kid that wouldn't have happened to a non-Muslim. It's nanny state, zero tolerance policies that take away the ability to apply common sense to complicated situations. In this case, whether or not to put cuffs on a 14 year old when he brings something to school that causes questions to be asked.</p> <p>But as far as the other question, was the clock device he brought to school a legitimate cause for concern, the answer is an unequivocal yes. I have built and taught classes on improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the clock he brought to school is a dead ringer for the trigger used on many of these homemade bombs. [Townhall.com, <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/jimhanson/2015/09/17/a-clock-or-a-bomb-trigger-n2053448" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Breitbart Contributor: Arrest Happened "Because Of Zero Tolerance Policies, Not Islamophobia." Breitbart contributor Merrill Hope argued that the blame for Ahmed's treatment rested with the Irving Schools Code of Conduct, and lamented the "Islamophobic narrative" she claimed was perpetuated by President Obama and Hillary Clinton's public support for Ahmed:</p> <p>Once the predominantly Islamophobic slanted story broke nationally, outpourings of support for Mohamed exploded on social media. In response, Ahmed Mohamed milked the PR spin. He tweeted: "Thank you for your support! I really didn't think people would care about a muslim boy. #Thankyouforstandingwithme. #IStandWithAhmed.</p> <p>Not long after, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted out her two cents on social media on the Islamophobic narrative.</p> <p>Not to be outdone, President Barrack Obama also jumped on the bandwagon and invited young Mohamed to the White House. [Breitbart.com, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/09/16/texas-boy-arrested-because-of-zero-tolerance-policies-not-islamophobia/" type="external">9/16/15</a>]</p> <p>Infowars: Notion That Mohamed Was Treated Differently Because Of Race Is "Completely Bogus." At Infowars, Editor-At Large Paul Joseph Watson claimed that Ahmed's story gained attention because of the "trendy" fact that the student is Muslim and called the notion that Ahmed's race or religion played a factor in his treatment "completely bogus":</p> <p>14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed built a clock to impress his teacher but ended up in handcuffs after police were called over concerns the object resembled a bomb.</p> <p>The leftist media and social justice warrior 'virtue signallers' immediately leapt on the story to claim that Mohamed was targeted because he was a Muslim (and not because his "clock" looked nothing like a clock and more closely resembled a bomb in a briefcase).</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>Never wasting an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the politically correct crowd, Obama reached out to Ahmed and invited him to visit the White House.</p> <p>The notion that white kids wouldn't be treated the same way and that Ahmed was only targeted because of his skin color or religion is completely bogus.</p> <p>Innumerable non-Muslim kids have been disciplined, suspended and even SWAT-teamed for objects far less concerning than Ahmed's clock.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>To the left, defending American kids who are persecuted for wearing Old Glory just isn't trendy enough, but if a Muslim called Mohamed gets in trouble for bringing something that resembles a bomb to school, liberals are falling over themselves to worship him. [InfoWars.com, <a href="http://www.infowars.com/obama-invites-clock-kid-to-white-house-ignores-students-suspended-for-u-s-flag-t-shirts-nerf-guns/" type="external">9/17/15</a>]</p> <p>Breitbart's Ben Shapiro: Ahmed's Experience "Stinks with Leftist Exploitation." Breitbart's Senior Editor-At-Large Ben Shapiro pushed a theory that Ahmed's father, who he called "an anti-Islamaphobia media gadfly," exploited his son's experience to push a message of widespread Islamophobia:</p> <p>Again, where was the engineering teacher to vouch for Mohammed's story? Why didn't Mohammed simply explain himself? The police said that initially, it was "not immediately evident" that the clock-in-a-case was a class experiment - perfectly plausible, given that Mohammed built the clock-in-a-case voluntarily, without assignment, and in conjunction with no science fair. [Breitbart.com, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/18/real-story-istandwithahmed/" type="external">9/18/15</a>]</p> <p>The Daily Caller: "Don't Bring A Clock To School Unless It Looks Like a Clock." Associate editor of the Daily Caller, Scott Greer, blamed Ahmed for his own arrest, arguing that the teenager "should have had the good sense" to keep his clock put away:</p> <p>Of course, if it was just a clock Mohamed brought to show off to a teacher, the school was out of bounds. But the young engineer should have had the good sense to follow that teacher's advice and put it away. If it was intended as a bomb prank, then the school was justified in its actions. People who yell "Bomb!" at an airport get hauled off to jail. There's no great injustice in sending Mohamed to juvie for an hour and giving him a three-day suspension for doing the same thing.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>We live in a dangerous world, and not even schools are safe from the devastation. We can't demand zero tolerance policies to keep schools safe, but then at the same time demand exceptions for protected classes.</p> <p>Until the day that our society can rest assured that students won't try to kill their fellow classmates at school, we'll have to live with Mr. Mohamed getting suspended for three days over a clock. [The Daily Caller, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/09/18/dont-bring-a-clock-to-school-unless-it-looks-likes-a-clock/" type="external">9/18/15</a>]</p>

Right-Wing Media Deny Role Of Islamophobia In Ahmed Mohamed's Arrest

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/09/18/right-wing-media-deny-role-of-islamophobia-in-a/205651

2015-09-18

4left

Ahmed Was Arrested After His Clock Was Reported As A Hoax Bomb On September 14 a 14yearold SudaneseAmerican teenager from Irving Texas was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to his school School officials reported the clock as a hoax bomb and called the local police Five police officers handcuffed the child and brought him to a juvenile detention center where he was fingerprinted and interrogated before being released to his parents Two days later the Irving Police Department announced that Ahmed was no longer facing criminal charges but the boy continued to serve out a threeday suspension from school for the creation of a socalled hoax bomb The Council on AmericanIslamic Relations CAIR is currently investigating the incident The Dallas Morning News 91615The Washington Post 91615 After His Arrest Ahmed Gained Support From Many Public Figures Including President Obama After the story of Ahmeds arrest was reported it gained widespread public attention on social media President Obama tweeted Ahmed an invitation to the White House Hillary Clinton Arne Duncan and Mark Zuckerberg expressed their support and Ahmed was offered an internship at Twitter Wellwishers tweeted their support for Ahmed using the hashtag IStandWithAhmed A question about Ahmeds arrest was also featured at the earlier GOP debate on CNN Wednesday night As the New York Times reported Ahmed Mohameds homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb By Wednesday it had brought him an invitation to the White House support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg and a moment of headspinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion As a result a 14yearold freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving Tex who is partial to tinkering technology and NASA Tshirts and wants to go to MIT found himself in a social media whirlwind that reflected the nations charged debates on Islam immigration and ethnicity The New York Times 91715 MIT And Harvard Offered Ahmed Tours Of Their Astrophysics Facilities On the September 17 edition of MSNBCs All In with Chris Hayes Ahmed was surprised during an interview about his arrest by astrophysicist Chanda PrescodWeinstein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and extended an invitation to tour the astrophysics facilities at both MIT which he had described as his dream school and Harvard University MSNBC All In with Chris Hayes 91715 Ahmed Will Transfer Schools Citing Previous Prejudice From School Officials In an interview with DallasFort Worth ABC affiliate WFAA 8 Ahmed said he initially was scared that nobody was going to care about his arrest because he is Muslim and described a previous instance when he was singledout by his middle school vice principal who called him names and threatened to follow him until he graduated Toward the end of the interview Ahmed noted that he chose MacArthur High School in Irving Texas specifically because it offered engineering classed but that he would not be returning to the school WFAA 8 91715 Fox Contributor Jonah Goldberg Everyone Is Defending Ahmed Because Of the Political Correctness Angle On the September 17 edition of Foxs Outnumbered Fox contributor and National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg argued that Ahmeds case received public attention because of the political correctness angle claiming that public attention would be different if Ahmed had been wearing a Confederate flag tshirt JONAH GOLDBERG But what drives me crazy is first of all if this kid had a Confederate flag tshirt and brought in the same clock itd be very interesting how the culture would flip on this I think the school HARRIS FAULKNER How do you think the culture would flip on this GOLDBERG Well then wed be hearing about look the school officials had to do what they had to do In the days of mass shootings and then the Colorado shooting and blah blah blah and South Carolina and I would have sympathy for that I dont think what drives me crazy is that no one freaks out about the kids who are suspended for making a gun out of a PopTart or you know drawing something silly on a piece of paper And everyones rushing to defend this kid because of the political correctness angle Fox News Outnumbered 91715 Media Matters 91715 Foxs Gallagher Ahmed Wasnt Forthcoming Enough With Policeamp160On the September 18 edition of Fox Newsamp160The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson Fox contributor Mike Gallagher repeatedly compared Ahmeds homemade clock to a bomb and suggested that the student should have been more forthcoming when he was interrogated by the police MIKE GALLAGHER The ABC affiliate in Dallas reports that the kid wasnt particularly forthcoming when the police were called Let me give him a word of advice When he goes to the White House for his clockbuilding summit with President Obama he might want to leave that contraption behind because the US Secret Service would have big problems with it Did you see it The thing doesnt look like a clock GALLAGHER Were told see something say something Now I guess if you see something ALAN COLMES A clock GALLAGHER That looks like a clock COLMES A clock A 14 yearold with a clock GALLAGHER Yeah put that clock around your wrist okay Put it side by side by a real suitcase bomb and its hard to tell the difference Fox News The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson 91815 Limbaugh Obama Is Using This To Characterize The United States As A Racist And Bigoted Country On the September 17 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show Limbaugh attacked President Obama for supposedly using Ahmeds experience to make his own star shine a little bit brighter and blamed Ahmed and zerotolerance school policies for fueling the arrest RUSH So the point here is that the effort is being made to blame school officials and the cops for Islamophobia here and that is not what is going on Zerotolerance policies at schools which are the direct result of previous incidents the zero tolerance is out of control such as pretending to shoot a gun with your finger that gets you sent home is whats responsible here Its just the latest example and its made to order for Obama because here we have once again backlash against Muslims you see Thats what this really is So Obama will be able to make a speech about how dangerous this is how unfortunate it is how sorry it is Innocent little 14yearold Ahmed Mohamed has a brilliant science project a brilliant clock a new way of doing a clock Yeah one looks just like a bomb in a briefcase Obama gets to bring him to the White House make a star out of him make Obamas star shine even brighter And once again the bottom line Characterize the United States as a racist and bigoted country Premiere Radio NetworksThe Rush Limbaugh Show 91715 National Review Online A Phony Case Of Islamophobia National Review Online correspondent Kevin D Williamson declared Ahmeds controversial arrest to be a phony case of Islamophobia and attacked President Obama and other public figures for expressing support for Ahmed calling their actions cheap moral preening and arguing that the story only received attention because it can be used to further a story about racism in the United States The story immediately became ubiquitous not because of what actually happened boneheaded as that was but because it can be used to further a story that the media already want to tell that the United States is morally corrupt and irredeemably racist that Muslims are under siege that white privilege blinds the majority of Americans to the corruption at the heart of everything red white and blue Muslim kid meets paranoia in Texas is A1 copy NRAwearing kid meets paranoia in West Virginia not so much President Barack Obama never one to miss an opportunity for cheap moral preening invited Mohamed to the White House National Review Online 91715 Breitbart Editor Race Grifters Unite Breitbartcom EditorAtLarge John Nolte argued that the public attention given to the role of race in Ahmeds case was the work of shameless opportunists and compared Ahmeds experience to examples of hysterical Zero Tolerance school policies such as a student suspended for violating school dress code praying and saying God bless you Naturally these shameless opportunists expressed zero outrage when a fifthgrader a full four years younger than Ahmed was arrested and charged with brandishing a weapon for bringing a toy gun on a school bus Why would they Theres no political upside for the Left unless you can scream racism Then there was the 7 yearold boy suspended for a Pop Tart Gun Once again No political upside no media uproar no White House invite Then there was the 5th grade girl who was searched by school officials for possessing a paper gun No political upside means no media uproar and no White House invite Breitbartcom 91615 The Federalist Editor IStandWithAhmed Is About Pretend Islamaphobia Senior editor of The Federalist David Harsanyi argued that public support for Ahmed was selective concern trolling to create the perception that discrimination against Muslims is a pervasive problem in American life So a story that perfectly illustrated the tendencies of overbearing school administrators is now transformed into a teachable moment about Islamophobia And blowing up a nonevent is a way to create the perception that discrimination against Muslims is a pervasive problem in American life In the real world though the preponderance of victims of jumpy teachers are not Muslims But those cases do not provide Vox or the White House with the fodder they need for some selfsatisfying lecturing The Federalist 91715 Townhall Columnist Ahmed Created An Environment That Required The Teachers To Act Townhall columnist Jim Hanson claimed the school was being unfairly slurred as Islamophobic and placed the blame on the 14yearold Ahmed for bringing something to school that causes questions to be asked and on nanny state zero tolerance policies Hanson compared Ahmeds clock to pictures of an Iranianmade improvised explosive device IED trigger calling it a dead ringer for triggers used on homemade bombs the author saw in Iraq The latest outrage being used to promote the false narrative about unfair treatment of Muslims is the teenager Ahmed Mohamed in Irving Texas arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school If you just skimmed the surface and saw the picture of the skinny nerd in the NASA tshirt in handcuffs it would be easy to see a problem And there is one but its not discrimination against a Muslim kid that wouldnt have happened to a nonMuslim Its nanny state zero tolerance policies that take away the ability to apply common sense to complicated situations In this case whether or not to put cuffs on a 14 year old when he brings something to school that causes questions to be asked But as far as the other question was the clock device he brought to school a legitimate cause for concern the answer is an unequivocal yes I have built and taught classes on improvised explosive devices IEDs and the clock he brought to school is a dead ringer for the trigger used on many of these homemade bombs Townhallcom 91715 Breitbart Contributor Arrest Happened Because Of Zero Tolerance Policies Not Islamophobia Breitbart contributor Merrill Hope argued that the blame for Ahmeds treatment rested with the Irving Schools Code of Conduct and lamented the Islamophobic narrative she claimed was perpetuated by President Obama and Hillary Clintons public support for Ahmed Once the predominantly Islamophobic slanted story broke nationally outpourings of support for Mohamed exploded on social media In response Ahmed Mohamed milked the PR spin He tweeted Thank you for your support I really didnt think people would care about a muslim boy Thankyouforstandingwithme IStandWithAhmed Not long after Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted out her two cents on social media on the Islamophobic narrative Not to be outdone President Barrack Obama also jumped on the bandwagon and invited young Mohamed to the White House Breitbartcom 91615 Infowars Notion That Mohamed Was Treated Differently Because Of Race Is Completely Bogus At Infowars EditorAt Large Paul Joseph Watson claimed that Ahmeds story gained attention because of the trendy fact that the student is Muslim and called the notion that Ahmeds race or religion played a factor in his treatment completely bogus 14yearold Ahmed Mohamed built a clock to impress his teacher but ended up in handcuffs after police were called over concerns the object resembled a bomb The leftist media and social justice warrior virtue signallers immediately leapt on the story to claim that Mohamed was targeted because he was a Muslim and not because his clock looked nothing like a clock and more closely resembled a bomb in a briefcase Never wasting an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the politically correct crowd Obama reached out to Ahmed and invited him to visit the White House The notion that white kids wouldnt be treated the same way and that Ahmed was only targeted because of his skin color or religion is completely bogus Innumerable nonMuslim kids have been disciplined suspended and even SWATteamed for objects far less concerning than Ahmeds clock To the left defending American kids who are persecuted for wearing Old Glory just isnt trendy enough but if a Muslim called Mohamed gets in trouble for bringing something that resembles a bomb to school liberals are falling over themselves to worship him InfoWarscom 91715 Breitbarts Ben Shapiro Ahmeds Experience Stinks with Leftist Exploitation Breitbarts Senior EditorAtLarge Ben Shapiro pushed a theory that Ahmeds father who he called an antiIslamaphobia media gadfly exploited his sons experience to push a message of widespread Islamophobia Again where was the engineering teacher to vouch for Mohammeds story Why didnt Mohammed simply explain himself The police said that initially it was not immediately evident that the clockinacase was a class experiment perfectly plausible given that Mohammed built the clockinacase voluntarily without assignment and in conjunction with no science fair Breitbartcom 91815 The Daily Caller Dont Bring A Clock To School Unless It Looks Like a Clock Associate editor of the Daily Caller Scott Greer blamed Ahmed for his own arrest arguing that the teenager should have had the good sense to keep his clock put away Of course if it was just a clock Mohamed brought to show off to a teacher the school was out of bounds But the young engineer should have had the good sense to follow that teachers advice and put it away If it was intended as a bomb prank then the school was justified in its actions People who yell Bomb at an airport get hauled off to jail Theres no great injustice in sending Mohamed to juvie for an hour and giving him a threeday suspension for doing the same thing We live in a dangerous world and not even schools are safe from the devastation We cant demand zero tolerance policies to keep schools safe but then at the same time demand exceptions for protected classes Until the day that our society can rest assured that students wont try to kill their fellow classmates at school well have to live with Mr Mohamed getting suspended for three days over a clock The Daily Caller 91815

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<p>Jan 19 (Reuters) - NRK Co Ltd :</p> <p>* Says it raised 1.0 billion won via public offering of 443,458 shares of the company</p> <p>Source text in Korean: <a href="https://goo.gl/YS6fGH" type="external">goo.gl/YS6fGH</a></p> <p>Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Members of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be struggling over how to resolve a key case recently when Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the best course might be to put off a decision altogether.</p> FILE PHOTO - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer participates in taking a new family photo with his fellow justices at the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>Breyer&#8217;s remark, coming during a March 28 oral argument in a closely watched case involving the redrawing of electoral districts aimed at entrenching one party in power, illustrated the difficulty the nine justices seem to be having in producing rulings at their usual pace.</p> <p>With five conservatives and four liberals, the court is ideologically divided, meaning common ground may be difficult to find. President Donald Trump&#8217;s appointee Neil Gorsuch, who marks his first anniversary as a justice on Tuesday, restored the court&#8217;s conservative majority after it was shorthanded and evenly split ideologically for 14 months.</p> <p>During their current term that began in October and runs through the end of June, the justices must resolve more weighty and difficult cases than usual. One of their biggest cases &#8212; deciding the legality of President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries &#8212; will not be heard until April 25.</p> <p>The high court has issued only 18 rulings in cases already argued this term, lagging behind its normal pace. Numerous major cases have yet to be resolved, including one on Wisconsin electoral boundaries heard in October and the similar one heard last month involving the same practice of &#8220;partisan gerrymandering&#8221; in Maryland that prompted Breyer to suggest the justices rehear the whole matter in the future.</p> <p>A divisive case pitting gay rights against religious liberty, involving a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, was argued in December.</p> <p>Other major cases involve fees paid by non-members to unions representing public employees like police officers and teachers, the right of workers to bring class-action claims against employers, the ability of police to obtain cellphone location data to tie criminal suspects to crimes and a California law regulating Christian-based anti-abortion facilities.</p> <p>Supreme Court experts expect the justices to issue a larger-than-normal number of 5-4 rulings in the coming months. That would increase the chances of conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes sides with the court&#8217;s four liberals in major cases, casting the deciding votes.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s reasonable to suggest there are going to be fewer unanimous decisions and more division,&#8221; said Nicole Saharsky, a lawyer who often has argued cases before the court.</p> <p>The court usually takes less time in issuing a ruling when the justices are unanimous. It has issued 11 unanimous rulings and seven with dissenting votes, including three that were 5-4. The court&#8217;s most contentious rulings commonly are issued in June.</p> <p>Part of the slowdown in rulings may be related to the presence of Gorsuch, who has shown signs that he will be a strident conservative voice on the bench. Gorsuch also has exhibited a willingness to question the reasoning of his colleagues, a practice that can delay rulings.</p> <p>&#8220;There could just be new dynamics one way or another,&#8221; said John Elwood, who has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts (seated C) leads Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (front row, L-R), Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Elena Kagan (back row, L-R), Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in taking a new family photo including Gorsuch, their most recent addition, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo CONTENTIOUS ISSUES <p>The impasse over partisan gerrymandering was first on display when the court heard arguments on Oct. 3 in a challenge by Democratic voters to Republican-drawn state legislative districts in Wisconsin. Five months later, the justices appeared no closer to resolving the matter when they heard the similar Maryland dispute involving a Democratic-drawn U.S. House of Representatives district.</p> <p>The court seemed similarly divided in the worker class action case argued on Oct. 2, the first day of the term. The justices will have to decide whether workers can be forced by companies to sign agreements waiving the right to bring class-action claims against their employer.</p> <p>Based on the Dec. 5 oral argument, Kennedy will also be the deciding vote in the case of whether the Denver-area Christian baker can be penalized under a Colorado anti-discrimination law or whether the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s promise of free speech protects him.</p> <p>The nine justices have not always been at odds with each other, even on contentious matters. There was no dissent when the court in February rejected Trump&#8217;s bid to immediately end a program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children.</p> <p>The court also showed no divisions when it declined to intervene in another electoral boundaries fight, this time in Pennsylvania.</p> <p>The slow pace of rulings may in part just be the result of scheduling, said Kannon Shanmugam, another regular Supreme Court lawyer.</p> <p>&#8220;The court has had hard, divisive cases earlier in the term,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not surprising it might take a while.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BUDAPEST/GYONGYOS, Hungary (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched a last-ditch effort to mobilise supporters in Hungary&#8217;s parliamentary election on Sunday, as interim turnout ran even higher than in a 2002 vote that consigned him to eight years in opposition.</p> Hungarian women, wearing traditional costumes, fill their ballot papers at a polling station during Hungarian parliamentary elections in Veresegyhaz, Hungary April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo <p>After an acrimonious campaign in which rightwing nationalist Orban projected himself as a saviour of Hungary&#8217;s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, all opinion polls put his Fidesz party well ahead.</p> <p>A strong victory could embolden him to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against the European Union&#8217;s migration policies. Orban, Hungary&#8217;s longest-serving post-communist premier, opposes deeper integration of the bloc.</p> <p>Interim data at 1300 GMT showed voter turnout at 53.64 percent, a touch higher than the 53.59 percent in the second round in 2002 under a different election system, when final turnout reached 73.5 percent. Turnout in the 2014 vote was 61.7 percent.</p> <p>Reuters correspondents saw long lines of voters at polling stations. In central London, emigre Hungarians queued for hundreds of metres in the rain to vote, some waiting for more than two hours.</p> <p>Some pollsters said voter turnout above 70 percent could signal that the opposition was mobilising supporters efficiently, and might even deprive Fidesz of its parliamentary majority.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-hungary-election-turnout/interim-turnout-in-hungarys-election-drops-below-2002-levels-idUSKBN1HF0FA" type="external">Interim turnout in Hungary's election drops below 2002 levels</a> <p>&#8220;High turnout means, most probably, less mandates for Fidesz than in the previous term,&#8221; said Peter Kreko, director of think tank Political Capital.</p> <p>But he added that since all parties, including Fidesz, had mobilised intensively, it did not necessarily mean Orban was threatened with defeat.</p> <p>Orban has far-right admirers across Europe who like his tough line on migrants and a landslide win would show that his single-issue campaign, arguing that migration poses a security threat, had paid off.</p> MIGRATION &#8220;LIKE RUST&#8221; <p>Critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fuelled xenophobia.</p> <p>After casting his vote in a wealthy district of Budapest, he said: &#8220;From here I will go and take part in mobilising voters ... I am asking everyone to take part in the election.&#8221;</p> <p>Asked by journalists if he was fighting the European Union, Orban said: &#8220;The EU is not in Brussels. The EU is in Berlin, in Budapest, in Prague and in Bucharest.&#8221;</p> <p>He reiterated he would stand up for Hungary&#8217;s interests and said Hungary was a loyal member of international organisations.</p> <p>&#8220;We love our country and we are fighting for our country,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Orban posted updates on his Facebook page on Sunday, the latest showing him campaigning in a Budapest district.</p> A woman casts her ballot during Hungarian parliamentary election in Gyongyos, Hungary, April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>A strong win for Orban would boost other right-wing nationalists in Central Europe, in Poland and in neighbouring Austria, and expose cracks in the 28-nation EU.</p> <p>While Fidesz led all opinion polls before the vote, there is a small chance that the fragmented opposition could strip Fidesz of its parliamentary majority if voters frustrated with Orban&#8217;s policies choose tactical voting in the 106 constituencies.</p> <p>The strongest opposition party is the formerly far-right Jobbik, which has recast its image as a more moderate nationalist force. It has been campaigning on an anti-corruption agenda and urged higher wages to lure back hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have left Hungary for western Europe.</p> <p>Clad in a green jacket and white shirt, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona, 39, arrived to vote in the eastern city of Gyongyos, his home town and the district where he is likely to win a seat.</p> <p>&#8220;Everyone should go to vote because this election determines Hungary&#8217;s course not for four years but for two generations at least,&#8221; he told reporters. &#8220;Emigration may or may not define Hungary, and I would prefer that it does not.&#8221;</p> <p>Socialist candidate for prime minister Gergely Karacsony also urged Hungarians to vote, saying higher turnout would probably favour opposition parties, state news agency MTI reported.</p> <p>The EU has struggled to respond as Orban&#8217;s government has, in the view of its critics, used its two landslide victories in 2010 and 2014 to erode democratic checks and balances. It has curbed the powers of the constitutional court, increased control of the media and appointed loyalists to key positions.</p> <p>Orban is credited with keeping the budget deficit under control, reducing unemployment and some of Hungary&#8217;s debt, and putting its economy on a growth track.</p> <p>On Friday, at his closing campaign rally, he vowed to protect his nation from Muslim migrants, saying: &#8220;Migration is like rust that slowly but surely would consume Hungary.&#8221;</p> OUTSIDE CHANCE OF SURPRISE <p>The anti-immigrant campaign has gone down well with many of the roughly two million core voters of Fidesz.</p> <p>&#8220;My little daughter must be my primary concern, to make her future safe. Safety is first,&#8221; said Julia Scharle, 27, holding her child outside the polling station where Orban cast his vote. She would not reveal her voting preference.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>In March the government gave pre-election handouts to millions of families and pensioners.</p> <p>A poll by Zavecz research institute published on Friday showed Fidesz had 46 percent support among decided voters, while Jobbik had 19 percent. The Socialists came in third with 14 percent. Voter turnout was estimated between 64 and 68 percent.</p> <p>However, one-third of voters are undecided and may have concealed their voting preferences.</p> <p>In 2014, Fidesz won a two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament with 133 seats. Such a big margin looks less likely this time.</p> <p>If Orban wins, he is expected to continue his economic policies, with income tax cuts and incentives to boost growth.</p> <p>His business allies are expected to expand their economic domains. Businessmen close to Fidesz have acquired stakes in major industries like banking, energy, construction and tourism, profiting from EU funds.</p> <p>&#8220;Only a dramatic outcome of the election would force a significant shift in the direction of policymaking,&#8221; Barclays said in a note.</p> <p>It said that given the importance of EU structural funds for Hungary, the country would probably avoid an all-out conflict with the EU.</p> <p>Writing by Krisztina Than; additional reporting by Sandor Peto; editing by Janet Lawrence and Andrew Roche</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) - Unusually cool weather greeted spectators as they filed into Augusta National for what many expect will be a heated battle between Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed for the U.S. Masters Green Jacket on Sunday.</p> FILE PHOTO - Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland holds up his ball after saving par on the 13th during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-highlights/u-s-masters-day-four-idUSKBN1HF0N4" type="external">U.S. Masters Day Four</a> <p>A total of 53 golfers will tee off in the final round of the year&#8217;s first major but all eyes will eventually be on the final pair of Reed and McIlroy who have turned the chase for the Masters title into a two horse race.</p> FILE PHOTO - Patrick Reed of the U.S. celebrates his eagle putt on the 13th hole during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar <p>Reed, seeking his first major win, will start the day with a three shot cushion at the top of the leaderboard. He will be chased by McIlroy, who needs a Masters victory to complete a career grand slam.</p> <p>McIlroy, who threw away a four-shot lead in the final round at Augusta in 2011 when he was still chasing a maiden major, has since captured wins at each of golf&#8217;s three other blue riband events and is closer than ever to completing his collection.</p> <p>Both men have gone to great pains to not make Sunday&#8217;s final round into a match play contest but with the next closest challenger, Rickie Fowler, five off the pace, the Northern Irishman and American are sure to hold the spotlight.</p> <p>Four-times champion Tiger Woods, whose Augusta National homecoming was not as spectacular or entertaining as expected, was among the first to tee off as he was sitting a whopping 18 shots behind the leader.</p> <p>Playing his first Masters since 2015 after battling back issues, hopes were high that the former-world number one would be in contention for a fifth Green Jacket after a promising run up to the Masters that included a tie for second at the Valspar Championship and a tie for fifth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.</p> <p>Still fighting his way back to top form after undergoing spinal fusion surgery last April, Woods offered glimpses of the skill and talent that lifted him to 14 major titles but was never in serious contention.</p> <p>Editing by Pritha Sarkar</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) - Highlights from the final round of the 82nd U.S. Masters on Sunday:</p> FILE PHOTO - Patrick Reed of the U.S. talks with his caddie Kessler Karain as they walk off the 12th tee during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S. April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson COOL WEATHER GREETS EARLY STARTERS <p>The final round of the year&#8217;s first major got underway with the early starters taking to the course under cloudy skies and unusually cool conditions at Augusta National where the mid-morning temperature was 63 Fahrenheit (17 Celsius).</p> REED, MCILROY GET READY FOR SHOWDOWN <p>Patrick Reed will take a three-shot lead into the final round when he sets off with Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy in the day&#8217;s final pairing at 2:40 p.m. ET (1849 GMT).</p> <p>Reporting by Frank Pingue; Editing by Toby Davis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-NRK raises 1.0 bln won via public offering Signs of struggles on big cases as U.S. Supreme Court pace slackens Turnout high in Hungary's election as Orban fights to retain power Golf: Cool day to start of heated race for Green Jacket U.S. Masters Day Four

https://reuters.com/article/brief-nrk-raises-10-bln-won-via-public-o/brief-nrk-raises-10-bln-won-via-public-offering-idUSL3N1PE2PH

2018-01-19

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Jan 19 Reuters NRK Co Ltd Says it raised 10 billion won via public offering of 443458 shares of the company Source text in Korean googlYS6fGH Further company coverage Beijing Headline News Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Members of the US Supreme Court appeared to be struggling over how to resolve a key case recently when Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the best course might be to put off a decision altogether FILE PHOTO US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer participates in taking a new family photo with his fellow justices at the Supreme Court building in Washington DC US June 1 2017 REUTERSJonathan Ernst Breyer8217s remark coming during a March 28 oral argument in a closely watched case involving the redrawing of electoral districts aimed at entrenching one party in power illustrated the difficulty the nine justices seem to be having in producing rulings at their usual pace With five conservatives and four liberals the court is ideologically divided meaning common ground may be difficult to find President Donald Trump8217s appointee Neil Gorsuch who marks his first anniversary as a justice on Tuesday restored the court8217s conservative majority after it was shorthanded and evenly split ideologically for 14 months During their current term that began in October and runs through the end of June the justices must resolve more weighty and difficult cases than usual One of their biggest cases 8212 deciding the legality of President Donald Trump8217s travel ban on several Muslimmajority countries 8212 will not be heard until April 25 The high court has issued only 18 rulings in cases already argued this term lagging behind its normal pace Numerous major cases have yet to be resolved including one on Wisconsin electoral boundaries heard in October and the similar one heard last month involving the same practice of 8220partisan gerrymandering8221 in Maryland that prompted Breyer to suggest the justices rehear the whole matter in the future A divisive case pitting gay rights against religious liberty involving a Christian baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple was argued in December Other major cases involve fees paid by nonmembers to unions representing public employees like police officers and teachers the right of workers to bring classaction claims against employers the ability of police to obtain cellphone location data to tie criminal suspects to crimes and a California law regulating Christianbased antiabortion facilities Supreme Court experts expect the justices to issue a largerthannormal number of 54 rulings in the coming months That would increase the chances of conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy who sometimes sides with the court8217s four liberals in major cases casting the deciding votes 8220It8217s reasonable to suggest there are going to be fewer unanimous decisions and more division8221 said Nicole Saharsky a lawyer who often has argued cases before the court The court usually takes less time in issuing a ruling when the justices are unanimous It has issued 11 unanimous rulings and seven with dissenting votes including three that were 54 The court8217s most contentious rulings commonly are issued in June Part of the slowdown in rulings may be related to the presence of Gorsuch who has shown signs that he will be a strident conservative voice on the bench Gorsuch also has exhibited a willingness to question the reasoning of his colleagues a practice that can delay rulings 8220There could just be new dynamics one way or another8221 said John Elwood who has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court FILE PHOTO US Chief Justice John Roberts seated C leads Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg front row LR Justice Anthony Kennedy Justice Clarence Thomas Justice Stephen Breyer Justice Elena Kagan back row LR Justice Samuel Alito Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in taking a new family photo including Gorsuch their most recent addition at the Supreme Court building in Washington DC US June 1 2017 REUTERSJonathan ErnstFile Photo CONTENTIOUS ISSUES The impasse over partisan gerrymandering was first on display when the court heard arguments on Oct 3 in a challenge by Democratic voters to Republicandrawn state legislative districts in Wisconsin Five months later the justices appeared no closer to resolving the matter when they heard the similar Maryland dispute involving a Democraticdrawn US House of Representatives district The court seemed similarly divided in the worker class action case argued on Oct 2 the first day of the term The justices will have to decide whether workers can be forced by companies to sign agreements waiving the right to bring classaction claims against their employer Based on the Dec 5 oral argument Kennedy will also be the deciding vote in the case of whether the Denverarea Christian baker can be penalized under a Colorado antidiscrimination law or whether the US Constitution8217s promise of free speech protects him The nine justices have not always been at odds with each other even on contentious matters There was no dissent when the court in February rejected Trump8217s bid to immediately end a program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children The court also showed no divisions when it declined to intervene in another electoral boundaries fight this time in Pennsylvania The slow pace of rulings may in part just be the result of scheduling said Kannon Shanmugam another regular Supreme Court lawyer 8220The court has had hard divisive cases earlier in the term8221 he said 8220It8217s not surprising it might take a while8221 Reporting by Lawrence Hurley Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BUDAPESTGYONGYOS Hungary Reuters Prime Minister Viktor Orban launched a lastditch effort to mobilise supporters in Hungary8217s parliamentary election on Sunday as interim turnout ran even higher than in a 2002 vote that consigned him to eight years in opposition Hungarian women wearing traditional costumes fill their ballot papers at a polling station during Hungarian parliamentary elections in Veresegyhaz Hungary April 8 2018 REUTERSBernadett Szabo After an acrimonious campaign in which rightwing nationalist Orban projected himself as a saviour of Hungary8217s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe all opinion polls put his Fidesz party well ahead A strong victory could embolden him to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against the European Union8217s migration policies Orban Hungary8217s longestserving postcommunist premier opposes deeper integration of the bloc Interim data at 1300 GMT showed voter turnout at 5364 percent a touch higher than the 5359 percent in the second round in 2002 under a different election system when final turnout reached 735 percent Turnout in the 2014 vote was 617 percent Reuters correspondents saw long lines of voters at polling stations In central London emigre Hungarians queued for hundreds of metres in the rain to vote some waiting for more than two hours Some pollsters said voter turnout above 70 percent could signal that the opposition was mobilising supporters efficiently and might even deprive Fidesz of its parliamentary majority Related Coverage Interim turnout in Hungarys election drops below 2002 levels 8220High turnout means most probably less mandates for Fidesz than in the previous term8221 said Peter Kreko director of think tank Political Capital But he added that since all parties including Fidesz had mobilised intensively it did not necessarily mean Orban was threatened with defeat Orban has farright admirers across Europe who like his tough line on migrants and a landslide win would show that his singleissue campaign arguing that migration poses a security threat had paid off MIGRATION 8220LIKE RUST8221 Critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fuelled xenophobia After casting his vote in a wealthy district of Budapest he said 8220From here I will go and take part in mobilising voters I am asking everyone to take part in the election8221 Asked by journalists if he was fighting the European Union Orban said 8220The EU is not in Brussels The EU is in Berlin in Budapest in Prague and in Bucharest8221 He reiterated he would stand up for Hungary8217s interests and said Hungary was a loyal member of international organisations 8220We love our country and we are fighting for our country8221 he said Orban posted updates on his Facebook page on Sunday the latest showing him campaigning in a Budapest district A woman casts her ballot during Hungarian parliamentary election in Gyongyos Hungary April 8 2018 REUTERSLeonhard Foeger A strong win for Orban would boost other rightwing nationalists in Central Europe in Poland and in neighbouring Austria and expose cracks in the 28nation EU While Fidesz led all opinion polls before the vote there is a small chance that the fragmented opposition could strip Fidesz of its parliamentary majority if voters frustrated with Orban8217s policies choose tactical voting in the 106 constituencies The strongest opposition party is the formerly farright Jobbik which has recast its image as a more moderate nationalist force It has been campaigning on an anticorruption agenda and urged higher wages to lure back hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have left Hungary for western Europe Clad in a green jacket and white shirt Jobbik leader Gabor Vona 39 arrived to vote in the eastern city of Gyongyos his home town and the district where he is likely to win a seat 8220Everyone should go to vote because this election determines Hungary8217s course not for four years but for two generations at least8221 he told reporters 8220Emigration may or may not define Hungary and I would prefer that it does not8221 Socialist candidate for prime minister Gergely Karacsony also urged Hungarians to vote saying higher turnout would probably favour opposition parties state news agency MTI reported The EU has struggled to respond as Orban8217s government has in the view of its critics used its two landslide victories in 2010 and 2014 to erode democratic checks and balances It has curbed the powers of the constitutional court increased control of the media and appointed loyalists to key positions Orban is credited with keeping the budget deficit under control reducing unemployment and some of Hungary8217s debt and putting its economy on a growth track On Friday at his closing campaign rally he vowed to protect his nation from Muslim migrants saying 8220Migration is like rust that slowly but surely would consume Hungary8221 OUTSIDE CHANCE OF SURPRISE The antiimmigrant campaign has gone down well with many of the roughly two million core voters of Fidesz 8220My little daughter must be my primary concern to make her future safe Safety is first8221 said Julia Scharle 27 holding her child outside the polling station where Orban cast his vote She would not reveal her voting preference Slideshow 11 Images In March the government gave preelection handouts to millions of families and pensioners A poll by Zavecz research institute published on Friday showed Fidesz had 46 percent support among decided voters while Jobbik had 19 percent The Socialists came in third with 14 percent Voter turnout was estimated between 64 and 68 percent However onethird of voters are undecided and may have concealed their voting preferences In 2014 Fidesz won a twothirds majority in the 199seat parliament with 133 seats Such a big margin looks less likely this time If Orban wins he is expected to continue his economic policies with income tax cuts and incentives to boost growth His business allies are expected to expand their economic domains Businessmen close to Fidesz have acquired stakes in major industries like banking energy construction and tourism profiting from EU funds 8220Only a dramatic outcome of the election would force a significant shift in the direction of policymaking8221 Barclays said in a note It said that given the importance of EU structural funds for Hungary the country would probably avoid an allout conflict with the EU Writing by Krisztina Than additional reporting by Sandor Peto editing by Janet Lawrence and Andrew Roche Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUGUSTA Ga Reuters Unusually cool weather greeted spectators as they filed into Augusta National for what many expect will be a heated battle between Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed for the US Masters Green Jacket on Sunday FILE PHOTO Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland holds up his ball after saving par on the 13th during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 7 2018 REUTERSMike Segar Related Coverage US Masters Day Four A total of 53 golfers will tee off in the final round of the year8217s first major but all eyes will eventually be on the final pair of Reed and McIlroy who have turned the chase for the Masters title into a two horse race FILE PHOTO Patrick Reed of the US celebrates his eagle putt on the 13th hole during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 7 2018 REUTERSMike Segar Reed seeking his first major win will start the day with a three shot cushion at the top of the leaderboard He will be chased by McIlroy who needs a Masters victory to complete a career grand slam McIlroy who threw away a fourshot lead in the final round at Augusta in 2011 when he was still chasing a maiden major has since captured wins at each of golf8217s three other blue riband events and is closer than ever to completing his collection Both men have gone to great pains to not make Sunday8217s final round into a match play contest but with the next closest challenger Rickie Fowler five off the pace the Northern Irishman and American are sure to hold the spotlight Fourtimes champion Tiger Woods whose Augusta National homecoming was not as spectacular or entertaining as expected was among the first to tee off as he was sitting a whopping 18 shots behind the leader Playing his first Masters since 2015 after battling back issues hopes were high that the formerworld number one would be in contention for a fifth Green Jacket after a promising run up to the Masters that included a tie for second at the Valspar Championship and a tie for fifth at the Arnold Palmer Invitational Still fighting his way back to top form after undergoing spinal fusion surgery last April Woods offered glimpses of the skill and talent that lifted him to 14 major titles but was never in serious contention Editing by Pritha Sarkar Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUGUSTA Ga Reuters Highlights from the final round of the 82nd US Masters on Sunday FILE PHOTO Patrick Reed of the US talks with his caddie Kessler Karain as they walk off the 12th tee during third round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 7 2018 REUTERSLucy Nicholson COOL WEATHER GREETS EARLY STARTERS The final round of the year8217s first major got underway with the early starters taking to the course under cloudy skies and unusually cool conditions at Augusta National where the midmorning temperature was 63 Fahrenheit 17 Celsius REED MCILROY GET READY FOR SHOWDOWN Patrick Reed will take a threeshot lead into the final round when he sets off with Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy in the day8217s final pairing at 240 pm ET 1849 GMT Reporting by Frank Pingue Editing by Toby Davis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>John Hagee and Dual Covenant Theology Telling The Jews They Don't Need Jesus</p> <p /> <p>"But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. " <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&amp;amp;c=15" type="external">Matthew 15:24</a></p> <p>"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. " <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?t=KJV&amp;amp;b=Jhn&amp;amp;c=14&amp;amp;v=1&amp;amp;x=0&amp;amp;y=0" type="external">John 14:6</a></p> <p>"Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha'i, needs to believe in Jesus...but not Jews." <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_540301/san-antonio-fundamentalist-battles-anti-semitism.html" type="external">John Hagee, interview with the Houston Chronicle</a></p> <p>AN OPEN INVITATION TO PASTOR HAGEE: We have done our level best to quote your words accurately and directly through newspaper interviews you have given, video you have starred in, and in speeches you have given in Israel. We even published your denial of Dual Covenant Theology as you wrote it, complete and unedited.</p> <p>If you take issue with any part of this article, we invite you to <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nteb" type="external">call in to our radio show</a>, and we can discuss it openly, honestly and fairly. You may also <a href="" type="internal">email us here</a> to set up a meeting. We look forward to speaking with you soon.</p> <p>Dual Covenant Theology explained</p> <p>For those of you who don't know, this is what Dual Covenant Theology is:</p> <p>"Dual-covenant theology is a Liberal Christian view that holds that Jews may simply keep the Law of Moses, because of the "everlasting covenant" (Genesis 17:13) between Abraham and God expressed in the Hebrew Bible, whereas Gentiles (those not Jews or Jewish proselytes) must convert to Christianity or alternatively accept the Seven Laws of Noah. Many forms of Christianity, especially Conservative Protestants, consider this view to be heresy." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology" type="external">source - Wikipedia</a></p> <p><a href="" type="internal" /> John Hagee may reject the term Dual Covenant Theology, but he absolutely subscibes to the idea of it</p> <p>Does John Hagee teach Dual Covenant Theology?</p> <p>Yes, he does.</p> <p>How do I know this? A friend of mine who lives in Israel met with Pastor Hagee and his staff including <a href="http://www.cufi.org/site/PageNavigator/about_directors_morrison" type="external">Cheryl Morrison, a key Director in CUFI</a> - Christians United For Israel. At this meeting, attended by over 5,000, she was told by both Pastor Hagee and Cheryl Morrison that "Jews are saved by the Abrahamic covenant" He told them, in effect, that they do not need Jesus because they have God's promised to Abraham.</p> <p>This is a fact, this happened a few weeks ago. This is not something I "found on the Internet", this is a real-life story that happened to someone I am personal friends with. Needless to say, when she told me this I was floored. I had been sharing the Gospel with her for well over a year, and now here she was telling me that John Hagee and CUFI assured her that all she needed to get to Heaven was the Abrahamic Covenant.</p> <p>It broke my heart.</p> <p>Let me be crystal clear before we go any further. When evidence of this heresey was first presented to me, the FIRST thing I did was to contact John Hagee Ministries in Austin, Texas, to discuss this with them. I called and asked to speak with someone regarding Mr. Hagee's position on how salvation for the Jews is obtained. After listening to several nervous-sounding administration officials tell me they could not help me, I was finally put in contact with one Velvet Ridings, who told me that she is the Administrative Director for Christians United for Israel. (story continued after the video)</p> <p>THE VIDEO THAT JOHN HAGEE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE!</p> <p>You will notice that clicking on the video below brings up an offical YouYube notice that the video has been terminated from the NTEB YouTube channel. This was done at the offical request of the people at John Hagee Ministries. Why would they do this?</p> <p>They did it because in the video, which is a commerical for Hagee's book, "In Defense Of Israel", John Hagee asserts that "Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah". Yes, that's right, John Hagee said that, and John Hagee believes that. But when the book was published, there was such an outcry against his obviously heretical position, that Hagee was forced to re-write his book, and claim that he was "misinterpreted", and that he "used the wrong words" to get his point across.</p> <p>At the same time he released his book, he also made a television commerical that ran on TBN, with him looking into the camera and saying the very things that he claims people have "misinterpreted" from his book. Maybe you can "misinterpret" a book from the way you read it, but him doing a TV commercial saying exactly what he denies is said is pretty powerful stuff. Things like this are usually referred to as the "smoking gun".</p> <p>John Hagee Ministries Attacks NTEB In Attempt To Silence Video</p> <p>Here now is the commercial of John Hagee saying that "Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah." This action taken by John Hagee Ministries, petitioning YouTube to remove this video, has resulted in the permanent deletion of the NTEB YouTube channel.</p> <p><a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" type="external" /></p> <p>John Hagee in his own words</p> <p>"Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah" - from John Hagee's book, 'In Defense of Israel"</p> <p>"The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law of God as given through Moses," Hagee said. "I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ. I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, which is the word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption. "The law of Moses is sufficient enough to bring a person into the knowledge of God until God gives him a greater revelation. And God has not," said Hagee, giving hisinterpretation of Romans 11:25. "Paul abandoned the idea (of Jews knowing Christ). In the book of Romans, he said, `I am now going to go to the Gentiles from this time forward.' Judaism doesn't need Christianity to explain its existence. But Christianity has to have Judaism to explain its existence." <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_540301/san-antonio-fundamentalist-battles-anti-semitism.html" type="external">Houston Chronicle</a></p> <p>"I'm not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith," he said. "There is nothing in the `night to honor Israel' that does that." In fact, trying to convert Jews is a "waste of time," he said. "The Jewish person who has his roots in Judaism is not going to convert to Christianity. There is no form of Christian evangelism that has failed so miserably as evangelizing the Jewish people. They (already) have a faith structure." Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha'i, needs to believe in Jesus, he says. But not Jews. Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced by Christianity, he says. <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_540301/san-antonio-fundamentalist-battles-anti-semitism.html" type="external">Houston Chronicle</a></p> <p>"This book will expose the sins of the fathers and the vicious abuse of the Jewish people. 'In Defense of Israel' will shake Christian theology. It scripturally proves that the Jewish people as a whole did not reject Jesus as Messiah. It will also prove that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah. It will prove that there was a 'Calvary conspiracy' between Rome, the high priest, and Herod to execute Jesus as an insurrectionist too dangerous to live. Since Jesus refused by word and deed to claim to be the Messiah, how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered?" - from John Hagee's book, 'In Defense of Israel"</p> <p>(continued...) I asked Ms. Ridings point blank if John Hagee taught Dual Covenant theology. She asked me what I meant by that, and I said "does Mr. Hagee tell the Jews that because of the Abrahamic Covenant they don't need Jesus?" Well, she heemed and hawed, and after awhile said that she wanted to send me the official document prepared by John Hagee Ministires to deny the claim that he teaches a Dual Covenant theology. After I read it I called her back but she was never again available, and messages left on her machine were not returned. Here is what she sent me:</p> <p>John Hagee's Official Denial of Dual Covenant theology</p> <p>"In response to concerns regarding unsubstantiated rumors that I believe in Dual Covenant. I am not now nor have I ever been Dual Covenant! I have been preaching the gospel for more than half a century. Almost every Sunday for over 52 years, I have stood in front of Christian audiences to clearly proclaim the glory of our Lord, Savior and Messiah, Jesus Christ. For more than 30 years, these weekly sermons have been beamed to millions around the world on Christian television.</p> <p>I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to learn that some people are interpreting my unconditional love and support of the Jewish people through numerous Night to Honor Israel celebrations as a rejection of this most fundamental Christian belief that Jesus came to earth as the Messiah promised in the Hebrew Scriptures.</p> <p>Given my long years of preaching the gospel to so many, it simply never occurred to me that anyone would question my belief in the fundamentals of the faith. &amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Over the centuries, Christians have been quick to condemn the Jews for their faith and this destructive approach has led to replacement theology and the viewpoint of some that God has rejected and broken covenant with the Jewish people. These ideas, in turn, opened the door to a vicious Christian anti-Semitism that led to the Crusades, the Inquisition, countless pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust.</p> <p>I have challenged this misconception by highlighting a distinction that has been long recognized in Christian theology between the role Jesus played in His first coming and the role He will play in His second coming. Jesus came the first time as the suffering Messiah, as exemplified by His persecution, rejection and crucifixion. Jesus will come back as the reigning Messiah, who will rule the world from His throne in Jerusalem as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.</p> <p>Most Christians believe that the suffering Messiah was clearly foreshadowed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets. God could have sent His Son to earth as the reigning Messiah; instead He chose to send Him as the suffering Messiah who submitted to the Cross for our redemption and I thank Him every day that He did. However, I also regret daily that this divine move has led so many of the fallen humans it saved to denigrate and persecute the Jewish people from whom our Lord sprang. Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns. I pray that we can focus on the fact that we, as Christians, must shift from condemning the Jews for what they missed to thanking them for what they gave."</p> <p>Blessings to you and those you love, Pastor John Hagee</p> <p>But what is he really saying?</p> <p>Now, I'll grant you that John Hagee rejects the label of Dual Covenant Theology, and that he does not acknowledge that what he teaches is that. But as this article has shown, for all practical purposes he does indeed hold to the position that there is one path of salvation for the Jews - Abraham, and that there is another path for all gentiles - Jesus. He has said exactly this in the interview with the Houston Chronicle, and in his writing and teachings on the subject. In fact, he has held to this position for over 30 years. If NTEB was brought into a court of law tomorrow, and asked to prove from Pastor Hagee's own words that he teaches a Dual Covenant postion, it would be remarkably easy to do.</p> <p>What his official denial letter is really about, is his position about what he preaches to gentile Christian believers. It IS true that for 52 years he has stood in the pulpit and preached Jesus. I don't deny that for one second. But what this article is about is the fact that while he preaches Jesus to the gentiles, he says something that is polar opposite to Jews in Israel. He tells the Jews that all they need is Abraham, not Jesus. No where in his entire denial letter does he say that Jews must receive Jesus as Saviour to go to Heaven. Instead he rambles on and on about all the "work" he has done for the Christian church. Well, Mr. Hagee, we are not asking you about the Christian church, we have asked you about the Jews. And you have not replied. In fact, Mr. Morgenstern, who identified himself as the official CUFI spokesperson in Israel, assured me that "CUFI has nothing to do with the bible, and does not discuss biblical things ever." So by that admission, I would have to come to the conclusion that CUFI is a humanitarian organization, like the United Way, and not a group proclaiming Jesus to a lost and dying world.</p> <p>When I spoke on the phone with Velvet Ridings from CUFI, and Ari Morgenstern from CUFI, as well as other administrative people from his San Antonio office, I asked them to just verify for me one thing, and that one thing was this: I asked to just confirm for me that without salvation in Jesus Christ, that ALL people - Jew and gentile - are eternally lost and headed for the Devil's Hell. Not a single one of them would tell me that that was Pastor Hagee's position. Not one. If they had, I would not have been able to truthfully publish this article.</p> <p>We feel that the first hand testimony presented here, along with the numerous quotes from interviews and videos that Mr. Hagee has put out, more than creates a true and accurate picture of what he and CUFI tell the Jews when they are in Israel. No wonder he's so popular over there.</p> <p>John Hagee's book vs. The King James Authorized Version 1611 Holy Bible</p> <p>SCORE: HAGEE - 0&amp;#160; HOLY BIBLE - 100%</p> <p>HAGEE: "The sovereign purpose for Jesus' life was to be a light to the Gentiles" (p. 133) BIBLE: Matthew 15:24-- "But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."</p> <p>HAGEE: "there is not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah&#65533;" (p. 136) BIBLE: John 4:25-26-- "The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. " Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am [he]."</p> <p>HAGEE: "The Jews were not rejecting Jesus as Messiah; it was Jesus who was refusing to be the Messiah to the Jews." (p. 140) "He refused to be their Messiah, choosing instead to be the Savior of the world." (p 143) BIBLE: Acts 2:36--(Peter, addressing the assembled masses of Jewish people on the Feast of Shavuot in Jerusalem in the passage of Acts 2) "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ."</p> <p>HAGEE: "Jesus refused to produce a sign &#65533; because it was not the Father's will, nor his, to be Messiah. (p. 138). BIBLE: Luke 11:29--(Yeshua/Jesus was rebuking not refusing) "And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet." <a href="http://betshalomfresno.org/?page_id=409" type="external">source - Bet Shalom Fresno</a></p> Dual Covenant Theology explained

John Hagee and Dual Covenant Theology

http://nowtheendbegins.com/pages/deception/john-hagee-and-dual-covenant-theology.htm

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John Hagee and Dual Covenant Theology Telling The Jews They Dont Need Jesus But he answered and said I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel Matthew 1524 Jesus saith unto him I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but by me John 146 Everyone else whether Buddhist or Bahai needs to believe in Jesusbut not Jews John Hagee interview with the Houston Chronicle AN OPEN INVITATION TO PASTOR HAGEE We have done our level best to quote your words accurately and directly through newspaper interviews you have given video you have starred in and in speeches you have given in Israel We even published your denial of Dual Covenant Theology as you wrote it complete and unedited If you take issue with any part of this article we invite you to call in to our radio show and we can discuss it openly honestly and fairly You may also email us here to set up a meeting We look forward to speaking with you soon Dual Covenant Theology explained For those of you who dont know this is what Dual Covenant Theology is Dualcovenant theology is a Liberal Christian view that holds that Jews may simply keep the Law of Moses because of the everlasting covenant Genesis 1713 between Abraham and God expressed in the Hebrew Bible whereas Gentiles those not Jews or Jewish proselytes must convert to Christianity or alternatively accept the Seven Laws of Noah Many forms of Christianity especially Conservative Protestants consider this view to be heresy source Wikipedia John Hagee may reject the term Dual Covenant Theology but he absolutely subscibes to the idea of it Does John Hagee teach Dual Covenant Theology Yes he does How do I know this A friend of mine who lives in Israel met with Pastor Hagee and his staff including Cheryl Morrison a key Director in CUFI Christians United For Israel At this meeting attended by over 5000 she was told by both Pastor Hagee and Cheryl Morrison that Jews are saved by the Abrahamic covenant He told them in effect that they do not need Jesus because they have Gods promised to Abraham This is a fact this happened a few weeks ago This is not something I found on the Internet this is a reallife story that happened to someone I am personal friends with Needless to say when she told me this I was floored I had been sharing the Gospel with her for well over a year and now here she was telling me that John Hagee and CUFI assured her that all she needed to get to Heaven was the Abrahamic Covenant It broke my heart Let me be crystal clear before we go any further When evidence of this heresey was first presented to me the FIRST thing I did was to contact John Hagee Ministries in Austin Texas to discuss this with them I called and asked to speak with someone regarding Mr Hagees position on how salvation for the Jews is obtained After listening to several nervoussounding administration officials tell me they could not help me I was finally put in contact with one Velvet Ridings who told me that she is the Administrative Director for Christians United for Israel story continued after the video THE VIDEO THAT JOHN HAGEE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE You will notice that clicking on the video below brings up an offical YouYube notice that the video has been terminated from the NTEB YouTube channel This was done at the offical request of the people at John Hagee Ministries Why would they do this They did it because in the video which is a commerical for Hagees book In Defense Of Israel John Hagee asserts that Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah Yes thats right John Hagee said that and John Hagee believes that But when the book was published there was such an outcry against his obviously heretical position that Hagee was forced to rewrite his book and claim that he was misinterpreted and that he used the wrong words to get his point across At the same time he released his book he also made a television commerical that ran on TBN with him looking into the camera and saying the very things that he claims people have misinterpreted from his book Maybe you can misinterpret a book from the way you read it but him doing a TV commercial saying exactly what he denies is said is pretty powerful stuff Things like this are usually referred to as the smoking gun John Hagee Ministries Attacks NTEB In Attempt To Silence Video Here now is the commercial of John Hagee saying that Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah This action taken by John Hagee Ministries petitioning YouTube to remove this video has resulted in the permanent deletion of the NTEB YouTube channel John Hagee in his own words Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah from John Hagees book In Defense of Israel The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law of God as given through Moses Hagee said I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah which is the word of God has a relationship with God and will come to redemption The law of Moses is sufficient enough to bring a person into the knowledge of God until God gives him a greater revelation And God has not said Hagee giving hisinterpretation of Romans 1125 Paul abandoned the idea of Jews knowing Christ In the book of Romans he said I am now going to go to the Gentiles from this time forward Judaism doesnt need Christianity to explain its existence But Christianity has to have Judaism to explain its existence Houston Chronicle Im not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith he said There is nothing in the night to honor Israel that does that In fact trying to convert Jews is a waste of time he said The Jewish person who has his roots in Judaism is not going to convert to Christianity There is no form of Christian evangelism that has failed so miserably as evangelizing the Jewish people They already have a faith structure Everyone else whether Buddhist or Bahai needs to believe in Jesus he says But not Jews Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced by Christianity he says Houston Chronicle This book will expose the sins of the fathers and the vicious abuse of the Jewish people In Defense of Israel will shake Christian theology It scripturally proves that the Jewish people as a whole did not reject Jesus as Messiah It will also prove that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah It will prove that there was a Calvary conspiracy between Rome the high priest and Herod to execute Jesus as an insurrectionist too dangerous to live Since Jesus refused by word and deed to claim to be the Messiah how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered from John Hagees book In Defense of Israel continued I asked Ms Ridings point blank if John Hagee taught Dual Covenant theology She asked me what I meant by that and I said does Mr Hagee tell the Jews that because of the Abrahamic Covenant they dont need Jesus Well she heemed and hawed and after awhile said that she wanted to send me the official document prepared by John Hagee Ministires to deny the claim that he teaches a Dual Covenant theology After I read it I called her back but she was never again available and messages left on her machine were not returned Here is what she sent me John Hagees Official Denial of Dual Covenant theology In response to concerns regarding unsubstantiated rumors that I believe in Dual Covenant I am not now nor have I ever been Dual Covenant I have been preaching the gospel for more than half a century Almost every Sunday for over 52 years I have stood in front of Christian audiences to clearly proclaim the glory of our Lord Savior and Messiah Jesus Christ For more than 30 years these weekly sermons have been beamed to millions around the world on Christian television I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to learn that some people are interpreting my unconditional love and support of the Jewish people through numerous Night to Honor Israel celebrations as a rejection of this most fundamental Christian belief that Jesus came to earth as the Messiah promised in the Hebrew Scriptures Given my long years of preaching the gospel to so many it simply never occurred to me that anyone would question my belief in the fundamentals of the faith amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 Over the centuries Christians have been quick to condemn the Jews for their faith and this destructive approach has led to replacement theology and the viewpoint of some that God has rejected and broken covenant with the Jewish people These ideas in turn opened the door to a vicious Christian antiSemitism that led to the Crusades the Inquisition countless pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust I have challenged this misconception by highlighting a distinction that has been long recognized in Christian theology between the role Jesus played in His first coming and the role He will play in His second coming Jesus came the first time as the suffering Messiah as exemplified by His persecution rejection and crucifixion Jesus will come back as the reigning Messiah who will rule the world from His throne in Jerusalem as King of Kings and Lord of Lords Most Christians believe that the suffering Messiah was clearly foreshadowed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets God could have sent His Son to earth as the reigning Messiah instead He chose to send Him as the suffering Messiah who submitted to the Cross for our redemption and I thank Him every day that He did However I also regret daily that this divine move has led so many of the fallen humans it saved to denigrate and persecute the Jewish people from whom our Lord sprang Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns I pray that we can focus on the fact that we as Christians must shift from condemning the Jews for what they missed to thanking them for what they gave Blessings to you and those you love Pastor John Hagee But what is he really saying Now Ill grant you that John Hagee rejects the label of Dual Covenant Theology and that he does not acknowledge that what he teaches is that But as this article has shown for all practical purposes he does indeed hold to the position that there is one path of salvation for the Jews Abraham and that there is another path for all gentiles Jesus He has said exactly this in the interview with the Houston Chronicle and in his writing and teachings on the subject In fact he has held to this position for over 30 years If NTEB was brought into a court of law tomorrow and asked to prove from Pastor Hagees own words that he teaches a Dual Covenant postion it would be remarkably easy to do What his official denial letter is really about is his position about what he preaches to gentile Christian believers It IS true that for 52 years he has stood in the pulpit and preached Jesus I dont deny that for one second But what this article is about is the fact that while he preaches Jesus to the gentiles he says something that is polar opposite to Jews in Israel He tells the Jews that all they need is Abraham not Jesus No where in his entire denial letter does he say that Jews must receive Jesus as Saviour to go to Heaven Instead he rambles on and on about all the work he has done for the Christian church Well Mr Hagee we are not asking you about the Christian church we have asked you about the Jews And you have not replied In fact Mr Morgenstern who identified himself as the official CUFI spokesperson in Israel assured me that CUFI has nothing to do with the bible and does not discuss biblical things ever So by that admission I would have to come to the conclusion that CUFI is a humanitarian organization like the United Way and not a group proclaiming Jesus to a lost and dying world When I spoke on the phone with Velvet Ridings from CUFI and Ari Morgenstern from CUFI as well as other administrative people from his San Antonio office I asked them to just verify for me one thing and that one thing was this I asked to just confirm for me that without salvation in Jesus Christ that ALL people Jew and gentile are eternally lost and headed for the Devils Hell Not a single one of them would tell me that that was Pastor Hagees position Not one If they had I would not have been able to truthfully publish this article We feel that the first hand testimony presented here along with the numerous quotes from interviews and videos that Mr Hagee has put out more than creates a true and accurate picture of what he and CUFI tell the Jews when they are in Israel No wonder hes so popular over there John Hagees book vs The King James Authorized Version 1611 Holy Bible SCORE HAGEE 0amp160 HOLY BIBLE 100 HAGEE The sovereign purpose for Jesus life was to be a light to the Gentiles p 133 BIBLE Matthew 1524 But he answered and said I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel HAGEE there is not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah65533 p 136 BIBLE John 42526 The woman saith unto him I know that Messias cometh which is called Christ when he is come he will tell us all things Jesus saith unto her I that speak unto thee am he HAGEE The Jews were not rejecting Jesus as Messiah it was Jesus who was refusing to be the Messiah to the Jews p 140 He refused to be their Messiah choosing instead to be the Savior of the world p 143 BIBLE Acts 236Peter addressing the assembled masses of Jewish people on the Feast of Shavuot in Jerusalem in the passage of Acts 2 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ HAGEE Jesus refused to produce a sign 65533 because it was not the Fathers will nor his to be Messiah p 138 BIBLE Luke 1129YeshuaJesus was rebuking not refusing And when the people were gathered thick together he began to say This is an evil generation they seek a sign and there shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonas the prophet source Bet Shalom Fresno Dual Covenant Theology explained

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<p>It is no secret Donald Trump is an independent, incompetent, narcissist and that he and his fascist cohorts like Steve Bannon were not ready to govern. Perhaps because they didn&#8217;t think they&#8217;d win, they are subsequently struggling to provide both policy and nominees, thankfully wasting most of the critical first one hundred days.</p> <p>What seems to be the best kept secret is the importance of the Koch Donors Trust network and political minions from both Utah and Wisconsin to a Trump Administration.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Before both the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff in Oregon and the 2016 election of President Trump, I <a href="" type="internal">wrote</a> of how the Koch and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints private business interests, among the most substantial on the planet, coincided with public lands policy in the west, including enabling the Bundys and their militias:</p> <p>&#8220;To the point, the Church and the Koch Brothers will oppose any policies that negatively affect their financial portfolios. Is it any wonder they oppose any law or regulation that would affect these interests?</p> <p>And, they both have never been shy engaging their supporters in the political process &#8211; even fomenting sedition &#8211; to protect their interests.&#8221;</p> <p>The tie that binds is the nationalist, anti-communist, uber free market, John Birch Society. an offshoot of the earlier Liberty League of which Fred Koch was also a part. This was a direct response to Wisconsin&#8217;s &#8220;Fighting&#8221; Robert LaFollette&#8217;s Progressive Era reforms that lead to those of the New Deal.&amp;#160; From its inception the Koch machine has heavily invested in Wisconsin, currently claiming credit to 3,000 jobs in all the major resource extraction industries including pipelines, minerals, and forest products. Beyond ideology, these investments are why the Trust&#8217;s network dedicated millions turning the formerly progressive state for over half a century into the ALEC model it is today.</p> <p>However, the Kochs also have substantial investments in the extraction of western public lands resources, their alliance with theo-constitutionalists in the State of Deseret consistently leading that charge, as each is in agreement with the capitalist oriented Mormon dogma that &#8220;everything temporal is spiritual&#8221; including all extractions of financial, natural and human resource.&amp;#160; Populated and operated by Mormon <a href="http://suindependent.com/theo-constitutional/" type="external">theo-constitutional</a> radicals since its inception, the JBS enjoys a special place in the hearts of Mormons who revere former spokespeople Cleon Skousen of pocket constitution fame and Prophet Ezra Taft Benson. The New Yorker in <a href="" type="internal">Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party&#8217;s Cold War Roots</a> said Benson, &#8220;denounced Democratic officeholders and intellectuals (including the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.) as socialists and Communist sympathizers, warned that &#8220;the Constitution will be endangered and hang, as it were, by a single thread,&#8221; and praised the John Birch Society as &#8220;the most effective non-church organization in our fight against creeping socialism and Godless Communism.&#8221;&#8221; &amp;#160;To this day Mormons maintain a stronger a membership/leadership presence in the organization than the now insidious Boy Scouts of America.</p> <p>Arguably, the Koch network&#8217;s greatest political and legislative successes have been in both states, with each adhering to the Donors Trust Tea Party agenda of &#8220;right to work&#8221;, school vouchers, and piss on you taxation and environmental deregulation. While they share most ideological, business and legislative ambitions, what characterizes the Mormons from their Wisconsin Koch counterparts is the theo-constitutional ideology of being the God&#8217;s chosen people and how this view relates to Zion&#8217;s dominion over the public lands of the West.</p> <p>***</p> <p>The JBS network has been hard at work in Wisconsin since the 1940s, the face of organization lunacy McCarthy who unseated Progressive Robert LaFollette, Jr. It is why the John Birch Society moved its headquarters from its original location in Massachusetts to Appleton, WI in the 1980s &#8211; the homes of both McCarthy and David Prosser.</p> <p>Republican Prosser began his career as a District Attorney in Outagamie County. As a kid, I campaigned for him &#8211; my first political endeavor going door to door with leaflets &#8211; my grandparents being friends with his parents. Elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 1979, he quickly became Minority Leader and eventually Assembly Speaker when the GOP took the chamber. In 1998, he was appointed by former Governor and G.W. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.</p> <p>From the 70s to the present, Prosser, who with my grandfather helped bring the JBS to Appleton, used his influence to implement the grand plan to reshape the current Republican party in Wisconsin and kill Progressivism. When the Tea Party hit the streets in 2010, the GOP political machine that he and the JBS/Trust network built was already in place for Reince Priebus and Scott Walker to implement while Prosser, as Chief Justice, presided over the judicial review.</p> <p>In this author&#8217;s view, the since retired Prosser was a master politician most responsible for changing the political landscape of Wisconsin and, with the election of Trump, the nation. He is well respected among the party elites and, although an asshole who <a href="" type="internal">choked a fellow justice</a> that just happened to be both female and a liberal rival, is no doubt proud of his accomplishments.</p> <p>House Speaker Paul Ryan began his political career as a legislative aide for former Republican Senator Bob Kasten who just happened to be a foreign policy adviser to the 2016 Trump Campaign.&amp;#160; After Kasten lost his 1992 Wisconsin Senate seat to progressive Democrat Russ Feingold, Ryan became a speechwriter for Empower America, now known as the Koch Freedomworks.&amp;#160; In 1995, Ryan became the Legislative Director for then Senator and now Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas &#8211; the home of Koch Industries.</p> <p>With Ryan, Priebus lead the way for Tea Party success in the Wisconsin legislature as Chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party, an indication of that success Walker&#8217;s election as Governor, <a href="" type="internal">saying</a>,&amp;#160; &#8220;Early on, when the jury was still out on where the tea party was going, Reince was there early making the case.&#8221; Walker was elected in 2010 at the height of the Koch promoted movement and, with Priebus, Prosser, and a packed GOP legislature, by 2015 completely eliminated the Progressive Era reforms known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Idea" type="external">Wisconsin Idea</a> that earned the state the moniker &#8220;the laboratory for democracy&#8221;, executing the coup de grace to <a href="" type="internal">LaFollette Progressivism</a>.</p> <p>Next, the New Deal.</p> <p>Priebus is a skilled administrator, evidence of his management converting a once core blue state to red and guiding the GOP through the morass of the 2016 election as Chair of the Republican National Committee. Unlike his former counterpart Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman, Priebus seems to operate under the necessary premise that all politics are local and allowed the party system to work as intended, even as the establishment pressured him to do otherwise before and after Trump won the nomination. Also unlike Wasserman, his demeanor is mostly unthreatening, almost likeable. For example, while in law school he interned with the NAACP Legal Fund in California. He also interned with the Wisconsin Supreme Court during Prosser&#8217;s tenure.</p> <p>The role of Priebus as White House Chief of Staff is to oversee both Trump and the Executive Office of the United States &#8211; the federal bureaucracy. Priebus is a perfect choice for working closely with his friend Speaker Ryan, the two working in tandem as the real CEOs of the nation. The value of both Ryan and Priebus and should not be underestimated &#8211; by Trump.</p> <p>***</p> <p>The Donors Trump Administration must do the dirty work of implementing policy, to make certain words and deeds receive favorable oversight, and to push the coordinated paperwork between the Executive and Legislative. To do this, Priebus needs a skilled, trusted, on-the-same-page bureaucrat like himself to coordinate with and push paper between the branches of government, a friend with a benefit who can bring the Senate to bed. This is where Rob Porter and the Utah Congressional delegation with its many respective chamber committee chairs are best suited for the task &#8211; for that earlier mentioned public lands price.</p> <p>Interim White House Staff Secretary Porter is the former Chief of Staff for Skousen Freeman and Senator Orrin Hatch. Before this, the former Harvard Republican Club President Porter was General Counsel for Ohio&#8217;s Senator Rob Portman and for the Judiciary Committee&#8217;s Senator Mike Lee of Utah who himself has been mentioned as a Trump SCOTUS nominee. Portman was also a Law Clerk with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and like Priebus is a skilled, liked, well versed bureaucrat who knows and plays well with Washington insiders and top dog oligarchs.</p> <p>Hatch, a vampire, is the longest currently serving member of the Senate. He has so far been instrumental <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/orrin-hatch-suspended-committee-rules-advance-trump-nominees/" type="external">shepherding Trump nominees</a>, invoking the &#8220;nuclear option&#8221; as Chair of the Finance Committee, suspending the rules to ram both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price through to the floor for confirmation.</p> <p>Sagebrush rebellion radical and Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock, home of the now again contested Grand Staircase Escalante Canyon National Monument, who with several other Commissioners from other Utah Counties call themselves The Posse, wrote an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, &#8220; <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4966758-155/op-ed-hatch-and-trump-are-dream" type="external">Hatch and Trump are the dream team rural Utah needs</a>. I wrote about Pollock and their exploits in <a href="" type="internal">Utah, the Kochs and Their Malheur Monster</a>. Far from rural in scope it seems if Dracula himself wrote it, as I couldn&#8217;t give any better description of the importance of Hatch to a Donors Trump Administration than does Pollock in &#8216;his&#8217; piece:</p> <p>&#8220;The majority of the president&#8217;s key priorities &#8212; from fixing our tax code to repealing Obamacare &#8212; will require Hatch&#8217;s input and ultimately his approval as chairman. To move any reform through Congress, the president will continue to need Hatch&#8217;s cooperation, experience and advice.</p> <p>Perhaps this is why, only a month into his presidency, Trump has already held multiple meetings with Hatch in the Oval Office. Thanks to his tremendous influence in the Senate, Hatch will continue to have more face time with the president than almost any member of Congress.&#8221;</p> <p>Not to be forgotten, Hatch is also on the Judiciary Committee, giving him great leverage over SCOTUS nominees during confirmation. This could help his junior Senate partner Mike Lee &#8211; also a member of the Judiciary Committee along with the always important to Deseret Energy and Natural Resources Committee with Porter&#8217;s former boss Sen. Portman &#8211; who has been mentioned as a future Trump SCOTUS pick.</p> <p>In the House, the former history teacher whose voice you hated is Rep. Bob Bishop, Chair of the Resources Committee, who will coordinate with Senator Lee to ensure that all extractive Donors Trump enterprises will be deregulated on public lands, the Antiquities and Threatened and Endangered Species Acts abolished, and provide a soapbox for promoting public lands transfer to states. A real whiner, he was recorded saying to his critics, &#8220;If anyone here likes the Antiquities Act the way it is written, die, I mean stupidity out of the gene pool.&#8221;</p> <p>As Chair of the House Oversight Committee, Animal Farm&#8217;s Napoleon doppelganger Rep. Jason Chaffetz has his own role to play, ensuring that his committee will never investigate a Donors Trump Administration. With his help, the only investigations into alleged Russian influence in the 2016 election, Trump&#8217;s taxes, or most Executive Branch indiscretions of the future will need to come from a Special Prosecutor, press and/or popular revolt.</p> <p>The quid pro quo is, of course, public lands, Chaffetz having already this Congress proposed a lands transfer bill that was withdrawn after the hunting and wheeled wreckreation industries opposed (he doesn&#8217;t care about <a href="" type="internal">neoliberal environmentalists like the Outdoor Industry Association</a>). Facing chants of &#8220;Do your job!&#8221; from 2,000 people attending a recent contentious Town Hall meeting, he responded that his constituents were trying to &#8220;intimidate and bully people.&#8221; A haughty man, he will try again with future lands transfer bills.</p> <p>Speaking of sagebrush bullies, <a href="http://suindependent.com/mike-noel/" type="external">fuck Mike &#8220;Bloodshed&#8221; Noel</a>.</p> <p>Interviewed for PBS&#8217; Religion and Ethics Weekly, Noel wears Mormon theo-constitutionalism on his sleeve, saying, &#8220;We believe strongly that the Constitution was divinely inspired, and even the founders of it were inspired to write the Constitution.&#8221;</p> <p>Chair of the Rules Committee of the Utah House and state legislative leader of the Donors Trust American Lands Council public lands transfer goals, former Bureau of Land Management employee Noel is being sold by the Hatch and the Utah delegation as the agency&#8217;s next Director &#8211; and he wants to abolish the agency.</p> <p>During the 2016 Malheur takeover in Oregon, a McCarthyesque Congressional Field Hearing was held in St. George, called by Chairs Chaffetz and Bishop, the goal to berate the BLM and federal public lands managers. Testifying with members of The Posse, Noel implored his brethren while threatening public servants, &#8220;This has got to stop. There will be bloodshed. If this continues, there will be bloodshed, I foresee it now.&#8221;</p> <p>And, with that, fuck every one of these Utah politicians who, like McCarthy and the rest of the communist witch-hunters, choose to operate from the bigotry of the righteous, vilifying dedicated public servants both Gentile and chosen alike. Like Donald Trump, they have a proven track record of using their positions of power to go after anyone who opposes their divine goals with malevolent Machiavellian intent, sharing the same basement <a href="http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Degrees_of_Glory" type="external">Degree of Glory</a>.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Wisconsin remains a deeply divided state, the internal struggles far more wrenching than the uniformity of Zion. Given it is the home to Progressivism, a term usurped by the Democratic Party, its people are still being violently ideologically pulled, actively participating in the Laboratory. Union busting and environmental deregulation of today are akin to the forests cleared by loggers for the paper industries of oligarchs of the last Gilded Age 125 years ago. In this native Wisconsinite view, we can only hope that there is a Fighting Bob in the near future to step Forward with a new Idea.</p> <p>Many Mormons hated the idea of voting for Donald the Vile Gentile, instead choosing Independent Utahn and former CIA spook Evan McMullin. McMullin, who got into the presidential race late, garnered 22% of the vote, leaving Trump with only 46% in an overwhelmingly Republican state. McMullin&#8217;s platform was entirely the dangers of Trump, making one wonder if he was privy to knowledge of so-called Russian influence in the Trump campaign, the core of the old-school John Birch Society and the Cold War. In any event, McMullin&#8217;s success is an indication of the saliency of the &#8216;anti-commie&#8217; message.&amp;#160; And, even though Trump was sensitive to Utah&#8217;s perception of him &#8211; he never traveled to the state during the campaign &#8211; the evidence is clear that as business people they all have gotten over it.</p> <p>The Donors Trump Administration has the high probability of policy and legislative success despite the prospect of an independent, incompetent, insane Donald Trump and fascist, dishevelled, apocalyptic Steve Bannon occupying the White House.</p> <p>The only organization with clarified policy to save the legacy and impeachment of Trump, the Koch Donors Trust network is ready, citizens like Ryan and Priebus, Hatch and Porter of the great states of Wisconsin and Utah able.</p> <p>Unlike Trump, these vocational citizens who are backed by financial oligarchs with both planetary and heavenly ambition have patiently been working since the Progressive Era reforms of the New Deal to capitalize on this moment.</p> <p>Like Trump, they are all well versed in the quid pro quo world of the Art of the Deal and appear to have closed it.</p>

The Donors Trump Administration

https://counterpunch.org/2017/03/03/the-donors-trump-administration/

2017-03-03

4left

It is no secret Donald Trump is an independent incompetent narcissist and that he and his fascist cohorts like Steve Bannon were not ready to govern Perhaps because they didn8217t think they8217d win they are subsequently struggling to provide both policy and nominees thankfully wasting most of the critical first one hundred days What seems to be the best kept secret is the importance of the Koch Donors Trust network and political minions from both Utah and Wisconsin to a Trump Administration Before both the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff in Oregon and the 2016 election of President Trump I wrote of how the Koch and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints private business interests among the most substantial on the planet coincided with public lands policy in the west including enabling the Bundys and their militias 8220To the point the Church and the Koch Brothers will oppose any policies that negatively affect their financial portfolios Is it any wonder they oppose any law or regulation that would affect these interests And they both have never been shy engaging their supporters in the political process 8211 even fomenting sedition 8211 to protect their interests8221 The tie that binds is the nationalist anticommunist uber free market John Birch Society an offshoot of the earlier Liberty League of which Fred Koch was also a part This was a direct response to Wisconsin8217s 8220Fighting8221 Robert LaFollette8217s Progressive Era reforms that lead to those of the New Dealamp160 From its inception the Koch machine has heavily invested in Wisconsin currently claiming credit to 3000 jobs in all the major resource extraction industries including pipelines minerals and forest products Beyond ideology these investments are why the Trust8217s network dedicated millions turning the formerly progressive state for over half a century into the ALEC model it is today However the Kochs also have substantial investments in the extraction of western public lands resources their alliance with theoconstitutionalists in the State of Deseret consistently leading that charge as each is in agreement with the capitalist oriented Mormon dogma that 8220everything temporal is spiritual8221 including all extractions of financial natural and human resourceamp160 Populated and operated by Mormon theoconstitutional radicals since its inception the JBS enjoys a special place in the hearts of Mormons who revere former spokespeople Cleon Skousen of pocket constitution fame and Prophet Ezra Taft Benson The New Yorker in Confounding Fathers The Tea Party8217s Cold War Roots said Benson 8220denounced Democratic officeholders and intellectuals including the historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr as socialists and Communist sympathizers warned that 8220the Constitution will be endangered and hang as it were by a single thread8221 and praised the John Birch Society as 8220the most effective nonchurch organization in our fight against creeping socialism and Godless Communism82218221 amp160To this day Mormons maintain a stronger a membershipleadership presence in the organization than the now insidious Boy Scouts of America Arguably the Koch network8217s greatest political and legislative successes have been in both states with each adhering to the Donors Trust Tea Party agenda of 8220right to work8221 school vouchers and piss on you taxation and environmental deregulation While they share most ideological business and legislative ambitions what characterizes the Mormons from their Wisconsin Koch counterparts is the theoconstitutional ideology of being the God8217s chosen people and how this view relates to Zion8217s dominion over the public lands of the West The JBS network has been hard at work in Wisconsin since the 1940s the face of organization lunacy McCarthy who unseated Progressive Robert LaFollette Jr It is why the John Birch Society moved its headquarters from its original location in Massachusetts to Appleton WI in the 1980s 8211 the homes of both McCarthy and David Prosser Republican Prosser began his career as a District Attorney in Outagamie County As a kid I campaigned for him 8211 my first political endeavor going door to door with leaflets 8211 my grandparents being friends with his parents Elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 1979 he quickly became Minority Leader and eventually Assembly Speaker when the GOP took the chamber In 1998 he was appointed by former Governor and GW Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson to the Wisconsin Supreme Court From the 70s to the present Prosser who with my grandfather helped bring the JBS to Appleton used his influence to implement the grand plan to reshape the current Republican party in Wisconsin and kill Progressivism When the Tea Party hit the streets in 2010 the GOP political machine that he and the JBSTrust network built was already in place for Reince Priebus and Scott Walker to implement while Prosser as Chief Justice presided over the judicial review In this author8217s view the since retired Prosser was a master politician most responsible for changing the political landscape of Wisconsin and with the election of Trump the nation He is well respected among the party elites and although an asshole who choked a fellow justice that just happened to be both female and a liberal rival is no doubt proud of his accomplishments House Speaker Paul Ryan began his political career as a legislative aide for former Republican Senator Bob Kasten who just happened to be a foreign policy adviser to the 2016 Trump Campaignamp160 After Kasten lost his 1992 Wisconsin Senate seat to progressive Democrat Russ Feingold Ryan became a speechwriter for Empower America now known as the Koch Freedomworksamp160 In 1995 Ryan became the Legislative Director for then Senator and now Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas 8211 the home of Koch Industries With Ryan Priebus lead the way for Tea Party success in the Wisconsin legislature as Chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party an indication of that success Walker8217s election as Governor sayingamp160 8220Early on when the jury was still out on where the tea party was going Reince was there early making the case8221 Walker was elected in 2010 at the height of the Koch promoted movement and with Priebus Prosser and a packed GOP legislature by 2015 completely eliminated the Progressive Era reforms known as the Wisconsin Idea that earned the state the moniker 8220the laboratory for democracy8221 executing the coup de grace to LaFollette Progressivism Next the New Deal Priebus is a skilled administrator evidence of his management converting a once core blue state to red and guiding the GOP through the morass of the 2016 election as Chair of the Republican National Committee Unlike his former counterpart Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Priebus seems to operate under the necessary premise that all politics are local and allowed the party system to work as intended even as the establishment pressured him to do otherwise before and after Trump won the nomination Also unlike Wasserman his demeanor is mostly unthreatening almost likeable For example while in law school he interned with the NAACP Legal Fund in California He also interned with the Wisconsin Supreme Court during Prosser8217s tenure The role of Priebus as White House Chief of Staff is to oversee both Trump and the Executive Office of the United States 8211 the federal bureaucracy Priebus is a perfect choice for working closely with his friend Speaker Ryan the two working in tandem as the real CEOs of the nation The value of both Ryan and Priebus and should not be underestimated 8211 by Trump The Donors Trump Administration must do the dirty work of implementing policy to make certain words and deeds receive favorable oversight and to push the coordinated paperwork between the Executive and Legislative To do this Priebus needs a skilled trusted onthesamepage bureaucrat like himself to coordinate with and push paper between the branches of government a friend with a benefit who can bring the Senate to bed This is where Rob Porter and the Utah Congressional delegation with its many respective chamber committee chairs are best suited for the task 8211 for that earlier mentioned public lands price Interim White House Staff Secretary Porter is the former Chief of Staff for Skousen Freeman and Senator Orrin Hatch Before this the former Harvard Republican Club President Porter was General Counsel for Ohio8217s Senator Rob Portman and for the Judiciary Committee8217s Senator Mike Lee of Utah who himself has been mentioned as a Trump SCOTUS nominee Portman was also a Law Clerk with the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and like Priebus is a skilled liked well versed bureaucrat who knows and plays well with Washington insiders and top dog oligarchs Hatch a vampire is the longest currently serving member of the Senate He has so far been instrumental shepherding Trump nominees invoking the 8220nuclear option8221 as Chair of the Finance Committee suspending the rules to ram both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price through to the floor for confirmation Sagebrush rebellion radical and Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock home of the now again contested Grand Staircase Escalante Canyon National Monument who with several other Commissioners from other Utah Counties call themselves The Posse wrote an oped in the Salt Lake Tribune 8220 Hatch and Trump are the dream team rural Utah needs I wrote about Pollock and their exploits in Utah the Kochs and Their Malheur Monster Far from rural in scope it seems if Dracula himself wrote it as I couldn8217t give any better description of the importance of Hatch to a Donors Trump Administration than does Pollock in 8216his8217 piece 8220The majority of the president8217s key priorities 8212 from fixing our tax code to repealing Obamacare 8212 will require Hatch8217s input and ultimately his approval as chairman To move any reform through Congress the president will continue to need Hatch8217s cooperation experience and advice Perhaps this is why only a month into his presidency Trump has already held multiple meetings with Hatch in the Oval Office Thanks to his tremendous influence in the Senate Hatch will continue to have more face time with the president than almost any member of Congress8221 Not to be forgotten Hatch is also on the Judiciary Committee giving him great leverage over SCOTUS nominees during confirmation This could help his junior Senate partner Mike Lee 8211 also a member of the Judiciary Committee along with the always important to Deseret Energy and Natural Resources Committee with Porter8217s former boss Sen Portman 8211 who has been mentioned as a future Trump SCOTUS pick In the House the former history teacher whose voice you hated is Rep Bob Bishop Chair of the Resources Committee who will coordinate with Senator Lee to ensure that all extractive Donors Trump enterprises will be deregulated on public lands the Antiquities and Threatened and Endangered Species Acts abolished and provide a soapbox for promoting public lands transfer to states A real whiner he was recorded saying to his critics 8220If anyone here likes the Antiquities Act the way it is written die I mean stupidity out of the gene pool8221 As Chair of the House Oversight Committee Animal Farm8217s Napoleon doppelganger Rep Jason Chaffetz has his own role to play ensuring that his committee will never investigate a Donors Trump Administration With his help the only investigations into alleged Russian influence in the 2016 election Trump8217s taxes or most Executive Branch indiscretions of the future will need to come from a Special Prosecutor press andor popular revolt The quid pro quo is of course public lands Chaffetz having already this Congress proposed a lands transfer bill that was withdrawn after the hunting and wheeled wreckreation industries opposed he doesn8217t care about neoliberal environmentalists like the Outdoor Industry Association Facing chants of 8220Do your job8221 from 2000 people attending a recent contentious Town Hall meeting he responded that his constituents were trying to 8220intimidate and bully people8221 A haughty man he will try again with future lands transfer bills Speaking of sagebrush bullies fuck Mike 8220Bloodshed8221 Noel Interviewed for PBS8217 Religion and Ethics Weekly Noel wears Mormon theoconstitutionalism on his sleeve saying 8220We believe strongly that the Constitution was divinely inspired and even the founders of it were inspired to write the Constitution8221 Chair of the Rules Committee of the Utah House and state legislative leader of the Donors Trust American Lands Council public lands transfer goals former Bureau of Land Management employee Noel is being sold by the Hatch and the Utah delegation as the agency8217s next Director 8211 and he wants to abolish the agency During the 2016 Malheur takeover in Oregon a McCarthyesque Congressional Field Hearing was held in St George called by Chairs Chaffetz and Bishop the goal to berate the BLM and federal public lands managers Testifying with members of The Posse Noel implored his brethren while threatening public servants 8220This has got to stop There will be bloodshed If this continues there will be bloodshed I foresee it now8221 And with that fuck every one of these Utah politicians who like McCarthy and the rest of the communist witchhunters choose to operate from the bigotry of the righteous vilifying dedicated public servants both Gentile and chosen alike Like Donald Trump they have a proven track record of using their positions of power to go after anyone who opposes their divine goals with malevolent Machiavellian intent sharing the same basement Degree of Glory Wisconsin remains a deeply divided state the internal struggles far more wrenching than the uniformity of Zion Given it is the home to Progressivism a term usurped by the Democratic Party its people are still being violently ideologically pulled actively participating in the Laboratory Union busting and environmental deregulation of today are akin to the forests cleared by loggers for the paper industries of oligarchs of the last Gilded Age 125 years ago In this native Wisconsinite view we can only hope that there is a Fighting Bob in the near future to step Forward with a new Idea Many Mormons hated the idea of voting for Donald the Vile Gentile instead choosing Independent Utahn and former CIA spook Evan McMullin McMullin who got into the presidential race late garnered 22 of the vote leaving Trump with only 46 in an overwhelmingly Republican state McMullin8217s platform was entirely the dangers of Trump making one wonder if he was privy to knowledge of socalled Russian influence in the Trump campaign the core of the oldschool John Birch Society and the Cold War In any event McMullin8217s success is an indication of the saliency of the 8216anticommie8217 messageamp160 And even though Trump was sensitive to Utah8217s perception of him 8211 he never traveled to the state during the campaign 8211 the evidence is clear that as business people they all have gotten over it The Donors Trump Administration has the high probability of policy and legislative success despite the prospect of an independent incompetent insane Donald Trump and fascist dishevelled apocalyptic Steve Bannon occupying the White House The only organization with clarified policy to save the legacy and impeachment of Trump the Koch Donors Trust network is ready citizens like Ryan and Priebus Hatch and Porter of the great states of Wisconsin and Utah able Unlike Trump these vocational citizens who are backed by financial oligarchs with both planetary and heavenly ambition have patiently been working since the Progressive Era reforms of the New Deal to capitalize on this moment Like Trump they are all well versed in the quid pro quo world of the Art of the Deal and appear to have closed it

It/PRON is/AUX no/DET secret/ADJ Donald/PROPN Trump/PROPN is/AUX an/DET independent/ADJ incompetent/ADJ narcissist/NOUN and/CCONJ that/SCONJ he/PRON and/CCONJ his/PRON fascist/ADJ cohorts/NOUN like/ADP Steve/PROPN Bannon/PROPN were/AUX not/PART ready/ADJ to/PART govern/VERB Perhaps/ADV because/SCONJ they/PRON didn8217/PROPN t/PROPN think/VERB they8217d/NOUN win/NOUN they/PRON are/AUX subsequently/ADV struggling/VERB to/PART provide/VERB both/DET policy/NOUN and/CCONJ nominees/NOUN thankfully/ADV wasting/VERB most/ADJ of/ADP the/DET critical/ADJ first/ADJ one/NUM hundred/NUM days/NOUN What/PRON seems/VERB to/PART be/AUX the/DET best/ADV kept/VERB secret/ADJ is/AUX the/DET importance/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Koch/PROPN Donors/PROPN Trust/PROPN network/NOUN and/CCONJ political/ADJ minions/NOUN from/ADP both/PRON Utah/PROPN and/CCONJ Wisconsin/PROPN to/ADP a/DET Trump/PROPN Administration/PROPN Before/ADP both/CCONJ the/DET Malheur/PROPN National/PROPN Wildlife/PROPN Refuge/PROPN standoff/NOUN 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<p>John Hagee and Dual Covenant Theology Telling The Jews They Don't Need Jesus</p> <p /> <p>"But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. " <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&amp;amp;c=15" type="external">Matthew 15:24</a></p> <p>"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. " <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?t=KJV&amp;amp;b=Jhn&amp;amp;c=14&amp;amp;v=1&amp;amp;x=0&amp;amp;y=0" type="external">John 14:6</a></p> <p>"Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha'i, needs to believe in Jesus...but not Jews." <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_540301/san-antonio-fundamentalist-battles-anti-semitism.html" type="external">John Hagee, interview with the Houston Chronicle</a></p> <p>AN OPEN INVITATION TO PASTOR HAGEE: We have done our level best to quote your words accurately and directly through newspaper interviews you have given, video you have starred in, and in speeches you have given in Israel. We even published your denial of Dual Covenant Theology as you wrote it, complete and unedited.</p> <p>If you take issue with any part of this article, we invite you to <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nteb" type="external">call in to our radio show</a>, and we can discuss it openly, honestly and fairly. You may also <a href="" type="internal">email us here</a> to set up a meeting. We look forward to speaking with you soon.</p> <p>Dual Covenant Theology explained</p> <p>For those of you who don't know, this is what Dual Covenant Theology is:</p> <p>"Dual-covenant theology is a Liberal Christian view that holds that Jews may simply keep the Law of Moses, because of the "everlasting covenant" (Genesis 17:13) between Abraham and God expressed in the Hebrew Bible, whereas Gentiles (those not Jews or Jewish proselytes) must convert to Christianity or alternatively accept the Seven Laws of Noah. Many forms of Christianity, especially Conservative Protestants, consider this view to be heresy." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-covenant_theology" type="external">source - Wikipedia</a></p> <p><a href="" type="internal" /> John Hagee may reject the term Dual Covenant Theology, but he absolutely subscibes to the idea of it</p> <p>Does John Hagee teach Dual Covenant Theology?</p> <p>Yes, he does.</p> <p>How do I know this? A friend of mine who lives in Israel met with Pastor Hagee and his staff including <a href="http://www.cufi.org/site/PageNavigator/about_directors_morrison" type="external">Cheryl Morrison, a key Director in CUFI</a> - Christians United For Israel. At this meeting, attended by over 5,000, she was told by both Pastor Hagee and Cheryl Morrison that "Jews are saved by the Abrahamic covenant" He told them, in effect, that they do not need Jesus because they have God's promised to Abraham.</p> <p>This is a fact, this happened a few weeks ago. This is not something I "found on the Internet", this is a real-life story that happened to someone I am personal friends with. Needless to say, when she told me this I was floored. I had been sharing the Gospel with her for well over a year, and now here she was telling me that John Hagee and CUFI assured her that all she needed to get to Heaven was the Abrahamic Covenant.</p> <p>It broke my heart.</p> <p>Let me be crystal clear before we go any further. When evidence of this heresey was first presented to me, the FIRST thing I did was to contact John Hagee Ministries in Austin, Texas, to discuss this with them. I called and asked to speak with someone regarding Mr. Hagee's position on how salvation for the Jews is obtained. After listening to several nervous-sounding administration officials tell me they could not help me, I was finally put in contact with one Velvet Ridings, who told me that she is the Administrative Director for Christians United for Israel. (story continued after the video)</p> <p>THE VIDEO THAT JOHN HAGEE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE!</p> <p>You will notice that clicking on the video below brings up an offical YouYube notice that the video has been terminated from the NTEB YouTube channel. This was done at the offical request of the people at John Hagee Ministries. Why would they do this?</p> <p>They did it because in the video, which is a commerical for Hagee's book, "In Defense Of Israel", John Hagee asserts that "Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah". Yes, that's right, John Hagee said that, and John Hagee believes that. But when the book was published, there was such an outcry against his obviously heretical position, that Hagee was forced to re-write his book, and claim that he was "misinterpreted", and that he "used the wrong words" to get his point across.</p> <p>At the same time he released his book, he also made a television commerical that ran on TBN, with him looking into the camera and saying the very things that he claims people have "misinterpreted" from his book. Maybe you can "misinterpret" a book from the way you read it, but him doing a TV commercial saying exactly what he denies is said is pretty powerful stuff. Things like this are usually referred to as the "smoking gun".</p> <p>John Hagee Ministries Attacks NTEB In Attempt To Silence Video</p> <p>Here now is the commercial of John Hagee saying that "Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah." This action taken by John Hagee Ministries, petitioning YouTube to remove this video, has resulted in the permanent deletion of the NTEB YouTube channel.</p> <p><a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" type="external" /></p> <p>John Hagee in his own words</p> <p>"Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah" - from John Hagee's book, 'In Defense of Israel"</p> <p>"The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law of God as given through Moses," Hagee said. "I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ. I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, which is the word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption. "The law of Moses is sufficient enough to bring a person into the knowledge of God until God gives him a greater revelation. And God has not," said Hagee, giving hisinterpretation of Romans 11:25. "Paul abandoned the idea (of Jews knowing Christ). In the book of Romans, he said, `I am now going to go to the Gentiles from this time forward.' Judaism doesn't need Christianity to explain its existence. But Christianity has to have Judaism to explain its existence." <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_540301/san-antonio-fundamentalist-battles-anti-semitism.html" type="external">Houston Chronicle</a></p> <p>"I'm not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith," he said. "There is nothing in the `night to honor Israel' that does that." In fact, trying to convert Jews is a "waste of time," he said. "The Jewish person who has his roots in Judaism is not going to convert to Christianity. There is no form of Christian evangelism that has failed so miserably as evangelizing the Jewish people. They (already) have a faith structure." Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha'i, needs to believe in Jesus, he says. But not Jews. Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced by Christianity, he says. <a href="http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1988_540301/san-antonio-fundamentalist-battles-anti-semitism.html" type="external">Houston Chronicle</a></p> <p>"This book will expose the sins of the fathers and the vicious abuse of the Jewish people. 'In Defense of Israel' will shake Christian theology. It scripturally proves that the Jewish people as a whole did not reject Jesus as Messiah. It will also prove that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah. It will prove that there was a 'Calvary conspiracy' between Rome, the high priest, and Herod to execute Jesus as an insurrectionist too dangerous to live. Since Jesus refused by word and deed to claim to be the Messiah, how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered?" - from John Hagee's book, 'In Defense of Israel"</p> <p>(continued...) I asked Ms. Ridings point blank if John Hagee taught Dual Covenant theology. She asked me what I meant by that, and I said "does Mr. Hagee tell the Jews that because of the Abrahamic Covenant they don't need Jesus?" Well, she heemed and hawed, and after awhile said that she wanted to send me the official document prepared by John Hagee Ministires to deny the claim that he teaches a Dual Covenant theology. After I read it I called her back but she was never again available, and messages left on her machine were not returned. Here is what she sent me:</p> <p>John Hagee's Official Denial of Dual Covenant theology</p> <p>"In response to concerns regarding unsubstantiated rumors that I believe in Dual Covenant. I am not now nor have I ever been Dual Covenant! I have been preaching the gospel for more than half a century. Almost every Sunday for over 52 years, I have stood in front of Christian audiences to clearly proclaim the glory of our Lord, Savior and Messiah, Jesus Christ. For more than 30 years, these weekly sermons have been beamed to millions around the world on Christian television.</p> <p>I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to learn that some people are interpreting my unconditional love and support of the Jewish people through numerous Night to Honor Israel celebrations as a rejection of this most fundamental Christian belief that Jesus came to earth as the Messiah promised in the Hebrew Scriptures.</p> <p>Given my long years of preaching the gospel to so many, it simply never occurred to me that anyone would question my belief in the fundamentals of the faith. &amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Over the centuries, Christians have been quick to condemn the Jews for their faith and this destructive approach has led to replacement theology and the viewpoint of some that God has rejected and broken covenant with the Jewish people. These ideas, in turn, opened the door to a vicious Christian anti-Semitism that led to the Crusades, the Inquisition, countless pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust.</p> <p>I have challenged this misconception by highlighting a distinction that has been long recognized in Christian theology between the role Jesus played in His first coming and the role He will play in His second coming. Jesus came the first time as the suffering Messiah, as exemplified by His persecution, rejection and crucifixion. Jesus will come back as the reigning Messiah, who will rule the world from His throne in Jerusalem as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.</p> <p>Most Christians believe that the suffering Messiah was clearly foreshadowed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets. God could have sent His Son to earth as the reigning Messiah; instead He chose to send Him as the suffering Messiah who submitted to the Cross for our redemption and I thank Him every day that He did. However, I also regret daily that this divine move has led so many of the fallen humans it saved to denigrate and persecute the Jewish people from whom our Lord sprang. Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns. I pray that we can focus on the fact that we, as Christians, must shift from condemning the Jews for what they missed to thanking them for what they gave."</p> <p>Blessings to you and those you love, Pastor John Hagee</p> <p>But what is he really saying?</p> <p>Now, I'll grant you that John Hagee rejects the label of Dual Covenant Theology, and that he does not acknowledge that what he teaches is that. But as this article has shown, for all practical purposes he does indeed hold to the position that there is one path of salvation for the Jews - Abraham, and that there is another path for all gentiles - Jesus. He has said exactly this in the interview with the Houston Chronicle, and in his writing and teachings on the subject. In fact, he has held to this position for over 30 years. If NTEB was brought into a court of law tomorrow, and asked to prove from Pastor Hagee's own words that he teaches a Dual Covenant postion, it would be remarkably easy to do.</p> <p>What his official denial letter is really about, is his position about what he preaches to gentile Christian believers. It IS true that for 52 years he has stood in the pulpit and preached Jesus. I don't deny that for one second. But what this article is about is the fact that while he preaches Jesus to the gentiles, he says something that is polar opposite to Jews in Israel. He tells the Jews that all they need is Abraham, not Jesus. No where in his entire denial letter does he say that Jews must receive Jesus as Saviour to go to Heaven. Instead he rambles on and on about all the "work" he has done for the Christian church. Well, Mr. Hagee, we are not asking you about the Christian church, we have asked you about the Jews. And you have not replied. In fact, Mr. Morgenstern, who identified himself as the official CUFI spokesperson in Israel, assured me that "CUFI has nothing to do with the bible, and does not discuss biblical things ever." So by that admission, I would have to come to the conclusion that CUFI is a humanitarian organization, like the United Way, and not a group proclaiming Jesus to a lost and dying world.</p> <p>When I spoke on the phone with Velvet Ridings from CUFI, and Ari Morgenstern from CUFI, as well as other administrative people from his San Antonio office, I asked them to just verify for me one thing, and that one thing was this: I asked to just confirm for me that without salvation in Jesus Christ, that ALL people - Jew and gentile - are eternally lost and headed for the Devil's Hell. Not a single one of them would tell me that that was Pastor Hagee's position. Not one. If they had, I would not have been able to truthfully publish this article.</p> <p>We feel that the first hand testimony presented here, along with the numerous quotes from interviews and videos that Mr. Hagee has put out, more than creates a true and accurate picture of what he and CUFI tell the Jews when they are in Israel. No wonder he's so popular over there.</p> <p>John Hagee's book vs. The King James Authorized Version 1611 Holy Bible</p> <p>SCORE: HAGEE - 0&amp;#160; HOLY BIBLE - 100%</p> <p>HAGEE: "The sovereign purpose for Jesus' life was to be a light to the Gentiles" (p. 133) BIBLE: Matthew 15:24-- "But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."</p> <p>HAGEE: "there is not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah&#65533;" (p. 136) BIBLE: John 4:25-26-- "The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. " Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am [he]."</p> <p>HAGEE: "The Jews were not rejecting Jesus as Messiah; it was Jesus who was refusing to be the Messiah to the Jews." (p. 140) "He refused to be their Messiah, choosing instead to be the Savior of the world." (p 143) BIBLE: Acts 2:36--(Peter, addressing the assembled masses of Jewish people on the Feast of Shavuot in Jerusalem in the passage of Acts 2) "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ."</p> <p>HAGEE: "Jesus refused to produce a sign &#65533; because it was not the Father's will, nor his, to be Messiah. (p. 138). BIBLE: Luke 11:29--(Yeshua/Jesus was rebuking not refusing) "And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to say, This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet." <a href="http://betshalomfresno.org/?page_id=409" type="external">source - Bet Shalom Fresno</a></p> Dual Covenant Theology explained

John Hagee and Dual Covenant Theology

http://nowtheendbegins.com/pages/deception/john-hagee-and-dual-covenant-theology.htm

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John Hagee and Dual Covenant Theology Telling The Jews They Dont Need Jesus But he answered and said I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel Matthew 1524 Jesus saith unto him I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but by me John 146 Everyone else whether Buddhist or Bahai needs to believe in Jesusbut not Jews John Hagee interview with the Houston Chronicle AN OPEN INVITATION TO PASTOR HAGEE We have done our level best to quote your words accurately and directly through newspaper interviews you have given video you have starred in and in speeches you have given in Israel We even published your denial of Dual Covenant Theology as you wrote it complete and unedited If you take issue with any part of this article we invite you to call in to our radio show and we can discuss it openly honestly and fairly You may also email us here to set up a meeting We look forward to speaking with you soon Dual Covenant Theology explained For those of you who dont know this is what Dual Covenant Theology is Dualcovenant theology is a Liberal Christian view that holds that Jews may simply keep the Law of Moses because of the everlasting covenant Genesis 1713 between Abraham and God expressed in the Hebrew Bible whereas Gentiles those not Jews or Jewish proselytes must convert to Christianity or alternatively accept the Seven Laws of Noah Many forms of Christianity especially Conservative Protestants consider this view to be heresy source Wikipedia John Hagee may reject the term Dual Covenant Theology but he absolutely subscibes to the idea of it Does John Hagee teach Dual Covenant Theology Yes he does How do I know this A friend of mine who lives in Israel met with Pastor Hagee and his staff including Cheryl Morrison a key Director in CUFI Christians United For Israel At this meeting attended by over 5000 she was told by both Pastor Hagee and Cheryl Morrison that Jews are saved by the Abrahamic covenant He told them in effect that they do not need Jesus because they have Gods promised to Abraham This is a fact this happened a few weeks ago This is not something I found on the Internet this is a reallife story that happened to someone I am personal friends with Needless to say when she told me this I was floored I had been sharing the Gospel with her for well over a year and now here she was telling me that John Hagee and CUFI assured her that all she needed to get to Heaven was the Abrahamic Covenant It broke my heart Let me be crystal clear before we go any further When evidence of this heresey was first presented to me the FIRST thing I did was to contact John Hagee Ministries in Austin Texas to discuss this with them I called and asked to speak with someone regarding Mr Hagees position on how salvation for the Jews is obtained After listening to several nervoussounding administration officials tell me they could not help me I was finally put in contact with one Velvet Ridings who told me that she is the Administrative Director for Christians United for Israel story continued after the video THE VIDEO THAT JOHN HAGEE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE You will notice that clicking on the video below brings up an offical YouYube notice that the video has been terminated from the NTEB YouTube channel This was done at the offical request of the people at John Hagee Ministries Why would they do this They did it because in the video which is a commerical for Hagees book In Defense Of Israel John Hagee asserts that Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah Yes thats right John Hagee said that and John Hagee believes that But when the book was published there was such an outcry against his obviously heretical position that Hagee was forced to rewrite his book and claim that he was misinterpreted and that he used the wrong words to get his point across At the same time he released his book he also made a television commerical that ran on TBN with him looking into the camera and saying the very things that he claims people have misinterpreted from his book Maybe you can misinterpret a book from the way you read it but him doing a TV commercial saying exactly what he denies is said is pretty powerful stuff Things like this are usually referred to as the smoking gun John Hagee Ministries Attacks NTEB In Attempt To Silence Video Here now is the commercial of John Hagee saying that Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah This action taken by John Hagee Ministries petitioning YouTube to remove this video has resulted in the permanent deletion of the NTEB YouTube channel John Hagee in his own words Jesus did not come to the earth to be the Messiah from John Hagees book In Defense of Israel The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law of God as given through Moses Hagee said I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah which is the word of God has a relationship with God and will come to redemption The law of Moses is sufficient enough to bring a person into the knowledge of God until God gives him a greater revelation And God has not said Hagee giving hisinterpretation of Romans 1125 Paul abandoned the idea of Jews knowing Christ In the book of Romans he said I am now going to go to the Gentiles from this time forward Judaism doesnt need Christianity to explain its existence But Christianity has to have Judaism to explain its existence Houston Chronicle Im not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith he said There is nothing in the night to honor Israel that does that In fact trying to convert Jews is a waste of time he said The Jewish person who has his roots in Judaism is not going to convert to Christianity There is no form of Christian evangelism that has failed so miserably as evangelizing the Jewish people They already have a faith structure Everyone else whether Buddhist or Bahai needs to believe in Jesus he says But not Jews Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced by Christianity he says Houston Chronicle This book will expose the sins of the fathers and the vicious abuse of the Jewish people In Defense of Israel will shake Christian theology It scripturally proves that the Jewish people as a whole did not reject Jesus as Messiah It will also prove that Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah It will prove that there was a Calvary conspiracy between Rome the high priest and Herod to execute Jesus as an insurrectionist too dangerous to live Since Jesus refused by word and deed to claim to be the Messiah how can the Jews be blamed for rejecting what was never offered from John Hagees book In Defense of Israel continued I asked Ms Ridings point blank if John Hagee taught Dual Covenant theology She asked me what I meant by that and I said does Mr Hagee tell the Jews that because of the Abrahamic Covenant they dont need Jesus Well she heemed and hawed and after awhile said that she wanted to send me the official document prepared by John Hagee Ministires to deny the claim that he teaches a Dual Covenant theology After I read it I called her back but she was never again available and messages left on her machine were not returned Here is what she sent me John Hagees Official Denial of Dual Covenant theology In response to concerns regarding unsubstantiated rumors that I believe in Dual Covenant I am not now nor have I ever been Dual Covenant I have been preaching the gospel for more than half a century Almost every Sunday for over 52 years I have stood in front of Christian audiences to clearly proclaim the glory of our Lord Savior and Messiah Jesus Christ For more than 30 years these weekly sermons have been beamed to millions around the world on Christian television I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to learn that some people are interpreting my unconditional love and support of the Jewish people through numerous Night to Honor Israel celebrations as a rejection of this most fundamental Christian belief that Jesus came to earth as the Messiah promised in the Hebrew Scriptures Given my long years of preaching the gospel to so many it simply never occurred to me that anyone would question my belief in the fundamentals of the faith amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 Over the centuries Christians have been quick to condemn the Jews for their faith and this destructive approach has led to replacement theology and the viewpoint of some that God has rejected and broken covenant with the Jewish people These ideas in turn opened the door to a vicious Christian antiSemitism that led to the Crusades the Inquisition countless pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust I have challenged this misconception by highlighting a distinction that has been long recognized in Christian theology between the role Jesus played in His first coming and the role He will play in His second coming Jesus came the first time as the suffering Messiah as exemplified by His persecution rejection and crucifixion Jesus will come back as the reigning Messiah who will rule the world from His throne in Jerusalem as King of Kings and Lord of Lords Most Christians believe that the suffering Messiah was clearly foreshadowed in the writings of the Hebrew prophets God could have sent His Son to earth as the reigning Messiah instead He chose to send Him as the suffering Messiah who submitted to the Cross for our redemption and I thank Him every day that He did However I also regret daily that this divine move has led so many of the fallen humans it saved to denigrate and persecute the Jewish people from whom our Lord sprang Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns I pray that we can focus on the fact that we as Christians must shift from condemning the Jews for what they missed to thanking them for what they gave Blessings to you and those you love Pastor John Hagee But what is he really saying Now Ill grant you that John Hagee rejects the label of Dual Covenant Theology and that he does not acknowledge that what he teaches is that But as this article has shown for all practical purposes he does indeed hold to the position that there is one path of salvation for the Jews Abraham and that there is another path for all gentiles Jesus He has said exactly this in the interview with the Houston Chronicle and in his writing and teachings on the subject In fact he has held to this position for over 30 years If NTEB was brought into a court of law tomorrow and asked to prove from Pastor Hagees own words that he teaches a Dual Covenant postion it would be remarkably easy to do What his official denial letter is really about is his position about what he preaches to gentile Christian believers It IS true that for 52 years he has stood in the pulpit and preached Jesus I dont deny that for one second But what this article is about is the fact that while he preaches Jesus to the gentiles he says something that is polar opposite to Jews in Israel He tells the Jews that all they need is Abraham not Jesus No where in his entire denial letter does he say that Jews must receive Jesus as Saviour to go to Heaven Instead he rambles on and on about all the work he has done for the Christian church Well Mr Hagee we are not asking you about the Christian church we have asked you about the Jews And you have not replied In fact Mr Morgenstern who identified himself as the official CUFI spokesperson in Israel assured me that CUFI has nothing to do with the bible and does not discuss biblical things ever So by that admission I would have to come to the conclusion that CUFI is a humanitarian organization like the United Way and not a group proclaiming Jesus to a lost and dying world When I spoke on the phone with Velvet Ridings from CUFI and Ari Morgenstern from CUFI as well as other administrative people from his San Antonio office I asked them to just verify for me one thing and that one thing was this I asked to just confirm for me that without salvation in Jesus Christ that ALL people Jew and gentile are eternally lost and headed for the Devils Hell Not a single one of them would tell me that that was Pastor Hagees position Not one If they had I would not have been able to truthfully publish this article We feel that the first hand testimony presented here along with the numerous quotes from interviews and videos that Mr Hagee has put out more than creates a true and accurate picture of what he and CUFI tell the Jews when they are in Israel No wonder hes so popular over there John Hagees book vs The King James Authorized Version 1611 Holy Bible SCORE HAGEE 0amp160 HOLY BIBLE 100 HAGEE The sovereign purpose for Jesus life was to be a light to the Gentiles p 133 BIBLE Matthew 1524 But he answered and said I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel HAGEE there is not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah65533 p 136 BIBLE John 42526 The woman saith unto him I know that Messias cometh which is called Christ when he is come he will tell us all things Jesus saith unto her I that speak unto thee am he HAGEE The Jews were not rejecting Jesus as Messiah it was Jesus who was refusing to be the Messiah to the Jews p 140 He refused to be their Messiah choosing instead to be the Savior of the world p 143 BIBLE Acts 236Peter addressing the assembled masses of Jewish people on the Feast of Shavuot in Jerusalem in the passage of Acts 2 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified both Lord and Christ HAGEE Jesus refused to produce a sign 65533 because it was not the Fathers will nor his to be Messiah p 138 BIBLE Luke 1129YeshuaJesus was rebuking not refusing And when the people were gathered thick together he began to say This is an evil generation they seek a sign and there shall no sign be given it but the sign of Jonas the prophet source Bet Shalom Fresno Dual Covenant Theology explained

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to/PART be/AUX a/DET light/NOUN to/ADP the/DET Gentiles/PROPN p/NOUN 133/NUM BIBLE/PROPN Matthew/PROPN 1524/NUM But/CCONJ he/PRON answered/VERB and/CCONJ said/VERB I/PRON am/AUX not/PART sent/VERB but/CCONJ unto/ADP the/DET lost/ADJ sheep/NOUN of/ADP the/DET house/NOUN of/ADP Israel/PROPN HAGEE/PROPN there/PRON is/VERB not/PART one/NUM verse/NOUN of/ADP Scripture/NOUN in/ADP the/DET New/PROPN Testament/PROPN that/PRON says/VERB Jesus/PROPN came/VERB to/PART be/AUX the/DET Messiah65533/PROPN p/NOUN 136/NUM BIBLE/PROPN John/PROPN 42526/NUM The/DET woman/NOUN saith/VERB unto/ADP him/PRON I/PRON know/VERB that/SCONJ Messias/PROPN cometh/NOUN which/PRON is/AUX called/VERB Christ/PROPN when/SCONJ he/PRON is/AUX come/VERB he/PRON will/AUX tell/VERB us/PRON all/DET things/NOUN Jesus/PROPN saith/PROPN unto/ADP her/PRON I/PRON that/PRON speak/VERB unto/ADP thee/PRON am/AUX he/PRON HAGEE/PROPN The/DET Jews/PROPN were/AUX not/PART rejecting/VERB Jesus/PROPN as/SCONJ Messiah/PROPN it/PRON was/AUX 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<p>A slow-motion pogrom has been playing out in the White House over the last few months, as Trump&#8217;s inner circle is being systematically drained of his closest confidantes. Since July, Trump has seen Sean Spicer, Michael Short, Reince Preibus, Anthony &#8220;the Mooch&#8221; Scaramucci, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Tom Price, Dina Powell, Omarossa Newman, Rob Porter, Josh Raffel and, now, Hope Hicks head out the back door, with many of them detouring for an exit interview at the special prosecutor&#8217;s office.</p> <p>The latest unraveling began when White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter, a kind of gatekeeper to the Oval Office, was exposed as a serial wife-batterer. Trump liked Porter&#8217;s male model looks, but reportedly chafed at his romantic relationship with Hicks. (Hicks had previously been linked to Trump&#8217;s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who who assaulted reporter Michelle Fields and was accused of slapping Joy Villa in the face.) Despite desperate pleas to save his position from his paramour and chief of staff John Kelly, the photos of his ex-wife&#8217;s bruised face finally did him in.</p> <p>Then it was Hicks&#8217; turn to be stuffed into the meat-grinder. To the befuddlement of many in her family, the swimsuit model-turned-PR flak has proved stubbornly loyal to Trump, sticking with him through his raggedly improvised campaign and riotous first year in office. She has steamed his suits, with Trump in them, endured his rants, done damage control for his idiot son and edited his Tweets.&amp;#160;Though the evidence is scant, it&#8217;s been argued that Hicks exerted a calming influence over Trump&#8217;s stormy moods, as if a glimpse of Hope fluttering across the carpet of the Oval Office was all Trump needed to gratify his low-grade libido. Only Hope Hicks, it was said, could nurse Trump through the incoming flak from the morning papers and cable news shows. Who knows? Perhaps Hicks saved us from Trump launching a &#8220;fire and fury&#8221; attack on North Korea after he got all worked up over something Mika Brzezinski said on &#8220;Morning Joe.&#8221;</p> <p>Still even Hicks couldn&#8217;t escape Trump&#8217;s wrath. After enduring eight hours of testimony before the ludicrous House Intelligence Committee, where she copped to telling a few &#8220;white lies&#8221; on behalf of her boss, which is, of course, the top line in the job description for White House Communications Director, Trump hauled Hicks into the Oval Office and berated her for her testimony. Given the treatment of women inside Chez Trump, Hicks can be thankful she only received a tongue-lashing. She leaked her intent to resign a few hours later.</p> <p>What was Hicks&#8217; sin? She didn&#8217;t keep her mouth shut and let slip an obvious truth. Like most autocrats, Trump is obsessed with loyalty. Actually, loyalty is too grand of a word. Trump demands personal fealty and blind obedience. Trump had instructed Hicks to assert executive privilege to every question, including those asked about conversations before Trump&#8217;s inauguration. Sticking to that baseless plan would have only gotten Hicks cited with contempt. Of course, no one in his administration shoots their mouth off quite so self-destructively as the president himself, as when he publicly called for having cops seize people&#8217;s guns without due process.</p> <p>The Trump inner circle is now whittled down to three holdouts: Dan Scavino, Ivanka and Jared. But Jared, the Dauphin of the White House, has just had his wings clipped by John Kelly. Kushner&#8217;s security clearance had been in limbo for months, ever since the FBI learned that at least four nations&#8212;Mexico, China, United Arab Emirates and Israel, naturally&#8212;had been plotting to exploit Kushner&#8217;s naivet&#233; and financial entanglements to manipulate him into adopting positions more pliant to their interests. (Hard to imagine how much more contorted that position would be in the case of Israel.)</p> <p>So, Kushner is now confined only to reading documents stamped SECRET,&amp;#160;which, as <a href="" type="internal">Fred Kaplan</a> points out, aren&#8217;t really &#8220;secrets&#8221; at all. This is the surest sign yet that peace in the Middle East, which Jared was meant to be brokering, isn&#8217;t just around the corner.</p> <p>It seems unlikely that Kushner will stick around much longer, since he will be barred from attending most top-level staff meetings and instead will be compelled to spend his morning taking detailed notes about the crazed crosstalk on &#8220;Fox &amp;amp; Friends.&#8221;</p> <p>Even so, Jared has made his mark. After entering the White House with his family real estate company facing financial ruin, the tycoon-in-training rapidly got down to business. Over the course of his first year in the White House, Kushner held a series of private meetings with two big time investment bankers, Josh Harris, of Apollo Global Management, and Michael Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup. Neither company had shown any interest in salvaging Kushner Companies before Trump took office. But now they had a receptive ear in the inner sanctum of the White House, which soon retreated from its pledge to end the carried interest loophole in the tax code, a timely flip-flop which will save Wall Street banks billions of dollars a year.</p> <p>Soon after the meetings with Kushner, both firms miraculously offered huge loans to the imperiled Kushner Companies. Apollo lent Kushner Companies $184 million, more than three times the investment house&#8217;s average property loan. Citibank ponied up $325 million, for a grand total of half a billion dollars. Jared, who until now had never succeeded in much of anything, can return home to acclaim for having saved the family business.</p> <p>But what about Trump? The big question in Washington is: who will read to the President now? With Hicks and Kushner exiled and Ivanka <a href="" type="internal">under FBI scrutiny</a> for shady financial dealings, who can be trusted to summarize and sanitize the Presidential Daily Briefing (aka, the Deep State Digest)? The inscrutable Melania, the most intriguing resident of the White House, doesn&#8217;t seem all that eager to lend her husband even the coldest comfort. Will the Mooch, who has fingered Kelly for instigating a Stalinesque purge of Trump loyalists, be summoned back?</p> <p>Unless someone steps into the breach, Trump (like most of the rest of us) will be soon operating without any safety net, any buffer for his rages, tantrums and most destructive impulses. That&#8217;s when things will get really amusing.</p> <p>Roaming Charges</p> <p>Still from &#8220;Mister Magoo.&#8221;</p> <p>+ Among the most important things we learned this week is that Trump prowls the halls of the White House fuming about Jefferson B. Sessions, who the president calls Mr. Magoo. When he reaches the boiling point, Trump seizes his Android and Tweets out his disgust for the Attorney General, with most of America, except the liberals on MSDNC, cheering him on.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;M relationship between Trump and Beauregard is the most gripping reality show in DC. Currently, Trump is pissed because instead of assigning a special prosecutor to investigate the Obama Justice Department&#8217;s abuses of FISA courts, Sessions turned the matter over to the Department&#8217;s Inspector General, an indolent subterfuge Trump denounced as &#8220;DISGRACEFUL.&#8221; Instead of resigning, Sessions, who seems to enjoy being humiliated, wheezed a reply about doing the &#8220;honorable&#8221; thing. I wonder what Beauregard&#8217;s safe word is&#8230;&#8221;GETTYSBURG?&#8221;</p> <p>+ The Sputnik Left and the Russiagate witch-hunters at MSDNC &amp;#160;both seem to agree on one thing: Vladimir Putin is a Grand Chessmaster at the game of foreign policy, craftily maneuvering other global powers into vulnerable positions on the great board. But after watching his <a href="" type="internal">surreal and bombastic speech delivered in front of his own animated &#8220;Big Board&#8221;</a>, bragging about &#8220;invincible weapons&#8221; and &#8220;nuclear-armed cruise missiles&#8221; capable of penetrating the US missile defense system (Memo to Vlad: Star Wars has never worked and never will), Putin comes off as one of the more ludicrous characters in &#8220; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozg7gEchjuM" type="external">Dr. Strangelove</a>,&#8221; wanking over his doomsday machine. But as, Putin correctly noted, the US opened the door to this insane nuclear escalation by abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. &#8220;No one listened to us then,&#8221; Putin thundered. &#8220;Well, they will listen to us now&#8221;. The American nuclear hawks were certainly listening appreciatively, their smiles widening at each belligerent word. Has the world ever been in more a ruptured state? All around us we are led by mad, mad men (and the equally Mad Merkel).</p> <p /> <p>+&amp;#160;In the spirit of the Korematsu decision, the Supreme Court just decided that immigrants, even those with legal status, do not have a constitutional right to a bond hearing and thus can be <a href="" type="internal">held in jail indefinitely</a>&#8230;</p> <p>+&amp;#160;A mother and daughter from the Congo seeking asylum in the US were <a href="" type="internal">arrested by ICE</a>. The 7-year-old girl was pulled screaming from her mother&#8217;s arms. They are now being held in immigration jails 2,200 miles apart. Welcome to America&#8230;</p> <p>+ Former UN Ambassador John Bolton continues to push for a <a href="" type="internal">massive attack on North Korea</a>.&amp;#160;Bolton is another mad man, fully credentialed for Team Trump. Apparently the only thing keeping him from a post in the White House is his refusal to <a href="" type="internal">trim his mustache</a>. Don&#8217;t waver, John&#8230;</p> <p>+ NYT editorial page editor James Bennet, whose recent hires include a climate denier and a Nazi sympathizer, weighs in on the virtues of capitalism: &#8220;I think we are pro-capitalism. The NYT is in favor of capitalism because it has been the greatest engine of, it&#8217;s been the greatest anti-poverty program and engine of progress that we&#8217;ve seen.&#8221;</p> <p>+&amp;#160;The Democrats: a party that lives in constant fear of its <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/375719-dems-fear-overreach-as-left-presses-assault-weapon-ban" type="external">own members</a>&#8230;</p> <p>+&amp;#160;Alaska Rep. Don Young once tried to prove the safety of leg-hold traps by springing one on his own hand during a congressional hearing. He put on a good face, but later admitted it &#8220;hurt like hell.&#8221; Now he is pushing the discredited myth that Europe&#8217;s Jews could have saved themselves from the death camps <a href="" type="internal">if only they&#8217;d been armed</a>. And if the guns didn&#8217;t save them perhaps they could have used a cloak of invisibility, a time machine, a spaceship or a magic ring that rules them all&#8230;</p> <p>+ Need another reason to hate Barbra Streisand? She paid $50,000 to have two of her dogs <a href="" type="internal">cloned</a>, instead of adopting a puppy from the local animal shelter.</p> <p>+ Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth there have been no signs of <a href="" type="internal">newborn Right Whales</a>, a highly endangered species, in the North Atlantic so far this year.</p> <p>+ Hannah Arendt&#8217;s papers, notes, and lectures have been digitalized and <a href="" type="internal">placed online</a> by the Library of Congress.</p> <p>+ Fend for yourselves&#8230;even though much of Puerto Rico remains powerless, contractors are packing up and <a href="" type="internal">heading back to the mainland</a>, checks in pockets.</p> <p>+ The History of Sexuality (Vol. 1): the music video&#8230;</p> <p /> <p>+&amp;#160;I bet the governor and legislators of West Virginia aren&#8217;t too eager to see <a href="" type="internal">the state&#8217;s teachers</a>, among the most over-worked and underpaid in the nation, packing concealed heat&#8230;</p> <p>+&amp;#160;There are 3.5 million K-12 grade teachers in the US. Trump wants at least 20 percent of them to carry concealed weapons&#8211;or 700,000 teachers. The average price for a Glock pistol is $560. So Trump&#8217;s Arm the Teachers plan would translate into a $392 million windfall for the gun industry. This cost doesn&#8217;t include the price-tag for NRA-sponsored weapons training. Yes, the same kind of training Nikolas Cruz received.</p> <p>+ Blood Money:&amp;#160;In 2015, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre took home <a href="http://time.com/money/5178193/wayne-lapierre-net-worth-nra-money-salary/" type="external">$5.1 million</a>: $1,090,515 in base base, plus a $150,000 bonus &amp;amp; a special retirement plan payment of nearly $4 million</p> <p>+ &amp;#160;It&#8217;s invigorating to watch how the Macho Gun types come unglued by a few determined and articulate high school kids. Check out the latest stream of hysteria from frequent NYT columnist <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/375595-erick-erickson-florida-shooting-survivor-is-a-high-school-bully" type="external">Erick &#8220;the Snowflake&#8221; Erickson</a>.</p> <p>+ Ages in 1776:</p> <p>Marquis de Lafayette, 18 James Monroe, 18 Henry Lee III, 20 Aaron Burr, 20 Nathan Hale, 21 Alexander Hamilton, 21</p> <p>Just a bunch of kids, eh?</p> <p>+ Hopeless, Part Two&#8230; <a href="" type="internal">Joe Biden leads</a> in Democratic polls for 2020 race.</p> <p>+ According to Gallup&#8217;s daily tracking poll, Trump&#8217;s job approval rating dropped below 40% in TEXAS&#8230;but he&#8217;d still whup HRC, Joe Biden or, god help us, <a href="" type="internal">Terry McAuliffe</a>.</p> <p /> <p>+ The North Pole is becoming the North Pool, where temperatures <a href="" type="internal">spike above freezing in mid-winter</a>.</p> <p>+&amp;#160;In less than 200 hours, the Bering Sea lost <a href="" type="internal">a third of its sea ice</a> along the Alaska Coast&#8230;</p> <p>+ Nice knowing you&#8230;nearly two-thirds of the current population of <a href="" type="internal">King Penguins</a> are in peril from warming oceans.</p> <p>+ Coolest news of the week&#8230;a &#8220;one-in-a-million&#8221; <a href="" type="internal">yellow cardinal</a> was spotted in Alabama.</p> <p>+ From a <a href="" type="internal">New York Times Magazine</a> profile of Gen. John Kelly:</p> <p>&#8220;Kelly was a fierce defender of the status quo at Guant&#225;namo Bay, which fell under his command, publicly criticizing efforts to close the facility and chafing at media accounts that humanized those being held there. When some detainees began a hunger strike during Obama&#8217;s second term, Kelly feared that the issue was being framed too sympathetically. His charges were instructed to call the act &#8220;long-term nonreligious fasting&#8221; instead.&#8221;</p> <p>+ Here&#8217;s Leo Tolstoy&#8217;s fantastic list of the <a href="" type="internal">50 books</a> that most influenced his life and writing.</p> <p>+&amp;#160;Apparently, the Green Jet Set&#8217;s shit doesn&#8217;t stink and neither do <a href="" type="internal">their hydrocarbons</a>&#8230;.</p> <p>+ The day <a href="" type="internal">hell froze over and pigs flew</a>&#8230;</p> <p>+ Bring on the Rapture! While touring the Old City of Jerusalem,&amp;#160;Jean Tipton, wife of Colorado Rep. Scott Tipton, urged messianic Jews to <a href="" type="internal">seize&amp;#160;Haram-al-Sharif</a>, the third holiest site in Islam.&amp;#160;&#8220;Why not tomorrow,&#8221; she shouted &#8220;Say it&#8217;s ours!&#8221;</p> <p>+&amp;#160;New meaning to brothers in arms&#8230;NRA honors FCC chair&amp;#160;Ajit Pai <a href="" type="internal">with a rifle</a> as a reward for his role in killing &#8220;net neutrality.&#8221;</p> <p>+&amp;#160;How many direct lines does the Supreme Deity have? Must he put <a href="" type="internal">Scott Pruitt</a> on hold about drilling off the Oregon Coast, when <a href="" type="internal">Mike Pence</a> rings up needing help with a speech on annihilating Iran? What happens when <a href="https://www.wmagazine.com/story/oprah-winfrey-sign-from-god-president" type="external">Oprah calls</a> requesting a sign on whether she should run for president&#8230;</p> <p>+ And then there&#8217;s John Kelly, who said that <a href="" type="internal">God punished him</a> when he was made Trump&#8217;s Chief of Staff.</p> <p>+&amp;#160;I&#8217;m adamantly opposed to the death penalty. But I&#8217;m not inclined to file an emergency appeal in this case&#8230;</p> <p /> <p>+&amp;#160;She may not rise to the level of&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Einstein</a>, but Melania is clearly the smartest person left standing in the White House&#8230;</p> <p>+ It&#8217;s Oscar weekend? Ok, here are my picks for best films of the year&#8230;</p> <p>Best Film: Get Out dir. Jordan Peele</p> <p>Best Foreign Language Film: The Other Side of Hope dir. Aki K&#228;urismaki</p> <p>Best Documentary: Ex Libris: the New York Public Library dir. Frederick Wiseman</p> <p>So Afraid of the Russians</p> <p /> <p>Sound Grammar</p> <p>What I&#8217;m listening to this week&#8230;</p> <p>I&#8217;m recreating a vinyl collection from scratch. First 10 acquisitions:</p> <p>1. <a href="" type="internal">Exodus</a> by Bob Marley and the Wailers</p> <p>2. <a href="" type="internal">A Love Supreme</a> by John Coltrane</p> <p>3. <a href="" type="internal">Kind of Blue</a> by Miles Davis</p> <p>4. <a href="" type="internal">London Calling</a> by The Clash</p> <p>5. <a href="" type="internal">Lady in Satin</a> by Billie Holiday</p> <p>6. <a href="" type="internal">Maggot Brain</a> by Funkadelic</p> <p>7. <a href="" type="internal">Wild is the Wind</a> by Nina Simone</p> <p>8. <a href="" type="internal">Live at the Regal</a> by BB King</p> <p>9. <a href="" type="internal">Blood on the Tracks</a> by Bob Dylan</p> <p>10. <a href="" type="internal">Sunday at the Village Vanguard</a> by Bill Evans</p> <p>What next?</p> <p>Booked Up</p> <p>What I&#8217;m reading this week&#8230;</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist</a> by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington</p> <p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1937512657/counterpunchmaga" type="external">They Can&#8217;t Kill Us Until They Kill Us</a> by&amp;#160;Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">In the Wake: On Blackness and Being</a> by Christina Sharpe</p> <p>The Message is Freedom</p> <p>John Sinclair: &#8220;Our program is cultural revolution through a total assault on culture, which makes use of every tool, every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on: our culture, our art, our music, our books, our posters, our clothing, the way our hair grows long, the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep&#8211;it&#8217;s all one message&#8211;the message is freedom.&#8221;</p>

And Then There Were None

https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/02/100142/

2018-03-02

4left

A slowmotion pogrom has been playing out in the White House over the last few months as Trump8217s inner circle is being systematically drained of his closest confidantes Since July Trump has seen Sean Spicer Michael Short Reince Preibus Anthony 8220the Mooch8221 Scaramucci Steve Bannon Sebastian Gorka Tom Price Dina Powell Omarossa Newman Rob Porter Josh Raffel and now Hope Hicks head out the back door with many of them detouring for an exit interview at the special prosecutor8217s office The latest unraveling began when White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter a kind of gatekeeper to the Oval Office was exposed as a serial wifebatterer Trump liked Porter8217s male model looks but reportedly chafed at his romantic relationship with Hicks Hicks had previously been linked to Trump8217s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski who who assaulted reporter Michelle Fields and was accused of slapping Joy Villa in the face Despite desperate pleas to save his position from his paramour and chief of staff John Kelly the photos of his exwife8217s bruised face finally did him in Then it was Hicks8217 turn to be stuffed into the meatgrinder To the befuddlement of many in her family the swimsuit modelturnedPR flak has proved stubbornly loyal to Trump sticking with him through his raggedly improvised campaign and riotous first year in office She has steamed his suits with Trump in them endured his rants done damage control for his idiot son and edited his Tweetsamp160Though the evidence is scant it8217s been argued that Hicks exerted a calming influence over Trump8217s stormy moods as if a glimpse of Hope fluttering across the carpet of the Oval Office was all Trump needed to gratify his lowgrade libido Only Hope Hicks it was said could nurse Trump through the incoming flak from the morning papers and cable news shows Who knows Perhaps Hicks saved us from Trump launching a 8220fire and fury8221 attack on North Korea after he got all worked up over something Mika Brzezinski said on 8220Morning Joe8221 Still even Hicks couldn8217t escape Trump8217s wrath After enduring eight hours of testimony before the ludicrous House Intelligence Committee where she copped to telling a few 8220white lies8221 on behalf of her boss which is of course the top line in the job description for White House Communications Director Trump hauled Hicks into the Oval Office and berated her for her testimony Given the treatment of women inside Chez Trump Hicks can be thankful she only received a tonguelashing She leaked her intent to resign a few hours later What was Hicks8217 sin She didn8217t keep her mouth shut and let slip an obvious truth Like most autocrats Trump is obsessed with loyalty Actually loyalty is too grand of a word Trump demands personal fealty and blind obedience Trump had instructed Hicks to assert executive privilege to every question including those asked about conversations before Trump8217s inauguration Sticking to that baseless plan would have only gotten Hicks cited with contempt Of course no one in his administration shoots their mouth off quite so selfdestructively as the president himself as when he publicly called for having cops seize people8217s guns without due process The Trump inner circle is now whittled down to three holdouts Dan Scavino Ivanka and Jared But Jared the Dauphin of the White House has just had his wings clipped by John Kelly Kushner8217s security clearance had been in limbo for months ever since the FBI learned that at least four nations8212Mexico China United Arab Emirates and Israel naturally8212had been plotting to exploit Kushner8217s naivet233 and financial entanglements to manipulate him into adopting positions more pliant to their interests Hard to imagine how much more contorted that position would be in the case of Israel So Kushner is now confined only to reading documents stamped SECRETamp160which as Fred Kaplan points out aren8217t really 8220secrets8221 at all This is the surest sign yet that peace in the Middle East which Jared was meant to be brokering isn8217t just around the corner It seems unlikely that Kushner will stick around much longer since he will be barred from attending most toplevel staff meetings and instead will be compelled to spend his morning taking detailed notes about the crazed crosstalk on 8220Fox ampamp Friends8221 Even so Jared has made his mark After entering the White House with his family real estate company facing financial ruin the tycoonintraining rapidly got down to business Over the course of his first year in the White House Kushner held a series of private meetings with two big time investment bankers Josh Harris of Apollo Global Management and Michael Corbat the CEO of Citigroup Neither company had shown any interest in salvaging Kushner Companies before Trump took office But now they had a receptive ear in the inner sanctum of the White House which soon retreated from its pledge to end the carried interest loophole in the tax code a timely flipflop which will save Wall Street banks billions of dollars a year Soon after the meetings with Kushner both firms miraculously offered huge loans to the imperiled Kushner Companies Apollo lent Kushner Companies 184 million more than three times the investment house8217s average property loan Citibank ponied up 325 million for a grand total of half a billion dollars Jared who until now had never succeeded in much of anything can return home to acclaim for having saved the family business But what about Trump The big question in Washington is who will read to the President now With Hicks and Kushner exiled and Ivanka under FBI scrutiny for shady financial dealings who can be trusted to summarize and sanitize the Presidential Daily Briefing aka the Deep State Digest The inscrutable Melania the most intriguing resident of the White House doesn8217t seem all that eager to lend her husband even the coldest comfort Will the Mooch who has fingered Kelly for instigating a Stalinesque purge of Trump loyalists be summoned back Unless someone steps into the breach Trump like most of the rest of us will be soon operating without any safety net any buffer for his rages tantrums and most destructive impulses That8217s when things will get really amusing Roaming Charges Still from 8220Mister Magoo8221 Among the most important things we learned this week is that Trump prowls the halls of the White House fuming about Jefferson B Sessions who the president calls Mr Magoo When he reaches the boiling point Trump seizes his Android and Tweets out his disgust for the Attorney General with most of America except the liberals on MSDNC cheering him on The SampampM relationship between Trump and Beauregard is the most gripping reality show in DC Currently Trump is pissed because instead of assigning a special prosecutor to investigate the Obama Justice Department8217s abuses of FISA courts Sessions turned the matter over to the Department8217s Inspector General an indolent subterfuge Trump denounced as 8220DISGRACEFUL8221 Instead of resigning Sessions who seems to enjoy being humiliated wheezed a reply about doing the 8220honorable8221 thing I wonder what Beauregard8217s safe word is82308221GETTYSBURG8221 The Sputnik Left and the Russiagate witchhunters at MSDNC amp160both seem to agree on one thing Vladimir Putin is a Grand Chessmaster at the game of foreign policy craftily maneuvering other global powers into vulnerable positions on the great board But after watching his surreal and bombastic speech delivered in front of his own animated 8220Big Board8221 bragging about 8220invincible weapons8221 and 8220nucleararmed cruise missiles8221 capable of penetrating the US missile defense system Memo to Vlad Star Wars has never worked and never will Putin comes off as one of the more ludicrous characters in 8220 Dr Strangelove8221 wanking over his doomsday machine But as Putin correctly noted the US opened the door to this insane nuclear escalation by abrogating the AntiBallistic Missile Treaty 8220No one listened to us then8221 Putin thundered 8220Well they will listen to us now8221 The American nuclear hawks were certainly listening appreciatively their smiles widening at each belligerent word Has the world ever been in more a ruptured state All around us we are led by mad mad men and the equally Mad Merkel amp160In the spirit of the Korematsu decision the Supreme Court just decided that immigrants even those with legal status do not have a constitutional right to a bond hearing and thus can be held in jail indefinitely8230 amp160A mother and daughter from the Congo seeking asylum in the US were arrested by ICE The 7yearold girl was pulled screaming from her mother8217s arms They are now being held in immigration jails 2200 miles apart Welcome to America8230 Former UN Ambassador John Bolton continues to push for a massive attack on North Koreaamp160Bolton is another mad man fully credentialed for Team Trump Apparently the only thing keeping him from a post in the White House is his refusal to trim his mustache Don8217t waver John8230 NYT editorial page editor James Bennet whose recent hires include a climate denier and a Nazi sympathizer weighs in on the virtues of capitalism 8220I think we are procapitalism The NYT is in favor of capitalism because it has been the greatest engine of it8217s been the greatest antipoverty program and engine of progress that we8217ve seen8221 amp160The Democrats a party that lives in constant fear of its own members8230 amp160Alaska Rep Don Young once tried to prove the safety of leghold traps by springing one on his own hand during a congressional hearing He put on a good face but later admitted it 8220hurt like hell8221 Now he is pushing the discredited myth that Europe8217s Jews could have saved themselves from the death camps if only they8217d been armed And if the guns didn8217t save them perhaps they could have used a cloak of invisibility a time machine a spaceship or a magic ring that rules them all8230 Need another reason to hate Barbra Streisand She paid 50000 to have two of her dogs cloned instead of adopting a puppy from the local animal shelter Meanwhile back on Planet Earth there have been no signs of newborn Right Whales a highly endangered species in the North Atlantic so far this year Hannah Arendt8217s papers notes and lectures have been digitalized and placed online by the Library of Congress Fend for yourselves8230even though much of Puerto Rico remains powerless contractors are packing up and heading back to the mainland checks in pockets The History of Sexuality Vol 1 the music video8230 amp160I bet the governor and legislators of West Virginia aren8217t too eager to see the state8217s teachers among the most overworked and underpaid in the nation packing concealed heat8230 amp160There are 35 million K12 grade teachers in the US Trump wants at least 20 percent of them to carry concealed weapons8211or 700000 teachers The average price for a Glock pistol is 560 So Trump8217s Arm the Teachers plan would translate into a 392 million windfall for the gun industry This cost doesn8217t include the pricetag for NRAsponsored weapons training Yes the same kind of training Nikolas Cruz received Blood Moneyamp160In 2015 NRA chief Wayne LaPierre took home 51 million 1090515 in base base plus a 150000 bonus ampamp a special retirement plan payment of nearly 4 million amp160It8217s invigorating to watch how the Macho Gun types come unglued by a few determined and articulate high school kids Check out the latest stream of hysteria from frequent NYT columnist Erick 8220the Snowflake8221 Erickson Ages in 1776 Marquis de Lafayette 18 James Monroe 18 Henry Lee III 20 Aaron Burr 20 Nathan Hale 21 Alexander Hamilton 21 Just a bunch of kids eh Hopeless Part Two8230 Joe Biden leads in Democratic polls for 2020 race According to Gallup8217s daily tracking poll Trump8217s job approval rating dropped below 40 in TEXAS8230but he8217d still whup HRC Joe Biden or god help us Terry McAuliffe The North Pole is becoming the North Pool where temperatures spike above freezing in midwinter amp160In less than 200 hours the Bering Sea lost a third of its sea ice along the Alaska Coast8230 Nice knowing you8230nearly twothirds of the current population of King Penguins are in peril from warming oceans Coolest news of the week8230a 8220oneinamillion8221 yellow cardinal was spotted in Alabama From a New York Times Magazine profile of Gen John Kelly 8220Kelly was a fierce defender of the status quo at Guant225namo Bay which fell under his command publicly criticizing efforts to close the facility and chafing at media accounts that humanized those being held there When some detainees began a hunger strike during Obama8217s second term Kelly feared that the issue was being framed too sympathetically His charges were instructed to call the act 8220longterm nonreligious fasting8221 instead8221 Here8217s Leo Tolstoy8217s fantastic list of the 50 books that most influenced his life and writing amp160Apparently the Green Jet Set8217s shit doesn8217t stink and neither do their hydrocarbons8230 The day hell froze over and pigs flew8230 Bring on the Rapture While touring the Old City of Jerusalemamp160Jean Tipton wife of Colorado Rep Scott Tipton urged messianic Jews to seizeamp160HaramalSharif the third holiest site in Islamamp1608220Why not tomorrow8221 she shouted 8220Say it8217s ours8221 amp160New meaning to brothers in arms8230NRA honors FCC chairamp160Ajit Pai with a rifle as a reward for his role in killing 8220net neutrality8221 amp160How many direct lines does the Supreme Deity have Must he put Scott Pruitt on hold about drilling off the Oregon Coast when Mike Pence rings up needing help with a speech on annihilating Iran What happens when Oprah calls requesting a sign on whether she should run for president8230 And then there8217s John Kelly who said that God punished him when he was made Trump8217s Chief of Staff amp160I8217m adamantly opposed to the death penalty But I8217m not inclined to file an emergency appeal in this case8230 amp160She may not rise to the level ofamp160 Einstein but Melania is clearly the smartest person left standing in the White House8230 It8217s Oscar weekend Ok here are my picks for best films of the year8230 Best Film Get Out dir Jordan Peele Best Foreign Language Film The Other Side of Hope dir Aki K228urismaki Best Documentary Ex Libris the New York Public Library dir Frederick Wiseman So Afraid of the Russians Sound Grammar What I8217m listening to this week8230 I8217m recreating a vinyl collection from scratch First 10 acquisitions 1 Exodus by Bob Marley and the Wailers 2 A Love Supreme by John Coltrane 3 Kind of Blue by Miles Davis 4 London Calling by The Clash 5 Lady in Satin by Billie Holiday 6 Maggot Brain by Funkadelic 7 Wild is the Wind by Nina Simone 8 Live at the Regal by BB King 9 Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan 10 Sunday at the Village Vanguard by Bill Evans What next Booked Up What I8217m reading this week8230 The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington They Can8217t Kill Us Until They Kill Us byamp160Hanif WillisAbdurraqib In the Wake On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe The Message is Freedom John Sinclair 8220Our program is cultural revolution through a total assault on culture which makes use of every tool every energy and every media we can get our collective hands on our culture our art our music our books our posters our clothing the way our hair grows long the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep8211it8217s all one message8211the message is freedom8221

A/DET slowmotion/NOUN pogrom/NOUN has/AUX been/AUX playing/VERB out/ADP in/ADP the/DET White/PROPN House/PROPN over/ADP the/DET last/ADJ few/ADJ months/NOUN as/SCONJ Trump8217s/ADJ inner/ADJ circle/NOUN is/AUX being/AUX systematically/ADV drained/VERB of/ADP his/PRON closest/ADJ confidantes/NOUN Since/SCONJ July/PROPN Trump/PROPN has/AUX seen/VERB Sean/PROPN Spicer/PROPN Michael/PROPN Short/PROPN Reince/PROPN Preibus/PROPN Anthony/PROPN 8220the/PRON Mooch8221/PROPN Scaramucci/PROPN Steve/PROPN Bannon/PROPN Sebastian/PROPN Gorka/PROPN Tom/PROPN Price/PROPN Dina/PROPN Powell/PROPN Omarossa/PROPN Newman/PROPN Rob/PROPN Porter/PROPN Josh/PROPN Raffel/PROPN and/CCONJ now/ADV Hope/PROPN Hicks/PROPN head/VERB out/ADP the/DET back/ADJ door/NOUN with/ADP many/ADJ of/ADP them/PRON detouring/VERB for/ADP an/DET exit/NOUN interview/NOUN at/ADP the/DET special/ADJ prosecutor8217s/PROPN office/NOUN The/DET latest/ADJ unraveling/NOUN began/VERB when/SCONJ White/PROPN House/PROPN Staff/PROPN 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SECRETamp160which/NOUN as/SCONJ Fred/PROPN Kaplan/PROPN points/VERB out/ADP aren8217/NOUN t/NOUN really/ADV 8220secrets8221/NUM at/ADP all/DET This/PRON is/AUX the/DET surest/ADJ sign/NOUN yet/ADV that/SCONJ peace/NOUN in/ADP the/DET Middle/PROPN East/PROPN which/PRON Jared/PROPN was/AUX meant/VERB to/PART be/AUX brokering/VERB isn8217/NOUN t/NOUN just/ADV around/ADP the/DET corner/NOUN It/PRON seems/VERB unlikely/ADJ that/SCONJ Kushner/PROPN will/AUX stick/VERB around/ADV much/ADV longer/ADV since/SCONJ he/PRON will/AUX be/AUX barred/VERB from/ADP attending/VERB most/ADJ toplevel/ADJ staff/NOUN meetings/NOUN and/CCONJ instead/ADV will/AUX be/AUX compelled/VERB to/PART spend/VERB his/PRON morning/NOUN taking/VERB detailed/ADJ notes/NOUN about/ADP the/DET crazed/VERB crosstalk/NOUN on/ADP 8220Fox/NUM ampamp/NOUN Friends8221/PROPN Even/ADV so/ADV Jared/PROPN has/AUX made/VERB his/PRON mark/NOUN After/ADP entering/VERB the/DET White/PROPN House/PROPN with/ADP his/PRON family/NOUN real/ADJ 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who/PRON will/AUX read/VERB to/ADP the/DET President/PROPN now/ADV With/SCONJ Hicks/PROPN and/CCONJ Kushner/PROPN exiled/VERB and/CCONJ Ivanka/PROPN under/ADP FBI/PROPN scrutiny/NOUN for/ADP shady/ADJ financial/ADJ dealings/NOUN who/PRON can/AUX be/AUX trusted/VERB to/PART summarize/VERB and/CCONJ sanitize/VERB the/DET Presidential/PROPN Daily/PROPN Briefing/PROPN aka/ADV the/DET Deep/PROPN State/PROPN Digest/PROPN The/DET inscrutable/ADJ Melania/PROPN the/DET most/ADV intriguing/ADJ resident/NOUN of/ADP the/DET White/PROPN House/PROPN doesn8217/PROPN t/PROPN seem/VERB all/PRON that/ADV eager/ADJ to/PART lend/VERB her/PRON husband/NOUN even/ADV the/DET coldest/ADJ comfort/NOUN Will/AUX the/DET Mooch/PROPN who/PRON has/AUX fingered/VERB Kelly/PROPN for/ADP instigating/VERB a/DET Stalinesque/ADJ purge/NOUN of/ADP Trump/PROPN loyalists/NOUN be/AUX summoned/VERB back/ADV Unless/SCONJ someone/PRON steps/VERB into/ADP the/DET breach/NOUN Trump/PROPN like/SCONJ most/ADJ of/ADP the/DET 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<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson 1/DRAIN THE SW...ISS SKI RESORT <p>Donald Trump headlines the annual gathering of capitalism&#8217;s finest at Switzerland&#8217;s Davos ski resort next week. Davos always generates news for markets but the U.S. president&#8217;s appearance could cause an avalanche &#8212; hopefully not literally &#8212; by giving him the perfect platform for attacks on the elite and on unbalanced global trade.</p> <p>He may have to face some of those targets head on. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be there, as will India&#8217;s Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron. A paper will also be presented by Davos&#8217; organizers that takes direct aim at the Trump administration&#8217;s understanding of international commerce.</p> <p>Fireside chat about NAFTA&#8217;s merits anyone?</p> <p>U.S. trade deficit has been widening: <a href="http://reut.rs/2Di1bmN" type="external">reut.rs/2Di1bmN</a></p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2Di1bmN" type="external" /> 2/#ASKMARIO <p>The ECB has got a PR drive on at the moment encouraging young people to #ASKMARIO about the benefits of the euro. But on Thursday there will be a much more important Q&amp;amp;A session, when the central bank&#8217;s policymakers hold their first get-together of 2018.</p> <p>The main focus will be whether the ECB thinks the euro zone recovery is now so strong that it can end its 2.5 trillion euro bond buying largesse in one fell swoop in September, as some in its ranks have been suggesting.</p> <p>Such speculation has sent the euro on another surge this year and Bund and other benchmark bond yields finally look to be traveling with it. Draghi though has plenty of form in cooling these rallies and might do so again, even if we are nearing the stage of #WHATEVERITTOOK.</p> <p>The ECB's QE programme: <a href="http://reut.rs/2Did6kM" type="external">reut.rs/2Did6kM</a></p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2Did6kM" type="external" /> 3/MEXICAN (AND CANADIAN) STANDOFF <p>Mexican markets&#8217; two-year long rollercoaster ride over Trump&#8217;s threats to kill off the NAFTA trade agreement will continue next week as the final negotiation round gets going in Montreal.</p> <p>Trump said recently that terminating the 24-year old pact would be the &#8220;best deal&#8221; for the United States, but at five-week highs, the peso seems to be pricing in a positive outcome. A Reuters poll predicts it will all end up with only minor changes as the deal underpins $1 trillion in U.S., Mexican and Canadian trade.</p> <p>That may send the peso as much as 8 percent higher according to some of those polled, while the Canadian dollar would weaken modestly.</p> <p>But if NAFTA is scrapped, the peso will fall sharply, given Mexico sells 80 percent of its exports to the United States.</p> <p>That outcome may force central bank interventions while the threat to inflation &#8212; already at 16-1/2 year highs &#8212; will make a February interest rate rise a certainty. Ten-year bond yields are at 7.6 percent and approaching the six-year highs hit last January around Trump&#8217;s inauguration MX10YT=RR.</p> <p>NAFTA: <a href="http://reut.rs/2DSHDXz" type="external">reut.rs/2DSHDXz</a></p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2DSHDXz" type="external" /> 4/LOST IN TRANSLATION <p>Japan&#8217;s central bank also meets next week and though it is unlikely to change its policy any time soon, the moody reaction of the markets earlier this month to a small tweak in its bond purchases might require some verbal massaging.</p> <p>Investors are sensitive to any subtle sign the Bank of Japan will follow the U.S. Federal Reserve and ECB and start tapering. The economy has had a very strong run by Japanese standards and inflation is creeping higher, although it remains far below the 2 percent target.</p> <p>Governor Haruhiko Kuroda can therefore paint a brighter picture for the economy but may also remind investors that an exit from unconventional policies remains a distant prospect. Whether his words will be lost in translation remains to be seen but with the yen near a four-month high, markets seem to have their own interpretation.</p> <p>BOJ purchases: <a href="http://reut.rs/2Dd0Cuv" type="external">reut.rs/2Dd0Cuv</a></p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2Dd0Cuv" type="external" /> 5/BURNING HOT EARNINGS <p>Equities markets will be entering the white heat phase of the latest earnings season next week and so far a number of things have stood out.</p> <p>Firstly the numbers look strong. The 9 percent of U.S. companies that have reported so far have racked up overall earnings growth of 12.3 percent, with 75 percent of them also surprising on the upside.</p> <p>In terms of the scale of the surprise, the total wow factor is 4.5 percent, slightly down on the same time last year, when S&amp;amp;P 500 companies were scoring a slightly better 5 percent beat.</p> <p>Next week&#8217;s heavy slate includes U.S. manufacturers, basic industries and tech, while in Europe there is Swiss bank UBS on Monday, Novartis on Wednesday and Nordea, Sky and Diageo to come on Thursday.</p> <p>Most money managers say European stocks still look cheaper than their U.S. counterparts, but with the euro at lofty levels and the ECB now looking to rein in stimulus, any disappointments could be harshly punished.</p> <p>Euro zone has never been this cheap vs Wall Street: <a href="http://reut.rs/2DIvbJz" type="external">reut.rs/2DIvbJz</a></p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2DIvbJz" type="external" /> <p>Additional reporting by Sujata Rao, Marius Zaharia, Tom Pfeiffer and Megan Davies; Editing by Catherine Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures slid and the yen rose against the dollar on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed additional tariffs on China, aggravating trade tensions and smothering a revival in broader investor risk appetite.</p> FILE PHOTO: Men are refelcted in a screen displaying market indices outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan April 19, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter <p>MSCI&#8217;s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 0.25 percent. The index has spent the week swinging wildly in and out of negative territory amid the back-and-forth of the U.S.-China trade dispute.</p> <p>Australian stocks slipped 0.35 percent and South Korea&#8217;s KOSPI lost 0.3 percent. Japan&#8217;s Nikkei fell 0.15 percent.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 E-mini futures were down 1.2 percent , pointing to a lower start for Wall Street later in the session.</p> <p>The Dow and the S&amp;amp;P 500 posted gains for a third day in a row on Thursday, the longest stretch of gains in about a month, as investor fears of an escalating trade conflict between the United States and China abated, turning the focus to upcoming earnings.</p> <p>Trade tensions, however, returned to the fore after Trump said late on Thursday that he had instructed U.S. trade officials to consider $100 billion in additional tariffs on China, fuelling the trade dispute between the world&#8217;s two economic superpowers.</p> FILE PHOTO: A Japan Yen note is seen in this illustration photo taken June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration/File Photo <p>Trump said in a statement the extra tariffs were being considered &#8220;in light of China&#8217;s unfair retaliation&#8221; against earlier U.S. trade measures.</p> <p>&#8220;Trump&#8217;s order to consider whether $100 billion of additional tariffs would be appropriate, and recent trade actions and rhetoric in recent weeks, is an example of how battles can turn to wars,&#8221; said Dan Ivascyn, group chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co (PIMCO).</p> <p>&#8220;This is another reason investors should be reducing risk.&#8221;</p> <p>The dollar, which had risen to a one-month high against the yen on Thursday on an earlier easing of trade fears, slipped against its Japanese peer after Trump&#8217;s latest trade offensive.</p> <p>The greenback was down 0.3 percent at 107.080 yen , pulling back from 107.490, its highest since March 1. It was up 0.8 percent on the week.</p> <p>The dollar had risen to a one-month peak versus the yen, bolstered by Wall Street&#8217;s bounce on Thursday when the United States appeared to signal a willingness to resolve the trade dispute.</p> <p>The yen, a perceived safe-haven currency, is often sought in times of market turmoil and political tensions.</p> <p>The dollar dipped 0.15 percent to 0.9621 Swiss franc, another safe-haven currency.</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 5, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>The euro rose 0.1 percent to $1.2248 .</p> <p>The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies was down 0.1 percent at 90.359. The index has risen 0.4 percent this week.</p> <p>Treasury debt prices gained and yields declined as investors sought the safety of government bonds.</p> <p>The 10-year Treasury note yield fell 2 basis points to 2.811 percent, pulling back from Thursday&#8217;s nine-day high of 2.838 percent.</p> <p>Crude oil prices fell as risk aversion gripped the broader markets.</p> <p>U.S. crude slipped 0.6 percent to $63.14 a barrel and Brent was down 0.55 percent at $67.94 a barrel. Oil had gained on Thursday, helped by higher equities and Saudi Arabia&#8217;s unexpected hike in crude prices.</p> <p>Beyond the trade turmoil, financial markets are focused on Friday&#8217;s U.S. non-farm payrolls report, which could determine the pace of future Federal Reserve interest rate rises and consequently the dollar outlook.</p> <p>The U.S. March employment report is expected to show non-farm payroll growth of 193,000 jobs versus 313,000 in the prior month, according to the latest Thomson Reuters poll of economists. The unemployment rate is expected to drop to 4.0 percent from 4.1 percent in February.</p> <p>Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro; Additional reporting by the New York markets team; Editing by Eric Meijer</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday directed U.S. trade officials to identify tariffs on $100 billion more Chinese imports, upping the ante in an already high-stakes trade confrontation between the world&#8217;s two largest economies.</p> <p>The further tariffs were being considered &#8220;in light of China&#8217;s unfair retaliation&#8221; against earlier U.S. trade actions, which included a proposed $50 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump said in a White House statement.</p> <p>&#8220;This is what a trade war looks like, and what we have warned against from the start,&#8221; said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay.</p> <p>&#8220;We are on a dangerous downward spiral and American families will be on the losing end,&#8221; Shay added in a statement, urging Trump &#8220;to stop playing a game of chicken with the U.S. economy.&#8221;</p> <p>Financial markets, roiled for days by the trade fight and Trump&#8217;s management of it, whipsawed again on the new threat. After a bullish regular trading day, U.S. equity futures sold off sharply in after-market-hours trading.</p> <p>U.S. stock futures ESc1 slid 1 percent and the dollar dipped against other major currencies .DXY, while Asian shares flitted in and out of positive territory. Chinese markets were closed for a holiday.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-state-media/chinese-state-media-slams-latest-u-s-tariff-call-as-ridiculous-attempt-at-intimidation-idUSKCN1HD0BV" type="external">Chinese state media slams latest U.S. tariff call as 'ridiculous' attempt at intimidation</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-timeline/key-events-in-rapid-escalation-of-u-s-china-trade-dispute-idUSKCN1HD071" type="external">Key events in rapid escalation of U.S.-China trade dispute</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-measures/china-says-will-take-new-measures-if-u-s-sticks-to-protectionist-trade-stance-idUSKCN1HD0G9" type="external">China says will take new measures if U.S. sticks to protectionist trade stance</a> <p>Doug Kass, who runs hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management Inc, added: &#8220;Our president is going to make market volatility and economic uncertainty great again.&#8221;</p> <p>In his statement, Trump said the U.S. Trade Representative had determined that China &#8220;has repeatedly engaged in practices to unfairly obtain America&#8217;s intellectual property.&#8221;</p> <p>The tit-for-tat escalation of tariff announcements, which have stirred fears that trade unfolded surprisingly rapidly . They have stirred fears that the two countries will spiral into a trade war that will crush global growth.</p> <p>Chinese state media slammed Trump&#8217;s threat of more trade action against China as &#8220;ridiculous&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;This latest intimidation reflects the deep arrogance of some American elites in their attitude towards China,&#8221; the state-run Global Times said in an editorial.</p> <p>On Tuesday, USTR proposed 25 percent tariffs on more than 1,300 Chinese industrial and other products from flat-panel televisions to electronic components. China shot back 11 hours later with a list of proposed duties on $50 billion of American imports, including soybeans, aircraft, cars, beef and chemicals.</p> <p>&#8220;Rather than remedy its misconduct, China has chosen to harm our farmers and manufacturers,&#8221; the Republican president said.</p> <p>Republican lawmakers from Western and Midwestern states have voiced worries about a big hit to U.S. farming exporters.</p> &#8216;THIS IS NUTS&#8217; <p>On the new tariff threat, Republican Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement: &#8220;Hopefully the president is just blowing off steam again but, if he&#8217;s even half-serious, this is nuts.</p> <p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s absolutely take on Chinese bad behavior, but with a plan that punishes them instead of us. This is the dumbest possible way to do this,&#8221; said the lawmaker from the farm-belt state of Nebraska.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture is looking for ways to assist farmers affected by China&#8217;s tariffs, USDA undersecretary Bill Northey told Reuters, but did not offer specifics.</p> <p>White House officials have suggested throughout the week that talks with the Chinese could help resolve trade issues between the two countries. China ran a $375 billion goods trade surplus with the United States in 2017. Trump has demanded that China cut the trade gap by $100 billion.</p> <p>A senior U.S. official who requested anonymity told Reuters no formal negotiating sessions had yet been set, but that the United States was willing to negotiate with China.</p> <p>The U.S. tariffs are aimed at forcing changes to Chinese government policies designed to transfer U.S. intellectual property to Chinese companies and allow them to seize leadership in key high-technology industries of the future.</p> <p>The USTR&#8217;s &#8220;Section 301&#8221; investigation authorizing the tariffs alleges China has systematically sought to misappropriate U.S. intellectual property through joint venture requirements that often cannot be negotiated without technology transfers, something China denies.</p> FILE PHOTO: Containers are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, in Shanghai, China March 14, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song TARIFF TARGETS NOT YET CHOSEN <p>A USTR spokeswoman said that the $100 billion second-round of potential tariffs had not been determined yet and would be selected by USTR career staff - not political appointees - along with economists and trade experts.</p> <p>The new list will be proposed in the same manner as the first round and will go through a similar public comment period before any of them are activated, the spokeswoman said.</p> <p>A further $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods would likely expand the scope of Trump&#8217;s attack to more consumer goods. The first round of $50 billion in tariffs mostly targeted industrial goods and electronic components.</p> <p>The two biggest categories of U.S. imports from China last year were communications and computer equipment, totaling $137 billion according to U.S. Census data. Cellphones and computers, key portions of these categories, were spared from the initial tariffs list.</p> <p>Apparel and footwear, both labor-intensive industries in China, made up a combined $39 billion in U.S. imports.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>Dean Garfield, chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council, a tech industry lobbying group in Washington, said the additional tariffs were &#8220;irresponsible and destabilizing.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We need the U.S and China to come to the table and identify solutions to these serious problems,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland and David Lawder; Additional reporting by Eric Beech, Ginger Gibson and Caren Bohan in Washington and Jennifer Ablan, Caroline Valetkevitch, Trevor Hunnicutt and Daniel Bases in New York; Writing by Chris Sanders; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Peter Cooney &amp;amp; Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China&#8217;s Ministry of Commerce said it would take new comprehensive measures to safeguard the country&#8217;s interests if the United States sticks to its protectionist behavior, after President Donald Trump threatened an extra $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports.</p> <p>In a statement on its website on Friday, the ministry reiterated that it did not want a trade war, but was not afraid of one, and said that the trade conflict had been provoked by the United States.</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Kim Coghill</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Take Five: World markets themes for the week ahead Stocks drop, yen rises as Trump proposes more China tariffs Trade dispute escalates as Trump threatens $100 billion more in China tariffs China says will take new measures if U.S. sticks to protectionist trade stance

https://reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-themes/take-five-world-markets-themes-for-the-week-ahead-idUSKBN1F828M

2018-01-19

2least

LONDON Reuters Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York US January 19 2018 REUTERSLucas Jackson 1DRAIN THE SWISS SKI RESORT Donald Trump headlines the annual gathering of capitalism8217s finest at Switzerland8217s Davos ski resort next week Davos always generates news for markets but the US president8217s appearance could cause an avalanche 8212 hopefully not literally 8212 by giving him the perfect platform for attacks on the elite and on unbalanced global trade He may have to face some of those targets head on German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be there as will India8217s Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron A paper will also be presented by Davos8217 organizers that takes direct aim at the Trump administration8217s understanding of international commerce Fireside chat about NAFTA8217s merits anyone US trade deficit has been widening reutrs2Di1bmN 2ASKMARIO The ECB has got a PR drive on at the moment encouraging young people to ASKMARIO about the benefits of the euro But on Thursday there will be a much more important QampampA session when the central bank8217s policymakers hold their first gettogether of 2018 The main focus will be whether the ECB thinks the euro zone recovery is now so strong that it can end its 25 trillion euro bond buying largesse in one fell swoop in September as some in its ranks have been suggesting Such speculation has sent the euro on another surge this year and Bund and other benchmark bond yields finally look to be traveling with it Draghi though has plenty of form in cooling these rallies and might do so again even if we are nearing the stage of WHATEVERITTOOK The ECBs QE programme reutrs2Did6kM 3MEXICAN AND CANADIAN STANDOFF Mexican markets8217 twoyear long rollercoaster ride over Trump8217s threats to kill off the NAFTA trade agreement will continue next week as the final negotiation round gets going in Montreal Trump said recently that terminating the 24year old pact would be the 8220best deal8221 for the United States but at fiveweek highs the peso seems to be pricing in a positive outcome A Reuters poll predicts it will all end up with only minor changes as the deal underpins 1 trillion in US Mexican and Canadian trade That may send the peso as much as 8 percent higher according to some of those polled while the Canadian dollar would weaken modestly But if NAFTA is scrapped the peso will fall sharply given Mexico sells 80 percent of its exports to the United States That outcome may force central bank interventions while the threat to inflation 8212 already at 1612 year highs 8212 will make a February interest rate rise a certainty Tenyear bond yields are at 76 percent and approaching the sixyear highs hit last January around Trump8217s inauguration MX10YTRR NAFTA reutrs2DSHDXz 4LOST IN TRANSLATION Japan8217s central bank also meets next week and though it is unlikely to change its policy any time soon the moody reaction of the markets earlier this month to a small tweak in its bond purchases might require some verbal massaging Investors are sensitive to any subtle sign the Bank of Japan will follow the US Federal Reserve and ECB and start tapering The economy has had a very strong run by Japanese standards and inflation is creeping higher although it remains far below the 2 percent target Governor Haruhiko Kuroda can therefore paint a brighter picture for the economy but may also remind investors that an exit from unconventional policies remains a distant prospect Whether his words will be lost in translation remains to be seen but with the yen near a fourmonth high markets seem to have their own interpretation BOJ purchases reutrs2Dd0Cuv 5BURNING HOT EARNINGS Equities markets will be entering the white heat phase of the latest earnings season next week and so far a number of things have stood out Firstly the numbers look strong The 9 percent of US companies that have reported so far have racked up overall earnings growth of 123 percent with 75 percent of them also surprising on the upside In terms of the scale of the surprise the total wow factor is 45 percent slightly down on the same time last year when SampampP 500 companies were scoring a slightly better 5 percent beat Next week8217s heavy slate includes US manufacturers basic industries and tech while in Europe there is Swiss bank UBS on Monday Novartis on Wednesday and Nordea Sky and Diageo to come on Thursday Most money managers say European stocks still look cheaper than their US counterparts but with the euro at lofty levels and the ECB now looking to rein in stimulus any disappointments could be harshly punished Euro zone has never been this cheap vs Wall Street reutrs2DIvbJz Additional reporting by Sujata Rao Marius Zaharia Tom Pfeiffer and Megan Davies Editing by Catherine Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters US stock futures slid and the yen rose against the dollar on Friday after US President Donald Trump proposed additional tariffs on China aggravating trade tensions and smothering a revival in broader investor risk appetite FILE PHOTO Men are refelcted in a screen displaying market indices outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan April 19 2016 REUTERSThomas Peter MSCI8217s broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan lost 025 percent The index has spent the week swinging wildly in and out of negative territory amid the backandforth of the USChina trade dispute Australian stocks slipped 035 percent and South Korea8217s KOSPI lost 03 percent Japan8217s Nikkei fell 015 percent The SampampP 500 Emini futures were down 12 percent pointing to a lower start for Wall Street later in the session The Dow and the SampampP 500 posted gains for a third day in a row on Thursday the longest stretch of gains in about a month as investor fears of an escalating trade conflict between the United States and China abated turning the focus to upcoming earnings Trade tensions however returned to the fore after Trump said late on Thursday that he had instructed US trade officials to consider 100 billion in additional tariffs on China fuelling the trade dispute between the world8217s two economic superpowers FILE PHOTO A Japan Yen note is seen in this illustration photo taken June 1 2017 REUTERSThomas WhiteIllustrationFile Photo Trump said in a statement the extra tariffs were being considered 8220in light of China8217s unfair retaliation8221 against earlier US trade measures 8220Trump8217s order to consider whether 100 billion of additional tariffs would be appropriate and recent trade actions and rhetoric in recent weeks is an example of how battles can turn to wars8221 said Dan Ivascyn group chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co PIMCO 8220This is another reason investors should be reducing risk8221 The dollar which had risen to a onemonth high against the yen on Thursday on an earlier easing of trade fears slipped against its Japanese peer after Trump8217s latest trade offensive The greenback was down 03 percent at 107080 yen pulling back from 107490 its highest since March 1 It was up 08 percent on the week The dollar had risen to a onemonth peak versus the yen bolstered by Wall Street8217s bounce on Thursday when the United States appeared to signal a willingness to resolve the trade dispute The yen a perceived safehaven currency is often sought in times of market turmoil and political tensions The dollar dipped 015 percent to 09621 Swiss franc another safehaven currency Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange NYSE in New York US April 5 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid The euro rose 01 percent to 12248 The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies was down 01 percent at 90359 The index has risen 04 percent this week Treasury debt prices gained and yields declined as investors sought the safety of government bonds The 10year Treasury note yield fell 2 basis points to 2811 percent pulling back from Thursday8217s nineday high of 2838 percent Crude oil prices fell as risk aversion gripped the broader markets US crude slipped 06 percent to 6314 a barrel and Brent was down 055 percent at 6794 a barrel Oil had gained on Thursday helped by higher equities and Saudi Arabia8217s unexpected hike in crude prices Beyond the trade turmoil financial markets are focused on Friday8217s US nonfarm payrolls report which could determine the pace of future Federal Reserve interest rate rises and consequently the dollar outlook The US March employment report is expected to show nonfarm payroll growth of 193000 jobs versus 313000 in the prior month according to the latest Thomson Reuters poll of economists The unemployment rate is expected to drop to 40 percent from 41 percent in February Reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro Additional reporting by the New York markets team Editing by Eric Meijer Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump on Thursday directed US trade officials to identify tariffs on 100 billion more Chinese imports upping the ante in an already highstakes trade confrontation between the world8217s two largest economies The further tariffs were being considered 8220in light of China8217s unfair retaliation8221 against earlier US trade actions which included a proposed 50 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods Trump said in a White House statement 8220This is what a trade war looks like and what we have warned against from the start8221 said National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay 8220We are on a dangerous downward spiral and American families will be on the losing end8221 Shay added in a statement urging Trump 8220to stop playing a game of chicken with the US economy8221 Financial markets roiled for days by the trade fight and Trump8217s management of it whipsawed again on the new threat After a bullish regular trading day US equity futures sold off sharply in aftermarkethours trading US stock futures ESc1 slid 1 percent and the dollar dipped against other major currencies DXY while Asian shares flitted in and out of positive territory Chinese markets were closed for a holiday Related Coverage Chinese state media slams latest US tariff call as ridiculous attempt at intimidation Key events in rapid escalation of USChina trade dispute China says will take new measures if US sticks to protectionist trade stance Doug Kass who runs hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management Inc added 8220Our president is going to make market volatility and economic uncertainty great again8221 In his statement Trump said the US Trade Representative had determined that China 8220has repeatedly engaged in practices to unfairly obtain America8217s intellectual property8221 The titfortat escalation of tariff announcements which have stirred fears that trade unfolded surprisingly rapidly They have stirred fears that the two countries will spiral into a trade war that will crush global growth Chinese state media slammed Trump8217s threat of more trade action against China as 8220ridiculous8221 8220This latest intimidation reflects the deep arrogance of some American elites in their attitude towards China8221 the staterun Global Times said in an editorial On Tuesday USTR proposed 25 percent tariffs on more than 1300 Chinese industrial and other products from flatpanel televisions to electronic components China shot back 11 hours later with a list of proposed duties on 50 billion of American imports including soybeans aircraft cars beef and chemicals 8220Rather than remedy its misconduct China has chosen to harm our farmers and manufacturers8221 the Republican president said Republican lawmakers from Western and Midwestern states have voiced worries about a big hit to US farming exporters 8216THIS IS NUTS8217 On the new tariff threat Republican Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement 8220Hopefully the president is just blowing off steam again but if he8217s even halfserious this is nuts 8220Let8217s absolutely take on Chinese bad behavior but with a plan that punishes them instead of us This is the dumbest possible way to do this8221 said the lawmaker from the farmbelt state of Nebraska The US Department of Agriculture is looking for ways to assist farmers affected by China8217s tariffs USDA undersecretary Bill Northey told Reuters but did not offer specifics White House officials have suggested throughout the week that talks with the Chinese could help resolve trade issues between the two countries China ran a 375 billion goods trade surplus with the United States in 2017 Trump has demanded that China cut the trade gap by 100 billion A senior US official who requested anonymity told Reuters no formal negotiating sessions had yet been set but that the United States was willing to negotiate with China The US tariffs are aimed at forcing changes to Chinese government policies designed to transfer US intellectual property to Chinese companies and allow them to seize leadership in key hightechnology industries of the future The USTR8217s 8220Section 3018221 investigation authorizing the tariffs alleges China has systematically sought to misappropriate US intellectual property through joint venture requirements that often cannot be negotiated without technology transfers something China denies FILE PHOTO Containers are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Shanghai China March 14 2018 REUTERSAly Song TARIFF TARGETS NOT YET CHOSEN A USTR spokeswoman said that the 100 billion secondround of potential tariffs had not been determined yet and would be selected by USTR career staff not political appointees along with economists and trade experts The new list will be proposed in the same manner as the first round and will go through a similar public comment period before any of them are activated the spokeswoman said A further 100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods would likely expand the scope of Trump8217s attack to more consumer goods The first round of 50 billion in tariffs mostly targeted industrial goods and electronic components The two biggest categories of US imports from China last year were communications and computer equipment totaling 137 billion according to US Census data Cellphones and computers key portions of these categories were spared from the initial tariffs list Apparel and footwear both laborintensive industries in China made up a combined 39 billion in US imports Slideshow 2 Images Dean Garfield chief executive of the Information Technology Industry Council a tech industry lobbying group in Washington said the additional tariffs were 8220irresponsible and destabilizing8221 8220We need the US and China to come to the table and identify solutions to these serious problems8221 he added Reporting by Steve Holland and David Lawder Additional reporting by Eric Beech Ginger Gibson and Caren Bohan in Washington and Jennifer Ablan Caroline Valetkevitch Trevor Hunnicutt and Daniel Bases in New York Writing by Chris Sanders Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh Peter Cooney ampamp Shri Navaratnam Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China8217s Ministry of Commerce said it would take new comprehensive measures to safeguard the country8217s interests if the United States sticks to its protectionist behavior after President Donald Trump threatened an extra 100 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports In a statement on its website on Friday the ministry reiterated that it did not want a trade war but was not afraid of one and said that the trade conflict had been provoked by the United States Reporting by Tom Daly Editing by Kim Coghill Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 21 (Reuters) - Hedge fund investor Carl Icahn and another major owner of Xerox Corp stock, Darwin Deason, are pushing the digital print technology provider to explore strategic alternatives, including a sale, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.</p> <p>Icahn and Deason also want Xerox Chief Executive Jeff Jacobson to be removed from his position, the WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the matter. <a href="http://on.wsj.com/2EYCRHd" type="external">on.wsj.com/2EYCRHd</a></p> <p>Xerox did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.</p> <p>Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration this week will unveil a list of advanced technology Chinese imports targeted for U.S. tariffs to punish Beijing over technology transfer policies, a move expected to intensify trade tensions between the world&#8217;s two largest economies.</p> <p>U.S. tariffs on $50 billion to $60 billion worth of annual imports is expected to be levied on products benefiting from Beijing&#8217;s &#8220;Made in China 2025&#8221; industrial development program, but it may be more than two months before the import curbs take effect, administration officials have said.</p> <p>The U.S. Trade Representative&#8217;s office needs to unveil the list of products by Friday under President Donald Trump&#8217;s China tariff proclamation signed on March 22.</p> <p>The tariffs are aimed at forcing changes to Chinese government policies that USTR says results in the &#8220;uneconomic&#8221; transfer of U.S. intellectual property to Chinese companies.</p> <p>The agency&#8217;s &#8220;Section 301&#8221; investigation authorizing the tariffs alleges China has systematically sought to misappropriate U.S. intellectual property through joint venture requirements, unfair technology licensing rules, purchases of U.S. technology firms with state funding and outright theft.</p> <p>China has denied that its laws require technology transfers and has threatened to retaliate against any U.S. tariffs with trade sanctions of its own, with potential targets such as U.S. soybeans, aircraft or heavy equipment.</p> <p>On Sunday, Beijing slapped extra tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 U.S. products including frozen pork, as well as wine and certain fruits and nuts in response to steep U.S. tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel announced last month by the Trump administration.</p> <p>Fears have arisen that the two countries will spiral into a trade war that will crush global growth.</p> TARGETING &#8216;MADE IN CHINA 2025&#8217; <p>White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said last week that Section 301 tariffs would focus on Chinese industries benefiting from the Made in China 2025 plan, which aims to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products.</p> <p>&#8220;China in my view brazenly has released this China 2025 plan and basically told the rest of the world, &#8216;We&#8217;re going to dominate every single emerging industry of the future and therefore your economies aren&#8217;t going to have any future,&#8221; Navarro told Bloomberg Television.</p> <p>&#8220;The Section 301, which is on intellectual theft and forced transfer, is specifically designed to address those kinds of things,&#8221; Navarro said.</p> <p>The state-led 2025 program targets 10 strategic industries: advanced information technology, robotics, aircraft, shipbuilding and marine engineering, advanced rail equipment, new energy vehicles, electrical generation equipment, agricultural machinery, pharmaceuticals and advanced materials.</p> <p>&#8220;Foreign technology acquisition through various means remains a prime focus under Made in China 2025 because China is still catching up in many of the areas prioritized for development,&#8221; USTR said in its report justifying the tariffs.</p> <p>U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said that preserving America&#8217;s technological edge is &#8220;the future of the U.S. economy.&#8221;</p> <p>Reports that the tariff list may also include consumer goods such as clothing and footwear drew strong protests from U.S. business groups, which argued that it would raise prices for U.S. consumers.</p> LIMITED TIME FOR TALKS <p>While there have been contacts between senior members of the Trump administration and their Chinese counterparts since Trump announced his intention to impose tariffs, there has been little evidence of intensive negotiations to forestall them.</p> <p>&#8220;The administration is following the Japan model from the 1980s,&#8221; said a tech industry executive. &#8220;They&#8217;ll publish a Federal Register notice of tariffs on certain products, then try to reach a negotiated settlement over the next 60 days.&#8221;During his first stint at USTR in the Reagan administration, Lighthizer employed similar tactics to win voluntary Japanese export restraints on steel and autos.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the Infrastructure Initiative at the Local 18 Richfield Training Site in Richfield, Ohio, U.S., March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Wendy Cutler, a former deputy USTR in charge of Asia negotiations, said that addressing the sweeping intellectual property allegations identified by USTR would require major changes to China&#8217;s industrial policy. A 60-day settlement may not be realistic in that case.</p> <p>&#8220;I think they&#8217;ve set up a high bar for what they need to achieve, in order not to impose these types of tariffs and investment restrictions,&#8221; Cutler said.</p> <p>Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Peter Cooney and Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Kremlin aide said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump suggested the White House as the venue for a summit with Russia&#8217;s Vladimir Putin when they discussed the idea of meeting in a telephone call last month.</p> <p>Since that call, on March 20, preparations for a possible summit have not progressed because of a diplomatic row, the aide, Yuri Ushakov, said.</p> <p>&#8220;When our presidents spoke on the phone, Trump proposed having the first meeting in Washington, in the White House,&#8221; Ushakov told reporters at a briefing.</p> <p>&#8220;Trump called Putin last month to congratulate him on his election victory and told reporters he believed he and Putin would meet &#8220;in the not too distant future.&#8221;</p> <p>White House press secretary Sarah Sanders did not confirm an invitation had been issued to Putin, but said the two had discussed a number of venues for a potential meeting, including the White House.</p> <p>&#8220;We have nothing further to add at this time,&#8221; she told reporters on Monday.</p> <p>Rolling out a welcome for Putin in the White House, rather than at a neutral location, could anger Trump&#8217;s domestic critics, who accuse Russia of hostile acts against Western countries, including the United States.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva <p>Some current and former members of Trump&#8217;s team are under investigation for alleged collusion with Russia in the run-up to Trump&#8217;s inauguration. Trump denies any collusion.</p> <p>Since the March 20 phone call, Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed a Russian consulate over allegations that Russia was behind the poisoning of former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.</p> <p>Russia denies involvement and has retaliated against the diplomatic sanctions in kind.</p> FILE PHOTO: Russia's President Vladimir Putin talks to U.S. President Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo <p>&#8220;Against the backdrop of these events, it&#8217;s difficult to discuss the possibility of holding a summit&#8221;, Ushakov said.</p> <p>&#8220;We want to believe that the discussions (on a proposed summit) will begin,&#8221; Ushakov said.</p> <p>&#8220;We want to hope that... one day, at one time or another we can arrive at the start of a serious and constructive dialogue.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting and writing by Denis Pinchuk; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Christian Lowe and Robin Pomeroy</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While President Donald Trump has said illegal immigrants heading toward the United States are trying to take advantage of an Obama-era policy that shields certain people from deportation, the program known as DACA is actually not open to new entrants.</p> Activists and DACA recipients march up Broadway during the start of their 'Walk to Stay Home,' a five-day 250-mile walk from New York to Washington D.C., to demand that Congress pass a Clean Dream Act, in Manhattan, New York, U.S., February 15, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton <p>At issue is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which the Republican president last September ordered rescinded. Under DACA, hundreds of thousands of young adults dubbed &#8220;Dreamers&#8221; who were brought into the United States illegally as children have been shielded from deportation and given work permits.</p> <p>On Sunday, apparently in reference to a caravan of 1,500 Central Americans who are journeying through Mexico toward the United States, Trump wrote on Twitter: &#8220;These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!&#8221;</p> <p>But there is no &#8220;act&#8221; to get in on. Newly arriving illegal immigrants cannot win protections under DACA, created in 2012 by Trump&#8217;s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, for two reasons.</p> <p>Anyone admitted into the program had to have been living continuously in the United States since June 15, 2007, along with other requirements. In addition, Trump himself ordered an end to the program, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is not accepting new applicants.</p> <p>Under Trump&#8217;s action, DACA was supposed to have begun winding down last month. But courts have ruled that Trump acted improperly and that the hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently enrolled still qualified for protections while the legal fight over DACA unfolds.</p> <p>When he announced he was ending DACA, Trump urged Congress to come up with a legislative fix. Referring to the Dreamers, Trump said, &#8220;I have a great heart for the folks we&#8217;re talking about, a great love for them.&#8221;</p> <p>Seven months later, DACA participants are living with the uncertainty over whether they will be protected or targeted for deportation.</p> <p>Meanwhile, following a series of failed negotiations with Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, Trump has been fuming over the refusal of lawmakers to fully fund a $25 billion wall he wants to build on the U.S.-Mexican border. The wall became a bargaining chip in DACA replacement legislation.</p> <p>&#8220;NO MORE DACA DEAL!,&#8221; Trump said on Twitter as he blamed Democrats for the situation. &#8220;DACA is dead.&#8221;</p> <p>Matthew Wright, a government professor at American University in Washington, called Trump&#8217;s tweets &#8220;not connected to reality.&#8221; Wright noted that Trump rejected several Democratic offers to address DACA, including at one point a deal that would have provided $25 billion for his wall.</p> <p>Last month, Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said Trump&#8217;s rejection of that offer was the &#8220;high-water mark&#8221; for the wall&#8217;s prospects in Congress, where support for it is tepid at best.</p> <p>Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump declared as &#8220;dead&#8221; on Monday a program that protects immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children and pressed Congress to &#8220;immediately&#8221; pass legislation to secure the U.S. border with Mexico.</p> <p>Trump, who has taken a hard line toward immigration, said in September he would terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program introduced by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, but gave the Republican-controlled Congress until March 6 to replace it.</p> <p>Congress failed to meet that deadline, but courts have ruled the program can remain in place for now.</p> <p>&#8220;DACA is dead because the Democrats didn&#8217;t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon,&#8221; the Republican president said in a Twitter post.</p> <p>It was unclear whether Trump, in any new immigration legislation, would support safeguards for people protected by DACA. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on Trump&#8217;s tweets.</p> <p>Democrats blamed Trump for the tenuous status of a program that shielded hundreds of thousands of immigrants, often called &#8220;Dreamers,&#8221; from deportation and gave them work permits.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-immigration-daca-explainer/explainer-trump-muddles-daca-program-in-anti-immigrant-twitter-comments-idUSKCN1H91UM" type="external">Explainer: Trump muddles DACA program in anti-immigrant Twitter comments</a> <p>Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said on Twitter that the president created his own crisis.</p> <p>&#8220;The President is blaming everyone under the sun, but he only has to look in the mirror to find the person who turned down six different bipartisan DACA deals from Congress - a few that included funding for his useless wall,&#8221; Durbin said.</p> <p>Democrats had offered at one point to fully fund the wall Trump wants along the U.S.-Mexican border but rescinded the offer in January, accusing the president of reneging on elements of a tentative agreement.</p> <p>&#8220;He walked away - not Democrats,&#8221; Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote on Twitter.</p> <p>&#8220;Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People ... Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!&#8221; Trump said in another Twitter post.</p> <p>Congress cannot pass any legislation immediately as lawmakers are on their second week of a spring recess, but taking a tough stance on immigration appeals to Trump&#8217;s conservative base.</p> <p>Senate Republican leaders have ignored previous calls from Trump advocating the so-called nuclear option, which would involve changing Senate rules so Republicans could more easily overcome Democratic opposition to legislation in a chamber they control with a thin majority of 51 out of 100 seats.</p> <p>Cindy Agustin, 28, a DACA recipient and immigration activist in Chicago, said the impasse over the program breeds fear and uncertainty.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s frustrating because we&#8217;re in limbo right now,&#8221; Agustin added.</p> <p>Trump also reiterated his call for Mexico to stop people from entering the United States, after saying on Sunday he would terminate a major trade accord with Mexico if it does not do more to secure its border with the United States.</p> <p>The United States is currently renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.</p> BACK AGAINST THE WALL <p>Trump made building a border wall - and making Mexico pay for it - one of his top campaign pledges when he ran for president in 2016. Mexico has refused to pay.</p> <p>In the past, Trump had said he was open to a deal with congressional Democrats in which they would support funding for the border wall in exchange for protection for the Dreamers.</p> <p>But on Sunday he indicated that time had passed, writing on Twitter: &#8220;&#8216;Caravans&#8217; coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!&#8221;</p> <p>The mention of a caravan apparently referred to a group of 1,500 men, women and children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who are traveling in a &#8220;refugee caravan&#8221; organized by the U.S.-based immigration advocacy group Pueblo sin Fronteras, whose Spanish name means People Without Borders.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump waves to the media as he arrives with first lady Melania Trump at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., after the Easter weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>By traveling together, the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico toward the U.S. border dangerous. They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States.</p> <p>No immigration deal has materialized in the Republican-controlled Congress despite months of efforts. The Senate considered several immigration proposals in February but rejected all of them, including bipartisan bills and legislation tailored to Trump&#8217;s requirements.</p> <p>In light of Trump&#8217;s call for the &#8220;nuclear option,&#8221; a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday noted that Republican senators oppose changing existing rules governing the debate and passage of legislation.</p> <p>Major legislation usually needs a supermajority to pass the Senate. Without 60 votes in support, the Democratic minority can sink a bill.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Icahn, Deason call on Xerox to explore options, including sale -WSJ Trump to unveil China tariff list this week, targeting tech goods Kremlin says Trump suggested Putin visit the White House Explainer: Trump muddles DACA program in anti-immigrant Twitter comments Trump declares DACA 'dead,' urges Congress to act on border

https://reuters.com/article/xerox-fujifilm-icahn/icahn-deason-call-on-xerox-to-explore-options-including-sale-wsj-idUSL4N1PH01D

2018-01-22

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Jan 21 Reuters Hedge fund investor Carl Icahn and another major owner of Xerox Corp stock Darwin Deason are pushing the digital print technology provider to explore strategic alternatives including a sale the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday Icahn and Deason also want Xerox Chief Executive Jeff Jacobson to be removed from his position the WSJ reported citing people familiar with the matter onwsjcom2EYCRHd Xerox did not respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The Trump administration this week will unveil a list of advanced technology Chinese imports targeted for US tariffs to punish Beijing over technology transfer policies a move expected to intensify trade tensions between the world8217s two largest economies US tariffs on 50 billion to 60 billion worth of annual imports is expected to be levied on products benefiting from Beijing8217s 8220Made in China 20258221 industrial development program but it may be more than two months before the import curbs take effect administration officials have said The US Trade Representative8217s office needs to unveil the list of products by Friday under President Donald Trump8217s China tariff proclamation signed on March 22 The tariffs are aimed at forcing changes to Chinese government policies that USTR says results in the 8220uneconomic8221 transfer of US intellectual property to Chinese companies The agency8217s 8220Section 3018221 investigation authorizing the tariffs alleges China has systematically sought to misappropriate US intellectual property through joint venture requirements unfair technology licensing rules purchases of US technology firms with state funding and outright theft China has denied that its laws require technology transfers and has threatened to retaliate against any US tariffs with trade sanctions of its own with potential targets such as US soybeans aircraft or heavy equipment On Sunday Beijing slapped extra tariffs of up to 25 percent on 128 US products including frozen pork as well as wine and certain fruits and nuts in response to steep US tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel announced last month by the Trump administration Fears have arisen that the two countries will spiral into a trade war that will crush global growth TARGETING 8216MADE IN CHINA 20258217 White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said last week that Section 301 tariffs would focus on Chinese industries benefiting from the Made in China 2025 plan which aims to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products 8220China in my view brazenly has released this China 2025 plan and basically told the rest of the world 8216We8217re going to dominate every single emerging industry of the future and therefore your economies aren8217t going to have any future8221 Navarro told Bloomberg Television 8220The Section 301 which is on intellectual theft and forced transfer is specifically designed to address those kinds of things8221 Navarro said The stateled 2025 program targets 10 strategic industries advanced information technology robotics aircraft shipbuilding and marine engineering advanced rail equipment new energy vehicles electrical generation equipment agricultural machinery pharmaceuticals and advanced materials 8220Foreign technology acquisition through various means remains a prime focus under Made in China 2025 because China is still catching up in many of the areas prioritized for development8221 USTR said in its report justifying the tariffs US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said that preserving America8217s technological edge is 8220the future of the US economy8221 Reports that the tariff list may also include consumer goods such as clothing and footwear drew strong protests from US business groups which argued that it would raise prices for US consumers LIMITED TIME FOR TALKS While there have been contacts between senior members of the Trump administration and their Chinese counterparts since Trump announced his intention to impose tariffs there has been little evidence of intensive negotiations to forestall them 8220The administration is following the Japan model from the 1980s8221 said a tech industry executive 8220They8217ll publish a Federal Register notice of tariffs on certain products then try to reach a negotiated settlement over the next 60 days8221During his first stint at USTR in the Reagan administration Lighthizer employed similar tactics to win voluntary Japanese export restraints on steel and autos US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the Infrastructure Initiative at the Local 18 Richfield Training Site in Richfield Ohio US March 29 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas Wendy Cutler a former deputy USTR in charge of Asia negotiations said that addressing the sweeping intellectual property allegations identified by USTR would require major changes to China8217s industrial policy A 60day settlement may not be realistic in that case 8220I think they8217ve set up a high bar for what they need to achieve in order not to impose these types of tariffs and investment restrictions8221 Cutler said Reporting by David Lawder Editing by Peter Cooney and Susan Thomas Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters A Kremlin aide said on Monday that US President Donald Trump suggested the White House as the venue for a summit with Russia8217s Vladimir Putin when they discussed the idea of meeting in a telephone call last month Since that call on March 20 preparations for a possible summit have not progressed because of a diplomatic row the aide Yuri Ushakov said 8220When our presidents spoke on the phone Trump proposed having the first meeting in Washington in the White House8221 Ushakov told reporters at a briefing 8220Trump called Putin last month to congratulate him on his election victory and told reporters he believed he and Putin would meet 8220in the not too distant future8221 White House press secretary Sarah Sanders did not confirm an invitation had been issued to Putin but said the two had discussed a number of venues for a potential meeting including the White House 8220We have nothing further to add at this time8221 she told reporters on Monday Rolling out a welcome for Putin in the White House rather than at a neutral location could anger Trump8217s domestic critics who accuse Russia of hostile acts against Western countries including the United States US President Donald Trump and Russias President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang Vietnam November 11 2017 REUTERSJorge Silva Some current and former members of Trump8217s team are under investigation for alleged collusion with Russia in the runup to Trump8217s inauguration Trump denies any collusion Since the March 20 phone call Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed a Russian consulate over allegations that Russia was behind the poisoning of former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain Russia denies involvement and has retaliated against the diplomatic sanctions in kind FILE PHOTO Russias President Vladimir Putin talks to US President Donald Trump during their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg Germany July 7 2017 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFile Photo 8220Against the backdrop of these events it8217s difficult to discuss the possibility of holding a summit8221 Ushakov said 8220We want to believe that the discussions on a proposed summit will begin8221 Ushakov said 8220We want to hope that one day at one time or another we can arrive at the start of a serious and constructive dialogue8221 Reporting and writing by Denis Pinchuk Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington Editing by Christian Lowe and Robin Pomeroy Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters While President Donald Trump has said illegal immigrants heading toward the United States are trying to take advantage of an Obamaera policy that shields certain people from deportation the program known as DACA is actually not open to new entrants Activists and DACA recipients march up Broadway during the start of their Walk to Stay Home a fiveday 250mile walk from New York to Washington DC to demand that Congress pass a Clean Dream Act in Manhattan New York US February 15 2018 REUTERSShannon Stapleton At issue is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program which the Republican president last September ordered rescinded Under DACA hundreds of thousands of young adults dubbed 8220Dreamers8221 who were brought into the United States illegally as children have been shielded from deportation and given work permits On Sunday apparently in reference to a caravan of 1500 Central Americans who are journeying through Mexico toward the United States Trump wrote on Twitter 8220These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA They want in on the act8221 But there is no 8220act8221 to get in on Newly arriving illegal immigrants cannot win protections under DACA created in 2012 by Trump8217s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama for two reasons Anyone admitted into the program had to have been living continuously in the United States since June 15 2007 along with other requirements In addition Trump himself ordered an end to the program and the US Department of Homeland Security is not accepting new applicants Under Trump8217s action DACA was supposed to have begun winding down last month But courts have ruled that Trump acted improperly and that the hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently enrolled still qualified for protections while the legal fight over DACA unfolds When he announced he was ending DACA Trump urged Congress to come up with a legislative fix Referring to the Dreamers Trump said 8220I have a great heart for the folks we8217re talking about a great love for them8221 Seven months later DACA participants are living with the uncertainty over whether they will be protected or targeted for deportation Meanwhile following a series of failed negotiations with Democrats and some Republicans in Congress Trump has been fuming over the refusal of lawmakers to fully fund a 25 billion wall he wants to build on the USMexican border The wall became a bargaining chip in DACA replacement legislation 8220NO MORE DACA DEAL8221 Trump said on Twitter as he blamed Democrats for the situation 8220DACA is dead8221 Matthew Wright a government professor at American University in Washington called Trump8217s tweets 8220not connected to reality8221 Wright noted that Trump rejected several Democratic offers to address DACA including at one point a deal that would have provided 25 billion for his wall Last month Senator Angus King an independent who caucuses with the Democrats said Trump8217s rejection of that offer was the 8220highwater mark8221 for the wall8217s prospects in Congress where support for it is tepid at best Reporting by Richard Cowan Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump declared as 8220dead8221 on Monday a program that protects immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children and pressed Congress to 8220immediately8221 pass legislation to secure the US border with Mexico Trump who has taken a hard line toward immigration said in September he would terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals DACA program introduced by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama but gave the Republicancontrolled Congress until March 6 to replace it Congress failed to meet that deadline but courts have ruled the program can remain in place for now 8220DACA is dead because the Democrats didn8217t care or act and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon8221 the Republican president said in a Twitter post It was unclear whether Trump in any new immigration legislation would support safeguards for people protected by DACA The White House did not respond to requests for comment on Trump8217s tweets Democrats blamed Trump for the tenuous status of a program that shielded hundreds of thousands of immigrants often called 8220Dreamers8221 from deportation and gave them work permits Related Coverage Explainer Trump muddles DACA program in antiimmigrant Twitter comments Dick Durbin the No 2 Senate Democrat said on Twitter that the president created his own crisis 8220The President is blaming everyone under the sun but he only has to look in the mirror to find the person who turned down six different bipartisan DACA deals from Congress a few that included funding for his useless wall8221 Durbin said Democrats had offered at one point to fully fund the wall Trump wants along the USMexican border but rescinded the offer in January accusing the president of reneging on elements of a tentative agreement 8220He walked away not Democrats8221 Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote on Twitter 8220Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation use Nuclear Option if necessary to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People Act now Congress our country is being stolen8221 Trump said in another Twitter post Congress cannot pass any legislation immediately as lawmakers are on their second week of a spring recess but taking a tough stance on immigration appeals to Trump8217s conservative base Senate Republican leaders have ignored previous calls from Trump advocating the socalled nuclear option which would involve changing Senate rules so Republicans could more easily overcome Democratic opposition to legislation in a chamber they control with a thin majority of 51 out of 100 seats Cindy Agustin 28 a DACA recipient and immigration activist in Chicago said the impasse over the program breeds fear and uncertainty 8220It8217s frustrating because we8217re in limbo right now8221 Agustin added Trump also reiterated his call for Mexico to stop people from entering the United States after saying on Sunday he would terminate a major trade accord with Mexico if it does not do more to secure its border with the United States The United States is currently renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada BACK AGAINST THE WALL Trump made building a border wall and making Mexico pay for it one of his top campaign pledges when he ran for president in 2016 Mexico has refused to pay In the past Trump had said he was open to a deal with congressional Democrats in which they would support funding for the border wall in exchange for protection for the Dreamers But on Sunday he indicated that time had passed writing on Twitter 82208216Caravans8217 coming Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW NO MORE DACA DEAL8221 The mention of a caravan apparently referred to a group of 1500 men women and children from Honduras Guatemala and El Salvador who are traveling in a 8220refugee caravan8221 organized by the USbased immigration advocacy group Pueblo sin Fronteras whose Spanish name means People Without Borders US President Donald Trump waves to the media as he arrives with first lady Melania Trump at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland US after the Easter weekend in Palm Beach Florida April 1 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas By traveling together the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico toward the US border dangerous They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States No immigration deal has materialized in the Republicancontrolled Congress despite months of efforts The Senate considered several immigration proposals in February but rejected all of them including bipartisan bills and legislation tailored to Trump8217s requirements In light of Trump8217s call for the 8220nuclear option8221 a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday noted that Republican senators oppose changing existing rules governing the debate and passage of legislation Major legislation usually needs a supermajority to pass the Senate Without 60 votes in support the Democratic minority can sink a bill Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>PRAGUE (Reuters) - A fourth person has died from injuries sustained in a fire on Saturday at a hotel in central Prague, a hospital spokesman said.</p> Firefighters work at the scene of a fire at a hotel in Prague, Czech Republic January 20, 2018. REUTERS/Milan Kammermayer Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The fire broke out on Saturday evening at the Eurostars David Hotel, situated on a narrow street a block away from the Vltava River.</p> <p>Two people died on Saturday and were identified by police on Sunday as a German man born in 1996, and a South Korean woman born in 1997.</p> <p>The hospital spokesman said two more people who died on Sunday were women. Police said they had yet to identify the women.</p> <p>Four other people injured in the fire remained in hospital, police said. Their conditions were unclear.</p> <p>Investigations into the cause of the fire were continuing, police said.</p> <p>Reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by John Stonestreet and Susan Fenton</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he was suspending a new agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants, as right-wing pressure mounted on him to scrap the deal.</p> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun <p>Hours after announcing the new arrangement, which would also give thousands of other migrants the right to stay in Israel, Netanyahu posted a message on his Facebook page saying he was putting its implementation on hold until further review.</p> <p>The fate of some 37,000 Africans in Israel has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home. The right-wing government has been under pressure from its nationalist voter base to expel the migrants.</p> <p>According to the agreement, about 16,250 of about 37,000 African migrants, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan, would be relocated to Western nations while others would be allowed to stay in Israel.</p> <p>At a news conference in Jerusalem, Netanyahu praised the new agreement reached with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR). But in the hours that followed the announcement he faced growing calls on social and mainstream media to abolish the deal.</p> <p>Some Israelis accused him of caving to left-wing pressure and betraying the residents of south Tel Aviv, a poor part of the city which has attracted the largest migrant community, changing its ethnic makeup and enraging some of its inhabitants who want the migrants out.</p> <p>&#8220;I am attentive to you, especially to the residents of south Tel Aviv,&#8221; Netanyahu said on Facebook, adding that he planned to meet with local representatives on Tuesday.</p> <p>&#8220;In the meantime I am suspending the agreement&#8217;s implementation and after I meet with the representatives I will bring it forward for further review,&#8221; Netanyahu said.</p> FILE PHOTO: Pepole take part in a protest against the Israeli government's plan to deport African migrants, in Tel Aviv, Israel March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Corinna Kern/File Photo <p>Implementing the signed agreement was expected to take five years and Netanyahu&#8217;s backtrack was largely seen in Israel as an attempt to appease his voter base and keep its support at a time of political uncertainty.</p> <p>The four-term prime minister faces one of the greatest challenges to his career yet - he is under police investigation in three different corruption cases. Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing.</p> <p>Naftali Bennett, leader of the Israeli far-right party Jewish Home, a key member of Netanyahu&#8217;s coalition government and a competitor for Israel&#8217;s right-wing votes, said on Twitter the agreement would encourage more people to enter the country illegally and called on Netanyahu to overturn it.</p> <p>His calls were soon echoed by members of Netanyahu&#8217;s own Likud party.</p> PRESSURE <p>The UNHCR in a statement confirmed an agreement was signed with Israel but did not name the countries that would accept the migrants.</p> <p>It said it would &#8220;facilitate the departure to third countries to be determined of some 16,000 Eritreans and Sudanese under various programs, including sponsorship, resettlement, family reunion and labor migration schemes, while others will be receiving a suitable legal status in Israel.&#8221;</p> <p>Netanyahu named Germany, Italy and Canada as examples of countries that would accept the migrants, though German and Italian officials said they had no knowledge of any such agreement.</p> <p>Canada has an arrangement with Israeli authorities to suspend the deportation of individuals who have private sponsorship applications with Canada until they are processed, said Hursh Jaswal, spokesman for Canada&#8217;s immigration minister.</p> <p>There were 1,845 applications being processed at the end of last year, Jaswal said.</p> FILE PHOTO: African migrants wait in line for the opening of the Population and Immigration Authority office in Bnei Brak, Israel February 4, 2018. Picture taken February 4, 2018. REUTERS/Nir Elias/File Photo <p>A previous plan already underway for a mass deportation of some 20,000 migrants to Rwanda had led to legal challenges in Israel, drew criticism abroad and triggered an emotional public debate among Israelis.</p> <p>In February, Israeli authorities started handing out notices to male African migrants giving them two months to leave for a third country in Africa or risk being put in jail indefinitely.</p> <p>At immigration hearings, migrants were told they could choose to go to Rwanda or Uganda. Both countries have denied having any deal in place with Israel.</p> <p>The U.N.&#8217;s refugee agency had urged Israel to reconsider its deportation plan, saying migrants who have relocated to sub-Saharan Africa in the past few years were unsafe and ended up on the perilous migrant trail to Europe, some suffering abuse, torture and even dying on the way.</p> <p>Rights groups had challenged the deportation in Israel&#8217;s High Court, which on March 15 issued a temporary order that froze its implementation.</p> <p>Netanyahu said on Facebook that Rwanda had in the past few weeks folded to immense pressure and backed out of the deal it had made with Israel to accept expelled migrants, prompting him to seek the new arrangement with the UNHCR.</p> <p>Since 2005 a total of 64,000 Africans had entered Israel illegally over its border with Egypt, although thousands have since left. A fence Israel has built over the past few years along the frontier has largely stemmed the flow.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Philip Pullella in Rome and Joseph Nasr in Berlin; Editing by Hugh Lawson and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>RIYADH (Reuters) - King Salman reiterated Saudi Arabia&#8217;s support for a Palestinian state after his son and heir apparent said Israelis were entitled to live peacefully on their own land - a rare statement by an Arab leader.</p> Saudi Arabia's King Salman attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin (not in the picture) in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Kadobnov/Pool <p>The king also emphasized the need to advance the peace process in a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday night, made after Israeli security forces killed 16 Palestinians last week during a demonstration along the Israel-Gaza border</p> <p>King Salman reaffirmed &#8220;the kingdom&#8217;s steadfast position toward the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital&#8221;, state news agency SPA said on Tuesday.</p> <p>The report did not refer to the comments by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an interview published on Monday by U.S. magazine The Atlantic, which are the latest public sign that ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel may be growing closer.</p> <p>Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, Prince Mohammed was quoted as saying:</p> <p>&#8220;I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.&#8221;</p> <p>Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest shrines, does not recognize Israel. It has maintained for years that normalizing relations hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state.</p> Riyadh says Israel has right to its own land <p>Increased tension between Riyadh and Tehran has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they see as a common Iranian threat.</p> <p>Reporting By Stephen Kalin; editing by David Stamp</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia&#8217;s crown prince said in a published interview that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land, another public sign of an apparent thawing in ties between the two countries.</p> <p>Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, Mohammed bin Salman was quoted by U.S. magazine The Atlantic as saying:</p> <p>&#8220;I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.&#8221;</p> <p>Saudi Arabia - birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines - does not officially recognize Israel. It has maintained for years that normalizing relations hinges on an Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war - territory Palestinians seek for a future state.</p> <p>&#8220;We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people. This is what we have. We don&#8217;t have any objection against any other people,&#8221; said Prince Mohammed, who is touring the United States to drum up investments and support for his efforts to contain Iranian influence.</p> <p>Increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they regard as a common Iranian threat.</p> <p>&#8220;There are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries,&#8221; Prince Mohammed added.</p> <p>The German foreign ministry welcomed his comments and ministry officials underscored the Saudi role in pushing for an Arab peace initiative as early as 2002.</p> <p>&#8220;The prince&#8217;s comments are very close to the position of Germany and the EU: We need a two-state solution and serious negotiations to achieve that,&#8221; said one ministry official. &#8220;Israelis and Palestinians have a right to peaceful lives in their own country.&#8221;</p> <p>Israeli-Palestinian peace talks envisaging a Palestinian state alongside Israel have been frozen since 2014.</p> FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud is seen during a meeting with U.N Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the United Nations headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S. March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Amir Levy/File Photo <p>Saudi Arabia opened its air space for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel last month, which an Israeli official hailed as historic following two years of efforts.</p> <p>In November, an Israeli cabinet member disclosed covert contacts with Saudi Arabia, a rare acknowledgment of long-rumoured secret dealings which Riyadh still denies.</p> <p>Saudi Arabia condemned U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last year. But Arab officials told Reuters at the time that Riyadh appears to be on board with a broader U.S. strategy for an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan still in its early phases of development.</p> <p>Reporting by Stephen Kalin in Riyadh and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing by Mark Heinrich</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Three foreign powers who have shaped Syria&#8217;s civil war - Iran, Russia and Turkey - will discuss ways to wind down the fighting on Wednesday despite their involvement in rival military campaigns on the ground.</p> Syrian and Russian soldiers are seen at a checkpoint near Wafideen camp in Damascus, Syria March 2, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki <p>The leaders of the three countries will meet in Ankara for talks on a new constitution for Syria and increasing security in &#8220;de-escalation&#8221; zones across the country, Turkish officials say.</p> <p>The Syria summit brings together two powers which have been President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s most forceful supporters, Iran and Russia, with one of his strongest opponents, Turkey.</p> <p>Cooperation between the rival camps raised hopes of stabilizing Syria after seven years of conflict in which 500,000 people have been killed and half the population displaced.</p> <p>But the violence has raged on, highlighting strategic rifts between the three countries who, in the absence of decisive Western intervention, hold Syria&#8217;s fate largely in their hands.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-iran-syria/u-s-and-israel-interfere-in-syria-says-iran-president-idUSKCN1HA1X6" type="external">U.S. and Israel interfere in Syria, says Iran president</a> <p>Syria&#8217;s army and Iran-backed militias, with Russian air power, have crushed insurgents near Damascus in eastern Ghouta - one of the four mooted &#8220;de-escalation zones&#8221;.</p> <p>Turkey, which sharply criticized the Ghouta offensive, waged its own military operation to drive Kurdish YPG fighters from the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin. It has pledged to take the town of Tel Rifaat and push further east, angering Iran.</p> <p>&#8220;Whatever the intentions are, Turkey&#8217;s moves in Syria, whether in Afrin, Tel Rifaat or any other part of Syria, should be halted as soon as possible,&#8221; a senior Iranian official said.</p> <p>Iran has been Assad&#8217;s most supportive ally throughout the conflict. Iran-backed militias first helped his army stem rebel advances and, following Russia&#8217;s entry into the war in 2015, turn the tide decisively in Assad&#8217;s favor.</p> <p>A Turkish official said Ankara will ask Moscow to press Assad to grant more humanitarian access in Ghouta, and to rein in air strikes on rebel-held areas. &#8220;We expect ... Russia to control the regime more,&#8221; the official told reporters this week.</p> RIFTS OVER ASSAD <p>Ankara&#8217;s relations with Moscow collapsed in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane but have recovered since then - to the concern of Turkey&#8217;s Western allies.</p> <p>Turkey was one of the few NATO partners not to expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack on a former Russian agent which Britain blamed on Moscow - an allegation which Turkey said was not proven.</p> <p>Improved political ties have been reflected in Turkey&#8217;s agreement to buy a Russian missile defence system and plans for Russia&#8217;s ROSATOM to build Turkey&#8217;s first nuclear power plant.</p> <p>Turkey has also expanded relations with Iran, exchanging visits by military chiefs of staff, although its deepening ties with Tehran and Moscow have not translated into broader agreement on Syria&#8217;s future.</p> <p>Iran remains determined that Assad stay in power, while Russia is less committed to keeping him in office, a regional diplomat said. Turkey says Assad has lost legitimacy, although it no longer demands his immediate departure.</p> <p>At a meeting in Russia two months ago, boycotted by the leadership of Syria&#8217;s opposition, delegates agreed to set up a committee to rewrite Syria&#8217;s constitution and called for democratic elections.</p> <p>Turkey says Wednesday&#8217;s meeting will discuss setting up the constitutional committee, humanitarian issues and developments in Syria&#8217;s northern Idlib region, which is under the control of rival rebel factions and jihadi groups, and where Turkey has set up seven military observation posts.</p> <p>&#8220;There are issues where all three countries have different policies in Syria,&#8221; another Turkish official said. &#8220;In this regard, an aim is to find middle ground and create policies to improve the current situation.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Writing by Dominic Evans, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Fourth person dies after Prague hotel fire Israel suspends new relocation deal for African migrants Saudi king reiterates support for Palestinians after Israel comments Saudi crown prince says Israelis have right to their own land Russia, Iran and Turkey struggle to find common ground on Syria

https://reuters.com/article/czech-fire/update-1-fourth-person-dies-after-prague-hotel-fire-idUSL8N1PG0HR

2018-01-21

2least

PRAGUE Reuters A fourth person has died from injuries sustained in a fire on Saturday at a hotel in central Prague a hospital spokesman said Firefighters work at the scene of a fire at a hotel in Prague Czech Republic January 20 2018 REUTERSMilan Kammermayer Slideshow 3 Images The fire broke out on Saturday evening at the Eurostars David Hotel situated on a narrow street a block away from the Vltava River Two people died on Saturday and were identified by police on Sunday as a German man born in 1996 and a South Korean woman born in 1997 The hospital spokesman said two more people who died on Sunday were women Police said they had yet to identify the women Four other people injured in the fire remained in hospital police said Their conditions were unclear Investigations into the cause of the fire were continuing police said Reporting by Jason Hovet Editing by John Stonestreet and Susan Fenton Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he was suspending a new agreement with the UN refugee agency to relocate thousands of African migrants as rightwing pressure mounted on him to scrap the deal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference at the Prime Ministers office in Jerusalem April 2 2018 REUTERSRonen Zvulun Hours after announcing the new arrangement which would also give thousands of other migrants the right to stay in Israel Netanyahu posted a message on his Facebook page saying he was putting its implementation on hold until further review The fate of some 37000 Africans in Israel has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home The rightwing government has been under pressure from its nationalist voter base to expel the migrants According to the agreement about 16250 of about 37000 African migrants most of them from Eritrea and Sudan would be relocated to Western nations while others would be allowed to stay in Israel At a news conference in Jerusalem Netanyahu praised the new agreement reached with the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR But in the hours that followed the announcement he faced growing calls on social and mainstream media to abolish the deal Some Israelis accused him of caving to leftwing pressure and betraying the residents of south Tel Aviv a poor part of the city which has attracted the largest migrant community changing its ethnic makeup and enraging some of its inhabitants who want the migrants out 8220I am attentive to you especially to the residents of south Tel Aviv8221 Netanyahu said on Facebook adding that he planned to meet with local representatives on Tuesday 8220In the meantime I am suspending the agreement8217s implementation and after I meet with the representatives I will bring it forward for further review8221 Netanyahu said FILE PHOTO Pepole take part in a protest against the Israeli governments plan to deport African migrants in Tel Aviv Israel March 24 2018 REUTERSCorinna KernFile Photo Implementing the signed agreement was expected to take five years and Netanyahu8217s backtrack was largely seen in Israel as an attempt to appease his voter base and keep its support at a time of political uncertainty The fourterm prime minister faces one of the greatest challenges to his career yet he is under police investigation in three different corruption cases Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing Naftali Bennett leader of the Israeli farright party Jewish Home a key member of Netanyahu8217s coalition government and a competitor for Israel8217s rightwing votes said on Twitter the agreement would encourage more people to enter the country illegally and called on Netanyahu to overturn it His calls were soon echoed by members of Netanyahu8217s own Likud party PRESSURE The UNHCR in a statement confirmed an agreement was signed with Israel but did not name the countries that would accept the migrants It said it would 8220facilitate the departure to third countries to be determined of some 16000 Eritreans and Sudanese under various programs including sponsorship resettlement family reunion and labor migration schemes while others will be receiving a suitable legal status in Israel8221 Netanyahu named Germany Italy and Canada as examples of countries that would accept the migrants though German and Italian officials said they had no knowledge of any such agreement Canada has an arrangement with Israeli authorities to suspend the deportation of individuals who have private sponsorship applications with Canada until they are processed said Hursh Jaswal spokesman for Canada8217s immigration minister There were 1845 applications being processed at the end of last year Jaswal said FILE PHOTO African migrants wait in line for the opening of the Population and Immigration Authority office in Bnei Brak Israel February 4 2018 Picture taken February 4 2018 REUTERSNir EliasFile Photo A previous plan already underway for a mass deportation of some 20000 migrants to Rwanda had led to legal challenges in Israel drew criticism abroad and triggered an emotional public debate among Israelis In February Israeli authorities started handing out notices to male African migrants giving them two months to leave for a third country in Africa or risk being put in jail indefinitely At immigration hearings migrants were told they could choose to go to Rwanda or Uganda Both countries have denied having any deal in place with Israel The UN8217s refugee agency had urged Israel to reconsider its deportation plan saying migrants who have relocated to subSaharan Africa in the past few years were unsafe and ended up on the perilous migrant trail to Europe some suffering abuse torture and even dying on the way Rights groups had challenged the deportation in Israel8217s High Court which on March 15 issued a temporary order that froze its implementation Netanyahu said on Facebook that Rwanda had in the past few weeks folded to immense pressure and backed out of the deal it had made with Israel to accept expelled migrants prompting him to seek the new arrangement with the UNHCR Since 2005 a total of 64000 Africans had entered Israel illegally over its border with Egypt although thousands have since left A fence Israel has built over the past few years along the frontier has largely stemmed the flow Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem Philip Pullella in Rome and Joseph Nasr in Berlin Editing by Hugh Lawson and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles RIYADH Reuters King Salman reiterated Saudi Arabia8217s support for a Palestinian state after his son and heir apparent said Israelis were entitled to live peacefully on their own land a rare statement by an Arab leader Saudi Arabias King Salman attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin not in the picture in the Kremlin in Moscow Russia October 5 2017 REUTERSYuri KadobnovPool The king also emphasized the need to advance the peace process in a phone call with US President Donald Trump on Monday night made after Israeli security forces killed 16 Palestinians last week during a demonstration along the IsraelGaza border King Salman reaffirmed 8220the kingdom8217s steadfast position toward the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital8221 state news agency SPA said on Tuesday The report did not refer to the comments by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in an interview published on Monday by US magazine The Atlantic which are the latest public sign that ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel may be growing closer Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nationstate in at least part of their ancestral homeland Prince Mohammed was quoted as saying 8220I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations8221 Saudi Arabia birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest shrines does not recognize Israel It has maintained for years that normalizing relations hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war territory Palestinians seek for a future state Riyadh says Israel has right to its own land Increased tension between Riyadh and Tehran has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they see as a common Iranian threat Reporting By Stephen Kalin editing by David Stamp Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles RIYADH Reuters Saudi Arabia8217s crown prince said in a published interview that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land another public sign of an apparent thawing in ties between the two countries Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation state in at least part of their ancestral homeland Mohammed bin Salman was quoted by US magazine The Atlantic as saying 8220I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations8221 Saudi Arabia birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines does not officially recognize Israel It has maintained for years that normalizing relations hinges on an Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war territory Palestinians seek for a future state 8220We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people This is what we have We don8217t have any objection against any other people8221 said Prince Mohammed who is touring the United States to drum up investments and support for his efforts to contain Iranian influence Increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they regard as a common Iranian threat 8220There are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries8221 Prince Mohammed added The German foreign ministry welcomed his comments and ministry officials underscored the Saudi role in pushing for an Arab peace initiative as early as 2002 8220The prince8217s comments are very close to the position of Germany and the EU We need a twostate solution and serious negotiations to achieve that8221 said one ministry official 8220Israelis and Palestinians have a right to peaceful lives in their own country8221 IsraeliPalestinian peace talks envisaging a Palestinian state alongside Israel have been frozen since 2014 FILE PHOTO Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud is seen during a meeting with UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres at the United Nations headquarters in the Manhattan borough of New York City New York US March 27 2018 REUTERSAmir LevyFile Photo Saudi Arabia opened its air space for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel last month which an Israeli official hailed as historic following two years of efforts In November an Israeli cabinet member disclosed covert contacts with Saudi Arabia a rare acknowledgment of longrumoured secret dealings which Riyadh still denies Saudi Arabia condemned US President Donald Trump8217s move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last year But Arab officials told Reuters at the time that Riyadh appears to be on board with a broader US strategy for an IsraeliPalestinian peace plan still in its early phases of development Reporting by Stephen Kalin in Riyadh and Sabine Siebold in Berlin Editing by Mark Heinrich Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ANKARAISTANBUL Reuters Three foreign powers who have shaped Syria8217s civil war Iran Russia and Turkey will discuss ways to wind down the fighting on Wednesday despite their involvement in rival military campaigns on the ground Syrian and Russian soldiers are seen at a checkpoint near Wafideen camp in Damascus Syria March 2 2018 REUTERSOmar Sanadiki The leaders of the three countries will meet in Ankara for talks on a new constitution for Syria and increasing security in 8220deescalation8221 zones across the country Turkish officials say The Syria summit brings together two powers which have been President Bashar alAssad8217s most forceful supporters Iran and Russia with one of his strongest opponents Turkey Cooperation between the rival camps raised hopes of stabilizing Syria after seven years of conflict in which 500000 people have been killed and half the population displaced But the violence has raged on highlighting strategic rifts between the three countries who in the absence of decisive Western intervention hold Syria8217s fate largely in their hands Related Coverage US and Israel interfere in Syria says Iran president Syria8217s army and Iranbacked militias with Russian air power have crushed insurgents near Damascus in eastern Ghouta one of the four mooted 8220deescalation zones8221 Turkey which sharply criticized the Ghouta offensive waged its own military operation to drive Kurdish YPG fighters from the northwestern Syrian region of Afrin It has pledged to take the town of Tel Rifaat and push further east angering Iran 8220Whatever the intentions are Turkey8217s moves in Syria whether in Afrin Tel Rifaat or any other part of Syria should be halted as soon as possible8221 a senior Iranian official said Iran has been Assad8217s most supportive ally throughout the conflict Iranbacked militias first helped his army stem rebel advances and following Russia8217s entry into the war in 2015 turn the tide decisively in Assad8217s favor A Turkish official said Ankara will ask Moscow to press Assad to grant more humanitarian access in Ghouta and to rein in air strikes on rebelheld areas 8220We expect Russia to control the regime more8221 the official told reporters this week RIFTS OVER ASSAD Ankara8217s relations with Moscow collapsed in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian warplane but have recovered since then to the concern of Turkey8217s Western allies Turkey was one of the few NATO partners not to expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack on a former Russian agent which Britain blamed on Moscow an allegation which Turkey said was not proven Improved political ties have been reflected in Turkey8217s agreement to buy a Russian missile defence system and plans for Russia8217s ROSATOM to build Turkey8217s first nuclear power plant Turkey has also expanded relations with Iran exchanging visits by military chiefs of staff although its deepening ties with Tehran and Moscow have not translated into broader agreement on Syria8217s future Iran remains determined that Assad stay in power while Russia is less committed to keeping him in office a regional diplomat said Turkey says Assad has lost legitimacy although it no longer demands his immediate departure At a meeting in Russia two months ago boycotted by the leadership of Syria8217s opposition delegates agreed to set up a committee to rewrite Syria8217s constitution and called for democratic elections Turkey says Wednesday8217s meeting will discuss setting up the constitutional committee humanitarian issues and developments in Syria8217s northern Idlib region which is under the control of rival rebel factions and jihadi groups and where Turkey has set up seven military observation posts 8220There are issues where all three countries have different policies in Syria8221 another Turkish official said 8220In this regard an aim is to find middle ground and create policies to improve the current situation8221 Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara Writing by Dominic Evans Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>LONDON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - GKN, the British engineering company trying to fend off a hostile bid from Melrose Industries, increased its sales forecast for its electric driveline unit on Sunday, saying it had won significant contracts from major global automakers.</p> <p>The company said its electric driveline sales were forecast to rise from 33 million pounds ($46 million) in 2017 to 275 million pounds in 2020 and 500 million pounds in 2002. It had previously expected sales to rise to 200 million pounds in 2020.</p> <p>$1 = 0.7217 pounds Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Susan Fenton</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he wanted to &#8220;get out&#8221; of Syria and promised decisions soon, clashing with top advisors who spoke almost simultaneously about the hard work needed to defeat Islamic State.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint news conference with Latvia's President Raimonds Vejonis, Estonia's President Kersti Kaljulaid and Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria <p>The remarks demonstrated how Trump appears increasingly willing to publicly push back against his top military advisors and those tied to the fight against the militant group, who see a long-term U.S. role in both Iraq and Syria.</p> <p>&#8220;Our primary mission in terms of that was getting rid of ISIS. We&#8217;ve almost completed that task and we&#8217;ll be making a decision very quickly in coordination with others, as to what we&#8217;ll do,&#8221; Trump told a news conference, using an acronym for Islamic State.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to get out. I want to bring our troops home.&#8221;</p> <p>The United States has about 2,000 forces in Syria who are battling the group. U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East as the head of Central Command, estimated that more than 90 percent of the group&#8217;s territory had been taken back from the militants by U.S.-backed forces.</p> <p>But Votel, speaking on Tuesday at an event near the U.S. State Department, said that although the threat from Islamic State had diminished, &#8220;it is not gone.&#8221;</p> <p>Brett McGurk, the special U.S. envoy for the global coalition against Islamic State, speaking at the same event as Votel, suggested the U.S. fight against Islamic State was not near complete.</p> <p>&#8220;We are in Syria to fight ISIS. That is our mission and our mission isn&#8217;t over and we are going to complete that mission,&#8221; McGurk said.</p> <p>McGurk acknowledged a review was underway to ensure U.S. taxpayer dollars were well spent, when asked about media reports that Trump had ordered the State Department to freeze more than $200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria.</p> <p>Votel said he saw a U.S. military role in stabilization efforts in Syria.</p> <p>&#8220;The hard part, I think, is in front of us, and that is stabilizing these areas, consolidating our gains, getting people back into their homes,&#8221; Votel said.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a military role in this. Certainly in the stabilization phase.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Lesley Wroughton, and Lisa Lambert; Editing by James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would use U.S. military forces to protect the border with Mexico until a long-promised wall is completed and &#8220;proper security&#8221; is in place.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the Easter service at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Trump, who earlier threatened to halt U.S. foreign aid to Honduras and other countries unless they stopped a &#8220;caravan&#8221; of Central American migrants headed to the United States, called use of the military at the southern border &#8220;a big step.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has railed against more than 1,200 Central American migrants on a 2,000-mile (3,200-km) journey from the Mexico-Guatemalan border, and reiterated threats to derail the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if they are not stopped.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-immigration-caravan/mexico-throws-bureaucracy-at-migrant-caravan-dispersal-begins-idUSKCN1HA2D0" type="external">Mexico throws bureaucracy at migrant caravan, dispersal begins</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-immigration-military/trump-to-meet-with-mattis-to-discuss-military-protecting-u-s-border-with-mexico-idUSKCN1HA2DE" type="external">Trump to meet with Mattis to discuss military protecting U.S. border with Mexico</a> <p>&#8220;We will be doing things with Mexico, and they have to do it, otherwise I&#8217;m not going to do with the NAFTA deal,&#8221; Trump told reporters at the White House. He said if the &#8220;caravan&#8221; reaches the U.S. border &#8220;our laws are so weak and so pathetic ... it&#8217;s like we have no border.&#8221;</p> <p>Mexican officials stepped up efforts on Tuesday to process the dwindling group and determine whether they had the right to stay in Mexico or be returned to their countries of origin. Mexico has said such &#8220;caravans&#8221; of mostly Central Americans, including many escaping violence in Honduras, have occurred since 2010.</p> <p>&#8220;Until we can have a wall and proper security we&#8217;re going to be guarding our border with the military,&#8221; Trump said. He said he would be meeting soon with U.S. Defense Secretary Mattis and others to discuss the idea.</p> <p>In a post on Twitter earlier on Tuesday, Trump said the caravan &#8220;heading to our &#8216;Weak Laws&#8217; Border, had better be stopped before it gets there. Cash cow NAFTA is in play, as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen. Congress MUST ACT NOW!&#8221;</p> <p>Some members of Congress said they were uncomfortable with the idea of using the military at the border. Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said Trump should have to ask for approval from Congress.</p> <p>&#8220;I think we should put that new law to a vote in the Senate as soon as possible,&#8221; he said on Twitter. &#8220;I predict fewer than 20 votes.&#8221;</p> <p>Republican Representative Francis Rooney, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, said there was a risk of increased violence. &#8220;These people should be stopped at the border and vetted out, just the normal process, and we should have plenty of agents down there to do that,&#8221; Rooney told CNN.</p> <p>U.S. presidents have ordered National Guard forces to the border in the past. Under President George W. Bush, National Guard forces from all 54 U.S. states and territories were used between 2006 and 2008 for things like border-related intelligence analysis but did not have a direct law enforcement role, according to the Pentagon.</p> <p>On Monday, the Republican president railed against Democrats over immigration and again pressed U.S. lawmakers to pass legislation to build his long-promised border wall between the United States and Mexico.</p> <p>Despite months of efforts, no immigration deal has emerged in the Republican-led Congress, where lawmakers are not expected to pass much major legislation ahead of November&#8217;s midterm congressional elections.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Phil Stewart; writing by John Whitesides; editing by Bernadette Baum and Grant McCool</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MATIAS ROMERO, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican officials stepped up efforts on Tuesday to register a dwindling group of hundreds of largely Central American migrants who are moving through Mexico toward the United States, seeking to disperse the &#8220;caravan&#8221; that has drawn the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> <p>Trump, who has long sought to take a tough stance against illegal immigration, has railed against the caravan that has worked its way from the Guatemala-Mexico border in the past 10 days. At the weekend, and again on Tuesday, he reiterated threats to torpedo the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if the migrants are not stopped.</p> <p>In response, the Mexican government said on Monday the migrants in the caravan are undergoing an &#8220;administrative procedure&#8221; - a process that officials said would determine whether they had the right to stay in Mexico or would be returned to their countries of origin.</p> <p>The caravan was organized by U.S-based advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which seeks to draw attention to the rights of migrants and provide them with aid. The Mexican government says such caravans, which travel by road, rail and on foot, have been organized every year since 2010.</p> <p>Hundreds of men, women and children, many of them from Honduras, were stuck on Tuesday in the town of Matias Romero in the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca awaiting clarification of their legal status after officials began registering them.</p> <p>Confused and frustrated by paperwork, many migrants were uncertain what lay in store, and desperate for information.</p> <p>&#8220;What was the point of all this then if they don&#8217;t let us stay?&#8221; Elizabeth Alvalos, a migrant from El Salvador who was traveling with two children, said angrily. &#8220;There&#8217;s no food, my children haven&#8217;t eaten since yesterday.&#8221;</p> <p>Hundreds of people camped out overnight in a park near the town&#8217;s train station, with shoes and bags strewn about.</p> <p>The group convened at the southern border town of Tapachula on March 25th, reaching a peak of around 1,500 people. But by Tuesday the number was down to around 1,100, according to Pueblo Sin Fronteras spokeswoman Gina Garibo. Many had broken off from the group, eager to move on more quickly, she said.</p> <p>The government said on Monday evening that around 400 people in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries.</p> <p>Many of those in the caravan aimed to stay in Mexico because they had family ties there or planned to work, Garibo said.</p> <p>Martin Roja, a local director of Grupo Beta, the welfare arm of Mexico&#8217;s migration authorities, said his group was in Matias Romero registering migrants to provide them with documentation that could regularize their migration status within Mexico.</p> <p>Such measures could include processing asylum requests, and Roja said the officials in Matias Romero were not there to detain the migrants. However, other officials have said that those with no grounds to be in Mexico will have to leave.</p> NEXT, THE U.S. BORDER <p>Those migrants permitted be in Mexico are free to make their way to the U.S. border, where it is up to U.S. authorities to decide whether or not they can enter the country, the Mexican government says.</p> <p>Trump said on Tuesday he would use U.S. military forces to protect the nation&#8217;s border with Mexico until there is a border wall and &#8220;proper security&#8221; in place.</p> <p>Stopping illegal migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico was a key platform of Trump&#8217;s election campaign that has carried into his presidency.</p> <p>He has sought to link stopping the migrant flow, and his plans for a southern border wall, to the current renegotiation of NAFTA, the accord between Canada, the United States and Mexico that underpins much of Mexico&#8217;s foreign trade.</p> <p>However, the caravan of migrants also poses a political problem for Mexico&#8217;s unpopular government in a presidential election year.</p> <p>President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking re-election in the July 1 vote, but the ruling party candidate is running third, well behind the front-runner.</p> <p>The government does not want to be seen as kowtowing to threats by Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Mexico.</p> <p>In a country where millions of people have friends or relatives who have migrated legally or illegally to the United States, many Mexicans harbor sympathy for the Central Americans attempting to make the same journey northward.</p> <p>Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas, prompting many people to leave in search of a better life.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Diego Ore and Daina Solomon; Editing by Dave Graham and Frances Kerry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - As New York Federal Reserve chief, John Williams will bring intellectual heft to the central bank as a permanent voting member of the rate-setting committee, although he will need to prove himself both as regulator of and chief communicator with investment banks like Goldman Sachs ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GS.N" type="external">GS.N</a>) and JPMorgan ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=JPM.N" type="external">JPM.N</a>).</p> FILE PHOTO: San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams speaks to Reuters in San Francisco, California, U.S. September 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo <p>A top-notch economist who has done ground-breaking research on monetary policy as president of the San Francisco Fed, Williams will also have his work cut out in communicating with Wall Street as effectively as incumbent William Dudley has done.</p> <p>It was Dudley who in February 2017 spelled out a &#8220;compelling&#8221; case for a rise in interest rates ahead of a rate-setting meeting and dragged market pricing into line with the Fed&#8217;s path on interest rates.</p> <p>Williams will take over from Dudley when he retires in June.</p> <p>Williams, who has spent 24 years working in the Federal Reserve system, will be responsible for managing the Fed&#8217;s financial market operations including more than $4 trillion in bonds it bought during the financial crisis and which it is now systematically trimming, hoping not to spook markets.</p> <p>One focus of Williams&#8217; academic research has been showing how low interest rates are here to stay, a key issue for the Federal Reserve and other central banks as they seek to hike policy rates from the zero lower bound.</p> <p>His lack of links to Wall Street could prove to be an advantage. Under Dudley, formerly a managing director at Goldman and the bank&#8217;s chief economist, the New York Fed was criticized for its ties to investment banks it was charged with regulating.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a plus to be &#8220;without deep ties&#8221; to Wall Street, said University of Oregon professor Tim Duy, adding that Williams is smart enough to &#8220;know his weak points&#8221; and tap the bank&#8217;s own staff for any expertise he lacks.</p> WELLS FARGO AND LACK OF DIVERSITY <p>While Williams may not conform to some of the stereotypes of a Federal Reserve president and academic economist - he is a &#8220;Trekkie,&#8221; plays first-person-shooter computer games, and sometimes wears red sneakers - he is still a middle-aged white man.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GS.N" type="external">Goldman Sachs Group Inc</a> 249.58 GS.N New York Stock Exchange +2.23 (+0.90%) GS.N JPM.N WFC.N <p>The search committee at the New York Fed had included a search for minority candidates in its mandate. Just two of the 12 regional Fed presidents are non-white, and two are women, while there is just one female Fed governor.</p> <p>The post is not open to congressional review, although Williams has also faced criticism over San Francisco-based Wells Fargo ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WFC.N" type="external">WFC.N</a>), which opened millions of fraudulent customer accounts under his watch.</p> <p>While it is the Federal Reserve Board that makes calls on large bank supervision rather than individual regional Fed bank presidents, critics say the fact that he will now be regulating some of world&#8217;s most powerful financial institutions is a worry.</p> <p>&#8220;Mr. Williams&#8217; track record raises several questions, including about his fitness to supervise Wall Street banks given the San Francisco Fed&#8217;s inadequate supervision of Wells Fargo during its many consumer scandals,&#8221; Senator Elizabeth Warren said last week.</p> NOT A NEOPHYTE <p>Although Williams has spent most of his career in the Fed system, he has had other work, with short stints on the Council of Economic Advisers, a semester or two teaching at Stanford and four post-college years managing Berkeley&#8217;s best-known pizza joint, Blondie&#8217;s.</p> <p>Despite the lack of experience dealing with Wall Street, Williams won&#8217;t be starting from scratch, says John Taylor, a Stanford professor who wrote a paper with Williams on a problematic jump in financial market spreads in early 2008.</p> <p>&#8220;He was one of the first people to notice problems in the balance sheets of financial institutions, way back before the financial crisis really took over,&#8221; Taylor said in an interview.</p> <p>Reporting by Ann Saphir and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by David Chance and Andrea Ricci</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Takeover target GKN raises forecast for electric driveline sales Trump says seeking Syria pullout, clashing with advisors Trump says he will use military to protect U.S. border with Mexico Mexico throws bureaucracy at migrant caravan, dispersal begins New NY Fed chief will need to adapt fast to Wall St. role

https://reuters.com/article/gkn-ma-melrose-inds/takeover-target-gkn-raises-forecast-for-electric-driveline-sales-idUSL8N1PG0IV

2018-01-21

2least

LONDON Jan 21 Reuters GKN the British engineering company trying to fend off a hostile bid from Melrose Industries increased its sales forecast for its electric driveline unit on Sunday saying it had won significant contracts from major global automakers The company said its electric driveline sales were forecast to rise from 33 million pounds 46 million in 2017 to 275 million pounds in 2020 and 500 million pounds in 2002 It had previously expected sales to rise to 200 million pounds in 2020 1 07217 pounds Reporting by Paul Sandle Editing by Susan Fenton Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he wanted to 8220get out8221 of Syria and promised decisions soon clashing with top advisors who spoke almost simultaneously about the hard work needed to defeat Islamic State US President Donald Trump speaks during a joint news conference with Latvias President Raimonds Vejonis Estonias President Kersti Kaljulaid and Lithuanias President Dalia Grybauskaite at the White House in Washington US April 3 2018 REUTERSCarlos Barria The remarks demonstrated how Trump appears increasingly willing to publicly push back against his top military advisors and those tied to the fight against the militant group who see a longterm US role in both Iraq and Syria 8220Our primary mission in terms of that was getting rid of ISIS We8217ve almost completed that task and we8217ll be making a decision very quickly in coordination with others as to what we8217ll do8221 Trump told a news conference using an acronym for Islamic State 8220I want to get out I want to bring our troops home8221 The United States has about 2000 forces in Syria who are battling the group US Army General Joseph Votel who oversees US forces in the Middle East as the head of Central Command estimated that more than 90 percent of the group8217s territory had been taken back from the militants by USbacked forces But Votel speaking on Tuesday at an event near the US State Department said that although the threat from Islamic State had diminished 8220it is not gone8221 Brett McGurk the special US envoy for the global coalition against Islamic State speaking at the same event as Votel suggested the US fight against Islamic State was not near complete 8220We are in Syria to fight ISIS That is our mission and our mission isn8217t over and we are going to complete that mission8221 McGurk said McGurk acknowledged a review was underway to ensure US taxpayer dollars were well spent when asked about media reports that Trump had ordered the State Department to freeze more than 200 million in funds for recovery efforts in Syria Votel said he saw a US military role in stabilization efforts in Syria 8220The hard part I think is in front of us and that is stabilizing these areas consolidating our gains getting people back into their homes8221 Votel said 8220There is a military role in this Certainly in the stabilization phase8221 Reporting by Phil Stewart Idrees Ali Lesley Wroughton and Lisa Lambert Editing by James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would use US military forces to protect the border with Mexico until a longpromised wall is completed and 8220proper security8221 is in place US President Donald Trump arrives for the Easter service at BethesdabytheSea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach Florida US April 1 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas Trump who earlier threatened to halt US foreign aid to Honduras and other countries unless they stopped a 8220caravan8221 of Central American migrants headed to the United States called use of the military at the southern border 8220a big step8221 Trump has railed against more than 1200 Central American migrants on a 2000mile 3200km journey from the MexicoGuatemalan border and reiterated threats to derail the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA if they are not stopped Related Coverage Mexico throws bureaucracy at migrant caravan dispersal begins Trump to meet with Mattis to discuss military protecting US border with Mexico 8220We will be doing things with Mexico and they have to do it otherwise I8217m not going to do with the NAFTA deal8221 Trump told reporters at the White House He said if the 8220caravan8221 reaches the US border 8220our laws are so weak and so pathetic it8217s like we have no border8221 Mexican officials stepped up efforts on Tuesday to process the dwindling group and determine whether they had the right to stay in Mexico or be returned to their countries of origin Mexico has said such 8220caravans8221 of mostly Central Americans including many escaping violence in Honduras have occurred since 2010 8220Until we can have a wall and proper security we8217re going to be guarding our border with the military8221 Trump said He said he would be meeting soon with US Defense Secretary Mattis and others to discuss the idea In a post on Twitter earlier on Tuesday Trump said the caravan 8220heading to our 8216Weak Laws8217 Border had better be stopped before it gets there Cash cow NAFTA is in play as is foreign aid to Honduras and the countries that allow this to happen Congress MUST ACT NOW8221 Some members of Congress said they were uncomfortable with the idea of using the military at the border Democratic Senator Brian Schatz said Trump should have to ask for approval from Congress 8220I think we should put that new law to a vote in the Senate as soon as possible8221 he said on Twitter 8220I predict fewer than 20 votes8221 Republican Representative Francis Rooney a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the US House of Representatives said there was a risk of increased violence 8220These people should be stopped at the border and vetted out just the normal process and we should have plenty of agents down there to do that8221 Rooney told CNN US presidents have ordered National Guard forces to the border in the past Under President George W Bush National Guard forces from all 54 US states and territories were used between 2006 and 2008 for things like borderrelated intelligence analysis but did not have a direct law enforcement role according to the Pentagon On Monday the Republican president railed against Democrats over immigration and again pressed US lawmakers to pass legislation to build his longpromised border wall between the United States and Mexico Despite months of efforts no immigration deal has emerged in the Republicanled Congress where lawmakers are not expected to pass much major legislation ahead of November8217s midterm congressional elections Reporting by Steve Holland Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Phil Stewart writing by John Whitesides editing by Bernadette Baum and Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MATIAS ROMERO Mexico Reuters Mexican officials stepped up efforts on Tuesday to register a dwindling group of hundreds of largely Central American migrants who are moving through Mexico toward the United States seeking to disperse the 8220caravan8221 that has drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump Trump who has long sought to take a tough stance against illegal immigration has railed against the caravan that has worked its way from the GuatemalaMexico border in the past 10 days At the weekend and again on Tuesday he reiterated threats to torpedo the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA if the migrants are not stopped In response the Mexican government said on Monday the migrants in the caravan are undergoing an 8220administrative procedure8221 a process that officials said would determine whether they had the right to stay in Mexico or would be returned to their countries of origin The caravan was organized by USbased advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras which seeks to draw attention to the rights of migrants and provide them with aid The Mexican government says such caravans which travel by road rail and on foot have been organized every year since 2010 Hundreds of men women and children many of them from Honduras were stuck on Tuesday in the town of Matias Romero in the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca awaiting clarification of their legal status after officials began registering them Confused and frustrated by paperwork many migrants were uncertain what lay in store and desperate for information 8220What was the point of all this then if they don8217t let us stay8221 Elizabeth Alvalos a migrant from El Salvador who was traveling with two children said angrily 8220There8217s no food my children haven8217t eaten since yesterday8221 Hundreds of people camped out overnight in a park near the town8217s train station with shoes and bags strewn about The group convened at the southern border town of Tapachula on March 25th reaching a peak of around 1500 people But by Tuesday the number was down to around 1100 according to Pueblo Sin Fronteras spokeswoman Gina Garibo Many had broken off from the group eager to move on more quickly she said The government said on Monday evening that around 400 people in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries Many of those in the caravan aimed to stay in Mexico because they had family ties there or planned to work Garibo said Martin Roja a local director of Grupo Beta the welfare arm of Mexico8217s migration authorities said his group was in Matias Romero registering migrants to provide them with documentation that could regularize their migration status within Mexico Such measures could include processing asylum requests and Roja said the officials in Matias Romero were not there to detain the migrants However other officials have said that those with no grounds to be in Mexico will have to leave NEXT THE US BORDER Those migrants permitted be in Mexico are free to make their way to the US border where it is up to US authorities to decide whether or not they can enter the country the Mexican government says Trump said on Tuesday he would use US military forces to protect the nation8217s border with Mexico until there is a border wall and 8220proper security8221 in place Stopping illegal migrants crossing into the United States from Mexico was a key platform of Trump8217s election campaign that has carried into his presidency He has sought to link stopping the migrant flow and his plans for a southern border wall to the current renegotiation of NAFTA the accord between Canada the United States and Mexico that underpins much of Mexico8217s foreign trade However the caravan of migrants also poses a political problem for Mexico8217s unpopular government in a presidential election year President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking reelection in the July 1 vote but the ruling party candidate is running third well behind the frontrunner The government does not want to be seen as kowtowing to threats by Trump who is deeply unpopular in Mexico In a country where millions of people have friends or relatives who have migrated legally or illegally to the United States many Mexicans harbor sympathy for the Central Americans attempting to make the same journey northward Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas prompting many people to leave in search of a better life Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz Diego Ore and Daina Solomon Editing by Dave Graham and Frances Kerry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCONEW YORK Reuters As New York Federal Reserve chief John Williams will bring intellectual heft to the central bank as a permanent voting member of the ratesetting committee although he will need to prove himself both as regulator of and chief communicator with investment banks like Goldman Sachs GSN and JPMorgan JPMN FILE PHOTO San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams speaks to Reuters in San Francisco California US September 27 2016 REUTERSStephen LamFile Photo A topnotch economist who has done groundbreaking research on monetary policy as president of the San Francisco Fed Williams will also have his work cut out in communicating with Wall Street as effectively as incumbent William Dudley has done It was Dudley who in February 2017 spelled out a 8220compelling8221 case for a rise in interest rates ahead of a ratesetting meeting and dragged market pricing into line with the Fed8217s path on interest rates Williams will take over from Dudley when he retires in June Williams who has spent 24 years working in the Federal Reserve system will be responsible for managing the Fed8217s financial market operations including more than 4 trillion in bonds it bought during the financial crisis and which it is now systematically trimming hoping not to spook markets One focus of Williams8217 academic research has been showing how low interest rates are here to stay a key issue for the Federal Reserve and other central banks as they seek to hike policy rates from the zero lower bound His lack of links to Wall Street could prove to be an advantage Under Dudley formerly a managing director at Goldman and the bank8217s chief economist the New York Fed was criticized for its ties to investment banks it was charged with regulating It8217s a plus to be 8220without deep ties8221 to Wall Street said University of Oregon professor Tim Duy adding that Williams is smart enough to 8220know his weak points8221 and tap the bank8217s own staff for any expertise he lacks WELLS FARGO AND LACK OF DIVERSITY While Williams may not conform to some of the stereotypes of a Federal Reserve president and academic economist he is a 8220Trekkie8221 plays firstpersonshooter computer games and sometimes wears red sneakers he is still a middleaged white man Goldman Sachs Group Inc 24958 GSN New York Stock Exchange 223 090 GSN JPMN WFCN The search committee at the New York Fed had included a search for minority candidates in its mandate Just two of the 12 regional Fed presidents are nonwhite and two are women while there is just one female Fed governor The post is not open to congressional review although Williams has also faced criticism over San Franciscobased Wells Fargo WFCN which opened millions of fraudulent customer accounts under his watch While it is the Federal Reserve Board that makes calls on large bank supervision rather than individual regional Fed bank presidents critics say the fact that he will now be regulating some of world8217s most powerful financial institutions is a worry 8220Mr Williams8217 track record raises several questions including about his fitness to supervise Wall Street banks given the San Francisco Fed8217s inadequate supervision of Wells Fargo during its many consumer scandals8221 Senator Elizabeth Warren said last week NOT A NEOPHYTE Although Williams has spent most of his career in the Fed system he has had other work with short stints on the Council of Economic Advisers a semester or two teaching at Stanford and four postcollege years managing Berkeley8217s bestknown pizza joint Blondie8217s Despite the lack of experience dealing with Wall Street Williams won8217t be starting from scratch says John Taylor a Stanford professor who wrote a paper with Williams on a problematic jump in financial market spreads in early 2008 8220He was one of the first people to notice problems in the balance sheets of financial institutions way back before the financial crisis really took over8221 Taylor said in an interview Reporting by Ann Saphir and Jonathan Spicer Editing by David Chance and Andrea Ricci Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Rush Limbaugh: "Van Jones is Jeremiah Wright, is Bill Ayers. ... Van Jones is Obama." On his show, Limbaugh said: "Look it, folks. Van Jones is Jeremiah Wright, is Bill Ayers. It was not an accident that he's in the White House. Van Jones is Obama." He added: "Jeremiah Wright is Obama. There's no difference. The only difference is that some of them make reckless public statements. But in terms of what he believes, Obama's no different than Van Jones -- that's why he was in the White House in the first place as the green jobs czar, dealing with diversity and so forth. The guy hates Republicans, he's a Marxist, he's a communist. He's a 9-11 truther, he's a whacko, he's a nut. He's one of these far-left radicals, and Valerie Jarrett -- who is one of Obama's most trusted left-hand, right-hand people -- put him in there. The administration is full of people like this." [Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show, <a href="/video/2009/09/08/limbaugh-van-jones-is-jeremiah-wright-is-bill-a/154297" type="external">9/8/09</a>]</p> <p>Beck: "Have we heard that before?" On his Fox News show, Beck aired video of Jones' comments, asked, "Does it sound familiar at all? Have we heard that before?" then aired video of Wright. [Glenn Beck, 9/1/09]</p> <p>On a later show, Beck said: "How many mistakes with close personal friends -- how many mistakes and, 'Oh, I didn't know that about my adviser,' are you going to allow this president to make before you wake up and stand up? Where is Congress? In 20 years at Jeremiah Wright's church, Obama only ever heard the pastor talk about rain-colored, you know, rainbow-colored unicorns." [Glenn Beck, 9/3/09]</p> <p>O'Reilly: Jones "reminds me of Reverend Wright. ... He's an anti-American guy, we think." While interviewing Beck, O'Reilly said on his Fox News show that Van Jones "reminds me of Reverend Wright," adding, "He's an anti-American guy, we think, and they don't -- the Obama administration doesn't seem to have a problem with that." Beck replied that "[t]his is -- this is a pattern. This isn't about Barack Obama. This isn't about me, certainly, and it's not really even about Van Jones. Van Jones is just one of the most glaring people." [The O'Reilly Factor, <a href="/video/2009/08/26/oreilly-says-van-jones-reminds-me-of-rev-wright/153945" type="external">8/26/09</a>]</p> <p>Krauthammer: Obama "had a history, before he became a candidate, of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright." On Special Report, while discussing Jones, Krauthammer said: "What you also learn about the White House is when [adviser Valerie] Jarrett said, as we saw on tape, 'We've been watching him all these years.' Well, that means you have been watching him and you must know something about his history of quite radical politics and statements. And that apparently was undisturbing to Jarrett and to Obama people, and that tells you it's a reflection of the boss. The boss also had a history, before he became a candidate, of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers. Liberals scolded us last year -- how irrelevant all of that is, how it is a smear campaign against Obama. But if you live in that environment and you find nothing inherently wrong with that kind of radicalism, then a Van Jones will show up, you will watch him years and years, and you'll think this guy is perfectly mainstream." [Special Report, 9/7/09]</p> <p>Ronald Kessler: Jones' statements "are rather tame compared with Reverend Jeremiah Wright's statements for 20 years while Barack Obama was in his pews." On Fox News' America's Newsroom, Newsmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler said: "Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisers, recommended this person. There is no way that that would happen unless she and others in the White House knew of his radical reputation. So I think they got exactly what they wanted, and in fact his statements are rather tame compared with Reverend Jeremiah Wright's statements for 20 years while Barack Obama was in his pews. America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, created prisons to suppress blacks, Israel's a terrorist state. So, it's not shocking that they would hire someone like this." Host Gregg Jarrett replied, "What are you saying here? What does this tell you about President Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with?" [America's Newsroom, 9/7/09]</p> <p>Robert Pollock: "It's Reverend Wright all over again." On Fox News, Wall Street Journal editorial features editor Robert Pollock said, "Well, it's Reverend Wright all over again, except this time he's working in the White House." He added: "It makes you wonder when these people are going to stop popping up around Mr. Obama." [Journal Editorial Report, 9/5/09]</p> <p>Hannity can't "get over" his Rev. Wright obsession. Sean Hannity -- who claimed he "broke the story" about Wright during the 2008 campaign -- <a href="/research/2009/07/31/hannity-just-cant-get-over-his-rev-wright-obses/152741" type="external">has mentioned Wright on at least 45 different episodes</a> of his Fox News show since Obama's inauguration. Indeed, his repeated references to Wright -- most recently in discussions about Obama and race relations in America -- have prompted his own guests to comment, "You always want to bring up Reverend Wright," and "Sean, you need to get over it." Hannity has said Obama "is Reverend Wright" and that "he hid it well, but I think he's now implementing and proving me right."</p> <p>Beck: Wright ties evidence of Obama's "deep-seated hatred for white people." On Fox News, Beck said of Obama: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy -- over and over and over again -- who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture -- I don't know what it is. But you can't sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years and not hear some of that stuff and not have it wash over." [Fox &amp;amp; Friends, <a href="/video/2009/07/28/beck-obama-has-exposed-himself-as-a-guy-with-a/152551" type="external">7/28/09</a>]</p> <p>Limbaugh: Wright relationship an "indication of radicalism in Obama." In an interview on Hannity, Limbaugh said: "They wanted him elected because they wanted to reassert their power -- the media here -- in being able to sway public opinion to the result that they wanted. So it didn't -- they were going to cover up the Jeremiah Wright, all these things that give indication of radicalism in Obama -- cover that up, portray him as he wants to be portrayed, somebody who's not to be questioned, somebody who's not to be doubted, we're just supposed to accept and trust because most of these guys came alive and came of age in the civil rights battles of the '60s. It defines who they are." [Hannity, <a href="/research/2009/01/28/ignoring-documented-physical-abuse-at-abu-ghrai/147064" type="external">1/21/09</a>]</p> <p>Dick Morris: Obama may be a "sleeper agent" channeling Wright's views. On NBC's Today, Fox News contributor Dick Morris asserted, "And the determinant in the election will be whether we believe that Barack Obama is what he appears to be, or is he somebody who's sort of a sleeper agent who really doesn't believe in our system and is more in line with Wright's views?" [Today, <a href="/research/2008/06/24/face-the-state-distorted-cogcc-reform-to-state/143846" type="external">6/24/08</a>]</p> <p>McCain said Obama "does not share" Wright's views, reportedly would not "allow" such attacks. According to a Politico article, Sen. John McCain at one point during the 2008 presidential campaign refused to attack Obama for his relationship with Wright because he "fear[ed] a Wright attack would smack of desperation and racism." From the article:</p> <p>John McCain is at odds with many of his top advisers over launching a renewed attack on Barack Obama's ties to his long-time pastor and mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to campaign sources.</p> <p>Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and several top campaign officials see a sharp attack on Wright as the best -- and perhaps last -- chance to rattle Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill. ) and force voters to rethink their support of him. But McCain continues to overrule them, fearing a Wright attack would smack of desperation and racism, the officials said.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>The aides argue that the 20 years that Obama spent in the fiery Wright's pastoral care -- and his later assertion that he knew nothing of his former minister's more extreme statements -- provide an opening to challenge Obama's judgment and honesty in a relevant and politically resonant way.</p> <p>"He was a central figure in Obama's life, shaping Obama's thinking, and he made the extreme radical comments that are borderline anti-American," the campaign official said.</p> <p>But McCain will not allow it, according to campaign sources.</p> <p>"There's a slippery slope in politics on the racial divide, and Sen. McCain made it very clear early on that he did not want to get into that area," a top Republican official said. "I don't want to be known as a racist, and McCain doesn't want to be known as a racist candidate."</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>The McCain campaign's decision to cordon off the use of Wright from ads and debates has provoked simmering consternation among many leading Republicans and conservatives, who believe the pastor's fulminations might be the single most effective weapon McCain has left against Obama.</p> <p>"McCain felt it would be sensed as racially insensitive," the official said. "But more important is that McCain thinks that the bringing of racial religious preaching in black churches into the campaign would potentially have grave consequences for civil society in the United States."</p> <p>Asked about the issue during the firestorm over it last March, McCain told Sean Hannity on Fox News' "Hannity &amp;amp; Colmes": "I think that when people support you, it doesn't mean that you support everything you say. Obviously, those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with. And I don't believe that Sen. Obama would support any of those. ... I do know Sen. Obama. He does not share those views." [Politico, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14587.html" type="external">10/15/08</a>]</p> <p>New York Times: Republican ad connecting Obama and Wright is "race-baiting." In an editorial, The New York Times wrote that a North Carolina GOP ad "attack[ing] Senator Barack Obama as 'too extreme' for the state" is "[m]anipulative," "[s]hameful," and "[r]ace-baiting." The Times wrote: "The ad is built around the well-known video clip of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. -- Mr. Obama's former pastor -- declaring 'God damn America.' We have said before that we find Rev. Wright's oratory racist. And we have criticized Senator Obama for waiting too long to denounce it. His relationship with the Rev. Wright is undeniably a liability for his campaign. But that's not what this ad is about. The assertion that Mr. Obama is 'just too extreme for North Carolina' is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state." [New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/opinion/26sat4.html" type="external">4/26/08</a>]</p> <p>From the September 1 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:</p> <p>BECK: But this goes further than whether Van Jones is a capitalist or a communist. I want you to see if you recognize any patterns here. Listen to what Van Jones has said at this same conference back in March.</p> <p>JONES [video clip]: Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn't want, where it was all hot and windy. Well, guess what? Renewable energy. Guess what? Solar industry. Guess what? Wind industry. They now own and control 80 percent of the renewable energy resources.</p> <p>No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth. Give them the wealth. Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt.</p> <p>BECK: Let me go back up here. Can you believe wealth should be taken from one group and given to another based on race? And should anyone that believes that work with the president of the United States? "Give them the wealth. Give them the wealth." Is that what you voted for? Does it sound familiar at all? Have we heard that before?</p> <p>WRIGHT [video clip]: We believe God sanctioned the rape and robbery of an entire continent. We believe God ordained African slavery. We believe God makes Europeans superior to Africans and superior to everybody else, too.</p> <p>BECK: I don't believe that.</p> <p>From the September 3 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:</p> <p>BECK: See, this isn't about Van Jones, because now it's about Valerie Jarrett, too. She knows as well. Valerie, do you agree with these things? You have been following him.</p> <p>How many mistakes with close personal friends -- how many mistakes and, "Oh, I didn't know that about my adviser," are you going to allow this president to make before you wake up and stand up? Where is Congress?</p> <p>In 20 years at Jeremiah Wright's church, Obama only ever heard the pastor talk about rain-colored, you know, rainbow-colored unicorns.</p> <p>From the September 5 edition of Fox News' Journal Editorial Report:</p> <p>POLLOCK: Well, it's Reverend Wright all over again, except this time he's working in the White House. You remember all those green jobs President Obama talks about creating? Well, his green jobs czar is a guy called Van Jones; he's a radical leftist and race-baiter who has been caught on tape saying things like "white polluters steer poison into minority communities." He signed a petition calling on the New York state attorney general to investigate whether the Bush administration allowed 9-11 to happen as a pretext for war. It makes you wonder when these people are going to stop popping up around Mr. Obama.</p> <p>From the September 7 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier:</p> <p>KRAUTHAMMER: What you also learn about the White House is when Jarrett said, as we saw on tape, "We've been watching him all these years." Well, that means you have been watching him and you must know something about his history of quite radical politics and statements.</p> <p>And that apparently was undisturbing to Jarrett and to Obama people, and that tells you it's a reflection of the boss. The boss also had a history, before he became a candidate, of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers.</p> <p>Liberals scolded us last year -- how irrelevant all of that is, how it's a smear campaign against Obama. But if you live in that environment and you find nothing inherently wrong with that kind of radicalism, then a Van Jones will show up, you will watch him years and years, and you'll think this guy is perfectly mainstream.</p> <p>From the September 7 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom:</p> <p>KESSLER: On the vetting, the Secret Service checks people for criminal background, arrest warrants in order to get a White House pass. The FBI also checks to verify the person's background to see if he might have been, let's say, a member of a terrorist group. But none of these checks focuses on political statements such as these. Political statements are supposed to be vetted by the White House staff. And I'm sure they missed a few, but I would say that when you hire anybody from public life, you are aware of his general reputation, regardless of what kind of checks you do, what kind of vetting you do.</p> <p>Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisers, recommended this person. There is no way that that would happen unless she and others in the White House knew of his radical reputation. So I think they got exactly what they wanted, and in fact his statements are rather tame compared with Reverend Jeremiah Wright's statements for 20 years while Barack Obama was in his pews. America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, created prisons to suppress blacks, Israel's a terrorist state. So, it's not shocking that they would hire someone like this.</p> <p>JARRETT: What are you saying here? What does this tell you about President Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with?</p>

Rev. Wright redux: Media use Jones controversy to revive Wright smear

http://mediamatters.org/research/200909080032

2009-09-08

4left

Rush Limbaugh Van Jones is Jeremiah Wright is Bill Ayers Van Jones is Obama On his show Limbaugh said Look it folks Van Jones is Jeremiah Wright is Bill Ayers It was not an accident that hes in the White House Van Jones is Obama He added Jeremiah Wright is Obama Theres no difference The only difference is that some of them make reckless public statements But in terms of what he believes Obamas no different than Van Jones thats why he was in the White House in the first place as the green jobs czar dealing with diversity and so forth The guy hates Republicans hes a Marxist hes a communist Hes a 911 truther hes a whacko hes a nut Hes one of these farleft radicals and Valerie Jarrett who is one of Obamas most trusted lefthand righthand people put him in there The administration is full of people like this Premiere Radio Networks The Rush Limbaugh Show 9809 Beck Have we heard that before On his Fox News show Beck aired video of Jones comments asked Does it sound familiar at all Have we heard that before then aired video of Wright Glenn Beck 9109 On a later show Beck said How many mistakes with close personal friends how many mistakes and Oh I didnt know that about my adviser are you going to allow this president to make before you wake up and stand up Where is Congress In 20 years at Jeremiah Wrights church Obama only ever heard the pastor talk about raincolored you know rainbowcolored unicorns Glenn Beck 9309 OReilly Jones reminds me of Reverend Wright Hes an antiAmerican guy we think While interviewing Beck OReilly said on his Fox News show that Van Jones reminds me of Reverend Wright adding Hes an antiAmerican guy we think and they dont the Obama administration doesnt seem to have a problem with that Beck replied that this is this is a pattern This isnt about Barack Obama This isnt about me certainly and its not really even about Van Jones Van Jones is just one of the most glaring people The OReilly Factor 82609 Krauthammer Obama had a history before he became a candidate of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright On Special Report while discussing Jones Krauthammer said What you also learn about the White House is when adviser Valerie Jarrett said as we saw on tape Weve been watching him all these years Well that means you have been watching him and you must know something about his history of quite radical politics and statements And that apparently was undisturbing to Jarrett and to Obama people and that tells you its a reflection of the boss The boss also had a history before he became a candidate of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright William Ayers Liberals scolded us last year how irrelevant all of that is how it is a smear campaign against Obama But if you live in that environment and you find nothing inherently wrong with that kind of radicalism then a Van Jones will show up you will watch him years and years and youll think this guy is perfectly mainstream Special Report 9709 Ronald Kessler Jones statements are rather tame compared with Reverend Jeremiah Wrights statements for 20 years while Barack Obama was in his pews On Fox News Americas Newsroom Newsmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler said Valerie Jarrett one of Obamas closest advisers recommended this person There is no way that that would happen unless she and others in the White House knew of his radical reputation So I think they got exactly what they wanted and in fact his statements are rather tame compared with Reverend Jeremiah Wrights statements for 20 years while Barack Obama was in his pews America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks created prisons to suppress blacks Israels a terrorist state So its not shocking that they would hire someone like this Host Gregg Jarrett replied What are you saying here What does this tell you about President Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with Americas Newsroom 9709 Robert Pollock Its Reverend Wright all over again On Fox News Wall Street Journal editorial features editor Robert Pollock said Well its Reverend Wright all over again except this time hes working in the White House He added It makes you wonder when these people are going to stop popping up around Mr Obama Journal Editorial Report 9509 Hannity cant get over his Rev Wright obsession Sean Hannity who claimed he broke the story about Wright during the 2008 campaign has mentioned Wright on at least 45 different episodes of his Fox News show since Obamas inauguration Indeed his repeated references to Wright most recently in discussions about Obama and race relations in America have prompted his own guests to comment You always want to bring up Reverend Wright and Sean you need to get over it Hannity has said Obama is Reverend Wright and that he hid it well but I think hes now implementing and proving me right Beck Wright ties evidence of Obamas deepseated hatred for white people On Fox News Beck said of Obama This president I think has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deepseated hatred for white people or the white culture I dont know what it is But you cant sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years and not hear some of that stuff and not have it wash over Fox ampamp Friends 72809 Limbaugh Wright relationship an indication of radicalism in Obama In an interview on Hannity Limbaugh said They wanted him elected because they wanted to reassert their power the media here in being able to sway public opinion to the result that they wanted So it didnt they were going to cover up the Jeremiah Wright all these things that give indication of radicalism in Obama cover that up portray him as he wants to be portrayed somebody whos not to be questioned somebody whos not to be doubted were just supposed to accept and trust because most of these guys came alive and came of age in the civil rights battles of the 60s It defines who they are Hannity 12109 Dick Morris Obama may be a sleeper agent channeling Wrights views On NBCs Today Fox News contributor Dick Morris asserted And the determinant in the election will be whether we believe that Barack Obama is what he appears to be or is he somebody whos sort of a sleeper agent who really doesnt believe in our system and is more in line with Wrights views Today 62408 McCain said Obama does not share Wrights views reportedly would not allow such attacks According to a Politico article Sen John McCain at one point during the 2008 presidential campaign refused to attack Obama for his relationship with Wright because he feared a Wright attack would smack of desperation and racism From the article John McCain is at odds with many of his top advisers over launching a renewed attack on Barack Obamas ties to his longtime pastor and mentor the Rev Jeremiah Wright according to campaign sources Alaska Gov Sarah Palin and several top campaign officials see a sharp attack on Wright as the best and perhaps last chance to rattle Sen Barack Obama DIll and force voters to rethink their support of him But McCain continues to overrule them fearing a Wright attack would smack of desperation and racism the officials said The aides argue that the 20 years that Obama spent in the fiery Wrights pastoral care and his later assertion that he knew nothing of his former ministers more extreme statements provide an opening to challenge Obamas judgment and honesty in a relevant and politically resonant way He was a central figure in Obamas life shaping Obamas thinking and he made the extreme radical comments that are borderline antiAmerican the campaign official said But McCain will not allow it according to campaign sources Theres a slippery slope in politics on the racial divide and Sen McCain made it very clear early on that he did not want to get into that area a top Republican official said I dont want to be known as a racist and McCain doesnt want to be known as a racist candidate The McCain campaigns decision to cordon off the use of Wright from ads and debates has provoked simmering consternation among many leading Republicans and conservatives who believe the pastors fulminations might be the single most effective weapon McCain has left against Obama McCain felt it would be sensed as racially insensitive the official said But more important is that McCain thinks that the bringing of racial religious preaching in black churches into the campaign would potentially have grave consequences for civil society in the United States Asked about the issue during the firestorm over it last March McCain told Sean Hannity on Fox News Hannity ampamp Colmes I think that when people support you it doesnt mean that you support everything you say Obviously those words and those statements are statements that none of us would associate ourselves with And I dont believe that Sen Obama would support any of those I do know Sen Obama He does not share those views Politico 101508 New York Times Republican ad connecting Obama and Wright is racebaiting In an editorial The New York Times wrote that a North Carolina GOP ad attacking Senator Barack Obama as too extreme for the state is manipulative shameful and racebaiting The Times wrote The ad is built around the wellknown video clip of the Rev Jeremiah Wright Jr Mr Obamas former pastor declaring God damn America We have said before that we find Rev Wrights oratory racist And we have criticized Senator Obama for waiting too long to denounce it His relationship with the Rev Wright is undeniably a liability for his campaign But thats not what this ad is about The assertion that Mr Obama is just too extreme for North Carolina is a clear bid to stir bigotry in a Southern state New York Times 42608 From the September 1 edition of Fox News Glenn Beck BECK But this goes further than whether Van Jones is a capitalist or a communist I want you to see if you recognize any patterns here Listen to what Van Jones has said at this same conference back in March JONES video clip Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didnt want where it was all hot and windy Well guess what Renewable energy Guess what Solar industry Guess what Wind industry They now own and control 80 percent of the renewable energy resources No more broken treaties No more broken treaties Give them the wealth Give them the wealth Give them the dignity Give them the respect that they deserve No justice on stolen land We owe them a debt BECK Let me go back up here Can you believe wealth should be taken from one group and given to another based on race And should anyone that believes that work with the president of the United States Give them the wealth Give them the wealth Is that what you voted for Does it sound familiar at all Have we heard that before WRIGHT video clip We believe God sanctioned the rape and robbery of an entire continent We believe God ordained African slavery We believe God makes Europeans superior to Africans and superior to everybody else too BECK I dont believe that From the September 3 edition of Fox News Glenn Beck BECK See this isnt about Van Jones because now its about Valerie Jarrett too She knows as well Valerie do you agree with these things You have been following him How many mistakes with close personal friends how many mistakes and Oh I didnt know that about my adviser are you going to allow this president to make before you wake up and stand up Where is Congress In 20 years at Jeremiah Wrights church Obama only ever heard the pastor talk about raincolored you know rainbowcolored unicorns From the September 5 edition of Fox News Journal Editorial Report POLLOCK Well its Reverend Wright all over again except this time hes working in the White House You remember all those green jobs President Obama talks about creating Well his green jobs czar is a guy called Van Jones hes a radical leftist and racebaiter who has been caught on tape saying things like white polluters steer poison into minority communities He signed a petition calling on the New York state attorney general to investigate whether the Bush administration allowed 911 to happen as a pretext for war It makes you wonder when these people are going to stop popping up around Mr Obama From the September 7 edition of Fox News Special Report with Bret Baier KRAUTHAMMER What you also learn about the White House is when Jarrett said as we saw on tape Weve been watching him all these years Well that means you have been watching him and you must know something about his history of quite radical politics and statements And that apparently was undisturbing to Jarrett and to Obama people and that tells you its a reflection of the boss The boss also had a history before he became a candidate of being around and friends with the likes of Jeremiah Wright William Ayers Liberals scolded us last year how irrelevant all of that is how its a smear campaign against Obama But if you live in that environment and you find nothing inherently wrong with that kind of radicalism then a Van Jones will show up you will watch him years and years and youll think this guy is perfectly mainstream From the September 7 edition of Fox News Americas Newsroom KESSLER On the vetting the Secret Service checks people for criminal background arrest warrants in order to get a White House pass The FBI also checks to verify the persons background to see if he might have been lets say a member of a terrorist group But none of these checks focuses on political statements such as these Political statements are supposed to be vetted by the White House staff And Im sure they missed a few but I would say that when you hire anybody from public life you are aware of his general reputation regardless of what kind of checks you do what kind of vetting you do Valerie Jarrett one of Obamas closest advisers recommended this person There is no way that that would happen unless she and others in the White House knew of his radical reputation So I think they got exactly what they wanted and in fact his statements are rather tame compared with Reverend Jeremiah Wrights statements for 20 years while Barack Obama was in his pews America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks created prisons to suppress blacks Israels a terrorist state So its not shocking that they would hire someone like this JARRETT What are you saying here What does this tell you about President Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Probiotec Ltd:</p> <p>* NET PROFIT BEFORE TAX FOR HALF YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2017 IS NOW EXPECTED TO BE IN RANGE OF $1.5 MILLION TO $1.6 MILLION</p> <p>* &#8220;REASONABLY EXPECT TO DELIVER STRONG GROWTH IN BOTH REVENUE AND EARNINGS IN 2018 FINANCIAL YEAR&#8221; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (bangalore.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify before U.S. Congress, a source briefed on the matter said on Tuesday, as he bows to pressure from lawmakers insisting he explain how 50 million users&#8217; data ended up in the hands of a political consultancy.</p> <p>Lawmakers in the United States and Europe are demanding to know more about the company&#8217;s privacy practices after a whistleblower said consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to target U.S. and British voters in close-run elections.</p> <p>Facebook said on Tuesday the company had received invitations to testify before Congress and that they were talking to legislators.</p> <p>House Energy and Commerce Committee spokeswoman Elena Hernandez said &#8220;The committee is continuing to work with Facebook to determine a day and time for Mr. Zuckerberg to testify&#8221;.</p> <p>On the same day, Zuckerberg turned down British lawmakers&#8217; invitations to explain to a British parliamentary committee what went wrong.</p> <p>The company said it would instead send one of his deputies, suggesting that Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer or Chief Product Officer Chris Cox had the expertise to answer questions on the complex subject.</p> <p>The head of the committee called Zuckerberg&#8217;s decision &#8220;astonishing&#8221; and urged him to think again.</p> <p>Facebook shares closed down 4.9 percent on Tuesday and have fallen almost 18 percent since March 16, when Facebook first acknowledged that user data had been improperly channeled to Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 presidential campaign.</p> FILE PHOTO: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, appears on stage during a town hall at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 27, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo <p>The privacy breach has raised investor concerns that any failure by big tech companies to protect privacy could deter advertisers and lead to tougher regulation.</p> <p>Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who once worked at Cambridge Analytica, said on Monday that Canadian company AggregateIQ had developed the software that used the algorithms from the Facebook data to target Republican voters in the 2016 U.S. election.</p> <p>AggregateIQ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wylie&#8217;s remarks. Cambridge Analytica said it had not shared any of the Facebook profile data with AggregateIQ.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>Cambridge Analytica said last Monday it did not use Facebook data in Trump&#8217;s campaign, and that it had deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a third-party app in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules.</p> <p>In full-page advertisements in British and U.S. newspapers this week Zuckerberg said the app built by a university researcher &#8220;leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014&#8221;.</p> <p>He apologized last week for the mistakes the company had made and promised to restrict developers&#8217; access to user information as part of a plan to protect privacy.</p> <p>The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee said on Monday it had invited Zuckerberg, as well as the CEOs of Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc to testify at an April 10 hearing on data privacy.</p> <p>The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and U.S. Senate Commerce Committee had already formally asked Zuckerberg to appear at a congressional hearing.</p> <p>The U.S. Federal Trade Commission took the unusual step of announcing on Monday that it had opened an investigation into the company - which it generally only does in cases of great public interest - citing media reports that raise what it called &#8220;substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook.&#8221;</p> <p>Writing by Susan Thomas; Editing by James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>DETROIT (Reuters) - A former Michigan State University dean, who supervised the doctor at the center of the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, was himself charged on Tuesday with criminal sexual conduct involving medical school students.</p> <p>A student at the College of Osteopathic Medicine accused William Strampel, 70, of forcible sexual contact, prosecutors said in papers filed in state district court in East Lansing. Prosecutors said other students also accused Strampel of sexual misconduct.</p> <p>The charges emerged during a probe into how Michigan State handled complaints about the gymnastics doctor, special prosecutor William Forsyth told reporters in Lansing. The focus widened after investigators received a tip.</p> <p>The new charges, which Strampel&#8217;s attorney denied, make the university a bigger target for the &#8220;#MeToo&#8221; movement that has engulfed powerful men across society in harassment and abuse allegations.</p> <p>&#8220;We did what we felt we needed to do and it led us to where we are today,&#8221; Forsyth said.</p> <p>Strampel was dean from 2002 until the end of 2017. He supervised ex-USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar, who has been sentenced to prison for sexually abusing female gymnasts.</p> <p>The four criminal counts against Nassar&#8217;s former boss include fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. The accusations also include failing to properly oversee Nassar, whose scandal sparked probes into why the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Gymnastics and the university failed for years to investigate complaints.</p> <p>After a short hearing in state court in East Lansing, Strampel&#8217;s attorney John Dakmak told reporters: &#8220;My client denies that he ever engaged in any inappropriate touching of anyone. He denies that there was any quid pro quo for sexual favors.&#8221;Regarding the charges relating to Strampel&#8217;s supervision of Nassar, Dakmak said his client immediately involved other school officials in 2014 when the complaints surfaced and fired Nassar in 2016 when the sexual assault allegations were made.</p> <p>A Michigan State representative did not respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Four female medical students told investigators Strampel made sexually suggestive comments during meetings, including what some perceived as academic privileges in exchange for sex. Two accused him of grabbing their buttocks without consent.</p> William Strampel, a former Dean at Michigan State University and former supervisor of convicted USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, is arraigned by video for 'Criminal Sexual Conduct' involving medical students, in 54B District Court in East Lansing, Michigan, U.S., March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook <p>One student described meeting with Strampel in June 2017 to appeal a test score and feeling intimidated when he mentioned her age, saying: &#8220;26-year-old women can &#8216;put out&#8217; for 20 minutes with an old man ... and in return the women could get the benefit of a free vacation,&#8221; according to court documents.</p> <p>Another witness said Strampel suggested she become a centerfold model and related to her how another student had become a stripper to pay for school, court documents said.</p> <p>When Strampel agreed to let the student retake a test, he said she must agree to do anything for him, which she interpreted as a request for sex, court documents said.</p> <p>Strampel is also accused of using his position as dean to receive pornographic images of women &#8220;through threats and manipulation,&#8221; court documents said. They said investigators seized his computer in February and found about 50 photos of nude women, sex toys and pornography, including selfies of female students, pornographic videos and a video of Nassar performing &#8220;treatment&#8221; on a young female patient.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>Strampel, handcuffed hands clasped in his lap and his legs crossed, appeared at his arraignment via video feed. A split screen showed him expressing little emotion as he interacted with the judge, saying at one point that he had spoken with his attorney.</p> <p>Judge Richard Ball, citing a lack of criminal history, set a $25,000 personal recognizance bond, meaning Strampel need not post a cash bond. A preliminary hearing is set for May 3.</p> <p>If convicted, he faces five years and a possible fine of $10,000 for a misconduct in office charge, two years and a possible fine of $500 for the fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct charge and one year and a possible fine of $1,000 for each of the two willful neglect of duty charges, according to court documents.</p> <p>An attorney for more than 150 of Nassar&#8217;s victims said his clients were encouraged by the charges against Strampel.</p> <p>The charges demonstrate that officials are &#8220;serious about investigating the systemic misconduct at MSU that led to the largest child sex abuse scandal in history and holding the responsible parties accountable,&#8221; John Manly said in a statement.</p> <p>Michigan State has been criticized for its handling of Nassar, 54, who was a faculty member and physician at an on-campus clinic. Athletes had complained about Nassar since the 1990s, but the school did not open an investigation until 2014.</p> <p>Nassar was fired in September 2016. He received sentences this year that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life. In February, the school moved to fire Strampel, saying he failed to enforce guidelines created for Nassar after complaints of sexual misconduct.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Rebecca Cook in East Lansing, Michigan, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Gina Cherelus in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was part of a secretive delegation that arrived in Beijing by train on Monday and left on Tuesday, according to a source familiar with the matter and foreign media reports.</p> <p>The visit, which would be Kim&#8217;s first known journey abroad since he assumed power in 2011, was not announced by North Korea or China and has remained shrouded in mystery.</p> <p>South Korea&#8217;s left-leaning Hankyoreh newspaper reported that Kim had traveled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon before leaving for a &#8220;third location&#8221;, which could be in China, on Tuesday. It did not cite specific sources.</p> <p>The conservative South Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing an unnamed senior intelligence official, said the delegation had included Kim, and that he had left to return to North Korea.</p> <p>Kim is due to hold separate summits with China&#8217;s rivals, South Korea and the United States, and analysts say a visit to Beijing could be preparation for those.</p> <p>Beijing has traditionally been the closest ally of secretive and isolated North Korea, but ties have been frayed by North Korea&#8217;s pursuit of nuclear weapons and China&#8217;s backing of tough U.N. sanctions in response.</p> <p>A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman deflected a question on whether Kim, his sister or some other senior North Korean was visiting.</p> <p>&#8220;At present I have no understanding of the situation you mention. If there is news we will release it,&#8221; foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular daily briefing.</p> <p>Diplomatic sources in Beijing said a senior North Korean official was in town, but they did not know exactly who.</p> <p>U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it &#8220;kinda looked like&#8221; Kim went to Beijing, but told reporters at the Pentagon, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221;</p> <p>A senior U.S. official who follows North Korea closely said the available evidence suggested Kim had gone to meet Xi, but stressed that has not been confirmed.</p> <p>U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said China had not confirmed who had visited, but added, &#8220;there certainly was a lot of fanfare ... a lot of protocol.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We look forward to hearing about it and we&#8217;ll leave it for the Chinese to announce who was visiting,&#8221; she told a regular news briefing, adding that the United States was continuing with its plans for a summit with Kim by the end of May.</p> <p>A Reuters reporter saw a convoy leave Beijing&#8217;s Diaoyutai State Guest House, where senior foreign leaders often stay, and drive north on Tuesday morning. It was unclear where the convoy was headed.</p> <p>Later, a Reuters journalist saw what was believed to be the delegation&#8217;s train pulling out of a Beijing station. The group was reported to have arrived in China on Sunday after crossing from North Korea at the border city of Dandong.</p> A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation leaves China's captial in Beijing, China March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee <p>One source with ties to China&#8217;s leadership said earlier it was possible the visitor was Kim&#8217;s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong. She visited South Korea during the Winter Olympics last month, paving the way for a summit between the two Koreas.</p> <p>The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was unlikely Kim Jong Un would have again sent his sister given the importance of a meeting with Xi, which would underscore Kim&#8217;s standing as a world leader.</p> <p>South Korean news agency Newsis reported that Kim Yo Jong and the North&#8217;s ceremonial leader, Kim Yong Nam, were visiting Beijing, citing an unidentified North Korea-related source in the Chinese capital.</p> &#8220;LOT OF LEVERAGE&#8221; <p>The U.S. official said Xi and Kim Jong Un had reason to meet in advance of Kim&#8217;s meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April and possibly U.S. President Donald Trump in May.</p> Slideshow (16 Images) <p>&#8220;Xi has met Trump, and in many respects learned how to deal with him better than some people here do,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>&#8220;At the same time, despite the recent tensions, he needs to know what Kim has in mind for dealing with the South and the U.S., and he still has a lot of leverage with the North.&#8221;</p> <p>A senior South Korean official said improving ties between North Korea and China would be a positive sign before the planned summits.</p> <p>In Geneva, meanwhile, North and South Korean members of parliament shook hands and shared a toast to &#8220;peace&#8221; on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said, suggesting relations between their two countries are thawing.</p> <p>South Korean politician Young Chin shook hands with Ri Jong Hyok, director of North Korea&#8217;s National Reunification Institute and deputy head of its Supreme People&#8217;s Assembly, at the annual assembly in Geneva of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-pentagon/did-north-koreas-kim-go-to-china-u-s-says-uncertain-but-looked-like-it-idUSKBN1H327S" type="external">Did North Korea's Kim go to China? U.S. says uncertain but looked like it</a> <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-security/beijing-shrouded-in-security-speculation-over-mystery-north-korean-guest-idUSKBN1H31A1" type="external">Beijing shrouded in security, speculation over mystery North Korean guest</a> <p>While China, which remains North Korea&#8217;s biggest trading partner in spite of recent sanctions, has not confirmed any North Korean visit, it has not totally censored speculation.</p> <p>Posts on Chinese social media have talked about the possibility that Kim Jong Un was in China, some citing family members in Dandong. The rail journey between Dandong and Beijing covers more than 1,100 km (680 miles). It takes at least 14 hours by ordinary service, according to Chinese railway timetables.</p> <p>Kim Jong Un&#8217;s father, Kim Jong Il, met then-president Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year. That visit was seen at the time as reaffirmation of close ties with Beijing.</p> <p>&#8220;North Korea likely wants to confirm its relationship with China and believes it has some leverage with which it can ask for things from China,&#8221; said Yoo Ho-yeol, professor of North Korean studies at Seoul&#8217;s Korea University.</p> <p>&#8220;If North Korea speaks with the United States on its own, it might feel it is at a disadvantage but, if it has China as an ally, Pyongyang may think it will be able to protect its interests and profits during the summits.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Shu Zhang in BEIJING and Christine Kim in SEOUL; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang in SEOUL and John Walcott, Phil Stewart, David Brunnstrom and David Alexander in WASHINGTON; Editing by Gareth Jones and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Probiotec Updates On Expected Net Profit Before Tax For HY Ended Dec. 31, 2017 Facebook's Zuckerberg to testify before U.S. Congress: source U.S. gymnastics doctor's boss at Michigan State charged with sex crime North Korean leader was in delegation visiting Beijing: source

https://reuters.com/article/brief-probiotec-updates-on-expected-net/brief-probiotec-updates-on-expected-net-profit-before-tax-for-hy-ended-dec-31-2017-idUSFWN1PH170

2018-01-23

2least

Jan 23 Reuters Probiotec Ltd NET PROFIT BEFORE TAX FOR HALF YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2017 IS NOW EXPECTED TO BE IN RANGE OF 15 MILLION TO 16 MILLION 8220REASONABLY EXPECT TO DELIVER STRONG GROWTH IN BOTH REVENUE AND EARNINGS IN 2018 FINANCIAL YEAR8221 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage bangalorenewsroomthomsonreuterscom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to testify before US Congress a source briefed on the matter said on Tuesday as he bows to pressure from lawmakers insisting he explain how 50 million users8217 data ended up in the hands of a political consultancy Lawmakers in the United States and Europe are demanding to know more about the company8217s privacy practices after a whistleblower said consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to target US and British voters in closerun elections Facebook said on Tuesday the company had received invitations to testify before Congress and that they were talking to legislators House Energy and Commerce Committee spokeswoman Elena Hernandez said 8220The committee is continuing to work with Facebook to determine a day and time for Mr Zuckerberg to testify8221 On the same day Zuckerberg turned down British lawmakers8217 invitations to explain to a British parliamentary committee what went wrong The company said it would instead send one of his deputies suggesting that Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer or Chief Product Officer Chris Cox had the expertise to answer questions on the complex subject The head of the committee called Zuckerberg8217s decision 8220astonishing8221 and urged him to think again Facebook shares closed down 49 percent on Tuesday and have fallen almost 18 percent since March 16 when Facebook first acknowledged that user data had been improperly channeled to Cambridge Analytica which was hired by Donald Trump8217s 2016 presidential campaign FILE PHOTO Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears on stage during a town hall at Facebooks headquarters in Menlo Park California US September 27 2015 REUTERSStephen LamFile Photo The privacy breach has raised investor concerns that any failure by big tech companies to protect privacy could deter advertisers and lead to tougher regulation Christopher Wylie the whistleblower who once worked at Cambridge Analytica said on Monday that Canadian company AggregateIQ had developed the software that used the algorithms from the Facebook data to target Republican voters in the 2016 US election AggregateIQ did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wylie8217s remarks Cambridge Analytica said it had not shared any of the Facebook profile data with AggregateIQ Slideshow 5 Images Cambridge Analytica said last Monday it did not use Facebook data in Trump8217s campaign and that it had deleted all Facebook data it obtained from a thirdparty app in 2014 after learning the information did not adhere to data protection rules In fullpage advertisements in British and US newspapers this week Zuckerberg said the app built by a university researcher 8220leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 20148221 He apologized last week for the mistakes the company had made and promised to restrict developers8217 access to user information as part of a plan to protect privacy The US Senate Judiciary Committee said on Monday it had invited Zuckerberg as well as the CEOs of Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc to testify at an April 10 hearing on data privacy The US House Energy and Commerce Committee and US Senate Commerce Committee had already formally asked Zuckerberg to appear at a congressional hearing The US Federal Trade Commission took the unusual step of announcing on Monday that it had opened an investigation into the company which it generally only does in cases of great public interest citing media reports that raise what it called 8220substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook8221 Writing by Susan Thomas Editing by James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles DETROIT Reuters A former Michigan State University dean who supervised the doctor at the center of the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal was himself charged on Tuesday with criminal sexual conduct involving medical school students A student at the College of Osteopathic Medicine accused William Strampel 70 of forcible sexual contact prosecutors said in papers filed in state district court in East Lansing Prosecutors said other students also accused Strampel of sexual misconduct The charges emerged during a probe into how Michigan State handled complaints about the gymnastics doctor special prosecutor William Forsyth told reporters in Lansing The focus widened after investigators received a tip The new charges which Strampel8217s attorney denied make the university a bigger target for the 8220MeToo8221 movement that has engulfed powerful men across society in harassment and abuse allegations 8220We did what we felt we needed to do and it led us to where we are today8221 Forsyth said Strampel was dean from 2002 until the end of 2017 He supervised exUSA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar who has been sentenced to prison for sexually abusing female gymnasts The four criminal counts against Nassar8217s former boss include fourthdegree criminal sexual conduct The accusations also include failing to properly oversee Nassar whose scandal sparked probes into why the US Olympic Committee USA Gymnastics and the university failed for years to investigate complaints After a short hearing in state court in East Lansing Strampel8217s attorney John Dakmak told reporters 8220My client denies that he ever engaged in any inappropriate touching of anyone He denies that there was any quid pro quo for sexual favors8221Regarding the charges relating to Strampel8217s supervision of Nassar Dakmak said his client immediately involved other school officials in 2014 when the complaints surfaced and fired Nassar in 2016 when the sexual assault allegations were made A Michigan State representative did not respond to a request for comment Four female medical students told investigators Strampel made sexually suggestive comments during meetings including what some perceived as academic privileges in exchange for sex Two accused him of grabbing their buttocks without consent William Strampel a former Dean at Michigan State University and former supervisor of convicted USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar is arraigned by video for Criminal Sexual Conduct involving medical students in 54B District Court in East Lansing Michigan US March 27 2018 REUTERSRebecca Cook One student described meeting with Strampel in June 2017 to appeal a test score and feeling intimidated when he mentioned her age saying 822026yearold women can 8216put out8217 for 20 minutes with an old man and in return the women could get the benefit of a free vacation8221 according to court documents Another witness said Strampel suggested she become a centerfold model and related to her how another student had become a stripper to pay for school court documents said When Strampel agreed to let the student retake a test he said she must agree to do anything for him which she interpreted as a request for sex court documents said Strampel is also accused of using his position as dean to receive pornographic images of women 8220through threats and manipulation8221 court documents said They said investigators seized his computer in February and found about 50 photos of nude women sex toys and pornography including selfies of female students pornographic videos and a video of Nassar performing 8220treatment8221 on a young female patient Slideshow 5 Images Strampel handcuffed hands clasped in his lap and his legs crossed appeared at his arraignment via video feed A split screen showed him expressing little emotion as he interacted with the judge saying at one point that he had spoken with his attorney Judge Richard Ball citing a lack of criminal history set a 25000 personal recognizance bond meaning Strampel need not post a cash bond A preliminary hearing is set for May 3 If convicted he faces five years and a possible fine of 10000 for a misconduct in office charge two years and a possible fine of 500 for the fourthdegree criminal sexual conduct charge and one year and a possible fine of 1000 for each of the two willful neglect of duty charges according to court documents An attorney for more than 150 of Nassar8217s victims said his clients were encouraged by the charges against Strampel The charges demonstrate that officials are 8220serious about investigating the systemic misconduct at MSU that led to the largest child sex abuse scandal in history and holding the responsible parties accountable8221 John Manly said in a statement Michigan State has been criticized for its handling of Nassar 54 who was a faculty member and physician at an oncampus clinic Athletes had complained about Nassar since the 1990s but the school did not open an investigation until 2014 Nassar was fired in September 2016 He received sentences this year that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life In February the school moved to fire Strampel saying he failed to enforce guidelines created for Nassar after complaints of sexual misconduct Additional reporting by Rebecca Cook in East Lansing Michigan Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Gina Cherelus in New York Writing by Scott Malone Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSEOUL Reuters North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was part of a secretive delegation that arrived in Beijing by train on Monday and left on Tuesday according to a source familiar with the matter and foreign media reports The visit which would be Kim8217s first known journey abroad since he assumed power in 2011 was not announced by North Korea or China and has remained shrouded in mystery South Korea8217s leftleaning Hankyoreh newspaper reported that Kim had traveled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon before leaving for a 8220third location8221 which could be in China on Tuesday It did not cite specific sources The conservative South Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper citing an unnamed senior intelligence official said the delegation had included Kim and that he had left to return to North Korea Kim is due to hold separate summits with China8217s rivals South Korea and the United States and analysts say a visit to Beijing could be preparation for those Beijing has traditionally been the closest ally of secretive and isolated North Korea but ties have been frayed by North Korea8217s pursuit of nuclear weapons and China8217s backing of tough UN sanctions in response A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman deflected a question on whether Kim his sister or some other senior North Korean was visiting 8220At present I have no understanding of the situation you mention If there is news we will release it8221 foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular daily briefing Diplomatic sources in Beijing said a senior North Korean official was in town but they did not know exactly who US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it 8220kinda looked like8221 Kim went to Beijing but told reporters at the Pentagon 8220I don8217t know8221 A senior US official who follows North Korea closely said the available evidence suggested Kim had gone to meet Xi but stressed that has not been confirmed US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said China had not confirmed who had visited but added 8220there certainly was a lot of fanfare a lot of protocol8221 8220We look forward to hearing about it and we8217ll leave it for the Chinese to announce who was visiting8221 she told a regular news briefing adding that the United States was continuing with its plans for a summit with Kim by the end of May A Reuters reporter saw a convoy leave Beijing8217s Diaoyutai State Guest House where senior foreign leaders often stay and drive north on Tuesday morning It was unclear where the convoy was headed Later a Reuters journalist saw what was believed to be the delegation8217s train pulling out of a Beijing station The group was reported to have arrived in China on Sunday after crossing from North Korea at the border city of Dandong A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation leaves Chinas captial in Beijing China March 27 2018 REUTERSJason Lee One source with ties to China8217s leadership said earlier it was possible the visitor was Kim8217s younger sister Kim Yo Jong She visited South Korea during the Winter Olympics last month paving the way for a summit between the two Koreas The US official who spoke on condition of anonymity said it was unlikely Kim Jong Un would have again sent his sister given the importance of a meeting with Xi which would underscore Kim8217s standing as a world leader South Korean news agency Newsis reported that Kim Yo Jong and the North8217s ceremonial leader Kim Yong Nam were visiting Beijing citing an unidentified North Korearelated source in the Chinese capital 8220LOT OF LEVERAGE8221 The US official said Xi and Kim Jong Un had reason to meet in advance of Kim8217s meetings with South Korean President Moon Jaein in April and possibly US President Donald Trump in May Slideshow 16 Images 8220Xi has met Trump and in many respects learned how to deal with him better than some people here do8221 the official said 8220At the same time despite the recent tensions he needs to know what Kim has in mind for dealing with the South and the US and he still has a lot of leverage with the North8221 A senior South Korean official said improving ties between North Korea and China would be a positive sign before the planned summits In Geneva meanwhile North and South Korean members of parliament shook hands and shared a toast to 8220peace8221 on Tuesday a Reuters witness said suggesting relations between their two countries are thawing South Korean politician Young Chin shook hands with Ri Jong Hyok director of North Korea8217s National Reunification Institute and deputy head of its Supreme People8217s Assembly at the annual assembly in Geneva of the InterParliamentary Union Related Coverage Did North Koreas Kim go to China US says uncertain but looked like it Beijing shrouded in security speculation over mystery North Korean guest While China which remains North Korea8217s biggest trading partner in spite of recent sanctions has not confirmed any North Korean visit it has not totally censored speculation Posts on Chinese social media have talked about the possibility that Kim Jong Un was in China some citing family members in Dandong The rail journey between Dandong and Beijing covers more than 1100 km 680 miles It takes at least 14 hours by ordinary service according to Chinese railway timetables Kim Jong Un8217s father Kim Jong Il met thenpresident Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year That visit was seen at the time as reaffirmation of close ties with Beijing 8220North Korea likely wants to confirm its relationship with China and believes it has some leverage with which it can ask for things from China8221 said Yoo Hoyeol professor of North Korean studies at Seoul8217s Korea University 8220If North Korea speaks with the United States on its own it might feel it is at a disadvantage but if it has China as an ally Pyongyang may think it will be able to protect its interests and profits during the summits8221 Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Shu Zhang in BEIJING and Christine Kim in SEOUL Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang in SEOUL and John Walcott Phil Stewart David Brunnstrom and David Alexander in WASHINGTON Editing by Gareth Jones and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - Medibank Private Ltd:</p> <p>* RECEIVED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT APPROVAL TO INCREASE PREMIUMS BY AVERAGE 3.88% ACROSS ALL MEDIBANK AND AHM HEALTH INSURANCE PRODUCTS Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping told self-ruled Taiwan on Tuesday that it would face the &#8220;punishment of history&#8221; for any attempt at separatism, offering his strongest warning yet to the island claimed by China as its sacred territory.</p> <p>In response, the government of Taiwan, one of China&#8217;s most sensitive issues and a potentially dangerous military flashpoint, said it hoped China could &#8220;break free&#8221; of the old clich&#233;s of threats and force.</p> <p>China&#8217;s hostility toward Taiwan has risen since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the island&#8217;s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.</p> <p>China suspects Tsai wants to push for formal independence, which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing, though Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace.</p> <p>China has been infuriated by U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s signing into law legislation last week that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwan counterparts, and vice versa.</p> <p>The United States does not have formal ties with Taiwan but is required by law to help it with self-defense and is the island&#8217;s primary source of weapons.</p> <p>China will push for the &#8220;peaceful reunification of the motherland&#8221; and work for more Taiwanese to enjoy the opportunities of its development, Xi told the 3,000-odd delegates to the annual session of parliament.</p> <p>&#8220;It is a shared aspiration of all Chinese people and in their basic interests to safeguard China&#8217;s sovereignty and territorial integrity and realize China&#8217;s complete reunification,&#8221; Xi said in a speech at the end of the session.</p> <p>&#8220;Any actions and tricks to split China are doomed to failure and will meet with the people&#8217;s condemnation and the punishment of history,&#8221; he added, to loud applause.</p> <p>China had the will, confidence and ability to defeat any separatist activity, Xi said.</p> <p>&#8220;The Chinese people share a common belief that it is never allowed and it is absolutely impossible to separate any inch of our great country&#8217;s territory from China.&#8221;</p> Chinese President Xi Jinping walks to deliver his speech at the closing session of the National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China March 20, 2018. Picture taken with a slow shutter speed. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY <p>In Taiwan, the China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said the government was firm in its conviction to protect Taiwan&#8217;s &#8220;sovereign dignity&#8221; and the well-being of its people.</p> <p>&#8220;We also hope that mainland China&#8217;s leaders, at this time of entering into a new administration period, can break free of clich&#233;d thinking of strong intimidation,&#8221; it added.</p> <p>In a visit likely to further irritate China, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong will be in Taiwan this week, the island&#8217;s foreign ministry said.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) PATRIOTIC SPIRIT <p>China has also been worried about independence activists in the former British colony of Hong Kong following big street protests there in 2014 calling for universal suffrage.</p> <p>Xi said China would uphold Hong Kong&#8217;s high degree of autonomy, but would also seek to increase &#8220;national consciousness and patriotic spirit&#8221; in the financial center.</p> <p>Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by China, and has accused China of not understanding how democracy works, pointing out that Taiwan&#8217;s people have the right to decide its future.</p> <p>The new U.S. law on Taiwan adds to strains between China and the United States over trade, as Trump has enacted tariffs and called for China to reduce its huge trade imbalance with the United States, even while Washington has sought Beijing&#8217;s help to resolve tension with North Korea.</p> <p>Taiwan has thanked the United States for the law and its support, but its foreign ministry said on Monday there were no plans for any senior leaders, such as the president, to visit the United States.</p> <p>While stepped-up Chinese military exercises around Taiwan over the past year have rattled the island, Xi reiterated China&#8217;s assertion that its rise was not a threat to any country, though China considers Taiwan to be merely a Chinese province not a nation.</p> <p>&#8220;Only those who are in the habit of threatening others will see everyone else as a threat,&#8221; Xi said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Stella Qiu and Christian Shepherd, and Twinnie Siu and Fabian Hamacher in TAIPEI; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUSTIN/SCHERTZ, Texas (Reuters) - A package bomb blew up at a FedEx Corp distribution center near San Antonio on Tuesday, officials said, and the FBI was investigating whether it was linked to a series of four homemade bombs that hit the Texas capital of Austin this month.</p> <p>Officials did not say if the latest incident was the work of what Austin police believe could be a serial bomber responsible for the four earlier devices that killed two people and injured four others.</p> <p>The blast at the FedEx facility in Schertz was the fifth in the state in the last 18 days. If it is linked to the others, it would be the first outside the Austin area and the first that involves a commercial parcel service.</p> <p>Police discovered another package at the same location that they believe is also loaded with an explosive device, San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus told reporters.</p> <p>&#8220;There was one other package that we believe was also loaded with an explosive device that they are looking at right now,&#8221; McManus told reporters in Schertz, which is about 20 miles northeast of San Antonio.</p> An officer with Schertz Police Department holds a FedEx truck from entering the scene of a blast at a FedEx facility in Schertz, Texas, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Flores <p>The blast knocked a female employee off her feet and may have caused a concussion, McManus said. Federal officials on the scene said she had ringing in her ears and was treated and released.</p> <p>The package, filled with nails and metal shrapnel, exploded shortly after midnight local time at the facility, about 65 miles south of Austin, the San Antonio Fire Department said on Twitter.</p> Slideshow (10 Images) <p>The company described it as a FedEx Ground sorting facility. About 75 people were working at the facility at the time, fire officials said.</p> <p>The individual or people behind the bombings are likely to be highly skilled and methodical, said Fred Burton, chief security officer for Stratfor, a private intelligence and security consulting firm based in Austin.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-texas-blast-whitehouse/no-known-link-to-terrorism-in-texas-bombings-white-house-idUSKBN1GW293" type="external">No known link to terrorism in Texas bombings: White House</a> <p>&#8220;This is a race against time to find him before he bombs again,&#8221; Burton said.</p> <p>The bombings in Austin did not appear to be linked to terrorism, White House spokesman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter on Tuesday.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Writing by Scott Malone and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Jeffrey Benkoe</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. film and TV studio The Weinstein Company, whose ex-Chairman Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault, filed for bankruptcy on Monday and said it was ending all non-disclosure agreements that may have silenced some women.</p> <p>The filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware follows accusations by more than 70 women against the company&#8217;s co-founder, Harvey Weinstein, who was one of Hollywood&#8217;s most influential men, of sexual misconduct, including rape. Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sex with anyone.</p> <p>The women who spoke out against Weinstein spurred a national movement against sexual harassment, with victims sharing their stories on social media and labeling them under the hashtag #MeToo.</p> <p>Texas private equity firm Lantern Capital agreed to buy Weinstein Company out of bankruptcy for $310 million. The firm's offer, saving the studio from winding down its business, will be subject to higher and better bids in a court-supervised auction scheduled for May 2. <a href="http://bit.ly/2prGdNm" type="external">bit.ly/2prGdNm</a></p> <p>The deadline for other bids is April 30.</p> <p>Lantern had been a potential investor in former Obama administration official Maria Contreras-Sweet&#8217;s bid for the studio, which was ultimately terminated.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company&#8217;s bankruptcy will halt victim&#8217;s lawsuits against the company and any sexual misconduct claims would likely only be compensated after secured creditors are paid in full. Maria Contreras-Sweet&#8217;s bid for the studio included a $80-90 million compensation fund that would supplement any insurance payouts victims would receive.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company, which has won 28 Academy Awards, owns a film library of 277 feature films that have generated over $2 billion in aggregate box office receipts worldwide.</p> <p>Yet the company said in court papers it has lost about 25 percent of its workforce and many of its long time business partners since October 2017, when accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public.</p> <p>&#8220;It is an understatement to say that the last six months have been trying for the company,&#8221; Chief Restructuring Officer Robert Del Genio said in court papers.</p> FILE PHOTO - Harvey Weinstein speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York, December 5, 2012. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri <p>As part of the bankruptcy filing, the Weinstein Company said it released anyone &#8220;who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein&#8221; from nondisclosure agreements.</p> <p>&#8220;Since October, it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used non-disclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers. Effective immediately, those &#8216;agreements&#8217; end,&#8221; the company said in an emailed statement.</p> <p>In February, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued The Weinstein Company, Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein, alleging that Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed employees and the company failed to respond. Bob Weinstein co-founded the company and is the co-chairman.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace,&#8221; Schneiderman said in a statement after the company&#8217;s announcement on Monday.</p> <p>In its filing, the Weinstein Company listed $500 million to $1 billion in both liabilities and assets.</p> <p>The studio has spent months looking for a buyer or investor. Before the deal with Contreras-Sweet&#8217;s group failed, The Weinstein Company had tried securing rescue financing from other investors.</p> <p>Lions Gate Entertainment Corp had made an earlier offer for some of the company&#8217;s assets, as had Qatar-owned film company Miramax, which was founded by Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein. Both could be among potential bidders in the auction.</p> <p>Movie producer Killer Content also said bankruptcy would be the best option for the company, and that it may be interested in the studio&#8217;s assets in a bankruptcy auction.</p> <p>The Weinstein Company also won commitments from its bank lenders for a $25 million bankruptcy loan.</p> <p>Launched in October 2005, the studio produced and distributed critically acclaimed hits including &#8220;The King&#8217;s Speech&#8221; and &#8220;Silver Linings Playbook,&#8221; as well as TV series such as long-running fashion reality competition &#8220;Project Runway.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Marguerita Choy</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A student who shot and critically wounded two fellow students at a Maryland high school on Tuesday morning, died after exchanging gunfire with a campus security officer, the county sheriff said.</p> Law enforcement motorcade is seen near the Great Mills High School following a shooting on Tuesday morning in St. Mary's County, Maryland, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz <p>The school day had barely begun when the student, who has not been identified, shot a male student and a female student at Great Mills High School in St. Mary&#8217;s County before the campus security officer intervened, county Sheriff Timothy Cameron told a news conference.</p> <p>&#8220;Our school resource officer who was stationed inside the school was alerted to the event and the shots being fired,&#8221; Cameron said. &#8220;He pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter; during that engagement he fired a round at the shooter. Simultaneously, the shooter fired a round as well.&#8221;</p> <p>The officer was not harmed, the sheriff said.</p> <p>The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools and universities took place a little more than a month after 17 students and educators were shot dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.</p> <p>That attack sparked a new student movement against gun violence, including a national school walkout last week that Great Mills students participated in. It occurred just days before a planned Saturday march in Washington calling for new restrictions on guns.</p> <p>Parkland students and Great Mills students exchanged supportive messages on Twitter following Tuesday&#8217;s shooting.</p> <p>&#8220;We are here for you, students of Great Mills, together we can stop this from ever happening again,&#8221; Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Stoneman Douglas High School who survived last month&#8217;s rampage, wrote on Twitter.</p> <p>A 14-year-old male student, whom the sheriff had earlier said was in critical condition, was in good condition after treatment at MedStar St Mary&#8217;s Hospital, according to hospital officials. A 16-year-old female student, who also had been in critical condition, was stabilized and transferred to another hospital, they said.</p> Emergency personnel and law enforcement officers stand outside Great Mills High School following a shooting on Tuesday morning in St. Mary's County, Maryland, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz <p>The shooter used a handgun in the attack, the sheriff said. He was confirmed deceased at 10:41 a.m. ET after being taken to a hospital.</p> <p>Cameron said investigators would determine whether the shooter died of a wound from the school resource officer&#8217;s gun or in some other way.</p> <p>The public school&#8217;s roughly 1,600 students were later escorted off campus by police, classroom by classroom, to reunite with their parents at another high school.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>Police investigated rumors that someone was threatening to shoot people at the school last month, BayNet, a Maryland news outlet, reported on Feb. 21. The threats were unsubstantiated, but security was increased at the school, the principal said, according to BayNet.</p> <p>It was unclear whether those rumors had any connection with Tuesday&#8217;s violence.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not aware of anything, but again we&#8217;re gonna go back and come through that as well as anybody involved (and) their social media posts,&#8221; Cameron said in response to questions about the report.</p> <p>An armed school resource officer had also been on the campus of Stoneman Douglas at the time of the shooting there, and came under criticism for failing to stop the gunman, who was armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle. The officer, who resigned, said he had not been sure where the gunfire was coming from.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming teachers to combat the threat of school shootings, while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles, among other laws.</p> <p>The Maryland school is in Great Mills, a community about 70 miles (110 km) south of Washington.</p> <p>&#8220;You never think it&#8217;ll be your school and then it is,&#8221; Mollie Davis, who identified herself as a student at the school, wrote on Twitter. &#8220;Great Mills is a wonderful school and somewhere I am proud to go. Why us?&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Gina Cherelus in New York; writing by Joseph Ax; editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Medibank Private Received Federal Government Approval To Increase Premiums Xi warns Taiwan will face 'punishment of history' for separatism 'Race against time' to find bomber as fifth device blows up in Texas Weinstein Co files for bankruptcy, ends all non-disclosure agreements Maryland high school shooter dies after exchange with officer: sheriff

https://reuters.com/article/brief-medibank-private-received-federal/brief-medibank-private-received-federal-government-approval-to-increase-premiums-idUSFWN1PJ1DT

2018-01-24

2least

Jan 25 Reuters Medibank Private Ltd RECEIVED FEDERAL GOVERNMENT APPROVAL TO INCREASE PREMIUMS BY AVERAGE 388 ACROSS ALL MEDIBANK AND AHM HEALTH INSURANCE PRODUCTS Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters Chinese President Xi Jinping told selfruled Taiwan on Tuesday that it would face the 8220punishment of history8221 for any attempt at separatism offering his strongest warning yet to the island claimed by China as its sacred territory In response the government of Taiwan one of China8217s most sensitive issues and a potentially dangerous military flashpoint said it hoped China could 8220break free8221 of the old clich233s of threats and force China8217s hostility toward Taiwan has risen since the 2016 election of President Tsai Ingwen a member of the island8217s proindependence Democratic Progressive Party China suspects Tsai wants to push for formal independence which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing though Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace China has been infuriated by US President Donald Trump8217s signing into law legislation last week that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwan counterparts and vice versa The United States does not have formal ties with Taiwan but is required by law to help it with selfdefense and is the island8217s primary source of weapons China will push for the 8220peaceful reunification of the motherland8221 and work for more Taiwanese to enjoy the opportunities of its development Xi told the 3000odd delegates to the annual session of parliament 8220It is a shared aspiration of all Chinese people and in their basic interests to safeguard China8217s sovereignty and territorial integrity and realize China8217s complete reunification8221 Xi said in a speech at the end of the session 8220Any actions and tricks to split China are doomed to failure and will meet with the people8217s condemnation and the punishment of history8221 he added to loud applause China had the will confidence and ability to defeat any separatist activity Xi said 8220The Chinese people share a common belief that it is never allowed and it is absolutely impossible to separate any inch of our great country8217s territory from China8221 Chinese President Xi Jinping walks to deliver his speech at the closing session of the National Peoples Congress NPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing China March 20 2018 Picture taken with a slow shutter speed REUTERSDamir Sagolj TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY In Taiwan the China policymaking Mainland Affairs Council said the government was firm in its conviction to protect Taiwan8217s 8220sovereign dignity8221 and the wellbeing of its people 8220We also hope that mainland China8217s leaders at this time of entering into a new administration period can break free of clich233d thinking of strong intimidation8221 it added In a visit likely to further irritate China US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong will be in Taiwan this week the island8217s foreign ministry said Slideshow 11 Images PATRIOTIC SPIRIT China has also been worried about independence activists in the former British colony of Hong Kong following big street protests there in 2014 calling for universal suffrage Xi said China would uphold Hong Kong8217s high degree of autonomy but would also seek to increase 8220national consciousness and patriotic spirit8221 in the financial center Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by China and has accused China of not understanding how democracy works pointing out that Taiwan8217s people have the right to decide its future The new US law on Taiwan adds to strains between China and the United States over trade as Trump has enacted tariffs and called for China to reduce its huge trade imbalance with the United States even while Washington has sought Beijing8217s help to resolve tension with North Korea Taiwan has thanked the United States for the law and its support but its foreign ministry said on Monday there were no plans for any senior leaders such as the president to visit the United States While steppedup Chinese military exercises around Taiwan over the past year have rattled the island Xi reiterated China8217s assertion that its rise was not a threat to any country though China considers Taiwan to be merely a Chinese province not a nation 8220Only those who are in the habit of threatening others will see everyone else as a threat8221 Xi said Additional reporting by Stella Qiu and Christian Shepherd and Twinnie Siu and Fabian Hamacher in TAIPEI Writing by Ben Blanchard Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUSTINSCHERTZ Texas Reuters A package bomb blew up at a FedEx Corp distribution center near San Antonio on Tuesday officials said and the FBI was investigating whether it was linked to a series of four homemade bombs that hit the Texas capital of Austin this month Officials did not say if the latest incident was the work of what Austin police believe could be a serial bomber responsible for the four earlier devices that killed two people and injured four others The blast at the FedEx facility in Schertz was the fifth in the state in the last 18 days If it is linked to the others it would be the first outside the Austin area and the first that involves a commercial parcel service Police discovered another package at the same location that they believe is also loaded with an explosive device San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus told reporters 8220There was one other package that we believe was also loaded with an explosive device that they are looking at right now8221 McManus told reporters in Schertz which is about 20 miles northeast of San Antonio An officer with Schertz Police Department holds a FedEx truck from entering the scene of a blast at a FedEx facility in Schertz Texas US March 20 2018 REUTERSSergio Flores The blast knocked a female employee off her feet and may have caused a concussion McManus said Federal officials on the scene said she had ringing in her ears and was treated and released The package filled with nails and metal shrapnel exploded shortly after midnight local time at the facility about 65 miles south of Austin the San Antonio Fire Department said on Twitter Slideshow 10 Images The company described it as a FedEx Ground sorting facility About 75 people were working at the facility at the time fire officials said The individual or people behind the bombings are likely to be highly skilled and methodical said Fred Burton chief security officer for Stratfor a private intelligence and security consulting firm based in Austin Related Coverage No known link to terrorism in Texas bombings White House 8220This is a race against time to find him before he bombs again8221 Burton said The bombings in Austin did not appear to be linked to terrorism White House spokesman Sarah Sanders said on Twitter on Tuesday Additional reporting by Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee and Lisa Lambert in Washington Writing by Scott Malone and Daniel Trotta Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Jeffrey Benkoe Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORKCHICAGO Reuters US film and TV studio The Weinstein Company whose exChairman Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault filed for bankruptcy on Monday and said it was ending all nondisclosure agreements that may have silenced some women The filing in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware follows accusations by more than 70 women against the company8217s cofounder Harvey Weinstein who was one of Hollywood8217s most influential men of sexual misconduct including rape Weinstein has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone The women who spoke out against Weinstein spurred a national movement against sexual harassment with victims sharing their stories on social media and labeling them under the hashtag MeToo Texas private equity firm Lantern Capital agreed to buy Weinstein Company out of bankruptcy for 310 million The firms offer saving the studio from winding down its business will be subject to higher and better bids in a courtsupervised auction scheduled for May 2 bitly2prGdNm The deadline for other bids is April 30 Lantern had been a potential investor in former Obama administration official Maria ContrerasSweet8217s bid for the studio which was ultimately terminated The Weinstein Company8217s bankruptcy will halt victim8217s lawsuits against the company and any sexual misconduct claims would likely only be compensated after secured creditors are paid in full Maria ContrerasSweet8217s bid for the studio included a 8090 million compensation fund that would supplement any insurance payouts victims would receive The Weinstein Company which has won 28 Academy Awards owns a film library of 277 feature films that have generated over 2 billion in aggregate box office receipts worldwide Yet the company said in court papers it has lost about 25 percent of its workforce and many of its long time business partners since October 2017 when accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public 8220It is an understatement to say that the last six months have been trying for the company8221 Chief Restructuring Officer Robert Del Genio said in court papers FILE PHOTO Harvey Weinstein speaks at the UBS 40th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York December 5 2012 REUTERSCarlo Allegri As part of the bankruptcy filing the Weinstein Company said it released anyone 8220who suffered or witnessed any form of sexual misconduct by Harvey Weinstein8221 from nondisclosure agreements 8220Since October it has been reported that Harvey Weinstein used nondisclosure agreements as a secret weapon to silence his accusers Effective immediately those 8216agreements8217 end8221 the company said in an emailed statement In February New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sued The Weinstein Company Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein alleging that Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed employees and the company failed to respond Bob Weinstein cofounded the company and is the cochairman 8220This is a watershed moment for efforts to address the corrosive effects of sexual misconduct in the workplace8221 Schneiderman said in a statement after the company8217s announcement on Monday In its filing the Weinstein Company listed 500 million to 1 billion in both liabilities and assets The studio has spent months looking for a buyer or investor Before the deal with ContrerasSweet8217s group failed The Weinstein Company had tried securing rescue financing from other investors Lions Gate Entertainment Corp had made an earlier offer for some of the company8217s assets as had Qatarowned film company Miramax which was founded by Harvey Weinstein and Bob Weinstein Both could be among potential bidders in the auction Movie producer Killer Content also said bankruptcy would be the best option for the company and that it may be interested in the studio8217s assets in a bankruptcy auction The Weinstein Company also won commitments from its bank lenders for a 25 million bankruptcy loan Launched in October 2005 the studio produced and distributed critically acclaimed hits including 8220The King8217s Speech8221 and 8220Silver Linings Playbook8221 as well as TV series such as longrunning fashion reality competition 8220Project Runway8221 Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A student who shot and critically wounded two fellow students at a Maryland high school on Tuesday morning died after exchanging gunfire with a campus security officer the county sheriff said Law enforcement motorcade is seen near the Great Mills High School following a shooting on Tuesday morning in St Marys County Maryland US March 20 2018 REUTERSSait Serkan Gurbuz The school day had barely begun when the student who has not been identified shot a male student and a female student at Great Mills High School in St Mary8217s County before the campus security officer intervened county Sheriff Timothy Cameron told a news conference 8220Our school resource officer who was stationed inside the school was alerted to the event and the shots being fired8221 Cameron said 8220He pursued the shooter engaged the shooter during that engagement he fired a round at the shooter Simultaneously the shooter fired a round as well8221 The officer was not harmed the sheriff said The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at US schools and universities took place a little more than a month after 17 students and educators were shot dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida That attack sparked a new student movement against gun violence including a national school walkout last week that Great Mills students participated in It occurred just days before a planned Saturday march in Washington calling for new restrictions on guns Parkland students and Great Mills students exchanged supportive messages on Twitter following Tuesday8217s shooting 8220We are here for you students of Great Mills together we can stop this from ever happening again8221 Emma Gonzalez a senior at Stoneman Douglas High School who survived last month8217s rampage wrote on Twitter A 14yearold male student whom the sheriff had earlier said was in critical condition was in good condition after treatment at MedStar St Mary8217s Hospital according to hospital officials A 16yearold female student who also had been in critical condition was stabilized and transferred to another hospital they said Emergency personnel and law enforcement officers stand outside Great Mills High School following a shooting on Tuesday morning in St Marys County Maryland US March 20 2018 REUTERSSait Serkan Gurbuz The shooter used a handgun in the attack the sheriff said He was confirmed deceased at 1041 am ET after being taken to a hospital Cameron said investigators would determine whether the shooter died of a wound from the school resource officer8217s gun or in some other way The public school8217s roughly 1600 students were later escorted off campus by police classroom by classroom to reunite with their parents at another high school Slideshow 5 Images Police investigated rumors that someone was threatening to shoot people at the school last month BayNet a Maryland news outlet reported on Feb 21 The threats were unsubstantiated but security was increased at the school the principal said according to BayNet It was unclear whether those rumors had any connection with Tuesday8217s violence 8220I8217m not aware of anything but again we8217re gonna go back and come through that as well as anybody involved and their social media posts8221 Cameron said in response to questions about the report An armed school resource officer had also been on the campus of Stoneman Douglas at the time of the shooting there and came under criticism for failing to stop the gunman who was armed with an AR15 assaultstyle rifle The officer who resigned said he had not been sure where the gunfire was coming from US President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming teachers to combat the threat of school shootings while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles among other laws The Maryland school is in Great Mills a community about 70 miles 110 km south of Washington 8220You never think it8217ll be your school and then it is8221 Mollie Davis who identified herself as a student at the school wrote on Twitter 8220Great Mills is a wonderful school and somewhere I am proud to go Why us8221 Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Gina Cherelus in New York writing by Joseph Ax editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Q: Is it true that persons older than 59 can&#8217;t get heart surgery in England?</p> <p>A: There&#8217;s no such prohibition on heart operations in England, as a chain e-mail claims.</p> <p>FULL QUESTION</p> <p>Is this e-mail true?</p> <p>SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS</p> <p>The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada.</p> <p>[EET ]</p> <p>It took eight hours to drive her to a hospital. If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today. We now have helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes. Obama wants to have our healthcare like Canada &#8216;s and England &#8216;s.</p> <p>In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed.</p> <p>I got this today and am sending it on. If Obama&#8217;s plans in other areas don&#8217;t scare you, this should. Looks like Obama is sure keeping his word ****CHANGES. We better have our funerals paid up, may be needing it sooner rather than later with no Dr&#8217;s on our side to keep us healthy.. What will this world be like in another 20 YEARS WHEN OUR KIDS ARE READY FOR RETIREMENT? SAD!!! Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a senior citizen, is getting close or knows somebody that is.</p> <p>Most of you know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the "stimulus" bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens&#8230; The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg with the following statement. Bloomberg: Daschle says "health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."</p> <p>If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes. Please use the power of the internet to get this message out. Talk it up at the grassroots level&#8230;. We have an election coming up in one year and nine months. We have the ability to address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies have begun and in the interim, we can make their lives miserable. Lets do it! If you disagree, don&#8217;t do anything [/EET]</p> <p>FULL ANSWER</p> <p>This widely forwarded e-mail, targeted to senior citizens and claiming that health care legislation could constitute "senior death warrants," is riddled with false claims.</p> <p>The anonymous e-mail claims that "[i]n England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed." That&#8217;s false.</p> <p>We called the United Kingdom&#8217;s Department of Health and a spokesman told us: "It is not true that anyone aged over 59 years cannot receive heart repairs, stents or bypass surgery on the basis of their age."</p> <p>He also said that medical procedures in the U.K. are not routinely denied for older people. The National Health Service, the U.K.&#8217;s public health care service, has a constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age and other factors. "The <a href="http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_093419" type="external">NHS Constitution</a> states that the NHS provides a &#8216;comprehensive service, available to all irrespective of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief,&#8217; " the spokesman said.</p> <p>We also contacted a nonprofit group, England&#8217;s <a href="http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/our_mission.asp" type="external">Age Concern and Help the Aged</a>, which works to stop age discrimination in various facets of life, including employment and health care. Age Concern&#8217;s press office had never heard of any kind of prohibition on heart surgery for those 60 and older.</p> <p>The group&#8217;s <a href="http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/Documents/FS44NHS_services.pdf" type="external">handbook on health care</a> says that a national organization was created 10 years ago to improve health care for older people. One of the standards for the organization is &#8220;rooting out age discrimination.&#8221;</p> <p>Age Concern does receive complaints from older citizens, and its Web site <a href="http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/ageism-in-healthcare.asp" type="external">says</a> that ageism in health care does occur. It says, for example, that a doctor could refuse to refer an older patient to a consultant, medical professionals may make inappropriate comments about the patient, or a patient "might even be pushed into a care home you don&#8217;t want or be refused specific social services because of your age." The site then tells older people what they can do if they feel they&#8217;ve been mistreated.</p> <p>The site mentions one age limit &#8211; those over the age of 70 won&#8217;t get regular invitations every three years to breast cancer screenings. But those older folks get a screening if they request one.</p> <p>Canadian Choppers</p> <p>The e-mail also falsely claims that it took eight hours to drive actress Natasha Richardson to a hospital in Canada in March after she fell and hit her head while skiing. "If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today," the e-mail speculates, saying that the U.S. has fast-moving medical helicopters and implying that Canada doesn&#8217;t.</p> <p>That&#8217;s not true; in fact, the province of Ontario has an air ambulance system that the Toronto Star called "the envy of North America" and "the largest and most sophisticated of its kind on the continent." However, it is true that the province of Quebec, where Richardson was skiing, is the only province in the country that doesn&#8217;t have an air ambulance system, according to the Star. And her death raised questions about whether a helicopter could have made a difference in the tragedy.</p> <p><a href="http://www.tremblant.ca/index.htm" type="external">Mont Tremblant Ski Resort</a>, where Richardson was taking a lesson on a beginner&#8217;s slope on March 16, is about 25 miles from Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in Ste-Agathe, where Richardson was first taken.&amp;#160;Ambulance records <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/health/21richardson.html?_r=1" type="external">obtained by the New York Times</a> show that the ambulance arrived nine minutes after a call was made for it, and it took 38 minutes to get to Centre Hospitalier Laurentien.&amp;#160;Richardson was later moved to Montreal&#8217;s Sacre-Coeur Hospital, which has a trauma center and a team of neurosurgeons that the smaller Ste-Agathe hospital lacks.</p> <p>The ambulance that took her to Ste-Agathe was the second to arrive for her; the first was turned away when the actress said she was fine. As the Times, and many <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Movies/story?id=7119825&amp;amp;page=1" type="external">others</a>, reported, the first ambulance arrived at 1 p.m. but was turned away. At 3 p.m., when Richardson said she wasn&#8217;t feeling well, the second ambulance was summoned. Paramedics attended to her and then made the 38-minute trip to the hospital in Ste-Agathe, arriving at 4:20 p.m.</p> <p>At about 6 p.m., she was transported to the Montreal hospital. The time line of events <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=7214194&amp;amp;page=1" type="external">has prompted</a> many questions as to whether Richardson could have been successfully treated had the ambulance taken her straight to the Montreal hospital rather than Ste-Agathe, or if she had gone to the hospital in the first ambulance, or if she had been transported sooner from the Ste-Agathe hospital to the facility in Montreal. Or if a helicopter could have taken her from Ste-Agathe to Montreal, a drive of about 45 minutes, or if a helicopter could have been called by the resort.</p> <p>The Toronto Star <a href="http://www.thestar.com/article/605345" type="external">reported</a> that &#8220;Quebec is the only province that doesn&#8217;t have a network of helicopter air ambulances in place,&#8221; a situation the Quebec government had been studying. The Star said that the head of the trauma center at Montreal&#8217;s McGill University Health Centre had voiced concerns about this at a conference before Richardson&#8217;s death. Dr. Tarek Razek warned that skiers needed to wear helmets, saying "I cannot get you to my centre fast enough to have those reductions in mortality. I just can&#8217;t.&#8221; Razek told conference participants that Quebec was "the only region that I&#8217;ve ever been able to find in the Western world" without an air ambulance system.</p> <p>In a letter to Canada&#8217;s National Post, Razek said that Canada&#8217;s health care system wasn&#8217;t at fault, putting the blame squarely on Quebec.</p> <p>Razek, letter to National Post, published April 11: Our failure to ensure public safety to a minimum standard is indeed shameful, but it is not a failure of Canadian health care, as this service exists in most of Canada. Rather, it is a failure of Quebec health care.</p> <p>Another Canadian newspaper, Montreal&#8217;s Gazette, quoted the director of Quebec&#8217;s pre-hospital care as saying that the lack of helicopters was a matter of cost. Daniel LeFran&#231;ois told the Gazette that it was a case of "the biggest gain for the biggest need," saying "[i]t costs $6,000 for one hour of flight." LeFran&#231;ois noted that Quebec&#8217;s accident death rate was slightly lower than Canada&#8217;s average.</p> <p>So would Richardson have had a better chance of survival had she been skiing in a different Canadian province, or in the United States? We can&#8217;t possibly say. It&#8217;s worth noting that not every state in the U.S. has medical evacuation helicopters &#8211; <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/states/Vermont.pdf" type="external">Vermont</a> and <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/states/Rhode%20Island.pdf" type="external">Rhode Island</a>, small states to be sure, do not, <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/pubs/ADAMS_Intro.pdf" type="external">according to the Atlas &amp;amp; Database of Air Medical Services</a>, which is funded by the Federal Highway Administration. As shown on <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/pubs/AMTC08_poster.pdf" type="external">this map</a>, some areas of the country have many more air medical services than others: In <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/states/North%20Dakota.pdf" type="external">North Dakota</a> and <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/states/Wyoming.pdf" type="external">Wyoming</a>, for instance, it could take well over 30 minutes for an evacuation helicopter to get the scene of an accident, depending on the location.</p> <p>What Obama Wants</p> <p>After making false and disparaging claims about health care in those two countries, the e-mail says that "Obama wants to have our healthcare like Canada&#8217;s and England&#8217;s." Actually, the president has said repeatedly that he doesn&#8217;t want a single-payer system like England and Canada have, one in which everyone has insurance through the government. We&#8217;ve written about this several times, as <a href="" type="internal">conservative groups</a>, <a href="" type="internal">former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney</a> and <a href="" type="internal">then-presidential candidate John McCain</a>have all made similar claims and implications.</p> <p>Obama has said that the United States should build on the system it has now. His stance has irritated some single payer advocates and prompted several questions about why he&#8217;s against such a system.</p> <p>On July 1 at a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-the-President-in-an-Online-Town-Hall-on-Health-Care-Reform/" type="external">town hall meeting in Annandale, Va.</a>, Obama was asked again why the U.S. shouldn&#8217;t have a single payer system. The president responded:</p> <p>Obama, July 1: &#8230; the way our health care system evolved in the United States, it evolved based on employers providing health insurance to their employees through private insurers. And so that&#8217;s still the way that the vast majority of you get your insurance. And for us to transition completely from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system could be hugely disruptive. And my attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free market system. &#8230;</p> <p>But I recognize that there are lot of people who are passionate&amp;#160;&#8211; they look at France or some of these other systems and they say, well, why can&#8217;t we just do that? Well, the answer is, is that this is one-sixth of our economy, and we&#8217;re not suddenly just going to completely upend the system. We want to build on what works about the system and fix what&#8217;s broken about the system. And that&#8217;s what I think Congress is committed to doing, and I&#8217;m committed to working with them to make it happen.</p> <p>Daschle Didn&#8217;t Say That</p> <p>Finally, the e-mail claims that the stimulus bill "includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens." No, it doesn&#8217;t.</p> <p>Some conservatives have said that a council overseeing the government&#8217;s funding of comparative effectiveness research (research into which medicines and procedures work best and are most cost-effective) will "ration" health care. But the council created by the stimulus legislation (now <a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_public_laws&amp;amp;docid=f:publ005.111.pdf" type="external">public law</a>) doesn&#8217;t have any power to do that. In fact, the legislation stipulates that "[n]one of the reports submitted under this section or recommendations made by the Council shall be construed as mandates or clinical guidelines for payment, coverage, or treatment."</p> <p>The e-mail speculates that former Sen. Tom Daschle, once Obama&#8217;s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, was the author of this part of the bill. And it falsely says that Bloomberg News quoted Daschle as saying: "Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." Daschle didn&#8217;t say that.</p> <p>Instead, those are the words of the former Republican lieutenant governor of New York, Betsy McCaughey, who wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg News and offered her reading of comments in Daschle&#8217;s book. Back in February, we <a href="" type="internal">dissected</a> McCaughey&#8217;s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;amp;sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs" type="external">column</a>, pieces of which have popped up in chain e-mails, and found it to be full of errors. McCaughey also passes off opinion as fact, and in the case of Daschle, she paraphrases him, which is clear from the lack of quote marks in the column.</p> <p>What Daschle did say is a far cry from "seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them." Instead, he wrote (without mentioning age) in his book "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis": "The use and overuse of new technologies and treatments is grounded in American culture. &#8230; More so than people in other countries, [Americans] just aren&#8217;t inclined to fatalistically accept a hopeless diagnosis or forgo experimental interventions if there is even the slightest chance of success."</p> <p>He also quoted Rutgers University health care policy expert David Mechanic, who wrote: "more and more of what were once seen as social, behaviorial, or normative aspects of everyday life, or as normal processes of aging, are now framed in a medical context. &#8230; Whether wrinkles, breasts, or buttocks, impotence or social anxieties, or inattention in school, they all have become grist for the medical mill."</p> <p>&#8211; Lori Robertson</p> <p>Sources</p> <p>Spokesman, United Kingdom Department of Health. E-mail sent to FactCheck.org. 8 Jul 2009.</p> <p>Press office, Age Concern and Help for the Aged, London. Interview with FactCheck.org. 7 Jul 2009.</p> <p>United Kingdom Department of Health. &#8220; <a href="http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_093419" type="external">The NHS Constitution for England</a>.&#8221; 21 Jan 2009.</p> <p>Age Concern. <a href="http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/Documents/FS44NHS_services.pdf" type="external">NHS Services factsheet</a>. Apr 2008.</p> <p>Age Concern. <a href="http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/ageism-in-healthcare.asp" type="external">Ageism in the health service and social care</a>. Ageconcern.org.uk. 2009. Accessed 9 Jul 2009.</p> <p>Fidelman, Charlie. &#8220;MDs call for air ambulance; Movie star one of many cases, they say.&#8221; Gazette [Montreal]. 2 Apr 2009.</p> <p>Ogilvie, Megan. &#8220;How Ontario rescued its air ambulances.&#8221; Toronto Star. 28 Mar 2009.</p> <p>Razek Tarek. Letter to the editor. National Post. 11 Apr 2009.</p> <p>Marikar, Sheila. &#8220; <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/Movies/story?id=7119825&amp;amp;page=1" type="external">Natasha Richardson Died of Epidural Hematoma After Skiing Accident</a>.&#8221; ABCNews.com. 19 Mar 2009.</p> <p>Alfonsi, Sharyn and Jonann Brady. &#8220; <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=7214194&amp;amp;page=1" type="external">911 Tapes Reveal Richardson Timeline From Accident to Treatment</a>.&#8221; ABCNews.com 31 Mar 2009.</p> <p>Chung, Andrew. &#8220; <a href="http://www.thestar.com/article/605345" type="external">Richardson death highlights air ambulance woes.</a>&#8221; Toronto Star. 20 Mar 2009.</p> <p>Atlas &amp;amp; Database of Air Medical Services. <a href="http://www.adamsairmed.org/public_site.html" type="external">ADAMS Annual Public Atlas</a>, 6th ed. Sep 2008.</p> <p>Obama, Barack. <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-of-the-President-in-an-Online-Town-Hall-on-Health-Care-Reform/" type="external">Remarks by the president in an online town hall on health care</a>, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, Va. WhiteHouse.gov. 1 Jul 2009.</p> <p><a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_public_laws&amp;amp;docid=f:publ005.111.pdf" type="external">American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009</a>. Public Law 111-5. 17 Feb 2009.</p> <p>Austen, Ian. &#8220; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/health/21richardson.html?_r=1" type="external">Richardson Saw Doctors Several Hours After Fall</a>.&#8221; The New York Times. 21 Mar 2009.</p> <p>McCaughey, Betsy. &#8220; <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;amp;sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs" type="external">Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan</a>.&#8221; Bloomberg News. 9 Feb. 2009.</p> <p>Daschle, Tom. &#8220;Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.&#8221; St. Martin&#8217;s Press, 2008.</p>

England’s and Canada’s Health Care

https://factcheck.org/2009/07/englands-and-canadas-health-care/

2009-07-09

2least

Q Is it true that persons older than 59 can8217t get heart surgery in England A There8217s no such prohibition on heart operations in England as a chain email claims FULL QUESTION Is this email true SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada EET It took eight hours to drive her to a hospital If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today We now have helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes Obama wants to have our healthcare like Canada 8216s and England 8216s In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed I got this today and am sending it on If Obama8217s plans in other areas don8217t scare you this should Looks like Obama is sure keeping his word CHANGES We better have our funerals paid up may be needing it sooner rather than later with no Dr8217s on our side to keep us healthy What will this world be like in another 20 YEARS WHEN OUR KIDS ARE READY FOR RETIREMENT SAD Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a senior citizen is getting close or knows somebody that is Most of you know by now that the Senate version at least of the stimulus bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens8230 The author of this part of the bill former senator and tax evader Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg with the following statement Bloomberg Daschle says healthcare reform will not be pain free Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them If this does not sufficiently raise your ire just remember that Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low copay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes Please use the power of the internet to get this message out Talk it up at the grassroots level8230 We have an election coming up in one year and nine months We have the ability to address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies have begun and in the interim we can make their lives miserable Lets do it If you disagree don8217t do anything EET FULL ANSWER This widely forwarded email targeted to senior citizens and claiming that health care legislation could constitute senior death warrants is riddled with false claims The anonymous email claims that in England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed That8217s false We called the United Kingdom8217s Department of Health and a spokesman told us It is not true that anyone aged over 59 years cannot receive heart repairs stents or bypass surgery on the basis of their age He also said that medical procedures in the UK are not routinely denied for older people The National Health Service the UK8217s public health care service has a constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age and other factors The NHS Constitution states that the NHS provides a 8216comprehensive service available to all irrespective of gender race disability age sexual orientation religion or belief8217 the spokesman said We also contacted a nonprofit group England8217s Age Concern and Help the Aged which works to stop age discrimination in various facets of life including employment and health care Age Concern8217s press office had never heard of any kind of prohibition on heart surgery for those 60 and older The group8217s handbook on health care says that a national organization was created 10 years ago to improve health care for older people One of the standards for the organization is 8220rooting out age discrimination8221 Age Concern does receive complaints from older citizens and its Web site says that ageism in health care does occur It says for example that a doctor could refuse to refer an older patient to a consultant medical professionals may make inappropriate comments about the patient or a patient might even be pushed into a care home you don8217t want or be refused specific social services because of your age The site then tells older people what they can do if they feel they8217ve been mistreated The site mentions one age limit 8211 those over the age of 70 won8217t get regular invitations every three years to breast cancer screenings But those older folks get a screening if they request one Canadian Choppers The email also falsely claims that it took eight hours to drive actress Natasha Richardson to a hospital in Canada in March after she fell and hit her head while skiing If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today the email speculates saying that the US has fastmoving medical helicopters and implying that Canada doesn8217t That8217s not true in fact the province of Ontario has an air ambulance system that the Toronto Star called the envy of North America and the largest and most sophisticated of its kind on the continent However it is true that the province of Quebec where Richardson was skiing is the only province in the country that doesn8217t have an air ambulance system according to the Star And her death raised questions about whether a helicopter could have made a difference in the tragedy Mont Tremblant Ski Resort where Richardson was taking a lesson on a beginner8217s slope on March 16 is about 25 miles from Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in SteAgathe where Richardson was first takenamp160Ambulance records obtained by the New York Times show that the ambulance arrived nine minutes after a call was made for it and it took 38 minutes to get to Centre Hospitalier Laurentienamp160Richardson was later moved to Montreal8217s SacreCoeur Hospital which has a trauma center and a team of neurosurgeons that the smaller SteAgathe hospital lacks The ambulance that took her to SteAgathe was the second to arrive for her the first was turned away when the actress said she was fine As the Times and many others reported the first ambulance arrived at 1 pm but was turned away At 3 pm when Richardson said she wasn8217t feeling well the second ambulance was summoned Paramedics attended to her and then made the 38minute trip to the hospital in SteAgathe arriving at 420 pm At about 6 pm she was transported to the Montreal hospital The time line of events has prompted many questions as to whether Richardson could have been successfully treated had the ambulance taken her straight to the Montreal hospital rather than SteAgathe or if she had gone to the hospital in the first ambulance or if she had been transported sooner from the SteAgathe hospital to the facility in Montreal Or if a helicopter could have taken her from SteAgathe to Montreal a drive of about 45 minutes or if a helicopter could have been called by the resort The Toronto Star reported that 8220Quebec is the only province that doesn8217t have a network of helicopter air ambulances in place8221 a situation the Quebec government had been studying The Star said that the head of the trauma center at Montreal8217s McGill University Health Centre had voiced concerns about this at a conference before Richardson8217s death Dr Tarek Razek warned that skiers needed to wear helmets saying I cannot get you to my centre fast enough to have those reductions in mortality I just can8217t8221 Razek told conference participants that Quebec was the only region that I8217ve ever been able to find in the Western world without an air ambulance system In a letter to Canada8217s National Post Razek said that Canada8217s health care system wasn8217t at fault putting the blame squarely on Quebec Razek letter to National Post published April 11 Our failure to ensure public safety to a minimum standard is indeed shameful but it is not a failure of Canadian health care as this service exists in most of Canada Rather it is a failure of Quebec health care Another Canadian newspaper Montreal8217s Gazette quoted the director of Quebec8217s prehospital care as saying that the lack of helicopters was a matter of cost Daniel LeFran231ois told the Gazette that it was a case of the biggest gain for the biggest need saying it costs 6000 for one hour of flight LeFran231ois noted that Quebec8217s accident death rate was slightly lower than Canada8217s average So would Richardson have had a better chance of survival had she been skiing in a different Canadian province or in the United States We can8217t possibly say It8217s worth noting that not every state in the US has medical evacuation helicopters 8211 Vermont and Rhode Island small states to be sure do not according to the Atlas ampamp Database of Air Medical Services which is funded by the Federal Highway Administration As shown on this map some areas of the country have many more air medical services than others In North Dakota and Wyoming for instance it could take well over 30 minutes for an evacuation helicopter to get the scene of an accident depending on the location What Obama Wants After making false and disparaging claims about health care in those two countries the email says that Obama wants to have our healthcare like Canada8217s and England8217s Actually the president has said repeatedly that he doesn8217t want a singlepayer system like England and Canada have one in which everyone has insurance through the government We8217ve written about this several times as conservative groups former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney and thenpresidential candidate John McCainhave all made similar claims and implications Obama has said that the United States should build on the system it has now His stance has irritated some single payer advocates and prompted several questions about why he8217s against such a system On July 1 at a town hall meeting in Annandale Va Obama was asked again why the US shouldn8217t have a single payer system The president responded Obama July 1 8230 the way our health care system evolved in the United States it evolved based on employers providing health insurance to their employees through private insurers And so that8217s still the way that the vast majority of you get your insurance And for us to transition completely from an employerbased system of private insurance to a singlepayer system could be hugely disruptive And my attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free market system 8230 But I recognize that there are lot of people who are passionateamp1608211 they look at France or some of these other systems and they say well why can8217t we just do that Well the answer is is that this is onesixth of our economy and we8217re not suddenly just going to completely upend the system We want to build on what works about the system and fix what8217s broken about the system And that8217s what I think Congress is committed to doing and I8217m committed to working with them to make it happen Daschle Didn8217t Say That Finally the email claims that the stimulus bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens No it doesn8217t Some conservatives have said that a council overseeing the government8217s funding of comparative effectiveness research research into which medicines and procedures work best and are most costeffective will ration health care But the council created by the stimulus legislation now public law doesn8217t have any power to do that In fact the legislation stipulates that none of the reports submitted under this section or recommendations made by the Council shall be construed as mandates or clinical guidelines for payment coverage or treatment The email speculates that former Sen Tom Daschle once Obama8217s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services was the author of this part of the bill And it falsely says that Bloomberg News quoted Daschle as saying Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them Daschle didn8217t say that Instead those are the words of the former Republican lieutenant governor of New York Betsy McCaughey who wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg News and offered her reading of comments in Daschle8217s book Back in February we dissected McCaughey8217s column pieces of which have popped up in chain emails and found it to be full of errors McCaughey also passes off opinion as fact and in the case of Daschle she paraphrases him which is clear from the lack of quote marks in the column What Daschle did say is a far cry from seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them Instead he wrote without mentioning age in his book Critical What We Can Do About the HealthCare Crisis The use and overuse of new technologies and treatments is grounded in American culture 8230 More so than people in other countries Americans just aren8217t inclined to fatalistically accept a hopeless diagnosis or forgo experimental interventions if there is even the slightest chance of success He also quoted Rutgers University health care policy expert David Mechanic who wrote more and more of what were once seen as social behaviorial or normative aspects of everyday life or as normal processes of aging are now framed in a medical context 8230 Whether wrinkles breasts or buttocks impotence or social anxieties or inattention in school they all have become grist for the medical mill 8211 Lori Robertson Sources Spokesman United Kingdom Department of Health Email sent to FactCheckorg 8 Jul 2009 Press office Age Concern and Help for the Aged London Interview with FactCheckorg 7 Jul 2009 United Kingdom Department of Health 8220 The NHS Constitution for England8221 21 Jan 2009 Age Concern NHS Services factsheet Apr 2008 Age Concern Ageism in the health service and social care Ageconcernorguk 2009 Accessed 9 Jul 2009 Fidelman Charlie 8220MDs call for air ambulance Movie star one of many cases they say8221 Gazette Montreal 2 Apr 2009 Ogilvie Megan 8220How Ontario rescued its air ambulances8221 Toronto Star 28 Mar 2009 Razek Tarek Letter to the editor National Post 11 Apr 2009 Marikar Sheila 8220 Natasha Richardson Died of Epidural Hematoma After Skiing Accident8221 ABCNewscom 19 Mar 2009 Alfonsi Sharyn and Jonann Brady 8220 911 Tapes Reveal Richardson Timeline From Accident to Treatment8221 ABCNewscom 31 Mar 2009 Chung Andrew 8220 Richardson death highlights air ambulance woes8221 Toronto Star 20 Mar 2009 Atlas ampamp Database of Air Medical Services ADAMS Annual Public Atlas 6th ed Sep 2008 Obama Barack Remarks by the president in an online town hall on health care Northern Virginia Community College Annandale Va WhiteHousegov 1 Jul 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Public Law 1115 17 Feb 2009 Austen Ian 8220 Richardson Saw Doctors Several Hours After Fall8221 The New York Times 21 Mar 2009 McCaughey Betsy 8220 Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan8221 Bloomberg News 9 Feb 2009 Daschle Tom 8220Critical What We Can Do About the HealthCare Crisis8221 St Martin8217s Press 2008

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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>HOUSTON &#8212; The Latest on Super Bowl 51 (all times local):</p> <p>___</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>9:25 p.m.</p> <p>Tom Brady has a record fifth Super Bowl win for a quarterback after the biggest comeback in the game&#8217;s history, and one of the greatest catches.</p> <p>James White ran 2 yards for a touchdown on the first possession of overtime, and the Patriots came back from 25 points down for a 34-28 win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51.</p> <p>The Patriots drove to the tying score with help from a unbelievable catch by Julian Edelman, who somehow kept the ball off the turf on a diving grab of a tipped pass that bounced off a defender&#8217;s shoe.</p> <p>James White ran 1 yard for a touchdown, and Brady&#8217;s 2-point conversion pass to Danny Amendola tied the score at 28-all with 57 seconds left.</p> <p>The Falcons, who lost again in their second Super Bowl, led 28-3 in the third quarter after Matt Ryan&#8217;s second touchdown pass. Robert Alford had an 82-yard interception return in the first half.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: The New England Patriots have wiped out a 28-3 deficit to force the first overtime in Super Bowl history against the Atlanta Falcons.</p> <p>Tom Brady threw a tying 2-point conversion pass to Danny Amendola after James White&#8217;s 1-yard touchdown run to get the Patriots even at 28-all with 57 seconds remaining.</p> <p>The tying sequence was set up by a stunning catch from Julian Edelman, who somehow kept a tipped pass off the ground with a diving catch at the Atlanta 41.</p> <p>No team has ever come back from more than 10 points down in the Super Bowl.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:45 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: The New England Patriots are closing fast after Tom Brady&#8217;s second touchdown pass following Atlanta&#8217;s first turnover.</p> <p>Brady threw a 6-yard scoring pass to Danny Amendola and James White ran in the 2-point conversion to get the Patriots within one score at 28-20 in Super Bowl 51.</p> <p>The score was set up by Dont&#8217;a Hightower&#8217;s sack of Matt Ryan, forcing a fumble that was recovered by Alan Branch at the Falcons 25-yard line.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:35 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: The New England Patriots have gotten a little closer, but are still a long way from pulling off the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history.</p> <p>Stephen Gostkowski kicked a 33-yard field goal with 9:44 left, and New England trails the Atlanta Falcons 28-12.</p> <p>The Patriots had to settle for a field goal after Tom Brady was sacked twice in three plays after they got to the Atlanta 7. It was Gostkwoski&#8217;s second field goal of the game.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>No team has ever come back from more than 10 points down in the Super Bowl.</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:15 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: Tom Brady has thrown his first touchdown in Super Bowl 51, a 5-yarder to running back James White, but the New England Patriots still trail the Atlanta Falcons 28-9 after the third quarter.</p> <p>Stephen Gostkowski missed the extra point, which hit the right upright.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>While it was good for the Patriots to get in the end zone, the 13-play, 75-yard drive took nearly 6&#189; minutes off the clock.</p> <p>Brady had a big 15-yard run to convert third-and-8 from the Falcons 35. He was back to pass when he saw an opening and took off running, sliding down without getting hit.</p> <p>But the Patriots clearly showed some sense of desperation.</p> <p>They tried a trick play during the middle of that scoring drive, but receiver Julian Edelman&#8217;s third-and-3 pass just short of midfield was incomplete. They then went for it on fourth down, with Brady hitting Danny Amendola for 18 yards.</p> <p>After the touchdown, New England tried an onside kick. But the ball didn&#8217;t travel 10 yards before Gostkowski touched it, drawing a penalty and giving the ball to the Falcons.</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>___</p> <p>7:55 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: Matt Ryan has thrown a 6-yard touchdown pass to Tevin Coleman and the Atlanta Falcons have taken a 28-3 lead over the New England Patriots in the third quarter of Super Bowl 51.</p> <p>Ryan hit Coleman in the flat, and the Falcons running back beat linebacker Rob Ninkovich to the pylon. The score capped an 85-yard drive in eight plays, fueled by a 35-yard pass to Taylor Gabriel.</p> <p>Ryan, the NFL regular-season MVP, is 12 of 14 for 193 yards with two touchdowns.</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>___</p> <p>7:45 p.m.</p> <p>The Atlanta Falcons have already defeated two Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks this postseason.</p> <p>Now they have a 21-3 in the second half over four-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.</p> <p>Only one team has ever defeated three starting Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks in the same postseason, according to Elias.</p> <p>That was seven years ago when the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, after wins over Kurt Warner and Brett Favre in the NFC playoffs.</p> <p>Atlanta got to Super Bowl 51 with NFC playoff wins over Russell Wilson (Seattle Seahawks) and Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay Packers).</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>7:35 p.m.</p> <p>The roof is closed for the game but was opened slightly for Lady Gaga&#8217;s Super Bowl halftime show.</p> <p>The answer for why came at the end of a spectacular display of lights during her performance. Fireworks were set off from the roof of Houston&#8217;s NRG Stadium as the show finished.</p> <p>The roof closed again as soon as the show was over. Some of the smoke and haze from the show escaped, but not all of it. As happens frequently at the Super Bowl &#8212; particularly those indoors &#8212; there was a haze for the start of the second half.</p> <p>The New England Patriots trail the Atlanta Falcons 21-3 at halftime. The Patriots have won four straight games indoors. Their last defeat was Super Bowl 46 after the 2011 season, a 21-17 loss to the New York Giants.</p> <p>___</p> <p>7:15 p.m.</p> <p>Tom Brady is facing quite a challenge to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls.</p> <p>Brady had an interception returned for a touchdown, and a New England fumble turned into another score for Atlanta in the first half of Super Bowl 51. The Falcons lead 21-3, with New England getting its only score on a 41-yard field goal with 2 seconds left in the half.</p> <p>This is the seventh Super Bowl that Brady has started for New England. The Patriots had never trailed by more than 10 points in any of their previous six Super Bowls.</p> <p>Brady is 16-of-26 passing for 184 yards, and that interception Robert Alford returned 82 yards for a touchdown and a 21-0 Atlanta lead.</p> <p>Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan, this season&#8217;s MVP, is 7-of-8 passing for 115 yards and a touchdown.</p> <p>Falcons linebacker De&#8217;Vondre Campbell left in the first half with cramps and was questionable to return.</p> <p>___</p> <p>7:05 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: Stephen Gostkowski kicked a 41-yard field goal with 2 seconds left in the first half, and the New England Patriots finally are on the scoreboard.</p> <p>The Atlanta Falcons, trying to win their first Super Bowl, lead 21-3 at halftime.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:50 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: Robert Alford&#8217;s 82-yard interception return for a touchdown has put the Atlanta Falcons up 21-0 over the New England Patriots with 2:21 left in the first half.</p> <p>It appeared that the Patriots might finally get on the scoreboard, but Tom Brady was under pressure when he unloaded the third-down pass.</p> <p>If Brady is going to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls, he and the Patriots will have to do something that has never been done.</p> <p>According to Elias Sports, no team has won a Super Bowl after trailing by more than 10 points.</p> <p>Three teams have overcome 10-point deficits to win the Super Bowl. The most recent was Brady and the Patriots two years ago against the Seattle Seahawks.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:35 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: Matt Ryan has thrown a 19-yard touchdown pass to tight end Austin Hooper and the Atlanta Falcons lead the New England Patriots 14-0 with 8:48 to go in the first half of Super Bowl 51.</p> <p>Ryan, trying to become the first player to be the NFL&#8217;s MVP and win a Super Bowl in the same season since 1999, is 7-of-8 passing for 115 yards.</p> <p>The latest drive, after a Patriots punt, started with Ryan hitting Taylor Gabriel for 24 yards and then throwing an 18-yard pass to Julio Jones, who made a nice tip-toe catch along the sideline.</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:15 p.m.</p> <p>SCORE ALERT: The Atlanta Falcons have taken a 7-0 lead in Super Bowl 51 on Devonta Freeman&#8217;s 5-yard touchdown run with 12:15 left in the second quarter.</p> <p>The five-play, 71-yard drive was set up when Deion Jones forced a fumble by Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount, and the ball was recovered by Richard Alford.</p> <p>Matt Ryan, the NFL MVP, then threw passes of 19 and 23 yards to Julio Jones, who didn&#8217;t catch a pass in the first quarter.</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:05 p.m.</p> <p>While so many were expecting a shootout, a scoreless first quarter in the Super Bowl is nothing new for Tom Brady.</p> <p>Brady, trying to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls, never led his team to a point in the first quarter of his previous six Super Bowls, including his four wins.</p> <p>In the 2004 Super Bowl in the same building, when the Patriots beat Carolina 32-29, it was scoreless after the first quarter in Houston&#8217;s NRG Stadium.</p> <p>Each team punted twice in the first quarter. The biggest highlight was Devonta Freeman&#8217;s 37-yard run for Atlanta. But the Falcons didn&#8217;t get another first down on that drive.</p> <p>For the first time in 11 years, both teams punted on each of their first two offensive possessions in a Super Bowl.</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:50 p.m.</p> <p>It was a great start for the Atlanta Falcons with Devonta Freeman&#8217;s 37-yard run on their first offensive snap of the game.</p> <p>Freeman then ran for 3 yards and they didn&#8217;t get another first down on the opening drive before MVP Matt Ryan was sacked on third down by Trey Flowers.</p> <p>So the teams exchanged punts on their first two drives. It was the first time Atlanta hadn&#8217;t scored on its opening possession in nine games.</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:35 p.m.</p> <p>Former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, took part in the pregame coin toss &#8212; and New England Patriots have the ball first in Super Bowl 51.</p> <p>The Atlanta Falcons won the toss, but deferred their selection to the second half.</p> <p>The former first couple got a huge ovation, including applause from coaches and players from both teams, when they came onto the field slowly with Barbara in a golf cart and the 92-year-old former president being pushed in a wheelchair next to her.</p> <p>The Bushes often attend games of the Houston Texans, the host stadium for its second Super Bowl.</p> <p>Bush, the nation&#8217;s 41st president, was recently released from Houston Methodist Hospital, where he received treatment for pneumonia for more than two weeks.</p> <p>Vice President Mike Pence was also attending the game. He was seen applauding as well.</p> <p>The teams were on the wrong sides when they lined up and had to be told to switch sides.</p> <p>&#8212; Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:05 p.m.</p> <p>The teams have cleared the field and the Super Bowl pre-game festivities are close to beginning.</p> <p>The New England Patriots jogged off the turf to cheers at Houston&#8217;s NRG Stadium while the Atlanta Falcons ran through some of their plays as part of final preparations Sunday.</p> <p>Tom Brady got the biggest roar during warmups by running the length of the field and throwing some fist pumps at the crowd from the end zone with the Patriots logo. The 39-year-old New England star is trying to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls.</p> <p>After the players left, workers began setting up speakers and a small stage that mirrored part of the NFL logo at midfield.</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>4:35 p.m.</p> <p>Tom Brady has taken the field for the Super Bowl, and fired up New England fans with a couple of fist pumps as he finished a run toward the end zone covered with the Patriots logo.</p> <p>Brady is trying to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls. It would give him one more than Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana.</p> <p>The Patriots are going for their fifth title as well. From the sound of things during the pregame, they&#8217;ve got plenty of support at Houston&#8217;s NRG Stadium.</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>3:55 p.m.</p> <p>President Donald Trump is predicting an 8-point victory by the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.</p> <p>Trump made the prediction during a Fox News interview taped Saturday and aired a few hours before the game.</p> <p>While Trump counts Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as a friend and says he likes coach Bill Belichick and owner Bob Kraft, he also praises the Atlanta Falcons as a &#8220;fantastic team.&#8221;</p> <p>But, Trump says, &#8220;You have to stick up for your friends, right?&#8221;</p> <p>Trump tells Fox News host Bill O&#8217;Reilly that the Patriots are more comfortable because they&#8217;ve been to the big game before. He says, &#8220;Once you&#8217;ve done it, there&#8217;s a lot less pressure.&#8221;</p> <p>The Patriots have won the Super Bowl four times while the Falcons have played for the championship once and lost.</p> <p>___</p> <p>3:15 p.m.</p> <p>If you&#8217;re without a device in New York City and need an update on who&#8217;s winning the Super Bowl, find the Empire State Building.</p> <p>At kickoff at Houston&#8217;s NRG Stadium, the famous tower in Manhattan will be split between the colors of the New England Patriots (blue, red and white) and the Atlanta Falcons (red and black). When each team scores, the building will sparkle in that team&#8217;s colors. It will remain lit in the colors of the team with the lead.</p> <p>After the game, the winning team&#8217;s colors will sparkle for an hour before remaining lit in those colors until sunrise.</p> <p>The Empire State Building did the same thing a year ago when Denver beat Carolina last year.</p> <p>&#8212; Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston</p> <p>___</p> <p>2 p.m.</p> <p>Fans started entering NRG Stadium four hours before the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons.</p> <p>The Patriots are going for their fifth Super Bowl in the Tom Brady-Bill Belichick era. A win would give Brady the most Super Bowls in league history, breaking a tie with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw.</p> <p>The Patriots have overcome Brady&#8217;s four-game &#8220;Deflategate&#8221; suspension, star tight end Rob Gronkowski&#8217;s season-ending back surgery and the loss of two defensive stalwarts, Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins.</p> <p>The Falcons, making their second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history, are going for their first title led by league MVP Matt Ryan and wide receiver Julio Jones.</p> <p>Country star Luke Bryan will do the national anthem and Lady Gaga will perform the halftime show.</p> <p>New England will enter the game as a 3-point favorite.</p> <p>___</p> <p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>

Pats pull of biggest Super Bowl comeback

https://abqjournal.com/943188/the-latest-trump-says-patriots-by-8-over-falcons.html

2017-02-05

2least

HOUSTON 8212 The Latest on Super Bowl 51 all times local ___ ADVERTISEMENT 925 pm Tom Brady has a record fifth Super Bowl win for a quarterback after the biggest comeback in the game8217s history and one of the greatest catches James White ran 2 yards for a touchdown on the first possession of overtime and the Patriots came back from 25 points down for a 3428 win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl 51 The Patriots drove to the tying score with help from a unbelievable catch by Julian Edelman who somehow kept the ball off the turf on a diving grab of a tipped pass that bounced off a defender8217s shoe James White ran 1 yard for a touchdown and Brady8217s 2point conversion pass to Danny Amendola tied the score at 28all with 57 seconds left The Falcons who lost again in their second Super Bowl led 283 in the third quarter after Matt Ryan8217s second touchdown pass Robert Alford had an 82yard interception return in the first half ADVERTISEMENT 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ SCORE ALERT The New England Patriots have wiped out a 283 deficit to force the first overtime in Super Bowl history against the Atlanta Falcons Tom Brady threw a tying 2point conversion pass to Danny Amendola after James White8217s 1yard touchdown run to get the Patriots even at 28all with 57 seconds remaining The tying sequence was set up by a stunning catch from Julian Edelman who somehow kept a tipped pass off the ground with a diving catch at the Atlanta 41 No team has ever come back from more than 10 points down in the Super Bowl ADVERTISEMENT 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ 845 pm SCORE ALERT The New England Patriots are closing fast after Tom Brady8217s second touchdown pass following Atlanta8217s first turnover Brady threw a 6yard scoring pass to Danny Amendola and James White ran in the 2point conversion to get the Patriots within one score at 2820 in Super Bowl 51 The score was set up by Dont8217a Hightower8217s sack of Matt Ryan forcing a fumble that was recovered by Alan Branch at the Falcons 25yard line ADVERTISEMENT 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ 835 pm SCORE ALERT The New England Patriots have gotten a little closer but are still a long way from pulling off the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history Stephen Gostkowski kicked a 33yard field goal with 944 left and New England trails the Atlanta Falcons 2812 The Patriots had to settle for a field goal after Tom Brady was sacked twice in three plays after they got to the Atlanta 7 It was Gostkwoski8217s second field goal of the game ADVERTISEMENT No team has ever come back from more than 10 points down in the Super Bowl 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ___ 815 pm SCORE ALERT Tom Brady has thrown his first touchdown in Super Bowl 51 a 5yarder to running back James White but the New England Patriots still trail the Atlanta Falcons 289 after the third quarter Stephen Gostkowski missed the extra point which hit the right upright ADVERTISEMENT While it was good for the Patriots to get in the end zone the 13play 75yard drive took nearly 6189 minutes off the clock Brady had a big 15yard run to convert thirdand8 from the Falcons 35 He was back to pass when he saw an opening and took off running sliding down without getting hit But the Patriots clearly showed some sense of desperation They tried a trick play during the middle of that scoring drive but receiver Julian Edelman8217s thirdand3 pass just short of midfield was incomplete They then went for it on fourth down with Brady hitting Danny Amendola for 18 yards After the touchdown New England tried an onside kick But the ball didn8217t travel 10 yards before Gostkowski touched it drawing a penalty and giving the ball to the Falcons 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ADVERTISEMENT ___ 755 pm SCORE ALERT Matt Ryan has thrown a 6yard touchdown pass to Tevin Coleman and the Atlanta Falcons have taken a 283 lead over the New England Patriots in the third quarter of Super Bowl 51 Ryan hit Coleman in the flat and the Falcons running back beat linebacker Rob Ninkovich to the pylon The score capped an 85yard drive in eight plays fueled by a 35yard pass to Taylor Gabriel Ryan the NFL regularseason MVP is 12 of 14 for 193 yards with two touchdowns 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ADVERTISEMENT ___ 745 pm The Atlanta Falcons have already defeated two Super Bowlwinning quarterbacks this postseason Now they have a 213 in the second half over fourtime Super Bowl champion Tom Brady and the New England Patriots Only one team has ever defeated three starting Super Bowlwinning quarterbacks in the same postseason according to Elias That was seven years ago when the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts after wins over Kurt Warner and Brett Favre in the NFC playoffs Atlanta got to Super Bowl 51 with NFC playoff wins over Russell Wilson Seattle Seahawks and Aaron Rodgers Green Bay Packers 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ___ 735 pm The roof is closed for the game but was opened slightly for Lady Gaga8217s Super Bowl halftime show The answer for why came at the end of a spectacular display of lights during her performance Fireworks were set off from the roof of Houston8217s NRG Stadium as the show finished The roof closed again as soon as the show was over Some of the smoke and haze from the show escaped but not all of it As happens frequently at the Super Bowl 8212 particularly those indoors 8212 there was a haze for the start of the second half The New England Patriots trail the Atlanta Falcons 213 at halftime The Patriots have won four straight games indoors Their last defeat was Super Bowl 46 after the 2011 season a 2117 loss to the New York Giants ___ 715 pm Tom Brady is facing quite a challenge to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls Brady had an interception returned for a touchdown and a New England fumble turned into another score for Atlanta in the first half of Super Bowl 51 The Falcons lead 213 with New England getting its only score on a 41yard field goal with 2 seconds left in the half This is the seventh Super Bowl that Brady has started for New England The Patriots had never trailed by more than 10 points in any of their previous six Super Bowls Brady is 16of26 passing for 184 yards and that interception Robert Alford returned 82 yards for a touchdown and a 210 Atlanta lead Atlanta quarterback Matt Ryan this season8217s MVP is 7of8 passing for 115 yards and a touchdown Falcons linebacker De8217Vondre Campbell left in the first half with cramps and was questionable to return ___ 705 pm SCORE ALERT Stephen Gostkowski kicked a 41yard field goal with 2 seconds left in the first half and the New England Patriots finally are on the scoreboard The Atlanta Falcons trying to win their first Super Bowl lead 213 at halftime ___ 650 pm SCORE ALERT Robert Alford8217s 82yard interception return for a touchdown has put the Atlanta Falcons up 210 over the New England Patriots with 221 left in the first half It appeared that the Patriots might finally get on the scoreboard but Tom Brady was under pressure when he unloaded the thirddown pass If Brady is going to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls he and the Patriots will have to do something that has never been done According to Elias Sports no team has won a Super Bowl after trailing by more than 10 points Three teams have overcome 10point deficits to win the Super Bowl The most recent was Brady and the Patriots two years ago against the Seattle Seahawks ___ 635 pm SCORE ALERT Matt Ryan has thrown a 19yard touchdown pass to tight end Austin Hooper and the Atlanta Falcons lead the New England Patriots 140 with 848 to go in the first half of Super Bowl 51 Ryan trying to become the first player to be the NFL8217s MVP and win a Super Bowl in the same season since 1999 is 7of8 passing for 115 yards The latest drive after a Patriots punt started with Ryan hitting Taylor Gabriel for 24 yards and then throwing an 18yard pass to Julio Jones who made a nice tiptoe catch along the sideline 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ___ 615 pm SCORE ALERT The Atlanta Falcons have taken a 70 lead in Super Bowl 51 on Devonta Freeman8217s 5yard touchdown run with 1215 left in the second quarter The fiveplay 71yard drive was set up when Deion Jones forced a fumble by Patriots running back LeGarrette Blount and the ball was recovered by Richard Alford Matt Ryan the NFL MVP then threw passes of 19 and 23 yards to Julio Jones who didn8217t catch a pass in the first quarter 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ___ 605 pm While so many were expecting a shootout a scoreless first quarter in the Super Bowl is nothing new for Tom Brady Brady trying to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls never led his team to a point in the first quarter of his previous six Super Bowls including his four wins In the 2004 Super Bowl in the same building when the Patriots beat Carolina 3229 it was scoreless after the first quarter in Houston8217s NRG Stadium Each team punted twice in the first quarter The biggest highlight was Devonta Freeman8217s 37yard run for Atlanta But the Falcons didn8217t get another first down on that drive For the first time in 11 years both teams punted on each of their first two offensive possessions in a Super Bowl 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ 550 pm It was a great start for the Atlanta Falcons with Devonta Freeman8217s 37yard run on their first offensive snap of the game Freeman then ran for 3 yards and they didn8217t get another first down on the opening drive before MVP Matt Ryan was sacked on third down by Trey Flowers So the teams exchanged punts on their first two drives It was the first time Atlanta hadn8217t scored on its opening possession in nine games 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ___ 535 pm Former President George HW Bush and his wife Barbara took part in the pregame coin toss 8212 and New England Patriots have the ball first in Super Bowl 51 The Atlanta Falcons won the toss but deferred their selection to the second half The former first couple got a huge ovation including applause from coaches and players from both teams when they came onto the field slowly with Barbara in a golf cart and the 92yearold former president being pushed in a wheelchair next to her The Bushes often attend games of the Houston Texans the host stadium for its second Super Bowl Bush the nation8217s 41st president was recently released from Houston Methodist Hospital where he received treatment for pneumonia for more than two weeks Vice President Mike Pence was also attending the game He was seen applauding as well The teams were on the wrong sides when they lined up and had to be told to switch sides 8212 Stephen Hawkins reporting from Houston ___ 505 pm The teams have cleared the field and the Super Bowl pregame festivities are close to beginning The New England Patriots jogged off the turf to cheers at Houston8217s NRG Stadium while the Atlanta Falcons ran through some of their plays as part of final preparations Sunday Tom Brady got the biggest roar during warmups by running the length of the field and throwing some fist pumps at the crowd from the end zone with the Patriots logo The 39yearold New England star is trying to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls After the players left workers began setting up speakers and a small stage that mirrored part of the NFL logo at midfield 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ 435 pm Tom Brady has taken the field for the Super Bowl and fired up New England fans with a couple of fist pumps as he finished a run toward the end zone covered with the Patriots logo Brady is trying to become the first quarterback to win five Super Bowls It would give him one more than Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana The Patriots are going for their fifth title as well From the sound of things during the pregame they8217ve got plenty of support at Houston8217s NRG Stadium 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ 355 pm President Donald Trump is predicting an 8point victory by the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl Trump made the prediction during a Fox News interview taped Saturday and aired a few hours before the game While Trump counts Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as a friend and says he likes coach Bill Belichick and owner Bob Kraft he also praises the Atlanta Falcons as a 8220fantastic team8221 But Trump says 8220You have to stick up for your friends right8221 Trump tells Fox News host Bill O8217Reilly that the Patriots are more comfortable because they8217ve been to the big game before He says 8220Once you8217ve done it there8217s a lot less pressure8221 The Patriots have won the Super Bowl four times while the Falcons have played for the championship once and lost ___ 315 pm If you8217re without a device in New York City and need an update on who8217s winning the Super Bowl find the Empire State Building At kickoff at Houston8217s NRG Stadium the famous tower in Manhattan will be split between the colors of the New England Patriots blue red and white and the Atlanta Falcons red and black When each team scores the building will sparkle in that team8217s colors It will remain lit in the colors of the team with the lead After the game the winning team8217s colors will sparkle for an hour before remaining lit in those colors until sunrise The Empire State Building did the same thing a year ago when Denver beat Carolina last year 8212 Schuyler Dixon reporting from Houston ___ 2 pm Fans started entering NRG Stadium four hours before the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons The Patriots are going for their fifth Super Bowl in the Tom BradyBill Belichick era A win would give Brady the most Super Bowls in league history breaking a tie with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw The Patriots have overcome Brady8217s fourgame 8220Deflategate8221 suspension star tight end Rob Gronkowski8217s seasonending back surgery and the loss of two defensive stalwarts Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins The Falcons making their second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history are going for their first title led by league MVP Matt Ryan and wide receiver Julio Jones Country star Luke Bryan will do the national anthem and Lady Gaga will perform the halftime show New England will enter the game as a 3point favorite ___ For more NFL coverage httpwwwpro32aporg and httpwwwtwittercomAP_NFL

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<p>(Reuters) - A climate change advocacy group on Tuesday sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for banning certain scientists from serving on its advisory committees, a move the group said will give business an unfair influence on policy.</p> Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during an interview with Reuters journalists in Washington, U.S., January 9, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists in federal court in Boston, reflects rising tensions between environmental advocates and the administration of President Donald Trump over its efforts to roll back climate change regulations to boost industry.</p> <p>EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in October announced the agency would bar scientists that had previously received EPA grants from serving on its independent advisory boards as a way to ensure the panels are free from bias. Critics said the policy would have the opposite effect.</p> <p>An EPA official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>The advisory boards provide the scientific input for agency decisions around pollution and climate change regulation and were created by Congress to serve as a check on EPA policies and research.</p> <p>In its complaint, the Union of Concerned Scientists called the decision a &#8220;purge&#8221;, and &#8220;an attack on science itself.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;It portrays legitimate, independent scientists &#8212; who provide accurate, evidence-based information backed by verifiable, peer-reviewed research... - as just another interest group,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>It said the EPA&#8217;s memorandum on the decision did not prove that receiving EPA grants causes bias, or explain why the decision did not also bar scientists that are affiliated with private industry or local governments.</p> <p>&#8220;The effect is that private industry views will be overweighted,&#8221; on the panels, it said.</p> <p>The complaint asks that the court to prevent the EPA from implementing the policy.</p> <p>During his election campaign last year, Trump promised to roll back environmental regulations, including those limiting carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming, to make government more friendly to the drilling, mining, and manufacturing businesses.</p> <p>Pruitt, who had sued the EPA repeatedly while Oklahoma&#8217;s attorney general, was among Trump&#8217;s most controversial nominees. He is an outspoken doubter of mainstream climate science that concludes carbon dioxide from human use of fossil fuels is a primary driver of global warming, triggering more frequent volatile storms, sea level rise and droughts.</p> <p>Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>* Dry spell exacerbating risk to crop output</p> <p>* FEWS NET estimates 10 percent drop in 2017/18 crop</p> <p>* Farmers turn to neem tree for cheaper pesticide</p> <p>By Frank Phiri</p> <p>CHIKWAWA, Malawi, March 23 (Reuters) - A worsening pest infestation is threatening Malawi&#8217;s staple maize crop for the second year running, leaving farmers struggling to salvage crops already faltering due to drought.</p> <p>The outbreak of crop-munching fall armyworms, a pest from Latin America that first threatened African crops late in 2016.</p> <p>Impoverished Malawi is periodically hit by food shortages as it relies heavily on rain-fed agriculture and most of its maize is grown on small plots by subsistence farmers.</p> <p>&#8220;The worm is not dying, but we have to keep spraying in the hope it may give up. Last year it was the same,&#8221; said 20-year-old Patricia Ntasa in Chikwawa, 77 km (48 miles) southeast of Malawi&#8217;s economic hub of Blantyre.</p> <p>In the same field, Stoneck Njanji, 40, was worn out as he tried to kill the pest using spray. &#8220;We must spray once every week until maize matures. It&#8217;s hard labour,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Official estimates of the damage to maize by both the drought and armyworms are underway, the government has said. Last year, half of Malawi&#8217;s maize was infected by armyworms.</p> <p>The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which issues alarms about food shortages, said in its February report that drought and the pest infestation will reduce maize harvests by 10 percent in the 2017/18 (October to April) season.</p> <p>Malawi&#8217;s maize production in the 2016/17 farming season stood at 3.2 million tonnes.</p> <p>&#8220;Like last year, we have to think about what to do to find food,&#8221; said Barton Mapepa, 50, another farmer. Mapepa said his family relied on sweet potatoes to supplement its food supply.</p> <p>Malawi declared the armyworms a national disaster in December after discovering the pests had spread to 22 of Malawi&#8217;s 28 districts. In 2017, the pest infestation also affected Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.</p> <p>Lewis Lipenga, a crops protection officer in the Agriculture Ministry, the army worm had grown resistant to chemical pesticides since its arrival in Malawi, while high temperatures helped it multiply fast.</p> <p>The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) charity is working with farmers on cheaper methods to tackle the worm, such as spraying pulp from the leaves of the neem tree or planting crops resistant to the worm, such as sweet potatoes.</p> <p>&#8220;The best we can do is to try and control it, rather than expecting to eradicate it completely soon,&#8221; said Dane Fredenburg, a project director for agriculture at the CRS. (Writing by James Macharia Editing by Edmund Blair)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>OSLO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Winter sea ice on the Arctic Ocean covered the second smallest area on record this year, part of a thaw that is opening the region to shipping and oil exploration and may be disrupting weather far to the south, scientists said on Friday.</p> The Christophe de Margerie (R), an ice-class tanker fitted out to transport liquefied natural gas, is docked in Arctic port of Sabetta, Yamalo-Nenets district, Russia March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Olesya Astakhova <p>The extent of floating ice likely reached an annual maximum of 14.5 million square kilometers (5.6 million square miles) on March 17, fractionally bigger than a record set in 2017, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said.</p> <p>Sea ice around the North Pole freezes to its biggest at the end of the winter in March, and thaws to an annual minimum in September. The ice has shrunk in recent decades in a trend scientists link to man-made climate change.</p> <p>The 2018 winter ice is about a million square kilometers - roughly the size of Egypt or Colombia and bigger than the state of Texas - below the long-term average maximum, NSIDC data show. The center, affiliated with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, studies satellite data of the ice going back 39 years.</p> <p>The diminishing ice seems at odds with remarks by President Donald Trump in a television interview in January that &#8220;The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now. But now they&#8217;re setting records.&#8221;</p> <p>Until now, most scientific focus has been on a trend of shrinking Arctic sea ice in summer, which is opening shipping routes from the Pacific to the Atlantic and allowing oil and gas exploration even as it harms indigenous peoples and wildlife such as polar bears.</p> <p>Now, &#8220;things are increasingly about the winter time,&#8221; said Tor Eldevik, a professor at the University of Bergen&#8217;s Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.</p> <p>The winter retreat means ever bigger areas are ice-free year round, especially in the Barents Sea north of Russia and Norway which is becoming more like the Atlantic Ocean, he said.</p> <p>The vast Shtokman natural gas field, north of Russia, is in an area that is now ice-free even in the depths of winter &#8211; helping Gazprom if it ever develops the find. The region was ice-bound in winter until the early 1980s, Eldevik said.</p> <p>Shipping company Teekay ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TK.N" type="external">TK.N</a>) said a tanker loaded a first cargo of liquefied natural gas at a terminal in Arctic Russia and traveled to France in January 2018 - the first ship to make such a winter voyage without an icebreaker.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TK.N" type="external">Teekay Corp</a> 7.81 TK.N New York Stock Exchange -0.23 (-2.86%) TK.N <p>The retreat may also affect weather far to the south.</p> <p>Researchers suspect that Arctic warmth can disrupt the high altitude jet stream and send brief blasts of frigid air south - such as a &#8220;beast from the East&#8221; freeze in Europe last month or bitter cold brought by a &#8220;bomb cyclone&#8221; in the eastern United States.</p> <p>&#8220;You could talk about the Arctic having a fever, and boy did the Arctic have a fever this winter, and when it does, Florida feels it,&#8221; Jennifer Francis, a professor at Rutgers University&#8217;s department of marine and coastal science, told reporters.</p> <p>Florida faced freezing temperatures this year and suffers long-term threats from sea level rise.</p> <p>At the other end of the planet, sea ice around Antarctica recently reached the second smallest for summertime since satellite records began in the 1970s, also behind 2017, the NSIDC said.</p> <p>Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Tom Brown</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>OSLO (Reuters) - Human activities are causing an alarming decline in the variety of plant and animal life on Earth and jeopardizing food, clean water and energy supplies, a U.N.-backed study of biodiversity said on Friday.</p> FILE PHOTO: A boy looks for plastic bottles at the polluted Bagmati River in Kathmandu March 22, 2013. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar/File Photo <p>Climate change will become a steadily bigger threat to biodiversity by 2050, adding to damage from pollution and forest clearance to make way for agriculture, according to more than 550 experts in a set of reports approved by 129 governments.</p> <p>&#8220;Biodiversity, the essential variety of life-forms on earth, continues to decline in every region of the world,&#8221; the authors wrote after talks in Colombia. &#8220;This alarming trend endangers the quality of life of people everywhere.&#8221;</p> <p>Four regional reports covered the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Europe and Central Asia - all areas of the planet except the poles and the high seas.</p> <p>For the Americas, the report estimated that the value of nature to people - such as crops, wood, water purification or tourism - was at least $24.3 trillion a year, equivalent to the region&#8217;s gross domestic product from Alaska to Argentina.</p> <p>Almost two-thirds of those natural contributions were in decline in the Americas, it said.</p> <p>Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), said biodiversity was not only about saving rare butterflies, trees, birds or rhinos.</p> <p>While that was important, he told Reuters a key message was: &#8220;Please stop thinking of biodiversity just as an environmental issue. It&#8217;s way more important than that&#8221;.</p> ELEPHANTS AND MOSSES <p>Among other economic estimates, the Africa report said the absorption of greenhouse gases by a hectare (2.5 acres) of forest in Central Africa was worth $14,000 a year.</p> FILE PHOTO: Logs that were illegally cut from Amazon rainforest are transported on a barge on the Tapajos river, a tributary of the Amazon, near the city of Santarem, Para state April 18, 2013. REUTERS/Nacho Doce/File Photo <p>Unless governments take strong action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, &#8220;climate change may be the biggest threat to biodiversity&#8221; by mid-century, Watson said.</p> <p>He said U.S. delegates had not challenged findings about man-made climate change, although U.S. President Donald Trump doubts mainstream scientific opinion and plans to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.</p> <p>For pollution, eight of 10 rivers around the world with most plastic waste were in Asia. On current trends, overfishing meant there could be no exploitable fish stocks in the Asia-Pacific region by mid-century.</p> <p>Around the world, ever more animals and plants were under threat from human activities, ranging from elephants in Africa to rare mosses and snails in Europe, the study said.</p> <p>&#8220;By 2100, climate change could ... result in the loss of more than half of African bird and mammal species,&#8221; said Emma Archer of South Africa, the co-chair of the African assessment.</p> <p>Rising human populations in many developing nations would require new policies, both to protect nature and to meet U.N. goals of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030.</p> <p>In Europe and Central Asia, wetlands have declined by half since 1970, threatening many species.</p> <p>Amid the gloom, there were some bright spots.</p> <p>Forest cover had risen by 22.9 percent in China and other nations in northeast Asia between 1990 and 2015. Parks and other protected areas were expanding in many regions, including the Americas and Asia-Pacific.</p> <p>And populations of animals such as the Iberian lynx, Amur tiger and far eastern leopard were coming back from the brink of extinction thanks to conservation.</p> <p>Reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Andrew Roche</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States asked China on Friday not to implement a ban on imports of scrap materials, after the world&#8217;s top scrap buyer abruptly shut the door to many types of waste, throwing the global recycling industry into turmoil.</p> A worker cuts metal at a scrap metal stall at a recycling yard at the edge of Beijing, China, October 20, 2016. REUTERS/Thomas Peter <p>Reuters broke the news last July that China had told the World Trade Organization that it would stop accepting shipments of rubbish such as waste plastic and paper as part of a campaign against &#8220;foreign garbage&#8221;.</p> <p>The U.S. Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries said at the time that the ban would devastate an industry that supported 155,000 jobs and had exported scrap worth $5.6 billion to China in 2016.</p> <p>The United States raised concerns about the ban, and a subsequent revision of standards for a variety of scrap metals, at the WTO&#8217;s Council for Trade in Goods on Friday.</p> <p>&#8220;China&#8217;s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials, directing them away from productive reuse and toward disposal,&#8221; a U.S. representative told the meeting, according to a trade official in Geneva.</p> <p>The United States recognized China&#8217;s environmental concerns but Beijing&#8217;s approach seemed to be having the opposite effect to what was intended, and its rules had changed far too quickly for industry to adjust, the U.S. representative told the meeting.</p> WTO OBLIGATIONS <p>China seemed to be breaching its WTO obligations by treating domestic and foreign waste differently and employing an overly trade-restrictive policy, the U.S. official said.</p> <p>&#8220;We request that China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for trade in scrap materials, which provide a global framework for transparent and environmentally sound trade in recycled commodities.&#8221;</p> <p>The European Union&#8217;s representative at the meeting said China&#8217;s policy would force scrap to be rerouted to third countries which may not have facilities for safe recycling, or to landfill or incineration, causing environmental damage.</p> <p>The EU also questioned the science behind China&#8217;s ban, while several countries said they appreciated China&#8217;s goal but were not convinced about how it was trying to get there.</p> <p>China&#8217;s representative agreed to take the comments into account but said that every country had a responsibility to dispose of its waste, and with its large population China was obliged to restrict imports of waste while cleaning up at home.</p> <p>&#8220;China is seeking a path toward harmonization of man and nature,&#8221; the trade official quoted China&#8217;s delegate as saying.</p> <p>The dispute over scrap comes amid increased concerns of a full-blown trade war between the United States and China.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump this week signed a memorandum targeting up to $60 billion in Chinese goods with tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property but only after a 30-day consultation period that starts once a list is published.</p> <p>Trump has also announced steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the United States.</p> <p>Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Climate advocacy group sues U.S. EPA for 'purge' of scientists Malawi farmers battle crop-munching pests as output seen falling Arctic Ocean ice near record low for winter, boost for shipping Nature's 'alarming' decline threatens food, water, energy: U.N. U.S. asks China not to implement ban on foreign garbage

https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-epa-scientists/climate-advocacy-group-sues-us-epa-for-purge-of-scientists-idUSKBN1FC2XT

2018-01-23

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Reuters A climate change advocacy group on Tuesday sued the US Environmental Protection Agency for banning certain scientists from serving on its advisory committees a move the group said will give business an unfair influence on policy Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during an interview with Reuters journalists in Washington US January 9 2018 REUTERSKevin Lamarque The lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists in federal court in Boston reflects rising tensions between environmental advocates and the administration of President Donald Trump over its efforts to roll back climate change regulations to boost industry EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in October announced the agency would bar scientists that had previously received EPA grants from serving on its independent advisory boards as a way to ensure the panels are free from bias Critics said the policy would have the opposite effect An EPA official did not immediately respond to a request for comment The advisory boards provide the scientific input for agency decisions around pollution and climate change regulation and were created by Congress to serve as a check on EPA policies and research In its complaint the Union of Concerned Scientists called the decision a 8220purge8221 and 8220an attack on science itself8221 8220It portrays legitimate independent scientists 8212 who provide accurate evidencebased information backed by verifiable peerreviewed research as just another interest group8221 it said It said the EPA8217s memorandum on the decision did not prove that receiving EPA grants causes bias or explain why the decision did not also bar scientists that are affiliated with private industry or local governments 8220The effect is that private industry views will be overweighted8221 on the panels it said The complaint asks that the court to prevent the EPA from implementing the policy During his election campaign last year Trump promised to roll back environmental regulations including those limiting carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming to make government more friendly to the drilling mining and manufacturing businesses Pruitt who had sued the EPA repeatedly while Oklahoma8217s attorney general was among Trump8217s most controversial nominees He is an outspoken doubter of mainstream climate science that concludes carbon dioxide from human use of fossil fuels is a primary driver of global warming triggering more frequent volatile storms sea level rise and droughts Writing by Richard Valdmanis Editing by Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Dry spell exacerbating risk to crop output FEWS NET estimates 10 percent drop in 201718 crop Farmers turn to neem tree for cheaper pesticide By Frank Phiri CHIKWAWA Malawi March 23 Reuters A worsening pest infestation is threatening Malawi8217s staple maize crop for the second year running leaving farmers struggling to salvage crops already faltering due to drought The outbreak of cropmunching fall armyworms a pest from Latin America that first threatened African crops late in 2016 Impoverished Malawi is periodically hit by food shortages as it relies heavily on rainfed agriculture and most of its maize is grown on small plots by subsistence farmers 8220The worm is not dying but we have to keep spraying in the hope it may give up Last year it was the same8221 said 20yearold Patricia Ntasa in Chikwawa 77 km 48 miles southeast of Malawi8217s economic hub of Blantyre In the same field Stoneck Njanji 40 was worn out as he tried to kill the pest using spray 8220We must spray once every week until maize matures It8217s hard labour8221 he said Official estimates of the damage to maize by both the drought and armyworms are underway the government has said Last year half of Malawi8217s maize was infected by armyworms The Famine Early Warning Systems Network FEWS NET which issues alarms about food shortages said in its February report that drought and the pest infestation will reduce maize harvests by 10 percent in the 201718 October to April season Malawi8217s maize production in the 201617 farming season stood at 32 million tonnes 8220Like last year we have to think about what to do to find food8221 said Barton Mapepa 50 another farmer Mapepa said his family relied on sweet potatoes to supplement its food supply Malawi declared the armyworms a national disaster in December after discovering the pests had spread to 22 of Malawi8217s 28 districts In 2017 the pest infestation also affected Zambia Zimbabwe and South Africa Lewis Lipenga a crops protection officer in the Agriculture Ministry the army worm had grown resistant to chemical pesticides since its arrival in Malawi while high temperatures helped it multiply fast The Catholic Relief Services CRS charity is working with farmers on cheaper methods to tackle the worm such as spraying pulp from the leaves of the neem tree or planting crops resistant to the worm such as sweet potatoes 8220The best we can do is to try and control it rather than expecting to eradicate it completely soon8221 said Dane Fredenburg a project director for agriculture at the CRS Writing by James Macharia Editing by Edmund Blair Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles OSLOWASHINGTON Reuters Winter sea ice on the Arctic Ocean covered the second smallest area on record this year part of a thaw that is opening the region to shipping and oil exploration and may be disrupting weather far to the south scientists said on Friday The Christophe de Margerie R an iceclass tanker fitted out to transport liquefied natural gas is docked in Arctic port of Sabetta YamaloNenets district Russia March 30 2017 REUTERSOlesya Astakhova The extent of floating ice likely reached an annual maximum of 145 million square kilometers 56 million square miles on March 17 fractionally bigger than a record set in 2017 the US National Snow and Ice Data Center NSIDC said Sea ice around the North Pole freezes to its biggest at the end of the winter in March and thaws to an annual minimum in September The ice has shrunk in recent decades in a trend scientists link to manmade climate change The 2018 winter ice is about a million square kilometers roughly the size of Egypt or Colombia and bigger than the state of Texas below the longterm average maximum NSIDC data show The center affiliated with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration studies satellite data of the ice going back 39 years The diminishing ice seems at odds with remarks by President Donald Trump in a television interview in January that 8220The ice caps were going to melt they were going to be gone by now But now they8217re setting records8221 Until now most scientific focus has been on a trend of shrinking Arctic sea ice in summer which is opening shipping routes from the Pacific to the Atlantic and allowing oil and gas exploration even as it harms indigenous peoples and wildlife such as polar bears Now 8220things are increasingly about the winter time8221 said Tor Eldevik a professor at the University of Bergen8217s Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research The winter retreat means ever bigger areas are icefree year round especially in the Barents Sea north of Russia and Norway which is becoming more like the Atlantic Ocean he said The vast Shtokman natural gas field north of Russia is in an area that is now icefree even in the depths of winter 8211 helping Gazprom if it ever develops the find The region was icebound in winter until the early 1980s Eldevik said Shipping company Teekay TKN said a tanker loaded a first cargo of liquefied natural gas at a terminal in Arctic Russia and traveled to France in January 2018 the first ship to make such a winter voyage without an icebreaker Teekay Corp 781 TKN New York Stock Exchange 023 286 TKN The retreat may also affect weather far to the south Researchers suspect that Arctic warmth can disrupt the high altitude jet stream and send brief blasts of frigid air south such as a 8220beast from the East8221 freeze in Europe last month or bitter cold brought by a 8220bomb cyclone8221 in the eastern United States 8220You could talk about the Arctic having a fever and boy did the Arctic have a fever this winter and when it does Florida feels it8221 Jennifer Francis a professor at Rutgers University8217s department of marine and coastal science told reporters Florida faced freezing temperatures this year and suffers longterm threats from sea level rise At the other end of the planet sea ice around Antarctica recently reached the second smallest for summertime since satellite records began in the 1970s also behind 2017 the NSIDC said Reporting by Alister Doyle Editing by Tom Brown Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles OSLO Reuters Human activities are causing an alarming decline in the variety of plant and animal life on Earth and jeopardizing food clean water and energy supplies a UNbacked study of biodiversity said on Friday FILE PHOTO A boy looks for plastic bottles at the polluted Bagmati River in Kathmandu March 22 2013 REUTERSNavesh ChitrakarFile Photo Climate change will become a steadily bigger threat to biodiversity by 2050 adding to damage from pollution and forest clearance to make way for agriculture according to more than 550 experts in a set of reports approved by 129 governments 8220Biodiversity the essential variety of lifeforms on earth continues to decline in every region of the world8221 the authors wrote after talks in Colombia 8220This alarming trend endangers the quality of life of people everywhere8221 Four regional reports covered the Americas Asia and the Pacific Africa Europe and Central Asia all areas of the planet except the poles and the high seas For the Americas the report estimated that the value of nature to people such as crops wood water purification or tourism was at least 243 trillion a year equivalent to the region8217s gross domestic product from Alaska to Argentina Almost twothirds of those natural contributions were in decline in the Americas it said Robert Watson chair of the Intergovernmental SciencePolicy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services IPBES said biodiversity was not only about saving rare butterflies trees birds or rhinos While that was important he told Reuters a key message was 8220Please stop thinking of biodiversity just as an environmental issue It8217s way more important than that8221 ELEPHANTS AND MOSSES Among other economic estimates the Africa report said the absorption of greenhouse gases by a hectare 25 acres of forest in Central Africa was worth 14000 a year FILE PHOTO Logs that were illegally cut from Amazon rainforest are transported on a barge on the Tapajos river a tributary of the Amazon near the city of Santarem Para state April 18 2013 REUTERSNacho DoceFile Photo Unless governments take strong action to limit greenhouse gas emissions 8220climate change may be the biggest threat to biodiversity8221 by midcentury Watson said He said US delegates had not challenged findings about manmade climate change although US President Donald Trump doubts mainstream scientific opinion and plans to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement For pollution eight of 10 rivers around the world with most plastic waste were in Asia On current trends overfishing meant there could be no exploitable fish stocks in the AsiaPacific region by midcentury Around the world ever more animals and plants were under threat from human activities ranging from elephants in Africa to rare mosses and snails in Europe the study said 8220By 2100 climate change could result in the loss of more than half of African bird and mammal species8221 said Emma Archer of South Africa the cochair of the African assessment Rising human populations in many developing nations would require new policies both to protect nature and to meet UN goals of eradicating poverty and hunger by 2030 In Europe and Central Asia wetlands have declined by half since 1970 threatening many species Amid the gloom there were some bright spots Forest cover had risen by 229 percent in China and other nations in northeast Asia between 1990 and 2015 Parks and other protected areas were expanding in many regions including the Americas and AsiaPacific And populations of animals such as the Iberian lynx Amur tiger and far eastern leopard were coming back from the brink of extinction thanks to conservation Reporting by Alister Doyle Editing by Andrew Roche Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GENEVA Reuters The United States asked China on Friday not to implement a ban on imports of scrap materials after the world8217s top scrap buyer abruptly shut the door to many types of waste throwing the global recycling industry into turmoil A worker cuts metal at a scrap metal stall at a recycling yard at the edge of Beijing China October 20 2016 REUTERSThomas Peter Reuters broke the news last July that China had told the World Trade Organization that it would stop accepting shipments of rubbish such as waste plastic and paper as part of a campaign against 8220foreign garbage8221 The US Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries said at the time that the ban would devastate an industry that supported 155000 jobs and had exported scrap worth 56 billion to China in 2016 The United States raised concerns about the ban and a subsequent revision of standards for a variety of scrap metals at the WTO8217s Council for Trade in Goods on Friday 8220China8217s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials directing them away from productive reuse and toward disposal8221 a US representative told the meeting according to a trade official in Geneva The United States recognized China8217s environmental concerns but Beijing8217s approach seemed to be having the opposite effect to what was intended and its rules had changed far too quickly for industry to adjust the US representative told the meeting WTO OBLIGATIONS China seemed to be breaching its WTO obligations by treating domestic and foreign waste differently and employing an overly traderestrictive policy the US official said 8220We request that China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for trade in scrap materials which provide a global framework for transparent and environmentally sound trade in recycled commodities8221 The European Union8217s representative at the meeting said China8217s policy would force scrap to be rerouted to third countries which may not have facilities for safe recycling or to landfill or incineration causing environmental damage The EU also questioned the science behind China8217s ban while several countries said they appreciated China8217s goal but were not convinced about how it was trying to get there China8217s representative agreed to take the comments into account but said that every country had a responsibility to dispose of its waste and with its large population China was obliged to restrict imports of waste while cleaning up at home 8220China is seeking a path toward harmonization of man and nature8221 the trade official quoted China8217s delegate as saying The dispute over scrap comes amid increased concerns of a fullblown trade war between the United States and China US President Donald Trump this week signed a memorandum targeting up to 60 billion in Chinese goods with tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of US intellectual property but only after a 30day consultation period that starts once a list is published Trump has also announced steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the United States Reporting by Tom Miles Editing by Gareth Jones Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>HONG KONG, Jan 23 (Reuters) - China&#8217;s Leshi Internet Technology shares will resume trading on Wednesday after a nine-month suspension, the company said in a filing on Tuesday.</p> <p>The company asked in April for trading to be suspended pending an acquisition of LeEco&#8217;s film unit for 9.8 billion yuan ($1.53 billion), a plan it eventually scrapped last week. ($1 = 6.4000 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by David Goodman)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NORTH CHARLESTON S.C. (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>) delivered its first 787-10 Dreamliner to Singapore Airlines ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SIAL.SI" type="external">SIAL.SI</a>) on Sunday, rounding out a family of lightweight jets on which the U.S. planemaker is betting its future.</p> A Boeing 787-10 aircraft being built for Singapore Airlines sits in the Final Assembly Area before a delivery ceremony of the first Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner at Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Randall Hill <p>The handover took place in front of hundreds of Boeing workers as a band played loud rock-and-roll at the South Carolina plant where the carbon-composite jet is built.</p> <p>The new Dreamliner was parked on the tarmac at the delivery center in front of a line of about 10 787 airplanes in various stages of completion.</p> <p>Singapore Airlines, which expanded its order for 787-10s to 49 jets last year, plans to introduce the jet on services to Osaka, Japan, starting in May.</p> <p>The 787-10 is built exclusively at the North Charleston plant due to its large size, which prevents the transfer of sections to Boeing&#8217;s factory outside Seattle. Unlike the Washington state assembly lines, the plant, which has about 7,000 workers, is not unionized.</p> <p>The aircraft, which sells for $326 million at list prices, completes a line-up of three models starting with the 787-8 which debuted in 2011. All boast carbon-composite fabrication materials, fuel efficiency and new state-of-the-air filtration systems with higher levels of humidity in the air for long-distance flight.</p> <p>The 787-10&#8217;s range is 6,430 nautical miles (11,910 kilometers).</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>At 223 feet long (68 meters), the aircraft is 18 feet (5.5 meters) longer than the 787-9 and seats around 330 passengers, 40 more than the 787-9 and 88 more than the 787-8.</p> <p>Europe&#8217;s Airbus ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AIR.PA" type="external">AIR.PA</a>) competes against the 787-10 with its A330neo, an upgraded version of its most-sold wide-body aircraft with fuel-efficient engines and a new cabin.</p> <p>Both jets are designed for shorter flights compared with other mid-size wide-body planes, tapping into the rapid growth of trade within Asia as well as across other regions.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">Boeing Co</a> 321.0 BA.N New York Stock Exchange +1.39 (+0.43%) BA.N SIAL.SI AIR.PA AAL.O <p>But after brisk initial sales, orders for both models have slowed, with Airbus selling 214 of its A330neo.</p> <p>The 787-10 has 171 orders, about 13 percent of the total of firm orders for the 787.</p> <p>The mid-sized 787-9 is the most popular variant and competes mainly with Airbus&#8217;s new-generation carbon-composite A350.</p> <p>The 787 and A330neo are locked in a fierce battle for sales and profits in the market for jets with around 300 seats.</p> <p>Boeing looks poised to win a hotly contested order from American Airlines ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAL.O" type="external">AAL.O</a>), beating competition from the A330neo, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.</p> <p>Reporting by Harriet McLeod; Editing by Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BARCELONA/BERLIN (Reuters) - Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany on Sunday, five months after entering self-imposed exile from Spain, where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal secession referendum last year.</p> <p>Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared that police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain.</p> <p>The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis that flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence, prompting Madrid to take direct rule.</p> <p>Tens of thousands of Catalans, many of them wearing yellow in support of jailed separatist leaders, demonstrated in Barcelona on Sunday afternoon, chanting &#8220;Puigdemont, our president&#8221; and &#8220;freedom for political prisoners.&#8221;</p> <p>In a smaller parallel protest outside the central government delegation in the Catalan capital, three people were arrested and 50 suffered minor injuries after protesters clashed with riot police.</p> <p>Catalan parliament speaker Roger Torrent called for a broad coalition in defense of civil liberties and sovereign rights in a televised address on Sunday evening.</p> <p>&#8220;No judge, no government and no civil servant has right to</p> <p>charge and pursue the president of all Catalans,&#8221; he said. Torrent called for &#8220;calm and responsibility&#8221; following the scuffles.</p> <p>Spain&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state and reactivated international arrest warrants for Puigdemont and four other politicians who went into self-imposed exile last year.</p> <p>Among those subject to the arrest order, Clara Ponsati, a former Catalan minister now living in Scotland, told authorities she would turn herself in, Scottish police said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.</p> <p>The other three Catalan leaders are in Belgium.</p> <p>German police arrested Puigdemont on Sunday in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain. In a statement, police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway, which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border.</p> <p>Puigdemont was later transferred to Neumuenster prison, German news agency DPA reported.</p> <p>German magazine Focus said that Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany. It gave no source for its report.</p> People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany, during a demonstration held by pro-independence associations in Barcelona, Spain March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Albert Gea <p>He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference as part of a campaign to raise the profile of the Catalan independence movement in Europe.</p> EXTRADITION ISSUE <p>The Higher Regional Court in Schleswig-Holstein will be responsible for deciding whether to grant Spain&#8217;s extradition request.</p> <p>The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand extradition from other EU states, having removed political decision-making from the process. EU nations issue thousands of such warrants each year.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>Puigdemont will appear in court tomorrow to have his remand extended, German prosecutors said in a statement.</p> <p>Paul Bekaert, who represents Puigdemont in Belgium, where he had been subject to an arrest warrant in December, said his client rang him after being detained in Germany and had appeared calm during the conversation.</p> <p>Bekaert told Reuters TV that his client would have to appear before a German judge within 48 hours to determine whether or not to keep him in custody. Puigdemont will take German legal representation, Bekaert said, with the whole legal process, including possible appeals, likely to take months.</p> <p>Puigdemont could take his case to Germany&#8217;s highest court, which in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a German-Syrian al-Qaeda suspect.</p> <p>The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany&#8217;s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli, saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens.</p> <p>Puigdemont has previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium, where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention, according to Puigdemont&#8217;s spokesman, Joan Maria Pique.</p> <p>&#8220;The president was going to Belgium to put himself, as always, at the disposal of Belgian justice,&#8221; Pique told Reuters.</p> <p>The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum.</p> <p>Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest.</p> <p>Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pre-trial jail, sparking protests across Catalonia.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid and Thorsten Severin in Berlin; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An adult-film actress who claims she had sex with Donald Trump before he was president said on Sunday she had been threatened in 2011 while in a parking lot with her infant daughter to discourage her from discussing the relationship.</p> <p>Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, told CBS News&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; that she was on her way to a fitness class with her child when an unknown man approached her, according to a transcript of the interview released on Sunday.</p> <p>&#8220;And a guy walked up on me and said to me, &#8216;Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.&#8217; And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, &#8216;That&#8217;s a beautiful little girl. It&#8217;d be a shame if something happened to her mom.&#8217; And then he was gone,&#8221; Daniels said.</p> <p>Daniels sued the president on March 6, stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep quiet about an &#8220;intimate&#8221; relationship between them.</p> <p>White House aides did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the interview aired.</p> <p>Trump did not respond to reporters&#8217; shouted questions about whether he would watch the interview when he returned to the White House from Florida on Sunday evening.</p> <p>Daniels&#8217; appearance represented back to back trouble for Trump after an interview broadcast last week on CNN with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who described a 10-month long affair with Trump starting in 2006.</p> <p>Trump would have been married to his wife, Melania, during both the alleged extramarital relationships. The first lady accompanied him this weekend to his Florida golf club. A White House spokeswoman said Melania stayed behind as is her custom during their son&#8217;s school holiday.</p> Stormy Daniels, an adult film star and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford is interviewed by Anderson Cooper of CBS News' 60 Minutes program in early March 2018, in a still image from video provided March 25, 2018. CBSNews/60 MINUTES/Handout via REUTERS. NOT ATTRACTED <p>Daniels told &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; that she and Trump had sexual relations only once, but that she had seen him other occasions and he had kept in touch with her.</p> <p>She said she was not attracted to Trump, who was 60, to Daniels&#8217; 27, in 2006.</p> <p>The White House has denied he had an affair with Daniels, although Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said he paid her $130,000 of his own money during the 2016 presidential election campaign.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The payment could pose a legal problem. Watchdog groups have filed complaints with the Department of Justice and Federal Election Commission, saying that it may have violated campaign finance law by exceeding the limit on the size of a contribution.</p> <p>Cohen, who has denied that there was an affair, has not explained why he made the payment or said whether Trump was aware of it. Cohen did not respond to requests for comment after the interview aired.</p> <p>Daniels and her attorney would not discuss in the interview whether they had text messages or other materials that might verify her story.</p> <p>She was asked why she repeatedly signed statements denying the relationship with Trump, and acknowledged that there could be questions about her credibility.</p> <p>&#8220;I felt intimidated and ... honestly bullied. And I didn&#8217;t know what to do. And so I signed it,&#8221; Daniels said.</p> <p>Asked why viewers could be confident now that she was telling the truth, she said, &#8220;Cause I have no reason to lie. I&#8217;m opening myself up for, you know, possible danger, and definitely a whole lot of s***,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Additional reporting by David Lawder, Sarah Lynch, Steve Holland and Jim Oliphant in Washington, and Karen Freifeld in New York; editing by Caren Bohan and Grant McCool</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The youth-led U.S. gun control movement that flexed its public muscle with huge weekend rallies has already nudged Congress to enact minor firearms changes, but must remain active if it hopes to win more meaningful regulations, lawmakers said on Sunday.</p> <p>The movement that erupted after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has generated a national conversation about gun rights and has chipped away at legislative gridlock on the issue, they said.</p> <p>&#8220;The activism of these young people is actually changing the equation,&#8221; Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said a day after hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied in Washington.</p> <p>Tucked into a $1.3 trillion spending bill Congress passed last week were modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and an end to a ban on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying the causes of gun violence.</p> <p>&#8220;These are two things we could not have done in the past,&#8221; Kaine said on CNN&#8217;s &#8220;State of the Union&#8221; program. &#8220;But the active engagement by young people convinced Congress we better do something.&#8221;</p> <p>The spending bill, which President Donald Trump signed on Friday, also includes grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>The Trump administration also took a step on Friday to ban the sale of bump stocks - devices that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns - that helped gunman Stephen Paddock massacre 58 people in Las Vegas in October.</p> <p>A key focus of Saturday&#8217;s march on Washington, which was duplicated in 800 cities across the country and around the world, was an effort to turn emotion into political activism by registering participants to vote.</p> People take part in a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Redmond <p>Americans will vote in November on the entire U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.</p> <p>Gun control advocates have called for universal background checks on people buying guns, bans on assault-style rifles such as the one used to kill 17 students and staff in Parkland, and large-capacity ammunition magazines.</p> <p>Senator Mark Warner, another Virginia Democrat, declared in the wake of the student-led movement that he would now support bans on such rifles and magazines, which he had voted against in recent years.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s time to change our positions and re-examine them,&#8221; Warner said on the CBS News &#8220;Face the Nation&#8221; program.</p> <p>&#8220;I think this time it&#8217;s going different,&#8221; Warner said. &#8220;I think we can actually get it done.&#8221;</p> <p>To win significant changes, lawmakers said the young gun control advocates need to maintain their drive in the face of powerful pro-gun lobbying by the National Rifle Association and those who see gun ownership as a right protected by the U.S. Constitution.</p> <p>&#8220;If they don&#8217;t keep it up, those that want no change will just sit on their hands,&#8221; Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who formerly served in Congress, said on CNN.</p> <p>Two Republican senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Joni Ernst of Iowa, said over the weekend that while they supported gun control advocates&#8217; right to protest, they opposed infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms.</p> <p>Meanwhile, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum drew an angry response on social media for saying on CNN that, instead of agitating for change, students should &#8220;do something about maybe taking CPR classes&#8221; or take other training to respond to school shooters.</p> <p>Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Shares in China's Leshi to resume trading on Wednesday Boeing completes Dreamliner family with first 787-10 delivery Former Catalan leader Puigdemont detained in Germany Porn star Stormy Daniels says she was threatened to keep silence on Trump: TV interview U.S. gun control movement pushing Congress to act: lawmakers

https://reuters.com/article/lecom-stocks/shares-in-chinas-leshi-to-resume-trading-on-wednesday-idUSH9N1P605F

2018-01-23

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HONG KONG Jan 23 Reuters China8217s Leshi Internet Technology shares will resume trading on Wednesday after a ninemonth suspension the company said in a filing on Tuesday The company asked in April for trading to be suspended pending an acquisition of LeEco8217s film unit for 98 billion yuan 153 billion a plan it eventually scrapped last week 1 64000 Chinese yuan renminbi Reporting by Sijia Jiang Editing by David Goodman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NORTH CHARLESTON SC Reuters Boeing Co BAN delivered its first 78710 Dreamliner to Singapore Airlines SIALSI on Sunday rounding out a family of lightweight jets on which the US planemaker is betting its future A Boeing 78710 aircraft being built for Singapore Airlines sits in the Final Assembly Area before a delivery ceremony of the first Boeing 78710 Dreamliner at Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston South Carolina United States March 25 2018 REUTERSRandall Hill The handover took place in front of hundreds of Boeing workers as a band played loud rockandroll at the South Carolina plant where the carboncomposite jet is built The new Dreamliner was parked on the tarmac at the delivery center in front of a line of about 10 787 airplanes in various stages of completion Singapore Airlines which expanded its order for 78710s to 49 jets last year plans to introduce the jet on services to Osaka Japan starting in May The 78710 is built exclusively at the North Charleston plant due to its large size which prevents the transfer of sections to Boeing8217s factory outside Seattle Unlike the Washington state assembly lines the plant which has about 7000 workers is not unionized The aircraft which sells for 326 million at list prices completes a lineup of three models starting with the 7878 which debuted in 2011 All boast carboncomposite fabrication materials fuel efficiency and new stateoftheair filtration systems with higher levels of humidity in the air for longdistance flight The 787108217s range is 6430 nautical miles 11910 kilometers Slideshow 6 Images At 223 feet long 68 meters the aircraft is 18 feet 55 meters longer than the 7879 and seats around 330 passengers 40 more than the 7879 and 88 more than the 7878 Europe8217s Airbus AIRPA competes against the 78710 with its A330neo an upgraded version of its mostsold widebody aircraft with fuelefficient engines and a new cabin Both jets are designed for shorter flights compared with other midsize widebody planes tapping into the rapid growth of trade within Asia as well as across other regions Boeing Co 3210 BAN New York Stock Exchange 139 043 BAN SIALSI AIRPA AALO But after brisk initial sales orders for both models have slowed with Airbus selling 214 of its A330neo The 78710 has 171 orders about 13 percent of the total of firm orders for the 787 The midsized 7879 is the most popular variant and competes mainly with Airbus8217s newgeneration carboncomposite A350 The 787 and A330neo are locked in a fierce battle for sales and profits in the market for jets with around 300 seats Boeing looks poised to win a hotly contested order from American Airlines AALO beating competition from the A330neo people familiar with the matter said on Friday Reporting by Harriet McLeod Editing by Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BARCELONABERLIN Reuters Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany on Sunday five months after entering selfimposed exile from Spain where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal secession referendum last year Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared that police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis that flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence prompting Madrid to take direct rule Tens of thousands of Catalans many of them wearing yellow in support of jailed separatist leaders demonstrated in Barcelona on Sunday afternoon chanting 8220Puigdemont our president8221 and 8220freedom for political prisoners8221 In a smaller parallel protest outside the central government delegation in the Catalan capital three people were arrested and 50 suffered minor injuries after protesters clashed with riot police Catalan parliament speaker Roger Torrent called for a broad coalition in defense of civil liberties and sovereign rights in a televised address on Sunday evening 8220No judge no government and no civil servant has right to charge and pursue the president of all Catalans8221 he said Torrent called for 8220calm and responsibility8221 following the scuffles Spain8217s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion embezzlement or disobeying the state and reactivated international arrest warrants for Puigdemont and four other politicians who went into selfimposed exile last year Among those subject to the arrest order Clara Ponsati a former Catalan minister now living in Scotland told authorities she would turn herself in Scottish police said in a statement on Sunday afternoon The other three Catalan leaders are in Belgium German police arrested Puigdemont on Sunday in the northern state of SchleswigHolstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain In a statement police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border Puigdemont was later transferred to Neumuenster prison German news agency DPA reported German magazine Focus said that Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany It gave no source for its report People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany during a demonstration held by proindependence associations in Barcelona Spain March 25 2018 REUTERSAlbert Gea He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference as part of a campaign to raise the profile of the Catalan independence movement in Europe EXTRADITION ISSUE The Higher Regional Court in SchleswigHolstein will be responsible for deciding whether to grant Spain8217s extradition request The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand extradition from other EU states having removed political decisionmaking from the process EU nations issue thousands of such warrants each year Slideshow 8 Images Puigdemont will appear in court tomorrow to have his remand extended German prosecutors said in a statement Paul Bekaert who represents Puigdemont in Belgium where he had been subject to an arrest warrant in December said his client rang him after being detained in Germany and had appeared calm during the conversation Bekaert told Reuters TV that his client would have to appear before a German judge within 48 hours to determine whether or not to keep him in custody Puigdemont will take German legal representation Bekaert said with the whole legal process including possible appeals likely to take months Puigdemont could take his case to Germany8217s highest court which in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a GermanSyrian alQaeda suspect The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany8217s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens Puigdemont has previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention according to Puigdemont8217s spokesman Joan Maria Pique 8220The president was going to Belgium to put himself as always at the disposal of Belgian justice8221 Pique told Reuters The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pretrial jail sparking protests across Catalonia Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid and Thorsten Severin in Berlin Writing by Julien Toyer Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters An adultfilm actress who claims she had sex with Donald Trump before he was president said on Sunday she had been threatened in 2011 while in a parking lot with her infant daughter to discourage her from discussing the relationship Stormy Daniels whose real name is Stephanie Clifford told CBS News8217 822060 Minutes8221 that she was on her way to a fitness class with her child when an unknown man approached her according to a transcript of the interview released on Sunday 8220And a guy walked up on me and said to me 8216Leave Trump alone Forget the story8217 And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said 8216That8217s a beautiful little girl It8217d be a shame if something happened to her mom8217 And then he was gone8221 Daniels said Daniels sued the president on March 6 stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep quiet about an 8220intimate8221 relationship between them White House aides did not immediately respond to requests for comment after the interview aired Trump did not respond to reporters8217 shouted questions about whether he would watch the interview when he returned to the White House from Florida on Sunday evening Daniels8217 appearance represented back to back trouble for Trump after an interview broadcast last week on CNN with former Playboy model Karen McDougal who described a 10month long affair with Trump starting in 2006 Trump would have been married to his wife Melania during both the alleged extramarital relationships The first lady accompanied him this weekend to his Florida golf club A White House spokeswoman said Melania stayed behind as is her custom during their son8217s school holiday Stormy Daniels an adult film star and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford is interviewed by Anderson Cooper of CBS News 60 Minutes program in early March 2018 in a still image from video provided March 25 2018 CBSNews60 MINUTESHandout via REUTERS NOT ATTRACTED Daniels told 822060 Minutes8221 that she and Trump had sexual relations only once but that she had seen him other occasions and he had kept in touch with her She said she was not attracted to Trump who was 60 to Daniels8217 27 in 2006 The White House has denied he had an affair with Daniels although Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said he paid her 130000 of his own money during the 2016 presidential election campaign Slideshow 3 Images The payment could pose a legal problem Watchdog groups have filed complaints with the Department of Justice and Federal Election Commission saying that it may have violated campaign finance law by exceeding the limit on the size of a contribution Cohen who has denied that there was an affair has not explained why he made the payment or said whether Trump was aware of it Cohen did not respond to requests for comment after the interview aired Daniels and her attorney would not discuss in the interview whether they had text messages or other materials that might verify her story She was asked why she repeatedly signed statements denying the relationship with Trump and acknowledged that there could be questions about her credibility 8220I felt intimidated and honestly bullied And I didn8217t know what to do And so I signed it8221 Daniels said Asked why viewers could be confident now that she was telling the truth she said 8220Cause I have no reason to lie I8217m opening myself up for you know possible danger and definitely a whole lot of s8221 she said Reporting by Patricia Zengerle Additional reporting by David Lawder Sarah Lynch Steve Holland and Jim Oliphant in Washington and Karen Freifeld in New York editing by Caren Bohan and Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters The youthled US gun control movement that flexed its public muscle with huge weekend rallies has already nudged Congress to enact minor firearms changes but must remain active if it hopes to win more meaningful regulations lawmakers said on Sunday The movement that erupted after the Feb 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida has generated a national conversation about gun rights and has chipped away at legislative gridlock on the issue they said 8220The activism of these young people is actually changing the equation8221 Senator Tim Kaine a Virginia Democrat said a day after hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied in Washington Tucked into a 13 trillion spending bill Congress passed last week were modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and an end to a ban on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying the causes of gun violence 8220These are two things we could not have done in the past8221 Kaine said on CNN8217s 8220State of the Union8221 program 8220But the active engagement by young people convinced Congress we better do something8221 The spending bill which President Donald Trump signed on Friday also includes grants to help schools prevent gun violence The Trump administration also took a step on Friday to ban the sale of bump stocks devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns that helped gunman Stephen Paddock massacre 58 people in Las Vegas in October A key focus of Saturday8217s march on Washington which was duplicated in 800 cities across the country and around the world was an effort to turn emotion into political activism by registering participants to vote People take part in a March For Our Lives demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSJason Redmond Americans will vote in November on the entire US House of Representatives and onethird of the Senate Gun control advocates have called for universal background checks on people buying guns bans on assaultstyle rifles such as the one used to kill 17 students and staff in Parkland and largecapacity ammunition magazines Senator Mark Warner another Virginia Democrat declared in the wake of the studentled movement that he would now support bans on such rifles and magazines which he had voted against in recent years Slideshow 6 Images 8220I think it8217s time to change our positions and reexamine them8221 Warner said on the CBS News 8220Face the Nation8221 program 8220I think this time it8217s going different8221 Warner said 8220I think we can actually get it done8221 To win significant changes lawmakers said the young gun control advocates need to maintain their drive in the face of powerful progun lobbying by the National Rifle Association and those who see gun ownership as a right protected by the US Constitution 8220If they don8217t keep it up those that want no change will just sit on their hands8221 Ohio Governor John Kasich a Republican who formerly served in Congress said on CNN Two Republican senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Joni Ernst of Iowa said over the weekend that while they supported gun control advocates8217 right to protest they opposed infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms Meanwhile former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum drew an angry response on social media for saying on CNN that instead of agitating for change students should 8220do something about maybe taking CPR classes8221 or take other training to respond to school shooters Reporting by Peter Szekely Editing by Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer. McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years, presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, received an M.A. in Russian Studies from Fordham, a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University, and graduated from Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program. McGovern now works for "Tell the Word," a ministry of the inner-city/Washington Church of the Saviour.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. <p /> <p />President Obama announced his nominations for the new secretary of defense and director of the CIA, Chuck Hagel at defense and John Brennan for the CIA. Now joining us to discuss these appointments is Ray McGovern. Ray is a former CIA analyst for several decades. He's a prolific writer, does many things, including he's an often-contributor to The Real News. <p /> <p />Thanks for joining us, Ray. <p /> <p />So let's start with Chuck Hagel at Defense. You wrote a piece for The Baltimore Sun where you thought it would be a good idea for President Obama to select Hagel, and he did. But why did you think that would be a good idea? <p /> <p />RAY MCGOVERN, CIA AGENT (RET.): Well, in short, Paul, Hagel is no chickenhawk. He volunteered to go to Vietnam at the worst of the fighting, wounded twice. He'd been there, done that. Okay? And he's been very, very upfront about his reluctance or anyone's reluctance should be to send U.S. troops into battle for no good reason. <p /> <p />JAY: And chickenhawk, for those that don't know, although I suppose everybody does, is somebody who sits in Washington ordering other people to go fight. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: That's exactly right. Or you could go back to George W. Bush, who, you know, his daddy got him a job with the Texas National Guard because expressly, explicitly George Bush said he didn't want to go to Vietnam. Or you look at Dick Cheney, with five deferments. How many deferments do you think Joe Biden had? Five. Okay? So you've got a bunch of people that have no direct experience in war. That is really important. <p /> <p />Chuck Hagel would be the first person with combat experience to be secretary of defense in 30 years. Mel Laird was the first one. He was a naval&#226;&#128;&#148;he was a midshipman. <p /> <p />JAY: Okay. You would think with this kind of a record it would be a rather popular choice. He's a Republican. You would think Republicans would embrace him. But as we know, far from embracing him, there's a campaign to block this nomination. In fact, there's already a lobby group been formed with lots of money to take out ads against Hagel. Apparently there's been some website created specifically just to attack Hagel. So what's getting them all riled up? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, Paul, Hagel has not been sufficiently passionately attached to Israel. He said some things that have really rubbed some noses out of joint. For example, he had the temerity to say that I am the American senator, not an Israeli senator. Oh. Now, on the face of that, you know, who could object to that? Well, there's an awful lot of people, like the felon Elliot Abrams, who I heard at NPR yesterday saying that Hagel was anti-Semitic. He's anti-Semitic because he's the senator from the U.S. [crosstalk] <p /> <p />JAY: Well, no, they say he's anti-Semitic 'cause he talked about the Jewish lobby and not the Israel lobby. He used the&#226;&#128;&#148;he didn't say Zionist or Israel; he said Jewish. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Yeah. Well, okay. So he said that. The problem really is that these folks&#226;&#128;&#148;they're called the neocons&#226;&#128;&#148;these folks who have real difficulty distinguishing between the objective aims or the strategic aims of Israel on the one hand and the strategic needs of the United States on the other, those are the people that think that Hagel might decide that contrary to even what the president has said in terms of marching in lockstep with Israel, that Hagel might say, wait a second, wait a second, does this really make sense. I mean, Mr.&#194;&amp;#160;President, I know you said before the Super Bowl last year that your primary objective is the defense of the United States, and also Israel; I think we should give the United States a separate sentence this year and say, your primary objective is to secure the United States, and then if you want to add as a second sentence, "And we're also interested in defending Israel," that'll be alright. But people need to know that you're interested first and foremost in U.S. policy toward the Middle East bereft of any passionate attachment, the kind of attachment that George Washington himself warned against in his&#226;&#128;&#148;. <p /> <p />JAY: It's a very interesting appointment by Obama, because he had to know the pressure that was going to be brought to bear against him on this. He knew that the Likud, the right-wing party in power in Israel, and their allies in AIPAC and the lobby group in the United States and all the senators and members of the House, he knew this was going to be not very well liked, and he did it anyway. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Yeah, and that's a very good sign, Paul. It shows that there's a little bit of maybe a spine implant that Obama has gotten over Christmas. This is big. <p /> <p />Last year was really a rollercoaster with respect to U.S.-Israeli relations. In February, as I already said, Obama's saying, we're going to march in lockstep with Israel. Israel is equal foot in terms of our determination to defend it. <p /> <p />Come around September, come around late August, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying, I don't want to be complicit if the Israelis attack Iran. Hillary Clinton is saying, you know, these red lines about Netanyahu, that's BS; we're not interested in that. And the president is saying, sorry, I have to be on The View on TV. I can't meet with you, Netanyahu, when you come to the United States. There was a sea change there. Obama faced them down. <p /> <p />Now, this appointment, which I dearly feared would be in jeopardy because of all this opposition, Obama stood by it. And that speaks volumes. It means that the second part of 2012 is the continuity here and not the blind, the blind support of whatever Netanyahu does, including the settlements that keep going on with just verbal opposition from the United States. But that's the thing of the past, that this is a new era, and Hagel's going to make some changes. <p /> <p />JAY: Well, we don't know yet whether there's any change in terms of Obama and pressure on Israel vis-&#195;&amp;#160;-vis settlements and resolution with the Palestinians and two-state issues and those kinds of questions. What we do know from Obama's history&#226;&#128;&#148;and if you look at what he said about the Iraq War, he opposed the Iraq War not because he's against projecting U.S. power all over the world; he just thought it was a stupid war, the Iraq War. And I think what this is telling us is he thinks an attack on Iran would be stupid and doesn't want to do it. It doesn't mean he's against projecting U.S. power. And you can see this from his second appointment of John Brennan&#226;&#128;&#148;the guy he's been sitting with choosing who to kill with drones is now head of the CIA. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, you're right about that. But, you know, he also realizes now, four years later, that Afghanistan is a fool's errand and he needs support in the Senate to contend with the backsniping that is already occurring about losing Afghanistan. So the Iran thing is crucial. And Hagel is one of the last people that would think that we could send U.S. service people into war with Iran simply because Israel started it or simply because Israel wanted us to do it. So that is big. Okay? <p /> <p />Now, with respect to projecting power, you know, there's only a limited amount of power you can project. And what we're seeing now is a retrenchment. You know the problems here in this country. I think Obama will be helped by Hagel in sort of delimiting the defense budget, which is going out of all proportion to the threats that Americans face. <p /> <p />JAY: I guess my point is I think it's a rational, it's a good thing that Hagel's there, because&#226;&#128;&#148;I don't know if people on The Real News have heard me say this; I've been saying it informally right from the first day Obama was president, that the one thing I was actually hopeful for is he might be more rational on Iran than the Republicans would be. I didn't have a lot of expectations otherwise. And I think this Hagel appointment is that. But when you look at Brennan going to the CIA, does it not mean sort of an expansion of this drone assassination program? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Sure. <p /> <p />Now, Paul, just one little footnote about Hagel. Hagel has served on the president's foreign intelligence advisory board. That is key. He knows intelligence back and forth. And he knows very well that in November&#194;&amp;#160;2007, the entire intelligence community pronounced itself unanimously and with great confidence that Iran had stopped building a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003. And that judgment has been revalidated every year since by the director of national intelligence. I think Hagel will be able to use that cudgel against the neocons, say, why do we have to attack a country that's not building nuclear weapons. So that's a key thing. <p /> <p />You're right to focus on Iran. I'm more hopeful now than I would have been if the president had sort of caved again and [crosstalk] <p /> <p />JAY: Alright. So what do you make of the John Brennan appointment as director of the CIA? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, I wish I could be more optimistic, Paul. I know Brennan. I know him as a young sort of failed analyst. The way you promote yourself these days at Washington is you find a job in the White House and catch the attention of people like George Tenet, who was at the White House. And Tenet brought him back when Tenet became deputy CIA director, brought him back to CIA and made him into what he is today. He even sent him to Saudi Arabia to be a chief of station. <p /> <p />Now, Brennan pretends to know Arabic. He can say Abdulmutallab just really good&#226;&#128;&#148;I'll practice that: Abdulmutallab. Okay? So when he goes before the press and he says "Abdulmutallab," that's very impressive. But when Helen Thomas asks him, why do they hate us, why did they do these things, why did Abdulmutallab try to knock down that plane over Deroit, he says, they're hardwired to hate us. It's their religion. Helen says, oh, so it's the&#226;&#128;&#148;. Well, it's not the religion; it's the way&#226;&#128;&#148;I&#226;&#128;&#148;they just hate us, they hate us, and they're a danger to our homeland. <p /> <p />Now, either Brennan is dumb (and that's possible, you know) or he's really sold out to the people who are profiteering on these unending wars. Right? Why would you continue to press these things? Pakistan has 175&#194;&amp;#160;million people. What are we doing? We're alienating hundreds of them every day with these drone strikes. They also have nuclear weapons. So, you know, it doesn't make any sense, unless&#226;&#128;&#148;. <p /> <p />JAY: Well, just to refresh everybody's memory here, Brennan sits in the White House with President Obama deciding who they're going to kill with drones. He helps draw up the kill list. Is that correct? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: That's right. Yeah. That's pretty confirmed now. You know, picture it. Now, I've been in the White House. I used to brief there. But, you know, my picture is Brennan comes in on Tuesday, 'cause that's the day they do the kill list, and he says, Mr.&#194;&amp;#160;President, we have 13 here, here are the names, can you sign off on this. And Obama looks at him, and he says, well, number three&#226;&#128;&#148;didn't you tell me last week number three has three small kids? Well, yes, Mr.&#194;&amp;#160;President, but we know, we know he's a suspected militant, we know. So, well, look, take three, put him in&#226;&#128;&#148;let's do three next week, and let's just do 12 this week. Sign off. And then he goes&#226;&#128;&#148;Barack Obama goes to have a nice lunch with his wife. <p /> <p />Give me a break. That's what goes on in the White House now. You know, that's almost as bad as Condoleeza Rice presiding over demonstrations of enhanced interrogation techniques, which were also done at the White House. <p /> <p />JAY: And this was more or less leaked to The New York Times, right? It's not like you're speculating. The New York Times kind of described these meetings. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, yeah. This was when the White House saw some incentive in showing the president to be a tough guy like Brennan, you know. I know Brennan. He's from northern New Jersey. He's a tough guy. When he says, yeah, we do this without due process, well, don't be stupid here. We do due process right here in the White House. That's how we do due process now. Eric Holder says so. Give me a break. That's the kind of mentality you have there. And what really, really is missing here: where's the legal profession in this country? You know? Due process means the judiciary, it means the courts. And here they're letting these people get away with saying no, no, we do due process here in the White House. It's unconscionable. <p /> <p />JAY: So what does it mean for the CIA? Any changes from the way it's acting? <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Well, Paul, as you know, there are two CIAs, one the analysis CIA that Truman envisaged and set up. That's the one I worked in, and that's the one that prevented a war with Iran&#226;&#128;&#148;that's no exaggeration, with that estimate saying they had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003. That one still has some people of integrity in it. The other one that Truman never envisaged, this operational, you know, covert actions sort of thing, well, they're riding high. They're flying drones all over the place. And Brennan can be expected to enhance the military capabilities that really should not belong in the CIA. And Truman said so before he died. <p /> <p />JAY: And now President Obama has his guy controlling those drones. So in a sense it's an extension of the drone program and what they've been doing together. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: I think Obama, you know, has a certain confidence in Brennan that he has in nobody else. I hope it's not a misplaced confidence. Brennan's a pretty treacherous guy, and I think the way Obama looks at the CIA is, if he has his own man controlling the CIA, Brennan, that there's less danger that the CIA will play games, less prospect that the CIA will get involved in the kinds of things against John F.&#194;&amp;#160;Kennedy that happened then. <p /> <p />JAY: Thanks for joining us, Ray. <p /> <p />MCGOVERN: Most welcome. <p /> <p />JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. <p /> <p />End <p /> <p />DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Hagel Nomination Defies Neo-Cons and AIPAC; Brennon at CIA will Expand Drone Assassinations

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D31%26Itemid%3D74%26jumival%3D9476

2013-01-09

4left

Ray McGovern is a retired CIA officer McGovern was employed under seven US presidents for over 27 years presenting the morning intelligence briefings at the White House under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush McGovern was born and raised in the Bronx graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University received an MA in Russian Studies from Fordham a certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University and graduated from Harvard Business Schools Advanced Management Program McGovern now works for Tell the Word a ministry of the innercityWashington Church of the Saviour PAUL JAY SENIOR EDITOR TRNN Welcome to The Real News Network Im Paul Jay in Baltimore President Obama announced his nominations for the new secretary of defense and director of the CIA Chuck Hagel at defense and John Brennan for the CIA Now joining us to discuss these appointments is Ray McGovern Ray is a former CIA analyst for several decades Hes a prolific writer does many things including hes an oftencontributor to The Real News Thanks for joining us Ray So lets start with Chuck Hagel at Defense You wrote a piece for The Baltimore Sun where you thought it would be a good idea for President Obama to select Hagel and he did But why did you think that would be a good idea RAY MCGOVERN CIA AGENT RET Well in short Paul Hagel is no chickenhawk He volunteered to go to Vietnam at the worst of the fighting wounded twice Hed been there done that Okay And hes been very very upfront about his reluctance or anyones reluctance should be to send US troops into battle for no good reason JAY And chickenhawk for those that dont know although I suppose everybody does is somebody who sits in Washington ordering other people to go fight MCGOVERN Thats exactly right Or you could go back to George W Bush who you know his daddy got him a job with the Texas National Guard because expressly explicitly George Bush said he didnt want to go to Vietnam Or you look at Dick Cheney with five deferments How many deferments do you think Joe Biden had Five Okay So youve got a bunch of people that have no direct experience in war That is really important Chuck Hagel would be the first person with combat experience to be secretary of defense in 30 years Mel Laird was the first one He was a naval226128148he was a midshipman JAY Okay You would think with this kind of a record it would be a rather popular choice Hes a Republican You would think Republicans would embrace him But as we know far from embracing him theres a campaign to block this nomination In fact theres already a lobby group been formed with lots of money to take out ads against Hagel Apparently theres been some website created specifically just to attack Hagel So whats getting them all riled up MCGOVERN Well Paul Hagel has not been sufficiently passionately attached to Israel He said some things that have really rubbed some noses out of joint For example he had the temerity to say that I am the American senator not an Israeli senator Oh Now on the face of that you know who could object to that Well theres an awful lot of people like the felon Elliot Abrams who I heard at NPR yesterday saying that Hagel was antiSemitic Hes antiSemitic because hes the senator from the US crosstalk JAY Well no they say hes antiSemitic cause he talked about the Jewish lobby and not the Israel lobby He used the226128148he didnt say Zionist or Israel he said Jewish MCGOVERN Yeah Well okay So he said that The problem really is that these folks226128148theyre called the neocons226128148these folks who have real difficulty distinguishing between the objective aims or the strategic aims of Israel on the one hand and the strategic needs of the United States on the other those are the people that think that Hagel might decide that contrary to even what the president has said in terms of marching in lockstep with Israel that Hagel might say wait a second wait a second does this really make sense I mean Mr194amp160President I know you said before the Super Bowl last year that your primary objective is the defense of the United States and also Israel I think we should give the United States a separate sentence this year and say your primary objective is to secure the United States and then if you want to add as a second sentence And were also interested in defending Israel thatll be alright But people need to know that youre interested first and foremost in US policy toward the Middle East bereft of any passionate attachment the kind of attachment that George Washington himself warned against in his226128148 JAY Its a very interesting appointment by Obama because he had to know the pressure that was going to be brought to bear against him on this He knew that the Likud the rightwing party in power in Israel and their allies in AIPAC and the lobby group in the United States and all the senators and members of the House he knew this was going to be not very well liked and he did it anyway MCGOVERN Yeah and thats a very good sign Paul It shows that theres a little bit of maybe a spine implant that Obama has gotten over Christmas This is big Last year was really a rollercoaster with respect to USIsraeli relations In February as I already said Obamas saying were going to march in lockstep with Israel Israel is equal foot in terms of our determination to defend it Come around September come around late August the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying I dont want to be complicit if the Israelis attack Iran Hillary Clinton is saying you know these red lines about Netanyahu thats BS were not interested in that And the president is saying sorry I have to be on The View on TV I cant meet with you Netanyahu when you come to the United States There was a sea change there Obama faced them down Now this appointment which I dearly feared would be in jeopardy because of all this opposition Obama stood by it And that speaks volumes It means that the second part of 2012 is the continuity here and not the blind the blind support of whatever Netanyahu does including the settlements that keep going on with just verbal opposition from the United States But thats the thing of the past that this is a new era and Hagels going to make some changes JAY Well we dont know yet whether theres any change in terms of Obama and pressure on Israel vis195amp160vis settlements and resolution with the Palestinians and twostate issues and those kinds of questions What we do know from Obamas history226128148and if you look at what he said about the Iraq War he opposed the Iraq War not because hes against projecting US power all over the world he just thought it was a stupid war the Iraq War And I think what this is telling us is he thinks an attack on Iran would be stupid and doesnt want to do it It doesnt mean hes against projecting US power And you can see this from his second appointment of John Brennan226128148the guy hes been sitting with choosing who to kill with drones is now head of the CIA MCGOVERN Well youre right about that But you know he also realizes now four years later that Afghanistan is a fools errand and he needs support in the Senate to contend with the backsniping that is already occurring about losing Afghanistan So the Iran thing is crucial And Hagel is one of the last people that would think that we could send US service people into war with Iran simply because Israel started it or simply because Israel wanted us to do it So that is big Okay Now with respect to projecting power you know theres only a limited amount of power you can project And what were seeing now is a retrenchment You know the problems here in this country I think Obama will be helped by Hagel in sort of delimiting the defense budget which is going out of all proportion to the threats that Americans face JAY I guess my point is I think its a rational its a good thing that Hagels there because226128148I dont know if people on The Real News have heard me say this Ive been saying it informally right from the first day Obama was president that the one thing I was actually hopeful for is he might be more rational on Iran than the Republicans would be I didnt have a lot of expectations otherwise And I think this Hagel appointment is that But when you look at Brennan going to the CIA does it not mean sort of an expansion of this drone assassination program MCGOVERN Sure Now Paul just one little footnote about Hagel Hagel has served on the presidents foreign intelligence advisory board That is key He knows intelligence back and forth And he knows very well that in November194amp1602007 the entire intelligence community pronounced itself unanimously and with great confidence that Iran had stopped building a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003 And that judgment has been revalidated every year since by the director of national intelligence I think Hagel will be able to use that cudgel against the neocons say why do we have to attack a country thats not building nuclear weapons So thats a key thing Youre right to focus on Iran Im more hopeful now than I would have been if the president had sort of caved again and crosstalk JAY Alright So what do you make of the John Brennan appointment as director of the CIA MCGOVERN Well I wish I could be more optimistic Paul I know Brennan I know him as a young sort of failed analyst The way you promote yourself these days at Washington is you find a job in the White House and catch the attention of people like George Tenet who was at the White House And Tenet brought him back when Tenet became deputy CIA director brought him back to CIA and made him into what he is today He even sent him to Saudi Arabia to be a chief of station Now Brennan pretends to know Arabic He can say Abdulmutallab just really good226128148Ill practice that Abdulmutallab Okay So when he goes before the press and he says Abdulmutallab thats very impressive But when Helen Thomas asks him why do they hate us why did they do these things why did Abdulmutallab try to knock down that plane over Deroit he says theyre hardwired to hate us Its their religion Helen says oh so its the226128148 Well its not the religion its the way226128148I226128148they just hate us they hate us and theyre a danger to our homeland Now either Brennan is dumb and thats possible you know or hes really sold out to the people who are profiteering on these unending wars Right Why would you continue to press these things Pakistan has 175194amp160million people What are we doing Were alienating hundreds of them every day with these drone strikes They also have nuclear weapons So you know it doesnt make any sense unless226128148 JAY Well just to refresh everybodys memory here Brennan sits in the White House with President Obama deciding who theyre going to kill with drones He helps draw up the kill list Is that correct MCGOVERN Thats right Yeah Thats pretty confirmed now You know picture it Now Ive been in the White House I used to brief there But you know my picture is Brennan comes in on Tuesday cause thats the day they do the kill list and he says Mr194amp160President we have 13 here here are the names can you sign off on this And Obama looks at him and he says well number three226128148didnt you tell me last week number three has three small kids Well yes Mr194amp160President but we know we know hes a suspected militant we know So well look take three put him in226128148lets do three next week and lets just do 12 this week Sign off And then he goes226128148Barack Obama goes to have a nice lunch with his wife Give me a break Thats what goes on in the White House now You know thats almost as bad as Condoleeza Rice presiding over demonstrations of enhanced interrogation techniques which were also done at the White House JAY And this was more or less leaked to The New York Times right Its not like youre speculating The New York Times kind of described these meetings MCGOVERN Well yeah This was when the White House saw some incentive in showing the president to be a tough guy like Brennan you know I know Brennan Hes from northern New Jersey Hes a tough guy When he says yeah we do this without due process well dont be stupid here We do due process right here in the White House Thats how we do due process now Eric Holder says so Give me a break Thats the kind of mentality you have there And what really really is missing here wheres the legal profession in this country You know Due process means the judiciary it means the courts And here theyre letting these people get away with saying no no we do due process here in the White House Its unconscionable JAY So what does it mean for the CIA Any changes from the way its acting MCGOVERN Well Paul as you know there are two CIAs one the analysis CIA that Truman envisaged and set up Thats the one I worked in and thats the one that prevented a war with Iran226128148thats no exaggeration with that estimate saying they had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003 That one still has some people of integrity in it The other one that Truman never envisaged this operational you know covert actions sort of thing well theyre riding high Theyre flying drones all over the place And Brennan can be expected to enhance the military capabilities that really should not belong in the CIA And Truman said so before he died JAY And now President Obama has his guy controlling those drones So in a sense its an extension of the drone program and what theyve been doing together MCGOVERN I think Obama you know has a certain confidence in Brennan that he has in nobody else I hope its not a misplaced confidence Brennans a pretty treacherous guy and I think the way Obama looks at the CIA is if he has his own man controlling the CIA Brennan that theres less danger that the CIA will play games less prospect that the CIA will get involved in the kinds of things against John F194amp160Kennedy that happened then JAY Thanks for joining us Ray MCGOVERN Most welcome JAY And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network End DISCLAIMER Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy

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<p>If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, anti-Americanism is currently the first. The Bush regime uses it to deceive the United States people while enriching its corporate buddies. Spreading fear, anxiety, and hatred under the pretext of fighting terrorism, Bush and his team tear up the US constitution and pawn the country&#8217;s future. The McCarthyite suggestion that a menace exists called &#8220;anti-Americanism&#8221; is a potent weapon in the Bush plutocrats&#8217; disinformation armoury. It makes it much harder for rational criticism of US government policy to be heard&#8211;let alone accepted. The sleight of hand is to pretend that the regime installed in the White House represents the United States people.</p> <p>People throughout the Americas know better. After such long experience of US government aggression, opportunism and duplicity, maybe they are harder to dupe. As Bolivia tries to remake itself and the peoples of Venezuela and Colombia gear up to resist yet more White House sponsored terrorism,1 now may be a good time to remember some United States citizens who had a very different vision from that of their government. In Central America thousands of communities have been victims of terrorist aggression by the US government or its open support for genocidal military-dominated regimes in the region. Yet it is in those places that a more authentic voice of the United States people has been taken to heart. This truth counteracts the mindless racism encouraged by the neo-cons&#8217; beloved cop out, &#8220;anti-americanism&#8221;.</p> <p>The assassination of Ben Linder 2</p> <p>When Ben Linder was murdered by US government trained and funded Contra terrorists in 1987 in northern Nicaragua, he was installing electricity for impoverished rural communities. At his funeral in Matagalpa, that northern Nicaraguan city overflowed with mourners for the young man from Portland, Oregon who came to work for them and finished by dying for them. Writing about what was needed in order to resist the US terrorist war against Nicaragua, Linder wrote once &#8220;everything you can do should be done&#8221;. So, apart from fixing up electrical generating plant, he also helped with vaccination programs, dressing up as a clown to amuse parents and children waiting in line, riding his unicycle, juggling.</p> <p>How exceptional was Ben Linder? Perhaps it was his murder that made him an icon for those people determined to show solidarity with Central American victims of US government aggression. Tens of thousands of US citizens worked for longer or shorter periods in Central American countries before and after Ben Linder. The great majority stayed for brief lengths of time with poor rural and urban communities in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution. But many others worked long term on human rights and grass roots community development throughout the region.</p> <p>Rejecting the racist colonialism practiced by their governments since the interventions in Cuba and the Philippines during the war with Spain, these United States citizens shared an authentically American vision. That vision embraces as equals and as teachers the diverse peoples of all the Americas. It is the vision of Simon Bolivar to the sound of the Demajagua bell3 that day when Carlos Manuel de Cespedes declared an end to slavery in Cuba and called on all free people to rise up and resist an earlier vicious, corrupt, ruthless empire.</p> <p>For people in the United States that vision has travelled through many diverse filters. But the essential elements are in common and derive from the ideals that inspired the French and American revolutions. Successive US governments have betrayed those ideals around the world, from Central America to Asia, in Palestine and now in Venezuela. As heroic Rachel Corrie tragically found out in Palestine, should US citizens defy their government&#8217;s policy and defend the most basic humanitarian norms, so much the worse for them.</p> <p>US nuns murdered in El Salvador 4</p> <p>In 1981, a couple of decades before Rachel Corrie was murdered, the bodies of four women were found in a shallow grave in a rural district not far from San Salvador, El Salvador&#8217;s capital. They had been raped and shot dead by members of the Salvadoran army on the orders of senior officers. In the context of the time, the atrocity would hardly have merited reporting. But the women were United States citizens. Two were religious sisters of the New York based Maryknoll order, Ita Ford and Maureen Clarke. One was an Ursuline Sister, Dorothy Kazel, the fourth a lay missioner, Jean Donovan. By virtue of their nationality, the story did make the news, just&#8211;the back page of the New York Times, to that paper&#8217;s eternal shame.</p> <p>Those four women had helped defend Salvadorans from the terror unleashed against their own people by the Salvadoran government with support from the United States administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. They gave their lives working alongside vulnerable people and communities in El Salvador. The murders followed the assassination in 1980 of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. The women&#8217;s deaths were manipulated by the US government and its ever-pliant news media. The full facts took years to emerge. US ambassador to the UN, Jean Kirkpatrick, falsely accused the women of having supported the Salvadoran armed opposition, the FMLN. In fact, the four women were passionate advocates of non-violence, accompanying the rural villagers they served while caught up in a violent civil war.</p> <p>Ambassador Kirkpatrick&#8217;s statements on the case of the four women were to be expected from an unrepentant supporter of the bloodthirsty Argentinian military dictatorship. Her successor at the UN was Vernon Walters, former deputy director of the CIA, co-organiser of the continent wide terrorist blueprint Plan Condor and promoter of Ronald Reagan&#8217;s terrorist war against Nicaragua. In 1986 Vernon Walters threw in the face of the UN his government&#8217;s rejection of the International Court of Justice verdict convicting the US of terrorism against Nicaragua.</p> <p>Kirkpatrick&#8217;s and Walters&#8217; apologetics for mass murder helped John Negroponte, then US ambassador to Honduras, cover up his support for the systematic forced disappearances used to destroy Honduran civilian opposition to the presence of Contra bases in their country. Thomas Pickering, US ambassador to El Salvador at the time, also gave misleading information on local army and paramilitary murders, probably an essential qualification for his subsequent posting in 1989 as US ambassador to the UN, taking over from Vernon Walters.</p> <p>Jean Kirkpatrick, Vernon Walters, Thomas Pickering, John Negroponte and other US government representatives sent clear signals that the local military in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala were to be allowed a free hand by the United States government to murder tens of thousands of civilians and anyone who spoke out against the slaughter. Perhaps the defining climax to the sickening murder campaign came in 1989 when the Salvadoran army killed six Jesuit academics and two of their domestic staff at the University of Central America in San Salvador. These crimes were made possible because the United States government consistently tried to conceal its institutional role in funding, training and supporting the military and paramilitary perpetrators. The Iran-Contra scandal was the culmination of that sustained program of regional deceit.</p> <p>James &#8220;Guadelupe&#8221; Carney&#8211;the dilemma of a socially committed priest 5</p> <p>Faced with the murderous onslaught of their own governments, plenty of people in Central America believed the only practical response was armed resistance. Many others took the path of non-violent opposition. The tension between the two responses at a time of widespread savage violence raised painful moral dilemmas. Someone whose life epitomised those dilemmas was a Jesuit priest called James Carney. From Minnesota, Carney was known by his Honduran parishioners as Padre Guadelupe, after the Mexican indigenous Virgin Mary.</p> <p>Carney, a World War Two combat veteran, was forcibly disappeared by the Honduran military in September 1983. Remains exhumed at a former US-Contra military base in January this year may have been those of the missing priest. The discovery came after many years of efforts to find out how he died from the US authorities by Carney&#8217;s family, the Honduran government, relatives of other Honduran disappeared victims and by some US journalists, principally the Baltimore Sun in the mid-1990s. The US government is involved because senior US embassy personnel may have authorised Carney&#8217;s murder.</p> <p>Arriving in Honduras not long after the epoch-making Honduran general strike in 1954, Carney worked for over 20 years in northern Honduras and had taken Honduran nationality. In 1979 the Honduran government expelled him for his determined and outspoken support for the Honduran rural poor. He was especially incensed at CIA intervention in the internal elections of the most successful ever agricultural cooperative in Honduras, Las Isletas, subsequently sold to the Standard Fruit company.</p> <p>In Nicaragua, he met a group of other Honduran exiles determined to return home and start a campaign of armed resistance to the military presence in their country of the Nicaraguan Contra backed by the United States army. Carney felt he had no choice but to accompany them as their chaplain. Twenty years ago, he resigned from the Jesuit order and went back to the country he loved carrying his Bible in his pack.</p> <p>The armed group crossed into Honduras, reaching the remote Patuca district in Olancho. Right then the United States army was on a series of manoeuvres with the Honduran army known as Big Pine. Following desertions, the small guerilla column was located. Of its 93 members, over 70 were killed. Most were captured, interrogated under torture and then murdered.</p> <p>Prevarication and cover up</p> <p>And that was James Carney&#8217;s fate too. As Carney&#8217;s friend Fr. Joe Mulligan is quoted as saying, &#8220;If James Carney was captured by Honduran troops, before killing him I think the Honduran officials would have looked for a wink or a nod of approval from someone in the U.S. government or from the CIA.&#8221;6 That suspicion is supported by the January 1998 report of the Honduran government&#8217;s Human Rights Commission. The Commission, under Leo Valladares, reported in detail on its efforts to obtain information from various offices of the United States government.</p> <p>In March and August of 1997, after years of prevarication and disingenuous manoeuvring, US government officials made available some of the documentation. Over 50% of it was blacked out. Valladares and his team found themselves examining page after page of erasures. The insulting farce Valladares was subjected to confirms the US government and John Negroponte have plenty to hide. Honduran government requests for information from the Argentinian government, whose military trained the Contra in Honduras, also drew a blank.</p> <p>The report by Valladares records various accounts by witnesses indicating the presence of US army and CIA personnel during Carney&#8217;s capture and interrogation. It is inconceivable that Carney would have been murdered without the knowledge of senior embassy officials back in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa. No wonder so much of the evidence was erased and put beyond perusal.</p> <p>How high in the embassy hierarchy does the cover up reach? Given the circumstances of the time, suspicion points firmly to John Negroponte himself. Valladares&#8217; report cites testimony from a witness taken seriously by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in a test case judgement in 1989 condemning the Honduran government for four crimes of forced disappearance. The witness, a member of the Battalion 3-16 death squad, alleged that General Alvarez Martinez, then head of the Honduran armed forces, personally interrogated James Carney.</p> <p>Alvarez and Negroponte worked closely together through 1982 and 1983 consolidating a national security state in Honduras so as to provide a secure base for the Contra war against Nicaragua. If the information in Valladares report is true, Negroponte certainly was aware that Carney had been captured. Did he turn a blind eye while a United States citizen was tortured and murdered? Or did he actually authorize it?</p> <p>Who really represents the United States?</p> <p>With this history, it is fitting that the Bush regime&#8217;s ambassador to the UN should be John Negroponte. Few are better qualified than he to dissemble and justify current policies of murder, terror and torture by the current US government and its proxies around the world. Apart from the many thousands of murdered civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of innocent immigrants are in detention in the US itself, victims of racist propaganda and political expediency. The inmates of Guantanamo Camp X-Ray suffer a worse fate, along with an unknown number of detainees in US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Diego Garcia and elsewhere.</p> <p>By now, few expect Bush regime representatives to be anything but morally dishonest and intellectually shifty. It is appropriate that the US government rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court given the record of so many of its functionaries. The recent rebuke by the International Red Cross for US government treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo was timely and salutary.</p> <p>But the United States people are not their government. They have offered repeated examples from which everyone can take heart. Innumerable individuals like Ita Ford, Maureen Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, Jean Donovan and James Carney have already helped build another America, influenced by the United States&#8217; labor traditions, civil rights history and anti-war movements. Millions of United States citizens actively continue building a vision that rejects exploitation and intimidation masquerading as &#8220;free trade&#8221; and dismisses with contempt support for murderous military and paramilitary forces under cover of false campaigns against drugs or terrorism.</p> <p>A new generation is defending the authentic American ideals exemplified often enough from Chicago and La Demajagua to present day Chiapas and Bolivia. It is unlikely that Ben Linder and Rachel Corrie will be the last United States citizens to give their lives out of goodness for the sake of a better world. Their enduring presence and boundless charity renders alien and lilliputian the dysfunctional, psychotic regime John Negroponte represents at the UN.</p> <p>TONI SOLO ia an activist based in Central America. Contact :&#8211; <a href="mailto:tonisolo52@yahoo.com" type="external">tonisolo52@yahoo.com</a></p> <p>NOTES</p> <p>1. US terrorism against Venezuela</p> <p>&#8211;&#8216;Chavez Accuses CIA as Bombings Rock Venezuela&#8217; Agence France-Presse.Saturday 11 October 2003 (in www.truthout.com)</p> <p>&#8211;&#8216;Waiting for a response to U.S.-based terrorists&#8217; by Dozthor Zurlent,October 13, 2003 www.yellowtimes.org</p> <p>2. Ben Linder &amp;amp;ndash; among many sites:</p> <p><a href="http://www.rtfcam.org/martyrs/fullness_of_life/ben_linder.htm" type="external">&#8211;www.rtfcam.org/martyrs/fullness_of_life/ben_linder.htm</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.scripter.net/backpages/blinder.htm" type="external">&#8211;www.scripter.net/backpages/blinder.htm</a></p> <p>3Carlos Manuel de Cespedes owned a sugar plantation at La Demajagua near the town of Manzanillo in Cuba&#8217;s south east. On October 10th in 1868, he rang the sugar mill&#8217;s bell and assembled his slaves. Cespedes announced he was freeing them, and called on them to join him in a fight to win Cuba&#8217;s independence from Spain. The bell ubsequently became a symbol of defiance to the US-dominated Batista dictatorship.</p> <p>4. For the case of the four murdered US women religious:-</p> <p>&#8211;Chapter Two of &#8220;Manufacturing Consent&#8221; by Edward S. Herman &amp;amp; Noam Chomsky. Pantheon Books. 1988</p> <p>&#8211;Lawyers Committee for Human Rights ( <a href="http://www.lchr.org/lac/nuns/nuns.htm" type="external">www.lchr.org/lac/nuns/nuns.htm</a>)</p> <p>&#8211;&#8220;WHO IS THOMAS PICKERING?&#8221;, Democracy NOW!, July 13, 1998 ( <a href="http://www.pacifica.org/" type="external">www.pacifica.org</a>)</p> <p>&#8211;United States Institute of Peace Library. Item:&#8211;&#8220;UN Security Council, Annex, From Madness to Hope: the 12-year war in El alvaldor: Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, S/25500, 1993, 62-75.&#8221; ( <a href="http://www.usip.org/" type="external">www.usip.org</a>)</p> <p>5. For James Carney:-</p> <p>&#8211;EN BUSQUEDA DE LA VERDAD QUE SE NOS OCULTA. Un informe preliminar del Comisionado Nacional de los Derechos Humanos sobre el Proceso de Desclasificacion. Dr. Leo Valladares Lanza and Susan C. Peacock. January 1998 <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/honduras/hidden_truths/verdad.htm" type="external">www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/</a>)</p> <p>&#8211;&#8220;Friends reflect on life of radical priest who disappeared 20 years ago&#8221; Shawnee News Star February 8th 2003 ( <a href="http://www.news-star.com/" type="external">www.news-star.com</a>)</p> <p>&#8211;&#8220;EMBASSY VIGIL FOR FATHER CARNEY&#8221;, EPICA News Release. Tegucigalpa, Honduras Dec. 3, 1997 <a href="http://www.igc.apc.org/epica" type="external">www.igc.apc.org/epica</a>)</p> <p>6 &#8220;U.S. embassy throws out Catholics demanding truth about Carney&#8221;, Paul Jeffrey. National Catholic Reporter. November 3rd 1997</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Authentics Americans and John Negroponte

https://counterpunch.org/2003/10/28/authentics-americans-and-john-negroponte/

2003-10-28

4left

If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel antiAmericanism is currently the first The Bush regime uses it to deceive the United States people while enriching its corporate buddies Spreading fear anxiety and hatred under the pretext of fighting terrorism Bush and his team tear up the US constitution and pawn the country8217s future The McCarthyite suggestion that a menace exists called 8220antiAmericanism8221 is a potent weapon in the Bush plutocrats8217 disinformation armoury It makes it much harder for rational criticism of US government policy to be heard8211let alone accepted The sleight of hand is to pretend that the regime installed in the White House represents the United States people People throughout the Americas know better After such long experience of US government aggression opportunism and duplicity maybe they are harder to dupe As Bolivia tries to remake itself and the peoples of Venezuela and Colombia gear up to resist yet more White House sponsored terrorism1 now may be a good time to remember some United States citizens who had a very different vision from that of their government In Central America thousands of communities have been victims of terrorist aggression by the US government or its open support for genocidal militarydominated regimes in the region Yet it is in those places that a more authentic voice of the United States people has been taken to heart This truth counteracts the mindless racism encouraged by the neocons8217 beloved cop out 8220antiamericanism8221 The assassination of Ben Linder 2 When Ben Linder was murdered by US government trained and funded Contra terrorists in 1987 in northern Nicaragua he was installing electricity for impoverished rural communities At his funeral in Matagalpa that northern Nicaraguan city overflowed with mourners for the young man from Portland Oregon who came to work for them and finished by dying for them Writing about what was needed in order to resist the US terrorist war against Nicaragua Linder wrote once 8220everything you can do should be done8221 So apart from fixing up electrical generating plant he also helped with vaccination programs dressing up as a clown to amuse parents and children waiting in line riding his unicycle juggling How exceptional was Ben Linder Perhaps it was his murder that made him an icon for those people determined to show solidarity with Central American victims of US government aggression Tens of thousands of US citizens worked for longer or shorter periods in Central American countries before and after Ben Linder The great majority stayed for brief lengths of time with poor rural and urban communities in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution But many others worked long term on human rights and grass roots community development throughout the region Rejecting the racist colonialism practiced by their governments since the interventions in Cuba and the Philippines during the war with Spain these United States citizens shared an authentically American vision That vision embraces as equals and as teachers the diverse peoples of all the Americas It is the vision of Simon Bolivar to the sound of the Demajagua bell3 that day when Carlos Manuel de Cespedes declared an end to slavery in Cuba and called on all free people to rise up and resist an earlier vicious corrupt ruthless empire For people in the United States that vision has travelled through many diverse filters But the essential elements are in common and derive from the ideals that inspired the French and American revolutions Successive US governments have betrayed those ideals around the world from Central America to Asia in Palestine and now in Venezuela As heroic Rachel Corrie tragically found out in Palestine should US citizens defy their government8217s policy and defend the most basic humanitarian norms so much the worse for them US nuns murdered in El Salvador 4 In 1981 a couple of decades before Rachel Corrie was murdered the bodies of four women were found in a shallow grave in a rural district not far from San Salvador El Salvador8217s capital They had been raped and shot dead by members of the Salvadoran army on the orders of senior officers In the context of the time the atrocity would hardly have merited reporting But the women were United States citizens Two were religious sisters of the New York based Maryknoll order Ita Ford and Maureen Clarke One was an Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel the fourth a lay missioner Jean Donovan By virtue of their nationality the story did make the news just8211the back page of the New York Times to that paper8217s eternal shame Those four women had helped defend Salvadorans from the terror unleashed against their own people by the Salvadoran government with support from the United States administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan They gave their lives working alongside vulnerable people and communities in El Salvador The murders followed the assassination in 1980 of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero The women8217s deaths were manipulated by the US government and its everpliant news media The full facts took years to emerge US ambassador to the UN Jean Kirkpatrick falsely accused the women of having supported the Salvadoran armed opposition the FMLN In fact the four women were passionate advocates of nonviolence accompanying the rural villagers they served while caught up in a violent civil war Ambassador Kirkpatrick8217s statements on the case of the four women were to be expected from an unrepentant supporter of the bloodthirsty Argentinian military dictatorship Her successor at the UN was Vernon Walters former deputy director of the CIA coorganiser of the continent wide terrorist blueprint Plan Condor and promoter of Ronald Reagan8217s terrorist war against Nicaragua In 1986 Vernon Walters threw in the face of the UN his government8217s rejection of the International Court of Justice verdict convicting the US of terrorism against Nicaragua Kirkpatrick8217s and Walters8217 apologetics for mass murder helped John Negroponte then US ambassador to Honduras cover up his support for the systematic forced disappearances used to destroy Honduran civilian opposition to the presence of Contra bases in their country Thomas Pickering US ambassador to El Salvador at the time also gave misleading information on local army and paramilitary murders probably an essential qualification for his subsequent posting in 1989 as US ambassador to the UN taking over from Vernon Walters Jean Kirkpatrick Vernon Walters Thomas Pickering John Negroponte and other US government representatives sent clear signals that the local military in El Salvador Honduras and Guatemala were to be allowed a free hand by the United States government to murder tens of thousands of civilians and anyone who spoke out against the slaughter Perhaps the defining climax to the sickening murder campaign came in 1989 when the Salvadoran army killed six Jesuit academics and two of their domestic staff at the University of Central America in San Salvador These crimes were made possible because the United States government consistently tried to conceal its institutional role in funding training and supporting the military and paramilitary perpetrators The IranContra scandal was the culmination of that sustained program of regional deceit James 8220Guadelupe8221 Carney8211the dilemma of a socially committed priest 5 Faced with the murderous onslaught of their own governments plenty of people in Central America believed the only practical response was armed resistance Many others took the path of nonviolent opposition The tension between the two responses at a time of widespread savage violence raised painful moral dilemmas Someone whose life epitomised those dilemmas was a Jesuit priest called James Carney From Minnesota Carney was known by his Honduran parishioners as Padre Guadelupe after the Mexican indigenous Virgin Mary Carney a World War Two combat veteran was forcibly disappeared by the Honduran military in September 1983 Remains exhumed at a former USContra military base in January this year may have been those of the missing priest The discovery came after many years of efforts to find out how he died from the US authorities by Carney8217s family the Honduran government relatives of other Honduran disappeared victims and by some US journalists principally the Baltimore Sun in the mid1990s The US government is involved because senior US embassy personnel may have authorised Carney8217s murder Arriving in Honduras not long after the epochmaking Honduran general strike in 1954 Carney worked for over 20 years in northern Honduras and had taken Honduran nationality In 1979 the Honduran government expelled him for his determined and outspoken support for the Honduran rural poor He was especially incensed at CIA intervention in the internal elections of the most successful ever agricultural cooperative in Honduras Las Isletas subsequently sold to the Standard Fruit company In Nicaragua he met a group of other Honduran exiles determined to return home and start a campaign of armed resistance to the military presence in their country of the Nicaraguan Contra backed by the United States army Carney felt he had no choice but to accompany them as their chaplain Twenty years ago he resigned from the Jesuit order and went back to the country he loved carrying his Bible in his pack The armed group crossed into Honduras reaching the remote Patuca district in Olancho Right then the United States army was on a series of manoeuvres with the Honduran army known as Big Pine Following desertions the small guerilla column was located Of its 93 members over 70 were killed Most were captured interrogated under torture and then murdered Prevarication and cover up And that was James Carney8217s fate too As Carney8217s friend Fr Joe Mulligan is quoted as saying 8220If James Carney was captured by Honduran troops before killing him I think the Honduran officials would have looked for a wink or a nod of approval from someone in the US government or from the CIA82216 That suspicion is supported by the January 1998 report of the Honduran government8217s Human Rights Commission The Commission under Leo Valladares reported in detail on its efforts to obtain information from various offices of the United States government In March and August of 1997 after years of prevarication and disingenuous manoeuvring US government officials made available some of the documentation Over 50 of it was blacked out Valladares and his team found themselves examining page after page of erasures The insulting farce Valladares was subjected to confirms the US government and John Negroponte have plenty to hide Honduran government requests for information from the Argentinian government whose military trained the Contra in Honduras also drew a blank The report by Valladares records various accounts by witnesses indicating the presence of US army and CIA personnel during Carney8217s capture and interrogation It is inconceivable that Carney would have been murdered without the knowledge of senior embassy officials back in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa No wonder so much of the evidence was erased and put beyond perusal How high in the embassy hierarchy does the cover up reach Given the circumstances of the time suspicion points firmly to John Negroponte himself Valladares8217 report cites testimony from a witness taken seriously by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights in a test case judgement in 1989 condemning the Honduran government for four crimes of forced disappearance The witness a member of the Battalion 316 death squad alleged that General Alvarez Martinez then head of the Honduran armed forces personally interrogated James Carney Alvarez and Negroponte worked closely together through 1982 and 1983 consolidating a national security state in Honduras so as to provide a secure base for the Contra war against Nicaragua If the information in Valladares report is true Negroponte certainly was aware that Carney had been captured Did he turn a blind eye while a United States citizen was tortured and murdered Or did he actually authorize it Who really represents the United States With this history it is fitting that the Bush regime8217s ambassador to the UN should be John Negroponte Few are better qualified than he to dissemble and justify current policies of murder terror and torture by the current US government and its proxies around the world Apart from the many thousands of murdered civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan hundreds of innocent immigrants are in detention in the US itself victims of racist propaganda and political expediency The inmates of Guantanamo Camp XRay suffer a worse fate along with an unknown number of detainees in US bases in Iraq Afghanistan Diego Garcia and elsewhere By now few expect Bush regime representatives to be anything but morally dishonest and intellectually shifty It is appropriate that the US government rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court given the record of so many of its functionaries The recent rebuke by the International Red Cross for US government treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo was timely and salutary But the United States people are not their government They have offered repeated examples from which everyone can take heart Innumerable individuals like Ita Ford Maureen Clarke Dorothy Kazel Jean Donovan and James Carney have already helped build another America influenced by the United States8217 labor traditions civil rights history and antiwar movements Millions of United States citizens actively continue building a vision that rejects exploitation and intimidation masquerading as 8220free trade8221 and dismisses with contempt support for murderous military and paramilitary forces under cover of false campaigns against drugs or terrorism A new generation is defending the authentic American ideals exemplified often enough from Chicago and La Demajagua to present day Chiapas and Bolivia It is unlikely that Ben Linder and Rachel Corrie will be the last United States citizens to give their lives out of goodness for the sake of a better world Their enduring presence and boundless charity renders alien and lilliputian the dysfunctional psychotic regime John Negroponte represents at the UN TONI SOLO ia an activist based in Central America Contact 8211 tonisolo52yahoocom NOTES 1 US terrorism against Venezuela 82118216Chavez Accuses CIA as Bombings Rock Venezuela8217 Agence FrancePresseSaturday 11 October 2003 in wwwtruthoutcom 82118216Waiting for a response to USbased terrorists8217 by Dozthor ZurlentOctober 13 2003 wwwyellowtimesorg 2 Ben Linder ampampndash among many sites 8211wwwrtfcamorgmartyrsfullness_of_lifeben_linderhtm 8211wwwscripternetbackpagesblinderhtm 3Carlos Manuel de Cespedes owned a sugar plantation at La Demajagua near the town of Manzanillo in Cuba8217s south east On October 10th in 1868 he rang the sugar mill8217s bell and assembled his slaves Cespedes announced he was freeing them and called on them to join him in a fight to win Cuba8217s independence from Spain The bell ubsequently became a symbol of defiance to the USdominated Batista dictatorship 4 For the case of the four murdered US women religious 8211Chapter Two of 8220Manufacturing Consent8221 by Edward S Herman ampamp Noam Chomsky Pantheon Books 1988 8211Lawyers Committee for Human Rights wwwlchrorglacnunsnunshtm 82118220WHO IS THOMAS PICKERING8221 Democracy NOW July 13 1998 wwwpacificaorg 8211United States Institute of Peace Library Item82118220UN Security Council Annex From Madness to Hope the 12year war in El alvaldor Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador S25500 1993 62758221 wwwusiporg 5 For James Carney 8211EN BUSQUEDA DE LA VERDAD QUE SE NOS OCULTA Un informe preliminar del Comisionado Nacional de los Derechos Humanos sobre el Proceso de Desclasificacion Dr Leo Valladares Lanza and Susan C Peacock January 1998 wwwgwuedunsarchiv 82118220Friends reflect on life of radical priest who disappeared 20 years ago8221 Shawnee News Star February 8th 2003 wwwnewsstarcom 82118220EMBASSY VIGIL FOR FATHER CARNEY8221 EPICA News Release Tegucigalpa Honduras Dec 3 1997 wwwigcapcorgepica 6 8220US embassy throws out Catholics demanding truth about Carney8221 Paul Jeffrey National Catholic Reporter November 3rd 1997 amp160

If/SCONJ patriotism/NOUN is/AUX the/DET last/ADJ refuge/NOUN of/ADP the/DET scoundrel/NOUN antiAmericanism/NOUN is/AUX currently/ADV the/DET first/ADJ The/DET Bush/PROPN regime/NOUN uses/VERB it/PRON to/PART deceive/VERB the/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN people/NOUN while/SCONJ enriching/VERB its/PRON corporate/ADJ buddies/NOUN Spreading/VERB fear/NOUN anxiety/NOUN and/CCONJ hatred/NOUN under/ADP the/DET pretext/NOUN of/ADP fighting/VERB terrorism/NOUN Bush/PROPN and/CCONJ his/PRON team/NOUN tear/VERB up/ADP the/DET US/PROPN constitution/NOUN and/CCONJ pawn/VERB the/DET country8217s/PROPN future/NOUN The/DET McCarthyite/PROPN suggestion/NOUN that/SCONJ a/DET menace/NOUN exists/AUX called/VERB 8220antiAmericanism8221/PRON is/AUX a/DET potent/ADJ weapon/NOUN in/ADP the/DET Bush/PROPN plutocrats8217/PROPN disinformation/NOUN armoury/NOUN It/PRON makes/VERB it/PRON much/ADV harder/ADV for/ADP rational/ADJ criticism/NOUN of/ADP US/PROPN government/NOUN policy/NOUN to/PART be/AUX 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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - County Bancorp Inc:</p> <p>* COUNTY BANCORP, INC. ANNOUNCES NET INCOME OF $2.1 MILLION FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER 2017 AND NET INCOME OF $10.4 MILLION FOR THE YEAR 2017</p> * Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE $0.30 <p>* Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW $0.47 &#8212; THOMSON REUTERS I/B/E/S</p> <p>* COUNTY BANCORP-NET INTEREST INCOME REMAINED STABLE AT $10.2 MILLION FOR BOTH THREE MONTHS ENDED DEC 31, 2017 AND TO THREE MONTHS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2016 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to shift the course of the 7-year-old civil war.</p> <p>The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities including a research and development in Damascus&#8217; Barzeh district and two installations near Homs.</p> <p>The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his superpower ally Russia, but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war.</p> <p>The air attack, denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression, was unlikely to alter the course of a multi-sided war that has killed at least half a million people.</p> <p>&#8220;We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we&#8217;ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program,&#8221; Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump called the operation a success on Twitter and proclaimed: &#8220;Mission accomplished.&#8221;</p> <p>However, McKenzie acknowledged elements of Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-trump/trump-mission-accomplished-on-perfectly-executed-syria-strike-idUSKBN1HL0TW" type="external">Trump: 'mission accomplished' on 'perfectly executed' Syria strike</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-scene/syria-strike-reduces-research-center-to-smoking-rubble-idUSKBN1HL107" type="external">Syria strike reduces research center to smoking rubble</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-israel/syria-strikes-are-important-signal-to-iran-and-hezbollah-israeli-minister-idUSKBN1HL0A4" type="external">Syria strikes are 'important signal' to Iran and Hezbollah: Israeli minister</a> <p>In New York, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again, &#8220;the United States is locked and loaded.&#8221;</p> <p>At the United Nations, Russia said the U.S.-led strikes would complicate U.N. efforts to broker a political solution to the conflict in Syria.</p> <p>Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Saturday that the strikes were &#8220;unacceptable and lawless.&#8221;</p> <p>Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;Morning of resilience&#8221;.</p> <p>Ten hours after the missiles hit, smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh, where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of casualties.</p> <p>Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally, but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used. Syria fired 40 unguided surface to air missiles - but only after the Western strikes had ended, the Pentagon said.</p> <p>&#8220;We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets,&#8221; McKenzie said.</p> <p>The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people. They concluded Assad&#8217;s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as &#8220;limited and targeted&#8221;, with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war.</p> <p>U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a &#8220;one-time shot.&#8221;</p> THREE TARGETS <p>Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons, a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs, and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p> <p>The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets, and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria&#8217;s ability to produce such weapons.</p> <p>U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria, but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation.</p> <p>Syrian state media called the attack a &#8220;flagrant violation of international law&#8221;. Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals.</p> <p>Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma later on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack. Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings.</p> <p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p> <p>However, Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a one-off, unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad.</p> A missile is seen crossing over Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018. SANA/Handout via REUTERS <p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia.</p> <p>The Western countries were at pains to avoid further escalation, including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival Russia. French Defence Minister Florence Parly said the Russians &#8220;were warned beforehand&#8221;, to avert conflict.</p> <p>Dmitry Belik, a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes, told Reuters: &#8220;The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical. Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages.&#8221;</p> <p>The Western intervention has virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war&#8217;s early months.</p> ASSAD STRONG <p>In Douma, site of the suspected gas attack, the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad&#8217;s government of the entire war.</p> <p>Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has let Assad crush the rebel threat to topple him.</p> Slideshow (16 Images) <p>The United States, Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years, arming rebels, bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group. But they have refrained from targeting Assad&#8217;s government, apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p> <p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p> <p>The combined U.S., British and French assault involved more missiles, but appears to have struck more limited targets, than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack. That strike had effectively no impact on the war.</p> <p>Mattis said the United States had conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack. Evidence that the nerve agent sarin was also used was inconclusive, he said.</p> <p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad&#8217;s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although, unlike nerve agents, chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p> <p>Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry,; Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Idrees Ali, Yara Bayoumy, Joel Schectman in Washington; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam, Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut; Kinda Makieh in Barzeh; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow, Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Peter Graff, Kevin Liffey and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Yara Bayoumy, Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States is &#8220;locked and loaded&#8221; to strike again if Syria&#8217;s President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s government again uses chemical weapons, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Security Council on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;We are confident that we have crippled Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program. We are prepared to sustain this pressure, if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>&#8220;If the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again, the United States is locked and loaded,&#8221; Haley said.</p> <p>Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations Security Council failed to adopted a Russian-drafted resolution on Saturday that would have condemned &#8220;the aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic by the U.S. and its allies in violation of international law and the U.N. Charter.&#8221;</p> United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks to members of the United Nations Security Council during an emergency meeting on Syria at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz <p>Only Russia, China and Bolivia voted in favor of the draft resolution. Eight countries voted against the draft, while four abstained. A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, France, Britain or the United States to pass.</p> <p>Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain struck Syria with air-launched cruise missiles on Saturday to cripple President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s chemical weapons facilities and prevent what Prime Minister Theresa May cast as a global slide towards their greater use.</p> <p>Four Royal Air Force Tornado jets from the Akrotiri base in Cyprus fired Storm Shadow missiles at a military facility near Homs where it was assessed that Syria had stockpiled chemicals, Britain&#8217;s Ministry of Defense said.</p> <p>May said the strike was &#8220;limited and targeted&#8221; and came after intelligence indicated that Syrian military officials had co-ordinated a chlorine attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7.</p> <p>Missile attacks by the United States, France and Britain had been aimed at deterring Assad&#8217;s further use of chemical weapons and were not an attempt to topple the Syrian government, May said. The mission had been a success, she said.</p> <p>&#8220;This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change,&#8221; May said in a statement made from her country residence at Chequers just minutes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the strikes from the White House.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-britain-may-lega/western-missile-attack-on-syria-was-right-and-legal-british-pm-may-says-idUSKBN1HL0H9" type="external">Western missile attack on Syria was 'right and legal', British PM May says</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-homs/france-says-syrias-capacity-to-produce-chemical-weapons-considerably-weakened-idUSKBN1HL12K" type="external">France says Syria's capacity to produce chemical weapons considerably weakened</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-britain-may-assa/british-pm-may-declines-to-say-whether-assad-can-stay-after-missile-strikes-idUSKBN1HL0IG" type="external">British PM May declines to say whether Assad can stay after missile strikes</a> <p>May later told reporters in her Downing Street office that the Western missiles struck a chemical weapons storage and production facility, a chemical weapons research center and a military bunker involved in chemical weapons attacks.</p> <p>By launching strikes without prior approval from parliament, May dispensed with a non-binding constitutional convention dating back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. She said speed was essential and that military action was in the national interest.</p> <p>&#8220;It was both right and legal to take military action,&#8221; May said, adding that she would update parliament on Monday.</p> <p>The Western missile strikes demonstrate the volatile nature of the Syrian civil war, which started in March 2011 as an anti-Assad uprising but is now a proxy conflict involving a number of world and regional powers and a myriad of insurgent groups.</p> <p>Assad, May said, should not doubt the resolve of Britain, France and the United States but made clear that the strike was a specific response to the Douma attack which killed up to 75 people, including children.</p> <p>May dismissed as &#8220;grotesque and absurd&#8221; a claim by Russia, which intervened in the war in 2015 to back Assad, that the Douma attack was staged by Britain. But she declined to give any signal about the future of Assad.</p> <p>May&#8217;s office issued a statement detailing what it said was the justification for military action under international law, saying Assad had used chemical weapons since 2013 and the blocking of United Nations action by Russia and other allies of Syria left no alternative to &#8220;truly exceptional&#8221; use of force.</p> <p>&#8220;Such an intervention was directed exclusively to averting a humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Syrian regime&#8217;s use of chemical weapons, and the action was the minimum judged necessary for that purpose,&#8221; Downing Street said.</p> &#8220;RIGHT AND LEGAL&#8221; <p>May referred specifically to last month&#8217;s nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the southern English cathedral city of Salisbury that she has blamed on Russia. Moscow has denied any involvement.</p> <p>&#8220;We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized &#8211; either within Syria, on the streets of the UK or elsewhere,&#8221; May told reporters in Downing Street.</p> <p>She said almost a century of global acceptance about not using chemical weapons had been eroded in Douma and Salisbury.</p> <p>May said Britain and its allies had sought to use every diplomatic means to stop the use of chemical weapons, but had been repeatedly thwarted, citing a Russian veto of an independent investigation into the Douma attack at the U.N. Security Council this week.</p> Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May attends a press conference in 10 Downing Street, London, April 14, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/Pool <p>&#8220;So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime,&#8221; she said.</p> BOMBS DON&#8217;T BRING PEACE <p>The small Northern Irish political party that props up her government said May was justified in taking such action though it said wider intervention in Syria would be counter-productive.</p> <p>However, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a fervent anti-war campaigner, called the strikes &#8220;legally questionable&#8221; and said May should have recalled parliament from a holiday and &#8220;not trailed after Donald Trump&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;Bombs won&#8217;t save lives or bring about peace,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Britain should be playing a leadership role to bring about a ceasefire in the conflict, not taking instructions from Washington and putting British military personnel in harm&#8217;s way.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Many politicians in Britain, including some in May&#8217;s own Conservative Party, had backed his call for parliament to give the authority for any military strike.</p> <p>A YouGov poll for The Times newspaper this week indicated that only a fifth of voters believed that Britain should launch attacks on Syrian military targets and 43 percent opposed action.</p> <p>Former Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote on air strikes against Assad&#8217;s forces in 2013 when 30 Conservative lawmakers voted against action, with many Britons wary of entering another conflict after intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya failed to bring stability to the region.</p> <p>Cameron, though, gave his support of May on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;As we have seen in the past, inaction has its consequences,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill, William James and William Schomberg; Writing by Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Peter Graff and Toby Chopra</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-County Bancorp Q4 EPS $0.30 U.S. says air strikes cripple Syria chemical weapons program If Syria uses toxic gas again, U.S. 'locked and loaded': U.N. envoy Haley U.N. Security council fails to adopt Russian resolution on Syria Britain attacks Syria with cruise missiles to deter more chemical attacks

https://reuters.com/article/brief-county-bancorp-q4-eps-030/brief-county-bancorp-q4-eps-030-idUSASB0C1ES

2018-01-18

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Jan 18 Reuters County Bancorp Inc COUNTY BANCORP INC ANNOUNCES NET INCOME OF 21 MILLION FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER 2017 AND NET INCOME OF 104 MILLION FOR THE YEAR 2017 Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE 030 Q4 EARNINGS PER SHARE VIEW 047 8212 THOMSON REUTERS IBES COUNTY BANCORPNET INTEREST INCOME REMAINED STABLE AT 102 MILLION FOR BOTH THREE MONTHS ENDED DEC 31 2017 AND TO THREE MONTHS ENDED DECEMBER 31 2016 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIRUT Reuters Western powers said on Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria8217s chemical weapons program but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to shift the course of the 7yearold civil war The United States France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago targeting what the Pentagon said were three chemical weapons facilities including a research and development in Damascus8217 Barzeh district and two installations near Homs The bombing was the biggest intervention by Western countries against Syrian President Bashar alAssad and his superpower ally Russia but the three countries said the strikes were limited to Syria8217s chemical weapons capabilities and not aimed at toppling Assad or intervening in the civil war The air attack denounced by Damascus and its allies as an illegal act of aggression was unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war that has killed at least half a million people 8220We believe that by hitting Barzeh in particular we8217ve attacked the heart of the Syrian chemicals weapon program8221 Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie said at the Pentagon US President Donald Trump called the operation a success on Twitter and proclaimed 8220Mission accomplished8221 However McKenzie acknowledged elements of Syria8217s chemical weapons program remain and he could not guarantee that Syria would be unable to conduct a chemical attack in the future Related Coverage Trump mission accomplished on perfectly executed Syria strike Syria strike reduces research center to smoking rubble Syria strikes are important signal to Iran and Hezbollah Israeli minister In New York US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that Trump told her that if Syria uses poisonous gas again 8220the United States is locked and loaded8221 At the United Nations Russia said the USled strikes would complicate UN efforts to broker a political solution to the conflict in Syria Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Saturday that the strikes were 8220unacceptable and lawless8221 Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of Assad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220Morning of resilience8221 Ten hours after the missiles hit smoke was still rising from the remains of five destroyed buildings of the Syrian Scientific Research Center in Barzeh where a Syrian employee said medical components were developed There were no immediate reports of casualties Russia had promised to respond to any attack on its ally but the Pentagon said no Russian air defense systems were used Syria fired 40 unguided surface to air missiles but only after the Western strikes had ended the Pentagon said 8220We are confident that all of our missiles reached their targets8221 McKenzie said The Western countries said the strikes were aimed at preventing more Syrian chemical weapons attacks after a suspected poison gas attack in Douma on April 7 killed up to 75 people They concluded Assad8217s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as 8220limited and targeted8221 with no intention of toppling Assad or intervening more widely in the war US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a 8220onetime shot8221 THREE TARGETS Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research development production and testing of chemical and biological weapons a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post The Pentagon said there had been chemical weapons agents at one of the targets and that the strikes had significantly crippled Syria8217s ability to produce such weapons UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged all Security Council members to exercise restraint and avoid escalation in Syria but said allegations of chemical weapons use demand an investigation Syrian state media called the attack a 8220flagrant violation of international law8221 Iran8217s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called it a crime and the Western leaders criminals Inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW were due to try to visit Douma later on Saturday to inspect the site of the suspected gas attack Moscow condemned the Western states for refusing to wait for their findings Russia whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold Warera hostility has denied any gas attack took place in Douma and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up antiRussian hysteria However Syria and its allies also made clear that they considered the attack a oneoff unlikely to do meaningful harm to Assad A missile is seen crossing over Damascus Syria April 14 2018 SANAHandout via REUTERS A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia The Western countries were at pains to avoid further escalation including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival Russia French Defence Minister Florence Parly said the Russians 8220were warned beforehand8221 to avert conflict Dmitry Belik a Russian member of parliament who was in Damascus and witnessed the strikes told Reuters 8220The attack was more of a psychological nature rather than practical Luckily there are no substantial losses or damages8221 The Western intervention has virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war8217s early months ASSAD STRONG In Douma site of the suspected gas attack the last buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town state TV reported That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta marking one of the biggest victories for Assad8217s government of the entire war Russian and Iranian military help over the past three years has let Assad crush the rebel threat to topple him Slideshow 16 Images The United States Britain and France have all participated in the Syrian conflict for years arming rebels bombing Islamic State fighters and deploying troops on the ground to fight that group But they have refrained from targeting Assad8217s government apart from a volley of US missiles last year Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power they held back in the past from striking his government lacking a wider strategy to defeat him The combined US British and French assault involved more missiles but appears to have struck more limited targets than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack That strike had effectively no impact on the war Mattis said the United States had conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack Evidence that the nerve agent sarin was also used was inconclusive he said Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use although its use as a weapon is banned Allegations of Assad8217s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week Reporting by Phil Stewart and Tom Perry Additional reporting by Steve Holland Idrees Ali Yara Bayoumy Joel Schectman in Washington Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut Kinda Makieh in Barzeh Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Polina Ivanova in Moscow Michelle Nichols in New York Writing by Peter Graff Kevin Liffey and Doina Chiacu Editing by Yara Bayoumy Diane Craft and Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles UNITED NATIONS Reuters The United States is 8220locked and loaded8221 to strike again if Syria8217s President Bashar alAssad8217s government again uses chemical weapons US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the Security Council on Saturday 8220We are confident that we have crippled Syria8217s chemical weapons program We are prepared to sustain this pressure if the Syrian regime is foolish enough to test our will8221 she said 8220If the Syrian regime uses this poison gas again the United States is locked and loaded8221 Haley said Reporting by Michelle Nichols Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles UNITED NATIONS Reuters The United Nations Security Council failed to adopted a Russiandrafted resolution on Saturday that would have condemned 8220the aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic by the US and its allies in violation of international law and the UN Charter8221 United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks to members of the United Nations Security Council during an emergency meeting on Syria at the UN headquarters in New York US April 14 2018 REUTERSEduardo Munoz Only Russia China and Bolivia voted in favor of the draft resolution Eight countries voted against the draft while four abstained A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia China France Britain or the United States to pass Reporting by Michelle Nichols Editing by David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain struck Syria with airlaunched cruise missiles on Saturday to cripple President Bashar alAssad8217s chemical weapons facilities and prevent what Prime Minister Theresa May cast as a global slide towards their greater use Four Royal Air Force Tornado jets from the Akrotiri base in Cyprus fired Storm Shadow missiles at a military facility near Homs where it was assessed that Syria had stockpiled chemicals Britain8217s Ministry of Defense said May said the strike was 8220limited and targeted8221 and came after intelligence indicated that Syrian military officials had coordinated a chlorine attack in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7 Missile attacks by the United States France and Britain had been aimed at deterring Assad8217s further use of chemical weapons and were not an attempt to topple the Syrian government May said The mission had been a success she said 8220This is not about intervening in a civil war It is not about regime change8221 May said in a statement made from her country residence at Chequers just minutes after US President Donald Trump announced the strikes from the White House Related Coverage Western missile attack on Syria was right and legal British PM May says France says Syrias capacity to produce chemical weapons considerably weakened British PM May declines to say whether Assad can stay after missile strikes May later told reporters in her Downing Street office that the Western missiles struck a chemical weapons storage and production facility a chemical weapons research center and a military bunker involved in chemical weapons attacks By launching strikes without prior approval from parliament May dispensed with a nonbinding constitutional convention dating back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq She said speed was essential and that military action was in the national interest 8220It was both right and legal to take military action8221 May said adding that she would update parliament on Monday The Western missile strikes demonstrate the volatile nature of the Syrian civil war which started in March 2011 as an antiAssad uprising but is now a proxy conflict involving a number of world and regional powers and a myriad of insurgent groups Assad May said should not doubt the resolve of Britain France and the United States but made clear that the strike was a specific response to the Douma attack which killed up to 75 people including children May dismissed as 8220grotesque and absurd8221 a claim by Russia which intervened in the war in 2015 to back Assad that the Douma attack was staged by Britain But she declined to give any signal about the future of Assad May8217s office issued a statement detailing what it said was the justification for military action under international law saying Assad had used chemical weapons since 2013 and the blocking of United Nations action by Russia and other allies of Syria left no alternative to 8220truly exceptional8221 use of force 8220Such an intervention was directed exclusively to averting a humanitarian catastrophe caused by the Syrian regime8217s use of chemical weapons and the action was the minimum judged necessary for that purpose8221 Downing Street said 8220RIGHT AND LEGAL8221 May referred specifically to last month8217s nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the southern English cathedral city of Salisbury that she has blamed on Russia Moscow has denied any involvement 8220We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalized 8211 either within Syria on the streets of the UK or elsewhere8221 May told reporters in Downing Street She said almost a century of global acceptance about not using chemical weapons had been eroded in Douma and Salisbury May said Britain and its allies had sought to use every diplomatic means to stop the use of chemical weapons but had been repeatedly thwarted citing a Russian veto of an independent investigation into the Douma attack at the UN Security Council this week Britains Prime Minister Theresa May attends a press conference in 10 Downing Street London April 14 2018 REUTERSSimon DawsonPool 8220So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime8221 she said BOMBS DON8217T BRING PEACE The small Northern Irish political party that props up her government said May was justified in taking such action though it said wider intervention in Syria would be counterproductive However opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a fervent antiwar campaigner called the strikes 8220legally questionable8221 and said May should have recalled parliament from a holiday and 8220not trailed after Donald Trump8221 8220Bombs won8217t save lives or bring about peace8221 he said 8220Britain should be playing a leadership role to bring about a ceasefire in the conflict not taking instructions from Washington and putting British military personnel in harm8217s way8221 Slideshow 3 Images Many politicians in Britain including some in May8217s own Conservative Party had backed his call for parliament to give the authority for any military strike A YouGov poll for The Times newspaper this week indicated that only a fifth of voters believed that Britain should launch attacks on Syrian military targets and 43 percent opposed action Former Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote on air strikes against Assad8217s forces in 2013 when 30 Conservative lawmakers voted against action with many Britons wary of entering another conflict after intervention in Iraq Afghanistan and Libya failed to bring stability to the region Cameron though gave his support of May on Saturday 8220As we have seen in the past inaction has its consequences8221 he said Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill William James and William Schomberg Writing by Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge Editing by Angus MacSwan Peter Graff and Toby Chopra Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Ahmad Massoud/ZUMA Press</p> <p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175635/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>Pham To looked great for 78 years old. (At least, that&#8217;s about how old he thought he was.) His hair was thin, gray, and receding at the temples, but his eyes were lively and his physique robust&#8212;all the more remarkable given what he had lived through. I listened intently, as I had so many times before to so many similar stories, but it was still beyond my ability to comprehend. It&#8217;s probably beyond yours, too.</p> <p>Pham To told me that the planes began their bombing runs in 1965 and that periodic artillery shelling started about the same time. Nobody will ever know just how many civilians were killed in the years after that. &#8220;The number is uncountable,&#8221; he said one spring day a few years ago in a village in the mountains of rural central Vietnam. &#8220;So many people died.&#8221;</p> <p>And it only got worse. Chemical defoliants came next, ravaging the land. Helicopter machine gunners began firing on locals. By 1969, bombing and shelling were day-and-night occurrences. Many villagers fled. Some headed further into the mountains, trading the terror of imminent death for a daily struggle of hardscrabble privation; others were forced into squalid refugee resettlement areas. Those who remained in the village suffered more when the troops came through. Homes were burned as a matter of course. People were kicked and beaten. Men were shot when they ran in fear. Women were raped. One morning, a massacre by American soldiers wiped out 21 fellow villagers. This was the Vietnam War for Pham To, as for so many rural Vietnamese.</p> <p>One, Two&#8230; Many Vietnams?</p> <p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" /></p> <p>At the beginning of the Iraq War, and for years after, reporters, pundits, veterans, politicians, and ordinary Americans <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-11-06-vets-usat_x.htm" type="external">asked</a> whether the American debacle in Southeast Asia was being repeated. Would it be &#8220; <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/18097/iraq-versus-vietnam-comparison-public-opinion.aspx" type="external">another Vietnam</a>&#8220;? Would it become a &#8220; <a href="http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/summary.cfm?q=377" type="external">quagmire</a>&#8220;?</p> <p>The same held true for Afghanistan. Years after 9/11, as that war, too, foundered, questions about whether it was &#8220; <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/01/30/obama-s-vietnam.html" type="external">Obama&#8217;s Vietnam</a>&#8221; appeared ever more frequently. In fact, by October 2009, a majority of Americans had come to believe it was &#8220; <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/19/cnn-poll-will-afghanistan-turn-into-another-vietnam/" type="external">turning into another Vietnam</a>.&#8221;</p> <p>In those years, &#8220;Vietnam&#8221; even proved a surprisingly <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703746604574463024150622310.html" type="external">two-sided analogy</a>&#8212;after, at least, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125487333320069331.html" type="external">generals</a> began reading and citing <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club" type="external">revisionist texts</a> about that war. These claimed, despite all appearances, that the US military had actually won in Vietnam (before the politicians, media, and antiwar movement gave the gains away). The same winning formula, they insisted, could be used to triumph again. And so, a failed solution from that failed war, counterinsurgency, or COIN, was trotted out as the military panacea for impending disaster.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086919/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Debated <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2009/12/how-afghanistan-is-and-isn-t-another-vietnam/26257/" type="external">comparisons</a> between the two ongoing wars and the one that somehow never went away, came to <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and-vietnam-20120424" type="external">litter</a> newspapers, journals, magazines, and the Internet&#8212;until David Petraeus, a top COINdinista general who had written his <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club" type="external">doctoral dissertation</a> on the &#8220;lessons&#8221; of the Vietnam War, was called in to settle the matter by putting those lessons to work winning the other two. In the end, of course, US troops were <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/21/iraq-rejects-us-plea-bases" type="external">booted out</a> of Iraq, while the war in Afghanistan continues to this day as a dismally devolving stalemate, now wracked by &#8220; <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/12/24/police-afghanistan-us-kabul/1788779/" type="external">green-on-blue</a>&#8221; or &#8220;insider&#8221; attacks on US forces, while the general himself returned to Washington as CIA director to run covert wars in <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/24/world/la-fg-drone-study-20120925" type="external">Pakistan</a> and <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/12/27/3158338/us-drone-strikes-in-yemen-increase.html" type="external">Yemen</a> before retiring in <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175619" type="external">disgrace</a> following a sex scandal.</p> <p>Still, for all the ink about the &#8220; <a href="http://www.ndu.edu/press/political-military-lessons.html" type="external">Vietnam analogy</a>,&#8221; virtually none of the reporters, pundits, historians, generals, politicians, or other members of the chattering classes ever so much as mentioned the Vietnam War as Pham To knew it. In that way, they managed to miss the one unfailing parallel between America&#8217;s wars in all three places: civilian suffering.</p> <p>For all the dissimilarities, botched analogies, and tortured comparisons, there has been one connecting thread in Washington&#8217;s foreign wars of the last half century that, in recent years at least, Americans have seldom found of the slightest interest: misery for local nationals. Civilian suffering is, in fact, the defining characteristic of <a href="http://www.unicef.org/graca/patterns.htm" type="external">modern war</a> in general, even if only rarely discussed in the halls of power or the <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-01-06/opinions/35439668_1_civilian-deaths-wars-three-year-conflict" type="external">mainstream media</a>.</p> <p>An Unimaginable Toll</p> <p>Pham To was lucky. He and Pham Thang, another victim and a neighbor, told me that, of the 2,000 people living in their village before the war, only 300 survived it. Bombing, shelling, a massacre, disease, and starvation had come close to wiping out their entire settlement. &#8220;So many people were hungry,&#8221; Pham Thang said. &#8220;With no food, many died. Others were sick and with medications unavailable, they died, too. Then there was the bombing and shelling, which took still more lives. They all died because of the war.&#8221;</p> <p>Leaving aside those who perished from disease, hunger, or lack of medical care, at least 3.8 million Vietnamese died violent war deaths according to researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington. The best estimate we have is that 2 million of them were civilians. Using a very conservative extrapolation, this suggests that 5.3 million civilians were wounded during the war, for a total of 7.3 million Vietnamese civilian casualties overall. To such figures might be added an estimated <a href="http://www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu/cgi-bin/starfetch.exe?ZcGm4tpMBsHpqlt@7MzegUcyQLS7uI@inrWyEhn0BOca06Wa9v@qyEa35b5GjqVcdx8H1nCFaqipcdzPeY.1UHgdzUDrANU89T8k@h2yMEkk1v.zIGairQ/2391211001A.pdf" type="external">11.7 million</a> Vietnamese forced from their homes and turned into refugees, up to <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v422/n6933/full/nature01537.html" type="external">4.8 million</a> sprayed with toxic herbicides like Agent Orange, an estimated 800,000 to 1.3 million war orphans, and 1 million war widows.</p> <p>The numbers are staggering, the suffering incalculable, the misery almost incomprehensible to most Americans but not, perhaps, to an Iraqi.</p> <p>No one will ever know just how many Iraqis died in the wake of the US invasion of 2003. In a country with an estimated population of about <a href="http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/country-profile/middle-east-north-africa/iraq" type="external">25 million</a> at the time, a much-debated survey&#8212;the results of which were published in the British medical journal The Lancet&#8212;suggested more than <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html" type="external">601,000 violent &#8220;excess deaths</a>&#8221; had occurred by 2006. Another survey indicated that more than <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq14sep14,1,3979621.story" type="external">1.2 million</a> Iraqi civilians had died because of the war (and the various internal conflicts that flowed from it) as of 2007. The Associated Press tallied up records of <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/04/24/official_report_other_data_show_more_than_110600_iraqi_deaths/" type="external">110,600 deaths</a> by early 2009. An Iraqi family health survey fixed the number at <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2008/pr02/en/index.html" type="external">151,000 violent deaths</a> by June 2006. Official documents made public by Wikileaks counted 109,000 deaths, including 66,081 civilian deaths, between 2004 and 2009. <a href="http://www.iraqbodycount.org/" type="external">Iraq Body Count</a> has tallied as many as 121,220 documented cases of violent civilian deaths alone.</p> <p>Then there are those <a href="http://costsofwar.org/article/refugees-and-health" type="external">3.2 million</a> Iraqis who were internally displaced or fled the violence to other lands, only to find uncertainty and deprivation in places like Jordan, Iran, and now war-torn Syria. By 2011, 9% or more of Iraq&#8217;s women, as many as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/world/middleeast/iraqi-widows-numbers-have-grown-but-aid-lags.html?_r=0" type="external">1 million</a>, were widows (a number that skyrocketed in the years after the US invasion). A recent survey found that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20461110" type="external">800,000 to 1 million</a> Iraqi children had lost one or both parents, a figure that only grows with the continuing violence that the US unleashed but never stamped out.</p> <p>Today, the country, which experienced an <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174892/michael_schwartz_the_iraqi_brain_drain" type="external">enormous brain drain</a> of professionals, has a total of 200 social workers and psychiatrists to aid all those, armed and unarmed, who suffered every sort of horror and trauma. (In just the last seven years, by comparison, the US Veterans Administration has hired <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june12/vamentalhealth_04-19.html" type="external">7,000</a> new mental health professionals to deal with Americans who have been psychologically scarred by war.)</p> <p>Many Afghans, too, would surely be able to relate to what Pham To and millions of Vietnamese war victims endured. For more than 30 years, Afghanistan has, with the rarest of exceptions, been at war. It all started with the 1979 Soviet invasion and <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1984/chalmers_johnson_abolish_the_cia" type="external">Washington&#8217;s support</a> for some of the most extreme of the Islamic militants who opposed the Russian occupation of the country.</p> <p>The latest iteration of war there began with an invasion by US and allied forces in 2001, and has since claimed the lives of many <a href="http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-civilians" type="external">thousands</a> of civilians in <a href="http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2012/11/29/roadside-bomb-kills-10-afghan-civilians/" type="external">roadside</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0" type="external">aerial bombings</a>, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/asia/19afghanistan.html" type="external">suicide attacks</a> and <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2011/03/helicopter_gunners_kill_9_afgh.html" type="external">helicopter attacks</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/24/us-afghanistan-raids-idUSTRE71N15U20110224" type="external">night raids</a> and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/07/nation/la-na-nn-robert-bales-afghanistan-massacre-20121107" type="external">outright massacres</a>. Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of everything from lack of access to medical care (there are just <a href="http://www.who.int/healthinfo/EN_WHS2012_Full.pdf" type="external">2 doctors</a> for every 10,000 Afghans) to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/23/afghan-refugees-amnesty-report" type="external">exposure</a>, including shocking reports of children freezing to death in refugee camps <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17116592" type="external">last winter</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/world/asia/deadly-bite-of-winter-returns-to-ill-prepared-refugee-camps-of-kabul.html" type="external">again</a> this year. They were among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war. <a href="http://costsofwar.org/article/afghan-refugees" type="external">Millions</a> more live as refugees outside the country, mostly in Iran and <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-pakistan-afghan-refugees-20121213,0,7534396.story" type="external">Pakistan</a>. Of the women who remain in the country, up to <a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/world/afghanistan-community-of-widows6118.html" type="external">2 million</a> are widows. In addition, there are now an estimated <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/03/world/americas/afghanistan-orphanage-tour/index.html" type="external">2 million</a> Afghan orphans. No wonder <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/156443/Afghans-Outlook-Lives-Remains-Bleak.aspx" type="external">polling</a> by Gallup this past summer found 96% of Afghans claiming they were either &#8220;suffering&#8221; or &#8220;struggling,&#8221; and just 4% &#8220;thriving.&#8221;</p> <p>American Refugees in Mexico?</p> <p>For most Americans, this type of unrelenting, war-related misery is unfathomable. Few have ever personally experienced anything like what their tax dollars have wrought in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia in the last half-century. And while <a href="http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/11/15/census-u-s-poverty-rate-spikes-nearly-50-million-americans-affected/" type="external">surprising numbers</a> of Americans do suffer from poverty and deprivation, few know anything about what it&#8217;s like to live through a year of war&#8212;let alone 10, as Pham To did&#8212;under the constant threat of air strikes, artillery fire, and violence perpetrated by foreign ground troops.</p> <p>Still, as a simple thought experiment, let&#8217;s consider for a moment what it might be like in American terms. Imagine that the United States had experienced an occupation by a foreign military force. Imagine millions or even tens of millions of American civilians dead or wounded as a result of an invasion and resulting civil strife.</p> <p>Imagine a country in which your door might be kicked down in the dead of night by heavily-armed, foreign young men, in strange uniforms, helmets and imposing body armor, yelling things in a language you don&#8217;t understand. Imagine them rifling through your drawers, upending your furniture, holding you at gunpoint, roughing up your husband or son or brother, and marching him off in the middle of the night. Imagine, as well, a country in which those foreigners kill American &#8220;insurgents&#8221; and then routinely <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-kill-team-photos-20110327/0742506" type="external">strip them naked</a>; in which those occupying troops sometimes <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20807182" type="external">urinate</a> on American bodies (and shoot videos of it); or take <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/pictures/the-kill-team-photos-20110327/0232760" type="external">trophy photos</a> of their &#8220;kills&#8221;; or <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0311/kill_team_d664b005-6479-4a0b-ab2b-9be235920a0c.html" type="external">mutilate</a> them; or pose with the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-afghan-photos-20120418,0,6471010,full.story" type="external">body parts</a> of dead Americans; or from time to time&#8212;for reasons again beyond your comprehension&#8212; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/middleeast/22confess.html" type="external">rape</a> or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/army-seeks-death-penalty-for-robert-bales-in-massacre.html" type="external">murder</a> your <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/us-soldier-gets-life-sentence-afghan-killings-024116265.html" type="external">friends</a> and neighbors.</p> <p>Imagine, for a moment, violence so extreme that you and literally millions like you have to flee your hometowns for squalid refugee camps or expanding slums ringing the nearest cities. Imagine trading your home for a new one without heat or electricity, possibly made of refuse with a corrugated metal roof that roars when it rains. Then imagine living there for months, if not years.</p> <p>Imagine things getting so bad that you decide to trek across the Mexican border to live an uncertain life, forever wondering if your new <a href="http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war" type="external">violence-</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/25/us-mexico-poverty-idUSBRE86O1PY20120725" type="external">poverty-</a>wracked host nation will <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-pakistan-afghan-refugees-20121213,0,7534396.story" type="external">turn you out</a> or if you&#8217;ll ever be able to return to your home in the US Imagine living with these realities day after day for up to decade.</p> <p>After natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, small numbers of Americans briefly experience something like what millions of war victims&#8212;Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans, and others&#8212;have often had to endure for significant parts of their lives. But for those in America&#8217;s war zones, there will be no <a href="http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1103665,00.html" type="external">telethons</a>, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1698922/12-12-12-concert-raised-30-million-sandy-relief.jhtml" type="external">benefit concerts</a>, or <a href="http://www.empirestaterelief.com/" type="external">texting fund drives</a>.</p> <p>Pham To and Pham Thang had to bury the bodies of their family members, friends, and neighbors after they were massacred by American troops passing through their village on patrol. They had to rebuild their homes and their lives after the war with remarkably little help. One thing was as certain for them as it has been for war-traumatized Iraqis and Afghans of our moment: no Hollywood luminaries lined up to help raise funds for them or their village. And they never will.</p> <p>&#8220;We lost so many people and so much else. And this land was affected by Agent Orange, too. You&#8217;ve come to write about the war, but you could never know the whole story,&#8221; Pham Thang told me. Then he became circumspect. &#8220;Now, our two governments, our two countries, live in peace and harmony. And we just want to restore life to what it once was here. We suffered great losses. The US government should offer assistance to help increase the local standard of living, provide better healthcare, and build infrastructure like better roads.&#8221;</p> <p>No doubt&#8212;despite the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/world/asia/us-fund-to-rebuild-afghanistan-is-criticized.html" type="external">last decade</a> of US <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/world/middleeast/04reconstruct.html" type="external">nation-building</a> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/02/AR2011010202491.html" type="external">debacles</a> in its <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175583/" type="external">war zones</a>&#8212;many Iraqis and Afghans would express similar sentiments. Perhaps they will even be saying the same sort of thing to an American reporter decades from now.</p> <p>Over these last years, I&#8217;ve interviewed hundreds of war victims like Pham Thang, and he&#8217;s right: I&#8217;ll probably never come close to knowing what life was like for those whose worlds were upended by America&#8217;s foreign wars. And I&#8217;m far from alone. Most Americans never make it to a war zone, and even US military personnel arrive only for finite tours of duty, while for combat correspondents and aid workers an exit door generally remains open. Civilians like Pham To, however, are in it for the duration.</p> <p>In the Vietnam years, there was at least an antiwar movement in this country that included many <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietnam20aug20,0,6449035,full.story" type="external">Vietnam veterans</a> who made <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietnam6aug06,0,7018171,full.story" type="external">genuine efforts</a> to highlight the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-vietside20aug20,0,4976158,full.story" type="external">civilian suffering</a> they knew was going on at almost <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/my-lai-month" type="external">unimaginable levels</a>. In contrast, in the decade-plus since 9/11, with the <a href="http://www.currentintelligence.net/reviews/2011/6/17/monica-hallers-zainab-jawhar.html" type="external">rarest</a> of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/03/14/ST2008031403909.html" type="external">exceptions</a>, Americans have remained remarkably detached from their distant wars, thoroughly ignoring what can be known about the suffering that has been caused in their name.</p> <p>As I was wrapping up my interview, Pham Thang asked me about the purpose of the last hour and a half of questions I&#8217;d asked him. Through my interpreter, I explained that most Americans knew next to nothing about Vietnamese suffering during the war and that most books written in my country on the war years ignored it. I wanted, I told him, to offer Americans the chance to hear about the experiences of ordinary Vietnamese for the first time.</p> <p>&#8220;If the American people know about these incidents, if they learn about the wartime suffering of people in Vietnam, do you think they will sympathize?&#8221; he asked me.</p> <p>Soon enough, I should finally know the answer to his question.</p> <p>Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/24/opinion/la-oe-turse-afghanistan-and-vietnam-20120424" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a>, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-book-club" type="external">the Nation</a>, and <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175426/nick_turse_a_secret_war_in_120_countries" type="external">regularly</a> at <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/nickturse/" type="external">TomDispatch.</a> He is the author most recently of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086919/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam</a> (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books). Published on January 15th, it offers a new look at the American war machine in Vietnam and the suffering it caused. His website is <a href="http://www.nickturse.com/" type="external">NickTurse.com</a>. You can follow him on <a href="http://nickturse.tumblr.com/" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p> <p>To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="_cke_saved_href=" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p> <p>To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="_cke_saved_href=" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p> <p>To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="_cke_saved_href=" type="external">Facebook</a>.</p> <p>To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&amp;amp;id=1e41682ade" type="external">here</a>.</p>

“So Many People Died”: How Afghanistan and Iraq Echo Vietnam

https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/civilian-suffering-afghanistan-and-vietnam-kill-anything-that-moves/

2013-01-09

4left

Ahmad MassoudZUMA Press This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website Pham To looked great for 78 years old At least that8217s about how old he thought he was His hair was thin gray and receding at the temples but his eyes were lively and his physique robust8212all the more remarkable given what he had lived through I listened intently as I had so many times before to so many similar stories but it was still beyond my ability to comprehend It8217s probably beyond yours too Pham To told me that the planes began their bombing runs in 1965 and that periodic artillery shelling started about the same time Nobody will ever know just how many civilians were killed in the years after that 8220The number is uncountable8221 he said one spring day a few years ago in a village in the mountains of rural central Vietnam 8220So many people died8221 And it only got worse Chemical defoliants came next ravaging the land Helicopter machine gunners began firing on locals By 1969 bombing and shelling were dayandnight occurrences Many villagers fled Some headed further into the mountains trading the terror of imminent death for a daily struggle of hardscrabble privation others were forced into squalid refugee resettlement areas Those who remained in the village suffered more when the troops came through Homes were burned as a matter of course People were kicked and beaten Men were shot when they ran in fear Women were raped One morning a massacre by American soldiers wiped out 21 fellow villagers This was the Vietnam War for Pham To as for so many rural Vietnamese One Two8230 Many Vietnams At the beginning of the Iraq War and for years after reporters pundits veterans politicians and ordinary Americans asked whether the American debacle in Southeast Asia was being repeated Would it be 8220 another Vietnam8220 Would it become a 8220 quagmire8220 The same held true for Afghanistan Years after 911 as that war too foundered questions about whether it was 8220 Obama8217s Vietnam8221 appeared ever more frequently In fact by October 2009 a majority of Americans had come to believe it was 8220 turning into another Vietnam8221 In those years 8220Vietnam8221 even proved a surprisingly twosided analogy8212after at least generals began reading and citing revisionist texts about that war These claimed despite all appearances that the US military had actually won in Vietnam before the politicians media and antiwar movement gave the gains away The same winning formula they insisted could be used to triumph again And so a failed solution from that failed war counterinsurgency or COIN was trotted out as the military panacea for impending disaster Debated comparisons between the two ongoing wars and the one that somehow never went away came to litter newspapers journals magazines and the Internet8212until David Petraeus a top COINdinista general who had written his doctoral dissertation on the 8220lessons8221 of the Vietnam War was called in to settle the matter by putting those lessons to work winning the other two In the end of course US troops were booted out of Iraq while the war in Afghanistan continues to this day as a dismally devolving stalemate now wracked by 8220 greenonblue8221 or 8220insider8221 attacks on US forces while the general himself returned to Washington as CIA director to run covert wars in Pakistan and Yemen before retiring in disgrace following a sex scandal Still for all the ink about the 8220 Vietnam analogy8221 virtually none of the reporters pundits historians generals politicians or other members of the chattering classes ever so much as mentioned the Vietnam War as Pham To knew it In that way they managed to miss the one unfailing parallel between America8217s wars in all three places civilian suffering For all the dissimilarities botched analogies and tortured comparisons there has been one connecting thread in Washington8217s foreign wars of the last half century that in recent years at least Americans have seldom found of the slightest interest misery for local nationals Civilian suffering is in fact the defining characteristic of modern war in general even if only rarely discussed in the halls of power or the mainstream media An Unimaginable Toll Pham To was lucky He and Pham Thang another victim and a neighbor told me that of the 2000 people living in their village before the war only 300 survived it Bombing shelling a massacre disease and starvation had come close to wiping out their entire settlement 8220So many people were hungry8221 Pham Thang said 8220With no food many died Others were sick and with medications unavailable they died too Then there was the bombing and shelling which took still more lives They all died because of the war8221 Leaving aside those who perished from disease hunger or lack of medical care at least 38 million Vietnamese died violent war deaths according to researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington The best estimate we have is that 2 million of them were civilians Using a very conservative extrapolation this suggests that 53 million civilians were wounded during the war for a total of 73 million Vietnamese civilian casualties overall To such figures might be added an estimated 117 million Vietnamese forced from their homes and turned into refugees up to 48 million sprayed with toxic herbicides like Agent Orange an estimated 800000 to 13 million war orphans and 1 million war widows The numbers are staggering the suffering incalculable the misery almost incomprehensible to most Americans but not perhaps to an Iraqi No one will ever know just how many Iraqis died in the wake of the US invasion of 2003 In a country with an estimated population of about 25 million at the time a muchdebated survey8212the results of which were published in the British medical journal The Lancet8212suggested more than 601000 violent 8220excess deaths8221 had occurred by 2006 Another survey indicated that more than 12 million Iraqi civilians had died because of the war and the various internal conflicts that flowed from it as of 2007 The Associated Press tallied up records of 110600 deaths by early 2009 An Iraqi family health survey fixed the number at 151000 violent deaths by June 2006 Official documents made public by Wikileaks counted 109000 deaths including 66081 civilian deaths between 2004 and 2009 Iraq Body Count has tallied as many as 121220 documented cases of violent civilian deaths alone Then there are those 32 million Iraqis who were internally displaced or fled the violence to other lands only to find uncertainty and deprivation in places like Jordan Iran and now wartorn Syria By 2011 9 or more of Iraq8217s women as many as 1 million were widows a number that skyrocketed in the years after the US invasion A recent survey found that 800000 to 1 million Iraqi children had lost one or both parents a figure that only grows with the continuing violence that the US unleashed but never stamped out Today the country which experienced an enormous brain drain of professionals has a total of 200 social workers and psychiatrists to aid all those armed and unarmed who suffered every sort of horror and trauma In just the last seven years by comparison the US Veterans Administration has hired 7000 new mental health professionals to deal with Americans who have been psychologically scarred by war Many Afghans too would surely be able to relate to what Pham To and millions of Vietnamese war victims endured For more than 30 years Afghanistan has with the rarest of exceptions been at war It all started with the 1979 Soviet invasion and Washington8217s support for some of the most extreme of the Islamic militants who opposed the Russian occupation of the country The latest iteration of war there began with an invasion by US and allied forces in 2001 and has since claimed the lives of many thousands of civilians in roadside and aerial bombings suicide attacks and helicopter attacks night raids and outright massacres Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of everything from lack of access to medical care there are just 2 doctors for every 10000 Afghans to exposure including shocking reports of children freezing to death in refugee camps last winter and again this year They were among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war Millions more live as refugees outside the country mostly in Iran and Pakistan Of the women who remain in the country up to 2 million are widows In addition there are now an estimated 2 million Afghan orphans No wonder polling by Gallup this past summer found 96 of Afghans claiming they were either 8220suffering8221 or 8220struggling8221 and just 4 8220thriving8221 American Refugees in Mexico For most Americans this type of unrelenting warrelated misery is unfathomable Few have ever personally experienced anything like what their tax dollars have wrought in Southeast Asia the Middle East and Southwest Asia in the last halfcentury And while surprising numbers of Americans do suffer from poverty and deprivation few know anything about what it8217s like to live through a year of war8212let alone 10 as Pham To did8212under the constant threat of air strikes artillery fire and violence perpetrated by foreign ground troops Still as a simple thought experiment let8217s consider for a moment what it might be like in American terms Imagine that the United States had experienced an occupation by a foreign military force Imagine millions or even tens of millions of American civilians dead or wounded as a result of an invasion and resulting civil strife Imagine a country in which your door might be kicked down in the dead of night by heavilyarmed foreign young men in strange uniforms helmets and imposing body armor yelling things in a language you don8217t understand Imagine them rifling through your drawers upending your furniture holding you at gunpoint roughing up your husband or son or brother and marching him off in the middle of the night Imagine as well a country in which those foreigners kill American 8220insurgents8221 and then routinely strip them naked in which those occupying troops sometimes urinate on American bodies and shoot videos of it or take trophy photos of their 8220kills8221 or mutilate them or pose with the body parts of dead Americans or from time to time8212for reasons again beyond your comprehension8212 rape or murder your friends and neighbors Imagine for a moment violence so extreme that you and literally millions like you have to flee your hometowns for squalid refugee camps or expanding slums ringing the nearest cities Imagine trading your home for a new one without heat or electricity possibly made of refuse with a corrugated metal roof that roars when it rains Then imagine living there for months if not years Imagine things getting so bad that you decide to trek across the Mexican border to live an uncertain life forever wondering if your new violence and povertywracked host nation will turn you out or if you8217ll ever be able to return to your home in the US Imagine living with these realities day after day for up to decade After natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy or Katrina small numbers of Americans briefly experience something like what millions of war victims8212Vietnamese Iraqis Afghans and others8212have often had to endure for significant parts of their lives But for those in America8217s war zones there will be no telethons benefit concerts or texting fund drives Pham To and Pham Thang had to bury the bodies of their family members friends and neighbors after they were massacred by American troops passing through their village on patrol They had to rebuild their homes and their lives after the war with remarkably little help One thing was as certain for them as it has been for wartraumatized Iraqis and Afghans of our moment no Hollywood luminaries lined up to help raise funds for them or their village And they never will 8220We lost so many people and so much else And this land was affected by Agent Orange too You8217ve come to write about the war but you could never know the whole story8221 Pham Thang told me Then he became circumspect 8220Now our two governments our two countries live in peace and harmony And we just want to restore life to what it once was here We suffered great losses The US government should offer assistance to help increase the local standard of living provide better healthcare and build infrastructure like better roads8221 No doubt8212despite the last decade of US nationbuilding debacles in its war zones8212many Iraqis and Afghans would express similar sentiments Perhaps they will even be saying the same sort of thing to an American reporter decades from now Over these last years I8217ve interviewed hundreds of war victims like Pham Thang and he8217s right I8217ll probably never come close to knowing what life was like for those whose worlds were upended by America8217s foreign wars And I8217m far from alone Most Americans never make it to a war zone and even US military personnel arrive only for finite tours of duty while for combat correspondents and aid workers an exit door generally remains open Civilians like Pham To however are in it for the duration In the Vietnam years there was at least an antiwar movement in this country that included many Vietnam veterans who made genuine efforts to highlight the civilian suffering they knew was going on at almost unimaginable levels In contrast in the decadeplus since 911 with the rarest of exceptions Americans have remained remarkably detached from their distant wars thoroughly ignoring what can be known about the suffering that has been caused in their name As I was wrapping up my interview Pham Thang asked me about the purpose of the last hour and a half of questions I8217d asked him Through my interpreter I explained that most Americans knew next to nothing about Vietnamese suffering during the war and that most books written in my country on the war years ignored it I wanted I told him to offer Americans the chance to hear about the experiences of ordinary Vietnamese for the first time 8220If the American people know about these incidents if they learn about the wartime suffering of people in Vietnam do you think they will sympathize8221 he asked me Soon enough I should finally know the answer to his question Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatchcom and a fellow at the Nation Institute An awardwinning journalist his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times the Nation and regularly at TomDispatch He is the author most recently of Kill Anything that Moves The Real American War in Vietnam The American Empire Project Metropolitan Books Published on January 15th it offers a new look at the American war machine in Vietnam and the suffering it caused His website is NickTursecom You can follow him on Facebook To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom Facebook To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom Facebook To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom Facebook To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom here

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<p>TOKYO, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Japan Airlines Co (JAL) said on Wednesday that President Yoshiharu Ueki, who helped lead the company&#8217;s recovery from bankruptcy, will be replaced by managing executive officer Yuji Akasaka in April.</p> <p>Ueki, a former pilot who was named president in 2012, is credited for helping revitalising the once-bankrupt carrier by slashing costs and clinching code-sharing deals.</p> <p>He will become chairman, while Akasaka, currently in charge of engineering and maintenance, will become the new president, the company said. (Reporting by Minami Funakoshi; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fans will be glued to the &#8220;March Madness&#8221; college basketball tournament as the joint owner of rights for the games, Time Warner Inc, goes before a judge on Thursday to defend a proposed takeover by AT&amp;amp;T Inc.</p> Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes arrives ahead of arguments in the trial to determine if AT&amp;amp;T's merger with Time Warner is legal under antitrust law at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>With some 12 million viewers per game last year, the NCAA tournament exemplifies the marquee programming the U.S. government argues will become more expensive if Time Warner is bought by AT&amp;amp;T, the biggest pay-TV provider via subsidiary DirecTV.</p> <p>The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in November to stop AT&amp;amp;T, which has some 25 million pay-TV subscribers, from closing the $85 billion deal. AT&amp;amp;T says a merger benefits consumers by creating efficiencies.</p> <p>If the government loses, that could open up the field for similar tie-ups between distributors and content providers. But a win could strengthen the hand of antitrust regulators looking at other, similarly structured mergers.</p> <p>Opening arguments in the case are set for Thursday before Judge Richard Leon in Washington, who will decide the case. They were delayed one day by bad weather.</p> <p>The merger would hand AT&amp;amp;T, if it becomes the new owner of Time Warner, the motive and opportunity to refuse to license the March Madness games, along with premium cable channel HBO and other content, to pay-TV rivals and online distributors, the Justice Department says.</p> <p>The case is unusual for several reasons. To begin with, President Donald Trump criticized the proposed deal during his campaign and since taking office.</p> <p>AT&amp;amp;T lawyer Daniel Petrocelli had asked for access to communications between the White House and Justice Department about the deal, but Judge Leon denied the request.</p> Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes arrives ahead of arguments in the trial to determine if AT&amp;amp;T's merger with Time Warner is legal under antitrust law at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>AT&amp;amp;T and Time Warner also are not direct competitors, making the deal a so-called vertical merger between companies on the same supply chain. The vast majority of challenged mergers involve one rival buying another.</p> <p>If the government loses, Verizon Communications Inc and Charter Communications Inc could strike deals to buy movie or television makers and squeeze smaller pay-TV providers.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if anyone is big enough to swallow up Netflix but you know they want to,&#8221; said Gene Kimmelman, president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>AT&amp;amp;T has said the merger would result in more than $2.5 billion in annual cost savings by 2020. It also plans to argue the deal is crucial to compete with companies like Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Netflix Inc.</p> <p>The internet companies pose two challenges to pay TV. They either compete with cable and satellite television for ad dollars or provide cheaper online video that has hurt pricey pay-TV. Some do both.</p> <p>Consumers could be hurt if AT&amp;amp;T is reluctant to sell Time Warner content to online distributors in order to protect pay-TV at a time of declining subscriptions, Kimmelman said.</p> <p>&#8220;While everyone is very worried about the big tech giants for good reason, this isn&#8217;t one of the concerns that makes any sense,&#8221; he said, adding that he welcomed moves by Google and Amazon into video.</p> <p>Apple, Facebook and other vertically integrated tech companies are more powerful than media companies were 50 years ago because they own consumer data they can use to target advertising and predict future purchases, said Andrea Murino, an antitrust lawyer with Goodwin Procter LLP.</p> <p>This, combined with antitrust enforcers&#8217; preference for asset sales to resolve competitive concerns, could mean that more vertical deals will be challenged in court, she said.</p> <p>Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington, additional reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK - The threat of a global trade war pushed the U.S. dollar to its lowest in over a month on Thursday and dragged benchmark equity indexes in the U.S. and Europe into the red, a day after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates as expected.</p> <p>It was the dollar's third decline in four sessions and helped sterling <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=GBP&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">GBP=</a> climb to a six-week high after a Bank of England policy meeting laid the foundations for another British rate increase in the coming months.</p> <p>The Fed raised its key rate by 25 basis points to a range of 1.50 percent to 1.75 percent on Wednesday and flagged at least two more increases for the year, short of the three that some economists had been predicting.</p> <p>China also nudged up its borrowing costs overnight, as Beijing braced for fresh tariffs to be announced on Thursday by U.S. President Donald Trump on Chinese imports worth as much as $60 billion.</p> <p>Those jitters, plus weaker-than-expected German business confidence data, caused European shares to fall 1.7 percent to a two-week low.</p> <p>Selling pressure intensified in morning trading on Wall Street.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> fell 340.32 points, or 1.38 percent, to 24,341.99, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> lost 34.8 points, or 1.28 percent, to 2,677.13 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> dropped 101.62 points, or 1.38 percent, to 7,243.67.</p> <p>Shares in U.S. tech giant Facebook fell 1.6 percent in morning trading, in the wake of news Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for a &#8220;major breach of trust&#8221; over how it had handled data belonging to 50 million users.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>In the currency market, sterling <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=GBP&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">GBP=</a> hit a peak of $1.4216, its highest in more than a month.</p> <p>The Bank of England kept rates steady on Thursday but two of its policymakers unexpectedly voted for an immediate rate rise, in a statement that will boost investors&#8217; confidence that borrowing costs will rise in May.</p> <p>Bond yields - which move inversely to price - fell broadly. Borrowing costs on 30-year German debt hit their lowest level of the year.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24682.31 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes -44.96 (-0.18%) .DJI .SPX .IXIC .N225 <p>Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 24/32 in price to yield 2.819 percent, from 2.907 percent late on Wednesday.</p> <p>World shares broadly retreated, with MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS shedding 0.66 percent. Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> rose 1.0 percent.</p> <p>China said it hoped to hold talks with the United States to achieve a &#8220;win-win&#8221; solution on trade, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing.</p> <p>Concern about a trade war between the world&#8217;s two largest economies also put commodity markets on guard.</p> <p>U.S. crude CLcv1 fell 1.14 percent to $64.43 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at $68.90, down 0.82 percent on the day.</p> <p>(This version of the story was refiled to add dropped word &#8216;fell&#8217; in paragraph 8)</p> <p>Editing by Bernadette Baum</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Federal investigators on Thursday combed through the home of the 23-year-old they say was behind this month&#8217;s deadly Texas bombing spree, seeking clues about what motivated his attacks the day after he killed himself in a confrontation with police.</p> FILE PHOTO: Law enforcement personnel investigate a home where the bomber was suspected to have lived in Pflugerville, Texas, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott <p>Mark Conditt, an unemployed man from the Austin suburb of Pflugerville, confessed to the three-week string of bombings in a 25-minute video found on his cellphone, police said. Conditt blew himself up with one of his own bombs on Wednesday as police closed in on him in his car.</p> <p>The bombs, which killed two people and wounded five others, primarily targeted Austin, the Texas capital and a fast-growing city of 1 million people. Three were left as parcels outside victims&#8217; homes, one by a sidewalk with a trip-wire mechanism attached and two shipped as FedEx parcels, which helped investigators unmask the bomber&#8217;s identity.</p> <p>The attacks drew national attention when the second and third bombs went off while the city was hosting its annual South by Southwest music, movies and tech festival, which draws about half a million people.</p> <p>The video showed a troubled young man, according to Austin Police Chief Brian Manley, but did not outline a clear motive for the attacks that began March 2.</p> Texas blast suspect Mark Anthony Conditt is seen in this undated handout photo released by Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, U.S. March 21, 2018. Austin Community College/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT <p>The police department was unlikely to make the video public while the investigation continued, said spokeswoman Destiny Wilson.</p> <p>Investigators sought further clues from the home Conditt moved into last year and shared with two roommates in Pflugerville, which is within walking distance of his family&#8217;s house. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are helping Austin police.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Conditt and his three siblings had been home-schooled through high school, his mother wrote on Facebook. He attended classes at Austin Community College between 2010 and 2012, but did not graduate.</p> <p>&#8220;Raised by both parents in a Christian home, Conditt reportedly walked away from his faith several years ago,&#8221; Texas Home School Association President Tim Lambert said in a statement late on Wednesday. &#8220;Unfortunately, no form of education, public or private, can ensure a tragedy like this will never happen.&#8221;</p> <p>The Austin Stone Community Church, responding to reports that Conditt had attended, said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had no records of him being actively engaged with the church.</p> <p>Five of Conditt&#8217;s bombs exploded, one was recovered before it went off, and the seventh Conditt detonated as officers rushed his vehicle.</p> <p>Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Scott Malone</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress raced on Thursday to approve a massive spending bill and send it to President Donald Trump before a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline, in a move that would significantly boost defense and non-military funding through Sept. 30.</p> People build a snowman outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>The House of Representatives cleared the way for a vote on the measure later on Thursday, voting 211-207 to open debate. If it clears the chamber despite opposition from some conservatives protesting the measure&#8217;s crushing deficit spending, it is likely to have an easier time passing the Senate.</p> <p>When coupled with recently enacted tax cuts, the bill is projected to result in budget deficits hitting more than $800 billion for this year. That could create political difficulties for Republicans running for re-election in November if the conservative wing of the party lashes out at this legislation.</p> <p>Democrats complained that in the rush to pass the bill, few if any lawmakers had time to read through the 2,232-page tome to see what it actually contained.</p> <p>For Trump, there are potential difficulties as well beyond the deficit-spending.</p> <p>Trump, in a post on Twitter late on Wednesday, said the funding bill will allow him to start building a wall on the southwest U.S. border with Mexico. &#8220;Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming,&#8221; he wrote.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-fiscal-congress-freedomcaucus/house-freedom-caucus-rejects-1-3-trillion-u-s-spending-bill-idUSKBN1GY1K4" type="external">House Freedom Caucus rejects $1.3 trillion U.S. spending bill</a> <p>But Democrats argued the added funds will help build or restore a range of other barriers, including existing fencing, and would not pay for a concrete edifice that Trump originally said would be financed by Mexico - a claim the Mexican government has denounced.</p> <p>Passage of the spending bill would end several months of intense bickering between Republicans and Democrats over spending priorities, which led to two short government shutdowns earlier this year.</p> <p>It also would deliver another setback to Trump, whose proposals for severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department and other federal agencies would be scaled back.</p> <p>The bill, which also excludes some of Trump&#8217;s immigration-related funding requests, was unveiled late on Wednesday. Senate No. 2 Republican John Cornyn said his chamber could take it up on Thursday night if no senator acts to slow it.</p> <p>On Wednesday, the White House signaled that Trump would sign the legislation if Congress sends it to him.</p> CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION <p>House Republicans&#8217; conservative Freedom Caucus on Thursday said its roughly three dozen members would not back the bill because it massively increases spending while not defunding Obamacare, Planned Parenthood and so-called sanctuary cities.</p> <p>&#8220;You&#8217;re going to see lots of conservatives vote against it,&#8221; U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, a caucus member, told Fox News in an interview.</p> <p>Trump at one point wanted $25 billion included in the bill to fully fund construction of his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, but negotiations with Democrats to make that happen fell apart early this week, according to congressional aides.</p> <p>Instead, Trump would get nearly $1.6 billion more for border security this year. More border patrol agents could be hired, but there would not be the significant increase in immigration agents working the interior of the country.</p> <p>The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big buildup in those officers to boost deportation of undocumented immigrants.</p> <p>Besides the $80 billion boost in military spending, the largest in 15 years, the measure includes new money for infrastructure improvements and combating Russian election hacking.</p> <p>In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings, including a Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school, the bill contains modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>These provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups say are needed to stop the shooting deaths of school children, concert-goers, church worshipers and others.</p> <p>A so-called &#8220;grain glitch&#8221; included in a tax law enacted at the end of last year would be repaired by the legislation.</p> <p>Big grain buyers, such as Anheuser Busch Inbev NV, Cargill Inc and the ethanol industry, have complained the glitch gives lucrative tax breaks to grain producers for selling to farming cooperatives, and a lesser break for selling to agriculture companies.</p> <p>The bill will provide a $307 million increase above the administration&#8217;s request for counter-intelligence efforts to fight Russian cyber attacks in 2018, when U.S. mid-term congressional elections will be held, and $380 million for grants to states to secure their election systems.</p> <p>Other components of the bill include $10 billion in infrastructure spending for highways, airports, railroads and broadband, and a $2.8 billion increase to fund treatment and prevention of opioid addiction and research into the subject.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Bill Trott</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Japan Airlines president to be replaced by senior exec Future of TV in balance as AT&T, Time Warner plead merger case Dollar, shares weighed down by trade war worries Investigators scour Texas bomber's home, searching for a motive Congress rushes to pass funding bill before Friday deadline

https://reuters.com/article/japan-airlines-president/japan-airlines-president-to-be-replaced-by-senior-exec-idUST9N1OK04B

2018-01-24

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TOKYO Jan 24 Reuters Japan Airlines Co JAL said on Wednesday that President Yoshiharu Ueki who helped lead the company8217s recovery from bankruptcy will be replaced by managing executive officer Yuji Akasaka in April Ueki a former pilot who was named president in 2012 is credited for helping revitalising the oncebankrupt carrier by slashing costs and clinching codesharing deals He will become chairman while Akasaka currently in charge of engineering and maintenance will become the new president the company said Reporting by Minami Funakoshi Editing by Edwina Gibbs Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Fans will be glued to the 8220March Madness8221 college basketball tournament as the joint owner of rights for the games Time Warner Inc goes before a judge on Thursday to defend a proposed takeover by ATampampT Inc Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes arrives ahead of arguments in the trial to determine if ATampampTs merger with Time Warner is legal under antitrust law at US District Court in Washington US March 22 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein With some 12 million viewers per game last year the NCAA tournament exemplifies the marquee programming the US government argues will become more expensive if Time Warner is bought by ATampampT the biggest payTV provider via subsidiary DirecTV The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in November to stop ATampampT which has some 25 million payTV subscribers from closing the 85 billion deal ATampampT says a merger benefits consumers by creating efficiencies If the government loses that could open up the field for similar tieups between distributors and content providers But a win could strengthen the hand of antitrust regulators looking at other similarly structured mergers Opening arguments in the case are set for Thursday before Judge Richard Leon in Washington who will decide the case They were delayed one day by bad weather The merger would hand ATampampT if it becomes the new owner of Time Warner the motive and opportunity to refuse to license the March Madness games along with premium cable channel HBO and other content to payTV rivals and online distributors the Justice Department says The case is unusual for several reasons To begin with President Donald Trump criticized the proposed deal during his campaign and since taking office ATampampT lawyer Daniel Petrocelli had asked for access to communications between the White House and Justice Department about the deal but Judge Leon denied the request Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes arrives ahead of arguments in the trial to determine if ATampampTs merger with Time Warner is legal under antitrust law at US District Court in Washington US March 22 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein ATampampT and Time Warner also are not direct competitors making the deal a socalled vertical merger between companies on the same supply chain The vast majority of challenged mergers involve one rival buying another If the government loses Verizon Communications Inc and Charter Communications Inc could strike deals to buy movie or television makers and squeeze smaller payTV providers 8220I don8217t know if anyone is big enough to swallow up Netflix but you know they want to8221 said Gene Kimmelman president of the advocacy group Public Knowledge Slideshow 3 Images ATampampT has said the merger would result in more than 25 billion in annual cost savings by 2020 It also plans to argue the deal is crucial to compete with companies like Facebook Inc Alphabet Inc Amazoncom Inc and Netflix Inc The internet companies pose two challenges to pay TV They either compete with cable and satellite television for ad dollars or provide cheaper online video that has hurt pricey payTV Some do both Consumers could be hurt if ATampampT is reluctant to sell Time Warner content to online distributors in order to protect payTV at a time of declining subscriptions Kimmelman said 8220While everyone is very worried about the big tech giants for good reason this isn8217t one of the concerns that makes any sense8221 he said adding that he welcomed moves by Google and Amazon into video Apple Facebook and other vertically integrated tech companies are more powerful than media companies were 50 years ago because they own consumer data they can use to target advertising and predict future purchases said Andrea Murino an antitrust lawyer with Goodwin Procter LLP This combined with antitrust enforcers8217 preference for asset sales to resolve competitive concerns could mean that more vertical deals will be challenged in court she said Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington additional reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York Editing by Meredith Mazzilli Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK The threat of a global trade war pushed the US dollar to its lowest in over a month on Thursday and dragged benchmark equity indexes in the US and Europe into the red a day after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates as expected It was the dollars third decline in four sessions and helped sterling GBP climb to a sixweek high after a Bank of England policy meeting laid the foundations for another British rate increase in the coming months The Fed raised its key rate by 25 basis points to a range of 150 percent to 175 percent on Wednesday and flagged at least two more increases for the year short of the three that some economists had been predicting China also nudged up its borrowing costs overnight as Beijing braced for fresh tariffs to be announced on Thursday by US President Donald Trump on Chinese imports worth as much as 60 billion Those jitters plus weakerthanexpected German business confidence data caused European shares to fall 17 percent to a twoweek low Selling pressure intensified in morning trading on Wall Street The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI fell 34032 points or 138 percent to 2434199 the SampampP 500 SPX lost 348 points or 128 percent to 267713 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC dropped 10162 points or 138 percent to 724367 Shares in US tech giant Facebook fell 16 percent in morning trading in the wake of news Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for a 8220major breach of trust8221 over how it had handled data belonging to 50 million users Slideshow 2 Images In the currency market sterling GBP hit a peak of 14216 its highest in more than a month The Bank of England kept rates steady on Thursday but two of its policymakers unexpectedly voted for an immediate rate rise in a statement that will boost investors8217 confidence that borrowing costs will rise in May Bond yields which move inversely to price fell broadly Borrowing costs on 30year German debt hit their lowest level of the year Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 2468231 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 4496 018 DJI SPX IXIC N225 Benchmark 10year notes US10YTRR last rose 2432 in price to yield 2819 percent from 2907 percent late on Wednesday World shares broadly retreated with MSCIs gauge of stocks across the globe MIWD00000PUS shedding 066 percent Japans Nikkei N225 rose 10 percent China said it hoped to hold talks with the United States to achieve a 8220winwin8221 solution on trade Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing Concern about a trade war between the world8217s two largest economies also put commodity markets on guard US crude CLcv1 fell 114 percent to 6443 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was last at 6890 down 082 percent on the day This version of the story was refiled to add dropped word 8216fell8217 in paragraph 8 Editing by Bernadette Baum Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUSTIN Texas Reuters Federal investigators on Thursday combed through the home of the 23yearold they say was behind this month8217s deadly Texas bombing spree seeking clues about what motivated his attacks the day after he killed himself in a confrontation with police FILE PHOTO Law enforcement personnel investigate a home where the bomber was suspected to have lived in Pflugerville Texas March 21 2018 REUTERSLoren Elliott Mark Conditt an unemployed man from the Austin suburb of Pflugerville confessed to the threeweek string of bombings in a 25minute video found on his cellphone police said Conditt blew himself up with one of his own bombs on Wednesday as police closed in on him in his car The bombs which killed two people and wounded five others primarily targeted Austin the Texas capital and a fastgrowing city of 1 million people Three were left as parcels outside victims8217 homes one by a sidewalk with a tripwire mechanism attached and two shipped as FedEx parcels which helped investigators unmask the bomber8217s identity The attacks drew national attention when the second and third bombs went off while the city was hosting its annual South by Southwest music movies and tech festival which draws about half a million people The video showed a troubled young man according to Austin Police Chief Brian Manley but did not outline a clear motive for the attacks that began March 2 Texas blast suspect Mark Anthony Conditt is seen in this undated handout photo released by Austin Community College in Austin Texas US March 21 2018 Austin Community CollegeHandout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY NO RESALES NO ARCHIVES MANDATORY CREDIT The police department was unlikely to make the video public while the investigation continued said spokeswoman Destiny Wilson Investigators sought further clues from the home Conditt moved into last year and shared with two roommates in Pflugerville which is within walking distance of his family8217s house Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives ATF are helping Austin police Slideshow 3 Images Conditt and his three siblings had been homeschooled through high school his mother wrote on Facebook He attended classes at Austin Community College between 2010 and 2012 but did not graduate 8220Raised by both parents in a Christian home Conditt reportedly walked away from his faith several years ago8221 Texas Home School Association President Tim Lambert said in a statement late on Wednesday 8220Unfortunately no form of education public or private can ensure a tragedy like this will never happen8221 The Austin Stone Community Church responding to reports that Conditt had attended said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had no records of him being actively engaged with the church Five of Conditt8217s bombs exploded one was recovered before it went off and the seventh Conditt detonated as officers rushed his vehicle Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin and Jonathan Allen in New York Editing by Scott Malone Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US Congress raced on Thursday to approve a massive spending bill and send it to President Donald Trump before a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline in a move that would significantly boost defense and nonmilitary funding through Sept 30 People build a snowman outside the US Capitol in Washington US March 21 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein The House of Representatives cleared the way for a vote on the measure later on Thursday voting 211207 to open debate If it clears the chamber despite opposition from some conservatives protesting the measure8217s crushing deficit spending it is likely to have an easier time passing the Senate When coupled with recently enacted tax cuts the bill is projected to result in budget deficits hitting more than 800 billion for this year That could create political difficulties for Republicans running for reelection in November if the conservative wing of the party lashes out at this legislation Democrats complained that in the rush to pass the bill few if any lawmakers had time to read through the 2232page tome to see what it actually contained For Trump there are potential difficulties as well beyond the deficitspending Trump in a post on Twitter late on Wednesday said the funding bill will allow him to start building a wall on the southwest US border with Mexico 8220Got 16 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border rest will be forthcoming8221 he wrote Related Coverage House Freedom Caucus rejects 13 trillion US spending bill But Democrats argued the added funds will help build or restore a range of other barriers including existing fencing and would not pay for a concrete edifice that Trump originally said would be financed by Mexico a claim the Mexican government has denounced Passage of the spending bill would end several months of intense bickering between Republicans and Democrats over spending priorities which led to two short government shutdowns earlier this year It also would deliver another setback to Trump whose proposals for severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency State Department and other federal agencies would be scaled back The bill which also excludes some of Trump8217s immigrationrelated funding requests was unveiled late on Wednesday Senate No 2 Republican John Cornyn said his chamber could take it up on Thursday night if no senator acts to slow it On Wednesday the White House signaled that Trump would sign the legislation if Congress sends it to him CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION House Republicans8217 conservative Freedom Caucus on Thursday said its roughly three dozen members would not back the bill because it massively increases spending while not defunding Obamacare Planned Parenthood and socalled sanctuary cities 8220You8217re going to see lots of conservatives vote against it8221 US Representative Jim Jordan a caucus member told Fox News in an interview Trump at one point wanted 25 billion included in the bill to fully fund construction of his proposed USMexico border wall but negotiations with Democrats to make that happen fell apart early this week according to congressional aides Instead Trump would get nearly 16 billion more for border security this year More border patrol agents could be hired but there would not be the significant increase in immigration agents working the interior of the country The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big buildup in those officers to boost deportation of undocumented immigrants Besides the 80 billion boost in military spending the largest in 15 years the measure includes new money for infrastructure improvements and combating Russian election hacking In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings including a Feb 14 massacre at a Florida high school the bill contains modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence These provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups say are needed to stop the shooting deaths of school children concertgoers church worshipers and others A socalled 8220grain glitch8221 included in a tax law enacted at the end of last year would be repaired by the legislation Big grain buyers such as Anheuser Busch Inbev NV Cargill Inc and the ethanol industry have complained the glitch gives lucrative tax breaks to grain producers for selling to farming cooperatives and a lesser break for selling to agriculture companies The bill will provide a 307 million increase above the administration8217s request for counterintelligence efforts to fight Russian cyber attacks in 2018 when US midterm congressional elections will be held and 380 million for grants to states to secure their election systems Other components of the bill include 10 billion in infrastructure spending for highways airports railroads and broadband and a 28 billion increase to fund treatment and prevention of opioid addiction and research into the subject Additional reporting by Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey Editing by Bernadette Baum and Bill Trott Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan criticized the U.S. military on Friday for breaking a pledge to avoid flying helicopters over a school next to its base in Okinawa, a rare flash of discord with Tokyo&#8217;s main ally.</p> <p>The school next to the Futenma base on the southern island of Okinawa has become a focal point for discontent over the U.S. presence on the island since a window fell from a U.S. Marines helicopter onto its playground last month.</p> <p>The Marines blamed the incident on ground personnel failing to secure the window properly and promised to try to fly around the school in future.</p> <p>A string of recent aircraft incidents, including the falling window and emergency landings by two helicopters this month, have spurred renewed calls in Okinawa for the Americans to close some or all of their bases.</p> <p>&#8220;It is unacceptable. We would like the U.S. to deal with this,&#8221; Japan&#8217;s Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said.</p> <p>His ministry had clear evidence of Thursday&#8217;s overflight, including radar data and video, which it had given to the Marines and released to the media, Onodera said.</p> <p>The Marines insisted that their helicopters had avoided the school.</p> <p>&#8220;Pilots from yesterday&#8217;s flights were aware of the school&#8217;s location and avoided it, and Marine Corps Air Station Futenma confirmed using radar tracking data and pilot interviews that no Marine Corps aircraft flew over the school yesterday,&#8221; they said in a statement.</p> <p>Teachers and students at the elementary school conducted drills yesterday to evacuate the playground in case of falling aircraft parts.</p> <p>Located strategically at the edge of the East China Sea, Okinawa hosts some 30,000 military personnel living and working on bases that cover a fifth of the island. Okinawa was under U.S. occupation until 1972.</p> <p>Reporting by Tim Kelly and Linda Sieg; Editing by Paul Tait</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia&#8217;s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Paris on Sunday at the start of a European tour after three weeks in the United States, where he pitched for investments and support against arch-rival Iran.</p> <p>France&#8217;s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who worked closely with Prince Mohammed as defense minister in the previous French government, greeted him at the airport, the Saudi foreign ministry said on Twitter.</p> <p>Saudi officials said separately that Prince Mohammed, who serves as defense minister and also controls economic and energy policy for the world&#8217;s top oil exporter, would head to Spain later in the week.</p> <p>He is set to meet French President Emmanual Macron on Tuesday. On the agenda for his two-day stay in Paris are the conflicts in Yemen, Syria and the Iran nuclear deal. He will also attend cultural events and an economic forum.</p> <p>A tourism project between Paris and Riyadh is likely to be announced, but he is not expected to clinch any mega-deals.</p> <p>Activists were planning protests on Sunday. Macron is under growing pressure from lawmakers and rights groups over France&#8217;s weapons sales to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.</p> <p>Reporting By Stephen Kalin; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - Travelers grappled with another crippling wave of transport strikes in France on Sunday, as train workers protested President Emmanuel Macron&#8217;s economic reforms and a stand-off between the government and rail unions hardened.</p> A CGT sticker reading &#8220;railway emergency plan&#8221; is seen on a window over empty railway tracks at the Gare Lille Flandres railway station during a nationwide strike by French SNCF railway workers in Lille, France April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol <p>Train staff last week began three months of nationwide rolling strikes in a dispute over the government&#8217;s planned overhaul of state-run railway SNCF, in the biggest challenge yet to Macron&#8217;s attempts to modernize the French economy.</p> <p>Talks between workers and ministers have so far hit a wall. Some unions are stiffening their resistance, while the government has dug in its heels on the main aspects of its reform, which include the end of job-for-life guarantees for rail staff.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-france-reform-sncf-explainer/macrons-rail-reforms-and-french-union-strikes-idUSKBN1HF0TD" type="external">Macron's rail reforms and French union strikes</a> <p>&#8220;The status quo is not viable,&#8221; Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in an interview published in the newspaper Le Parisien on Sunday. &#8220;It&#8217;s urgent, we need to advance, and everyone should know we are determined to see this through to the end.&#8221;</p> <p>Officials at the Communist-rooted CGT union said on Friday strikes could drag on well beyond June if nothing shifted, adding train workers were ready for a &#8220;marathon&#8221;.</p> <p>The SNCF forecast that 43 percent of workers needed to make the train network run smoothly would walk out on Monday as stoppages continue, affecting local trains as well as regional lines and some international journeys.</p> <p>That marked a slight a dip in participation compared with 48 percent in the last 48 hours of walkouts on Tuesday and Wednesday last week.</p> An employee of French state-owned railway company SNCF advises a passenger at the Gare Lille Flandres railway station during a nationwide strike by French SNCF railway workers, in Lille, France, April 8, 2018. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol <p>Strikes have been called for two days out of every five until the end of June, and the shutdown is already causing havoc for commuters and holiday-makers at the start of mid-term school vacations in France.</p> <p>&#8220;This endangers me professionally,&#8221; said Olivier Coldefy, a court psychologist who works in French Guiana, whose travel plans fell through because of the train chaos.</p> <p>&#8220;I have work days that I&#8217;ve committed to that I can&#8217;t honor,&#8221; Coldefy added on Sunday morning at Montparnasse train station in Paris, where groups of tourists were scrambling to re-book trains after realizing theirs had been canceled.</p> TEST FOR MACRON <p>The showdown is one of the toughest challenges yet of Macron&#8217;s presidency, as well as a test for unions seeking to show they still have clout.</p> <p>Macron came to power last May on a promise to shake up Europe&#8217;s second-biggest economy, in a bid to modernize some of France&#8217;s creaking institutions and spur jobs growth. He has so far faced down unions to liberalize labor regulations.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>The shake-up of SNCF, which also includes ending early retirement for rail workers, comes before the monopoly is opened to competition in line with European Union rules.</p> <p>The government argues the overhaul will help transform the heavily indebted company into a profitable public service, but workers have hit back with complaints the SNCF was being dismantled to pave the way for privatization.</p> <p>Unions have also accused the government of refusing to budge an inch. Officials at the more reform-minded CFDT union said on Sunday they did not want a drawn-out conflict but that their proposed amendments to the shake-up had fallen on deaf ears.</p> <p>Locking horns with the rail sector has backfired on previous French governments - paralyzing train strikes in 1995 forced then-Prime Minister Alain Juppe to pull planned reforms.</p> BREWING PROTESTS <p>The SNCF reform has drawn public support so far, and 56 percent of French people thought the train stoppages were unjustified, according to an Ifop poll published on Sunday in the Journal du Dimanche. But discontent is also brewing in other sectors.</p> <p>Students have disrupted several universities across France in protest at a planned new selection system in higher education. Garbage collectors and other public workers have also held demonstrations.</p> <p>Though nowhere near as potent, the various protests come as France prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the student-led riots of May 1968, which gridlocked the country and led to the adoption of more progressive social policies.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Caroline Paillez, editing by Larry King; Editing by Ros Russell and Jane Merriman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a third straight term in power in Sunday elections after his anti-immigration campaign message secured a strong majority for his party in parliament, granting him two-thirds of seats based on preliminary results.</p> <p>The rightwing nationalist prime minister projected himself as a savior of Hungary&#8217;s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, an image which resonated with millions of voters, especially in rural areas.</p> <p>&#8220;We have won, Hungary has won a great victory,&#8221; a jubilant Orban told a large crowd of cheering supporters near the Danube river in Budapest.</p> <p>&#8220;There is a big battle behind us, we have won a crucial victory, giving ourself a chance to defend Hungary.&#8221;</p> <p>According to preliminary results with 93 percent of votes counted, National Election Office data projected Fidesz to win 133 seats, a tight two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament. Nationalist Jobbik was projected to win 26 seats, while the Socialists were projected as third with 20 lawmakers.</p> <p>Two smaller leftist parties, DK and LMP, won nine and eight seats respectively.</p> <p>That means Orban could have a two-thirds majority for a third time, and powers to change constitutional laws. The EU has struggled to respond as Orban&#8217;s government has, in the view of its critics, used its two landslide victories in 2010 and 2014 to erode democratic checks and balances.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-hungary-election-poland/orban-victory-confirmation-of-central-europes-emancipation-policy-polands-eu-envoy-idUSKBN1HG0JM" type="external">Orban victory confirmation of Central Europe's emancipation policy: Poland's EU envoy</a> <a href="/article/us-hungary-election-orban/from-liberal-hero-to-right-wing-icon-orbans-appeal-trumps-rivals-idUSKBN1HF0YO" type="external">From liberal hero to right-wing icon, Orban's appeal trumps rivals</a> <a href="/article/us-hungary-election-socialists/hungarian-socialist-leaders-resign-on-election-defeat-idUSKBN1HF0ZU" type="external">Hungarian Socialist leaders resign on election defeat</a> <p>The victory could embolden Orban to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against the European Union&#8217;s migration policies. Orban, Hungary&#8217;s longest-serving post-communist premier, opposes deeper integration of the bloc and - teaming up with Poland - has been a fierce critique of Brussels&#8217; policies.</p> <p>He expressed gratitude to Poland&#8217;s leaders for their backing ahead of the vote.</p> <p>French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front, was the first to congratulate Orban.</p> <p>&#8220;Great and clear victory for Viktor Orban in Hungary: reversal of values and mass immigration as promoted by the EU are rejected again. Nationalists could win a majority in Europe at the next European elections in 2019,&#8221; Le Pen tweeted.</p> OPPOSITION LEADERS RESIGN <p>The election produced a turnout of around 70 percent, exceeding the past three votes.</p> <p>Some analysts say Fidesz&#8217;s support was the strongest in small towns and villages.</p> <p>With his firm grip on state media and his business allies in control of regional newspapers, Orban&#8217;s message was amplified in the countryside. There, many people only watch the state television news channel, which has showed immigrants causing trouble in western European cities night after night.</p> <p>The strongest opposition party in the new parliament is the formerly far-right Jobbik, which has recast its image as a more moderate nationalist force.</p> <p>It campaigned on an anti-corruption agenda and urged higher wages to lure back hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have left Hungary for western Europe.</p> <p>Jobbik&#8217;s leader Gabor Vona said he would tender his resignation after the defeat.</p> <p>&#8220;Jobbik&#8217;s goal, to win the elections and force a change in government, was not achieved. Fidesz won. It won again,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The Socialists&#8217; entire leadership also resigned.</p> <p>Critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fueled xenophobia.</p> <p>With a message that he stands for all Hungarians against foreign meddling, Orban tapped into feelings shared by many Hungarians who perceive threats to their national identity and feel they are treated as second-class citizens in the EU.</p> <p>He seized the moment when on Jan. 12 2015, he said immigration into Europe should be largely halted after Paris attacks launched by Islamist extremists.</p> <p>&#8220;We should not look at economic immigration as if it had any use, because it only brings trouble and threats to European people,&#8221; he told state television then. &#8220;Therefore, immigration must be stopped. That&#8217;s the Hungarian stance.&#8221;</p> <p>In September 2015 he built a razor-wire fence on the Serbian border to keep out tens of thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. Since then his government has enacted a series of laws to control migration, and his tough measures have been sharply criticized by the United Nations.</p> <p>After casting his vote in a wealthy district of Budapest, he said he would stand up for Hungary&#8217;s interests.</p> Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses the supporters after the announcement of the partial results of parliamentary election in Budapest, Hungary, April 8, 2018.REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>Asked by journalists if he was fighting the European Union, Orban said: &#8220;The EU is not in Brussels. The EU is in Berlin, in Budapest, in Prague and in Bucharest.&#8221;</p> MIGRATION &#8220;LIKE RUST&#8221; <p>Orban&#8217;s strong win could boost other right-wing nationalists in Central Europe, in Poland and in neighboring Austria, and expose cracks in the 28-nation EU.</p> <p>Orban, 54, has curbed the powers of the constitutional court, increased control of the media and appointed loyalists to key positions.</p> <p>He is credited with keeping the budget deficit under control, reducing unemployment and some of Hungary&#8217;s debt, and putting its economy on a growth track.</p> <p>On Friday, at his closing campaign rally, he vowed to protect his nation from Muslim migrants, saying: &#8220;Migration is like rust that slowly but surely would consume Hungary.&#8221;</p> <p>The anti-immigration campaign has gone down well with many of the roughly two million core voters of Fidesz.</p> Slideshow (16 Images) <p>Orban is expected to continue his economic policies, with income tax cuts and incentives to boost growth, analysts have said.</p> <p>His business allies are expected to expand their economic domains. Businessmen close to Fidesz have acquired stakes in major industries like banking, energy, construction and tourism, profiting from EU funds. [nL3N1QW4GA]</p> <p>Writing by Krisztina Than; additional reporting by Sandor Peto and Marton Dunai; editing by Andrew Roche</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Sunday called for an end to violence in the Gaza Strip, adding the Palestinian territories were subject to a preliminary examination by her office and she was monitoring events there closely.</p> FILE PHOTO - Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), poses for pictures at the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Vidal <p>Following the deaths of 29 Palestinians in protest clashes with Israeli forces in the past two weeks, Fatou Bensouda said in a statement &#8220;any new alleged crime committed in the context of the situation in Palestine may be subjected to my Office&#8217;s scrutiny&#8221;.</p> <p>The ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes committed in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, in January 2015, after Palestine was officially admitted as a member of the court.</p> <p>Israel is not a member of the court but if Israeli citizens commit war crimes or crimes against humanity on the territory of a member state they could fall under the ICC&#8217;s jurisdiction.</p> <p>&#8220;Violence against civilians - in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza &#8211; could constitute crimes ... as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities,&#8221; Bensouda said.</p> <p>Bensouda said she would record &#8220;any instance of incitement or resort to unlawful force&#8221; by either side in the conflict.</p> <p>A preliminary examination is the earliest phase of a case at the ICC. In it, the prosecutor gathers information and studies whether crimes may have been committed that reach the level of gravity required to open a formal investigation, and whether the court would have jurisdiction.</p> <p>The ICC only has jurisdiction in cases where a country&#8217;s government is itself unable or unwilling to prosecute war crimes or crimes against humanity.</p> <p>Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Andrew Roche</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Japan criticizes U.S. for military flights over school in Okinawa Saudi crown prince begins European tour in Paris French train strikes resume as unions square off with Macron Hungary's strongman Viktor Orban wins third term in power International Criminal Court prosecutor calls for end to violence in Gaza

https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-japan-helicopter-okinawa/japan-criticizes-us-for-military-flights-over-school-in-okinawa-idUSKBN1F80CK

2018-01-19

2least

TOKYO Reuters Japan criticized the US military on Friday for breaking a pledge to avoid flying helicopters over a school next to its base in Okinawa a rare flash of discord with Tokyo8217s main ally The school next to the Futenma base on the southern island of Okinawa has become a focal point for discontent over the US presence on the island since a window fell from a US Marines helicopter onto its playground last month The Marines blamed the incident on ground personnel failing to secure the window properly and promised to try to fly around the school in future A string of recent aircraft incidents including the falling window and emergency landings by two helicopters this month have spurred renewed calls in Okinawa for the Americans to close some or all of their bases 8220It is unacceptable We would like the US to deal with this8221 Japan8217s Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said His ministry had clear evidence of Thursday8217s overflight including radar data and video which it had given to the Marines and released to the media Onodera said The Marines insisted that their helicopters had avoided the school 8220Pilots from yesterday8217s flights were aware of the school8217s location and avoided it and Marine Corps Air Station Futenma confirmed using radar tracking data and pilot interviews that no Marine Corps aircraft flew over the school yesterday8221 they said in a statement Teachers and students at the elementary school conducted drills yesterday to evacuate the playground in case of falling aircraft parts Located strategically at the edge of the East China Sea Okinawa hosts some 30000 military personnel living and working on bases that cover a fifth of the island Okinawa was under US occupation until 1972 Reporting by Tim Kelly and Linda Sieg Editing by Paul Tait Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles RIYADH Reuters Saudi Arabia8217s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Paris on Sunday at the start of a European tour after three weeks in the United States where he pitched for investments and support against archrival Iran France8217s foreign minister JeanYves Le Drian who worked closely with Prince Mohammed as defense minister in the previous French government greeted him at the airport the Saudi foreign ministry said on Twitter Saudi officials said separately that Prince Mohammed who serves as defense minister and also controls economic and energy policy for the world8217s top oil exporter would head to Spain later in the week He is set to meet French President Emmanual Macron on Tuesday On the agenda for his twoday stay in Paris are the conflicts in Yemen Syria and the Iran nuclear deal He will also attend cultural events and an economic forum A tourism project between Paris and Riyadh is likely to be announced but he is not expected to clinch any megadeals Activists were planning protests on Sunday Macron is under growing pressure from lawmakers and rights groups over France8217s weapons sales to the Saudiled coalition fighting Iranbacked Houthi rebels in Yemen Reporting By Stephen Kalin Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters Travelers grappled with another crippling wave of transport strikes in France on Sunday as train workers protested President Emmanuel Macron8217s economic reforms and a standoff between the government and rail unions hardened A CGT sticker reading 8220railway emergency plan8221 is seen on a window over empty railway tracks at the Gare Lille Flandres railway station during a nationwide strike by French SNCF railway workers in Lille France April 8 2018 REUTERSPascal Rossignol Train staff last week began three months of nationwide rolling strikes in a dispute over the government8217s planned overhaul of staterun railway SNCF in the biggest challenge yet to Macron8217s attempts to modernize the French economy Talks between workers and ministers have so far hit a wall Some unions are stiffening their resistance while the government has dug in its heels on the main aspects of its reform which include the end of jobforlife guarantees for rail staff Related Coverage Macrons rail reforms and French union strikes 8220The status quo is not viable8221 Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in an interview published in the newspaper Le Parisien on Sunday 8220It8217s urgent we need to advance and everyone should know we are determined to see this through to the end8221 Officials at the Communistrooted CGT union said on Friday strikes could drag on well beyond June if nothing shifted adding train workers were ready for a 8220marathon8221 The SNCF forecast that 43 percent of workers needed to make the train network run smoothly would walk out on Monday as stoppages continue affecting local trains as well as regional lines and some international journeys That marked a slight a dip in participation compared with 48 percent in the last 48 hours of walkouts on Tuesday and Wednesday last week An employee of French stateowned railway company SNCF advises a passenger at the Gare Lille Flandres railway station during a nationwide strike by French SNCF railway workers in Lille France April 8 2018 REUTERSPascal Rossignol Strikes have been called for two days out of every five until the end of June and the shutdown is already causing havoc for commuters and holidaymakers at the start of midterm school vacations in France 8220This endangers me professionally8221 said Olivier Coldefy a court psychologist who works in French Guiana whose travel plans fell through because of the train chaos 8220I have work days that I8217ve committed to that I can8217t honor8221 Coldefy added on Sunday morning at Montparnasse train station in Paris where groups of tourists were scrambling to rebook trains after realizing theirs had been canceled TEST FOR MACRON The showdown is one of the toughest challenges yet of Macron8217s presidency as well as a test for unions seeking to show they still have clout Macron came to power last May on a promise to shake up Europe8217s secondbiggest economy in a bid to modernize some of France8217s creaking institutions and spur jobs growth He has so far faced down unions to liberalize labor regulations Slideshow 7 Images The shakeup of SNCF which also includes ending early retirement for rail workers comes before the monopoly is opened to competition in line with European Union rules The government argues the overhaul will help transform the heavily indebted company into a profitable public service but workers have hit back with complaints the SNCF was being dismantled to pave the way for privatization Unions have also accused the government of refusing to budge an inch Officials at the more reformminded CFDT union said on Sunday they did not want a drawnout conflict but that their proposed amendments to the shakeup had fallen on deaf ears Locking horns with the rail sector has backfired on previous French governments paralyzing train strikes in 1995 forced thenPrime Minister Alain Juppe to pull planned reforms BREWING PROTESTS The SNCF reform has drawn public support so far and 56 percent of French people thought the train stoppages were unjustified according to an Ifop poll published on Sunday in the Journal du Dimanche But discontent is also brewing in other sectors Students have disrupted several universities across France in protest at a planned new selection system in higher education Garbage collectors and other public workers have also held demonstrations Though nowhere near as potent the various protests come as France prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the studentled riots of May 1968 which gridlocked the country and led to the adoption of more progressive social policies Additional reporting by Caroline Paillez editing by Larry King Editing by Ros Russell and Jane Merriman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BUDAPEST Hungary Reuters Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a third straight term in power in Sunday elections after his antiimmigration campaign message secured a strong majority for his party in parliament granting him twothirds of seats based on preliminary results The rightwing nationalist prime minister projected himself as a savior of Hungary8217s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe an image which resonated with millions of voters especially in rural areas 8220We have won Hungary has won a great victory8221 a jubilant Orban told a large crowd of cheering supporters near the Danube river in Budapest 8220There is a big battle behind us we have won a crucial victory giving ourself a chance to defend Hungary8221 According to preliminary results with 93 percent of votes counted National Election Office data projected Fidesz to win 133 seats a tight twothirds majority in the 199seat parliament Nationalist Jobbik was projected to win 26 seats while the Socialists were projected as third with 20 lawmakers Two smaller leftist parties DK and LMP won nine and eight seats respectively That means Orban could have a twothirds majority for a third time and powers to change constitutional laws The EU has struggled to respond as Orban8217s government has in the view of its critics used its two landslide victories in 2010 and 2014 to erode democratic checks and balances Related Coverage Orban victory confirmation of Central Europes emancipation policy Polands EU envoy From liberal hero to rightwing icon Orbans appeal trumps rivals Hungarian Socialist leaders resign on election defeat The victory could embolden Orban to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against the European Union8217s migration policies Orban Hungary8217s longestserving postcommunist premier opposes deeper integration of the bloc and teaming up with Poland has been a fierce critique of Brussels8217 policies He expressed gratitude to Poland8217s leaders for their backing ahead of the vote French farright leader Marine Le Pen president of the National Front was the first to congratulate Orban 8220Great and clear victory for Viktor Orban in Hungary reversal of values and mass immigration as promoted by the EU are rejected again Nationalists could win a majority in Europe at the next European elections in 20198221 Le Pen tweeted OPPOSITION LEADERS RESIGN The election produced a turnout of around 70 percent exceeding the past three votes Some analysts say Fidesz8217s support was the strongest in small towns and villages With his firm grip on state media and his business allies in control of regional newspapers Orban8217s message was amplified in the countryside There many people only watch the state television news channel which has showed immigrants causing trouble in western European cities night after night The strongest opposition party in the new parliament is the formerly farright Jobbik which has recast its image as a more moderate nationalist force It campaigned on an anticorruption agenda and urged higher wages to lure back hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have left Hungary for western Europe Jobbik8217s leader Gabor Vona said he would tender his resignation after the defeat 8220Jobbik8217s goal to win the elections and force a change in government was not achieved Fidesz won It won again8221 he said The Socialists8217 entire leadership also resigned Critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fueled xenophobia With a message that he stands for all Hungarians against foreign meddling Orban tapped into feelings shared by many Hungarians who perceive threats to their national identity and feel they are treated as secondclass citizens in the EU He seized the moment when on Jan 12 2015 he said immigration into Europe should be largely halted after Paris attacks launched by Islamist extremists 8220We should not look at economic immigration as if it had any use because it only brings trouble and threats to European people8221 he told state television then 8220Therefore immigration must be stopped That8217s the Hungarian stance8221 In September 2015 he built a razorwire fence on the Serbian border to keep out tens of thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa Since then his government has enacted a series of laws to control migration and his tough measures have been sharply criticized by the United Nations After casting his vote in a wealthy district of Budapest he said he would stand up for Hungary8217s interests Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses the supporters after the announcement of the partial results of parliamentary election in Budapest Hungary April 8 2018REUTERSLeonhard Foeger Asked by journalists if he was fighting the European Union Orban said 8220The EU is not in Brussels The EU is in Berlin in Budapest in Prague and in Bucharest8221 MIGRATION 8220LIKE RUST8221 Orban8217s strong win could boost other rightwing nationalists in Central Europe in Poland and in neighboring Austria and expose cracks in the 28nation EU Orban 54 has curbed the powers of the constitutional court increased control of the media and appointed loyalists to key positions He is credited with keeping the budget deficit under control reducing unemployment and some of Hungary8217s debt and putting its economy on a growth track On Friday at his closing campaign rally he vowed to protect his nation from Muslim migrants saying 8220Migration is like rust that slowly but surely would consume Hungary8221 The antiimmigration campaign has gone down well with many of the roughly two million core voters of Fidesz Slideshow 16 Images Orban is expected to continue his economic policies with income tax cuts and incentives to boost growth analysts have said His business allies are expected to expand their economic domains Businessmen close to Fidesz have acquired stakes in major industries like banking energy construction and tourism profiting from EU funds nL3N1QW4GA Writing by Krisztina Than additional reporting by Sandor Peto and Marton Dunai editing by Andrew Roche Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AMSTERDAM Reuters The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Sunday called for an end to violence in the Gaza Strip adding the Palestinian territories were subject to a preliminary examination by her office and she was monitoring events there closely FILE PHOTO Fatou Bensouda Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court ICC poses for pictures at the European Council in Brussels Belgium January 26 2017 REUTERSEric Vidal Following the deaths of 29 Palestinians in protest clashes with Israeli forces in the past two weeks Fatou Bensouda said in a statement 8220any new alleged crime committed in the context of the situation in Palestine may be subjected to my Office8217s scrutiny8221 The ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation into alleged crimes committed in occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem in January 2015 after Palestine was officially admitted as a member of the court Israel is not a member of the court but if Israeli citizens commit war crimes or crimes against humanity on the territory of a member state they could fall under the ICC8217s jurisdiction 8220Violence against civilians in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza 8211 could constitute crimes as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities8221 Bensouda said Bensouda said she would record 8220any instance of incitement or resort to unlawful force8221 by either side in the conflict A preliminary examination is the earliest phase of a case at the ICC In it the prosecutor gathers information and studies whether crimes may have been committed that reach the level of gravity required to open a formal investigation and whether the court would have jurisdiction The ICC only has jurisdiction in cases where a country8217s government is itself unable or unwilling to prosecute war crimes or crimes against humanity Reporting by Toby Sterling Editing by Andrew Roche Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - Berjaya Assets Bhd:</p> <p>* REFERS TO ARTICLE IN THE EDGE MALAYSIA ON 22 JAN 2018 ENTITLED &#8220;PRIVATISATION ON THE CARDS FOR 7-ELEVEN MALAYSIA?&#8221;&#8205;&#8203;</p> <p>* CLARIFIES THAT AS AT DATE OF ANNOUNCEMENT, CO IS NOT AWARE OF ANY PROPOSAL IN RELATION TO PRIVATISATION&#8205;&#8203; Source text: ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2DrRSAX" type="external">bit.ly/2DrRSAX</a>) Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - About 200 people demonstrated in Sacramento on Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark, in the latest of nearly two weeks of mostly peaceful rallies since the unarmed black man was gunned down in his grandmother&#8217;s yard.</p> <p>The death of the 22-year-old father of two was the latest in a string of killings of black men by police that have triggered street protests and fueled a renewed national debate about bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.</p> <p>Saturday&#8217;s demonstration brought together a multi-racial crowd, many holding signs such as &#8220;Stop Police Rage&#8221; and &#8220;Power to the People.&#8221; It was led by retired National Basketball Association player Matt Barnes, who grew up in the area and had two stints with the Sacramento Kings franchise.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here today to raise awareness, to come together peacefully and to have some accountability for the officers, not only in Sacramento but across the country, who have been doing this,&#8221; Barnes told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.</p> <p>Some of Clark&#8217;s relatives attended the gathering in a city plaza. It followed a more heated protest overnight, during which demonstrators yelled expletives at police clad in riot gear.</p> <p>Clark was shot on the night of March 18 by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows. Police said the officers feared he had a gun, but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone.</p> <p>Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way. The shooting was captured on a body cam video released by police.</p> Salena Manni (L), fiancee of Stephon Clark, holds their son Cairo and an unidentified man holds son Aiden (2nd R) while Basim Elkarra speaks and Rev Shane Harris listens at a rally in Sacramento, California, U.S., March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES <p>On Friday, an attorney for Clark&#8217;s family released a private autopsy showing most of the eight bullets that hit Clark struck him in the back, contradicting the police version of events.</p> <p>Clark was shot six times in the back, once in the side and once in the leg, said the attorney, Benjamin Crump.</p> <p>&#8220;This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,&#8221; Crump said.</p> Slideshow (14 Images) <p>The Sacramento Police Department said it would have no further comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner, and a review by state and local prosecutors.</p> <p>In several days of sporadic protests, protesters have blocked traffic and twice delayed fans from reaching games played by the Kings at the Golden 1 Center.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>The U.S. government&#8217;s Supreme Court battle with Microsoft Corp over whether technology companies can be forced to hand over data stored overseas could be nearing its end, after federal prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 13, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo <p>President Donald Trump on March 22 signed a provision into law making it clear that U.S. judges can issue warrants for such data, while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law.</p> <p>&#8220;This case is now moot,&#8221; the U.S. Department of Justice said, citing the newly passed legislation, in a 16-page court filing on Friday that requested the dismissal.</p> <p>The Supreme Court on Feb. 27 heard arguments in the case, which had been one of the most closely watched of the high court&#8217;s current term. Some justices urged Congress to pass a law to resolve the matter.</p> FILE PHOTO: Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith (R) makes a statement to the news media with his lawyer Josh Rosenkranz outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., February 27, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis <p>Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how U.S. prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by American companies. The case involved Microsoft&#8217;s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a U.S. judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drug-trafficking investigation.</p> <p>The bipartisan new law, known as the Cloud Act, was supported by Microsoft, other major technology companies and the Trump administration. But civil liberties groups opposed it, saying it lacked sufficient privacy protections.</p> <p>Microsoft, which has 100 data centers in 40 countries, was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States. The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account.</p> <p>A representative for Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment on the Justice Department&#8217;s filing.</p> <p>Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Alex Dobuzinskis; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ATLANTA (Reuters) - Atlanta&#8217;s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a nine-day-old cyber attack that plunged the Southeastern U.S. metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper.</p> A view of Atlanta's City Hall, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Laila Kearney <p>On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend, city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come.</p> <p>Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives, recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating &#8220;ransomware&#8221; virus attacks to hit an American city.</p> <p>Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta&#8217;s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s extraordinarily frustrating,&#8221; said Councilman Howard Shook, whose office lost 16 years of digital records.</p> <p>One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with &#8220;weapologize&#8221; and &#8220;imsorry&#8221; added to file names.</p> <p>Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyber extortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations, including businesses, healthcare organizations and government agencies. Previous high-profile attacks have shut down factories, prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations.</p> <p>Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it. The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents&#8217; information is in the hands of hackers, but they do not know for sure.</p> <p>City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices, including courts and the water department.</p> <p>Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450,000 people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau.</p> <p>City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded $51,000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files.</p> <p>&#8220;Everything on my hard drive is gone,&#8221; City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall&#8217;s ornate tower.</p> <p>City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom.</p> <p>Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish.</p> <p>&#8220;I said, &#8216;This is wrong,&#8217;&#8221; she recalled.</p> <p>City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building.</p> <p>Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device.</p> <p>Not all computers were compromised. Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected, Noble said.</p> <p>OLD-SCHOOL ANALOG</p> <p>Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases, department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters. He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files.</p> <p>&#8220;Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future,&#8221; he said. By the weekend, he added, officers were returning to digital police reports.</p> <p>Meanwhile, some city employees complained they have been left in the dark, unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know anything,&#8221; said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday.</p> FEEBLE <p>Like City Hall, whose 1930 neo-Gothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing, the city&#8217;s computer system is a combination of old and new.&amp;#160;</p> A view of Atlanta's City Hall, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Laila Kearney <p>&#8220;One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems,&#8221; Noble said.&amp;#160;</p> <p>The city published results from a recent cyber-security audit in January, and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit. The audit called for better record-keeping and hiring more technology workers.</p> <p>Councilman Shook said he is worried about how much the recovery will cost the city, but that he supports funding a cyber-security overhaul to counter future attacks.</p> <p>For now his staff are temporarily sharing one aging laptop.</p> <p>&#8220;Things are very slow,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that.&#8221;</p> <p>Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who took office in January, has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station.</p> <p>Shook, who chairs the city council&#8217;s finance subcommittee, said he did not know whether the city is negotiating with the hackers, but that it appears no ransom has been paid to date.</p> <p>The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is helping Atlanta respond, typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up.</p> <p>FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency is helping Atlanta respond to the attack, but declined to comment further.</p> <p>Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid, said Mark Weatherford, a former senior DHS cyber official.</p> <p>Weatherford, who previously served as California&#8217;s chief information security officer, said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment.</p> <p>&#8220;The longer it goes, the worse it gets,&#8221; he said. &#8220;This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Laila Kearney; additional reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Daniel Bases and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than $35 million, in one of the highest-profile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years.</p> Magomed Magomedov, a business partner and brother of co-owner of Russia's Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov, attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow, Russia March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva <p>Magomedov denied the charges at a pre-trial hearing, where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30.</p> <p>One of Russia&#8217;s richest men, the 49-year-old Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group. He also has investments in U.S. tech ventures, including the Virgin One Hyperloop project.</p> <p>He was detained along with his business partner and brother, Magomed Magomedov, and Artur Maksidov, the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.</p> <p>Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30, the court ruled.</p> <p>At a hearing in Moscow&#8217;s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial, Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses. She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a $35 million bail bond, and ordered he be detained.</p> <p>Citing the arguments against granting bail, the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft, and assets abroad. The day before he was detained, he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami, the judge said.</p> <p>Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation.</p> MUSCULAR STATE <p>Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom, Magomedov, dressed in a dark-blue jogging suit, said: &#8220;I categorically disagree with the charges presented ... The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem, and offered to put up the $35 million bail. &#8220;I&#8217;m willing to pull together this money, so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run,&#8221; Magomedov said.</p> <p>Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multi-millionaires who, while publicly loyal to the Kremlin, are not in President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s inner circle.</p> <p>Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy, Western sanctions on Russia, and powerful state-run companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy.</p> <p>In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted, some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals - though the authorities deny that.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO</a> 7.765 NMTP.MM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange -0.19 (-2.33%) NMTP.MM TRNF_p.MM FESH.MM <p>People familiar with the Russian judicial system say high-profile corruption cases are rarely fabricated, but that the law is applied selectively, and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors.</p> <p>Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with $1.4 billion. In January, he was listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as one of 96 &#8220;oligarchs&#8221; close to Putin.</p> <p>His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ride-hailing service Uber UBER.UL; Diamond Foundry, a company that produces man-made diamonds; and Peek, an online leisure activities company.</p> <p>Magomedov is also co-executive chairman of Los Angeles-based tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One, which is chaired by Richard Branson. It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes.</p> <p>He also co-owns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">NMTP.MM</a>) with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRNF_p.MM" type="external">TRNF_p.MM</a>) and transportation group Fesco ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FESH.MM" type="external">FESH.MM</a>).</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Christian Lowe; Editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Berjaya Assets Clarifies On Article In Edge Malaysia On Jan 22, 2018 Autopsy prompts more protests over killing of black man in California U.S. government seeks end to Supreme Court privacy fight with Microsoft With paper and phones, Atlanta struggles to recover from cyber attack Russian tycoon Magomedov arrested on embezzlement charges

https://reuters.com/article/brief-berjaya-assets-clarifies-on-articl/brief-berjaya-assets-clarifies-on-article-in-edge-malaysia-on-jan-22-2018-idUSFWN1PH0ES

2018-01-22

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Jan 22 Reuters Berjaya Assets Bhd REFERS TO ARTICLE IN THE EDGE MALAYSIA ON 22 JAN 2018 ENTITLED 8220PRIVATISATION ON THE CARDS FOR 7ELEVEN MALAYSIA822182058203 CLARIFIES THAT AS AT DATE OF ANNOUNCEMENT CO IS NOT AWARE OF ANY PROPOSAL IN RELATION TO PRIVATISATION82058203 Source text bitly2DrRSAX Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SACRAMENTO Calif Reuters About 200 people demonstrated in Sacramento on Saturday to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark in the latest of nearly two weeks of mostly peaceful rallies since the unarmed black man was gunned down in his grandmother8217s yard The death of the 22yearold father of two was the latest in a string of killings of black men by police that have triggered street protests and fueled a renewed national debate about bias in the US criminal justice system Saturday8217s demonstration brought together a multiracial crowd many holding signs such as 8220Stop Police Rage8221 and 8220Power to the People8221 It was led by retired National Basketball Association player Matt Barnes who grew up in the area and had two stints with the Sacramento Kings franchise 8220We8217re here today to raise awareness to come together peacefully and to have some accountability for the officers not only in Sacramento but across the country who have been doing this8221 Barnes told the Sacramento Bee newspaper Some of Clark8217s relatives attended the gathering in a city plaza It followed a more heated protest overnight during which demonstrators yelled expletives at police clad in riot gear Clark was shot on the night of March 18 by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows Police said the officers feared he had a gun but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way The shooting was captured on a body cam video released by police Salena Manni L fiancee of Stephon Clark holds their son Cairo and an unidentified man holds son Aiden 2nd R while Basim Elkarra speaks and Rev Shane Harris listens at a rally in Sacramento California US March 31 2018 REUTERSBob Strong NO RESALES NO ARCHIVES On Friday an attorney for Clark8217s family released a private autopsy showing most of the eight bullets that hit Clark struck him in the back contradicting the police version of events Clark was shot six times in the back once in the side and once in the leg said the attorney Benjamin Crump 8220This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances8221 Crump said Slideshow 14 Images The Sacramento Police Department said it would have no further comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner and a review by state and local prosecutors In several days of sporadic protests protesters have blocked traffic and twice delayed fans from reaching games played by the Kings at the Golden 1 Center Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Rich McKay in Atlanta and Jonathan Allen in New York Editing Chizu Nomiyama and Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles The US government8217s Supreme Court battle with Microsoft Corp over whether technology companies can be forced to hand over data stored overseas could be nearing its end after federal prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed FILE PHOTO The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles California US June 13 2017 REUTERSMike BlakeFile Photo President Donald Trump on March 22 signed a provision into law making it clear that US judges can issue warrants for such data while giving companies an avenue to object if the request conflicts with foreign law 8220This case is now moot8221 the US Department of Justice said citing the newly passed legislation in a 16page court filing on Friday that requested the dismissal The Supreme Court on Feb 27 heard arguments in the case which had been one of the most closely watched of the high court8217s current term Some justices urged Congress to pass a law to resolve the matter FILE PHOTO Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith R makes a statement to the news media with his lawyer Josh Rosenkranz outside of the US Supreme Court in Washington US February 27 2018 REUTERSLeah Millis Microsoft and the Justice Department had been locked in a dispute over how US prosecutors seek access to data held on overseas computer servers owned by American companies The case involved Microsoft8217s challenge to a domestic warrant issued by a US judge for emails stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin relating to a drugtrafficking investigation The bipartisan new law known as the Cloud Act was supported by Microsoft other major technology companies and the Trump administration But civil liberties groups opposed it saying it lacked sufficient privacy protections Microsoft which has 100 data centers in 40 countries was the first American company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the United States The Microsoft customer whose emails were sought told the company he was based in Ireland when he signed up for his account A representative for Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment on the Justice Department8217s filing Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Alex Dobuzinskis Additional reporting by Dustin Volz Editing by Will Dunham and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ATLANTA Reuters Atlanta8217s top officials holed up in their offices on Saturday as they worked to restore critical systems knocked out by a ninedayold cyber attack that plunged the Southeastern US metropolis into technological chaos and forced some city workers to revert to paper A view of Atlantas City Hall in Atlanta Georgia US March 31 2018 REUTERSLaila Kearney On an Easter and Passover holiday weekend city officials labored in preparation for the workweek to come Police and other public servants have spent the past week trying to piece together their digital work lives recreating audit spreadsheets and conducting business on mobile phones in response to one of the most devastating 8220ransomware8221 virus attacks to hit an American city Three city council staffers have been sharing a single clunky personal laptop brought in after cyber extortionists attacked Atlanta8217s computer network with a virus that scrambled data and still prevents access to critical systems 8220It8217s extraordinarily frustrating8221 said Councilman Howard Shook whose office lost 16 years of digital records One compromised city computer seen by Reuters showed multiple corrupted documents with 8220weapologize8221 and 8220imsorry8221 added to file names Ransomware attacks have surged in recent years as cyber extortionists moved from attacking individual computers to large organizations including businesses healthcare organizations and government agencies Previous highprofile attacks have shut down factories prompted hospitals to turn away patients and forced local emergency dispatch systems to move to manual operations Ransomware typically corrupts data and does not steal it The city of Atlanta has said it does not believe private residents8217 information is in the hands of hackers but they do not know for sure City officials have declined to discuss the extent of damage beyond disclosed outages that have shut down some services at municipal offices including courts and the water department Nearly 6 million people live in the Atlanta metropolitan area The Georgia city itself is home to more than 450000 people according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau City officials told Reuters that police files and financial documents were rendered inaccessible by unknown hackers who demanded 51000 worth of bitcoin to provide digital keys to unlock scrambled files 8220Everything on my hard drive is gone8221 City Auditor Amanda Noble said in her office housed in Atlanta City Hall8217s ornate tower City officials have not disclosed the extent to which servers for backing up information on PCs were corrupted or what kind of information they think is unrecoverable without paying the ransom Noble discovered the disarray on March 22 when she turned on her computer to discover that files could not be opened after being encrypted by a powerful computer virus known as SamSam that renamed them with gibberish 8220I said 8216This is wrong82178221 she recalled City officials then quickly entered her office and told her to shut down the computer before warning the rest of the building Noble is working on a personal laptop and using her smartphone to search for details of current projects mentioned in emails stored on that device Not all computers were compromised Ten of 18 machines in the auditing office were not affected Noble said OLDSCHOOL ANALOG Atlanta police returned to taking written case notes and have lost access to some investigative databases department spokesman Carlos Campos told Reuters He declined to discuss the contents of the affected files 8220Our data management teams are working diligently to restore normal operations and functionalities to these systems and hope to be back online in the very near future8221 he said By the weekend he added officers were returning to digital police reports Meanwhile some city employees complained they have been left in the dark unsure when it is safe to turn on their computers 8220We don8217t know anything8221 said one frustrated employee as she left for a lunch break on Friday FEEBLE Like City Hall whose 1930 neoGothic structure is attached to a massive modern wing the city8217s computer system is a combination of old and newamp160 A view of Atlantas City Hall in Atlanta Georgia US March 31 2018 REUTERSLaila Kearney 8220One of the reasons why municipalities are vulnerable is we just have so many different systems8221 Noble saidamp160 The city published results from a recent cybersecurity audit in January and had started implementing its recommendations before the ransomware virus hit The audit called for better recordkeeping and hiring more technology workers Councilman Shook said he is worried about how much the recovery will cost the city but that he supports funding a cybersecurity overhaul to counter future attacks For now his staff are temporarily sharing one aging laptop 8220Things are very slow8221 he said 8220It was a very surreal experience to be shut down like that8221 Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms who took office in January has declined to say if the city paid the ransom ahead of a March 28 deadline mentioned in an extortion note whose image was released by a local television station Shook who chairs the city council8217s finance subcommittee said he did not know whether the city is negotiating with the hackers but that it appears no ransom has been paid to date The Federal Bureau of Investigation which is helping Atlanta respond typically discourages ransomware victims from paying up FBI officials could not immediately be reached for comment A Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed the agency is helping Atlanta respond to the attack but declined to comment further Hackers typically walk away when ransoms are not paid said Mark Weatherford a former senior DHS cyber official Weatherford who previously served as California8217s chief information security officer said the situation might have been resolved with little pain if the city had quickly made that payment 8220The longer it goes the worse it gets8221 he said 8220This could turn out to be really bad if they never get their data back8221 Reporting by Laila Kearney additional reporting by Jim Finkle editing by Daniel Bases and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than 35 million in one of the highestprofile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years Magomed Magomedov a business partner and brother of coowner of Russias Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow Russia March 31 2018 REUTERSTatyana Makeyeva Magomedov denied the charges at a pretrial hearing where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30 One of Russia8217s richest men the 49yearold Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group He also has investments in US tech ventures including the Virgin One Hyperloop project He was detained along with his business partner and brother Magomed Magomedov and Artur Maksidov the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30 the court ruled At a hearing in Moscow8217s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a 35 million bail bond and ordered he be detained Citing the arguments against granting bail the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft and assets abroad The day before he was detained he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami the judge said Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation MUSCULAR STATE Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom Magomedov dressed in a darkblue jogging suit said 8220I categorically disagree with the charges presented The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny8221 Slideshow 7 Images He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem and offered to put up the 35 million bail 8220I8217m willing to pull together this money so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run8221 Magomedov said Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multimillionaires who while publicly loyal to the Kremlin are not in President Vladimir Putin8217s inner circle Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy Western sanctions on Russia and powerful staterun companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals though the authorities deny that Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO 7765 NMTPMM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange 019 233 NMTPMM TRNF_pMM FESHMM People familiar with the Russian judicial system say highprofile corruption cases are rarely fabricated but that the law is applied selectively and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with 14 billion In January he was listed by the US Treasury Department as one of 96 8220oligarchs8221 close to Putin His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ridehailing service Uber UBERUL Diamond Foundry a company that produces manmade diamonds and Peek an online leisure activities company Magomedov is also coexecutive chairman of Los Angelesbased tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One which is chaired by Richard Branson It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes He also coowns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port NMTPMM with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft TRNF_pMM and transportation group Fesco FESHMM Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov Writing by Gabrielle TetraultFarber and Christian Lowe Editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p>On January 18, Wyoming officials announced a grizzly bear trophy hunt that could begin this fall. State officials said that a plan with details of the hunt, including hunt areas and season lengths, would be released for public comment in February&amp;#160;( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).</p> <p>Thus far, Wyoming is the only state in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) to pursue a sport hunt for grizzly bears. Yellowstone&#8217;s grizzlies have not been hunted for over 40 years, after being listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ban on hunting grizzly bears is seen by experts as a major reason why the status of Yellowstone&#8217;s imperiled grizzly bears improved under ESA protections.</p> <p>Consequences of Hunting Yellowstone&#8217;s Grizzlies</p> <p>Scientists know a lot about the negative and often unintended consequences of hunting grizzly bears. Their findings are consistent no matter where research on bear hunting has been conducted &#8212; Canada, Sweden, Romania or in the US. Their major conclusion: hunting grizzlies often paradoxically increases conflicts with people and livestock. The reason is that trophy hunting is biased towards killing large male grizzlies.&amp;#160;Hunting large males disrupts the social order of bear populations, almost invariably resulting in more cub-killing by males, disruption of foraging by females, as well as unexpected and problematic population declines (see <a href="" type="internal">this paper</a>).</p> <p>In the case of Yellowstone, the hunt would target male grizzlies, while prohibiting the hunting of females with young. &amp;#160;&amp;#160;(Of course, grizzly bear hunting is banned from Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks).</p> <p>Paradoxically, hunting will likely exacerbate rather than ameliorate escalating depredation of livestock by grizzlies. Adolescent males, which are often the main depredators, tend to gravitate to areas where the dominant resident males have been killed by people. And, as with their human counterparts, adolescent male bears are notoriously prone to push human boundaries.</p> <p>A 2017 Memorandum of Agreement among Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho outlines the basic approach to hunting grizzly bears in Greater Yellowstone. Grizzly bear expert Dr. David Mattson submitted a thorough critique of this MOA as part of two letters he submitted last year commenting on the Service&#8217;s draft delisting rule ( <a href="" type="internal">see this blog</a>). He concludes that an unanticipated consequence of the proposed hunt is the probable overkill of male grizzlies. Mattson showed that within 8 years after delisting, implementation of the MOA would lead, in theory, to the near extermination of male bears outside the National Parks ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>). By adding significant numbers of bear deaths to the currently excessive and unsustainable levels, hunting once again endanger Yellowstone&#8217;s grizzly bears.</p> <p>One reason often given for hunting grizzlies is that bears would thereby become warier and people would thus be safer. But there is no evidence to support this claim ( <a href="" type="internal">see this blog</a>). In contrast to more social animals such as wolves, grizzlies tend to be loners except during breeding season or when females have cubs by their side. Lone bears are more likely to take to the grave whatever lessons they could have learned from being shot at.</p> <p>Killing Celebrity Grizzlies, Including Matron 399</p> <p>Grizzlies that frequent roadsides will be especially vulnerable to the upcoming hunts. Females that range near highways typically see people, not as threats, but as allies against male bears. The famous Jackson-area matron, Number 399, is clearly more afraid of male bears that can kill cubs than she is of people. Females such as 399 have taken a gamble on people in their efforts to keep cubs safe from predatory males.</p> <p>Until now, people have been upholding their end of the bargain. &amp;#160;And, Grand Teton Park has done a stellar job ensuring that visitors behave appropriately around roadside bears. This negotiated peace has helped Jackson&#8217;s rock star grizzlies flourish, while giving joy to countless park visitors and local residents. But the peace will be shattered when bear hunters take to the field.</p> <p>Grizzly 399 and other well-known well-loved bears den outside of National Parks on National Forest lands where they will be exposed to hunting. These bears will probably be among the first gunned down, whether out of convenience or maliciousness on the part of involved hunters and guides. Already some reprobate outfitters have threatened to kill Grizzly 399 ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>), whose den is not too hard to find.</p> <p>In comments last year on the federal decision to remove federal protections for Yellowstone grizzlies (&#8220;delist&#8221;) and thereby allow hunting, many people raised concerns about the fate of Grizzly 399 and her family if grizzlies are hunted. In fact, more than 99% of the roughly 850,000 comments submitted on the draft delisting proposal opposed delisting and sport hunting bears ( <a href="https://www.grizzlytimes.org/the-public-backs-bears" type="external">link</a>).</p> <p>But US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the States blew off the public to serve a minority of special interests, including NRA and Safari Club, as well as the agriculture and energy industries. They also ignored the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce, which passed a resolution opposing trophy hunting grizzly bears in Jackson Hole because of the economic value of these bears ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).</p> <p>There is no doubt that the economic engines currently driving communities around Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks are no longer hunting or extractive industries such as logging and ranching, but tourism and in-migration to the region because of its clean air and water, and magnificent scenery and watchable wildlife. In fact, tourism generates over 680 million dollars annually in the local communities around Yellowstone Park ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>). But the region&#8217;s politics do not yet reflect these facts.</p> <p>Wyoming&#8217;s Thuggish Approach to Grizzlies, Other Large Carnivores&amp;#160;</p> <p>Wyoming perfectly illustrates the stark contrast between the politics of yesteryear and the current reality that charismatic non-dead wildlife drives the region&#8217;s economy.&amp;#160; Wyoming officials are unambiguously thuggish in their unreasoned hostility towards large carnivores generally and grizzly bears specifically ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).</p> <p>The etymology of the word &#8220;thug&#8221; is interesting and relevant here: the original &#8220;thags&#8221; were devotees of the goddess Kali who waylaid and murdered travelers in northern Indian up through the mid-1800&#8217;s, when they were suppressed by the British.</p> <p>Wyoming Game and Fish is a devotee of a different yet related ethos that has proven no less deadly to people and animals. It sails under the colors of domination, control, and a blatant contempt for civility, democratic principles, and anyone who gets in the way of profit and the ideology of exploitation as defined by ranchers, executives of energy corporations and the NRA/Safari Club.</p> <p>Hunters play a dominant role in wildlife management, partly because virtually all funding comes from sales of hunting and fishing licenses or from taxes levied on sales of arms and ammunition. Hunters tend to be fiercely protective of their privileged status, which has increasingly come under attack by those who are disenfranchised: women, urban dwellers, non-Caucasians, and the educated ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).</p> <p>In the case of grizzly bear management, we are talking about a minority of mostly rich, politically connected white guys who want to kill grizzlies to feed their ego, rid themselves of an inconvenience, or make an ideological point. Needless-to-say, such men do not see grizzlies as sentient beings deserving of compassion. &amp;#160;&amp;#160;They also tend to see&#8212;without scientific justification&#8212;grizzlies as competitors for opportunities to kill large herbivores with enlarged sex-linked organs; i.e., bull elk ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>). So, the fewer bears, the better.</p> <p>Not surprisingly, Wyoming, along with Idaho and Montana, have barred the National Park Service (NPS) from participating in the processes of setting seasons for hunting grizzlies as a finger in the eye of the federal government and a symbolic middle finger to the NPS&#8217; preservation philosophy. Over the last few years, NPS officials, including Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk, have raised concerns about the adverse impact of grizzly bear hunting on park bears ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).&amp;#160; As soon as the Trump administration took over, the Park Service was silenced, raising this question: who is more thuggish, Wyoming or Trump?</p> <p>Hunting Grizzlies Because &#8220;We Hunt Everything Else in Wyoming&#8221;</p> <p>Last week, Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association President Jeff Smith supported the State&#8217;s proposal to hunt grizzly bears, saying: &#8220;We are dang sure supportive of hunting them, because we hunt everything else in Wyoming ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).&#8221;</p> <p>Smith&#8217;s view is wholeheartedly endorsed by Wyoming Game and Fish (WGF) officials. In fact, a year ago, at a meeting of grizzly bear managers, WGF Director Scott Talbott said something similar: &#8220;We just need to get grizzly bears delisted so we can manage them like every other species in the state, with a hunting season.&#8221;</p> <p>Managing grizzlies like other Wyoming wildlife is, in fact, the problem.&amp;#160; A case in point is the state&#8217;s management of wolves, which were delisted, for the third time, last year.</p> <p>Throwing Wyoming Wolves Under the Bus: Next Up, Grizzlies</p> <p>Wyoming officials have designated wolves outside Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks as varmints in over 90% of the state, allowing anybody to kill wolves by almost any means at any time. In 1995 and 1996 wolves were restored to Yellowstone, where they had been extirpated as a result of human persecution. The recovery of wolves in Yellowstone is considered one of the greatest conservation success stories of the century, that is, before wolves were turned over to the tender mercies of the states ( <a href="" type="internal">see this paper by&amp;#160;Scott Creel</a>).</p> <p>In 2017, wolves were delisted in Wyoming after a drawn-out legal battle. Hunters killed 32 wolves last fall ( <a href="https://wgfd.wyo.gov/WGFD/media/content/PDF/Hunting/WOLF_SUMMARY.pdf" type="external">link</a>), on top of the 113 wolves killed because they were implicated in livestock conflicts ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>), totaling nearly half of the wolf population in Wyoming. The State is well on its way to reducing the population to its target of 160 animals&#8212;a thuggish reprise of a thuggish and brutal past.</p> <p>Wyoming seems to be enacting a replay with grizzly bears. Officials in Wyoming, in fact, are leading the charge among northern Rocky Mountains states in a bid to reduce, not merely maintain, the number of grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem.</p> <p>Killing grizzlies is the only activity that Wyoming commits to pursuing in its recently revised Wyoming Grizzly Bear plan. The laudable language in the plan about coexistence and reducing human-bear conflicts should not lend comfort, because there is no funding to support such efforts and no enforceable standards requiring the state to do anything to make peace with grizzlies ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>). And, the state&#8217;s grizzly bear plan imitates its wolf plan in allowing a purge of all animals outside an artificially drawn boundary line.</p> <p>Free Fire Zone for Grizzly Bears?</p> <p>Wyoming has, in fact, designated a veritable free fire zone for grizzlies outside the Demographic Monitoring Area (DMA). The DMA is a more-or-less arbitrarily delineated area within which bears will be counted during the next five years to gauge whether recovery targets are being met after delisting. This is a huge problem, because the DMA excludes a large portion of occupied grizzly bear habitat along with important habitats crucial to supporting grizzly bears in the wake of losing essential natural foods to the twin malignancies of climate warming and invasive species. Roughly 50% of the ecosystem&#8217;s whitebark pine, 90% of its cutthroat trout, and 70% of its elk have disappeared in just a few decades. ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>).</p> <p>Of Racism and Oppression</p> <p>Wyoming has not just ignored science, it has also indulged in blatant racism. State officials have summarily dismissed the interests of Native Peoples expressed in numerous requests by numerous Tribes to be consulted or otherwise specifically involved in management of grizzly bears both before and after delisting.</p> <p>A 2015 incident involving the State&#8217;s lead grizzly bear manager is illustrative. As Chair of an interagency managers&#8217; meeting in Cody, a gum-chewing thuggish Brian Nesvik manhandled James Walks Along, Historic Preservation Officer of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, who, at the request of the Tribe&#8217;s President, attempted to present the views of the Northern Cheyenne on grizzly bears. ( <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_67s7JbfVU" type="external">The video can be viewed&amp;#160;here</a>). The State has yet to apologize for the insult, despite repeated requests to Governor Matt Mead, who is a staunch supporter of delisting.</p> <p>Another incident occurred less than a year later. In a 2016 open house on grizzly bear management convened by State managers, a thuggish Cody resident loudly proclaimed: &#8220;If we aren&#8217;t going to control these bears, we might as well give the land back to the Indians and sail back across the ocean.&#8221;&amp;#160; State officials seemed to embrace the resulting chorus of clapping and laughing from the audience. Another well-received commenter promised a return to &#8220;Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-up&#8221; if grizzly bears were not delisted.</p> <p>Civility itself appeared endangered that night, when the microphones were dominated by racist bullies threatening violence to bears and people alike. Meanwhile, those in attendance who sympathized with bears and valued civility were intimidated into silence, which was the perhaps the intended affect.</p> <p>Wyoming officials have attempted to gloss over their racist behavior with repeated, but false, claims of coordination and collaboration with the Tribes. A widespread government failure to coordinate and consult with Tribes is, in fact, at the root of legal challenges to the decision to delist grizzly bears last year. Tribes ranging from Canada to Mexico,&amp;#160;including the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho, who currently accommodate grizzlies on Wyoming&#8217;s Wind River Indian Reservation, are fiercely opposed to delisting ( <a href="" type="internal">link</a>). In fact, so far 177 Tribes have signed a treaty to preserve the grizzly bear and tribal sovereignty,&amp;#160;The Grizzly: a Treaty of Cooperation, Cultural Revitalization and Restoration. This is now the most signed tribal treaty in history ( <a href="https://www.piikaninationtreaty.com/the-treaty" type="external">link</a>).</p> <p>Concerns about the despotic arrangements for managing grizzly bears prompted Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) to introduce the&amp;#160;Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Act&amp;#160;(H.R. 3894) last fall ( <a href="https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/ranking-member-grijalva-introduces-bill-permanently-protects-grizzly-bear-honors-tribal-sovereignty-agreements/" type="external">link</a>). This bill would ensure that grizzly bears are permanently protected for their ecological and cultural value, and guarantee that Tribes have a role in conserving and managing the species. But, of course, the racist thuggish Republicans in charge of Congress will ensure that this bill never passes on their watch.</p> <p>Thuggery is Not Destiny: State Wildlife Management Reform is Possible</p> <p>Through legislation, Congressman Grijalva aims to give Tribes a long overdue voice in grizzly bear management. It is important to note that during the last 40 years, grizzly bears and the broader public who cares about them have been protected by the ESA, which has tempered the behavior of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana officials to some extent. In the absence of other statutes to empower national constituents, the ESA has served a particularly critical role of democratizing the decision-making.</p> <p>But after delisting, all bets are off. Grizzly bears face a free fire zone, a hunt, and management by thugs. &amp;#160;And if you don&#8217;t live within the boundaries of Wyoming, Idaho, or Montana, you simply won&#8217;t matter to the debate.</p> <p>For now, the prudent course is to keep grizzly bears federally protected. In the long run, it is possible to improve the practice of state wildlife management in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Other states have succeeded &#8212; even states such as Missouri and Arkansas that are much more financially strapped.</p> <p>State wildlife management reform is not rocket science. It involves relatively straight-forward changes such as the system of financial incentives and disincentives, agency culture, and approaches to public involvement ( <a href="https://www.grizzlytimes.org/problem-state-management" type="external">link</a>).</p> <p>Wyoming and other western states must be made accountable to a broader public that increasingly consists of wildlife watchers, Tribes, and the new West&#8217;s modem cowboys and retirees, rather than trophy hunters and traditional Lords of the energy and agriculture Yesteryear. Said another way, by answering to a different deity &#8212; perhaps Gaia or the sacred Bear Spirit (which is what the Tribes have been talking about for ages) &#8212; the thugs of Wyoming won&#8217;t be thugs anymore&#8230;</p>

Wyoming Thugs Greenlight Grizzly Bear Trophy Hunts

https://counterpunch.org/2018/01/26/wyoming-thugs-greenlight-grizzly-bear-trophy-hunts/

2018-01-26

4left

On January 18 Wyoming officials announced a grizzly bear trophy hunt that could begin this fall State officials said that a plan with details of the hunt including hunt areas and season lengths would be released for public comment in Februaryamp160 link Thus far Wyoming is the only state in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem GYE to pursue a sport hunt for grizzly bears Yellowstone8217s grizzlies have not been hunted for over 40 years after being listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act ESA The ban on hunting grizzly bears is seen by experts as a major reason why the status of Yellowstone8217s imperiled grizzly bears improved under ESA protections Consequences of Hunting Yellowstone8217s Grizzlies Scientists know a lot about the negative and often unintended consequences of hunting grizzly bears Their findings are consistent no matter where research on bear hunting has been conducted 8212 Canada Sweden Romania or in the US Their major conclusion hunting grizzlies often paradoxically increases conflicts with people and livestock The reason is that trophy hunting is biased towards killing large male grizzliesamp160Hunting large males disrupts the social order of bear populations almost invariably resulting in more cubkilling by males disruption of foraging by females as well as unexpected and problematic population declines see this paper In the case of Yellowstone the hunt would target male grizzlies while prohibiting the hunting of females with young amp160amp160Of course grizzly bear hunting is banned from Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks Paradoxically hunting will likely exacerbate rather than ameliorate escalating depredation of livestock by grizzlies Adolescent males which are often the main depredators tend to gravitate to areas where the dominant resident males have been killed by people And as with their human counterparts adolescent male bears are notoriously prone to push human boundaries A 2017 Memorandum of Agreement among Wyoming Montana and Idaho outlines the basic approach to hunting grizzly bears in Greater Yellowstone Grizzly bear expert Dr David Mattson submitted a thorough critique of this MOA as part of two letters he submitted last year commenting on the Service8217s draft delisting rule see this blog He concludes that an unanticipated consequence of the proposed hunt is the probable overkill of male grizzlies Mattson showed that within 8 years after delisting implementation of the MOA would lead in theory to the near extermination of male bears outside the National Parks link By adding significant numbers of bear deaths to the currently excessive and unsustainable levels hunting once again endanger Yellowstone8217s grizzly bears One reason often given for hunting grizzlies is that bears would thereby become warier and people would thus be safer But there is no evidence to support this claim see this blog In contrast to more social animals such as wolves grizzlies tend to be loners except during breeding season or when females have cubs by their side Lone bears are more likely to take to the grave whatever lessons they could have learned from being shot at Killing Celebrity Grizzlies Including Matron 399 Grizzlies that frequent roadsides will be especially vulnerable to the upcoming hunts Females that range near highways typically see people not as threats but as allies against male bears The famous Jacksonarea matron Number 399 is clearly more afraid of male bears that can kill cubs than she is of people Females such as 399 have taken a gamble on people in their efforts to keep cubs safe from predatory males Until now people have been upholding their end of the bargain amp160And Grand Teton Park has done a stellar job ensuring that visitors behave appropriately around roadside bears This negotiated peace has helped Jackson8217s rock star grizzlies flourish while giving joy to countless park visitors and local residents But the peace will be shattered when bear hunters take to the field Grizzly 399 and other wellknown wellloved bears den outside of National Parks on National Forest lands where they will be exposed to hunting These bears will probably be among the first gunned down whether out of convenience or maliciousness on the part of involved hunters and guides Already some reprobate outfitters have threatened to kill Grizzly 399 link whose den is not too hard to find In comments last year on the federal decision to remove federal protections for Yellowstone grizzlies 8220delist8221 and thereby allow hunting many people raised concerns about the fate of Grizzly 399 and her family if grizzlies are hunted In fact more than 99 of the roughly 850000 comments submitted on the draft delisting proposal opposed delisting and sport hunting bears link But US Fish and Wildlife Service FWS and the States blew off the public to serve a minority of special interests including NRA and Safari Club as well as the agriculture and energy industries They also ignored the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce which passed a resolution opposing trophy hunting grizzly bears in Jackson Hole because of the economic value of these bears link There is no doubt that the economic engines currently driving communities around Yellowstone and Grand Teton Parks are no longer hunting or extractive industries such as logging and ranching but tourism and inmigration to the region because of its clean air and water and magnificent scenery and watchable wildlife In fact tourism generates over 680 million dollars annually in the local communities around Yellowstone Park link But the region8217s politics do not yet reflect these facts Wyoming8217s Thuggish Approach to Grizzlies Other Large Carnivoresamp160 Wyoming perfectly illustrates the stark contrast between the politics of yesteryear and the current reality that charismatic nondead wildlife drives the region8217s economyamp160 Wyoming officials are unambiguously thuggish in their unreasoned hostility towards large carnivores generally and grizzly bears specifically link The etymology of the word 8220thug8221 is interesting and relevant here the original 8220thags8221 were devotees of the goddess Kali who waylaid and murdered travelers in northern Indian up through the mid18008217s when they were suppressed by the British Wyoming Game and Fish is a devotee of a different yet related ethos that has proven no less deadly to people and animals It sails under the colors of domination control and a blatant contempt for civility democratic principles and anyone who gets in the way of profit and the ideology of exploitation as defined by ranchers executives of energy corporations and the NRASafari Club Hunters play a dominant role in wildlife management partly because virtually all funding comes from sales of hunting and fishing licenses or from taxes levied on sales of arms and ammunition Hunters tend to be fiercely protective of their privileged status which has increasingly come under attack by those who are disenfranchised women urban dwellers nonCaucasians and the educated link In the case of grizzly bear management we are talking about a minority of mostly rich politically connected white guys who want to kill grizzlies to feed their ego rid themselves of an inconvenience or make an ideological point Needlesstosay such men do not see grizzlies as sentient beings deserving of compassion amp160amp160They also tend to see8212without scientific justification8212grizzlies as competitors for opportunities to kill large herbivores with enlarged sexlinked organs ie bull elk link So the fewer bears the better Not surprisingly Wyoming along with Idaho and Montana have barred the National Park Service NPS from participating in the processes of setting seasons for hunting grizzlies as a finger in the eye of the federal government and a symbolic middle finger to the NPS8217 preservation philosophy Over the last few years NPS officials including Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk have raised concerns about the adverse impact of grizzly bear hunting on park bears linkamp160 As soon as the Trump administration took over the Park Service was silenced raising this question who is more thuggish Wyoming or Trump Hunting Grizzlies Because 8220We Hunt Everything Else in Wyoming8221 Last week Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association President Jeff Smith supported the State8217s proposal to hunt grizzly bears saying 8220We are dang sure supportive of hunting them because we hunt everything else in Wyoming link8221 Smith8217s view is wholeheartedly endorsed by Wyoming Game and Fish WGF officials In fact a year ago at a meeting of grizzly bear managers WGF Director Scott Talbott said something similar 8220We just need to get grizzly bears delisted so we can manage them like every other species in the state with a hunting season8221 Managing grizzlies like other Wyoming wildlife is in fact the problemamp160 A case in point is the state8217s management of wolves which were delisted for the third time last year Throwing Wyoming Wolves Under the Bus Next Up Grizzlies Wyoming officials have designated wolves outside Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks as varmints in over 90 of the state allowing anybody to kill wolves by almost any means at any time In 1995 and 1996 wolves were restored to Yellowstone where they had been extirpated as a result of human persecution The recovery of wolves in Yellowstone is considered one of the greatest conservation success stories of the century that is before wolves were turned over to the tender mercies of the states see this paper byamp160Scott Creel In 2017 wolves were delisted in Wyoming after a drawnout legal battle Hunters killed 32 wolves last fall link on top of the 113 wolves killed because they were implicated in livestock conflicts link totaling nearly half of the wolf population in Wyoming The State is well on its way to reducing the population to its target of 160 animals8212a thuggish reprise of a thuggish and brutal past Wyoming seems to be enacting a replay with grizzly bears Officials in Wyoming in fact are leading the charge among northern Rocky Mountains states in a bid to reduce not merely maintain the number of grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem Killing grizzlies is the only activity that Wyoming commits to pursuing in its recently revised Wyoming Grizzly Bear plan The laudable language in the plan about coexistence and reducing humanbear conflicts should not lend comfort because there is no funding to support such efforts and no enforceable standards requiring the state to do anything to make peace with grizzlies link And the state8217s grizzly bear plan imitates its wolf plan in allowing a purge of all animals outside an artificially drawn boundary line Free Fire Zone for Grizzly Bears Wyoming has in fact designated a veritable free fire zone for grizzlies outside the Demographic Monitoring Area DMA The DMA is a moreorless arbitrarily delineated area within which bears will be counted during the next five years to gauge whether recovery targets are being met after delisting This is a huge problem because the DMA excludes a large portion of occupied grizzly bear habitat along with important habitats crucial to supporting grizzly bears in the wake of losing essential natural foods to the twin malignancies of climate warming and invasive species Roughly 50 of the ecosystem8217s whitebark pine 90 of its cutthroat trout and 70 of its elk have disappeared in just a few decades link Of Racism and Oppression Wyoming has not just ignored science it has also indulged in blatant racism State officials have summarily dismissed the interests of Native Peoples expressed in numerous requests by numerous Tribes to be consulted or otherwise specifically involved in management of grizzly bears both before and after delisting A 2015 incident involving the State8217s lead grizzly bear manager is illustrative As Chair of an interagency managers8217 meeting in Cody a gumchewing thuggish Brian Nesvik manhandled James Walks Along Historic Preservation Officer of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe who at the request of the Tribe8217s President attempted to present the views of the Northern Cheyenne on grizzly bears The video can be viewedamp160here The State has yet to apologize for the insult despite repeated requests to Governor Matt Mead who is a staunch supporter of delisting Another incident occurred less than a year later In a 2016 open house on grizzly bear management convened by State managers a thuggish Cody resident loudly proclaimed 8220If we aren8217t going to control these bears we might as well give the land back to the Indians and sail back across the ocean8221amp160 State officials seemed to embrace the resulting chorus of clapping and laughing from the audience Another wellreceived commenter promised a return to 8220Shoot Shovel and Shutup8221 if grizzly bears were not delisted Civility itself appeared endangered that night when the microphones were dominated by racist bullies threatening violence to bears and people alike Meanwhile those in attendance who sympathized with bears and valued civility were intimidated into silence which was the perhaps the intended affect Wyoming officials have attempted to gloss over their racist behavior with repeated but false claims of coordination and collaboration with the Tribes A widespread government failure to coordinate and consult with Tribes is in fact at the root of legal challenges to the decision to delist grizzly bears last year Tribes ranging from Canada to Mexicoamp160including the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho who currently accommodate grizzlies on Wyoming8217s Wind River Indian Reservation are fiercely opposed to delisting link In fact so far 177 Tribes have signed a treaty to preserve the grizzly bear and tribal sovereigntyamp160The Grizzly a Treaty of Cooperation Cultural Revitalization and Restoration This is now the most signed tribal treaty in history link Concerns about the despotic arrangements for managing grizzly bears prompted Congressman Raul Grijalva DAZ to introduce theamp160Tribal Heritage and Grizzly Bear Protection Actamp160HR 3894 last fall link This bill would ensure that grizzly bears are permanently protected for their ecological and cultural value and guarantee that Tribes have a role in conserving and managing the species But of course the racist thuggish Republicans in charge of Congress will ensure that this bill never passes on their watch Thuggery is Not Destiny State Wildlife Management Reform is Possible Through legislation Congressman Grijalva aims to give Tribes a long overdue voice in grizzly bear management It is important to note that during the last 40 years grizzly bears and the broader public who cares about them have been protected by the ESA which has tempered the behavior of Wyoming Idaho and Montana officials to some extent In the absence of other statutes to empower national constituents the ESA has served a particularly critical role of democratizing the decisionmaking But after delisting all bets are off Grizzly bears face a free fire zone a hunt and management by thugs amp160And if you don8217t live within the boundaries of Wyoming Idaho or Montana you simply won8217t matter to the debate For now the prudent course is to keep grizzly bears federally protected In the long run it is possible to improve the practice of state wildlife management in Wyoming Montana and Idaho Other states have succeeded 8212 even states such as Missouri and Arkansas that are much more financially strapped State wildlife management reform is not rocket science It involves relatively straightforward changes such as the system of financial incentives and disincentives agency culture and approaches to public involvement link Wyoming and other western states must be made accountable to a broader public that increasingly consists of wildlife watchers Tribes and the new West8217s modem cowboys and retirees rather than trophy hunters and traditional Lords of the energy and agriculture Yesteryear Said another way by answering to a different deity 8212 perhaps Gaia or the sacred Bear Spirit which is what the Tribes have been talking about for ages 8212 the thugs of Wyoming won8217t be thugs anymore8230

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - Talanx AG:</p> <p>* SAYS TO ACQUIRE NON-LIFE INSURER IN TURKEY</p> <p>* SAYS HAS AGREED TO ACQUIRE 99.4 PERCENT OF THE SHARES IN LIBERTY SIGORTA A.S., THE TURKISH NON-LIFE SUBSIDIARY OF US-BASED LIBERTY MUTUAL GROUP&#8205;&#8203;</p> <p>* SAYS IN 2016, LIBERTY SIGORTA GENERATED GROSS WRITTEN PREMIUMS OF EUR 56 MILLION AND HAD A PORTFOLIO OF MORE THAN 700,000 POLICYHOLDERS Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NORTH CHARLESTON S.C. (Reuters) - Boeing Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">BA.N</a>) delivered its first 787-10 Dreamliner to Singapore Airlines ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SIAL.SI" type="external">SIAL.SI</a>) on Sunday, rounding out a family of lightweight jets on which the U.S. planemaker is betting its future.</p> A Boeing 787-10 aircraft being built for Singapore Airlines sits in the Final Assembly Area before a delivery ceremony of the first Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner at Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Randall Hill <p>The ceremonial key to the plane was handed to Singapore Airlines Chief Executive Goh Choon Phong on the tarmac at Boeing&#8217;s South Carolina plant, where the carbon composite jet is built, in front of more than a thousand Boeing workers and guests.</p> <p>Goh called it a &#8220;beautiful aircraft&#8221; and an &#8220;unparalleled product for regional operations.&#8221;</p> <p>Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Kevin McAllister hailed the two airlines&#8217; 45-year relationship.</p> <p>Singapore Airlines was the first Southeast Asian carrier to buy Boeing&#8217;s 747 jumbo jet in 1972, Goh said, and the group is now the world&#8217;s first to operate all the 787 Dreamliner family of models.</p> <p>The new Dreamliner was parked in front of a line of about 10 787 airplanes in various stages of completion.</p> <p>Singapore Airlines, which expanded its order for 787-10s to 49 jets last year, plans to introduce the jet on services to Osaka, Japan, followed by Perth, Australia, starting in May.</p> <p>The 787-10 is built exclusively at the North Charleston plant due to its large size, which prevents the transfer of sections to Boeing&#8217;s factory outside Seattle. Unlike the Washington state assembly lines, the plant, which has about 7,000 workers, is not unionized.</p> <p>The aircraft, which sells for $326 million at list prices, completes a line-up of three models starting with the 787-8 which debuted in 2011. All boast carbon-composite fabrication materials, fuel efficiency and new state-of-the-air filtration systems with higher levels of humidity in the air for long-distance flight.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>The 787-10&#8217;s range is 6,430 nautical miles (11,910 kilometers).</p> <p>At 223 feet long (68 meters), the aircraft is 18 feet (5.5 meters) longer than the 787-9 and seats around 330 passengers, 40 more than the 787-9 and 88 more than the 787-8.</p> <p>Europe&#8217;s Airbus ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AIR.PA" type="external">AIR.PA</a>) competes against the 787-10 with its A330neo, an upgraded version of its most-sold wide-body aircraft with fuel-efficient engines and a new cabin.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BA.N" type="external">Boeing Co</a> 330.58 BA.N New York Stock Exchange +1.61 (+0.49%) BA.N SIAL.SI AIR.PA AAL.O <p>Both jets are designed for shorter flights compared with other mid-size wide-body planes, tapping into the rapid growth of trade within Asia as well as across other regions.</p> <p>But after brisk initial sales, orders for both models have slowed, with Airbus selling 214 of its A330neo.</p> <p>The 787-10 has 171 orders, about 13 percent of the total of firm orders for the 787.</p> <p>The mid-sized 787-9 is the most popular variant and competes mainly with Airbus&#8217;s new-generation carbon-composite A350.</p> <p>The 787 and A330neo are locked in a fierce battle for sales and profits in the market for jets with around 300 seats.</p> <p>Boeing looks poised to win a hotly contested order from American Airlines ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAL.O" type="external">AAL.O</a>), beating competition from the A330neo, people familiar with the matter said on Friday.</p> <p>(This story corrects Boeing executive&#8217;s title and first name.)</p> <p>Reporting by Harriet McLeod; Editing by Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer confidence fell from more than a 17-year high in March amid stock market volatility, but households remained upbeat about labor market conditions, which could help to support consumer spending.</p> FILE PHOTO - Holiday shoppers look at store windows at Henri Bendel store on 5th Avenue in New York November 23, 2012. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo <p>The Conference Board said on Tuesday its consumer confidence index dropped 2.3 points to a reading of 127.7 this month from a slightly downwardly revised 130.0 in February, which was the highest level since November 2000. The index was previously reported at 130.8 in February.</p> <p>&#8220;The stock market has been volatile and consumers don&#8217;t like market volatility. The pullback in confidence is not a concern for the economic outlook this year,&#8221; said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. &#8220;Still, we wonder if the decline in confidence means that the economy may have seen its best days already for this cycle.&#8221;</p> <p>U.S. stocks have been under pressure over the past two months as worries about inflation led some investors to speculate that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates more aggressively than currently anticipated.</p> <p>Wall Street has also been roiled by the threat of a global trade war after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. President Donald Trump last week signed a memorandum targeting up to $60 billion in Chinese goods with tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property.</p> <p>The S&amp;amp;P 500 index has dropped about 2 percent so far in March, coming on the heels of a decline of nearly 4 percent in February and putting stocks on pace for their worst two-month performance since the December 2015-January 2016 period.</p> <p>Stocks were trading higher on Tuesday as fears of a trade war between the United States and China eased.</p> <p>The dollar rose against a basket of currencies. Prices of U.S. Treasuries climbed as fund managers bought bonds to rebalance their portfolios for the end of the quarter in advance of more government debt supply.</p> FILE PHOTO: Clusters of newly built multi-unit town homes and apartments are shown in San Marcos, California January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo LABOR MARKET STRENGTH <p>The Conference Board survey&#8217;s so-called labor market differential, derived from data on respondents&#8217; views on whether jobs are plentiful or hard to get, increased to 25.0 in March, the strongest reading since May 2001, from 24.0 in February.</p> <p>That measure, which closely correlates to the unemployment rate in the Labor Department&#8217;s employment report, suggests that labor market slack continues to shrink.</p> <p>&#8220;This report combined with the March jobless claims data points to another 200,000-plus reading on payrolls in March, which we judge would push the unemployment rate down to 4.0 percent from 4.1 percent,&#8221; said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.</p> <p>The economy added 313,000 jobs in February. Labor market tightness has left economists optimistic that wage growth will soon pick up. That, together with lower income taxes, are expected to spur consumer spending in the coming quarters.</p> <p>Retail sales have declined for three straight months, leading economists to expect a slowdown in consumer spending in the first quarter. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, grew at a robust 3.8 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter.</p> <p>Rising house prices could also boost consumer spending. A separate report on Tuesday showed the S&amp;amp;P CoreLogic Case-Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas increased 6.4 percent in the 12 months to January after rising 6.3 percent in December.</p> <p>Higher house prices are bolstering household wealth. But the house price inflation is being driven by an acute shortage of homes available for sale, which is hurting the housing market.</p> <p>&#8220;If we continue to see a steady stream of buyers and owners remain largely uninterested in selling, we can expect prices to continue to rise,&#8221; said Danielle Hale, chief economist at realtor.com.</p> <p>Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street scored its best day in 2-1/2 years and the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw its third-biggest point gain ever on Monday, as trade war fears eased on reports the United States and China are willing to renegotiate tariffs and trade imbalances.</p> <p>The rally, fueled by technology stocks, came on the heels of the indexes' worst weekly performance since January 2016, the S&amp;amp;P 500's <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gain making up for less than half of the prior week's near 6 percent loss.</p> <p>&#8220;We saw a really good rally because of potential talks with China,&#8221; said Dennis Dick, Head of Markets Structure, Proprietary Trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas. &#8220;People are taking advantage of the huge dip last week.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re out of the woods yet. There&#8217;s political uncertainty,&#8221; Dick added.</p> <p>Last week&#8217;s drop was fueled in part by tensions surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s move to levy tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports, in addition to those imposed on solar panels, steel and aluminum.</p> <p>But tensions were calmed as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang repeated pledges to maintain trade negotiations and ease access to American businesses.</p> <p>U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday he believed Washington could reach agreement with China on some issues but tariffs would not be put on hold &#8220;unless we have an acceptable agreement that the president signs off on.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s clearly the easing of trade tensions. The comments by Steve Mnuchin late yesterday gave room for negotiation with China,&#8221; said Oliver Pursche, Chief Market Strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York.</p> <p>But China did call for unity among World Trade Organization members to prevent the United States from &#8220;wrecking&#8221; the WTO, and urged opposition to Trump&#8217;s tariffs targeting China&#8217;s alleged intellectual property theft.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 669.4 points, or 2.84 percent, to 24,202.6. The two larger point gains for the Dow were in October 2008. The S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 70.29 points, or 2.72 percent, to 2,658.55 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 227.88 points, or 3.26 percent, to 7,220.54. 7,220.54</p> <p>The three major U.S. indexes saw their best percentage gains since Aug. 26, 2015.</p> <p>All 11 major sectors of the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> closed in positive territory, led by technology .SPLRCT and finance .SPSY indexes, up 4.0 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">Standard &amp;amp; Poor's Corp</a> 2658.55 .SPX Chicago Board Options Exchange +0.00 (+0.00%) .SPX .DJI .IXIC MSFT.O INTC.O <p>The tech sector saw its biggest daily percentage gain since August 2015 and financials had their best day since November 2016.</p> <p>Microsoft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MSFT.O" type="external">MSFT.O</a>) pulled the indexes higher, gaining 7.6 percent. Morgan Stanley upped its price target on the tech company&#8217;s stock, saying its market value could hit $1 trillion on improved margins and growth in cloud computing.</p> <p>Intel ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=INTC.O" type="external">INTC.O</a>) advanced 6.3 percent after brokerage Raymond James upgraded the technology to &#8220;market perform&#8221;.</p> <p>Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) closed up 0.4 percent following several days of declines as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced it was investigating how the company allowed data of 50 million users to get into the hands of Cambridge Analytica.</p> <p>The Cboe Volatility Index .VIX, the most widely followed barometer of expected near-term volatility for the S&amp;amp;P 500, finished down 3.84 points at 21.03.</p> <p>Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.04-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.27-to-1 ratio favored advancers.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-stocks-instantview/wall-street-rebounds-on-hopes-for-u-s-china-talks-on-trade-idUSKBN1H22LX" type="external">Wall Street rebounds on hopes for U.S.-China talks on trade</a> <p>Volume on U.S. exchanges was 7.30 billion shares, below the 7.35 billion average for the last 20 trading days.</p> <p>Reporting by Stephen Culp; Editing by James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ULSAN, South Korea (Reuters) - Hyundai Motor&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=005380.KS" type="external">005380.KS</a>) union chief warned its workers may face a similar crisis to the one hitting General Motors&#8217; ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GM.N" type="external">GM.N</a>) South Korean unit as sales in key markets slide, adding that electric cars were &#8216;evil&#8217; and will destroy jobs.</p> Ha Bu-young, Hyundai Motor's South Korean union chief speaks during an interview with Reuters in Ulsan, South Korea, March 23, 2018. Picture taken March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Hyunjoo Jin <p>South Korea&#8217;s auto industry, known for its robust unions whose workers tend to be paid more and have better benefits than their compatriots in other sectors, has come to a crossroads.</p> <p>Blaming high labor costs and falling sales, General Motors ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GM.N" type="external">GM.N</a>) plans to close one of its plants in the country by May and is weighing options for its three other factories.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re feeling job anxiety. We&#8217;re feeling a sense of crisis,&#8221; Ha Bu-young, the head of the Hyundai Motor union, South Korea&#8217;s biggest and most powerful union, told Reuters in an interview late last week.</p> <p>He said that at three of Hyundai&#8217;s five plants in Ulsan, the world&#8217;s biggest car factory complex, some workers had been asked to take longer holidays as sales of sedans and older model SUVs like the Santa Fe slow in the United States and other markets.</p> <p>Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=000270.KS" type="external">000270.KS</a>) were also hit by diplomatic tensions between Seoul and Beijing last year, leading to a slump in sales in the world&#8217;s biggest auto market. The two automakers have flagged only modest global sales growth in 2018. &amp;#160;</p> <p>Longer term, Ha worries about the advent of electric cars, which when they go mainstream could wreak havoc on traditional auto jobs as they don&#8217;t require engines and transmissions.</p> <p>Hyundai&#8217;s union has predicted a drastic shift into electric cars could lead to a loss of 70 percent of Hyundai jobs in a worst case scenario.</p> <p>&#8220;Electric cars are disasters. They are evil. We are very nervous,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Ha said the union is studying how cars of the future might be built without slashing headcount and has proposed the automaker revive a committee to review the impact of new vehicles and new technology on jobs.</p> <p>He also noted that some 30,000 workers out of 50,000 union members will retire in 15 years, which could cushion the impact that cars of the future could have on staffing levels.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=005380.KS" type="external">Hyundai Motor Co</a> 154000.0 005380.KS Korea Stock Exchange +4,500.00 (+3.01%) 005380.KS GM.N 000270.KS FREE TRIPS TO EUROPE <p>At GM&#8217;s South Korean unit, the threat of potential plant closures has led its union to offer to freeze wages and skip bonuses while about 15 percent of its employees have applied for a voluntary redundancy package.</p> <p>While there is a sense of crisis at Hyundai&#8217;s union, the situation is not that dire.</p> <p>Hyundai&#8217;s management has proposed the scaling back of some benefits such as free week-long trips to Europe for 500 workers annually as well as support for some employees&#8217; sporting events - a proposal that the union plans to oppose, a union official said.</p> <p>But the union will for the first time seek pay raises for temporary workers this year that are higher than those of full-time auto workers, responding to criticism that regular auto works are generously paid.</p> <p>It will ask for a 7.4 percent wage increase for temporary workers versus a 5.3 percent wage raise for regular workers, Ha said, in line with a policy advocated by the umbrella union for South Korea&#8217;s metal workers.</p> <p>Last year Hyundai&#8217;s union initially demanded annual wage increases of 7 percent for its full-time workers and won a raise of less than 5 percent after tense negotiations that involved strikes.</p> Related Video <p>The shift towards improving pay for non-full time workers could invite opposition within the union, said Ha, adding that he was trying to right old wrongs.</p> <p>Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Edwina Gibbs</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Talanx Buys Turkish Non-Life Business of Liberty Mutual Group Boeing completes Dreamliner family with first 787-10 delivery U.S. consumer confidence ebbs, house prices surge Wall Street roars back as trade war fears fade Hyundai union head fears GM-like crisis; says electric cars destroy jobs

https://reuters.com/article/brief-talanx-buys-turkish-non-life-busin/brief-talanx-buys-turkish-non-life-business-of-liberty-mutual-group-idUSFWN1PI0B7

2018-01-23

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Jan 23 Reuters Talanx AG SAYS TO ACQUIRE NONLIFE INSURER IN TURKEY SAYS HAS AGREED TO ACQUIRE 994 PERCENT OF THE SHARES IN LIBERTY SIGORTA AS THE TURKISH NONLIFE SUBSIDIARY OF USBASED LIBERTY MUTUAL GROUP82058203 SAYS IN 2016 LIBERTY SIGORTA GENERATED GROSS WRITTEN PREMIUMS OF EUR 56 MILLION AND HAD A PORTFOLIO OF MORE THAN 700000 POLICYHOLDERS Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NORTH CHARLESTON SC Reuters Boeing Co BAN delivered its first 78710 Dreamliner to Singapore Airlines SIALSI on Sunday rounding out a family of lightweight jets on which the US planemaker is betting its future A Boeing 78710 aircraft being built for Singapore Airlines sits in the Final Assembly Area before a delivery ceremony of the first Boeing 78710 Dreamliner at Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston South Carolina United States March 25 2018 REUTERSRandall Hill The ceremonial key to the plane was handed to Singapore Airlines Chief Executive Goh Choon Phong on the tarmac at Boeing8217s South Carolina plant where the carbon composite jet is built in front of more than a thousand Boeing workers and guests Goh called it a 8220beautiful aircraft8221 and an 8220unparalleled product for regional operations8221 Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Kevin McAllister hailed the two airlines8217 45year relationship Singapore Airlines was the first Southeast Asian carrier to buy Boeing8217s 747 jumbo jet in 1972 Goh said and the group is now the world8217s first to operate all the 787 Dreamliner family of models The new Dreamliner was parked in front of a line of about 10 787 airplanes in various stages of completion Singapore Airlines which expanded its order for 78710s to 49 jets last year plans to introduce the jet on services to Osaka Japan followed by Perth Australia starting in May The 78710 is built exclusively at the North Charleston plant due to its large size which prevents the transfer of sections to Boeing8217s factory outside Seattle Unlike the Washington state assembly lines the plant which has about 7000 workers is not unionized The aircraft which sells for 326 million at list prices completes a lineup of three models starting with the 7878 which debuted in 2011 All boast carboncomposite fabrication materials fuel efficiency and new stateoftheair filtration systems with higher levels of humidity in the air for longdistance flight Slideshow 6 Images The 787108217s range is 6430 nautical miles 11910 kilometers At 223 feet long 68 meters the aircraft is 18 feet 55 meters longer than the 7879 and seats around 330 passengers 40 more than the 7879 and 88 more than the 7878 Europe8217s Airbus AIRPA competes against the 78710 with its A330neo an upgraded version of its mostsold widebody aircraft with fuelefficient engines and a new cabin Boeing Co 33058 BAN New York Stock Exchange 161 049 BAN SIALSI AIRPA AALO Both jets are designed for shorter flights compared with other midsize widebody planes tapping into the rapid growth of trade within Asia as well as across other regions But after brisk initial sales orders for both models have slowed with Airbus selling 214 of its A330neo The 78710 has 171 orders about 13 percent of the total of firm orders for the 787 The midsized 7879 is the most popular variant and competes mainly with Airbus8217s newgeneration carboncomposite A350 The 787 and A330neo are locked in a fierce battle for sales and profits in the market for jets with around 300 seats Boeing looks poised to win a hotly contested order from American Airlines AALO beating competition from the A330neo people familiar with the matter said on Friday This story corrects Boeing executive8217s title and first name Reporting by Harriet McLeod Editing by Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US consumer confidence fell from more than a 17year high in March amid stock market volatility but households remained upbeat about labor market conditions which could help to support consumer spending FILE PHOTO Holiday shoppers look at store windows at Henri Bendel store on 5th Avenue in New York November 23 2012 REUTERSBrendan McDermidFile Photo The Conference Board said on Tuesday its consumer confidence index dropped 23 points to a reading of 1277 this month from a slightly downwardly revised 1300 in February which was the highest level since November 2000 The index was previously reported at 1308 in February 8220The stock market has been volatile and consumers don8217t like market volatility The pullback in confidence is not a concern for the economic outlook this year8221 said Chris Rupkey chief economist at MUFG in New York 8220Still we wonder if the decline in confidence means that the economy may have seen its best days already for this cycle8221 US stocks have been under pressure over the past two months as worries about inflation led some investors to speculate that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates more aggressively than currently anticipated Wall Street has also been roiled by the threat of a global trade war after the Trump administration imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports President Donald Trump last week signed a memorandum targeting up to 60 billion in Chinese goods with tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of US intellectual property The SampampP 500 index has dropped about 2 percent so far in March coming on the heels of a decline of nearly 4 percent in February and putting stocks on pace for their worst twomonth performance since the December 2015January 2016 period Stocks were trading higher on Tuesday as fears of a trade war between the United States and China eased The dollar rose against a basket of currencies Prices of US Treasuries climbed as fund managers bought bonds to rebalance their portfolios for the end of the quarter in advance of more government debt supply FILE PHOTO Clusters of newly built multiunit town homes and apartments are shown in San Marcos California January 19 2016 REUTERSMike BlakeFile Photo LABOR MARKET STRENGTH The Conference Board survey8217s socalled labor market differential derived from data on respondents8217 views on whether jobs are plentiful or hard to get increased to 250 in March the strongest reading since May 2001 from 240 in February That measure which closely correlates to the unemployment rate in the Labor Department8217s employment report suggests that labor market slack continues to shrink 8220This report combined with the March jobless claims data points to another 200000plus reading on payrolls in March which we judge would push the unemployment rate down to 40 percent from 41 percent8221 said John Ryding chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York The economy added 313000 jobs in February Labor market tightness has left economists optimistic that wage growth will soon pick up That together with lower income taxes are expected to spur consumer spending in the coming quarters Retail sales have declined for three straight months leading economists to expect a slowdown in consumer spending in the first quarter Consumer spending which accounts for more than twothirds of US economic activity grew at a robust 38 percent annualized rate in the fourth quarter Rising house prices could also boost consumer spending A separate report on Tuesday showed the SampampP CoreLogic CaseShiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas increased 64 percent in the 12 months to January after rising 63 percent in December Higher house prices are bolstering household wealth But the house price inflation is being driven by an acute shortage of homes available for sale which is hurting the housing market 8220If we continue to see a steady stream of buyers and owners remain largely uninterested in selling we can expect prices to continue to rise8221 said Danielle Hale chief economist at realtorcom Reporting by Lucia Mutikani Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak in New York Editing by Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Wall Street scored its best day in 212 years and the Dow Jones Industrial Average saw its thirdbiggest point gain ever on Monday as trade war fears eased on reports the United States and China are willing to renegotiate tariffs and trade imbalances The rally fueled by technology stocks came on the heels of the indexes worst weekly performance since January 2016 the SampampP 500s SPX gain making up for less than half of the prior weeks near 6 percent loss 8220We saw a really good rally because of potential talks with China8221 said Dennis Dick Head of Markets Structure Proprietary Trader at Bright Trading LLC in Las Vegas 8220People are taking advantage of the huge dip last week8221 8220I don8217t think you8217re out of the woods yet There8217s political uncertainty8221 Dick added Last week8217s drop was fueled in part by tensions surrounding US President Donald Trump8217s move to levy tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese imports in addition to those imposed on solar panels steel and aluminum But tensions were calmed as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang repeated pledges to maintain trade negotiations and ease access to American businesses US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Sunday he believed Washington could reach agreement with China on some issues but tariffs would not be put on hold 8220unless we have an acceptable agreement that the president signs off on8221 8220It8217s clearly the easing of trade tensions The comments by Steve Mnuchin late yesterday gave room for negotiation with China8221 said Oliver Pursche Chief Market Strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York But China did call for unity among World Trade Organization members to prevent the United States from 8220wrecking8221 the WTO and urged opposition to Trump8217s tariffs targeting China8217s alleged intellectual property theft Slideshow 6 Images The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 6694 points or 284 percent to 242026 The two larger point gains for the Dow were in October 2008 The SampampP 500 SPX gained 7029 points or 272 percent to 265855 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 22788 points or 326 percent to 722054 722054 The three major US indexes saw their best percentage gains since Aug 26 2015 All 11 major sectors of the SampampP 500 SPX closed in positive territory led by technology SPLRCT and finance SPSY indexes up 40 percent and 32 percent respectively Standard ampamp Poors Corp 265855 SPX Chicago Board Options Exchange 000 000 SPX DJI IXIC MSFTO INTCO The tech sector saw its biggest daily percentage gain since August 2015 and financials had their best day since November 2016 Microsoft MSFTO pulled the indexes higher gaining 76 percent Morgan Stanley upped its price target on the tech company8217s stock saying its market value could hit 1 trillion on improved margins and growth in cloud computing Intel INTCO advanced 63 percent after brokerage Raymond James upgraded the technology to 8220market perform8221 Facebook FBO closed up 04 percent following several days of declines as the US Federal Trade Commission announced it was investigating how the company allowed data of 50 million users to get into the hands of Cambridge Analytica The Cboe Volatility Index VIX the most widely followed barometer of expected nearterm volatility for the SampampP 500 finished down 384 points at 2103 Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 304to1 ratio on Nasdaq a 227to1 ratio favored advancers Related Coverage Wall Street rebounds on hopes for USChina talks on trade Volume on US exchanges was 730 billion shares below the 735 billion average for the last 20 trading days Reporting by Stephen Culp Editing by James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ULSAN South Korea Reuters Hyundai Motor8217s 005380KS union chief warned its workers may face a similar crisis to the one hitting General Motors8217 GMN South Korean unit as sales in key markets slide adding that electric cars were 8216evil8217 and will destroy jobs Ha Buyoung Hyundai Motors South Korean union chief speaks during an interview with Reuters in Ulsan South Korea March 23 2018 Picture taken March 23 2018 REUTERSHyunjoo Jin South Korea8217s auto industry known for its robust unions whose workers tend to be paid more and have better benefits than their compatriots in other sectors has come to a crossroads Blaming high labor costs and falling sales General Motors GMN plans to close one of its plants in the country by May and is weighing options for its three other factories 8220We8217re feeling job anxiety We8217re feeling a sense of crisis8221 Ha Buyoung the head of the Hyundai Motor union South Korea8217s biggest and most powerful union told Reuters in an interview late last week He said that at three of Hyundai8217s five plants in Ulsan the world8217s biggest car factory complex some workers had been asked to take longer holidays as sales of sedans and older model SUVs like the Santa Fe slow in the United States and other markets Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors 000270KS were also hit by diplomatic tensions between Seoul and Beijing last year leading to a slump in sales in the world8217s biggest auto market The two automakers have flagged only modest global sales growth in 2018 amp160 Longer term Ha worries about the advent of electric cars which when they go mainstream could wreak havoc on traditional auto jobs as they don8217t require engines and transmissions Hyundai8217s union has predicted a drastic shift into electric cars could lead to a loss of 70 percent of Hyundai jobs in a worst case scenario 8220Electric cars are disasters They are evil We are very nervous8221 he said Ha said the union is studying how cars of the future might be built without slashing headcount and has proposed the automaker revive a committee to review the impact of new vehicles and new technology on jobs He also noted that some 30000 workers out of 50000 union members will retire in 15 years which could cushion the impact that cars of the future could have on staffing levels Hyundai Motor Co 1540000 005380KS Korea Stock Exchange 450000 301 005380KS GMN 000270KS FREE TRIPS TO EUROPE At GM8217s South Korean unit the threat of potential plant closures has led its union to offer to freeze wages and skip bonuses while about 15 percent of its employees have applied for a voluntary redundancy package While there is a sense of crisis at Hyundai8217s union the situation is not that dire Hyundai8217s management has proposed the scaling back of some benefits such as free weeklong trips to Europe for 500 workers annually as well as support for some employees8217 sporting events a proposal that the union plans to oppose a union official said But the union will for the first time seek pay raises for temporary workers this year that are higher than those of fulltime auto workers responding to criticism that regular auto works are generously paid It will ask for a 74 percent wage increase for temporary workers versus a 53 percent wage raise for regular workers Ha said in line with a policy advocated by the umbrella union for South Korea8217s metal workers Last year Hyundai8217s union initially demanded annual wage increases of 7 percent for its fulltime workers and won a raise of less than 5 percent after tense negotiations that involved strikes Related Video The shift towards improving pay for nonfull time workers could invite opposition within the union said Ha adding that he was trying to right old wrongs Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin Editing by Soyoung Kim and Edwina Gibbs Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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