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2019

6.0

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia has told poultry breeders to cull around 3 million chickens over a two-week period from Wednesday to prop up plunging prices, as farmers protested by giving away thousands of live birds for free. Indonesia has been producing more chicken than it consumes, putting pressure on prices. Chicken farmers have been complaining that live bird prices have been below a government floor price and cost of production for months. Breeders increased chicken production to cash in on an expected upturn in demand during the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holidays earlier this month. But the Agriculture Ministry said the demand did not turn out as expected. In response, the government has told farmers to cull 68-week old chickens over a two-week period until July 9, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement. Sugiono, the ministry’s director of breeding and livestock production, estimated 3 million chickens would be culled, reducing the supply of day-old chicks by 1.5 million per week. In the city of Yogyakarta on Java island, where prices were especially low, protesting farmers gave away 5,000 chickens, saying prices had been depressed for 10 months, even with a spike in demand around the Muslim fasting month. According to the agriculture ministry, the average price of live birds in Indonesia was 20,216 rupiah ($1.43) per kg on Tuesday, compared with a government floor price of 18,000 rupiah per kg. The government sets a floor and ceiling price for several staple foods, including chicken and corn. Farmers in Yogyakarta said they had to sell their birds for only 7,000 rupiah per kg. The association of Yogyakartan farmers said their businesses were dying and almost bankrupt. “Some of us are afraid to raise chickens,” it said in a statement. Indonesia previously ordered the culling of 6 million breeder chickens to control oversupply back in 2015. (reut.rs/2YmLpBX) The agriculture ministry is prepared to order more culling if prices do not rise. “If the prices of live birds are not yet in line with benchmark prices ... culling of parent stock of 60-week old chickens will be launched,” I Ketut Diarmita, director general of livestock and animal health at the ministry, said. Indonesia produced 3.6 million tonnes of chicken meat last year, but only consumed 3.1 million tonnes, agriculture ministry data showed. ($1 = 14,170 rupiah) Writing by Fransiska Nangoy and Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Ed Davies and Jane Merriman

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2018

8.0

Instagram is testing out a feature that groups users into college community lists, according to a CNBC report. It’s a move following the beginnings of parent company Facebook, which started out as a college-exclusive social networking platform. The service is intended for students currently enrolled in university, excluding alumni. Some users have been prompted to join their college community to connect with other students, which adds the user to a class-based list. Joining the group lets the user add their university and graduating year to their profile. Users can view the group members’ public Stories and direct message them from the community lists. It’s odd that verification doesn’t rely on an .edu email address or campus geolocation, but instead through “information people have publicly shared about their university, the accounts they follow and other connections they have,” according to CNBC. And it’s definitely not without its issues, as a reporter was able to join a college community group despite having graduated. Instagram confirmed to The Verge that the feature is in the testing phase, and there are “tools to report inappropriate usage.” As more companies focus on catering to university students (including Tinder’s recent launch of its college-only service, Tinder U), it’s clear that they’ll have to take extra precautions to keep their platforms safe.

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2016

12.0

In the wake of the presidential election, feelings are running high in America, with half of the electorate rejoicing and the other half panicking. The divide we felt in the nation in the run-up to the election now seems more intense than ever. How can we understand our differences? How can we begin to repair them? In the world of emotional intelligence, we close the gaps in our understanding of people “on the other side” by first being aware of our own feelings and stories, and then getting curious about the feelings and stories on the other side of the conversation. This is not easy. A conversation that includes opposing viewpoints can feel like looking at the classic vase-or-face picture. We alternate between seeing one or the other. But to see the entire picture — or hold an integrated conversation — requires that all parts be viewed simultaneously.  This can be hard. When we teach emotional intelligence, we first teach people how to recognize and regulate their own feelings. Sometimes that involves taking a pause between feeling triggered and responding. In the book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild describes how she “turned off her own alarm system” in order to listen for a deep understanding of what her subjects — Tea Party members in the deep South “on the other side of the empathy wall” — were telling her. If we don’t temporarily check our feelings, they leak out and color our ability to see the other person’s picture. And since feelings travel faster in the brain than thoughts, taking that “meta-moment” allows the thinking and reasoning part of our brain, the frontal cortex, to weigh in.  When we are unable to step into another’s frame and instead shelter among like-minded company, our views become more polarized and it becomes easy to feel contempt for the other. Many leaders are mapping ways to bring together people who hold deeply different beliefs. Hochschild and her interviewees found areas of agreement such as getting big money out of politics, reducing prison populations, and protecting the environment. Sharing and listening are also at the heart of the Living Room Conversation Project, an open-source format for conducting authentic conversations with people who hold different views. Guided by ground rules, participants explore each other’s perspectives and often conclude on common ground. The first high-profile conversation was co-hosted by Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org, and Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. They started out discussing crony capitalism and ended up agreeing on the need for criminal justice reform, something they continued to work on. Old scientific views held that humans are naturally competitive, and campaign rhetoric plays on that, encouraging groups to turn on one another. But modern scholars of human behavior say compassion is our natural state while violence, greed, and competition may be learned. The Center for Nonviolent Communication takes this position and has taught skills of deep listening, respect, and nonviolent dialogue for decades. Schools, too, are increasingly teaching emotional and interpersonal skills. The World Economic Forum, cognitive scientists, the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning, and even leading economists all point to the urgency of developing emotional and social skills in our youth. The Department of Education considers social and emotional learning an important part of the next generation of high schools. Forbes magazine listed the ability to manage emotions as number two on their list of qualities possessed by “super-achievers.” At the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence we teach these skills as well. To be sure, we cannot overstate how hard it is to hear a very different view. Understanding another’s perspective doesn’t mean we have to feel the others feelings, we merely take them into account. Also deep listening doesn’t mean giving up what we hold important — in fact, constantly prioritizing another’s feelings over your own is its own kind of empathy trap. And in the case where one party is marginalized and feels threatened, it can be more effective to have allies hold the conversation. Finally, sometimes resistance is the right course of action following a truly emotionally intelligent reflection. Diversity is a strength that increases the chances of adapting to changing environments. But navigating diversity calls for real skill especially amid today’s accelerating pace of change. We must find the patience to enlarge the frame, ensuring that we see vase and faces alike. Then we can have the conversations that bring people together. Robin Stern, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and Associate Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Diana Divecha, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist and Research Affiliate of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. The views of Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill View the discussion thread. Contributor's Signup The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

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2018

4.0

Two weeks ago TechCrunch called on Instagram to build an equivalent to Facebook’s “Download Your Information feature so if you wanted to leave for another photo sharing network, you could. The next day it announced this tool would be coming and now TechCrunch has spotted it rolling out to users. Instagram’s “Data Download” feature can be accessed here or through the app’s privacy settings. It lets users export their photos, videos, archived Stories, profile, info, comments, and non-ephemeral messages, though it can take a few hours to days for your download to be ready. An Instagram spokesperson now confirms to TechCrunch that “the Data Download tool is currently accessible to everyone on the web, but access via iOS and Android is still rolling out.” The download contains you profile info, photos, videos, archived Stories (those posted after December 2017), your post and story captions, your uploaded contacts, the usernames of your followers and people you follow, Direct messages, non-ephemeral Direct message photos and videos, comments, Likes, searches, and settings. The tool’s launch is necessary for Instagram to comply with the data portability rule in European Union’s GDPR privacy law that goes into effect on May 25th. But it’s also a reasonable concession. Instagram has become the dominant image sharing social network with over 800 million users. It shouldn’t need to lock up users’ data in order to keep them around. Instagram traps data without a Download Your Information tool [Update: WhatsApp announced today that it too will be rolling out a Data Download tool to all users globally with its next app update as part of its GDPR compliance. Users will be able to export their “account info” which includes their profile photo and group names, but not messages which can be exported or backed up by some phones. WhatsApp is increasing the minimum age to use its app from 13 to 16 in Europe (though it will stay 13 everywhere else). It’s also set up a business entity for operating in Europe, and clarified that it doesn’t share user data with Facebook though it hopes to if regulators let it in the future. However it does share security and anti-spam data to block bad actors on both apps.] Instagram hasn’t been afraid to attack competitors and fight dirty. Most famously, it copied Snapchat’s Stories in August 2016, which now has over 300 million daily users — eclipsing the original. But it also cut off GIF-making app Phhhoto from its Find Friends feature, then swiftly cloned its core feature to launch Instagram Boomerang. Within a few years, Phhhoto had shut down its app. If Instagram is going to ruthlessly clone and box out its competitors, it should also let users choose which they want to use. That’s tough if all your photos and videos are trapped inside another app. The tool could create a more level playing field for competition amongst photo apps. It could also deter users from using sketchy third-party apps to scrape all their Instagram content. Since they typically require you to log in with your Instagram credentials, these put users at risk of being hacked or having their images used elsewhere without their consent. Considering Facebook launched its DYI tool in 2010, six years after the site launched, the fact that it took Instagram 8 years from launch to build this means it’s long overdue. But with such strong network effect and its willingness to clone any popular potential rival, it may still take a miracle or a massive shift to a new computing platform for any app to dethrone Instagram.

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2019

2.0

Krista Knight agreed to write a movie musical short for the prestigious academy pro bono. After discovering her colleagues were being paid, she requested the same. Advertise on Hyperallergic with Nectar Ads The New York Film Academy (NYFA) bills itself as an influential global institution that has lured many of its faculty from universities like Harvard, Columbia, and Yale while courting blockbuster names like Rose McGowan, Steven Spielberg, and Al Pacino as guest speakers. In its 26-year history, the for-profit education center has taught over 5,000 students annually in areas like film, acting, photography, and broadcast journalism. Despite NYFA’s vaunted history and access to vast resources, the academy did not plan to pay playwright Krista Knight for her work writing a 20-minute movie musical short for the institution’s second-year musical theater majors, a project she began in the summer of 2018 and was expected to conclude later that fall. When Knight agreed to take on the project, she knew it came without pay; what she didn’t know was that her male colleagues on the creative team were being compensated for similar-level tasks. The film’s director Mike Price recruited Knight by referral from a mutual colleague. In his first email to Knight, in June, Price said there would be no monetary compensation for her position as the movie musical’s bookwriter; instead, he promised Knight “‘in-kind’ pay in resources and a credit moving forth into film festivals.” Knight accepted the offer. Weeks after Knight began work on the project, however, she learned that the rest of the creative team — including the composer and the librettist, who were both men — were receiving a small stipend of $150 each for their work. She asked NYFA to pay her a $150 stipend, too. Shortly thereafter, she found herself dismissed from the project. On August 6, Knight says she wrote an email to Mark Olsen, NYFA’s Musical Theater Conservatory Chair, addressing her concerns about financial disparity on the project and asking for $150 dollars. She forwarded this email to the project’s director, Mark Price, and choreographer, Deidre Goodwin. “Industry standard is that composer, librettist, and bookwriter are each paid 1/3,” Knight wrote in her email. “So if the composer team (composer and librettist) is being paid $300 for the project, the bookwriter should also be paid $150.” Olsen says that he never received a direct email from Knight, but that he received Knight’s request for payment from Price and Goodwin. “Although not part of our usual budget for these projects, when I received [Knight’s] request [for payment] I instantly approved it,” Olsen told Hyperallergic in an email. In an August 16 email to Knight, Price wrote: “We’ve received the okay for compensation, just waiting for official confirmation and timeline for payment.” Goodwin and Price explained to Knight that the school had not planned to pay her due to “an antiquated policy at NYFA to only pay the composers and not the bookwriter.” They stressed that they were trying to change this practice. One thing Mark want to clearly address right away is that in no way does the lack of a stipend for the writer have anything to do with gender inequality. Both writers and composers have been male and female in the past. Really don’t want for you or anyone for that matter to have that thought in their mind or spirit because it simply isn’t accurate. I am a black woman and Mark is a gay hispanic man and we are I hope, obviously, strongly against inequality of any kind. Mark and I have vehemently fought for this to change since the moment we signed on to this project and are continuing to do so. […] Just don’t want you to perceive that it has anything to do with trying to pay men and not women and that we are not still trying to change it. While she was waiting for confirmation of payment, Knight didn’t feel like it was right to continue working for free and paused her work on the project for two weeks. With reassurances from the August 16 email that the financial details were being settled, she continued working and submitted a rough draft of the script on August 22, three days past her initial deadline. On August 23, Knight received an email from Price and Goodwin, who informed Knight that she was effectively being let go from the project’s creative team. They implied in the email that this decision had been made due to Knight’s failure to meet an August 19 deadline for the script. “We sincerely hope we can collaborate in the near future,” Price and Goodwin wrote. Reading their message, Knight says she was caught off-guard. She says Price and Goodwin encouraged her to approach NYFA about receiving compensation, and even informed her that emailing the department chair would help her case. As a playwright, Knight has held residencies at places like Yale University, Dartmouth College, and the Juilliard School, while showcasing work at venues like The Public Theater, the Kennedy Center, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Knight says she put a significant amount of time into this project, including attending seven conferences with the director and choreographer about their vision. She created writing prompts and sat in on classes at NYFA to collect general material for her script. It wasn’t until her second meeting with the creative team that Knight realized she was the only member not being paid. She says she had been encouraging the team to be “more artistically ambitious because [they] weren’t being paid.” That’s when the composer divulged that he was, indeed, getting paid. So were the director, the choreographer, and the librettist. “I’ve never heard of the composer team being paid and not the bookwriter,” Knight told Hyperallergic, saying it was industry standard to pay all staff on a creative team. She doesn’t want to assume that her lack of payment was a gender-related decision, as she wrote in an email, but instead stresses that it’s symptomatic of a culture in which artists are made to feel grateful for any opportunities that come their way: I don’t think that NYFA chose not to pay me because I’m a woman and the composer and lyricist are both men, but by choosing to only pay the composers, they are also choosing to pay the artists that are more likely to be men. I think not paying artists/writers in general is still very common, because they can, and artists (like me) are willing to work for free. Because I was told there was no payment, it also meant that my agent was not involved, and I have no protection for the time and work I’ve already generated for this project, or from being removed from the project entirely when I asked to also be paid. Neither Price nor Goodwin responded to Hyperallergic’s multiple requests for comment. In his response, Olsen stressed to Hyperallergic that the movie musical short was not a commercial endeavor; it was an educational opportunity for students, which is often created by NYFA’s staff writers and musicians. He continued via email: Olsen believes that the situation deteriorated because of communication glitches. “Where things faltered is in the fact that this a basically a good faith based project where artists get together and collaborate to help create the best possible experience for the students,” he writes. “When it became evident to the teachers that the writer was in fact not writing and was not going to write until she received some sort of formal agreement from the producer (who was happily processing it) and after missing a key deadline putting in jeopardy the entire work flow of the project, the artistic team lost confidence in her ability to be a good fit for the project.” Going forward, Olsen notes, NYFA will either offer an honorarium for artists or avoid complication by not using outside writers.

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2017

11.0

Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore said Friday that he is refusing to debate his Democratic opponent Doug Jones because of Jones's stance on transgender rights. In an interview with Sean Hannity on iHeartRadio, Moore said that Jones's "very liberal" stance on transgender issues was behind the decision to skip a debate. "We’ve refused to debate them because of their very liberal stance on transgenderism and transgenderism in the military and in bathrooms. They are desperate," Moore told Hannity. Moore's comments on the show come two days after he stated transgender individuals "don't have rights." "The transgenders don't have rights," Moore said Wednesday during a press conference. "They’ve never been denominated as having rights by the U.S. Supreme Court." Moore also attacked Jones Wednesday for supporting allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military. "He believes in transgender bathrooms and transgenders in the military. I disagree with him 100 percent," Moore added. Moore's interview with Hannity comes as the GOP candidate faces accusations of sexual misconduct with a minor decades ago. A woman told The Washington Post that Moore initiated unwanted sexual contact with her decades ago, when she was 14. Moore was in his 30s at the time. Moore on Friday again denied the allegations, calling them an effort by Jones's campaign and the Post to derail his campaign. He has vowed to stay in the race despite calls from many Republicans for him to stand down if the allegations are true. "I had nothing to do with this, this is a completely manufactured story meant to defrock this campaign," Moore told Hannity. "They are losing, they are 11 points behind, they don’t like my acknowledgement that there is a God." "These allegations are completely false and misleading," he added. "But more than that, it hurts me personally because you know, I'm a father. I have one daughter, I have five granddaughters, and I have a special concern for the protection of young ladies." View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

politics

Roy Moore

(moore , alabama , roy moore , roy , moores , doug jones , jones , mr moore , strange , doug)

2017

5.0

RHP Nick Pivetta made his fourth career major league and allowed one run and three hits in 4 2/3 innings and was optioned to Triple-A Lehigh Valley after Thursday’s game. He left with two on and two out in the fifth after throwing 107 pitches. Pivetta also recordedi five strikeouts Thursday Pivetta has fanned 21 batters through his first 19.1 innings, striking out five or more in each of his first four career starts. OF Michael Saunders was removed from the Thursday’s game vs. Texas in the sixth inning with left groin tightness. Saunders was 1-for-2 in the game prior to the injury, and 3-for-6 with a home run and a triple in the last two games after going 0-for-4 in the series opener. 1B Tommy Joseph hit a two-run home run in the ninth inning and has homered in four of his last eight games. He is batting .329/.405/.643/1.048 over his last 21 games dating back to April 20th. 3B Maikel Franco extended his hitting streak to five games with a fifth inning homer, and got the Phillies on the board in the second inning with a sacrifice fly. He finished the series 3-for-10 with three RBI in the first action of his career against Texas.

baseball

yankees

(innings , inning , yankees , runs , hits , mets , homer , sox , home run , baseball)

2018

9.0

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday that discussions with the United States about forging a new North American Free Trade Agreement were still constructive, so the two sides agreed to meet again for further negotiations. Freeland said she spoke with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer over the weekend after their talks ended on Friday, and their teams have had “a lot of contact” since then. “We agreed that it would be useful to continue talking today, so we’re back for more negotiations,” Freeland told reporters as she entered USTR offices in Washington. “The conversations over the weekend continued to be constructive and productive.” Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

trade

NAFTA

(nafta , usmca , mexico , canada , trade agreement , north american , trade , lighthizer , american free , agreement)

2019

9.0

(Adds domestic closing price, analyst comment and chart) HONG KONG, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The yuan edged lower on Tuesday as Sino-U.S. trade tensions showed no sign of abating, but China's central bank again set a firmer-than-expected guidance rate, tempering losses. China on Monday lodged a complaint against the United States at the World Trade Organization, after Washington slapped 15% tariffs on various Chinese goods the previous day. Beijing hit back with new duties on U.S. crude oil. Escalations in the year-long trade conflict led the Chinese currency to its sharpest monthly drop in 25 years in August. The onshore yuan fell almost 0.1% on Tuesday to finish domestic trading at 7.1785 per dollar, the weakest since February 2008. But the yuan's losses were limited by the People's Bank of China's fixing, which came in at 7.0884 per dollar, a new 11-1/2-year low but stronger than Reuters' estimate of 7.1099. Spot yuan can trade 2% either side of this guidance rate. As long as the midpoint stays on the stronger side of 7.1, spot yuan will find support around 7.2, OCBC Wing Hang Bank said in a note on Tuesday. "Clearly, if there are no concrete developments in the trade talks, the PBoC fixing will set the tone for USDCNY for the time being," Zhou Hao, analyst at Commerzbank, said in a note on Tuesday afternoon. The PBOC will likely keep the yuan close to its current levels before U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators meet later this month, even if further yuan weakness may help Chinese exporters and economic growth, said a trader with a foreign bank in Shanghai. "Ultimately, the source of economic pressure is the trade conflict, and the U.S. would not like to see the yuan depreciate too much," he said. Washington labeled China a currency manipulator last month after Beijing let the yuan slip past 7 per dollar. A forex sales banker in Hong Kong said the PBOC has no clear "line in the sand" for yuan prices and will instead focus on "trying to contain volatility at this point in time." The offshore yuan was trading at 7.184 per dollar, up 0.15% on the day. As U.S. markets reopen after a long weekend, dollar strength buoyed by rising risks of Brexit may add pressure on the yuan, China Construction Bank (Asia) said in a note on Tuesday. The greenback was up 0.3% at 99.244 by 0828 GMT. (Reporting by Noah Sin; Editing by Kim Coghill and Jacqueline Wong)

finance

currencies

(yuan , midpoint , onshore , pboc , dollar , spot yuan , offshore , pips , peoples bank , currency)

2019

3.0

Washington (CNN)A Republican congressman who opposes President Donald Trump's emergency border wall declaration said Sunday he believes Trump "is violating our constitutional system" with the declaration. The comments from Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who serves on the House Oversight Committee, came as he discussed the declaration, which Trump made last month to unlock additional funding to construct his proposed wall along the southern border. "I think the President is violating our constitutional system. And I don't think Congress can grant legislative powers to the President by statute," Amash told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "You can't just pass a statute that says, 'The President now has appropriations power and bypass Congress.' " Amash said he thinks his Republican colleagues who support the move are abdicating their constitutional responsibilities, but that he doesn't "think that they are all intending to do that." He added that Republican members of Congress who argue the President was granted this power by Congress are probably not "thinking to themselves, 'Oh, I just want the President to violate the Constitution.' " Amash, who is one of 13 Republicans in the House who voted with Democrats to pass a measure to block Trump's declaration, told Tapper that "we have to protect our own power." The measure will now be considered in the Senate, where, Amash said, he's "hopeful many Republican senators will agree." Not ruling out a 2020 bid Amash, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, declined on Sunday to rule out a possible 2020 presidential run as a Libertarian candidate. "Well, I would never rule anything out. That's not on my radar right now," he said of a 2020 bid to Tapper. "But I think that it is important that we have someone in there who is presenting a vision for America that is different from what these two parties are presenting." Amash told Tapper he believes there is a "wild amount of partisan rhetoric on both sides" and that "Congress is totally broken." "I think that we need to return to basic American principles, talk about what we have in common as a people -- because I believe we have a lot in common as Americans -- and try to move forward together, rather than fighting each other all the time," Amash said.

politics

border wall

(shutdown , wall , border , border wall , national emergency , border security , emergency , government shutdown , funding , wall funding)

2016

4.0

China's first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) will take center-stage today, as markets look for signs the world's second-largest economy is comfortably shifting away from its manufacturing roots. Experts predict growth, expected at 10 a.m. SIN/HK, to have moderately eased in the first quarter of 2016; economists polled by Reuters estimated the economy expanded by 6.7 percent on-year, compared to a 6.8 percent reading in the December quarter. China is also due to release industrial production, retail sales and fixed asset investment data for March on Friday. Bank of America Merrill Lynch economists said in a recent report that they expected modestly slower growth in both secondary and tertiary sectors. The bank said strong year-on-year increase in home sales meant "real estate growth will likely rebound notably in 1Q from 4Q, largely offsetting lower growth in other service categories." Peter Donisanu, global research analyst at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said in a Friday note that the institute expected to a Q1 on-year growth rate below the previous quarter's 6.8 percent. He noted that production measures softened during the first quarter, with exports and imports both lower on-year in January and February and industrial production also slowing, while official manufacturing PMI continued its slide into contractionary territory to a four-year low of 49 in February. "Nonetheless, we expect slower, but positive, growth in China during the first quarter, with support likely to come from a moderately positive expansion of the country's "new" economy tertiary (services) industries, which should continue through this year," Donisanu wrote. A negative surprise in the form of growth below 6.5 percent on-year "could reignite market worries about global growth and lead to heightened market volatility," he added. A series of "solid numbers," however, could provide further short-term upside for commodities, Angus Nicholson, market analyst at IG, said in a note on Friday. Last month, at the National People's Congress (NPC), an annual meeting of parliament, Chinese leaders targeted 6.5 to 7 percent growththis year and identified supply-side policies as a crucial lever to revive growth and arrest excess capacity. China's economic growth rate slowed to a 25-year low of 6.9 percent in 2015. — Follow CNBC International on and Facebook.

economy

china's growth

(chinas , growth , beijing , gdp , li , chinas economy , trillion yuan , economy , fixedasset , growth target)

2017

6.0

Bill Gurley, an outspoken venture capitalist at Benchmark, is in talks to leave Uber's board, a source told CNBC. Benchmark partner Matt Cohler will replace Gurley effective immediately, a source said. Bloomberg and The New York Times previously reported the news. Gurley was reportedly instrumental in the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick this week, although on Twitter Gurley noted that Kalanick will go down in history for his lasting impact as an entrepreneur. In February 2011, it poured $11 million into the company at a $60 million valuation, according to Crunchbase data. Gurley has been an advocate of thoughtful spending and public market accountability on his blog, "Above the Crowd, " a sharp contrast to Uber's position as one of the most highly valued private start-ups. Gurley has also been skeptical that one of Uber's main business strategies, , could be feasible in the next two decades. The New York Times reported earlier this year that Gurley was guiding Uber behind the scenes as it dealt with widespread fallout from allegations of misconduct and sexual harassment. — with reporting by CNBC's Sally Shin and Arjun Kharpal Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Benchmark invested in Uber in 2011.

business

Uber

(kalanick , uber , ubers , kalanicks , travis , travis kalanick , khosrowshahi , mr kalanick , fowler , ceo travis)

2017

4.0

MILAN, April 5 (Reuters) - Telecom Italia’s Chief Executive Flavio Cattaneo plans to keep his current job at the Italian phone group regardless of whom shareholders choose to appoint as its next chairman, the top executive said on Wednesday. Cattaneo made the remarks after a report said he could decide to leave if top shareholder Vivendi pushed for the French group’s CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine to become Telecom Italia’s chairman with at least the same powers held by current Chairman Giuseppe Recchi. Telecom Italia’s board comes up for renewal in May. “I will remain regardless of the chairman that shareholders decide to pick as I’m sure they will put me in a position to work well,” Cattaneo said on the sidelines of an event in Rome, according to comments emailed by a spokesman. He added there were no disagreements with shareholders, including Vivendi, and that they all shared a common vision for the company’s strategy. Sources have said Vivendi is considering putting de Puyfontaine forward as Telecom Italia’s next chairman, potentially aggravating concerns about the French group’s growing influence over Italian companies. (Reporting by Agnieszka Flak, editing by Valentina Za)

business

telecommunications

(vivendi , telecom italia , italia , open fiber , telecom , tims , tim , fiber , genish , elliott)

2016

3.0

March 9 (Reuters) - Cloud storage provider Box Inc reported a 35.7 percent rise in quarterly revenue as more customers subscribed to its content-sharing platform. Net loss attributable to shareholders narrowed to $50.4 million, or 41 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, from $52.9 million, or $2.64 per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $85 million from $62.6 million. (Reporting by Kshitiz Goliya in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

Technology

Dropbox

(dropbox , dropboxs , levie , box , cloud storage , ipo , cents share , revenue , cents , boxs)

2020

3.0

From Israel to South Korea to China, governments around the world are using technology to track the coronavirus outbreak as they race to stem its spread. But how long will it last and is this an infringement of privacy, rights groups have asked. In China, government-installed CCTV cameras point at the apartment door of those under a 14-day quarantine to ensure they don't leave. Drones tell people to wear their masks. Digital barcodes on mobile apps highlight the health status of individuals.  These are just some of the ways the world's second-largest economy has mobilized its surveillance apparatus to help contain the outbreak of the coronavirus.  Private individuals who live in China have either provided photographic evidence, or told CNBC in interviews, of the CCTV equipment being installed in front of their homes to enforce quarantines. Those individuals did not wish to be identified by name for this article. While some of China's measures appear extreme, nations around the world have taken the decision to boost their surveillance of individuals in a bid to help them fight the COVID-19 outbreak. Rights organizations argue that with monitoring capabilities ramping up, it may be hard for governments to scale back down. On top of that, experts are worried that surveillance tools like a person's location data may not even be effective and that there may be no timeline on when governments will stop collecting that kind of information.  "Coronavirus is pushing us over the edge and ... perhaps institutionalizing these systems and in addition, making general public to become more accepting of these more intrusive measure," Maya Wang, a senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch, told CNBC.  The technologies employed by governments around the world are aimed at identifying where infected people are and monitoring quarantines. Countries and cities around the world have been locked down, a move that looks to encourage "social distancing" and reduce the transmission between people.  In Singapore, the government rolled out an app called TraceTogether. It uses Bluetooth signals between cellphones to see if potential carriers of the coronavirus have been in close contact with other people.  Over in Hong Kong, some residents were made to wear a wristband which linked to a smartphone app and could alert authorities if a person left their place of quarantine.  In South Korea, the government used records such as credit card transactions, smartphone location data and CCTV video as well as conversations with people, to create a system where confirmed cases were tracked. The result was a map that could tell people whether they had gone near a coronavirus carrier.  On Thursday, the South Korean government launched an enhanced tool that it says can help track patients even more closely in near real time, in order to see where the disease was moving.  Meanwhile, Israel's security agency Shin Bet is using citizens' cell phone location data to track where they've been so they can enforce quarantine controls and monitor the movements of those infected. Controversially, the data has been collected over the past few years and intended to for counterterrorism purposes, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said this data trove and the collection of it had not been previously reported. Some parts of India were stamping the hands of people arriving at airports telling them how long they had to be quarantined, Reuters reported. Reservation data from airlines and trains were being monitored to make sure those people didn't travel, the report added. In the south Indian state of Kerala, authorities have been using a mixture of telephone call records, surveillance camera footage and phone location data to track down people who may have been in contact with coronavirus patients. In the U.S., the government is talking to Facebook, Google and other tech companies about the possibility of using location and movement data from Americans' smartphones to combat coronavirus.  World leaders have described the coronavirus pandemic as an extraordinary time, and French President Emmanuel Macron declaring that the country is at "war" against the disease.  As such, governments are taking unusual steps to combat the outbreak including the use of surveillance tools. One of the most common tools being employed around the world has been the gathering of location data using smartphones and data from mobile networks.  But one of the big problems, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital privacy advocacy group, is that collection of certain data like phone location, hasn't been proven to be effective in tracking the spread of the virus.  "Because new government dragnet location surveillance powers are such a menace to our digital rights, governments should not be granted these powers unless they can show the public how these powers would actually help, in a significant manner, to contain COVID-19," the EFF said in a blog post earlier this week. The organization argued that even the Global Positioning System, or GPS, on smartphones are only accurate to a 16-foot radius, according to official U.S. government information. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the virus can spread between people who are in close contact with one another, which the body estimates is within 6 feet. "These and other technologies like Bluetooth can be combined for better accuracy, but there's no guarantee that a given phone can be located with six-foot precision at a given time," the EFF said.  How long will data collection go on and when will it be deleted, if ever? These are two key questions that privacy advocates are asking. They have highlighted the potential for heightened surveillance to go on — even after the coronavirus outbreak is under control. Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit advocacy group, raised this concern in an interview with CNBC and pointed to the USA Patriot Act which was signed into law after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The legislation gives federal government broad surveillance powers to aid their counterterrorism efforts. But the law, which was initially due to expire in 2005, was renewed and earlier this month, got another short-term renewal until later this year.  "We have absolutely no reason to believe that the government agencies that are eager to expand their power in response to COVID-19 will be willing to see those authorities lapse once the virus is eradicated," Cahn told CNBC.  For their part, some governments have laid out clearly what data they are collecting and the time limit on how long they will hold the information, though not all have put specific dates forward.  Singapore said its TraceTogether app does not record location data or access the phone user's contact list. Data logs are stored on phones in encrypted form, according to the government. South Korea said its information collection efforts will end when the coronavirus outbreak is over and that all personal data will be deleted. Some of the surveillance tools to battle COVID-19 currently being used involve sharing some of the data collected with other government agencies, such as law enforcement.  Cahn suggested that any solution that is being used now should have a "complete ban" on doing that. Academics have offered alternatives to such tools being pushed by governments. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an app called "Private Kit: Safe Paths." The idea is that users can update information about themselves on the app and then declare if they have the coronavirus or not. Their location and movement is logged. However, it is stored on the phone in encrypted form and not shared with third parties without consent. People can get notifications about if they have been near someone with coronavirus but it won't give a user the exact name or identity of individuals, unlike some current government-led solutions. But the app will require widespread use for it to be effective.  With global cases rising rapidly and deaths continuing to mount, governments need to move quickly to control the situation, or the risks will be even higher. The key, for privacy groups, is balancing the need for the use of technology and data for the public good versus protecting privacy. If that is not done, they say, the consequences after the dust has settled could be big.  "I don't think the fact this is an urgent public health crisis is an excuse for governments to not act quickly to find solutions to protect human rights," Wang from Human Rights Watch said. "Otherwise, we fall into this dependency such that later on, we become more intrusive in the use of these technologies which can also produce harm."

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2017

4.0

April 17 (Reuters) - Bank Aljazira: * Q1 net profit 216 million riyals Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

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2016

5.0

Nihar Janga looked like the strongest speller at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and perhaps the best ever. And he's only 11 years old. But he stumbled twice, at just the wrong time — or maybe the right time. He still ended up winning, but sharing the title with 13-year-old Jariam Hathwar. Twice, Jairam missed a word, giving Nihar a chance to seal the title. Both times, Nihar followed up with his own flub. After each nailed his final two words, they were declared co-champions. It was the third year in a row that the bee ended in a tie. Nihar is the youngest champion on record. Jairam is the younger brother of the 2014 co-champion. The tie was unexpected after bee officials changed the rules to make it harder.

tennis

federer

(federer , nadal , djokovic , tennis , wimbledon , grand slam , match , slam , atp , 64)

2018

10.0

China's central bank still has plenty of tools that it can use to counter the detrimental effects of a trade war, its governor, Yi Gang, said on Sunday. The Asian economic giant is in the center of a tariff fight with the U.S. The world's two largest economies have imposed tit-for-tat tariffs on each other's products, which have made investors nervous and is seen as a major risk in derailing the global economy. "I think the downside risks from trade tensions are significant," Yi said at the International Banking Seminar, which was organized on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Bali, Indonesia. "We still have plenty of monetary instruments in terms of interest rate policy, in terms of required reserve ratio. We have plenty of room for adjustment, in case we need it," he said, adding that China still wants a "constructive solution" to the ongoing trade frictions. Yi's comments came just days after the IMF downgraded global growth forecasts for this year and next year to 3.7 percent, citing ongoing trade tensions that could hurt confidence. China's economy is expected to grow 6.6 percent this year — maintaining an earlier forecast — but slashed the country's 2019 growth estimate by 0.2 percentage points to 6.2 percent. The IMF also said that at its worst, the tariff fight could knock 1.6 percentage points off China's economic growth over two years, although it added that it expects much of that impact to be offset by the Chinese government's policies to stimulate the economy. Yi said he largely agrees with the IMF's assessment on how an escalating trade war could impact the global economy. But he said China is on track to meet its growth target of 6.5 percent this year and "maybe a little bit more." The People's Bank of China has on four occasions this year cut the amount of reserves that banks must hold, unlocking more cash into the economy so that businesses and households could borrow more money to spend. Many investors and economists — such as UBS and Nomura — have interpreted those moves as China's signal to ease monetary conditions. But Yi on Sunday maintained that China's monetary policy stance is still prudent and neutral. A neutral monetary policy means the central bank is neither trying to slow nor stimulate the economy. When policy is said to be accommodative, it means the central bank is making it cheaper for businesses and households to borrow in hopes that they will increase spending and lift the economy. The governor pointed to the growth of M2 money supply, which has grown at a slower pace this year to more align with China's economic expansion. M2 measures the amount of money in the economy that includes cash and other assets such as mutual funds and time deposits. In the last few months, that indicator has grown by around 8 percent year-over-year, down from previous year's double digits level and coming closer to growth in the overall economy, Yi said. At the same time, the growth in China's total social financing — which measures credit in the economy such as loans and bonds — have maintained in a "reasonable range," he added. "So if you look at the broad money, if you look at the interest rate and you look at monetary conditions, basically you can have the conclusion that we have a prudent and neutral stance monetary policy," Yi said.

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2020

3.0

What percentage of teenagers see problems like anxiety, bullying, drug addiction and gangs as either major or minor among their peers? This graph, showing the percentage of American teenagers, ages 13 – 17, who feel certain problems are major or minor among people their age in their community, appeared elsewhere on NYTimes.com. The data is from a representative sample of 920 teens surveyed from September to November 2018. By Friday morning, March 20, we will provide the “Reveal” — the graph’s free online link, additional background and questions, shout outs highlighting student comments and headlines, and Stat Nuggets. What do you notice? If you make a claim, tell us what you noticed that supports your claim. What do you wonder? What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the graph? What’s going on in this graph? Write a catchy headline that captures the graph’s main idea. The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order. Start with “I notice,” then “I wonder,” and end with a catchy headline. 2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment online. Teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students say.) 3. After you have posted, read what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting a comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly. On Wednesday, March 18, our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own. 4. By Friday morning, March 20, we will reveal more information about the graph at the bottom of this post. Students, we encourage you to post an additional comment after reading the reveal. How does the original article and the moderators’ comments help you see the graph differently? Try to incorporate the statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets in your response. Read our 2019-20 introductory post, which includes the archives of past releases by topic and graph type. Learn more about the “Notice and Wonder” teaching strategy and how and why other teachers are using this feature from our on-demand webinar. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter so you never miss a graph, and add our 2019-20 “What’s Going On in This Graph?” live-moderated discussion Wednesdays to your Google calendar (3/18, 3/25, 4/1, 4/8). Graphs are always released by the Friday before to give teachers time to plan ahead. Go to the A.S.A. K-12 website, which includes This is Statistics, resources, professional development, student competitions, curriculum, courses and careers.

education

thinking strategies

(graph , graphs , thinking strategies , visual thinking , going picture , post students , going graph , responses models , deeper use , understanding deeper)

2016

11.0

Nov 1 (Reuters) - Genomic Health Inc - * Genomic Health reports third consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth in announcement of third quarter 2016 financial results * Q3 loss per share $0.08 * Q3 revenue $82.3 million versus I/B/E/S view $83.2 million * Q3 earnings per share view $-0.08 — Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

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2016

3.0

Dubai is betting big on tourism. An architectural model of Dubai Parks & Resorts, a $2.8 billion project in the Middle Eastern city-state, was unveiled on Tuesday. There will be a Taj Mahal-inspired theatre, a LEGOLAND theme park, other movie-themed attractions and more. The attractions are scheduled to open in October of this year. "Dubai Parks and Resorts is where the best of the east meets the best of the west to create a world of fun and adventure unlike any other," the website reads. The project includes three theme parks, a water park, a retail outlet and a hotel. An architectural model view of the Motiongate movie theatre at the Dubai Parks and Resorts complex. Dubai's airport is one of the largest in the world, and holds the current record for number of international travelers arriving, departing or passing through the airport. The city is sometimes considered a layover, but officials want more people to visit the city as a destination. An architectural model view of the Rajmahal Theatre, part of Bollywood Parks at the Dubai Parks and Resorts complex. Officials at Dubai Parks & Resorts hope to attract 20 million visitors by 2020, calling it "the ultimate year-round international tourist destination." Additional reporting by the Associated Press. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

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2017

8.0

Aug 10 (Reuters) - Nike Inc- * Nike Inc declares $0.18 quarterly dividend Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

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None

(dividend , quarterly dividend , share source , cash dividend , quarterly cash , quarterly , sets quarterly , eikon company , text eikon , eikon)

2017

10.0

Have you ever been in a car and thought to yourself, "damn, I'd really love to wear this car mat as a skirt?" No? Didn't think so.  The folks at Balenciaga beg to differ, it seems. They're selling a "car design skirt" that looks like it's come straight out of the footwell of your automobile. Fetch! Oh, and it happens to cost £1,795 ($2,365). Bargain! Women Fall Winter 17 @MadameFigaroJapon A post shared by Balenciaga (@balenciaga) on Oct 16, 2017 at 6:49am PDT A few frugal individuals have pointed out that fashionistas wanting to get on board with this look can do so for a fraction of the price. Like, just buy some car mats and wear them? Easy.  4 car floor mats: $20Balenciaga 1 floor mat: $2000 pic.twitter.com/1lUfUW31wa — Ahmad 🔰 (@MigTheRobot) October 23, 2017 We're not designer fashion experts, but... pic.twitter.com/zCujBIJNxf — Money Saving Expert (@MoneySavingExp) October 25, 2017 Listen, if we're gonna go all out on this whole automobile chic look, then we need to do it properly.  A few people rightly noted that there's something missing from Balenciaga's ensemble.  Can't believe they let her walk out without her necklace on smh.. pic.twitter.com/3Y2rfX7yyM — drew F (@Bewbzy) October 20, 2017 What is missing from this attire is a magic 🌲air freshener hanging from her neck. — Brian packwood (@packos98) October 19, 2017 What will they think of next?

fashion

designer jeans

(fashion , designer , wear , jeans , collection , designers , fashion week , denim , dresses , dress)

2019

8.0

President Donald Trump accused China on Monday of manipulating its currency as the trade war between the world's largest economies keeps escalating. "China dropped the price of their currency to an almost a historic low," Trump said in a tweet. "It's called 'currency manipulation.' Are you listening Federal Reserve? This is a major violation which will greatly weaken China over time!" China — which has historically controlled its currency — allowed the yuan to fall to its lowest level in more than a decade. The yuan traded above 7 per U.S. dollar, making Chinese products cheaper. The People's Bank of China denied devaluing the yuan as a counter to U.S. tariffs. In a statement, PBOC Governor Yi Gang said China will "not engage in competitive devaluation, and not use the exchange rate for competitive purposes and not use the exchange rate as a tool to deal with external disturbances such as trade disputes." Trump's comments on Monday came less than three months after his administration decided not to label China a currency manipulator. No country has been named a manipulator since the Clinton administration did so for China in 1994. Though Trump vowed to brand China a manipulator during his campaign, his administration has passed on five opportunities to do so. Trump's tweet came four days after he announced a 10% tariff on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports that had eluded U.S. levies. The additional tariff is set to take effect on Sept. 1, when Chinese officials are scheduled to meet with their U.S. counterparts in Washington. Trump said last week that China was supposed to buy "large quantities" of U.S. agricultural products, but did not do so. China had reportedly denied Trump's claims, but Bloomberg News reported Sunday night the Chinese government asked state-owned companies to halt imports of U.S. agricultural products. —CNBC's Tom Franck contributed to this report.

finance

currency manipulator

(manipulator , currency , currency manipulator , china currency , treasury , mnuchin , currency manipulation , label china , china , yuan)

2019

8.0

BOGOTA, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Colombian industrial conglomerate Grupo Argos said on Tuesday its net profit increased 16% in the first half of the year to 265 billion pesos ($77 million) compared with the year-ago period. The company, whose subsidiaries include cement-maker Cementos Argos and energy company Celsia, did not include figures for the second quarter in its filing to the country’s financial regulator. “Various milestones that will have positive impact in the long-term materialized in this period,” chief executive Jorge Mario Velasquez said in a statement. Those milestones include “the incorporation of the transmission and distribution assets of our subsidiary Celsia for close to 2 trillion pesos and financial optimization operations in our concessions business, which included bond issues for close to 2.5 trillion pesos,” he said. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were 2.1 trillion pesos, up 12% compared with the first half of 2018, the filing said. Revenue was 7.6 trillion pesos during the first half, the company said, up 9% year-on-year. Celsia said last week it would sell some $420 million in thermal energy assets. The sale will give it more flexibility and profitability, Argos said in its Tuesday statement, as well as focus its grid more on clean energy. Cementos Argos said on Monday its net profit was up 33.5% to 70.7 billion pesos in the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2018. Argos has approached U.S. aggregates and cement maker Summit Materials Inc about a merger, Reuters reported in June, a deal that would bolster Argos’ U.S. footprint and illustrate how building materials companies in emerging markets are seeking to become consolidators of their sectors in more mature economies. ($1 = 3,436.26 Colombian pesos) (Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb Editing by Chris Reese)

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2020

1.0

(Reuters) - Citigroup’s (C.N) female employees earn 27% less than male employees on average, when factors like title and location are not taken into account, the Wall Street bank said on Wednesday. That was a slight improvement of two percentage points from last year, according to an internal analysis. In similar job positions in the same location, women on average are paid 99% of what men are paid, on a par with last year’s results, the bank said. Citigroup began disclosing “raw” pay gap figures globally last year in response to shareholder pressure to disclose how much less it pays women than men. A British law that went into effect in 2018 forced corporations to disclose unadjusted pay gap figures for their operations in that country annually, but Citi is the only bank that voluntarily discloses the global metrics. “As we’ve said before, transparency breeds accountability and we took that important first step last year in disclosing our pay equity results,” head of global human resources Sara Wechter said in a statement. “We know the pressure to make progress will continue and we welcome it.” For minorities in the United States, Citi said the median pay was 94% of the median for non-minorities, up from 93% last year. The third-largest U.S. bank has said it wants female employees to hold at least 40% of roles at assistant vice-president level through to managing director level by the end of 2021, with 8% of such roles in the United States held by black employees. (reut.rs/30nQ6gi) Activist investment firm Arjuna Capital lobbied U.S. Wall Street firms to disclose and close gender pay gaps at shareholder meetings last year. “The lack of diversity in the upper echelon’s of Wall Street will not be solved in one year, but over the course of many,” said Natasha Lamb, managing partner at Arjuna. “This is a great start, and Citi goes well beyond peers who have not even disclosed these raw numbers.” Reporting by C Nivedita in Bengaluru and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Tom Brown

pay gap

gender pay gap

(pay gap , gap , gender pay , gender , equal pay , women , wage gap , pay , men , equal)

2019

7.0

Farrah Abraham says all of Jenelle Evans' family and legal drama comes down to one thing -- she's a bad mother ... but Jenelle's got a harsh claim of her own about Farrah. We got the former 'Teen Mom' leaving Madeo in Beverly Hills Thursday night, and she cut right to the chase when we asked her about the latest Jenelle news ... that she told cops the dog-killing incident was a publicity stunt. Farrah calls BS -- she believes David Eason did kill the family dog -- and says the bottom line is Evans has chosen a "horrible man" over her children ... and until she leaves the abusive relationship, she doesn't deserve to get her kids back. The same goes for Amber Portwood, according to Farrah ... who also takes a parting shot at MTV for employing them. Of course, this comes on the heels of Abraham throwing shade at both women earlier Thursday ... to which Jenelle responded on Twitter by claiming Abraham prostitutes herself to companies to make money ever since she got fired from 'Teem Mom.' Evans added ... "I know EVERY company you've sold your body for," and claimed some of those same companies do business with her without her having to take her clothes off. Jenelle quickly deleted the tweets. As we reported ... Evans also denied several major aspects of the police investigation into David killing her dog. Cops say Jenelle walked back her original story and admitted to cops she made it up ... but Jenelle says they're lying, and claims her stepdaughter testified in court that the dog killing is true.

entertainment

television

(farrah , abraham , farrah abraham , teen mom , mom og , abrahams , portwood , teen , farrahs , og)

2016

7.0

ATHENS (Reuters) - Turkey’s ambassador to Athens said on Tuesday that not extraditing the eight Turkish soldiers who fled to Greece after a failed military coup on the weekend would not help bilateral relation between the two neighbors. Relations between the NATO allies have warmed in recent years but they have a long history of enmity and a longstanding dispute over territorial borders in the Aegean, with warplanes from both sides regularly engaging in mock dogfights. Territorial disputes almost provoked a war between Greece and Turkey in 1996 over tiny uninhabited islets. The soldiers have requested political asylum in Greece and the Greek government has told Ankara the process will be swift but stick strictly to international law and human rights treaties. Reporting by Renee Maltezou; Writing by Karolina Tagaris

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2020

1.0

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - U.S. presidential adviser Ivanka Trump on Tuesday touted government-industry collaboration to create jobs, drawing applause at a tech show that contrasted with the criticism she faced beforehand for her lack of tech experience. The daughter of Republican President Donald Trump and a businesswoman, Trump spoke at the annual CES tech conference in Las Vegas in the face of backlash from some industry officials, including women, who challenged her tech qualifications. She said a White House council that she co-leads will launch a nationwide year-long advertising campaign to encourage all pathways to jobs, including apprenticeships, and not just a college degree. “We need to raise awareness about many options that exist,” she told the audience. Trump said the White House will release a national workforce strategy in the coming months. She said over 400 companies have committed to offering over 14 million training opportunities. The council includes the chief executives from Apple Inc, Walmart Inc, IBM Corp and other major companies. Conference organizers defended Trump’s participation, saying she leads White House efforts on job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training and entrepreneurship. Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro, who moderated the discussion with Trump, praised her remarks. “On behalf of the industry, we want to work with you. We want to create jobs,” Shapiro said. Trump talked about efforts to boost paid family leave, finding people to fill 500,000 manufacturing job openings and doing more to recruit and retain immigrants that she dubbed “the greatest talent in the world.” “If we can’t agree come together on this, we can’t come together on anything,” Trump told Shapiro. Some in the Women Who Tech group on Facebook voiced displeasure with the invitation to Trump. Investor Elisabeth Fullerton wrote: “This is an insult to women in technology. We did hard times in university, engineering, math, and applied sciences. This is what extreme privilege and entitlement get you. It’s not what you know it’s who you know I guess.” Tech analyst Carolina Milanesi wrote in an opinion piece in Forbes: “The reason for my upset is rooted in the fact that there are many more women who are in tech and are entrepreneurs who could run circles around Trump on how technology will impact the future of work.” Reporting by David Shepardson in Las Vegas and Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker

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2017

11.0

BERLIN, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Members of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) will get to vote on any decision by the leadership of the centre-left party to join a future coalition government, leader Martin Schulz said on Friday. “There is nothing automatic about the direction we are moving in,” Schulz said. “If a discussion results in us deciding to participate in any form whatsoever in the formation of a government, we will put it to a vote of party members.” Schulz made the remarks said during a brief news conference, shortly after the German president announced he would host a meeting next week with Schulz and Chancellor Angela Merkel to find a way out of a political impasse. Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Thomas Escritt

politics

germany

(spd , merkel , merkels , afd , cdu , chancellor , germany , coalition , csu , germanys)

2016

8.0

(CNN)"I'm very proud of my size 14 hips," Ashley Graham told CNN at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night. "The only pressure that I feel is to continue to represent women of all shapes and sizes in a correct manner," she said. "I think that I'm doing that by eating healthy, working out and staying true to who I am. I am a very curvy, voluptuous woman." Graham, who was featured on the 2016 cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition, has been vocal about her experiences being body shamed -- no matter her size. Related Link: Plus-sized model Ashley Graham lands Sports Illustrated swimsuit gig "I'm too big. I'm too small. I'm too pretty. I'm too ugly. And I think at the end of the day, no woman is ever going to be good enough for society," Graham said. "So why not just start embracing what is the difference in you and saying that is beautiful." Graham attributes her modeling success to self-acceptance. "I started to claim confidence in my cellulite and my back fat and my cellulite on my arms," she said. "That's how you get on the cover of Sports Illustrated."

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2019

10.0

Noah Centineo and Alexis Ren are officially dating. The pair made their red carpet debut at the UNICEF Masquerade Ball in Los Angeles on Saturday night, confirming weeks of rumors that the two are an item. For the festivities, Ren, 22, wore a sexy backless silver dress with a thigh-high slit and matching silver heels, while Centineo, 23, kept things casual in a black blazer, white sneakers and his new buzz cut. In keeping with the masquerade theme, the actor also wore a silver mask on top of his head. Later in the night, the couple was also spotted holding hands outside the event. Centineo and Ren were first romantically linked in late September. Ren previously dated her Dancing with the Stars partner Alan Bersten during their time on the show last year. In December 2018, PEOPLE confirmed that the pair had broken up. Meanwhile, Centineo has kept quiet about his love life. The Perfect Date actor was previously linked to Lily Collins, but PEOPLE later confirmed that the two were not an item. In September 2018, Centineo told PEOPLE that he was “single” and denied rumors that he was dating his To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before costar Lana Condor. “From what she’s told me and from what I’ve seen, she’s so happy with her man, and I’m so happy for her with her man,” Centineo said at the time. “Yeah, just friends. Lovely, lovely friends. She’s my favorite.”

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2016

5.0

It's been a minute since anybody of note uploaded a music video with a maximum resolution of 480p, but then Skepta is not most people. Below you can watch the video for "Man," which just dropped, because it's a bank holiday weekend and everybody is hungover and Skepta knows how to take care of his fans. Filmed by Risky Roadz at the best party you've never been to (which includes rules such as "no sex in the dressing room" and "Snapchat and die"), the whole thing will get you feeling misty-eyed for the glory days of Channel U—in that it was filmed on a hand-held camera and culminates in everyone smashing up a car. Watch below, and prepare your mind, body, and soul for Konnichiwa, which drops May 6.

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2019

3.0

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act allows plaintiffs to claim they were subjected to a hostile work environment based on their disabilities but cautioned that mere “teasing” does not meet the bar. A unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived claims by a former employee at a Costco Wholesale Corp store in Long Island, New York, who said coworkers relentlessly mocked his Tourette Syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. To read the full story on WestlawNext Practitioner Insights, click here: bit.ly/2IXe8dj

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2019

12.0

To sum up the past decade, you could call it a tale of two presidents. For evidence of that, look no further than the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The financial overhaul legislation was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010. On the heels of the financial crisis, it was intended to help rein in banks. The law also paved the way for tougher consumer protections. It ordered the SEC to evaluate how the industry provides investment advice to retail customers. In 2011, the agency released a study advocating for the creation of a uniform fiduciary standard for investment advisors and broker-dealers. The measure also called for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government body specifically devoted to serving as a consumer watchdog. Fast forward: On May 24, 2018, President Donald Trump signed a rollback of a number of banking regulations that were included in that law. And while that didn't affect the two big consumer protections, it is up for debate whether consumers are in a better position almost a decade later. Aaron Klein, a fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution who helped craft the Dodd-Frank Act, said the answer is a definitive no. "The Trump administration took over," Klein said. "They told the police to take a break, and they stopped recording crime." "Ultimately, consumers will lose billions of dollars as a result of purposeful neglect," he said. One of the big misses this decade, investor advocates argue, is the failure to establish a fiduciary rule. The regulation was aimed at getting brokers and investment advisors to adhere to a higher standard when providing advice for clients. Many advocates consider the fiduciary standard to be better protection, because it requires financial professionals to put their clients' best interests ahead of their own. Investment advisors, for example, have traditionally been held to that. Brokers, meanwhile, have answered to something known as the suitability rule, which means brokers were free to sell clients any investment as long as it was "suitable" for the client at the time, even if cheaper alternatives were available. Efforts to put together a joint fiduciary rule created an ongoing saga over the past decade. Despite the SEC's authority to issue a fiduciary rule, the panel mostly didn't take action following its 2011 report. It wasn't until this year that the agency began rolling out a rule called Regulation Best Interest. While the SEC stalled, the Department of Labor and even some states moved to establish their own fiduciary rules. The Department of Labor's efforts were squashed when the Trump administration took over. But the DOL has said it plans to work on a new rule governing retirement accounts. While Regulation Best Interest is legally in force, financial firms have until June to comply. The rule, called Reg BI for short, requires brokers to keep retail customers' best interests in mind when recommending securities. It also requires broker-dealers and investment advisors to provide clients with a new form that summarizes the relationship. Critics say the rule falls short of providing investors with full fiduciary coverage. "It, to some degree, made the area more complex and harmful for consumers," said Jamie Hopkins, director of retirement research at Carson Group and professor at Creighton University Heider College of Business. "They've expanded the use of the language 'best interest,' when in my belief that's really 'suitability' plus additional disclosures," Hopkins said. Yet many in the financial industry have embraced the rule. Earlier this month, Kenneth Bentsen Jr., president and CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, an industry trade group that represents securities firms, called Reg BI a "robust and strict standard." "It is not a disclosure-only based rule," Bentsen said. "It is much stricter than that." Hopkins argues that the change puts the burden on the consumer to ask financial advisors if they are fiduciaries and to clarify how they get paid and what services they provide. "If that's something you want, have the advisor put that in writing that they are a fiduciary," Hopkins said. As with the fiduciary rule, efforts to develop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into a robust watchdog have also taken different turns amid the change in administrations. For evidence, look no further than to the CFPB's own shifting leadership. When Richard Cordray, the first director of the CFPB, announced in November 2017 that he was stepping down, both he and President Trump named a replacement. Cordray promoted chief of staff Leandra English to the role of deputy director and said she would serve as acting director until the Senate confirmed a successor. Instead, Trump named his own acting director, Mick Mulvaney. Consumer advocates complained that the CFPB's authority was watered down under Mulvaney's leadership, citing an April New York Times Magazine article, "Mick Mulvaney's Master Class in Destroying a Bureaucracy from Within." Last December, Kathy Kraninger was confirmed by the Senate as the new director. To cap off her one-year anniversary, the CFPB recently put out a release boasting of its accomplishments. On that list is an item — payday loans — that has sparked criticism. These short-term loans often saddle consumers with high interest rates as they try to cover their cash needs between paychecks. In 2017, the CFPB issued a rule that would establish stricter regulations for payday lenders. But this year, the agency has proposed delaying compliance and rescinding tougher underwriting requirements that lenders would face. "The biggest concerns that we see with the CFPB today is they are holding the hands of the payday lenders," said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. "That means that the debt trap will continue and people will continue to lose their cars and their bank accounts as a result of the continued destruction of payday loans," she said. Klein also criticized the agency for "rewarding the naughty list." "They have stuffed the stockings of payday lenders and the people who were convicted or pleaded guilty to financial malfeasance by reducing fines," he said. The good news is that Congress has left the CFPB intact, which means a new administration could re-energize it, Klein said. "A new director would have substantial authority to revive the agency, and elections have consequences," Klein said. "The CFPB day to day, month to month, needs to be independent." However, not everyone agrees that having a separate agency dedicated to consumer protection is necessary. The Federal Trade Commission already protects consumers against fraud, said Norbert Michel, director for the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "All you did was give this new agency this vague new power and said we're going to figure it out later on, which isn't doing anything to protect anyone against fraud," Michel said. The CFPB's evolution has helped to do one thing: raise public awareness of consumer protection issues, Jun said. But as with the fiduciary rule, the onus is on the consumer to ask the right questions — and speak up if they are wronged. Individuals should still turn to the CFPB's public complaint database to make their voices heard, Jun said. They should also consider talking to a lawyer or reporting egregious practices to their state attorneys general, she said. "If something doesn't seem right to you, look into it," Jun said.

finance

banks

(doddfrank , banks , financial , volcker , regulators , hensarling , volcker rule , banking , fsoc , financial crisis)

2016

12.0

Dec 29 (Reuters) - Bonjour Holdings Ltd * Currently expects group to record a net loss for year ended 31 december 2016 * Expected result due to declined turnover given prolonged sluggish retail environment Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

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2017

6.0

We love bananas. So much so that we will forgive them when they're at their polar worsts: overripe and mushy brown or underripe and elastic green. Because here's the thing, both of those states can be remedied. Bananas that are past their prime can be spread on some toast or thrown in baking batter for added sweetness. And the ones that aren't quite ready? Ah, we'll just eat them anyways smothered in nut butter! But if there's one thing we simply cannot seem to forgive the smooth yellow favorite for, it's those damn dangly strings. Because no matter what state the fruit is in, there's no escaping them. We've been there; You picking your ideal one from the bunch, start the peeling process, and then bam — attack of the clingy white strings. What are they? Where did they come from? Why are they haunting our bananas, our hands, our kitchen counters and floors?! But before we slide too far into the dramatics (too late?), there's actually some pretty uplifting news behind this 'nana nuisance. According to an interview on The Huffington Post with Dr. Nicholas D. Gillitt (a Ph.D. in physical and inorganic chemistry), these messy threads are called phloem bundles and they provide necessary nutrients to our 'nanners. When questioned about the possibility of developing the fruit without these sticky strands, Gillitt clapped back, "Yes it is potentially possible, but if the phloem bundles are necessary for the adequate disposition of nutrients throughout the plant, and are not truly bothersome, what would be the driver?" Touché, Dr. Gillitt, touché. Now that this fruit knowledge has been dropped on us, we fully plan to push forward and embrace our bananas, phloem bundles and all. Because at the end of the day, we'd rather have an enriching 'nana then no 'nana at all.

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2016

3.0

ZURICH (Reuters) - ABB’s (ABBN.S) second-biggest shareholder, activist investor Cevian, has hired Boston Consulting Group to study a potential break-up of the Swiss engineering group, turning up the pressure for a revamp, Germany’s Manager Magazin reported. Sweden’s Cevian, ABB and Boston Consulting declined to comment. Talk of breaking up ABB has swirled for months as Chief Executive Ulrich Spiesshofer has come under pressure from Cevian, which has boosted its stake to above 5 percent and said the company must speed up efforts to simplify its structure. Sweden’s Investor AB is ABB’s largest shareholder, having increased its stake to more than 10 percent last year. ABB officials have opposed a major break-up of the group’s energy and automation businesses but have left open the door for some divestments, the magazine reported. ABB shares were up 1.9 percent in afternoon trade, boosting their gains this year to 2.7 percent. (This story has been corrected in paragraph 3 to say only Cevian not Investor AB has publicly demanded changes at ABB) Reporting by Oliver Hirt and Michael Shields; Editing by Susan Fenton

business

power grids

(abb , abbs , spiesshofer , power grids , grids , abb said , swiss engineering , spiesshofer said , reuters abb , grids business)

2017

6.0

The S&P 500 Information Technology Sector Stock Price Index has declined by almost 5 percent since its peak on June 8th. Many believe this represents an overdue valuation adjustment after the index soared by about 40 percent in the last year. Certainly, a refreshing pause after such an aggressive run makes sense. However, rather than necessarily signaling an overvalued sector, we believe the recent pullback in tech stocks may be a reaction to a forthcoming reacceleration in U.S. economic momentum.

tech

tech stocks

(stocks , fang , alphabet , sp , tech , tech stocks , sp 500 , nasdaq , faang , fang stocks)

2020

3.0

March 26 (Reuters) - * DEUTSCHE BANK PAUSES JOB CUTS TO AVOID DISTRESS DURING OUTBREAK - BLOOMBERG NEWS Source : bloom.bg/2JggEZh

banking

deutsche bank

(deutsche , deutsche bank , commerzbank , bank , deutsche banks , sewing , cryan , banks , deutsches , reuters deutsche)

2018

9.0

House Democrats are preparing to force a vote Thursday on a plan to protect special counsel Robert Mueller's probe from interference or unilateral removal by President Donald Trump. Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, with the backing of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, intend to introduce the proposal as an amendment ahead of expected consideration of three tax-related bills. The proposal would force Republicans to decide whether to consider the Mueller-protection proposal or sideline it. For Democrats, the effort is a chance to force Republicans on the record on an issue that has generated some bipartisan support in the House and Senate. It's a matter Democrats have described with increasing urgency as Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on Mueller and the investigation of his campaign's contacts with Russia. Republicans, though, have shown little urgency to support the measure, even as most have expressed support for Mueller being allowed to complete his work. They've argued that they don't believe Trump will try to remove Mueller, despite his rhetoric describing the investigation as illegitimate and a "witch hunt" The measure, which has the backing of six House Republicans in addition to more than 120 House Democrats, would prohibit a special counsel from being removed without "good cause," such as a violation of Justice Department policy. The proposal would also prohibit removal by anyone other than the attorney general or the most highly ranked Justice Department official who oversees the special counsel. In addition, the measure must provide written notice of any removal decision, including a detailed explanation, and provide the special counsel an opportunity to appeal to a three-judge panel. The court would also decide whether the special counsel would remain active while any appeal is pending -- and would guarantee that all documents, resources and materials are preserved. Two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, backed an identical measure in the Senate. McGovern intends to introduce an amendment to a House rule to govern debate on three tax bills. The amendment would require Republicans to add the special counsel legislation to the list of bills to be considered. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has long sought the committee's consideration of the legislation but has been stymied along partisan lines from a hearing or vote.

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2016

6.0

June 9 (Reuters) - Moody’s: * Indian public sector banks face high external capital needs * Weak earnings outlook for India’s public sector banks highlights their high level of external capital needs * Capitalisation profiles will further deteriorate unless the government provides additional capital support * Bank’s asset quality will remain under pressure over the next 12 months Source text - (bit.ly/1U4kZk6) (Bengaluru Newsroom: +1 646 223 8780)

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2019

8.0

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Nauru President Baron Waqa was voted out of office in the tiny South Pacific island nation after six years in power, media reports said on Sunday. Waqa was beaten in his seat of Boe in a national election on Saturday. He contested the seat against four other candidates, two of whom won seats in Nauru’s 19-member parliament, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. Sixty candidates contested the election, seeking the support of 7,400 registered voters. Final results were expected later on Sunday. Political instability has plagued Nauru in the past but the previous election in 2016 was deemed by Commonwealth observers to be transparent and fair. The Micronesian nation, with a population estimated at about 11,300 people, once made its money from phosphate mining. The island also hosts a controversial detention center housing asylum seekers on behalf of Australia, its biggest foreign aid donor. Under Australian law, would-be asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach its shores by boat are sent for processing to offshore camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Reporting by Alison Bevege; Editing by Paul Tait

asylum seekers

Manus Island

(nauru , manus , australia , asylum seekers , manus island , turnbull , seekers , papua new , papua , asylum)

2016

6.0

June 13 (Reuters) - Hengtong Optic-electric Co Ltd * Says it plans to boost Hong Kong-based unit’s registered capital by $50 million to $80 million * Says it plans to invest 500 million yuan ($75.93 million) to set up engineering service unit Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/1UpNxTs Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.5848 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)

finance

yuan

(text chinese , yuan , million yuan , reporting hong , kong newsroom , renminbi reporting , yuan renminbi , beijing headline , headline news , coverage beijing)

2017

10.0

Gwyneth Paltrow faced her demon head-on, and she's not hiding after publicly blasting Harvey Weinstein for sexually harassing her. Gwyneth was out Thursday in Santa Monica, heading to a meeting. It's the first time we've seen her since she accused Weinstein of getting sexually aggressive with her in the mid-'90s when she was 22. As you know, Weinstein's since been axed from the movie production company he founded after Gwyneth, Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan and many other women came forward with similar stories.

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2018

3.0

Four million people living in Cape Town face an uncertain future due to the city’s worst water crisis in history. Even with some extraordinary measures the city has already taken, steadily increasing demands for water and three years of drought mean that the city just can’t keep up. About four months from now, the city’s water supply is projected to drop so low that city officials will be forced to turn off municipal water supplies. Residents will need to line up at water distribution centers for a reduced allocation of only six gallons per day. In the United States, we typically take the availability of water for granted. If water comes from our taps or flows to farms and industry, we tend to assume our water supplies are assured. But water crises are becoming more common, and no nation is immune — so the smarter approach is to learn some important lessons now. Water crises have been identified among the top five global risks for seven years in a row, according to a World Economic Forum report. Atlanta, São Paulo, Melbourne, and London have faced serious droughts that threatened their drinking water supplies in the past few decades. Iran, Syria, Somalia, and South Sudan have experienced civil unrest due to poor water management decisions coupled with drought. Closer to home, the Colorado River Basin has limped through an 18-year drought. There have been some wet periods, but the trend is a declining water supply, and it may be the new normal. Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in America, is less than half full. And the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center predicts this year’s runoff to Lake Powell will be about 50 percent of normal. Of course, we could have a snowy spring to help — but we also know it could get even drier. While we can hope for the best, we must plan for the worst. We know that places like the Colorado River Basin, Texas, New Mexico and California will continue to experience drier and hotter conditions over time. Extreme dry periods are no less devastating than other natural disasters. In the Colorado River Basin alone, 40 million people, almost 5 million acres of agricultural lands, a vital recreational economy, energy production and wildlife throughout the region are depending on us to get it right. There is no silver bullet, but solutions exist that are feasible and necessary to ensure that communities in the U.S. do not find themselves in a water crisis like Cape Town’s. But it requires that stakeholders be proactive. Every level of government has a responsibility to act. Cities need to foster a water conservation ethic and develop plans for the droughts we know are coming. States, primarily responsible for managing water in the West, should develop policies that promote flexible water systems. And the federal government must demonstrate how innovative water management can reduce conflict, provide secure water supplies, and restore health to rivers that flow through arid lands. In the past few years, Congress has taken important steps to respond to the historic Western drought by funding programs at the Bureau of Reclamation that build more resilient water systems. The WaterSMART Program improves water infrastructure to sustain communities and irrigated agriculture while also supporting nature. Producers need reliable supplies of water. Once water is delivered to farms, which is where about 80 percent of water in the West is consumed, conservation programs in the farm bill help producers use water more efficiently and effectively. With a robust conservation title in the farm bill, they can contribute to a more resilient system, too. Congress should use the annual appropriations process as well as upcoming debates over infrastructure and reauthorization of the farm bill to tie together these on-farm and off-farm solutions. There’s a lot Congress can do, but it cannot wait. The farm bill expires in September and important infrastructure legislation is actively moving right now. Given the enormously high stakes, it is critical to ensure those pieces of legislation maximize multiple benefits. With federal support and action at the state and local levels, we can plan for and manage future droughts — and we can do it with an eye toward protecting our rivers and maintaining a healthy environment while also meeting the needs of our communities. Providing clean and adequate water supplies is one of the most critical functions a government can play. While the stakes are high, we are all in this together and we must recognize that water is too important to all of us to let politics overwhelm good solutions. The rivers and lakes we depend on depend on us. Taylor Hawes is the director of The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River Program. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

environment

drought

(maize , farmers , drought , water , reuters foundation , thomson reuters , thomson , crops , cape , cape town)

2018

1.0

* Shanghai stocks higher, blue-chip CSI300 index up * Gains in Shanghai stocks led by Henan Yuguang Gold & Lead Co Ltd and losses by Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co Ltd * China’s A-shares are at a 29.08 percent premium over H-shares SHANGHAI, Jan 23 (Reuters) - China stocks extended a rally on Tuesday to fresh two-year peaks, underpinned by continued gains in banking and real estate firms. ** At the close, the Shanghai Composite index was up 45.62 points or 1.3 percent at 3,546.98. ** The blue-chip CSI300 index was up 1.08 percent, with its financial sector sub-index higher by 2.01 percent, the consumer staples sector up 0.34 percent, the real estate index up 3.21 percent and healthcare sub-index up 0.04 percent. ** The smaller Shenzhen index ended up 0.36 percent and the start-up board ChiNext Composite index was unchanged. ** Around the region, MSCI’s Asia ex-Japan stock index was firmer by 0.88 percent while Japan’s Nikkei index closed up 1.29 percent. ** At 07:01 GMT, the yuan was quoted at 6.3997 per U.S. dollar, 0.08 percent firmer than the previous close of 6.405. ** The largest percentage gainers in the main Shanghai Composite index were Henan Yuguang Gold & Lead Co Ltd up 10.05 percent, followed by Sichuan Langsha Holding Ltd gaining 9.99 percent and China Construction Bank Corp up by 8.72 percent. ** The largest percentage losses in the Shanghai index were Zhejiang Hisun Pharmaceutical Co Ltd down 10 percent, followed by Shanghai Zhongyida Co Ltd losing 8.01 percent and Kama Co Ltd down by 7.72 percent. ** So far this year, the Shanghai stock index is up 5.87 percent, the CSI300 is up 8.8 percent this year, while China’s H-share index listed in Hong Kong is up 12.8 percent. Shanghai stocks have risen 5.87 percent this month. ** About 23.87 billion shares were traded on the Shanghai exchange, roughly 136.7 percent of the market’s 30-day moving average of 17.46 billion shares a day. The volume in the previous trading session was 21.75 billion. ** As of 07:02 GMT, China’s A-shares were trading at a premium of 29.10 percent over the Hong Kong-listed H-shares. ** The Shanghai stock index is above its 50-day moving average and above its 200-day moving average. ** The price-to-earnings ratio of the Shanghai index was 15.9 as of the last full trading day while the dividend yield was 1.8 percent. ** So far this week, the market capitalisation of the Shanghai stock index has risen by 0.50 percent to 30.79 trillion yuan. (Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

finance

stock market

(shanghai , index , hang seng , seng , csi300 , hshares , seng index , composite index , shanghai composite , hang)

2018

4.0

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, in a move that may undercut his party’s message about the recent tax overhaul ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, told the Economist magazine there is “no evidence whatsoever” the law significantly helped American workers. “There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” Rubio said in the interview published Thursday. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.” The tax overhaul, which sailed through the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress in December without Democratic support, permanently cut the top corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent. Tax cuts for individuals, however, are temporary and expire after 2025. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have said their tax overhaul will lead to more take-home pay for workers and have touted the bonuses some workers received from their employers as evidence the law is working. Rubio voted for the proposal even though he had lobbied party leaders for a larger child tax credit. Rubio’s staff did not deny he made the statement. “Senator Rubio pushed for a better balance in the tax law between tax cuts for big businesses and families, as he’s done for years. As he said when the tax law passed, cutting the corporate tax rate will make America a more competitive place to do business, but he tried to balance that with an even larger child tax credit for working Americans,” Rubio spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in an email. The tax law is Republicans’ only significant legislative achievement since Trump took office as they head into the midterms, when all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and about a third of the 100-member Senate’s seats are being contested. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said earlier this month that the tax bill, as written, is projected to add $1.9 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Reporting by Amanda Becker; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker

taxes

tax reform

(tax , tax reform , tax cuts , tax rate , taxes , corporate tax , reform , tax cut , deduction , tax code)

2017

6.0

(CNN)The House Russia investigation hearing Wednesday into Russia's efforts to hack state voting systems quickly turned into a grueling examination of the Democratic Party's extensive failings during the election, as Republicans and Democrats grilled former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, pressed Johnson on why the Democratic National Committee rejected the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to help after Russians hacked them. "It's not even like it was a Republican administration trying to hack in the DNC," King said. "I recall clearly that I was not pleased that we were not in there helping patch this vulnerability," Johnson said. But he added, "The Department of Homeland Security does not have the power to issue a search warrant to go in over their objections." The House intelligence committee hearing was slated to focus Russia's attempts to hack into state elections systems, happening simultaneously as a Senate intelligence panel of DHS and FBI officials were testifying on Russian cyberinterference with last year's elections. "In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of (Russian President) Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election -- plain and simple. Now, the key question for the president and Congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?" Johnson said in his opening remarks. The coordinated hacking effort from Russian-aligned hackers has received minimal attention in the congressional probes into Russia's interference in the election. President Donald Trump and his supporters have regularly noted that no votes were ever changed by Russian hackers -- something Obama and Trump administration intelligence officials have regularly stated in their testimony. Johnson took heat from Democrats, angry that former President Barack Obama did not more forcefully announce Russia's meddling in the election in the midst of the election itself. "Why wasn't that done? Was there thought given to that? Why was that course rejected?" asked Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Johnson said that Obama clearly wanted that message out there, but did not want to make it look like he was putting his thumb on the scale for (Democratic presidential nominee) Hillary Clinton. "We considered all those things and the decision was made that the Director of National Intelligence (James Clapper) and Department of Homeland Security together should make this statement," Johnson said. The DNC quickly blasted back at Johnson Wednesday, following his testimony. A DNC spokeswoman noted that DHS didn't reach out to DNC until August last year, after the hack was already public and after the DNC and FBI already fixed the security gap. "The DNC has and will continue to cooperate with law enforcement on Russia's interference in our election. The DNC has been in regular contact with the FBI for many months and the FBI confirmed the DNC has provided all the information it needed to make its assessment. The DNC was contacted by DHS months after the DNC worked closely with the FBI to remedy the intrusion. The DNC then provided DHS with detailed information about the intrusion," said DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson. Concerns about the security of voters' information were raised anew this week after a Republican voter data firm, Deep Root, accidentally left the data of 198 million voters exposed online earlier this month. And questions of what the Russian government was attempting resurfaced recently after a National Security Agency contractor allegedly leaked a report detailing those hacking attempts to a news outlet. The recent NSA report -- written May 5 -- detailed extensively a Russian intelligence-directed operation that targeted a company that provides voter registration software and, using information from that hack, later evolved into a "spearfishing" campaign against multiple state and local election officials. The Justice Department alleges a 25-year-old woman, Reality Winner, leaked the document to The Intercept and has charged her under the federal Espionage Act. Johnson, in his written testimony, details numerous public statements he made through last year's election after he learned of hacking attempts, as he tried to draw attention to the issue. He also details a largely failed effort to get elections system designated as critical government infrastructure -- which would have given greater priority to states seeking help in possible cyberattacks. But, as Johnson notes in his testimony, the proposal faced a severe backlash, with some state officials alleging that Johnson was attempting a federal takeover of state-based elections systems. Johnson eventually backed off the idea, he notes. The hearing itself marks another small victory for House Russia investigators, who have been attempting to right their investigation ever since House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes' clandestine trip to the White House in March almost derailed the House probe. But the separate Senate probe is still widely viewed as more likely to produce results and uncover major findings. Johnson met privately with the leaders of the Senate intelligence committee last week.

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2019

6.0

In the third episode of the second season of Big Little Lies, an eight-year-old girl named Amabella goes into a “coma” in her school classroom. It’s not really a coma—it’s more like a panic attack—but it is enough to send her mother, Renata Klein (Laura Dern) into a fit. Amabella was physically bullied throughout the first season, and Renata—the Sheryl Sandberg–esque CEO of a Silicon Valley company and the only mother among her cohort with a powerful day job—spent a lot of time screaming her head off at anyone she thought might be responsible. She fingered the wrong child as the bully, and proceeded to verbally torture that child’s mother (Jane, played by a soft-spoken Shailene Woodley) for months. When the true bully emerged—one of a pair of twins whose mother, Celeste (Nicole Kidman), received regular brutal beatings at home from her husband Perry and so began to mimic his father’s violent behaviors—Renata had to recant. But in Big Little Lies, no one ever stays calm for too long. When Amabella passes out, Renata has another excuse to go ballistic in public. A children’s therapist dressed as Little Bo Peep—likely the sort of thousand-dollar-an-hour specialists that roam the moneyed enclaves of the California coast—has a session with Amabella and determines that she is not being bullied again; she is simply overwhelmed by the concept of climate change. “She is worried about the end of the world,” the therapist tells Renata and her husband, Gordon, who are already enmeshed into their own serious crisis. In the pilot, Renata learns that Gordon made some bad (read: deeply illegal) investments, and now the FBI is seizing everything they own, much of which came from Renata’s corporate hustling. So it doesn’t take much to set Renata off. She stomps into Otter Bay Elementary school in a shiny snakeskin blazer with fury in her eyes and confronts her daughter’s teacher and the principal about teaching climate change in the classroom. “What possesses two idiots like yourselves to teach eight-year-olds that the planet is doomed?” she barks. She calls the principal “a smoker who hasn’t been laid in 15 fucking years.” She howls over their protestations. And then, in her final chilling blow as a human monsoon, she yells, “I will be rich again! I will rise up. I will buy a fucking polar bear for every kid in this school.” Later, in the same episode, Reese Witherspoon’s character, the pert perfectionist Madeline Martha Mackenzie, gives a mostly incoherent speech at a parent assembly, arguing against teaching young children about what may happen to the planet. “That the whole world might go kapooey?” she says into the microphone, on the verge of tears. “They need to know that? I think part of the problem is, we lie to our kids. We fill their head with Santa Claus and happy endings when most of us know most endings to most stories fucking suck. There aren’t a lot of happy endings for a lot of people, you know? Be it climate change, be it guns in schools.” When Big Little Lies finished its stunning first season, which ended with the murder of Perry at a school fundraiser, I wrote that it was the best show that we have about the blue ache at the edge of California, how it was really a western about loneliness and isolation disguised as soapy housewife noir. That BLL is about what happens when people push all the way to the foamy frontiers searching for fulfillment, and how when they still don’t find it there, they have to manufacture it elsewhere: in infidelity, in codependent, twisted, violent relationships, hubris, gossip, corruption, lies. The show was a perfect jewel box of wealth and secrets, gleaming with the lawlessness that comes with living in mansions up against big waves and thinking that consequences can’t apply to you. At the end of the first season, the women closed ranks, telling themselves a story about Perry’s death that enabled them to grasp order in their lives. Sure, there was a victim but the dead man was a bad man; he was the outlaw, the abuser. None of the women told the police the true story—that Perry had been kicking Celeste’s head in on the pavement while the women tried to wrestle him off of her, and Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz, the lone woman of color in the group) rushed ahead and shoved him from behind out of pure protective instinct. He cracked his head open on the pavement, but no one would have locked Bonnie up as a murderess, had the women come clean. But they chose instead to tell a truth that sounded smoother, that kept the gang together. You do these things out on the frontier. Now, having seen four episodes of the second season, I am starting to see Big Little Lies as a different show about California. This is no longer a show about the ocean as a body of water that can gobble up your secrets, but as a natural force that will inevitably spit them back up at you with a vengeance when the tide rises. Whereas season one’s director Jean-Marc Vallée shot the Pacific waves buffeting craggy rocks with epic grandeur, the director of season two, Andrea Arnold, is less infatuated with the scenery. Arnold’s films, particularly Fish Tank and American Honey, are primarily about teenagers living on the edges of poverty. She has an active distaste for opulence that comes through in her work; even her recent remake of Wuthering Heights was less about the romance of the English moors and more about the terror running underneath Bronte’s text. She was the ideal choice to helm a season that slowly dismantles everything the first season built. Season two is about California as a site of destruction, or at least as a place where future destruction is always looming. The climate change discussion that permeates the third episode is part of this running theme. If season one of Big Little Lies was a modern-day noir, then the second season is The Day After Tomorrow transposed onto the Pacific Coast Highway. What happens, out there on the San Andreas fault, after the world is blown apart? How do you reconstitute yourself when everything you believe to be solid starts to shatter and evaporate? The second season of BLL is a reckoning. It sets out to explore what happens when the lies we tell about happy endings start to curdle. As Madeline says at the assembly, most endings fucking suck. There was no way, if Big Little Lies kept going, that it could remain wrapped in a bow. There is a growing camp of television critics who believe that most prestige shows do not deserve a second season. They argue that most shows, especially those made in haste to feed the churning maw of streaming platforms, have just enough juice in them for one great run (if that). And yet, when a network has a bonafide hit, it doesn’t know when to press pause; it will keep milking a storyline until it becomes ridiculous if viewers continue to watch. I was nervous about the second season of Big Little Lies. It is HBO’s shiniest, starriest program after Game of Thrones, and I feared that the network would swerve into aggressive fan service rather than into nuanced, complex narrative terrain. And in certain ways, that has happened. Laura Dern’s character is more of a meme than a mom this season—the moment when she yells “I will not not be rich!” at her husband inside a jail has become an inescapable GIF on social media. Witherspoon’s character, also, has veered towards the parodic; her husband discovers she cheated on him and she melts into a campy, Valley of the Dolls–style puddle. But the producers also made two crucial hires that has saved it from the dreaded sophomore slump: Arnold, who has shifted the show into a darker, more believable gear, and Meryl Streep, who brings nuance to everything she does, be it a primal scream or a quick flash of her incisors. She plays Mary Louise, Perry’s mother and Celeste’s mother-in-law, who moves down to Monterey in the wake of her son’s death to help care for her grandsons and to try to discover what really happened that night on the school steps. She is suspicious of the women, namely Celeste (she does not believe that Perry was abusive) and Jane, who discovers moments before Perry’s death that he was the man who raped her several years before and fathered her child, Ziggy. Mary Louise demands a paternity test, and then, rebuffed by both Jane and Celeste, tries a different tactic, burrowing herself into both of their lives like a prairie dog. Mary Louise brings a lot of pain to the surface. Suddenly, the manicured appearance of all the women’s lives starts to break down: Renata loses her fortune, Bonnie goes nearly mute with guilt, Madeline sabotages her marriage, Celeste turns to Ambien and nearly dies in a car accident, and Jane finds that she cannot be intimate with a new love interest because she is still processing trauma from her rape eight years earlier. California can be a refuge, but it can also be a dead end. There’s nowhere further to go with your delusions; at some point they start to bubble up. What I appreciate about this season of Big Little Lies is its messiness; it feels undone somehow, and ragged. It’s harder on its characters; it doesn’t coddle them in cashmere but shoves them right into the deep end. Madeline might not reconcile with her husband. Renata may never be able to buy a polar bear for every child. Bonnie, who arguably is going through the worst time of all, stares longingly at the ocean like Edna Pontellier in The Awakening, as if she might walk in and never emerge because she cannot live with what she has done. It’s all mixed up and nothing makes sense. Tectonic plates have shifted. This may be too heavy for eight-year-olds to take in, but it feels right for us to have to watch it all burn. Rachel Syme is the television critic for The New Republic.

entertainment

celebrities

(big little , little lies , celeste , renata , lies , madeline , kidman , mary louise , monterey , witherspoon)

2018

2.0

MEXICO CITY — American officials have rebuffed repeated requests from Mexico to help investigate the use of government spying technology against innocent civilians, wary that Mexico wants to use the United States as cover in a sham inquiry, senior American officials say. The Mexican government has been on the defensive for months, battling revelations that surveillance technology it acquired has been used to spy on some of the nation’s most prominent human rights lawyers, academics and journalists. Days after The New York Times revealed the extensive spying campaign, Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, acknowledged that the government had purchased the spying technology. He quickly ordered a federal investigation into any misuse, and Mexican officials said they would ask the F.B.I. for help. But after reviewing the request, American officials decided not to get involved, leery that the Mexican government had little interest in actually solving the case because a serious investigation might implicate some of its most powerful figures, senior American officials said. In particular, American officials were worried that the Mexicans would try to trumpet the involvement of the United States to lend an appearance of credibility to a whitewash, the officials said. The spying technology, developed by an Israeli cyber-arms manufacturer, is sold only to governments, and under the explicit condition that it be used only to track terrorists and other criminals. After it became clear that the technology had been used much more broadly than that, the Mexicans sent a list of questions to American law enforcement officials to show their seriousness about investigating. But the questions required no more than a basic computer science degree to answer, one American official said. The Mexican government — which operated the surveillance technology itself — was more than capable of solving the case on its own if it wanted to, the official said. The F.B.I. declined to comment. There are many potential reasons Mexican officials, if they were serious about investigating, might want American help, even if they did not necessarily need it. The Mexican public is deeply suspicious of its government, so the participation of American law enforcement officials could help build trust in the findings. But more than six months after the investigation was announced, some of the American concerns appear to be bearing out, according to victims of the spying and their lawyers, who have had access to the case files. The government inquiry has failed to make headway in many basic areas, they contend. Prosecutors handling the case have yet to question any of the officials responsible for operating the surveillance technology, according to the victims’ lawyers and their review of the case file. The Mexican government declined to offer specific comments on the investigation but said it remains “in the phase of exhausting different lines of investigation.” It also said that it had been in constant contact with the group of forensic analysts that first discovered the existence of the spyware, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, and that it had sought counsel from other national and international experts. The Citizen Lab seemed taken aback by the assertion. “That’s a surprising statement, given that we have had exactly one meeting with them and have received no further follow-up,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher there. He said the Citizen Lab answered the government’s questions at that meeting, in October, and even suggested a list of evidence to preserve for the investigation. The spying software, known as Pegasus, infiltrates smartphones to monitor every detail of a person’s cellular life — calls, texts, email, contacts and calendars. It can even use the microphone and camera on phones for surveillance, turning a target’s smartphone into a personal bug. But investigators have not even identified the government employees who operate the technology, or visited the offices where the spying operation was conducted, according to interviews with the victims and their lawyers and the the case files. Prosecutors have for now also declined to examine the servers used by the officials who operated the spying technology, according to the case files and the lawyers. Those servers, according to cyber-forensic analysts and the Israeli manufacturers of the spyware, would contain a record of every attempted hack on every single target. “It is highly likely that the political actors who were using this software are now keeping this investigation from making any progress at all,” said Mario Ignacio Álvarez, a former deputy at the nation’s attorney general’s office. “This is still a country where it is better to pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe for justice than to the authorities.” That is not to say that the case file is empty. It already stands several feet tall, stacked with sheaths of documents. But they are often as pointless as they are copious, lawyers for the victims of the spying contend. Investigators have included printouts of basic Google searches related to the case, including some of the victims’ Facebook pages. And the bulk of the file is dedicated to the rolling responses from about 2,000 municipalities that were asked by prosecutors if they possessed the software. The requests include townships of fewer than 500 people with annual budgets that are a fraction of the roughly $80 million that the Mexican government spent to purchase the surveillance system. “Once more we have entered into a bureaucratic labyrinth that will take us nowhere,” said Leopoldo Maldonado, a lawyer for a journalist protection group, Article 19, which is representing several victims in the case. “This is not a serious investigation.” One of the documents contained in the case file, according to those who have reviewed it, is an admission by the nation’s attorney general’s office that it purchased the software. But the prosecutors assigned to solving the case are employed by the attorney general’s office — offering little hope to the spying victims that the agency will vigorously investigate itself. “We knew from the beginning that it would be very hard to have a real investigation, but this is a clear demonstration of the lack of an independent system in Mexico,” said Carmen Aristegui, one of Mexico’s most renowned journalists, who endured dozens of hacking attempts using the Pegasus spyware. “We are the political targets of a government that combats its critics with illegal tools.” Lawyers for the victims have taken the government to court, hoping to force a more thorough inquiry. In written responses to the suit, prosecutors say they are waiting for the opportune moment to review the servers and question participants in the hacking program, but have not refused outright to do so. They also claim that the cutting-edge malware does not allow them to track the targets, according to documents in the case file. “The software has no reporting function that offers a registry of numbers that might have been intercepted,” according to the file. But this is at odds with the description of the spyware given to The Times last year by its manufacturer, the NSO Group. Officials at the company said the contracts were based on a specific number of spying targets, and that the system installed on site at the government agency tracked every time it was used. Even critics accustomed to the Kabuki dance of independent investigations in Mexico, where officials publicly promise to root out corruption but do little to punish the culprits, have expressed surprise. To some, the lack of an investigation is almost as worrisome as the spying itself. “It translates into still feeling vulnerable,” said Luis Fernando García, the director of R3D, a digital rights group representing several victims. “When nothing happens, it emboldens those with this kind of technology to continue using it illegally.” Prosecutors insist they need the phones of the spying victims to proceed with their investigation. But forensic experts — as well as victims of the spyware in Panama, where the former president has been charged with illegal espionage — say the target’s phone is unnecessary to conduct an inquiry. The servers, they say, are all that is really required. “This is the height of cynicism, to transfer blame for the lack of investigation to the victims,” said Mario Patrón, a target of the hacking and the executive director of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, one of Mexico’s most respected human rights groups. One of the most glaring omissions in the file, the victims’ lawyers say, is the contract that the Attorney General’s office signed with the software manufacturer. While some of that and other material is secret for reasons of national security, the government says, there are other leads that prosecutors appear to have ignored. For instance, they have not questioned the individual in charge of the division that used the spyware, Tomás Zerón, a close ally of the president, according to the case files and the lawyers. The office, known as the Criminal Investigation Agency, was run by Mr. Zeron at the time of the hacking. Mr. Zerón’s name has surfaced in scandals before. He was the chief investigator into the mysterious disappearance of 43 teaching students who clashed with the police in 2014. The case remains unresolved. Mr. Zerón was removed from his post in 2016, after video obtained by international investigators looking into the disappearances showed him handling evidence related to the case that was never logged in any official files, they said. Mr. Zerón, through an aide, declined to comment. Independent groups, meanwhile, appear to be making some progress in unearthing details about the purchase of the software. This month, the group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity said it had discovered a link between an individual who was working for the Attorney General’s office and the company that sold the software to the law enforcement agency. Salvador Camarena, an investigative editor with Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, whose team has been looking into the companies associated with the sale, was himself a target of spying. But unlike other victims, he chose not to file a complaint with the government. “I saw it as a waste of time,” he said. “Why on earth would they want to investigate themselves?” But in recent weeks, Mr. Camarena decided to file a complaint to review what the government had done. “It was journalistic curiosity,” he said, “to see what I could find out about who targeted me.”

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2018

3.0

Wild how quickly you forget the speed of the news cycle's churn. At the start of this year, Lana Del Rey and Radiohead headlines were lurching between ‘yes, Radiohead are suing Lana for copyright infringement’ to ‘no, they just want a songwriting credit’ and ‘hang on, Lana said they wanted 100 percent of the credit for writing “Get Free,”' This all had the audacity to play out at that time of year when most well-adjusted people were barely coping with being back at work after a week or so away over the festive season. If you missed it, congrats. And yet, between January 7 and 10, Lana stans buckled up for the rollercoaster ride of defending their queen against accusations of lifting the chord progression and loose melody from Radiohead’s “Creep.” Keep in mind, this all started with a Sun entertainment story that we described at the time as “skimpy and anonymously sourced.” The story alleged that an unnamed source believed Radiohead were considering suing Lana, to get themselves a writing credit or compensation. On January 7, though, Lana tweeted: “It’s true about the lawsuit. Although I know my song wasn’t inspired by Creep, Radiohead feel it was and want 100 percent of the publishing—I offered up to 40 over the last few months but they will only accept 100. Their lawyers have been relentless, so we will deal with it in court.” Radiohead’s team denied filing a lawsuit, saying instead that they were looking to give the band a writing credit. We of course butted in by publishing a very scientific study of who’s better, between Lana and Radiohead. But because life is a gift that endlessly gives, this chapter has reopened. Over the weekend, while playing Lollapalooza in Brazil, Lana hinted that the whole situation has now been resolved. According to the BBC, while (of course) lighting a cigarette onstage during her set, she said, ”Now that my lawsuit's over, I guess I can sing that song any time I want, right?" after playing “Get Free” in her encore. She did not specify what "over" means but it sounds like the dispute is resolved. For now. We’re not ready for this back and forth to start up again, so have contacted Lana’s reps asking for a comment. We need answers. In the meantime, jam to Radiohead's well known 90s classic “Get Free” below. You can find Noisey on Twitter. This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

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2019

7.0

July 9 (Reuters) - Eddie Stobart Logistics said on Tuesday it expected first-half adjusted operating earnings to be at the lower end of its expectations due to a slowdown in some businesses and “a problematic contract”. The company, which provides transportation and warehousing facilities to construction companies, retailers and industrials, said the shortfall was partly due to slower-than-expected productivity in Contract Logistics and Warehousing units, and a short-term adverse effect from its exit of a contract. (Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong; editing by Gopakumar Warrier)

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(gvc , william hill , betting , gambling , ladbrokes , paddy power , pounds , paddy , betfair , power betfair)

2019

8.0

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSE.L) $27 billion purchase of financial-data business Refinitiv has its origins in May 2013, amid the crocuses, champagne and corporate hobnobbing of the British capital’s Chelsea Flower Show. Italian investment banker Matteo Canonaco brokered an introduction between David Craig, who at the time ran Thomson Reuters Corp’s (TRI.TO) Financial and Risk division, the company that became Refinitiv last year, and Joseph Baratta, head of private equity at Blackstone Group Inc (BX.N). The meeting would set in motion a sequence of events involving Blackstone, Refinitiv and LSE that led to a deal which was announced on Thursday. Craig and Canonaco, who now runs advisory firm Canson Capital Partners, pitched Baratta with an idea: The F&R unit would be better off split from Thomson Reuters, where the duo felt it was not getting enough investment, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. In order to do that they would have to overcome several hurdles, starting with the need to find an investor with deep pockets willing to back the idea, the sources said. As one of the top executives at the world’s largest private equity firm, Baratta could play that role, according to the sources. Baratta was intrigued and wanted to hear more, the sources said. Craig felt the division, which sells data and analytics to traders, investors and other financial customers, could be a good fit with an exchange operator, especially LSE, but he did not share that with Baratta at the flower show, one of the sources said. However, by the time Blackstone inked its deal with Thomson Reuters, some of Blackstone’s dealmakers had reached the same conclusion. Blackstone, LSE and Thomson Reuters declined to comment. Refinitiv and Craig did not respond to requests for comment.  Refinitiv’s merger with LSE will come just 10 months after Blackstone bought a majority stake in the unit from Thomson Reuters, in a deal that closed last October. LSE hopes Refinitiv will help it transform into a major global market data and infrastructure player. It is a quick sale for a private equity firm, which typically holds on to assets for three to five years. Blackstone and its co-investors will immediately double on paper their roughly $4 billion investment in Refinitiv, two sources close to Blackstone said. The private equity firm will be paid with LSE shares and will have to remain fully invested for at least the first two years as part of a lock-up arrangement which will come to an end on the fourth anniversary of completion. Blackstone and other minority investors, including Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Singapore state fund GIC, will control 22% of the combined firm and get two board seats, while Thomson Reuters will have a 15% stake and one board seat. Craig and Baratta followed up the meeting at the flower show with several others during 2013, and were joined by Thomson Reuters executives and bankers. Although Baratta had been intrigued, Blackstone initially thought a purchase of F&R would be too big of a bet for the firm at the time and the talks went quiet in 2014-2015, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Craig also separately spoke over the years with LSE, then led by Xavier Rolet, about the possibility of a deal for F&R, but the exchange executive was not confident that his board would back it, one source with knowledge of the matter said. Another source familiar with the situation said Rolet saw more value in deals that added to the exchange operator’s trading assets. Rolet declined to comment. A buyout of the F&R business had some unique challenges. At Thomson Reuters, an independent board of directors, called Founders Share Company trustees, had oversight over the Reuters news agency and could veto deals viewed as threatening its independence and freedom from bias. Reuters provides news on F&R products, including Eikon terminals, its largest customer. Further, some members of the Thomson Reuters board, including chairman David Thomson, did not initially want to sell the F&R division because they worried a deal could undervalue the business, according to two sources. A representative for Thomson declined to comment. By the summer of 2016, three sources close to Blackstone said the private equity firm had come up with a structure for a deal for F&R. Senior Managing Director Martin Brand reached out to Canonaco in May 2016 to resume the talks and took the lead on the deal, two sources said. Dubbed Project York by bankers, the deal envisioned Blackstone buying a 55% stake in the business, according to two sources close to Blackstone. Negotiations with Thomson Reuters started in earnest in the summer of 2017, with Blackstone’s Brand and Thomson Reuters CEO Jim Smith gathering at Blackstone’s New York offices in July. The talks culminated in a handshake deal at a dinner at Toronto’s Bymark restaurant on December 4, attended by Blackstone and Thomson Reuters executives and their advisors, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. Before signing the deal in early 2018, Blackstone dealmakers told their firm’s investment committee that a sale of the division to an exchange operator could be one possible exit strategy, two of the sources said. Reuters was left behind with Thomson Reuters. Under the deal inked with Blackstone, the news agency continued to operate independently under the Trust Principles and was guaranteed annual payments of $325 million for 30 years, plus an annual inflation increase. The LSE will inherit this arrangement. For more on the Trust Principles, click tmsnrt.rs/2rtSank When LSE said in April 2018 that David Schwimmer, a longtime Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) banker, would take over as CEO that August, the stars aligned for a deal between Refinitiv and the exchange operator. Blackstone’s Brand had grown close to Schwimmer, who had done deals for the private equity firm. Last year, he helped sell capital markets data provider Ipreo, owned by Blackstone and Goldman, to IHS Markit Ltd (INFO.N) for $1.9 billion, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Brand did not wait for the Refinitiv deal to close to plant the idea of a merger with LSE in Schwimmer’s mind last year. The future of the financial services industry, Brand’s pitch to Schwimmer went, was in marrying trading and data offerings. LSE should lead the way, he told Schwimmer, according to one of the sources close to Blackstone. Initially, Schwimmer was reluctant to do a big deal early in his tenure as CEO, three of the sources said. But in April of this year, Schwimmer learned that Blackstone was in advanced talks with Deutsche Boerse AG (DB1Gn.DE) to sell a foreign exchange trading business of Refinitiv for more than $3 billion, four sources said. Emboldened by an 18% run-up in LSE’s stock in the first quarter and having persuaded a new chairman at LSE to back a deal, Schwimmer felt he had to move before Deutsche Boerse bought the forex trading unit, one of the sources said. Representatives for LSE and Schwimmer declined to comment. Blackstone slowed down talks with Deutsche Boerse to give LSE time to put together an offer, according to two sources close to Blackstone. Bankers nicknamed the deal Project Africa, referring to Refinitiv as rhino, LSE as leopard and Thomson Reuters as tiger, they said. By May, they had a handshake agreement, according to four sources. Craig, who will remain at the helm of Refinitiv within LSE and sit on its executive committee, is expected to get some shares in the company, one of the sources said. Additional reporting by Michelle Price in Washington D.C. and Amran Abocar in Toronto; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Edward Tobin and Alexander Smith

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(lse , hkex , refinitiv , blackstone , lses , london stock , hkexs , schwimmer , lse said , stock exchange)

2019

6.0

Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said Tuesday that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) should participate in a climate-focused town hall next month, noting that the issue has become a key campaign issue in the Democratic presidential race. Former Obama-era counterintelligence official Nate Synder warned Tuesday that the Trump administration should not take any short-cuts on its approach to Huawei. Republican strategist Marissa Martinez predicted Monday that former Vice President Joe Biden will win the Democratic nomination, citing his fundraising prowess. A senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign said Monday that former Vice President Joe Biden’s greatest vulnerability is his “pro-corporate policies.” A senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign said Monday that the Vermont senator and progressive rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) aren’t necessarily competing for the same group of voters. Conservative commentator Patrice Onwuka ripped Ben Shapiro on Friday after the conservative commentator said that it is a “you problem” if someone has to work more than one job to support themselves. Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann criticized Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) after the lawmaker questioned whether there would be “any population of the world left” if not for rape and incest. Support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) among college students climbed to its highest mark since April, according to a new weekly Chegg-College Pulse poll. A former FBI intelligence officer said Thursday that combating right-wing extremism and white nationalism poses a serious challenge for security officials going into 2020. The head of a flight attendants union that represents nearly 50,000 members across the country said Thursday that there is “broad support” within the labor movement for “Medicare for All.” A former campaign staffer on President Obama's 2008 campaign is calling on John Hickenlooper to end his White House bid and instead launch a Senate run in Colorado. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told Hill.TV on Wednesday that the number of migrants coming to the U.S. southern border has dropped significantly since record-highs in May. Law professor Richard Hasen said Wednesday that expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court should be a “last resort” for lawmakers. Ken Cuccinelli, the acting head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,  defended his controversial remarks about the poem etched on the Statue of Liberty in an exclusive interview with Hill.TV Tuesday afternoon.  Republican strategist Holly Turner said Tuesday that former Vice President Joe Biden’s recent string of gaffes won’t necessarily hurt his chances to take on President Trump in the 2020 election. Foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang predicted on Tuesday that the United States and China won’t reach a comprehensive trade deal before the 2020 U.S. elections. Security analyst Gordon Chang on Tuesday criticized President Trump's language on ongoing protests in Hong Kong, saying the U.S. has a much more vested interest in the embattled city than what the president has indicated. Conservative commentator Dennis Prager said Monday that tech giants like Google and Facebook need to decide whether they are publishers or open forums. A top Iowa Democratic Party official said Monday that 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer has an advantage in the state thanks to his name recognition and ties to various grassroots organizations. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

politics

conservative commentator

(conservative commentator , commentator , 2020 presidential , adviser bernie , gordon chang , monday vice , sanderss 2020 , president joe , bernie sanderss , immigration services)

2017

2.0

For almost 85 years, Yale's Calhoun College honored alumnus John C. Calhoun. There's just one problem. Calhoun was an outspoken advocate for slavery and a noted white supremacist. Well, times are changing. After student and faculty protests, the Huffington Post reports that Yale is ready to rename it after a notable female alumna, Grace Murray Hopper."The decision to change a college’s name is not one we take lightly," Yale President Peter Salovey said in a press release. "But John C. Calhoun's legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately supported slavery as a 'positive good' fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values."Instead of extolling white supremacy, the new Hopper College will take its name from one of the very first women to earn a degree in mathematics at Yale — and in America. Hopper earned her masters at the university in 1930 and her doctorate in 1934. According to Yale's website, Hopper "was a remarkable woman who grandly rose to the challenges of programming the first computers." Have you ever filed a bug report? You have Hopper to thank for that. She actually coined the term "bug" in reference to a computer malfunction. Additionally, Hopper served in the Navy, reaching the rank of Rear Admiral. The name change won't be official until July, but students are already celebrating. Instead of waiting for brass plaques and new signage, some have taken it upon themselves to change the signage around the building.

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2016

2.0

This morning, the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) released frightening research for the one in ten adults who spend over an hour a day browsing online dating sites: Sexual assaults initiated by strangers met on dating sites and apps have increased dramatically over the last five years. According to the study, titled "Emerging new threat in online dating: Initial trends in internet dating-initiated serious sexual assaults," reports of "online dating initiated sexual offences" increased from 33 incidents in 2009 to 184 incidents in 2014—that's six-fold. Eighty-five percent of victims were women, and 42 percent of female victims were between the ages of 20 and 29. Although the report is quick to note that online dating platforms "offer relatively safe and positive opportunities for individuals to meet prospective partners," it nevertheless also highlights the difficulty of preventing sexual assaults that originate in the deceptive spaces of online dating platforms, where strangers are not framed as strangers who could easily be lying to you but as potential soul mates. Websites like MyMatchChecker already aim to protect online daters by offering background checks specifically targeted towards people using sites like OkCupid and Tinder—but these cost money, and they require knowing your potential suitor's real name. "It's a tricky situation," says Scott Berkowitz, the president and founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), echoing the NCA study's wariness about the potential danger in the "increased trust and intimacy" that can develop in online relationships—a little more than half the reported incidents began with communication that included "sexual content" before a face-to-face meeting. "I think that it's fairly easy to tell the creeps and to stay away from them, but that's not where the biggest worry is," Berkowitz says. Offenders have adapted to the parameters and conventions of online dating: The NCA report notes that online dating has "produced a new type of sexual offender" who is less likely to have prior criminal convictions. Instead, these offenders "exploit the ease of access and arm-chair approach to dating websites." "The thing about most rapists is they give a lot of thought to what they're doing," Berkowitz says. "They plan it out in advance, they think about when and where and how, and they think about how they're going to get away with it." The dramatic statistical increase in sexual assaults resulting from online dating encounters is likely bolstered by a couple of situational factors: 1) the increase in popularity of online dating over the survey period and 2) an increase in reporting sexual assault, though the NCA is careful to point out that the levels of underreporting are still significant enough that the true number of sexual offenses that arise from online dating is unknown. Nevertheless, according to the report, there were twice as many Internet dating sexual offenses as "bogus taxi driver" sexual offenses in the 2014/2015 fiscal year. Complicating matters is dating sites' limited ability to effectively target potential offenders; as Berkowitz says, the obvious creeps are very different from the calculated predators. "[Dating sites] are in a tough position because they have no way to tell who's likely to commit assault—no better than the rest of us do," says Berkowitz. "I think that one thing they can be doing is running members through a sex offender registry—which only has a very small portion of all sex offenders, but at least it's something. The vast majority of sex offenders are never caught or convicted, so they never show up on registries." Although "there's no easy way to identify someone who's capable of doing this," Berkowitz says, there are ways you can stay safer. "The general rules about meeting strangers are sort of the best you can do—meet in public, get to know them as much as possible in a public setting before you're alone with them." The NCA report supports this advice: Forty-one percent of incidents studied in the NCA report began as dates at a residence, and 72 percent of assaults ultimately occurred at either the victim or the offender's residence. Users can also try to do their own background checks using low-grade Internet stalking skills—see if you can find your love interests' other social media profiles or identify any mutual friends or acquaintances. It's also important to always let someone else know you're going on a Tinder date in case something goes bad. Despite the difficulty of avoiding potential predators on online dating platforms, the Online Dating Association, a regulatory organization based in the UK, has committed to helping the NCA limit dating site sexual assaults. "We want dating to be a safe as well as great experience and take our responsibilities seriously," the ODA said in a statement published on its website today. "We are always looking at how we can do more."

online dating

tinder

(tinder , dating , bumble , dating apps , dating app , match , online dating , match group , app , tinders)

2017

10.0

I don’t know about you, but ever since I started watching Riverdale, I’ve probably logged what would add up to be over a dozen hours daydreaming about how it might feel to make-out with Cole Sprouse or even more intriguing, the fictional Jughead Jones. Finally after months of wondering, Lili Reinhart, the actress who plays Betty Cooper, Juggie’s gf, dished on what it's like to kiss the actor, and it seems like she has nothing but compliments. In a recently interview with Entertainment Tonight, Riehnhart was asked, "When you have to film those more intimate scenes, what is it like for you as an actor?" Apparently, it’s really not that bad. The actress explained, "I feel like it's very comfortable, at this point." She continued, "I mean it’s The CW, you’re not getting too crazy. It’s just like, kissing and hugging." Sure, we have yet to see Bughead actually do the deed, but I can’t help but think about that particularly sexy scene in last season’s finale when the couple found themselves alone in F.P.’s trailer — a screenshot of which may or may not be saved to my iPhone. Because the cast is so close, however, Reinhart says having to act out scenes like that isn't awkward. She told ET, "I mean, I think we’re all so comfortable with one another that it's not even really a thing. We have a kissing scene, it’s fine. We don’t even really think twice about it." The ET interviewer went on to suggest that it probably helps that Reinhart and Sprouse are so close IRL, and Reinharts responded, smiling, "We get along. We’re doing good." God, please let that be another hint that the two are actually dating. While Reinharts' scoop might not be the steamiest, the actress does confirm all my suspicions that kissing Cole Sprouse ain’t too shabby. Read these stories next:Grown-Up Hanson Drops Amazing Acoustic "MMMBop" Cover Exactly How Contestants Pack For The Bachelor The True Story Behind This Scary Meme

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2017

9.0

Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are now working together to develop a more secure solution for two-factor authentication. The companies seem to be looking for a way to replace traditional text messages as the method for verifying whether someone is trying to log in to an online account. What they’ll replace it with is unclear, but the companies’ announcement seems to say they’ll have a solution ready sometime next year. Two-factor authentication (sometimes called two-step verification, or something similar) is a security option that’s been offered by more and more websites over the past few years. It usually involves a website texting users a unique code every time they want to log in, requiring that person to have both their regular account password and access to their physical phone in order to get into their account. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work in theory. The trouble is, hackers are increasingly figuring out ways to intercept those codes, because SMS isn’t all that secure. That’s been known for a while, and today’s announcement suggests the big carriers are finally prepared to do something about it. The companies say they’ll develop an “advanced mobile authentication solution” that will be able to analyze network activity patterns to tell “with a high degree of certainty” whether or not an account’s owner is really behind an action being taken. The group says they’ll take an “open approach” to developing their solution, working with app developers and other third parties for input. There’s no guarantee that this will all work out as cleanly as the announcement seems to imply, with all the major carriers rolling out some easy, effective solution that becomes widely adopted next year. It’s rarely the case that the tech industry will widely get on board with one decision. Still, it’s a step toward addressing a security issue that’s flaws are increasingly evident.

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2016

9.0

RF Yasmany Tomas had two doubles in four at-bats Tuesday night. He has hits in 11 of his last 13 games, going 20-for-54 (.370). RHP Archie Bradley allowed two runs on two hits, three walks and a hit batter with seven strikeouts Tuesday. He didn’t figure in the decision. Bradley is 3-1 with a 4.94 ERA over his last six starts. His 121 strikeouts are the second-most among all rookies since he was promoted to the majors on May 29. 1B Paul Goldschmidt’s two-run homer in the sixth tied the score. His 21st homer of the season left him one RBI short of 500. The only other Diamondback to have 500 RBI for Arizona in a career was OF Luis Gonzalez, who finished with 774. Goldschmidt’s 499 RBI are the eighth-most in the major leagues since his debut on Aug. 1, 2011. 2B Jean Segura was 0-for-2 with two walks Tuesday. He remains 10 hits shy of joining Luis Gonzalez as only the second Diamondback to have 200 hits in a season.

baseball

yankees

(innings , inning , yankees , runs , hits , mets , homer , sox , home run , baseball)

2018

3.0

Department of Veterans Affairs officials at nearly every level knew for years about sterilization lapses and equipment shortfalls at the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center, but they were either unwilling or unable to fix the problems, an inspector general investigation found. The failures put patients at risk and squandered taxpayer dollars. Clinicians put patients under anesthesia before realizing they didn't have equipment to perform scheduled procedures. In some cases, they canceled and redid surgeries later. In others, they ran across the street to a private-sector hospital to borrow supplies midprocedure. Investigators found more than 1,000 boxes of unsecured documents that contained veterans' personal information — including medical records — in storage facilities, the basement and a dumpster. The hospital paid exorbitant amounts for supplies and equipment, including $300 per speculum it could have bought for $122 each, and $900 each for a special needle that was available for $250. In one case, the hospital rented in-home hospital beds for three patients for three years — at a total cost of $877,000. The medical center could have bought the three beds for $21,000. The inspector general's findings go beyond the Washington, D.C., VA medical center and could help explain repeated crises in recent years at VA medical centers across the country, where problems have continued despite repeated warnings. Local, regional and national VA officials knew for years about widespread falsification of patient wait times before revelations that dozens of veterans died waiting for appointments at the Phoenix VA in 2014 led to a national audit and comprehensive effort to stop the practice nationwide. The same with massive rates of opiate prescriptions doled out at the VA medical center in Tomah, Wis., until news reports that a veteran died from mixed drug toxicity at the hospital in 2015 forced VA officials to reel in opiate prescription rates at the Wisconsin facility and across the nation. In the Washington D.C., probe, the inspector general found once again that multiple local, regional and national officials had been informed of the problems but did not fix them. Investigators concluded "a culture of complacency and a sense of futility pervaded offices at multiple levels." "In interviews, leaders frequently abrogated individual responsibility and deflected blame to others," the investigation report says. "Despite the many warnings and ongoing indicators of serious problems, leaders failed to engage in meaningful interventions of effective remediation." They recommended establishing clearer lines of accountability at all levels of the agency. Investigators did not find evidence that VA Secretary David Shulkin or his top deputies had been informed of the problems. Shulkin fired the Washington medical center director last year after the inspector general issued an emergency preliminary report concluding patients were in imminent danger at the facility. He also dispatched teams of specialists from headquarters to inventory and ensure adequate supplies were available to treat patients. In their response to this week's inspector general report, VA officials said the agency has purchased more than $3 million worth of surgical instruments, instituted a reliable inventory system, and is seeking to clarify lines of authority and accountability "As we move forward, we are putting in place a reliable pathway" for staffers at all levels to "escalate high-priority concerns to senior leadership for prompt action and follow up," wrote Carolyn Clancy, executive in charge of the Veterans Health Administration. "This is woven into our on-going modernization efforts. I am dedicated to continued and sustained improvement and incorporating lessons learned across our network." The inspector general began investigating the D.C. hospital after receiving an anonymous tip in March 2017 about supply and financial mismanagement. After the preliminary emergency report, the probe expanded to include more than 40 investigators, including auditors, health care specialists and law enforcement agents. Among the key findings: • A review of 124 veteran patient records found problems with supplies or instruments in 74 of the cases between 2014 and 2017. One surgery was canceled after the patient was already under anesthesia because a retractor was unavailable — it had not been sterilized since its last use a week earlier. A surgeon had to improvise when a tool used to prepare a skin graft was broken and the graft failed. A surgical staff member had to run to a private-sector hospital to borrow mesh to repair a hernia midprocedure. • The hospital had more than 375 patient safety incidents because of supply problems between 2014 and 2016 but nearly half of them weren't entered into a national VA database that tracks such incidents. In the local system where staff did track them, they failed to record how severe they were. • Investigators seized more than 1,300 boxes of unsecured records from two warehouses, the hospital basement and a large trash dumpster in April 2017. Of those, 81% contained confidential patient information, including medical scans and records dating to the 1970s. • They found more than 500,000 items which had been sitting for years in an off-site warehouse, including $80,000 worth of refrigerators, $25,000 worth of blood pressure cuffs, and 185 beds the hospital had acquired but found unusable. Two forklifts purchased for $44,000 in 2013 for use in the warehouse were too big to actually operate there. So hospital staff just parked them. • Between 2013 and 2017, local, regional and national VA officials received at least 10 formal reports identifying issues with supplies and equipment, including medical instruments, that remained unaddressed last year. The VA says it has secured the warehouse and disposed of excessive equipment, directed better tracking of patient safety reports, and instituted stricter purchasing controls. The acting medical center director, Lawrence Connell, said he has designated a records manager and a privacy specialist at the hospital to make determinations about the unsecured patient records. "The Privacy Officer determined that there was not a need to notify Veterans because there was no evidence of improper access to their patient information," he wrote. "In the future, if the Privacy Officer discovers any evidence of improperly accessed patient information, the Privacy Officer will make the necessary notifications to veterans."

veterans

veterans affairs

(va , veterans , shulkin , veterans affairs , shulkins , vas , wilkie , va secretary , affairs , department veterans)

2017

10.0

Tech giant Amazon is expanding into the pharmacy business, according to a Thursday report from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The popular shopping website has allegedly received approval for wholesale pharmacy licenses in at least 12 states: Nevada, Arizona, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alabama, New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut, Idaho, New Hampshire, Oregon and Tennessee.The news comes months after a CNBC report that Amazon was beginning to hire personnel in preparation for breaking in to the industry, which is currently dominated by three major companies. The report in May of this year indicated that the pharmaceutical industry represents a $25-$50 billion opportunity for Amazon. Inc, which reportedly holds a meeting each year to discuss the possibility. Amazon recently began selling medical devices and equipment online, and in Japan the company began selling pharmaceuticals and cosmetics through its Prime Now delivery service in April. The online retail giant is also in the middle of a continent-wide search for a city to host a new, second headquarters. Localities have been tripping over each other to win the $5 billion in construction and 50,000 high-skilled jobs that would come with such a venture. News of Amazon's acquiring of the licenses had immediate ripple effects across the stock market. Stock prices for CVS, Rite Aid and other major players in the industry all dropped upon the news report's release. In an emailed statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a spokesperson for Amazon, Inc. refused to comment on "rumors and speculation." The news comes the same day The Wall Street Journal reported that CVS is in talks to buy health insurer Aetna for $66 billion. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

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2018

2.0

The attorney for Real Housewives of New York star Luann de Lesseps rejected a plea deal Wednesday morning during a hearing at the Palm Beach County Court House in West Palm Beach, Florida, PEOPLE confirms. “They said no when the the state attorney offered a settlement in her case,” Mike Edmondson, executive assistant to Dave Aronberg, state attorney for the Fifteen Judicial Circuit of Palm Beach County, tells PEOPLE. A new hearing is set for April 13. Prosecutors gave no details of their settlement offer. “The case is still ongoing, it’s been rescheduled for 60 days, and everyone is still in discussion,” her rep tells PEOPLE. The reality star faces a third degree felony charge of resisting arrest by Palm Beach police officer Steven O’Leary with violence, the first degree misdemeanor charge of trespassing in an occupied room of the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, and the second degree misdemeanor charge of disorderly intoxication. The felony charge could land her five years in prison. De Lesseps, 52, was arrested in the early hours of Dec. 24, 2017, and released on her own recognizance the same day after allegedly attacking a police officer in Palm Beach. She was charged with disorderly intoxication, battery on an officer/firefighter/EMT, resisting arrest with violence and threatening a public servant, according to the report filed by the Palm Beach County sheriff’s Office. She pleaded not guilty to all counts. She was found trespassing in guest room of the Colony Hotel with an unidentified man, according to the police report. They had allegedly entered the wrong room and refused to leave. Police stated that de Lesseps slammed a door and kicked a police officer. She also allegedly told the police: “I am going to kill you all.” DeLesseps, who married wealthy entrepreneur Tom D’Agostino on New Year’s Eve 2017 in Palm Beach before divorcing him seven months later, released a statement explaining her behavior: “This was my first time in Palm Beach since my wedding, and being here brought up long-buried emotions. I want to offer my sincere apologies to anyone I might have offended with my behavior. I am committed to a transformative and hopeful 2018.” She kept her promise and quickly entered a rehab facility, issuing a statement to PEOPLE as she checked herself into a treatment program. “I have decided to seek professional guidance and will be voluntarily checking into an alcohol treatment center. I intend to turn this unfortunate incident into a positive life changing event,” she said. “Once again, I sincerely apologize for my actions. I have the greatest respect for police officers and the job that they do. My actions alleged in the police report do not reflect my core values and my law abiding character.” She finished by stating: “I am so grateful for the love and support that I am receiving from my family, friends and loyal supporters.”

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2017

9.0

Sept 1 (Reuters) - Nordic American Offshore Ltd * Nordic American Offshore Ltd. (NYSE: NAO) - new CFO appointed for NAT and NAO. * Nordic American Offshore Ltd - appointment of Mr. Bjørn Giaever as chief financial officer​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

business

eikon

(text eikon , eikon company , eikon , company coverage , source text , cfo , text , financial officer , chief financial , coverage)

2017

9.0

More than 20 years after being gunned down on the streets of Las Vegas, the murder of Tupac Shakur remains unsolved, denying his loved ones a sense of justice. His mother, Afeni Shakur Davis, who died in May 2016 at age 69, spent her last years living with the horrific knowledge that her son’s death went unpunished. “She was, as you might expect of a mother whose child has been killed, very, very angry,” Donald David, who worked with Afeni to manage her son’s estate, tells PEOPLE. “She was angry because she felt that nobody was trying to find out what had really happened. She was angry that it happened, but she was more angry, I think, that it was trivialized.” But according to an LAPD source familiar with the investigation, finding someone culpable in a murder is more difficult than grieving families believe. “They don’t understand the laws and how things work. It is not what you know, it is what you can prove.” Las Vegas Police Department detective Dan Long, who is also involved with the case, agrees. “If you let everybody out there know what your investigation is and where you are going, it’s a problem,” he tells PEOPLE. “There are times when you hold things back. I know it sounds awful, but you have to.” The mystery surrounding Shakur’s death has spawned a complex tangle of conspiracy theories, compounded by an influx of false information. “Everybody wants notoriety. Everybody wants to be heard. Everybody wants to put their spin on it and make themselves look important,” says the LAPD source. “They will say whatever to make money. You have so many jailhouse informants trying to get favors and get out of jail. They’ve muddied the waters.” For Detective Long, taking tip calls, many of dubious veracity, is a regular part of his job. “I get them weekly, daily it depends on the time of year. Obviously in September I get hundreds.” In the immediate aftermath of the murder, many in the media speculated that the crime was the result of the raging East Coast/West Coast hip hop feud, which pitted Shakur against his rap rival, and former friend, Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace (a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G.). But police soon established a theory that Shakur’s death was the result of an altercation with a member of the Compton Crips street gang, in opposition with Shakur’s alliance with the conflicting Mob Piru (which evolved out of the Blood gang). According to David, Afeni never subscribed to the theory that Smalls had ordered her son’s death. “What we came to believe was that it was not a West Coast/East Coast issue, but we came to believe that it was more a question of the Crips versus the Bloods.” The Crip who sparred with Shakur, Orlando Anderson, became a major person of interest in the case, but an investigation of his home turned up nothing. He was killed a year after Shakur’s murder in an unrelated shootout. Anderson’s death put an end to a promising lead, leaving his mother—and millions of fans—to spend years wondering who did it.  “She never felt a sense of closure,” says David. “There’s still no official determination as to who killed Tupac or even an effort on anybody’s part to find out.” Barring the revelation of important new evidence, the LAPD source is doubtful the case will ever be formally solved. “[Anderson] was a suspect, but it doesn’t mean you can prove it. The case could only be solved in a court of public opinion.”

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2020

2.0

yields sink@ (Corrects name to SCHLEIF not SCHLEP in third set of comments) NEW YORK, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main stock indexes fell almost 2% on Tuesday as the coronavirus spread further and officials described it as "a rapidly escalating epidemic," a day after the S&P 500 and the Dow Industrials' biggest daily decline in two years. Investors moved into safer-seeming assets like government bonds, pushing the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note to its lowest ever, amid concerns the spreading epidemic would have a significant impact on global growth. U.S. Health and Human Services (HAS) Secretary Alex Afar said on Tuesday there will likely be more cases of coronavirus in the United States, and he asked a Senate subcommittee to approve $2.5 billion in funding to fight the outbreak after proposing cuts to the department's budget. COMMENTS: DAVID CARTER, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, LENOX WEALTH ADVISORS, NEW YORK (The selloff is) clearly coronavirus driven, and we dont expect a rebound until the spread of the virus peaks. Historically, markets always recover from these health scares (SARIS, Enola) but only after the crisis peaks. We are watching closely for signs of a peak. However, the spread to Italy suggests a peak is not near. The equity market was priced for perfection but the coronavirus scare is clearly a real problem, and a big blemish on perfection. The equity market is off year-to-date, and its not about the Fed, its not about profits, its not about equity valuation multiples. Its about the fact that if countries close their borders global trade doesnt really work and the global economy and profit growth will suffer. The Dramatic drop in bond yields suggests lots of fear. The drop in bond yields and the inversion is adding to the angst in the equity market. The Fed cannot ride to the rescue in this situation. DAVID KATZ, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, MATRIX ASSET ADVISORS, NEW YORK You sort of just have a mini panic. The CDC putting out new information, which is reasonable information, but you have people looking at yesterday where coronavirus cases started to go up in Europe and other parts of Asia and the market went down a lot and the natural assumption is, my goodness, if it comes here then its going to go down more. You sort of have the coronavirus selloff taking on a life of its own. Generally, when you have a selloff like this, once there is a light at the end of the tunnel, the markets recover as quickly as they sell off, and we believe that thats going to be the case this time. Our expectation is there will be more bad news along with some better developments and the time to be buying stocks is in days like yesterday, days like today... We think that if you are waiting for better news, you are going to ultimately end up paying a batch more. As quickly as stocks come down, they recover. We think that there definitely is going to be a slowdown in the global economy in the first quarter and in the U.S. economy and we think that companies will miss expectations. However, if and when there is any sort of clarity or light at the end of the tunnel, we think the market will look beyond the quarterly disappointments and look at the recovery portion. The best course of action for investors is if youre in stocks and you have a reasonable allocation, stay with that; we would not be selling into this weakness. By the same token, if you have had cash on the sidelines you are hopeful to put to work, we think this is a good opportunity to be adding into stocks here. CAROL SCHLEIF, DEPUTY CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, ABBOT DOWNING, MINNEAPOLIS "People are pulled to the sidelines and there's a re-evaluation of risks. They're taking a wait and see because nobody how to accurately estimate the potential near term economic impact of coronavirus." "People who want to sell today don't have anybody on the other side of the trade. We haven't had a big pull back in the market for a very long time. "Markets abhor a vacuum. They hate not knowing so people are waiting to see, to give it a few days to settle." "When the mood is fearful and people are reticent to buy having offhand comments circulate is going to add to the aura of concern and make people step back and wait." (Compiled by Alden Bentley)

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2016

3.0

(Repeats story published late Tuesday; no changes to text) TOKYO, March 22 (Reuters) - The development of a large nickel deposit in the Solomon Islands is back to square one this week, as the nation’s highest court ruled that neither of the two miners in Japan and Australia fighting over the discovery were entitled to the license. The Solomon Islands Court of Appeal on Monday rejected a portion of Sumitomo Metal Mining’s appeal that the country’s government should not have cancelled its license to develop the Isabel nickel laterite discovery in 2011. In the same ruling, the Court of Appeal accepted another portion of Sumitomo’s suit by revoking Axiom Mining’s current license for the Isabel site, returning the Isabel discovery to government ownership without restoring the Japanese company’s earlier license. Japanese miner Sumitomo and tiny Australian explorer Axiom Mining have been fighting over the Isabel discovery since 2011. Sumitomo won an international tender for prospecting licences in 2010. The licences were cancelled in 2011 and similar rights were later that year awarded to Axiom. Sumitomo in 2013 sued the Solomon Islands Government and Axiom, claiming that the government wrongly cancelled Sumitomo’s rights to grant the rights to Axiom, even though Axiom did not take part in the 2010 international tender. The High Court of the Solomon Islands in 2014 rejected all of Sumitomo’s claims, and Sumitomo filed an appeal to the Court of Appeals, the nation’s court of final appeal. Analysts estimate the Isabel discovery compares in size or grade to other large South Pacific nickel mines, such as Vale SA’s Goro mine in New Caledonia and the China-owned Ramu mine in Papua New Guinea. “We will look closely into the court’s decisions and think about what steps we would take next,” a spokesman for Sumitomo Metal Mining said. The company had no information on whether the Solomon Islands’ government will conduct a new tender, he said. Sumitomo Metal’s shares were up 1.4 percent against a 1.9 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average. Axiom halted trading in their shares on Monday, according to a release to the Australia Stock Exchange, without giving a reason for the halt. “We are still in the game and appealing,” Axiom Managing Director Ryan Mount told Reuters. “This is a project that makes a lot of sense.” Axiom’s business model is to directly ship unprocessed nickel ore to Asian markets at costs that fall below other South Pacific suppliers in places such as New Caledonia, he said. (Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori and Yuka Obayashi in TOKYO and James Regan in SYDNEY; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Tom Hogue)

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2018

9.0

(This Sept. 26 story was corrected to change number of registered voters in paragraph 16 to 3.085 million from 3.85 million) By Raya Jalabi and Ahmed Aboulenein ERBIL/SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - A year after a failed bid for independence, Iraq’s Kurds will be voting again on Sunday, this time in a parliamentary election that could disrupt the delicate balance of power in their semi-autonomous region. With opposition parties weak, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are likely to extend their almost three decades of sharing power. But splits within the PUK present the possibility that Masoud Barzani’s KDP will take a dominant position in Kurdish politics, both in the regional capital Erbil and in the difficult formation of a federal government in Baghdad. The contentious referendum on independence in 2017, led by Barzani, promised to set Iraq’s Kurds on a path to a homeland. Instead, a swift backlash from Baghdad dashed those prospects and diminished the region’s autonomy. Speaking on the vote’s first anniversary, Barzani, who stepped down as Kurdish president in the aftermath, told thousands of flag-waving men in Erbil: “We will never give up our dignity or honor.” But Barzani - still the KDP’s leader and main vote-getter - also added that “even 1,000 years of war won’t solve the problem”. Even though relations with Baghdad have improved, the Kurdish region has lost territory and economic autonomy, and voter frustration is rising. “This is the first time that I’m not voting,” said Ahmed Abdullah, a 68-year-old retiree. “The two parties in power steal and lie, and that’s how they stay in power. I’ve stopped believing anything will change.” Abdullah had been a supporter of the PUK, the second largest party, led by the Talabani family and based around Sulaimaniya. The PUK and the Erbil-based Barzani clan’s KDP together form a dynastic duopoly predicated on patronage in the regions they respectively control. But years of stagnant politics, unpaid salaries and corruption have undermined faith in politics and shrunk the turnout in recent elections. The situation was not helped by the suspension of parliament between 2015 and 2017 due to in-fighting. “What’s the point of voting? Nothing ever changes, whether we vote or not. Things just get worse,” said 38-year-old teacher Alan Baram. Senior KDP leader Hoshyar Zebari acknowledged that allegations of Kurdish fraud in May’s federal election had undermined public confidence, and said Sunday’s vote was “critical to restoring the legitimacy of our institutions”. But most major parties say they do not expect more than about 40 percent of the 3.085 million registered voters to go to the polls - below even the record low of 44.5 percent who voted in the federal election. A low turnout could benefit the KDP and PUK, whose voters tend to be more committed, respecting their role in establishing autonomy after the Gulf War of 1991. The KDP also commands some respect for ushering in the referendum, despite the negative consequences for the region, while the PUK has yet to heal the internal rifts that opened when its founder Jalal Talabani died in 2017. Those PUK divisions have not been helped by the decision of Barham Salih to quit the opposition Coalition for Democracy and Justice, which he founded, in order to rejoin the PUK and seek the Iraqi presidency. Salih’s former party has all but collapsed and, further clearing the field for the KDP, the main opposition party, Gorran, is still rebuilding after the death of its charismatic leader in 2017. All opposition parties were further weakened by dismal showings in May’s federal election, amid multiple allegations - not confirmed in the subsequent recount - of fraud by the two main parties.  “If there’s widespread fraud again, all opposition parties will be diminished,” said Attah Mohammed of the Kurdistan Islamic Group, a sentiment echoed by other opposition leaders. The election will cast a shadow in Baghdad, where the KDP and PUK are competing for the post of federal president, reserved for Kurds ever since a U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Though historically the position has been filled by the PUK, the KDP have fielded their own candidate. Kamal Chomani, non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said that, despite no longer being president of Kurdistan, Barzani hoped to be seen as the pre-eminent Kurdish leader: “He wants all the players to come and see him in Erbil any time they need to deal with the Kurds.” Whether that kind of power politics will inspire many to vote appears doubtful. “I only ever voted in the referendum because that was for Kurdistan,” said 20-year-old fruit-seller Mostafa Ali in Erbil. “These elections are for the parties, not for Kurdistan.” Reporting by Raya Jalabi in Erbil and Sulaimaniya, and Ahmed Aboulenein in Erbil; Editing by Michael Georgy, Kevin Liffey and Raissa Kasolowsky

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(kurdish , kurds , kurdistan , kirkuk , iraqi , baghdad , barzani , iraq , krg , referendum)

2018

4.0

April 11 (Reuters) - Goke Microelectronics Co Ltd * Says it expected FY 2018 Q1 net loss to be 33 million yuan to 38 million yuan versus net loss of 26.9 million yuan year ago * Comments that management costs and financial costs as main reasons for the forecast Source text in Chinese:goo.gl/63dYZQ Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)

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2017

11.0

Tyrese Gibson had a celebratory lunch Saturday with daughter Shayla after winning a sweeping courtroom victory against ex-wife Norma Gibson. Tyrese and 10-year-old Shayla hit up Nobu in Malibu ... this after the judge denied Norma's request for a permanent restraining order. The judge also awarded Tyrese 50/50 custody. He has some interesting things to say. On the one hand he says Rx drugs took him off the rails, which is why he said Will and Jada Smith gave him $5 million ... which they did not. But then he insinuates they promised him money but it never arrived. Our Will and Jada sources say they never offered. And Tyrese makes it clear ... he still has beef with The Rock.

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2019

11.0

Rapper and producer Will.i.am is saying a "racist" Qantas Airlines flight attendant called the police on him during a flight from Brisbane to Sydney.According to the musician, who shared the incident on Twitter, he "experienced the worst service due to an overly aggressive flight attendant," who called authorities after Will.i.am didn't hear an announcement to put his laptop away. "I don't want to believe she racist. But she has clearly aimed all her frustrations only at the people of color." The rapper said that other passengers came to his defense, and he wasn't charged or detained upon landing. In a statement, Qantas called the altercation a misunderstanding and not a result of race.Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.Will.i.am has claimed a "racist" flight attendant called the police on him after he didn't hear an announcement to put his laptop away before take-off. The rapper and producer tweeted to his followers about the incident, which he said began when he missed the flight announcement due to his noise-canceling headphones."I'm currently on a flight from Brisbane to Sydney," he tweeted. "I'm sorry to say me and my group have experienced they worse service due to an overly aggressive flight attendant… 'I don't want to believe she racist. But she has clearly aimed all her frustrations only at the people of color."Will.i.am then shared a photo of a police officer who had met him when he landed, adding: "@Qantas I was making music wearing noise canceling headphones on the plane… I'm sorry I couldn't hear the P.A…I complied when she's tapped me on the shoulder to put my laptop away… It's sad that your #RacistFlightAttendant sent the police…" He continued: "This is how your [sic] greeted when you land from Brisbane to Sydney flying @qantas with a #RacistFlightattendant. 'She sent the police after me because [sic] I couldn't hear the P.A while making beats on the plane wearing noise canceling headphones…"He then said he was grateful for other passengers who stood up for him. "Your #RacistFlightattendant was beyond rude & took it to the next level by calling the police on me. 'Thank god the other passengers testified that SHE was out of Control. The police finally let me go. imagine if the police were as aggressive as [flight attendant]."The Black-Eyed Peas star concluded: "I was intimidated by 5 police officers when I landed…for what? I put away my laptop when she asked…why would she feel threatened by me to call the police?"While many of Will.i.am's followers have expressed their support, he also received criticism for tweeting the badge number and name of the officer who met him at the airport, along with the name of the flight attendant he accused of racism, to his 12 million followers.He defended himself, tweeting: "If I did something wrong....or if I was the slightest bit rude to a FAN or a journalist during work, I would be publicly named...this is what Twitter is for...we are supposed to call out wrong doings so we can have a safer more compassionate world."A Qantas spokesman told The Independent: "There was a misunderstanding on board, which seems to have been exacerbated by will.i.am wearing noise canceling headphones and not being able to hear instructions from crew."We completely reject the suggestion this had anything to do with race. We'll be following up with will.i.am and wish him well for the rest of the tour." Read the original article on The Independent. Copyright 2019. Follow The Independent on Twitter.

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2018

3.0

Whether large or small, companies across both the manufacturing and construction industries have expressed positive views about their future and poised to expand this year, according to recent surveys from our organizations. This includes optimism on the ability to hire more workers and compensate them better and the growth of the American economy as a whole. The rationale undergirding this optimism was remarkably similar. First, it was based on the promise of pro-growth policies undertaken in 2017 like tax reform and regulatory reform.  Second, it was premised on the potential for further pro-growth advances in the near future like continued regulatory reform, smart trade policies and critically necessary investments in infrastructure.   In other words, if we want to keep the momentum going, then Washington needs to enact a substantial infrastructure package as soon as possible. It’s an important message and one we’re taking to Capitol Hill today as part of the Infrastructure Working Group, bringing together a wide range of viewpoints, from labor, to retail, to finance, to agriculture. We are united in our determination to demonstrate broad support for infrastructure and see the type of action we think is necessary. The time is now to develop and advance an infrastructure investment package that can improve the safety, reliability and efficiency of our nation’s infrastructure systems. The investments we make should be substantial, they should be long term, and they should touch each of the different types of infrastructure that will be needed to expand our economy further, grow jobs more and ensure American companies and workers are best positioned to compete in the global economy of the 21st century. Not only does that mean making a $1.3 trillion infrastructure investment over 10 years, but it also means enhancing municipal bonds and tools similar to it, fixing chronic challenges related to the Highway Trust Fund and streamlining the federal permitting process. Whatever Congress passes should also encourage the active participation of all levels of government and between the public and private sectors too, because no single partner can do this alone and simply shifting federal responsibilities is not going to move us forward. Let’s be honest. Everyone knows that the sorry state of our roads and bridges, ports and waterways, airports and water-supply systems is hardly acceptable, and it’s getting worse. Democrats agree. Republicans agree. So, if we all agree, why not finally do something about it in the 115th Congress? Why not honor our parents’ and grandparents’ hard work to build the infrastructure we rely on today by making it worthy of their shared commitment and sacrifice? It’s something we can do. It’s something we must do. And, as Washington has shown already, it’s something we have the capacity to do — if the drive is there to get it done. In recent years, Congress has taken notable bipartisan action on infrastructure legislation like the Water Resources Development Act and the highway bill. This year, the Trump administration has already used its executive authority to update and streamline the permitting process. So, we can get this done. We hope, for the sake of sustaining the forward momentum we’ve recently seen on our economy and also for growing that progress further, that Congress and the administration get the job done as soon as possible. If they do, we’ll be here ready to serve their partners every step of the way. Stephen Sandherr is CEO of the Associated General Contractors of America. Jay Timmons is president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

infrastructure

transportation

(infrastructure , transportation , bridges , infrastructure plan , gas tax , roads , projects , roads bridges , trillion , trillion infrastructure)

2020

1.0

ZURICH, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Fragrance and flavour maker Givaudan said it was on track to reach its 2020 guidance after net profit and underlying sales rose around 6% last year, helped by strong growth in its fragrance division. Givaudan, which develops tastes and scents for customers in the consumer and luxury goods industry, has been benefiting from its focus on natural ingredients and health and wellness products, but also recent trends requiring new flavours like planted foods. “The company continues to implement price increases in collaboration with its customers to fully compensate for the increases in input costs,” Givaudan said in a statement on Friday. (Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Michael Shields)

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2018

2.0

"So Brave!" is Broadly's new humor column in collaboration with the feminist satire site Reductress. Aren't women who trust men in power just as guilty as the men who abuse their power? Has the pendulum swung too far the other way? Does this mean men can never touch women without being accused of rape? WHY TWITTER LADY SCREAM AT ME?? Thank Goddess, then, that Sports Illustrated is finally showing us exactly how we can embrace the movement to end sexual harassment—all while staying sexy at the same time. The sports magazine, which releases an annual empowering swimsuit issue celebrating all women with svelte bodies and D-cups, has released a #MeToo-themed issue, where "models were as much participants as objects." Because if women are finally going to end our own objectification, everyone has to watch us while we do it sensually. Why abolish wet T-shirt contests when you can take the power back on your own terms and enter the contest wearing a T-shirt that reads "OWN IT"? Editor MJ Day, who put the #MeToo swimsuit issue together, told Vanity Fair that she "sees connections between the #MeToo movement and her own work," which makes sense since production studios like Harvey Weinstein’s and boob magazines like Sports Illustrated probably have the same casting process. "No one ever gives models a real opportunity to be who they are," said Day, who encouraged models to express their true selves by letting them choose which words they'd like painted on their naked bodies. But don’t be afraid all of this change, dear Sports Illustrated fan! If you, like the millions of women who turn to the nude magazine for empowerment, are worried that an issue as politicized as #MeToo might get in the way of enjoying the sports periodical’s thoughtful writing and feminist messages, don’t worry. "These are sexy photos," Day, who likely oversaw the photoshopping of all the models' cellulite, assures. "At the end of the day, we’re always going to be sexy, no matter what is happening." And that’s what really matters in the fight against sexism.

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2017

6.0

The managers of the Republican and Democratic congressional baseball teams appeared together on Wednesday afternoon to call on lawmakers to ease tensions between the two parties after a shooter opened fire at a baseball practice for the GOP's team. Reps. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who manage their caucuses' respective baseball teams, told reporters on Capitol Hill that Congress's annual charity baseball game would continue as scheduled Thursday night, despite the shooting that injured five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.). "Joe and I talked and we decided that we’re not going to let incidents like this change our way of life or daily routines," Doyle said at the news conference. "It will be play ball tomorrow night at 7:05," Barton told reporters. Barton reassured members of Congress that Nationals Park, where the Congressional Baseball Game is played, would remain a secure setting amid heightened safety concerns. The shooting at a park in Alexandria, Va., rattled lawmakers in the Capitol on Wednesday. Scalise and four others were taken to hospitals after the attack. The shooter, identified as 66-year-old James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Ill., was shot by law enforcement and later died of his injuries. Hodgkinson was revealed to be a former volunteer for Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersJoe Biden faces an uncertain path Bernie Sanders vows to go to 'war with white nationalism and racism' as president Biden: 'There's an awful lot of really good Republicans out there' MORE's (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign and a frequent critic of President Trump on social media. His political views have been looked at as a possible motive for the attack. Both Barton and Doyle said the attack appeared to be politically motivated and urged lawmakers to begin de-escalating partisan tensions within their own ranks.  "We’re united, not as Republicans and Democrats but as United States representatives," Barton said. "It shouldn’t take an incident like this to bring us together," Doyle said. "When the leadership of this country is civil toward one another, maybe the public will start being civil toward one another too, and the news media will be civil towards members of Congress and the public and we can change the mood in this country so that people don't get filled up with this kind of hatred." The news conference at times became emotional, with Doyle and Barton describing what they see as an eroding camaraderie among lawmakers, as well as an onslaught of increasingly personal criticisms from the public. "Members are not looked out at people anymore," Barton said. "People think they can come to our town hall meetings and say just the most obnoxious things and not feel anything personally." "It is a very different climate than in 1985 when I was elected," he added. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

politics

gun violence

(scalise , hodgkinson , congressional baseball , baseball , steve scalise , capitol police , baseball practice , baseball game , scalises , majority whip)

2018

11.0

The incoming congresswoman has given her followers the type of behind-the-scenes look at congressional orientation that’s not usually broadcast. Last Friday, three days after being elected to the House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez invited over 600,000 people to chat as she made loaded macaroni and cheese in an Instant Pot. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, was streaming on Instagram Live, answering questions submitted through the live chat feature as she grated cheese and sang along to Janelle Monáe. It wasn’t too surprising to see her there, as her followers have watched each step of her journey since she announced she would be seeking a congressional seat in April 2017. Over the past week, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has taken these followers behind the scenes of congressional orientation, as she’s visited monuments, met with other incoming freshmen and looked through the new member directory — which she joked was like a yearbook. “At orientation you get a swag bag,” she said in one story, displaying a shopping bag that she explained held her new secure devices. In another, she walked between government buildings, whispering, “Guys, there are secret underground tunnels,” adding in a caption, “Jk they’re not secret but it’s cool.” Government officials have always found creative ways to reach their constituents, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats to President Trump’s use of Twitter. But Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, is especially good at connecting with her followers on Instagram, which can be a more intimate platform — especially when a user speaks directly to the camera. The video quality isn’t great, the audio can get muffled and the lighting can be overexposed. But that’s partly the point. Using her cellphone’s forward-facing camera, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez provides civics lessons and discusses her personal highs and lows. The videos seem designed to be accessible to everyone. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has started using a closed-captioning tool called Clipomatic so that those who are deaf or hard of hearing can follow along. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is also an active user of Twitter, the preferred clap-back platform. On Thursday, a reporter from the Washington Examiner tweeted a picture of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s back with the caption, “I’ll tell you something: that jacket and coat don’t look like a girl who struggles.” It was one of several recent attempts by conservative media to portray her as wealthier than she says she is. He later deleted the tweet, but not before Ms. Ocasio-Cortez responded. She replied to her initial tweet with another, tagging the reporter, Eddie Scarry, and including a screenshot of his original tweet. “Oh, does @eScarry think he can delete his misogyny without an apology? I don’t think so. You’re a journalist — readers should know your bias.” And she has company among her fellow incoming freshmen. After Representative-elect Ilhan Omar of Minnesota arrived in Washington this week, she tweeted, “We did not come to play,” along with a link to a story in The Cut. The headline: “Your Cool New Congresswomen Are Already Hanging Out.” A week earlier, Ms. Omar reacted to Representative-elect Ayanna Pressley’s win in Massachusetts with a Beyoncé GIF. Like Snapchat stories, Instagram stories are ephemeral and automatically delete after 24 hours. But users can save stories and pin them to their pages as a “highlight,” allowing followers to watch a story weeks after it was published. Three months ago, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made an Instagram story in which she spoke about how she was feeling. That story, labeled “Pep Talk,” is pinned to the top of her page as a highlight. At one point, she sighed deeply and said, “You’re supposed to be perfect all the time on every issue.” “I think what people forget is if we want everyday, working-class Americans to run for office, and not like these robots, that we have to acknowledge and accept imperfection and growth and humanity in our government,” she added. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to requests for an interview. Some have dismissed her Instagram use as merely an example of a young person knowing how to use a platform. But it’s not that simple, said Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies social media. “Very few people can get away with wearing those animated Instagram glasses but also be taken seriously,” Professor Grygiel said. “She can command both spaces.” In 2018, social media skills are expected of political figures and their teams. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is a top Instagram user among Republican politicians, with a following of nearly 280,000. But his Instagram presence is distant, filled with professional photography and text cards that do not lend themselves to a sense of authenticity. According to an analysis in The New York Times, the number of interactions on Democrats’ Instagram accounts dwarfed those on Republican accounts within a 30-day period ending Oct. 15. The political tilt of Instagram reflects the demographics of the platform’s users. Instagram users skew younger, as do Democratic voters. One of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s biggest strengths on Instagram is that she tries to bring her followers into the political process and convince them that they, too, could someday be in her shoes. “What she’s saying is, ‘Hey, develop these skills alongside of me and we will be a community, we’ll be a force,’” Professor Grygiel said. “She’s not just saying, ‘Hey, support me, support me, support me.’”

politics

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

(ocasiocortez , crowley , alexandria , ocasiocortezs , alexandria ocasiocortez , pressley , aoc , progressive , capuano , ms ocasiocortez)

2019

12.0

"My faith in humanity is restored," said Musk in court after the verdict was delivered. The jury deliberated for only an hour before delivering its verdict in the case, which went to trial earlier this week. Unsworth brought the suit against Musk in September 2018, after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had called him "sus" (suspicious) and a "pedo guy" on Twitter earlier that summer. Musk also characterized the spelunker as a "child rapist" in e-mails to Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Mac, and practically requested the lawsuit in August 2018 with a tweet that said, "Don't you think it's strange he hasn't sued me?" In his testimony during the defamation trial this week, Musk apologized to Unsworth and said he did not believe the cave explorer was a pedophile. Musk and his defense team, led by attorney Alex Spiro, argued that "pedo guy" was simply heated rhetoric and not meant as a statement of fact. They also argued that the phrase "pedo guy" is widely known as slang for "creepy old guy." And they suggested that Unsworth was looking for a payday in court, and had not sincerely been harmed by the "pedo guy" label. The clash between the two men began when Unsworth criticized Musk for involving himself, and his employees, in an effort to rescue 12 boys and their soccer coach from flooded caves in Thailand in July 2018. Unsworth's expertise and knowledge of the caves proved instrumental in extracting the soccer team. He is credited as being a leader of the rescue effort. Musk and his employees developed a device that they billed as a mini-submarine or escape pod, and which they thought could transport the kids out of the caves. On July 8, 2018, Musk wrote in a tweet, "Mini-sub arriving in about 17 hours. Hopefully useful. If not, perhaps it will be in a future situation." The device was never used in the effort, however. Before the rescue was completed, Musk had directed employees to compel Thai officials to say nice things about him and his mini-sub, even as storms continued to bear down. After the rescue, Unsworth was asked during a television interview on CNN about the mini-sub and Musk. He said Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts," and viewed the escape pod as "just a PR stunt." Lashing back, Musk called the caver a "pedo guy" in his now infamous public tweets. The verdict could set a precedent where free speech online, libel and slander are concerned. Vernon Unsworth vs. Elon Musk was one of the first major defamation lawsuits --brought by a private individual over a tweet-- to ever go to trial. In closing arguments, Unsworth's attorney, L. Lin Wood, made an emotional appeal to the jury, calling Musk a "liar" while standing just a few feet away from the CEO. He also referred to Musk as "the billionaire bully," and said that by labeling Unsworth a "pedo guy" on Twitter, where Musk had tens of millions of followers, "He dropped a nuclear bomb on Vernon Unsworth," and the fallout would last for decades. Wood, who is well-known for representing Richard Jewell in his defamation case (and who will be portrayed by Sam Rockwell in an upcoming film about that) sought damages of $190 million in total for Unsworth. That included: $5 million in actual damages, $35 million in assumed damages and punitive damages of $150 million. That amounts to less than a percent of Elon Musk's estimated net worth including approximately $20 billion in SpaceX and Tesla holdings. Musk's lead attorney, Alex Spiro, in closing arguments characterized Musk's offensive tweets as merely insulting and not statements of fact. Spiro also said that Unsworth was telling the court, "I've been horribly damaged. Pay me lots of money," but then failed to prove he had been damaged at all. Referencing the fact that Unsworth had earned a little money for speaking engagements since the cave rescue, he asked, "You wanna award damages? How about one dollar?" And he implored the court not to engage in policing speech.

crime

pedophilia

(unsworth , musk , pedo , pedo guy , musks , cave , unsworths , rescue , pedophile , submarine)

2017

1.0

What if there was an Uber-style app that replaced 911? That's one of many timely questions posed by Fox's new crime drama APB, a cop show with a tech-savvy twist.  Inspired by the New York Times Magazine article “Who Runs the Streets of New Orleans,” which chronicled entrepreneur Sidney Torres's attempts to reduce crime in New Orleans' French Quarter with a privately-funded police patrol squad that civilians could alert via app, the series follows billionaire engineer Gideon Reeves (Justin Kirk) in his quest to remake Chicago’s 13th Police District into the most high-tech, forward-thinking police force in the world. After his friend is killed in a violent crime, Gideon realizes that the local police department is understaffed and underfunded, and makes an unlikely proposal to the Mayor and City Council — that he run the 13th District himself, with a few technological upgrades. In addition to his business acumen, Gideon brings his cutting-edge tech to the table, including police drones; smart cruisers; the world’s most effective non-lethal sidearms; and the innovative APB app; a cell phone app that speeds up 911 response times by allowing users to contact police at the push of a button. It's crime-fighting on demand, for better or worse.  Check out an exclusive first look at the series above. APB premieres Monday, Feb. 6 at 9 p.m. on Fox. Air New Zealand's cheeky new safety video gets real meta — oh, and the All Blacks are back Stephen Colbert uses the perfect 'Scooby-Doo' parody to explain the Democratic debates Robert De Niro and Al Pacino play the mob game in Martin Scorsese's 'The Irishman' Daniel Radcliffe plays ridiculously filthy innuendo game, can't stop giggling

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2019

5.0

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired dozens of rockets into Israel early Saturday, the Israeli military said, triggering retaliatory airstrikes amid rising tensions. At least one Palestinian, 22-year-old Emad Nassir, was killed in the airstrikes and six others were injured amid the shelling, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, according to the Associated Press. Militants fired more than 90 rockets into Israel, the AP reported, while the Israeli military said it targeted rocket launchers and Hamas posts in tit-for-tat air strikes and tank fire. Reuters reported that the escalation began Friday after two Israeli soldiers were injured by Gaza gunfire near the border. An Israeli air strike later killed two Hamas militants. Two Palestinians protesting near the border were killed by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinian Education Ministry announced it was evacuating schools in areas at risk of being attacked. The violence comes days before Muslims begin observing the holy month of Ramadan and Israelis celebrate Independence Day. The flare-up prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuBenjamin (Bibi) NetanyahuMORE to call together his security council. Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said the group would “continue to respond to the crimes by the occupation and it will not allow it to shed the blood of our people,” though Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza, did not claim responsibility for firing the rockets.  Hamas said Thursday its Gaza chief, Yeyha Al-Sinwar had traveled to Egypt for talks to try to prevent hostilities from escalating on the border. Israel and Hamas have waged three wars since the armed group took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.  View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Middle East

Israel-Palestine conflict

(gaza , hamas , israeli , palestinian , israel , palestinians , west bank , jerusalem , israels , gaza strip)

2019

9.0

PEOPLE Now airs live, Monday through Friday, from the Meredith offices in New York City. Catch PEOPLE Now every weekday at 12:00 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT on People.com or on the PeopleTV app on your favorite streaming device. Want even more? Check out clips from previous episodes of PEOPLE Now.

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(friday meredith , et9 pt , pm et9 , et9 , peoplecom peopletv , people weekday , clips previous , people airs , city catch , check clips)

2020

2.0

Feb 20 (Reuters) - The Members Exchange (MEMX), a new would-be bourse backed by major Wall Street firms, said on Thursday it plans to launch the exchange on July 24 following the closure of a funding round led by JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Jane Street Capital. The company did not disclose the amount raised or the valuation at which the funding was made. MEMX will start onboarding trading members later in February, it said in a statement. In a blog post, MEMX said it expects to receive approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in the second quarter and will begin platform testing and member certification on May 11. When MEMX was first announced in January 2019, it pushed down the share prices of exchange operators Nasdaq and NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc. The institutions that fund and control MEMX are some of the biggest customers of major U.S. exchanges, including Bank of America Corp, Virtu Financial, Morgan Stanley , Fidelity and Citadel Securities. Online retail brokers Charles Schwab Corp and E*Trade Financial Corp are also founding members. This is not the first time that industry giants have taken on established exchanges. Nearly a decade ago, a group of banks backed a low-cost exchange called BATS. Another group of industry heavyweights launched an exchange called Direct Edge with a similar goal of slashing trading costs. The two exchanges quickly gained market share, later merged and are now owned by Cboe Global Markets. (Reporting by Abhishek Manikandan in Bengaluru; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)

finance

exchanges

(iex , exchanges , exchange , nyse , nasdaq , stock exchange , sec , bats , speed bump , trading)

2019

5.0

If it feels like DJ Khaled is everywhere in the transit world, that's because he is.   Popping up on Lyft scooters, ride-share driving undercover, and owning a ridiculous car collection, the hip-hop star is all about getting around. Now he's helping you get where you're going as a new navigation voice option in the Waze app.  Sure, his voice giving directions is part of a six-week promo with streaming music service Deezer for his new album. But that doesn't mean you can't embrace the advice-filled phrases the performer is known for. Here's a sense of what it'll be like to have him guiding your drive starting Wednesday and available until June 30. Waze, Google's driving direction app, is used worldwide with 115 million users and has featured other celebrity voices for navigation such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kevin Hart, T-Pain, and Shaq. Bringing in known voices to give you driving directions is a feature that's been incorporated into the app for years. A popular request was actor Morgan Freeman a few years ago.  One of the songs on his newest album Father of Asahd features singer John Legend, who is the latest voice option on Google's digital assistant platform, Google Assistant. Legend's AI voice launched last month.  To turn on the We The Best label producer on your Waze app go to Settings > Voice Directions > DJ Khaled.

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2017

6.0

Belfast-hailing duo Bicep will release their self-titled debut album on September 1 via Ninja Tune. It contains 12 tracks and will touch upon genres including house, techno, electro, and Italo disco. Alongside the news, they've shared the stormy lead single, "Aura," which is streaming below. "It was a happy experiment… you might call it an accident," they said of the track in a press release. "We'd been playing with this specific and very complicated gear-chain for a while but nothing worked, or didn't feel musical enough… then it all just fell into place and 'Aura' appeared." Bicep have been producing for nearly eight years for the likes of Throne of Blood, Love Fever, and Aus Music, but the duo of Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson first came into recognition as club-music tastemakers via their blog, Feel My Bicep. Following Bicep's release, they'll head out to tour across Europe, Asia, and the U.S., with the latter leg including stops in Los Angeles and New York. View those dates below.

music

albums

(album , band , bands , music , songs , song , noisey , albums , ep , guitar)

2016

5.0

LIKE COUNTLESS STUDENTS of German before him, Ahmed is struggling with his verb placement. Eager to learn, he listens patiently as the earnest volunteers from Über den Tellerrand kochen (Cook Outside the Box), a Berlin-based outfit that began by offering refugees a space to prepare food and has since branched out into language classes, explain the fiendish intricacies of the grammar. But before long they have moved on to the difference between Sie and Du, and Ahmed is floundering. “I love the German people,” he says later. “But I just can’t speak their language.” That is not his only problem. Deposited by Germany’s refugee office in Hoppegarten, a distant suburb of the capital best known for horseracing, Ahmed, a 24-year-old Syrian refugee, cannot afford to commute to Berlin proper. Even if he could, he might still find it hard to get a job, though as a refugee he has full access to Germany’s labour market. A barman by training—he claims to mix a killer mojito—Ahmed would face a lot of competition in job-poor Berlin, and his lack of German is a handicap. It is also hindering his search for accommodation closer to town, which, within reason, the state would pay for. For now, it seems, he is stuck. Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Ahmed arrived in Germany last November, joining hundreds of thousands of Syrians and other asylum-seekers on the migrant trail via Turkey, Greece and the Balkans. Like many of his compatriots, he had fled not Syria itself but Lebanon, where he and his family had been leading a clandestine life for years, safe from harm but struggling to get by and unable to return home. As his story suggests, Germany (along with several other European countries) faces a huge challenge integrating its newcomers, most of whom arrived with few language skills or qualifications, into its labour market and wider society. That will take time, resources and political capital. In some countries it will test assumptions about welfare, housing and employment. But last year’s drama was also a sharp reminder to Europe that it cannot insulate itself from the troubles of its wider neighbourhood. For years Syrian refugees had been building up in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, not to mention the millions displaced inside the country itself. Of the estimated total of 13m displaced by the war (7m inside Syria, 6m outside), around 1m have gone to Europe. Lebanon now hosts 1.07m registered Syrians (the total number is closer to 1.5m), a staggering burden for a country of 4.5m. In Jordan 1.3m refugees swallow up one-quarter of public spending. Governments and officials in the Middle East had warned Europe about a wave of refugees. But without a robust system of international rules that could have eased the burden on the refugee-hosting countries, or any political interest in Europe in resolving the problem, it was left to Ahmed and many others like him to vote with their feet, bringing chaos in their wake. What was Lebanon’s problem is now Germany’s. Belatedly, the rich world has learned that the current system of international protection for refugees is broken. And Europe, which is where the global refugee regime began 65 years ago, and where its limits have now been most starkly exposed, will have to be the catalyst for change. Thanks in part to the explosion of refugees from Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s refugee body, now puts the world’s displaced population at a post-war record of 60m, of whom 20m are stranded outside their own countries (the map shows only registered refugees, for whom firm figures are available). Except for a couple of bright spots, such as the possible return of up to 6m internally displaced Colombians after a peace deal between the government and the guerrillas, the problem is getting worse. New conflicts in places like South Sudan are creating fresh refugee problems; older ones, such as Somalia’s, grind on with no solution in sight. Still, there is no iron law that says the globally displaced must continue to rise in number. Conflicts can be resolved, just as they can break out. Perhaps more worrying is that a record 45% of the world’s refugees are now in “protracted situations” that have lasted five years or more. Syrians are the latest recruits to this wretched club, and the welcome is wearing thin in the countries to which most have fled. Indeed, dismal prospects in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon partly explain last year’s exodus to Europe. Shocked to learn that they were legally obliged to help the people streaming across their borders, a growing number of European politicians and officials are pressing for revisions to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, which make up the main framework for international protection of people fleeing persecution and provide the basis for the work of the UNHCR. The convention is one of the most potent instruments of international law ever devised. The primary obligation that it places on signatories is the duty of non-refoulement, meaning they may not return people to countries where they are at risk. But as James Hathaway, an expert on refugee law at the University of Michigan, points out, it has also proved to be an extremely versatile device. Over the decades regional and international law has built on the convention’s foundations, extending the scope of protection beyond the original definition of a refugee as someone who faces a “well-founded fear of being persecuted”. Notably, many parts of the world now offer protection to those fleeing war-torn countries like Syria. And yet the politicians who established the refugee regime in the early 1950s, with the horrors of the second world war still fresh in the mind, had modest ambitions. The convention covered only Europeans who had been displaced before 1951, including millions during the war and many more in post-war ethnic cleansing. (The UNHCR had no role in helping the millions displaced by India’s partition, or the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.) By 1950 resettlement and repatriation efforts had reduced Europe’s refugee population to less than half a million. The UNHCR was small, poor and feeble. Few expected it to last for long. However, it turned out to be a rather useful adjunct to Western foreign policy, particularly for refugees fleeing communist or Soviet-backed states. In 1956 the high commissioner used his good offices to help hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who fled the Soviet tanks, even though they were not covered by the convention. Many were resettled in America or other countries outside Europe. The UNHCR helped victims of fighting in Africa and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1967 protocol to the convention removed its geographical and temporal limits. Agreements in Africa and Asia extended the scope of protection. Later, the European Union created new forms of protection that fell short of full refugee status, to help victims of war and other forms of violence that did not meet the convention’s strict definition. The result was an international mesh of laws and institutions to help displaced people around the globe. In time the UNHCR identified three “durable solutions” for refugees beyond providing immediate sanctuary: voluntary repatriation, integration in the country that offered asylum and resettlement to another country, usually in the rich world. All are now floundering. Most refugees would dearly love to return home, but that would require resolution of the conflicts they fled in the first place, and there is little sign of that for Somalis, Syrians or Afghans. Returns are at their lowest since 1983, according to UNHCR figures. That leaves integration and resettlement. Western governments can play a crucial role in both. To promote integration in countries that may be resistant to opening their labour markets or overburdening public services, they can provide financial and logistical support. For the Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, that can mean anything from cheap loans to the creation of special economic zones to assistance for overburdened towns and villages. In parts of Africa, this report will show, there are glimmers of a new approach that may offer refugees an alternative to mouldering in camps. But today’s politics has turned against resettlement, in which vulnerable refugees are moved to rich countries that volunteer to accept them, usually with the help of the UNHCR. Too often such rich countries, having clamped down on irregular flows, promise generous resettlement to compensate but fail to follow through. Australia, for example, is often accused of not living up to its vow to increase its resettlement quotas now that it has more or less eliminated spontaneous arrivals of asylum-seekers by turning them back at sea. There are worrying signs that the EU may follow suit. Vague promises of mass resettlement of refugees from Turkey to Europe have not materialised. America, which traditionally takes a large share of resettled refugees, has slightly increased its quotas but has been deterred by probably ill-founded security concerns since last November’s terrorist attacks in Paris. Canada’s new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, speedily made good (at great expense) on an election promise to resettle 25,000 Syrians, and then promised to take more. But this alone is a drop in the ocean. As Peter Sutherland, the UN’s special migration representative, notes, it seems unfair for a country’s proximity to war zones to define its responsibility to refugees. To ward off this danger, the 1951 convention calls on signatories to act in a “spirit of international co-operation”, but places no specific obligations on countries and regions not faced with a refugee influx. Last year’s crisis in Europe revealed the weaknesses of the global refugee regime. Europe learned that its carefully constructed asylum and border rules were no match for migrants who flouted them en masse. But it also found that the arrival of modest numbers of uninvited foreigners quickly upset its comfortable political and economic balance. To keep them out, in March the EU signed a deal with Turkey that skates close to the edge of international law by obliging asylum-seekers who reach Greece to return to Turkey, where some may face inadequate protection or even refoulement. All this shows up a glaring difference in the treatment of refugees between the rich and the poor world. In Europe, asylum-seekers are treated generously by global standards, even if some countries have tightened their rules. In most EU countries they can work before they obtain refugee status (or some lesser protection), and certainly afterwards. They are promised housing, freedom of movement and protection from official harassment. Public services generally work well and benefits are adequate. After five years refugees in EU states can usually become permanent residents (which gives them freedom of movement throughout the EU), and in some cases full citizens. And even those whose bids for asylum fail are often granted some of these privileges, partly because governments find it so hard to send them back. Unwilling to unwind these protections, European governments have simply made it harder for asylum-seekers to reach their borders in the first place. The overall effect has been something akin to a dystopian television game show: the refugees must brave untold hardships to reach their destination, but a glittering prize awaits them once they arrive. It seems unfair that proximity to war zones should define responsibility to refugees For the 86% of the world’s refugees who fetch up in the developing world, the reverse applies: the journey is often (though not always) less arduous, but conditions are likely to be far worse. By accidents of geography countries that border war zones, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Kenya, find themselves the involuntary hosts of millions of refugees, some languishing in camps, others scratching a meagre existence on the fringes of cities. Some of these countries, particularly in the Middle East, never signed the 1951 convention. Others, mainly in Africa, simply ignore its provisions, denying refugees the right to work or travel, sometimes for decades at a stretch. This leaves the hard-working but largely unaccountable (and often underfunded) humanitarian organisations that care for them, including the UNHCR, to serve as surrogate states, a role for which they are rarely suited. The effect of this approach can be seen in places like Dadaab, a collection of five camps near Kenya’s border with Somalia described later in this special report (and now threatened with closure). There, a second and third generation of refugees is growing up entirely dependent on the rations, sanitation services and schooling provided by NGOs. This special report will argue that the Refugee Convention, and the further protections embodied in regional agreements, should be retained. But it will also show that fresh thinking is desperately needed to make them work, especially for refugees in protracted situations. Developing countries will continue to host the lion’s share of the world’s refugees, and that need not spell disaster: Syrians may have a better chance of economic and social integration in Lebanon or Jordan than in Europe, and will be more likely to return home if peace is made. Such countries can also usually host refugees at a small fraction of the cost in Europe or America. But they cannot be left to cope with the problem alone, and when their limits are breached others will feel the consequences, as Europe learned last year. A new compact between rich and poor world is therefore needed. Europe will be the Petri dish. Other regions, including North America and Australasia but also wealthier parts of the Middle East, Asia and even Latin America, may follow. A UN refugee summit in New York in September, devoted to exploring fresh avenues for international protection, offers a chance to start the conversation. But it will be hard for rich countries to extend more help to refugees when their own voters are fretting about a loss of control. For European governments in particular, that means two things. First, they must ensure that the integration of refugees like Ahmed proceeds as smoothly as possible, which is harder than many suggest. Second, they need to restore confidence in border management and their ability to control irregular migratory flows. Europe’s response to last year’s crisis was improvised, chaotic, divisive and expensive. The damage was immense, and the loss of confidence will be hard to repair. Western governments have been muddying the waters on migration for decades, pretending that the “guest workers” they had imported to ease labour shortages would return home; relying on armies of undocumented migrant workers; and making unrealistic promises about their ability to control borders. This has fostered distrust, allowing anti-immigrant populists to flourish, and shrunk the political space for sensible and compassionate policies. It has exposed the West to charges of hypocrisy, not always unwarranted. The hope must be that Europe’s troubles last year will jolt politicians into taking a more far-sighted approach towards refugee management, including better co-operation among themselves and more help for the poor countries that bear the heaviest load. The fear is that, by spooking voters and polluting politics, it will do the opposite.

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2019

3.0

RUSSIA'S FOREIGN MINISTRY SAYS EU SANCTIONS DENY RUSSIA'S RIGHT TO PROTECT ITS BORDERS - IFAX

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2019

2.0

Lil Pump had an intense showdown with Miami cops -- shouting back and forth -- moments before they arrested him for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. TMZ's obtained police body cam footage from the rapper's December arrest before his flight outta Miami. You can see an incredibly frustrated Pump repeatedly tell cops a bag that smelled of weed, according to TSA, was definitely NOT his. In the video, you can also see Pump's manager mount the same defense ... but clearly, it fell on deaf ears because cops were adamant the bag belonged to Pump. Check out the video ... Pump gets visibly angry and that triggers a cop to shout right back at him. TMZ broke the story ... the rapper was hauled off his flight from Miami to L.A. after he was accused of carrying drugs in the bag that smelled like weed. Our law enforcement sources eventually confirmed Pump's version of events -- he was NOT carrying any drugs. Pump's manager was also arrested for disorderly conduct. Both men entered not guilty pleas.

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2016

10.0

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The International Court of Justice on Wednesday rejected suits filed by the tiny Marshall Islands against the world’s nuclear powers that sought to force them to do more to disarm. Though the suits failed on procedural grounds, India, Pakistan and Britain were brought to the court to answer the complaint at public hearings in April. In its ruling in the country’s case against India, the first of the three to be decided on Wednesday, the court said it had accepted Indian arguments that the ICJ, also known as the World Court, should not have jurisdiction in the case. Judges said that while the Marshall Islands may not be satisfied with progress on nuclear disarmament, it had failed to show that it has any ongoing legal dispute with India fit for the court to adjudicate. It later rejected the Marshall Islands’ suit against Pakistan on the same grounds. The third suit, against Britain, was still to be decided. The other nuclear powers - including declared powers China, France, Russia and the United States, as well as undeclared nuclear states Israel and North Korea - did not respond to the suit the islands filed last year. The Marshall Islands, population 53,000, was the site of dozens of atomic-bomb tests by the United States after World War Two. It had argued that nuclear powers were failing to adhere to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, notably by developing a new generation of “tactical” nuclear weapons. In 1996, at the request of the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on nuclear weapons. Besides finding them probably illegal unless possibly used in self defense, it also found that countries are obliged “to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.” But the court ruled that given its lack of jurisdiction, it would not consider the Marshall Islands’ arguments on their merits. Reporting by Toby Sterling, editing by Larry King

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2016

4.0

Dubai has gained a reputation as both a center for wealth and excess as well as a city where even relatively minor illegal acts can have major consequences. Now one component of the city's enforcement efforts will be backed by the latest technology in remote-controlled technology: drones. The Dubai Municipality's Waste Management Department plans to deploy an entire fleet of drones to police the city's litterers. . في ظل التطور نحو التميز وسعي الحكومة إلى الخدمات الذكية في خدمة المجتمع ومواكبة ما هو متبع في كبريات المدن العالمية ، قامت إدارة النفايات ببلدية دبي بتدشين طائرة من دون طيار لمراقبة المواقع التي يتم الإشراف عليها بمكبات النفايات في القصيص وجبل علي وورسان بالإضافة إلى المواقع الاستثمارية . In line with the development towards excellence and the government pursuit for smart services in providing services to the community and keeping up with what is followed in major international cities, The Waste Management Department in Dubai Municipality launched the drone to monitor sites that are supervised by waste landfills in Al Qusais, Jebel Ali and Warsan as well as in investment sites. #دبي #بلدية_دبي #DubaiMunicipality #Dubai #MyDubai A photo posted by Dubai Municipality بلدية دبي (@dubaimunicipality) on Apr 3, 2016 at 12:53am PDT Currently, just one drone is operation, but two additional drones will be added later this year. The drones will monitor waste dump sites, beaches and desert camp sites for sanitation law violators. The new role of drones in Dubai's enforcement is important because littering laws there are fairly strict. Repeat offenders who toss cigarette butts into the street can rack up hundreds of dollars in fines. Similarly, the laws against spitting in public can also incur hefty fines. "The main beneficial factor is the amount of time these drones can save," Abdul Majeed Al Saifaie, director of the Waste Management Department, told the UAE-based Gulf News. "Instead of having municipality inspectors driving across the city, the drones will be able to fly directly to a number of different locations within a short time, and provide us with data and high-resolution photographs." However, Dubai's new drone enforcement doesn't mean the city is a playground for drone enthusiasts. Rules for individual drone use in Dubai prohibit the use of drones at night, near buildings, people or near airports. Commercial drone use is still not allowed.

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2018

3.0

ROME, March 13 (Reuters) - Telecom Italia interrupted negotiations with unions over redundancies and is ready to introduce temporary layoff schemes in the coming weeks, two labour representatives said on Tuesday. The phone group, which employs almost 60,000 people in its domestic operations, is considering cutting up to 6,500 jobs in Italy through incentivised redundancies and early retirement. The company has said it will unilaterally open the procedure for temporary state-backed layoffs if unions will not change their veto on the group’s labour reorganisation plan, two unionists said. “We have told the company that we will not reach a deal on layoffs if the shareholding structure is not clear ... and without a government in place,” said Giorgio Serao, from the Fistel-Cisl union, referring to activist fund Elliott taking a stake in TIM, and the fact a national election last week delivered a hung parliament. Serao added that the labour groups have asked to wait at least for the next company’s shareholders’ meeting, scheduled for April 24. (Reporting by Alberto Sisto; writing by Francesca Landini Editing by Isla Binnie)

business

telecommunications

(vivendi , telecom italia , italia , open fiber , telecom , tims , tim , fiber , genish , elliott)

2017

10.0

It's a great time to be Netflix Inc. Shares of the leading video streamer just shot to record highs after announcing a price increase. Not only will the company soon see rising operating margins, but investors are rewarding management for the move. Meanwhile, the company just won 20 Emmy awards after garnering a company-record 91 nominations at the annual television celebration. Netflix's success with original programming along with the performance of the underlying business and stock price has taken over the narrative of the company. The service is now associated with hit shows like House of Cards and Stranger Things, but its growing reputation for original content belies an important truth about the company -- most of its programming budget and viewership revolves around licensed, not original content. Though its hit shows are the ones that get headlines, Netflix Content Chief Ted Sarandos acknowledged that the "vast majority" of next year's $7 billion budget will go to licensed content. Within a few years, Netflix believes it will spend half of its budget on original content, but currently the company is heavily dependent on partners. For example, a recent survey of Netflix's "Trending Now" suggestions found that most of the recommendations were not Netflix originals. Here comes Hulu The company faces an increasing number of competitors as traditional networks like CBS and Disney have launched or announced plans for their own streaming services, but the most underrated of its rivals may be Hulu, a joint venture between several of the major broadcast networks. Backed by the likes of Disney (via Disney ABC), 21st Century Fox, NBC Universal, and Comcast, Hulu looks like a business that was designed to stand in Netflix's way, and after its debut series The Handmaid's Tale won Best Drama at the Emmys, the company has momentum like never before. Hulu recently stepped up its challenge of Netflix by outbidding it for the popular NBC series This Is Us, and acquiring the rights to 30 Rock, which stopped streaming on Netflix last month. Among the other shows Hulu recently acquired are Black-ish, Will & Grace, and NYPD Blue, giving the service a reliable library of reruns that have proven to be popular. In another shot across the bow at Netflix, Hulu just announced it would lower its monthly fee for new subscribers from $7.99 to $5.99 with commercials, seemingly a response to Netflix hiking the price on its most popular package from $9.99/month to $10.99/month. The move should help draw attention to Hulu as it beefs up its content library. Moving to originals Netflix has carefully developed its strategy around original content, as the streamer would rather invest to create its own programming that it controls in perpetuity and can stream around the world. That strategy makes sense for Netflix as content creators like Disney are becoming reluctant to sell to it, but investors should remember that the streamer has no inherent advantage when it comes to creating content. Like its competitors, Netflix has had hits and misses, and is often simply bidding alongside Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and others as new shows become available. As Hulu's Emmy win shows, all of the streamers and premium networks are capable of churning popular shows. Turmoil inside Amazon Studios, meanwhile, has become apparent as that company has been unable to land a Game of Thrones-type hit despite spending $4.5 billion on content this year, and CEO Jeff Bezos has called for a shakeup in the division's strategy. Netflix's advantage may come from its global reach and paying audience of over 100 million, but it's worth remembering that syndicated shows are an important anchor for the company's audience. As it steps up its focus on originals, the company needs to be careful not to lose too many of the classic hit shows that have delighted its members for so many years. Read the original article on The Motley Fool. Copyright 2019. Follow The Motley Fool on Twitter.

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2017

5.0

Let’s say you are Maurice Marciano: small of stature, sun-kissed, dapper, with a rough Gallic timbre, hooded chestnut eyes, white hair. You smell— sh-h-h —of Hermès, though with your three brothers you founded Guess, the eternally eighties apparel, fragrance, and accessories company that celebrates blondness, buxomness, and acid-washed jeans. Several years ago, you and your younger brother Paul, seeking a place to house a large collection of contemporary art, bought a hundred-and-ten-thousand-square-foot travertine-and-marble Scottish Rite Masonic temple on Wilshire Boulevard, in Los Angeles. You wanted to run away from this thing—forget it!—but you couldn’t. Now all you want is for the visitors to your museum to have the same experience that you had upon entering: Whoa . Built in 1961 by Millard Sheets, a prolific mosaic artist and bank architect, the building was more or less abandoned by the Masons in the mid-nineties, given over to rave promoters and spillover crowds from nearby synagogues on the High Holidays. At its peak, in the sixties, the Masonic temple is said to have had eighteen thousand members; its vast auditorium could seat two thousand. Unlike regular Freemasonry, which has three degrees, Scottish Rite has thirty-two, which are attained by performing dramatic initiation plays. According to Susan Aberth, an art-history professor at Bard who serves as the Marcianos’ Masonry consultant, the dramas provided a welcome outlet for the frustrations of mid-century middle-class male life. “Businessmen who sold shoes could escape their homes and become patriarchs of old and fight with swords and do things that masculinity did not allow,” she said. “It was a safe space.” The building was a Tut’s tomb of ritual accoutrements. There were scripts for plays likely never seen by the uninitiated: “4th Degree: Court of the Secret Master,” “32nd Degree: Master of the Royal Secret.” In the basement, the Marcianos found special cabinets containing fezzes, crowns, faux-chain-mail headdresses, fanciful Egyptian-style hats like the ones worn by Osiris, or Papa Smurf; a huge space devoted to strappy Biblical sandals. “Those guys like a lace-up sandal, I’ll tell you that much,” Aberth said. “The wildest, wildest was the wig room,” Maurice Marciano said the other day in the museum. (The building will open to the public, as the Marciano Art Foundation, on May 25th, with a show that includes work by Paul McCarthy, Louise Lawler, and Sterling Ruby.) Marciano wandered around the room he thinks of as “the museum of the museum,” where the Masonic objects—sceptres, ledgers, velvet capes, combo goggle-blindfolds known as hoodwinks, and, everywhere, the all-seeing eye with compass (“G,” for “Geometry” or “God”)—will be on permanent display. “We want to explain the process of becoming a Freemason. I hope they’re not going to get mad, because they can be so secretive.” An occult fraternal order is not a bad way to describe the contemporary-art scene. Some of our most cryptic symbologists dabble in Masonic iconography: Bruce Nauman’s “Topological Gardens,” in which words such as “Fortitude” and “Justice” appear in neon on classical buildings, brings to mind the eighteenth degree of the Scottish Rite; Matthew Barney devoted one of his “Cremaster” films to a Masonic murder plot. In the temple’s lobby, Marciano described how he had carefully preserved the mosaics and the terrazzo floors but removed a fresco depicting the history of Freemasonry in California. Before him was a thirty-foot-long Cindy Sherman print, in which Sherman wears a velvety tunic with an all-seeing eye, knee-high boots, and a wig. “My God! People come in and they have Cindy Sherman dressed as a kind of Freemason welcoming them,” Marciano said. Speaking of symbols, is there a more potent one than the Guess logo, an upside-down red triangle that in three strokes conjures up Claudia, Anna Nicole, and Paris? Its shape has a certain Masonic resonance. “Their thing was all about geometry, the pyramid and all that,” Marciano said. “You reverse the pyramid, it’s the Guess triangle!” Aberth, the on-staff symbologist, elaborated. “We live in a forest of signs we no longer understand,” she said. “A triangle pointing down is a really early alchemical symbol, symbolizing the downward flow, and water, which always represents the feminine. Since Guess makes sexy women’s jeans, I think it’s great that it’s a symbol of femininity. Definitely, it represents the pubic triangle. I mean, how could it not?” ♦ An earlier version of this article misstated the auditorium’s seating capacity.

art

artists

(art , museum , artists , exhibition , paintings , artist , painting , gallery , museums , works)

2018

10.0

ALGIERS/MILAN (Reuters) - Italian oil major Eni said on Monday it had struck a deal to team up with French peer Total to look for oil and gas in Algeria and strengthen its position in the north African country. The two oil companies signed a deal with state-owned Algerian energy giant Sonatrach to pursue offshore exploration in the OPEC country while working together on exploration permits. Algeria is seeking to increase oil output to boost revenues following a crash in prices in 2014. The recent rebound in prices has allowed Sonatrach to invest in petrochemicals, unconventional and offshore. “Together with Sonatrach and Total, we will have the opportunity to explore the deep waters of the Algerian offshore, a virtually unexplored geological province,” Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said. Eni, the biggest foreign oil and gas player in Algeria, said it had also agreed with Sonatrach to take a 49 percent stake in three oil blocks in the Algerian desert estimated to hold 145 million barrels of oil. The licenses cover an area in the North Berkine basin where all Eni’s production assets are located and production is expected to start by the end of 2020. Eni has been operating in Algeria since 1981 and has strategic contracts with Sonatrach, importing 27 percent of Italy’s gas last year. With strong output potential in Libya and Egypt, it is looking to help create a gas hub in the Eastern Mediterranean area. It is in advanced talks with Spain’s Naturgy to re-open its liquefied natural gas terminal at Damietta in Egypt which it sees starting operations next year. Eni has stakes in 32 mining permits in Algeria, and produces for itself around 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Eni’s Descalzi said the company is committed to investing in the North African country. “Definitely we will continue to invest and we hope to make a big discovery in the shale as the one we did in Egypt,” Descalzi said in a presentation at the Algiers’ international forum. France’s Total has already signed a $1.5 billion petrochemical deal with Sonatrach. “We will also invest more in Algeria because trust and confidence are back,” Total’s CEO Patrick Pouyanne told reporters on the sidelines of the forum. Reporting by Stephen Jewkes and Lamine Chikhi; Editing by Mark Potter and Louise Heavens

Algeria

Sonatrach

(sonatrach , algeria , algerias , ould , algiers , hamid ould , ould ahmed , chikhi , algerian , gas)

2018

2.0

Shaun White has three Olympic gold medals. So he shouldn’t mind if Miley Cyrus borrows just one of them, right? Days after flying down a mountain in PyeongChang, South Korea, the snowboarder hung out with the “Party in the USA” singer. Cyrus posted a photo of the two to Instagram on Tuesday while wearing his Olympic bling around her neck. “Chillin’ with an American legend… and I mean @leroythegoodboy,” Cyrus, 25, captioned the shot, joking about the Olympian’s popular pooch, who was also in the picture. “Kidding @shaunwhite, you are the s—! So badass! Proud of you!” She also held what appeared to be a prayer candle featuring White’s image in her hand. White, 31, was brought to tears last week at the 2018 Winter Olympics after his historic, gold-medal-winning final run in the men’s halfpipe event. He edged out 11 other competitors including three Americans: Chase Josey, Ben Ferguson and Jake Pates. “I just felt so overwhelmed,” he told NBC after the win. “People talking about my age, my injury in New Zealand … It’s all worth it now.” “It just means the world to me to come back from the defeat at Sochi to find the love and passion of those sport again and be able to deliver a run like this,” he told reporters at a news conference later Wednesday. In the wake of White’s win, a settled sexual harassment lawsuit against him has resurfaced. After issuing two statements about the lawsuit —which was initially filed in May 2016 by Lena Zawaideh, the former drummer in White’s band, Bad Things —last week, White also told PEOPLE, “Representing Team USA at the Olympics in a sport that I love is a true honor, and I was thrilled to win gold. I regret my behavior of many years ago and am sorry that I made anyone — particularly someone I considered a friend — uncomfortable.” “I have grown and changed as a person, as we all grow and change, and am proud of who I am today,” White continued. The 2018 Winter Olympics are airing live on NBC. To learn more, visit teamusa.org.

sports

olympics

(olympic , olympics , medal , biles , gold , medals , rio , championships , bronze , gold medal)

2016

6.0

June 7 (Reuters) - Alliance Data Systems Corp : * Says its card services business and Bed Bath & Beyond to launch loyalty-driven co-brand credit card Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Bengaluru Newsroom: +1-646-223-8780)

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2016

1.0

Unbuttoned If 2015 was the year unisex became a trend in fashion, 2016 may be the year the question of gender and dress enters an entirely different dimension, at least judging by the style soothsayer Nicolas Ghesquière, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton, whose ability to sense social change and give it form has made him one of the most successful designers of his generation. Or rather, judging by his Instagram feed. See, Mr. Ghesquière greeted the early days of January with a post unveiling his three-part spring-summer Vuitton women’s wear ad campaign (coming to magazines in their February issues). One section has a cast of models including Jean Campbell, Rianne Van Rompaey, Sarah Brannon — and Jaden Smith, the 17-year-old actor-rapper-designer-pontificator son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. The presence of Mr. Smith, in itself, is not a big thing. Celebrities of all ages are regulars in fashion ads, and Mr. Smith’s younger sister, Willow, was featured in Marc Jacobs’s fall campaign. Burberry often accessorizes its women’s wear ads with hip young men, and for spring has added Dylan Brosnan (son of Pierce) to the roster. What sets the Vuitton ads apart is that they feature Mr. Smith as himself, but in women’s clothing. Specifically, in pieces straight off the runway from the last women’s show: a black leather jacket (look No. 2, originally worn by Lily Stewart), a white cotton and metal embroidered top (look No. 24) and a metal embroidered kilt (look No. 3). In other words, he’s not a man in transition (that’s been done before, when Riccardo Tisci put a transgender model, Lea T, in his fall 2010 women’s ads) or a man wearing clothing that looks as if it could be worn by either gender. Nor is he a man wearing woman-inspired men’s wear, like the men on the Sonia Rykiel pre-fall runway in fuchsia-and-black-striped twin sets and velvet tux trousers. He is a man who happens to be wearing obviously female clothes. And while he doesn’t look like a girl in them, he actually looks pretty good. It’s not about the hairy-legs-in-a-skirt bro cliché. So what is it about? It is possible to see this as sheer sensationalism. There has been speculation that Mr. Smith, who has been wearing various bits of women’s clothes for a while now — a white skirt and black tux to a prom; a flowered T-shirt dress to Coachella and making statements such as “I like wearing super drapey things so I can feel as though I’m a super hero” (in an interview in GQ) — has done it mostly as a canny play for attention, or to promote the idea of himself as a new thought leader (“Went To TopShop To Buy Some Girl Clothes, I Mean ‘Clothes,’” he Instagrammed last year). And certainly, including him in its campaign makes Vuitton appear edgy and forward thinking and millennial sensitive, especially in the context of the other indie celebrities in the ads: a South Korean actress, Doona Bae, and the virtual star of the “Final Fantasy” video game, Lightning. Mr. Smith “represents a generation that has assimilated the codes of true freedom, one that is free of manifestoes and questions about gender,” Mr. Ghesquière stated. “Wearing a skirt comes as naturally to him as it would to a woman who, long ago, granted herself permission to wear a man’s trench or a tuxedo.” Translation: This is the natural end stage of the fashion revolution started in the 1960s and ’70s when women took off their aprons and girdles and appropriated jeans. This posits millennials as the real heirs to the Me Generation, though it’s questionable whether many of Mr. Smith’s 2.4 million Instagram followers are also actual Vuitton customers. But whatever the motivation of both parties, and however pure (or not), the result has its own substance. It’s not unisex. It’s not gender neutral or gender bending or gender free or any of the other expressions we’ve been using to describe the current clothes-fluid moment, because it is, in fact, entirely gendered, at least going by traditional definitions of men’s versus women’s clothing. The clothes and their conceptual allegiance have not changed at all. The person wearing them has. And therein lies the rub. Boundaries have been pushed on runways before: Jean Paul Gaultier caused a controversy when he put skirts in his men’s wear show in 1984. Then it was deliberately provocative, however; when Alessandro Michele dressed men in floral suits and sheer chiffon pussy-bow blouses on his recent Gucci women’s runway, as with Vuitton, it was more subtle. A nudge to the question of why this was surprising, at a time when gender definitions are as fluid as they have ever been and when there are efforts to codify the new reality, be it on bathroom doors or in the language of institutions. A push to the realization that though we long ago accepted women appropriating men’s clothes — and stopped thinking of it as appropriating — the idea of men appropriating women’s clothes is still largely taboo. But while runways, even in the age of social media, are largely for the fashion-centric few, global ad campaigns have a wider reach. Mr. Smith certainly thinks so, since after Mr. Ghesquière’s Instagram he Instagrammed in turn: “Thank You So Much @louisvuitton And @nicolasghesquiere For The Opportunity To Impact This World.” That could be overstating the matter, but there’s no question clothes are one way we order the world. We use them to tell if someone is male or female (or wants to be one or the other), what they do, how much money they have, what bands they like, what country they come from, etc. Whatever you do in your private life, clothes are public signals about how to read you. They are part of the social contract. If that order is thrown up in the air, how will we know what snap judgments to make? How do we know how to interpret what we are seeing, if interpretation is based on outmoded definitions of identity? How will we know what floors to shop on? What fashion weeks to attend? The fear of semiological chaos (and the force of historical convention) explains in part why clothing norms have held on so long. We want to understand what we are seeing, and we want those seeing it to understand what we are saying. But here’s the thing: As much as understanding, we also want admiration; to think we look good in what we are wearing. Fashion developed in part because the shapes flatter our different bodies (what fits best, stays; how else to explain the eternal appeal of jeggings?). Suits idealize and triangulate the male torso, smoothing spare tires and hiding potbellies; dresses nip and tuck and create curves where there were none. Mr. Smith looked good in his girl’s Vuitton, in part because of his coat-hangerlike frame (he fit the runway samples) and in part because the clothes have a gladiatorial edge. But that doesn’t mean every man will. In the end, that may be the greatest factor mitigating against the complete dissolution of traditional boundaries between men’s and women’s wear, and it may also be the real message of this particular moment: We are entering the age of wear what you like. Happy new year.

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2019

6.0

The owners of a luxury hotel in Panama City that ousted the Trump Organization as property managers last year accused it on Monday of evading taxes in Panama and creating a “false light” around the hotel’s finances. The accusations, made in a legal filing in Manhattan federal court, are fraught with potential diplomatic and legal complexities for President Trump. They essentially assert that his family business cheated a foreign government, a claim the Trump Organization characterized in a statement as “completely false.” The president’s company, the filing alleges, “also made fraudulent and false claims to the Panamanian tax authorities” to “cover up its unlawful activities.” This was originally detected during an audit last year by that country’s tax agency, according to the filing. It was not possible to immediately verify accusations in the filing that the Trump Organization did not fulfill its obligation as managers to ensure all the hotel’s taxes were paid, including those related to the Trumps’ management fees. Panamanian law imposes a tax on commissions paid to foreign businesses, but the Trumps’ management fees may have qualified for an exemption. The filing does not make clear how much money may be owed — or for how long the Trump Organization may have failed to pay the taxes — but suggests that the company’s actions on this and other matters exposed the hotel’s owners to millions of dollars in liability. The Trump Organization said the accusations were misdirected. “To the extent any taxes were to be withheld,” the company’s statement said, it was the responsibility of the hotel owners, not the Trump Organization, which “did not evade any taxes.” The statement added that the tax decisions were made on the advice of an international accounting firm. The filing comes as the Trump Organization is waging battle with congressional Democrats investigating the president’s personal finances. While those investigations present more immediate political threats to Mr. Trump, the Panama dispute could open a new line of attack on the president’s business and provide fodder for his critics. The filing also alleges, among other claims, that the Trump Organization understated employee salaries in reports to the Panamanian social security agency, which may have reduced the hotel’s social security tax payments. Collectively, the company’s actions made “the financial and operational performance of the hotel appear in a false light,” the filing says. An official with the Panamanian tax agency, reached by telephone, said he was not authorized to comment. The new accusations escalate a bitter falling out between business partners over what was once known as The Trump International Hotel and Tower, and was the only Trump hotel property in Latin America. Orestes Fintiklis, whose companies control a majority of the hotel, removed the Trump Organization as managers last year and later rebranded the property as a JW Marriott. In its statement on Monday, the Trump Organization took aim at Mr. Fintiklis over the court filling, saying he was “trying to distract from his own fraud and material breaches.” The dispute with Mr. Fintiklis began in 2017, soon after he bought 202 of the hotel’s 369 units. Mr. Fintiklis, a Cypriot citizen, took legal action against the Trump Organization, arguing it had mismanaged the hotel, which was struggling financially. In early 2018, the fight spilled over to the property itself, where shouting and shoving matches broke out and police officers arrived in Kevlar helmets. The Trump Organization accused Mr. Fintiklis of using “thug-like, mob-style tactics.” But in March of last year, a local court ruled in Mr. Fintiklis’s favor and a workman pried off the silver T-R-U-M-P name from the 70-story property, Panama’s tallest building. It was a blow to the Trump Organization, which was already downsizing as it adjusted to business realities under a presidency that has driven away some customers and brought limitations on overseas deals. In 2017, owners of struggling Trump hotels in Toronto and the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan bought out the Trump Organization and changed the names of the properties. Today, the Trump company still has its name on golf courses, hotels and other real estate ventures in 10 countries, from Ireland to South Korea, although several of the projects are still underway. The fight with Mr. Fintiklis continues to wind through the courts. The Trump Organization has pursued, among other things, its own fraud claim against Mr. Fintiklis and his companies. The president’s company, which was affiliated with the hotel since before it opened in 2011 and was supposed to manage it through 2031, has argued that it is owed at least $3 million. Mr. Fintiklis and his companies are collectively seeking about $35 million in damages from the Trumps, through legal proceedings in Manhattan, where the Trump Organization is based, as well as in Panama and before an international arbitration panel. The filing in Manhattan on Monday outlined for the first time the accusation of tax evasion. Mr. Fintiklis and his companies cited a Panamanian law that imposes a 12.5 percent tax on payments to a foreign entity like the Trump Organization. The president’s company, the filing alleged, “used its control over the hotel bank accounts to make payments to itself and affiliates without withholding the 12.5 percent tax on its management fees, thus intentionally evading taxes.” The president’s financial disclosure statements show that his business received at least several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in fees related to its management of the Panama property. It is unclear how his company handled any taxes paid on those fees because he has refused to release his tax returns.

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2018

3.0

A horse walked into a club — no joke. And city officials in Miami Beach were certainly not laughing on Friday when they shut down the nightclub for creating what they said was a threat to public health and opened a criminal investigation into whether it had committed animal cruelty. “This morning we heard about and saw an extremely troubling video of what can only be described as insane stupidity,” Mayor Dan Gelber said at a news conference on Friday. “It was dangerous to this animal, it was dangerous to the public, it was inhumane. It wasn’t silly or sophomoric. It was outrageous.” The order issued to the nightclub, Mokai Lounge, says the horse was paraded around the venue sometime Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Video of the episode shows a woman in underwear riding a white horse, which appears to slip and then fall. As the horse attempts to regain its footing, the rider falls from its back. The horse then meanders through the crowd for a few seconds before the video ends. The city order says that the footage shows that the horse was scared and concludes that the situation was an “actual threat” to public health and safety — enough to warrant the revocation of the lounge’s business license. At the news conference, Mr. Gelber recalled his first thought after watching footage of the event: “What kind of idiot would do something like this?” The city manager, Jimmy L. Morales, who issued the order revoking the nightclub’s business license, added, “I was disgusted and offended that any legitimate businessperson would think this was an appropriate action to take.” Officials at Mokai Lounge could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday night. The authorities would not discuss how the animal got inside the club, why it was taken there or other information about their investigation. But Melissa Berthier, a spokeswoman for the city, said in an email on Saturday that the police had located the horse, and had determined it to be “healthy and safe.”

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2018

7.0

(CNN)A black Oregon state representative says someone called the police on her while she was canvassing door-to-door in her district. Rep. Janelle Bynum represents District 51, which includes the area of Clackamas County, where she was campaigning. In a Facebook post Tuesday, the Democrat wrote that a woman notified police that Bynum was suspicious because she was "spending a lot of time typing on my cell phone after each house." Bynum is running for reelection in the fall, and said she takes notes when she's visiting her constituents to keep an account of what her community cares about. She praised the deputy who responded for being professional, and said she asked him if she could meet the woman who made the call, but she was not available. "The officer called her, we talked and she did apologize," Bynum said, without specifying the race of the caller. CNN has reached out to Bynum and the police department for comment. Bynum told local media that someone called 911 and reported that she was spending too much time at houses in the area. In recent weeks, there have been a series of widely-publicized instances of police being called on black people engaging in regular activities. In one incident in Ohio, someone called the police on a 12-year-old boy for mowing the wrong lawn. CNN's Joe Sutton contributed to this report.

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2018

5.0

Bank of America and Citigroup are facing blowback from Republican politicians after using their financial influence to support gun restrictions and discourage the spread of assault weapons. Why it matters: The backlash shows how private-sector gun control measures can put the companies under just as much pressure as politicians who try to restrict guns through new laws. The details: Citigroup imposed new gun control policies on its clients, like age restrictions and background checks, while Bank of America said it would stop lending money to clients who manufacture military-style assault weapons. They joined a list of companies that adopted pro-gun control policies after the Parkland shooting. What they're saying: Sen. Ted Cruz harshly criticized the banks on Friday, saying Texas citizens "appear to have a stronger commitment to protecting our constitutional liberties than do your boardrooms," the Dallas Morning News reported. Michael Piwowar, a Republican appointee to the Securities and Exchange Commission, lambasted Citigroup executives in a meeting. Bloomberg reports Piwowar insinuated the bank would "have trouble finding the votes" at the SEC to "ease regulations on derivatives and proprietary trading." Sen. John Kennedy said in April, per Bloomberg, that he "planned to file a complain...against the two banks for their 'offensive' conduct.'" Texas Reps. Lamar Smith and Louie Gohmert called for the cancellation of a $700 billion contract last month between Citigroup and the General Services Administration, the Dallas Morning News reports. "We don't have to reward companies with our business that are trying to take away Second Amendment Rights," Gohmert said.

guns

gun control

(gun , guns , nra , gun control , gun violence , parkland , firearms , shooting , background checks , shootings)

2019

11.0

When Mike Carpenter learned Google's latest acquisition would be Fitbit, the maker of a device he wore at all hours of the day except in the shower, he left his Fitbit Charge 3 on the table at his office where he was working that day. He, and others like him, haven't picked theirs up since. On Nov. 1, Google said would be buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion in hopes of boosting its hardware business getting a foothold in the health space. Google explicitlysaid in the deal announcement that it won't sell their personal or health data. Despite that assurance, some Fitbit users say they don't trust the company, and are shedding the product altogether. "I'm not only afraid of what they can do with the data currently, but what they can do with it once their AI advances in 10 or 20 years," Carpenter told CNBC, saying he didn't believe the company's privacy assurances. "Health insurance companies would love to get their hands on that data and their purposes wouldn't be advertising so is that what they are going to do with it? They didn't spend the money to not utilize it in some way." The trend of people throwing or threatening to throw out their Fitbit devices comes as Google faces a perception problem that has spanned everyday users and regulators alike. The company has paid data privacy fines in the EU and made recent strides into the stringently regulated healthcare industry, which has caused the public to re-think seemingly harmless tools. Privacy groups this week began pushing regulators to block the Fitbit acquisition, which the company originally hoped to close in early 2020. Google didn't respond to requests for comment. "I only recently got it and now I'm thinking I don't need Google watching literally my every step or my every heart beat," said Dan Kleinman, who said he is getting rid of his Fitbit Versa. Some people cited Google's 2014 acquisition of Nest Labs, which, at the time consisted of smart home thermostats. Since then, the company has tied Nest's technology, branding and device accounts to its digital assistant and smart speakers. "I use a lot of Google services and think they do a decent job, but I'm not interested in adding my health data to their systems," said Fredrik Matheson who got rid of his Charge 3 after the announcement. "The moment my wife — who is not in tech — heard Google had agreed to acquire Fitbit, she asked me to figure out which watch she should replace her Fitbit with." Twitter users have been tweeting about their plans to get rid of their devices upon hearing of the acquisition. "With news of the acquisition of your company, I intend to sell my Fitbit & delete my account," said a tweet from Tanya Janca, which received several hundred retweets and likes. "I like your product and have enjoyed it many years, but I value my privacy much, much more. The aggregation of data possible makes me extremely uncomfortable." Some critical users say they're now considering Fitbit's main rival, the Apple Watch, while others longed for the early days of low-tech fitness tracking. "This may push me to pay for an Apple Watch, and jettison my current Fitbit (assuming I even still want a thing strapped to my wrist collecting data about me)," tweeted author Stephen Anderson. "Can we just bring back Pebble?" Carpenter and Kleinman later pointed to the news about Google's partnership with health giant Ascension, saying they were glad they made the decision to leave their Fitbit devices behind. "Google could know which medications I take, and what any medical diagnosis's I have," Carpenter said. "It makes me feel sick to my stomach."

Watches

Smartwatches

(fitbit , apple watch , watch , smartwatch , watches , apple , fitness , heart rate , smartwatches , wearable)