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They arrived a day or two after the Easter Sunday bombings and moved into a low-slung house behind a high wall and black metal gate, unloading boxes from a pale gray minivan.

But the neighbors in the seaside town of Sainthamaruthu soon began to suspect that something wasn’t right. Finally, a group of local residents asked the new arrivals — men, women and children — to leave town.

Within hours, the quiet lane was turned into a war zone.

On Friday, at least 15 people, including six children, were killed in bomb blasts and gunfire as Sri Lankan security forces closed in on the house.

Police believe the fiery explosions were triggered deliberately — the final violent acts of a group whose hideout had bombmaking items and black backpacks. Their preparations pointed to just one thing: possible plans for the next steps in a campaign of terror that began April 21 with bombings at churches that claimed more than 250 lives.

The identities of those killed in Sainthamaruthu were not immediately known or released. On Saturday, after the chaos, crime scene personnel in fluorescent vests roamed the area around the home collecting metal pellets, torn pieces of clothing and fragments of flesh.

The confrontation on Sri Lanka’s eastern shore — on the other side of the island from the capital, Colombo — came amid a nationwide security crackdown and searches for suspects across the country. Police have deployed new emergency powers to stop and question individuals and to conduct raids.

But the events that flushed out the suspects in Friday’s raids involved something simpler: neighborhood intuition.

It began when Imam Lateef, 54, the vice-chairman of the nearby Hijra Mosque, received a call from the landlord who had rented the home to the group. The landlord was worried about the people in the house. Their behavior was suspicious, Lateef said, and the landlord wanted them to leave.

Lateef and several other members of the mosque walked over to the house, along a canal crowded with lotus plants.

The man who answered the door said that the family was from Kattankudy, the hometown of Zahran Hashim, the mastermind of the attacks, and the base of National Thowheed Jamaath, the Islamist extremist group Hashim founded. The mosque delegation politely asked them to leave by the following day.

Meanwhile, after Friday prayers, Mohammed Rizwan, a local shopkeeper, was chatting with a group of friends about the new arrivals. They had heard they were from Kattankudy and resolved to check them out.

When Rizwan went by in the early evening Friday, he said that a man at the house told him to get out and pointed a gun at his chest. Rizwan took off running, grabbing the nearest police officer he could find — a local traffic cop.

Minutes later, the first blast shook the house.

A second blast followed. Then a third. But this time, special police units and soldiers were on the scene.

The blasts blew a hole in the roof and wall of the house, sending tiles flying. The security forces exchanged gunfire with a man carrying an AK-47 rifle. He was shot dead.

Amid the confusion, security forces also shot at three people in an auto-rickshaw that failed to heed warnings to stop, injuring two and killing one. It turned out the trio had no connection to the house or the attacks.

Earlier on Friday, police had raided a house about three miles from the rented home. There they found a cache of explosives, police said, plus the clothing and flag used by the Easter Sunday bombers to record a video professing allegiance to the Islamic State.

When the authorities entered the home in Sainthamaruthu at dawn on Saturday, they found the charred bodies of children in a corner of the room. They also discovered two survivors. An injured woman and toddler were taken to the hospital.

The evidence left behind was chilling. The home contained bombmaking equipment, including detonators, wires, plastic tubes for explosives and three identical, brand-new black backpacks.

Outside, the body of the man shot by the security forces — identified only as “Niyaz” by a local police official — still lay face down on the cobbled pavement as flies buzzed around the corpse. Ripped pieces of clothing were scattered on the ground together with bullet casings. Torn sheaves of paper with the hadith — the sayings of the prophet Muhammad — were strewn in two places.

In the still, humid air, crime scene personnel climbed ladders and began to scour the house’s roof for evidence. Meanwhile, police officers took two white plastic sheets and created a makeshift body bag, hoisting a corpse into the back of a navy blue police truck.

Nearby, hundreds of local residents had spent the morning sheltering at a school while they waited to be able to return to their homes. The entire town of Sainthamuruthu was under a curfew, with all roads closed and all shops shuttered.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said Friday that strict new measures were being taken to identify and track people, similar to hard-line methods used during the civil war between separatist ethnic Tamils and the government that ended in 2009.

He said that about 70 individuals suspected of ties to the Islamic State had been arrested, and that another 70 suspects were still at large. On Saturday, the National Thowheed Jamaath, the Islamist extremist group linked to the Easter attacks, was banned.

“We had to declare an emergency situation to suppress terrorists and ensure a peaceful environment in the country,” the president said. “Every household in the country will be checked” and lists of all residents made to “ensure that no unknown person can live anywhere.”

Rizwan, the shopkeeper, expressed a sense of pride at his actions a day earlier.

“I feel like I did a brave thing when I went to see what was happening,” he said. Perhaps, he added, this would mark the end of the terror that has stalked Sri Lanka in recent days.

“We hope it’s over,” he said. “But we don’t know.”

Benislos Thushan and Pamela Constable in Colombo contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/sri-lanka-authorities-say-15-die-in-police-raid-at-home-of-suspected-terrorists/2019/04/27/de46eb64-686e-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html




Know about college admissions wrongdoing? Tell us here.

A Harvard graduate, Mark Riddell had an uncanny knack for standardized tests, able to calibrate his answers perfectly to get any score.

His mastery made him an invaluable commodity in the college admissions bribery scheme, an SAT and ACT ringer who doctored entrance exams or took the tests on behalf of students at least 25 times, prosecutors said Friday in federal court in Boston. He was paid a total of $240,000, they said.

Riddell, a 36-year-old former tennis pro from Palmetto, Fla., pleaded guilty Friday to two federal felony charges in connection with the nationwide college admissions scandal.

He faces a sentence of 33 to 41 months in prison under sentencing guidelines, and is the latest defendant to plead guilty in the college admissions cheating scheme that helped the children of celebrities and wealthy power brokers get into elite colleges that otherwise may not have accepted them.

Many of the students were unaware of the fraud. But in at least one case, the daughter of a Silicon Valley hedge fund leader was there when Riddell helped her with the SAT, and gloated about it afterward, prosecutors say.


“They celebrated the successful cheating on the car ride to Riddell’s hotel,” Assistant US Attorney Eric S. Rosen told a federal judge Friday.

After his arrest, Riddell was placed on leave from his job as director of college entrance exam preparation at IMG Academy, a private prep school in Florida that coaches elite high school athletes.

Dressed in a navy blue suit and wearing a black scarf, Riddell appeared calm as he sat in US District Court and told Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton that he understood the charges.

“I’m here to plead guilty to fraud for cheating on the SAT and ACT test,” he told the judge.

Riddell admitted to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services fraud, and to conspiracy to money laundering. He was paid $10,000 for each fraudulent test, prosecutors said.

He is slated to be sentenced July 18. His attorney, Benjamin Stechschulte of Florida, said he would not comment on the case.

The scheme was carried out in two ways: Riddell and others would help students cheat on tests, or fix their scores, with the test proctors allegedly having knowledge of the fraud; or, those involved in the scheme would bribe athletic coaches to list potential students as recruits, which could facilitate their admission, even if the student had never played the sport competitively before, and wouldn’t for the college.

The alleged architect, William “Rick” Singer, 58, of California, who authorities say collected $25 million, has already pleaded guilty and is slated to be sentenced on June 19.

Singer is cooperating with investigators and helped unravel the conspiracy. Authorities say he set up a set up fake charitable organizations that collected bribes from wealthy parents, and funneled the money to coaches and others, such as Riddell, who helped falsify test scores.

Earlier this week, 13 parents, including Hollywood actress Felicity Huffman, said they plan to plead guilty to a sole count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

Separately, 16 other parents, including actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, were indicted this week on money laundering charges.

The parents allegedly paid bribes ranging from $50,000 to $1.2 million.

Prosecutors have said Riddell knew the material in tests well enough, without any advance information, to help students score well, but not so well that the scheme would raise suspicion.

“Just a really smart guy,” US Attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters in March.

He first helped fix a student’s scores in 2011, Rosen said. He traveled to Vancouver, Canada, where he used fake identification and posed as the older son of David Sidoo, a Canadian businessman, to take the son’s SAT test. The son was admitted to Chapman University in California. Another son was admitted to the University of California Berkeley, allegedly with Singer’s help.

Sidoo allegedly paid Singer $300,000. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

The student who allegedly celebrated the cheating with Riddell was the daughter of Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez, who allegedly paid $450,000 to Singer, for helping to fix the scores for two daughters, and for bribing a Georgetown tennis coach. The couple has been charged with mail fraud and money laundering.

Federal authorities have also charged several people involved in the scheme, including two people who oversaw the SAT and ACT tests in Texas and California, with racketeering.

After Riddell’s arrest last month, he released a statement through his attorney apologizing “for the damage I have done and grief I have caused . . . as a result of my needless actions.”

“I understand how my actions contributed to a loss of trust in the college admissions process,” he said.

“I will always regret the choices I made,” he added. “But I also believe that the more than 1,000 students I legitimately counseled, inspired, and helped reach their goals in my career will paint a more complete picture of the person I truly am.”

Milton Valencia can be reached at Milton.Valencia@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MiltonValencia

Source Article from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/04/12/test-taker-college-admissions-cheating-scam-slated-plead-guilty-friday-boston/NWnRQq3slzuQ12BHmsxG0L/story.html

FALMOUTH, England – At what President Joe Biden calls a “defining” time for democracy, he makes his first international trip for the G-7 summit with a packed agenda.

Among the highlights: getting the global economy back on track in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that is still firmly entrenched in most parts of the world; climate change; defense and security; and easier – though no less important – talking about the solidarity, multilateralism and shared democratic values that many close European allies felt had all but vanished under former President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“This is a defining question of our time: Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

Biden will participate in the in the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, NATO in Brussels,  followed by a highly anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader he actively dislikes, in Geneva.

Biden will announce that the U.S. will purchase and donate 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low and lower middle-income countries and the African Union. The shots will be distributed through the global vaccine alliance known as COVAX, with 200 million to be shared this year and the remaining 300 million to be donated through the first half of 2022. 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/06/10/biden-meet-g-7-nato-allies-defining-moment-democracy/5288083001/



DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross.

When U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, there wasn’t a women’s bathroom near the House floor, and it would be several years before women were allowed to wear pants in the chamber. Things have changed since then. Pelosi has now led the Democratic Party’s House caucus for 18 years, and our guest at Time, national political correspondent Molly Ball, says she’s used her negotiating talents to outmaneuver President Trump repeatedly in policy battles.

Paul’s new book traces Pelosi’s political skills back to her roots in her father’s Democratic machine in Baltimore. She describes how Pelosi outworked and outthought male rivals to ascend the leadership ladder in Congress, why she became the preferred target of Republicans in congressional elections and, somewhat surprisingly, why she found working with President Obama so difficult. Besides her work at Time, Molly Ball is a political analyst for CNN. Previously, she’s reported for The Atlantic, Politico and other media organizations. Her new book is called “Pelosi.” I spoke with Molly Ball from my home in Philadelphia. She was at her home in Arlington, Va.

Well, Molly Ball, welcome to FRESH AIR. You’re working at home – right? – like everybody else, with three kids and your husband. And I’m interested in how reporting in Washington has changed with the pandemic. You know, this is a city that’s just full of, you know, tips and rumors and gossip and stories and all kinds of communication. A lot of it’s digital, but now people can’t really get together. How does it feel different?

MOLLY BALL: Really, I think a lot of what you refer to in Washington occurs when people circulate – right? – when we are around each other, the reporters and our sources and the politicians and so on. And a lot of people find this kind of incestuous, but it is, for better or worse, a big way that that sort of gossip network that you describe is fueled. So that is all a little bit harder, to keep in touch with people and to sort of know what the scuttlebutt is. But also the kind of reporting I do – I’m not mainly a Capitol Hill correspondent. I do a lot of traveling around the country, meeting people, trying to, you know, witness the situation on the ground with my own eyes, and that’s completely stopped.

DAVIES: So let’s talk about Nancy Pelosi. You know, many people’s image of Nancy Pelosi is that of a wealthy San Francisco liberal, which she is, but her political roots are really very different. Tell us about her background, her family.

BALL: One of her mentors earlier in her career, Jack Murtha, used to say about her, don’t think she’s from San Francisco. She’s from Baltimore. And that’s both literally true and true in a deeper sense, right? Her father was a congressman from Baltimore and then became the mayor of Baltimore. He came out of the machine politics of Baltimore, a Democratic city. She was born in 1940, when her father was already in Congress. So literally from the day she was born, she was part of this very Catholic, very Democratic, very Italian family that was involved in the political life of the city and the nation.

And that machine politics, as you know from Philadelphia, was very much about the sort of tribes and factions of the city. The different ethnicities all had their own little neighborhoods, and they all had a sort of boss who could deliver their votes, often in exchange for something. So when you see the kind of deal-maker that Nancy Pelosi is, when you see the kind of negotiating that she does on Capitol Hill, I think a lot of it does trace back to her roots in Baltimore.

DAVIES: What about Nancy Pelosi’s mother? Tell us about her.

BALL: Her mother’s very important to her, I think at least as important as her father. And one of the things I tried to do in the book was sort of restore the significance of her mother to her life. You know, I think inevitably because her father was a politician, her mother sort of gets erased from this narrative, but she was very much shaped by her mother. And she talks very frankly, which I think is interesting, about how stifled her mother was. Her mother had a lot of ambitions that she wasn’t able to fulfill simply because she was a woman. She wanted to be an auctioneer. She wanted to go to law school. She wanted to have her own business. And all of those dreams were thwarted because she had to stay home and raise the children and keep the house and because, quite frankly, her husband wouldn’t let her.

There was a point where she had a business. She’d invented and patented a beauty product, and she wanted to market it nationally. But she needed her husband’s signature in order to do that, and he wouldn’t give it to her. So I think it shaped her that her mother was stifled in that way. But it also shaped her that her mother was a very strong and aggressive woman, a sort of – I don’t want to be stereotypical, but, you know, the sort of fiery Italian American mother who – there are family stories about how she once punched a poll worker in the face. She was known to – she once put LBJ in his place and told off Ronald Reagan. So this was not someone who was afraid to get in people’s faces, and I think that’s certainly a characteristic you also see in her daughter.

DAVIES: You know, and the kind of urban machine politics that her family was involved in functions – you know, it’s about loyalty and favors, but it’s also just about an awful lot of hard work – street lists and knowing where your votes are and turning them out. And there’s a lot of hard work involved. Nancy Pelosi, then Nancy D’Alesandro, grew up when the machine was quite active. Did she play a role herself?

BALL: She did. Her mother was responsible for a couple of things in the household as sort of the brains of the political operation. One was the Women’s Democratic Club that operated out of the basement, and they did a lot of that hard work you’re talking about – pounding the pavement, doing the precincts and making sure everything was in the right place. And then also the favor file, which is the other side of what you’re talking about, the sort of constituent services operation, where there was a list that was maintained in the family’s living room of all of the things – all the favors people needed from – whether it was their mayor or their congressman.

And so from the time she was about 11, Nancy D’Alesandro was in charge of being in that living room and maintaining that favor file, telling people – answering the phone and telling them where they could go if they needed to get into city hospital or needed help getting housing or any of the sort of government services. So she was a very active part of that operation from a pretty early age.

And I think the point you make about how hard that work is is important because it’s also very individual, right? This is politics at a very individual level where you know every single voter, and you know what they care about, and you know where they live, and you’re turning them out precinct by precinct, block by block. So I think that that’s really important to her sense of politics as well.

DAVIES: So Nancy grows up, goes to Catholic school, goes to college and actually, after college, gets a job in a senator’s office, where, ironically, Steny Hoyer, who would later be her No. 2 in Congress for so many years, was also employed. This was sort of the dawn of the feminist wave of the ’60s. Did Nancy see her – Nancy D’Alesandro see herself as a career woman?

BALL: I think she did. She, like her mother, wanted to go to law school and never ended up doing so. And she did take this job in the senator’s office. But she also met the man who would become her husband while they were both in college. And so she ended up, kind of like her mother, giving up all of those dreams in order to become a housewife.

Now, she never stopped doing her political activities, being active in the Democratic Party, being a volunteer and pushing the stroller while distributing leaflets, but she didn’t immediately have a career – in fact, didn’t have a career until many, many years later, and it’s a sort of interesting irony of her life that even though she saw the sort of trap that her mother had fallen into, she ended up doing almost the same thing after she graduated from college.

DAVIES: So she raised five children but stayed active in the party, held fundraisers at her house. How did she get into formal politics, into the Democratic Party in California?

BALL: Well, her first ever real office – office with some sort of power, with some sort of vote – was the San Francisco Library Board in 1975. And I tell this story in the book of how the mayor at the time, Joe Alioto, called her up and asked her to take this spot on the San Francisco Library Commission. And she turned him down. She said, well, you know, I’m perfectly happy being a volunteer. I’m happy to help. I don’t need that kind of official position. And even though she considered him something of a chauvinist, a sort of old-fashioned man, he reprimanded her.

He said, no. You’re doing the work. You should have something to show for it. You should have the power that comes with it. You should be able to make decisions. And this was really a revelation for her. And when she and I talked about it, she described it as a sort of feminist moment where she realized that, yes, she should be able to have that kind of power if she was going to be doing all the work. And everything sort of changed for her once she had that official position. She realized that, particularly as a woman, if you were just sort of talking, no one might listen to you. But if you had a vote, they had to respect you. They had to listen to your voice.

DAVIES: She gets into Congress in 1987. And not many politicians make their first run at elected office for Congress and win. She, in a way, was kind of in the right place at the right time. A congressman died. His wife took the seat. She got colon cancer and said that Nancy should run for the seat. But she still had to win it. It was a field of 14 people, including one that was quite formidable. How’d she pull it off?

BALL: Well, I think there are actually quite a few people in the Congress today who that’s their first office. But that’s sort of (laughter) another discussion. But yeah, she did have to fight for it despite having the deathbed endorsement of her friend, Sala Burton, who’d held the seat before her untimely death of colon cancer. And she really did model her operation on the politics that she learned in Baltimore, on counting every vote, on knowing the neighborhoods block by block and precinct by precinct.

She knew the value of showing up. She was a tireless campaigner. She’d be up at 5 in the morning waving signs for the commuters. And she’d be out late at night, you know, speaking at a bingo parlor or a lady’s bridge club. And so her principal opponent was a man named Harry Britt, who was sort of the successor of the famous Harvey Milk, the tragically assassinated member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And this was at a time when the AIDS crisis was really coming on the national radar.

And if elected, Harry Britt, her opponent, would have been the first openly gay man elected to Congress. So a lot of the campaign was about who could better represent the gay community. And Nancy Pelosi talked about all the connections she had, her ability to be effective in Washington. But her principal opponent’s argument was, we need to be represented by one of our own in Congress. And she won pretty narrowly. She won – there was – it was sort of two rounds of voting. And she won that first round by just a few thousand votes.

DAVIES: The other big part of it was money, right? She raised a lot of money. And she, at this point, had family wealth to contribute, too.

BALL: That’s right. Her husband was a banker and financier. They lived in New York for a few years before moving to his hometown in San Francisco. And he became quite successful. So even at that time in 1987, they were quite well-off. And yes, she put quite a lot of her own money into the race in addition to being able to raise funds. Because she had this background as a fundraiser, because she’d spent so much time raising money for other politicians, she was then able to call in a lot of those favors. And she outspent the entire rest of the field combined to win that race.

DAVIES: You write that when she got to Congress, she already knew 200 representatives and senators personally and that many owed her a favor. That’s pretty remarkable for a freshman. Why was that?

BALL: It’s very unusual for a freshman member of Congress. But she had helped so many people get to Congress. She had held all of these fundraisers in her home. Her house in San Francisco had become a sort of well-known stop on the fundraising circuit. So not just San Francisco politicians, but politicians from all over the country who were coming through California to raise money would stop at their home.

She also spent a term as the finance chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, basically raising money for all of the Senate candidates in tough races in 1986. So that meant that she got to know a lot of senators and helped a lot of them. And a lot of them grew to respect her through that and also, perhaps, owed her a favor. So – and this was exactly what she ran on.

Her slogan when she ran for office that first time was, a voice that will be heard. And it was all about her connections and her ability to be effective in Washington, which, if you think about it, is pretty odd for someone who’s never actually been in office before. In fact, one of her campaign consultants looked at this proposed slogan and said, wait a minute. We’re going to run a first-time candidate on this idea that they’re effective and accomplished? And the answer was, yes. That’s what we’re going to do. And it ended up working.

DAVIES: Molly Ball is the national political correspondent for Time. Her new book is “Pelosi.” We’ll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SLOWBERN’S “WHEN WAR WAS KING”)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we’re speaking with Molly Ball. She is the national political correspondent for Time and a political analyst on CNN. Her new book is called “Pelosi.”

You know, a lot of people serve in Congress for decades but never become leaders. They are active on their committees. Nancy Pelosi decided, first, in 1988, she would run for one of these leadership posts, a whip. She stayed at it, eventually was elected the whip. She became the leader of the caucus in 2002. They were in the minority. So she told the post of minority leader and then eventually became speaker in 2007 after the Democrats won the majority in Congress in 2006. But running for these leadership posts is a little different from just serving in Congress. Tell us how you do it. How did she manage to win these internal battles for leadership?

BALL: It requires building a lot of support among your colleagues. So that means raising money for your colleagues, campaigning for your colleagues, helping them get elected and stay elected. It means proving that you have the sort of chops to do the job, proving that you know the ins and outs of the policy, you know the way the House works and functions. But it’s a lot of just building those relationships.

And interestingly, although she came from the liberal wing of the caucus, from a pretty early point in her career, she was building relationships with the more moderate and conservative Democrats in the House. And she became friends with a sort of crusty, old chauvinist from Pennsylvania, Jack Murtha, who was known for his work on defense spending. And because he saw something in her that made him take her seriously, he became a sort of crucial validator for her.

You have to remember, when she got to the House in 1987, out of 435 members of the House, there were only 23 women. So she wasn’t really going to get anywhere by getting all the women in the House to vote for her. There just weren’t that many. She needed to get all the men to take her seriously. She needed to get them to see her as someone who could do this job and wasn’t just a sort of dilettante, as she was often caricatured. So getting those older and more conservative and male members to take her seriously and to see her as a force to be reckoned with was really crucial to her being able to win that position.

DAVIES: Right. And, you know, you mentioned that in the 2000 congressional election cycle, she donated 3.9 million to other Democratic candidates. That’s certainly a way to win a lot of friends. The other thing was just the sheer level of work and the stamina she showed. What were her days like?

BALL: She has always had a really remarkable amount of energy. She doesn’t need a lot of sleep. I’ve never seen her eat an entire meal (laughter). She seems to – she doesn’t drink coffee. She doesn’t drink alcohol. She seems to live mostly on dark chocolate and chocolate ice cream, which she eats every day. But she has this incredible level of energy. And she traces a lot of it to being a mother. And as a mother myself, I identify with this a little bit. I think you find, when you become a mother for the first time – much less when you have five children – that the amount of capacity that you thought you had just increases exponentially when you – just because it’s so much work to take care of small children.

And so a lot of her energy derived from having been – having had five children in the space of six years, and having to raise this large family. That sort of makes you the leader of a caucus, in a way. And I think some of it is just natural. I think some of it has just got to be the way that she is naturally. I’ve actually asked her this question. I’m certainly not the first to ask, well, where do you get all this energy? How do you do it? And she’ll just give you this sort of blank look and say, well, I’m Italian. We have great stamina. And I think she really believes that she’s just genetically superior for being Italian.

DAVIES: You know, the other interesting thing is about having – raising a large family and, like, being a leader in a congressional caucus is, you know, you end up having to be very, very efficient with your time and get things done and yet have enormous patience to deal with people who think they’re important and can throw tantrums and need to be taken care of.

BALL: That’s right. When you think about it, politicians and toddlers have a lot in common, right?

DAVIES: (Laughter).

BALL: They’re egomaniacs. They’re self-centered. They’re unreasonable. They want everything and they want it now. And they’re not really interested in hearing why you need to get – you need them to do something else. So I do think that managing a caucus is a lot like managing a large family. And I think she did learn a lot from that. And, you know, a friend of Nancy Pelosi’s, when she was still a youngish mother, said she knew she was destined for success in politics when she saw all five children folding their own laundry.

And the way she ran the house was disciplined. It was efficient. It was, you know, her – she hardly ever – I have a hard time believing this. But her children say she hardly ever had to scold them because she would just give them that cold glare of disappointment. And the shame that they would feel for disappointing her was enough to make them behave. And so I think you see that in the way she manages the House Democratic Caucus as well, that she doesn’t often have to bring the hammer down and really punish people because they’re just so afraid of disappointing her.

DAVIES: Molly Ball is political correspondent for Time and an analyst for CNN. Her new book is “Pelosi.” She’ll be back to talk more about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s career after a break. And Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album by saxophonist Dayna Stephens’ trio. I’m Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF CARLA BLEY’S “BASEBALL”)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. We’re speaking with Time national political correspondent Molly Ball, who’s written a book about U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Ball says Pelosi has used her political skill and negotiating talents to outmaneuver President Trump in several policy battles. Ball’s book is called “Pelosi.”

You know, for the first several years that Nancy Pelosi was the leader of the Democratic caucus, she was there when the Democrats were in a minority, and so it was a matter of getting the most she could with Republicans who were in charge. And you tell a number of stories. One that comes to mind is when Tom DeLay, the congressman from Texas, called her to say that they had to reduce the number of Democrats on one of the committees after this had all been agreed to. And she really showed some spine. How did she respond to him?

BALL: I love this answer. I love what she said to him when he told her that he was going to go back on this agreement she’d made with the Republican speaker at the time. She said, life on this planet as you know it will not be the same if you persist in this notion. So she was very much laying down a marker that said – and they tried to argue with her. They said, oh, we’ll go out and badmouth you in the media if you do this. She said, I don’t care. They said, well, actually, no, this is better for you. You get a larger percentage of the seats if the committee is smaller. She said, I don’t care. We had an agreement. We’re sticking to the agreement. And life as you know it will not be the same if you persist in this notion.

So from the very beginning, she was a very tough leader. She was a very strong leader. I think she viewed the leaders who’d come before her as being a little bit weak-willed and letting people get away with too much. And so at various points as minority leader before becoming speaker, a lot of what she was doing was trying to instill a sense of party discipline and wake up the Democratic caucus to the idea that they needed to work as a unit if they were going to have any kind of leverage in negotiations with the majority. And it is still, I think, the No. 1 thing that she says to and about her caucus today. She says, our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power.

DAVIES: And we got to work as a team. It really is interesting because when you’re in the minority, you have to know how far you can push, right? I mean, and part of that involves knowing the circumstances in which the Republican leaders will need some Democratic votes because their own caucus was restive and some of them wouldn’t go along with leadership. And so it’s one thing to be tough and show steel, but to do it well, you really have to have done the homework and know exactly where you stand, where the votes are, right?

BALL: That’s right. And I think the other sort of favorite word in Nancy Pelosi’s vocabulary is leverage. She always knows where those pressure points are, knows exactly what her leverage is. Sometimes it’s that, as you say, the opposition is divided, and that means that if the Democrats are unified, they have a lot of leverage because the majority needs their votes. Another thing is just knowing what the priorities are. So in many of the negotiations with the Republican majority in the last few years, she knew that they wanted to increase military spending. So in order to get that, she was going to require them to increase some domestic spending or to protect some domestic spending that the Democrats cared about. So knowing those pressure points, knowing what it is your opponent values in the negotiation, enables her to to maximize that leverage.

And then just the fact that she is so effective – it becomes a sort of virtuous cycle, I guess you would say, that because she’s so successful at keeping the Democratic caucus united, it gives her a lot of credibility in that negotiation to say, I can bring along all of my votes. Can you do that? Because I haven’t seen you do that, but you’ve seen me do that a lot.

DAVIES: In 2006, the Democrats get the majority in Congress. She then becomes speaker the following January. And then in 2008, Barack Obama wins the White House. And Pelosi is speaker at a time when the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. And you have a president with an ambitious policy agenda. And there were things they took on like the Affordable Care Act. But it’s interesting that you write that one of the toughest things for her was dealing with President Obama. What was hard about that?

BALL: I don’t think she would say that he was hard to deal with. I think she – they – the two of them became very close. And she cherished that relationship very much. And I think he came to respect her as well. But this was a common refrain during the Obama administration from Democrats in the House and Senate. They just never felt that Obama was fully engaged with the Congress and knew his way around the Congress. Having only been a senator for a few years, never having been in the House and, you know, not being the sort of schmoozer who is always having people over to the White House and wining and dining representatives and so on, many of the House Democrats were often frustrated with President Obama’s negotiating abilities, felt that he was giving away too much on the front end and wasn’t maximizing leverage. So if you can imagine, if you’re someone like Nancy Pelosi who values leverage, that’s going to be extremely frustrating.

DAVIES: Right. Well, and she was frustrated, as many in Congress were, that the Obama administration would want Congress to actually draft some of these really critical pieces of legislation, almost as if – I think you write – the Democrats in Congress felt that the Obama team wanted to get credit for these policy initiatives but not get their hands dirty in actually doing the work of making things happen. And then I guess the other thing was that Obama tended to think he was going to get Republican support. And she would tell him, no, they will string you along and then vote against you and then blame Democrats for everything that goes wrong.

BALL: That’s right. She had had a lot of experience watching how the Republicans did business and had become, I think, pretty appropriately cynical about their willingness to work in a bipartisan fashion. So pretty much from the beginning, you know, you mentioned that Obama came in with this ambitious policy agenda. He also, of course, came in with a crashing economy. And so the first order of business was to try to do something about that. And Obama really did think that because the situation was so dire and because he had run on this message of sort of uniting the country and because he came in with this very strong popularity, he thought that he could get some Republican support.

But the Republicans pretty much decided at the outset that that was something they were not going to do. And Nancy Pelosi became a useful foil for them, in part because Obama was so popular, right? And they could always say, well, you know, we like Obama fine, but Nancy Pelosi and the Washington Democrats, they are the problem here. They’re the ones getting in the way. They’re the ones who won’t work with us. And it wasn’t true. She would’ve been willing to work across the aisle if she believed that they were really going to deal with her. But she also wasn’t naive enough to think that they were totally sincere in all of their protestations.

DAVIES: What was Nancy Pelosi’s role in getting the Affordable Care Act passed?

BALL: She was really instrumental to its passage, and I don’t think that her role has been fully appreciated. A lot of the histories of the Affordable Care Act have centered on President Obama or have centered on the challenge of getting it through the Senate. But she was key to getting it through the House. And not only that – when the Democrats lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate and had to essentially start from scratch, there were a lot of people in the White House in the Obama administration who wanted to give up, who thought that this just wasn’t going to be possible. It was too large a hill to climb, and it was looking politically toxic as well, and maybe they should toggle back their ambitions and try for something a little bit smaller, something that wouldn’t be truly universal but would maybe just increase the number of children with health insurance. And Nancy Pelosi was the one who in that meeting turned to President Obama and said, Mr. President, I know there are people urging you to take what she called the namby-pamby approach, and she was the one who stiffened his spine. Now, the president and his people will tell you that he never went wobbly, although there’s some evidence that perhaps he did, but she was the one who said, I will help you make this happen. Let’s not back down. We’ve come too far. Trying to get some form of universal access to health care was something that the Democrats had been trying to do for the better part of a century, and they were so close, and she was not going to let him give up at that moment.

DAVIES: Molly Ball is national political correspondent for Time. Her new book is called “Pelosi.” We’ll continue our conversation after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. We’re speaking with Molly Ball. She’s national political correspondent for Time and a political analyst for CNN. Her new biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is called “Pelosi.”

So the Democrats lost control of Congress in 2010. That made Nancy Pelosi now minority leader. And then in 2016, Donald Trump surprises everyone by winning the presidential election. She’s got a new president she’ll have to deal with. So how did she manage dealing with him? What approach did she take?

BALL: Well, you have to remember that, first of all, nobody, including Donald Trump, expected him to win that election in 2016. So it was quite a jolt to everybody in politics, Nancy Pelosi included. And, also, nobody knew what to expect from him as president because he had said so many conflicting things in order to get elected, had had so many different personas from sort of conservative Republican to liberal New York Democrat. And he’d sold himself simultaneously as this fighter for the right and also as this deal-maker. And, in fact, people – a lot of people who voted for him saw him as more moderate than Hillary Clinton, someone who would be able to work across the aisle.

So being the results-oriented, operational person that she is, Nancy Pelosi did not spend a lot of time recovering from the shock of Donald Trump’s election. She immediately started to think about, how can I deal with him? And they got on the phone, and he said some very nice things to her. And her very first thought, though, was, I have to protect the Affordable Care Act, because she knew that with Republicans, the only thing that had stopped Republicans from repealing the Affordable Care Act before was that President Obama would’ve vetoed it. But now that they had the majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency, it was a very real possibility. So she immediately kicked into high gear trying to ensure that the Affordable Care Act would not be repealed. And that was her very first priority.

DAVIES: In 2018, the Democrats retook Congress with a new wave of enthusiasm and a new wave of women running for office and being elected to Congress. This presented a challenge for Nancy Pelosi. I mean, there were a lot of new people in Congress who didn’t know her as well, and she and the other two top leaders in Congress were all in their 70s and there was a rebellion of sorts. What convinced her she should stay on? How did she deal with this?

BALL: She said after the 2016 election that if Hillary Clinton had won, she might have stepped down, she might have retired because there would be a woman at the table. Being the only woman leader – top leader of either party in Congress or the White House, she has spent most of her career being the only woman at the table when the president meets with the top leaders of Congress, and she believes that that’s really important. So some people don’t believe she actually would’ve stepped down. She certainly has a long record of refusing to step down, even after a loss. But she did say that she would’ve considered that and that she stayed in large part because she believed there needed to be a woman at that negotiating table.

And then also, just her capabilities as a negotiator, seeing what the Democrats were going to be up against with the Republicans in power in both houses of Congress and the White House, believing that they needed the most capable person in those negotiations and believing that that was her.

DAVIES: After the Democrats took control of the House in 2018 and then Pelosi would soon be speaker again, she had real leverage in dealing with Donald Trump, which didn’t happen in the first two years of his term. How did things change? There was an early meeting at which she made quite a statement.

BALL: That’s right. Shortly after that 2018 election, you remember there was this high-stakes budget negotiation going on between the two parties that ended in a government shutdown. And before that, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer went to the White House to meet with the president. And Trump, as he’s done in a few of these settings, decided to invite the press to stay and film this negotiation that they thought was going to be private. And at one point, they’re going back and forth about things like the border wall and whether the government’s going to shut down.

And Trump, sort of almost as an aside, says, well, you know, Nancy’s got a hard time right now because she doesn’t have a lot of support in her own party. He’s referring to the leadership battle that she was in to regain the speakership. And she immediately cuts him off, doesn’t let him finish and says, Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats.

So she was interrupting him. She was putting him in his place. She was refusing to be sort of insulted in that way. And I think that made a big impression. But what made an even bigger impression was when she and Senator Schumer walked out of that meeting, walked out the doors of the White House. And she put on that reddish-orange coat and those round tortoiseshell sunglasses and just grinned a big grin.

And there’s an – that image of that moment sort of instantly became iconic as the epitome of the woman who could put Trump in his place. And because there was this wave of women’s political activism that started with Trump’s election and has continued ever since, because there’s so much anger on the left toward Trump and the Trump administration, I think that image immediately caught fire as sort of the fighter that Democrats needed, the figure who they felt could finally really stand up for them and stand up to Trump. And that’s been her position ever since.

DAVIES: You know, it’s interesting. You make the point a lot in the book of how results-oriented she is, you know? It isn’t – doesn’t matter whether you don’t like me or whether you make fun of me in public if we get important things done for the American people – and just tries not to get involved in all the emotional stuff that can get in the way. That said, did you ever see her lose her temper?

BALL: There’s a little-known incident that’s a perfect illustration of this from 2014. So she’s minority leader at this time. The Republicans are in control of the House. And there’s some speeches going on, as they often are, on the floor of the House. And a Republican member of Congress, Tom Marino, starts sort of taunting her. He’s saying, you know, you could’ve fixed immigration when you were in control, Madam Speaker. But you didn’t do it. And he’s insulting her intelligence. He’s insulting her capacity.

So he gets done speaking. And you can actually see, in a partial way, on, like, the C-SPAN recording of this, you can see her marching across the floor, chasing him down and wagging her finger at him. And what she’s saying is, you are an insignificant person. You’re an insignificant person. And he recounted this later sort of shocked that she – and her colleagues almost had to pull her away from him because she was so incensed by what he’d accused her of.

DAVIES: I’m wondering if you can tell us a bit about how she’s going to deal with the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic. I mean, there are practical challenges. How does the House function? How can you exercise oversight over the executive branch without public hearings and staff being on sight? How do you vote? What do you see?

BALL: Yeah. Obviously, it’s a massive public policy challenge. And it’s also a massive logistical challenge. And I don’t think the Congress has figured out either part of that yet. She’s been involved in the negotiations toward these four massive bills that have already been passed, spending nearly $3 trillion to try to keep, you know, workers and businesses and the health care system afloat. And the work there is not finished. I think she regards that as a partial success. She still thinks that more needs to be done.

And in terms of the logistics, you know, the House is a very old-fashioned place. And there were some efforts to try to figure out a way for them to meet remotely or do something else. And that kind of got poleaxed bipartisanship, you could say, where the Republicans wouldn’t agree to it. And it’s become this whole highly charged political battle, as absolutely everything is these days.

So we’ll see. We have, you know, the Senate coming back this week. The House is supposed to come back in some fashion next week. And it will be a real challenge to see whether they can manage these two simultaneous problems, both the policy problem – this is a Congress that wasn’t functioning particularly well before they had to stay home and wear masks – and also the unique logistical problems of the virus.

DAVIES: Molly Ball, thank you so much for spending some time with us.

BALL: Thank you so much for having me.

DAVIES: Molly Ball is national political correspondent for Time and an analyst for CNN. Her new book is “Pelosi.” Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album by saxophonist Dayna Stephens’ trio. He says their improvised grace seems oddly relevant now. This is FRESH AIR.

(ROBBEN FORD AND BILL EVANS’ “PIXIES”)

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Kudlow” host Larry Kudlow blasted Biden for stating the top 1% get away with paying almost no income tax telling “America Reports” the president’s mantra of asking the wealthy to “pay their fair share” is a “Democrat talking point” they think polls well. He also noted that with Biden’s new tax plan, “only Colombia and Portugal” will have higher tax rates.

LARRY KUDLOW: With this Ways and Means proposal, which will come if you add in the states, this will come to 26.5% plus 4.1%. Just call it 31%. Only Colombia and Portugal, two small countries, have higher tax rates. We will now have the highest of all the big major industrial countries, including China. Is that what we want? In terms of the capital gains tax, we will have a higher capital gains tax for investment than China. Is that what we want? And will somebody look at these profit numbers and tax revenue numbers? This is phony, and they should ashamed of themselves for putting this stuff out there.

It is a terrible, factual misstatement. It goes beyond cognitive dissonance. The numbers are very clear. First of all, the top 1% pay 40% of the income taxes. The bottom 50% or more don’t pay income taxes. He [Biden] doesn’t talk about that. If you do the numbers right, over a 10-year period, the spending will be roughly $5.5 trillion, plus a trillion for the so-called infrastructure, which only a third is for infrastructure. Nobody in their right mind believes that a strong economy with excessive inflation requires $6 trillion in new federal spending. I don’t care what side you are on, Democrat or Republican, supply-side or Keynesian. No one believes that. He [Biden] just said corporations don’t pay taxes. We are seeing record tax revenues from record profits. The Trump tax cuts not only succeeded in record-low unemployment, low poverty and helped minority groups, but they [tax cuts] paid for themselves. It was a $350 million corporate tax cut and added profits and revenues within 18 months. Biden’s economists and his own Treasury department will be happy to supply him with the numbers if he ever wants to look. If you go after these company that are so profitable, you will lose $100 billion in profits next year. Roughly half of S&P 500 profits will go down from higher taxes.

WATCH FULL INTERVIEW HERE:

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/kudlow-bidens-economic-agenda-americans-president-phony-tax-facts

Three suspects have been identified in the case of a slain witness who testified in the murder trial of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, Dallas police announced Tuesday. One suspect was in custody, and two others are being sought on capital murder charges in the death of Joshua Brown.

Police said Tuesday that Brown was killed in a drug deal gone bad, and they emphasized his death was not related to his testimony in the Guyger case.

Brown was a key prosecution witness in the trial of Guyger, who was convicted last week in the killing of her neighbor, Botham Jean. Brown lived across the hall from Jean and testified that he heard two people “meeting by surprise,” followed by two shots, the night Jean died.

Brown, 28, was shot to death at a separate apartment complex on Friday, just 10 days after taking the stand.

In this Sept. 24, 2019, photo, Joshua Brown, left, answers questions from Assistant District Attorney LaQuita Long, right, while pointing to a map of the South Side Flats where he lives, while testifying during the murder trial of former Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger.

AP


Dallas Police Assistant Chief Avery Moore said the three suspects had traveled from Louisiana to buy drugs from Brown, and one of the men shot Brown twice and killed him.

One of the suspects, 20-year-old Jacquerious Mitchell, was wounded and treated at a hospital. He’s expected to be charged with capital murder. Police are still searching for Thaddeous Charles Green, 22, and Michael Diaz Mitchell, 32, who they believe fled the state.  

Jacquerious Mitchell told police it was Green who contacted Brown to buy the drugs, according to police. Mitchell said Green and Brown were talking when the conversation escalated into a physical confrontation. During the dispute, Brown shot Jacquerious Mitchell and Green shot Brown, killing him, according to Jacquerious Mitchell’s account. Mitchell said he was driven to a hospital before the other two suspects fled.

Dallas Police said “numerous tips” led them to search Brown’s apartment, where they confiscated 12 pounds of marijuana, 149 grams of THC cartridges and more than $4,000 in cash.  

Brown was concerned for his safety and didn’t want to testify in the Guyger trial because he believed he had been targeted in a previous November 2018 shooting, according to his family lawyer, Lee Merritt. The shooting at a Dallas strip club last year left Brown wounded and killed Nicholas Shaquan Diggs, reports CBS Dallas-Fort Worth.

Brown was also expected to testify in an upcoming trial in Diggs’ death, the station reports.

Merritt told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth that the day Brown testified, someone posted on one of Brown’s social media accounts, “Now we know where to find you.” The post was later deleted.

Merritt and others have called for an outside agency to investigate Brown’s death. Dallas Police did not immediately respond to a request for a response from CBS News.

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joshua-brown-murder-dallas-police-identify-suspects-in-case-of-slain-amber-guyger-witness-2019-10-08/

Critical Race Theory is a controversial philosophy – a progressive idea that proponents say can increase racial equity and which critics describe as Marxist, anti-American and neo-racist.

It’s either “a way of understanding how American racism has shaped public policy, or a divisive discourse that pits people of color against White people,” as a recent article in Education Week put it.

“CRT seeks to diminish the reality that we are all unique and precious in God’s eyes,” Melody Clarke of Heritage Action for America told Fox News Friday. “Our individual destiny is up to our God-given talent, drive and ambition, not what someone else thinks about us.”

Nearly half of all states in the U.S. are taking measures to ban it from their public schools.

CRITICAL RACE THEORY: DIVERSE GROUP OF MOTHERS FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY SPEAK OUT

The following states have already approved bans on forcing teachers to give lessons on Critical Race Theory, in alphabetical order:

Arkansas

Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed Senate Bill 627 on May 3. The bill is titled, An Act to Prohibit the Propagation of Divisive Concepts: To Review State Entity Training Materials; And for Other Purposes. The bill’s definition of divisive concepts includes the ideas that Arkansas or the U.S. are “fundamentally racist or sexist” and that individuals are inherently racist or oppressive, “whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Florida

In early June, the Sunshine State’s Board of Education banned CRT from public school classrooms in a unanimous vote and grouped it in with the New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project and Holocaust denialism.

Iowa

A Hawkeye State bill passed the state Legislature and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds. The bill declared CRT “discriminatory indoctrination.”

Idaho

Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, signed House Bill 377 on April 28. Under the new law, an amendment to the state’s existing statutes on education, public schools that teach CRT can lose their funding.

Montana

Attorney General Austin Knudsen effectively banned CRT programs in schools and state employee training programs after he issued an opinion labeling the concept “discriminatory.”

WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY?

Oklahoma

Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 1775 into law in early May – banning public schools from forcing students into mandatory training sessions on gender, race or sexual diversity.

Tennessee

Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed Senate Bill 0623 into law in late May. Among other things, it prohibits public and charter schools from using CRT concepts in curriculum or supplemental materials.

States that are considering legislation on Critical Race Theory:

Kentucky

Lawmakers have pre-filed a bill for the 2022 session that would ban not only instruction based on CRT but also classroom discussion that incorporates its concepts.

Maine

Republican Rep. Meldon Carmichael has introduced a bill that would ban political, ideological or religious advocacy in public school classrooms. It was referred to the state House’s education committee in early June.

Michigan

The Wolverine State has a bill in committee that would ban CRT as well as the New York Times’ 1619 Project curriculum, defining them as “anti-American and racist theories.”

VIRGINIA MOM WHO SURVIVED MAOIST CHINA EVISCERATES SCHOOL BOARD’S CRITICAL RACE THEORY PUSH

Missouri

Missouri is considering a similar bill, which labels the 1619 Project and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Justice Curriculum as types of CRT.

New Hampshire

House Bill 544 is similar to Idaho’s bill but also pertains to state contracts, grants and training programs. It was passed as an amendment to the state budget, which has not yet been sent to Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican. 

North Carolina

House Bill 324, which would ban public schools from teaching that it is racist or sexist to believe the United States is a meritocracy or that it was founded “for the purpose of oppressing members of another race or sex.” It has passed the House and is in committee in the state Senate.

Ohio

A Buckeye State bill would stress the importance of teaching the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights in social studies classes while also banning school district officials from forcing their teachers to introduce core tenets of CRT in the classroom. 

1619 PROJECT’S NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES PAID BY OREGON EDUCATION DEPARTMENT WITH FUNDS DIVERTED FROM NEEDY KIDS

Pennsylvania

GOP-backed House Bill 1532, the Teaching Racial and Universal Equality Act, places new restrictions on “racist and sexist concepts.” It was sent to committee in early June.

Rhode Island

An amendment to the Rhode Island Board of Education Act would ban CRT. It is also in committee.

South Carolina

A group of GOP lawmakers introduced H. 4325 last month, bluntly summarizing it as “critical race theory instruction prohibition.” It is currently in committee.

VIRGINIA PARENTS PUSH BACK AGAINST CRITICAL RACE THEORY, ‘WON’T STAND FOR LOWERING EDUCATION STANDARDS’

Texas

A CRT ban was sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk on June 1. It says teachers cannot be forced to discuss current events and that if they do, they must allow students to explore varied viewpoints without the head of the class advocating for any particular side. It also bans schools from granting extra credit when students participate in ideological rallies or lobbying efforts.

Utah

House Resolution 901, a nonbinding motion, would urge the state Board of Education to take its own action against CRT.

West Virginia

Lawmakers in both houses of the state Legislature are considering their own proposals to ban CRT and other “divisive concepts” from schools.

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Special Mention:

Virginia, with its government controlled by Democrats, appears unlikely to pass any legislation that would crack down on CRT.

But in Loudoun County, a suburb of the nation’s capital, parents, teachers and other community members have rallied against CRT in their local school district under a national spotlight.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/critical-race-theory-states-cracking-down

Univision Noticias publicó los resultados de un modelo de pronóstico electoral desde el pasado mes de
septiembre y hasta el
día antes las elecciones de 2016, enfocado en los cinco estados pendulares donde los latinos tienen mayor peso en la población votante: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada y Nuevo México.

Dijimos que Hillary Clinton ganaba en Florida por el voto latino y con eso llegaba a la presidencia. Sobra decir que eso no fue así. No acertamos el resultado más importante.

Acá explicamos por qué fallamos, según lo que hemos analizado hasta el momento. Y en qué acertamos. El modelo pronósticó
15 hechos distintos, de los cuales 14 casos sí se cumplieron, incluyendo el número record de 13.5 millones de votantes hispanos que salieron a nivel nacional.

El error en Florida

Cuando publicamos nuestro pronóstico final, el día antes de las elecciones, todos las proyecciones electorales también daban la victoria a la candidata demócrata en Florida.
¿Por qué nos equivocamos?

No podemos hablar por los demás, pero, desde nuestra perspectiva, parece haber tres razones principales: 1. que las encuestas no reflejaron adecuadamente el apoyo del voto blanco a Donald Trump; 2. que se esperaba un apoyo del 5% para los candidatos independientes, pero al final de ese grupo casi la mitad terminó votando por Trump; 3. que los condados rurales de la Florida votaron más de lo esperado.

Parece claro que a las encuestas se les escapó el ímpetu del votante blanco por Trump.

Según el promedio de ocho de las principales encuestas publicadas entre el 25 de octubre y el 1 de noviembre, los votantes blancos apoyaban a Trump con el 53% de los sufragios.
Pero el día las elecciones la realidad fue distinta; el apoyo de los votantes blancos se incrementó en 9 puntos porcentuales hasta alcanzar el 64%, según lo señalan las encuestas a boca de urna realizadas por el
National Election Pool.

¿Por qué no capturaron ese comportamiento las encuestas? Sin duda, a partir de hoy se hablará mucho del asunto y surgirán muchas hipótesis. Esta es una que tiene sentido: era socialmente mal visto votar por Trump y los ciudadanos no dijeron la verdad a las empresas encuestadoras. O bien, quienes iban a votar por Trump no estuvieron reflejados proporcionalmente en las muestras que utilizaron para realizar las encuestas.

Este fenómeno se conoce como el sesgo de deseabilidad social (
social desirability bias). Es la tendencia que tienen las personas que responden cuestionarios de encuestas a dar una respuesta que les haga ver bien antes las demás personas. Esto implica que se sobrereporten “buenas conductas” y se reporten menos conductas “no deseadas”.

Es decir: parece que muchas de las personas blancas no dijeron que iban a votar por Trump, pero finalmente sí lo hicieron.

“Hay indicios de que quienes apoyan a Clinton son más propensos a decir que van a votar por ella, que los que apoyan a Trump a decir que van a votar por Trump”,
dijo Arie Kapteyn, directora del Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research de la University of Southern California’s (USC) a USA Today al intentar explicar la falta de precisión de las encuestas.

Si Kaptein tiene razón, esa es una explicación racional detrás algunos desaciertos de los pronósticos y de las encuestas mismas.

No podemos asegurar que esto fue lo que sucedió, solamente parece ser una hipótesis con sentido que debe examinarse, en especial considerando la gran cantidad de actos socialmente reprochables que la prensa señaló al republicano durante la campaña presidencial. Algunos incluso hablan de un
votante ‘tímido’ femenino que sí apoyaba al republicano pero no lo expresaba en público.

Este fenómeno
lo anticiparon algunos expertos, pero consideraron que no tenía tanto peso como para explicar la victoria de Trump o la imprecisión de los pronósticos en el resultado general. Quizás, en ese segundo punto se equivocaron.

Si el sesgo de deseabilidad social ocurrió entre los votantes blancos, podría explicar, al menos en parte,
que Clinton perdiera las elecciones por tres estados predominantemente blancos en los que las encuestas y los pronósticos le daban la victoria: Michigan, Minnesota y Wisconsin. Estos tres estado le dieron al republicano una diferencia de 100,000 votos que prácticamente le dieron la presidencia.

De hecho, este fue uno de los escenarios que anticipó Univision.
Anunciamos que Trump tenía 39% de probabilidades de ganar, y eso pasaría si “los votantes no hispanos (blancos y negros) salen a votar más de lo esperado y apoyan a Trump más de lo esperado”.

Una segunda explicación, posiblemente relacionada con el voto ‘tímido’, es que se esperaba un apoyo del 5% para los candidatos independientes en Florida, pero casi la mitad de esos votantes terminaron votando por Donald Trump, dándole la victoria en el estado.

En tercer lugar,
como explicó Univisión Noticias , los condados rurales de Florida votaron más de lo esperado, y lo hicieron abrumadoramente por Trump. Además, 3.5 millones de votantes registrados en Florida (uno de cada cuatro) no salieron a votar y es probable que una gran cantidad de ellos se encontraran en zonas urbanas del estado, donde Clinton tenía mayor apoyo.

Al no salir a votar, le dieron más peso a los votantes rurales, quienes finalmente le otorgaron la victoria a Trump y lo encaminaron hacia la presidencia. Este fenómeno no lo capturaron las encuestas, y por tanto tampoco por nuestro modelo estadístico.

¿En qué acertamos?

En el pronóstico de la población general, los últimos resultados del modelo reflejaban que Trump ganaría Arizona y que Clinton ganaría los otros cuatro estados. Acertamos en el resultado de Arizona, Colorado, Nevada y Nuevo México.

De hecho, en Colorado, Nevada y Nuevo México, el pronóstico fue sumamente preciso, mientras que en Arizona pronosticó correctamente como ganador a Trump, aunque con un porcentaje menor al que realmente consiguió el republicano. Esto se debe, principalmente, a que
la mitad de las personas que dijeron que votarían por un tercer partido, al final votaron por el candidato republicano.

Pronóstico de Univision comparado el resultado de las elecciones


El pronóstico del voto hispano

También acertamos al pronosticar el apoyo abrumador de los hispanos para Clinton en Florida, Nevada, Colorado y Arizona.

En los otros tres estados se pronosticó correctamente el apoyo a Clinton,
aunque en las elecciones se reflejó un apoyo mayor al esperado para Donald Trump.

Esto se debió a que las encuestas de hispanos, que eran una parte muy importante del modelo, no reflejaron tanto apoyo para el republicano. Tampoco mostraron adecuadamente la intención de voto para los partidos independientes, salvo en Arizona. Mientras que en Colorado y Florida se sobreestimó el voto independiente de los hispanos, en Nevada se subestimó.

Sin embargo, en términos generales, el apoyo para Clinton se vio reflejado correctamente en el pronóstico.

Pronóstico de Univision de voto latino comparado con las exit polls


Estimación de votos

En este tema, nuestro modelo fue el
único que correctamente estimó la participación record de 13.5 millones de hispanos a nivel nacional. Adicionalmente, acertamos con gran precisión los 9.3 millones de votos totales en Florida, y la participación de los hispanos en ese estado, quienes fueron 18.7% de los votantes cuando nuestro pronóstico estimó un 18.5%.

Eso sí, subestimamos la participación de los hispanos en el resto de los estados, pero no necesariamente porque no hayamos calculado correctamente el número de votantes hispanos, sino porque los ciudadanos de otras etnias (incluyendo a los blancos) no salieron a votar como esperábamos.

Por ejemplo, sí esperabamos que los latinos fueran el 13,8% de los votantes en Arizona, pero como los demás grupos étnicos no votaron en grandes cantidades, el peso de los latinos en el total subió a 15,9%. Lo mismo sucedió en Colorado y en Nevada.

Hay mucho más que discutir y analizar. Los pronosticadores del prestigioso blog
Five Thirty Eight, de Nate Silver, también están buscando explicaciones para el error de las encuestas y de sus estimaciones. Nosotros no tenemos excusas ni estamos culpando de todo a los encuestadores, simplemente quisimos darle cuentas a nuestros lectores sobre el ejercicio que hicimos junto a la firma Cifras y Conceptos y explicarles cómo interpretamos lo sucedido.

Source Article from http://www.univision.com/noticias/elecciones-2016/por-que-fallo-el-pronostico-electoral-de-univision-noticias

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

Treinta años después de que su cuarto reactor explotara el 26 de abril de 1986, todavía existe una zona de exclusión alrededor de la planta nuclear de Chernobyl en Ucrania.

El fotógrafo polaco Jerzy Wierzbicki visitó la zona acompañado de dos guías, exempleados de la planta nuclear.

Después de que el reactor reventara, un incendio se desató en las instalaciones y duró 10 días. Eso hizo que se diseminara gran cantidad de material radioactivo en las zonas circundantes y en grandes partes de Europa, especialmente en Ucrania, Bielorrusia y Rusia.

El área cercana a la planta fue evacuada. La zona de exclusión, un radio de 30 kilómetros alrededor de la planta, es monitoreada por policías armados con rifles AK-47.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

En realidad, la zona nunca fue evacuada en su totalidad. Las normas varían de acuerdo con los niveles de radiación.

Donde está ubicada la planta no hay residentes. A los trabajadores se les permite vivir en la ciudad de Chernobyl, a unos 15 kilómetros de distancia, e incluso así, sólo pueden hacerlo por un número determinado de semanas.

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Jerzy Wierzbicki

No muy lejos de la planta, María e Iván Semieniuk cenan en su casa en la localidad de Parishev.

Cuando ocurrió el accidente, fueron sacados de allí, llevados a 20 kilómetros de Chernobyl. Las autoridades les habían dicho que iban a poder regresar tres días después.

Como sospechaban que su regreso tomaría mucho más tiempo, metieron algunas de sus posesiones en su automóvil Zaporozhets y condujeron hacia otro pueblo llamado Borodianka.

Allí, la policía militar los bañó con agua fría y a Iván le dijeron que sería empleado como un trabajador de la construcción.

Dos años después, se les permitió regresar a Parishev. Han vivido allí desde entonces, pese a estar dentro de la zona de exclusión.

En el pueblo y en el bosque que lo rodea hay un pequeño grupo de habitantes, pero gran parte del área está vacía.

Con un dosímetro, los visitantes de la zona de exclusión pueden medir los cambios en la radiación y la exposición a la misma.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

En la casa de Iván y María, 30 años después, la medición es muy baja. De hecho, está por debajo de lo que se considera el límite seguro.

En promedio, las mediciones en la zona oscilan entre 0,9 microsieverts por hora a una cierta distancia de la planta a 2,5 microsieverts cerca de ella.

En aquellos lugares donde se registra un nivel alto, unos 214,2 microsieverts por hora, es peligroso quedarse aunque sea por tan sólo pocos minutos.

El dosímetro registra esa medida cuando se analizan equipos radioactivos usados tras la crisis de 1986 en una área cercana a la ciudad de Pripyat.

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Jerzy Wierzbicki

Entre los residuos almacenados en una zona ubicada fuera de Pripyat, está la mayor parte de los vehículos y otros equipos pesados que se utilizaron en los días posteriores a la explosión del reactor número cuatro.

La imagen de arriba muestra el camión soviético Zil, enredado con otra chatarra metálica.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

Pripyat es en sí misma una ciudad fantasma.

Inaugurada en 1970 como un núcleo urbano soviético moderno para los trabajadores de la industria nuclear, se convirtió en el hogar de unas 50.000 personas.

La piscina Azure quedaba cerca de la escuela primaria número tres.

Treinta y seis horas después de la catástrofe, los residentes fueron desalojados de la ciudad en una operación de largo alcance.

El techo del reactor número cuatro de Chernobyl saltó por los aires a la 01:24 el 26 de abril.

Pripyat está a solo 4 kilómetros de distancia.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

Pripyat se mantiene intacta, tal como estaba el 27 de abril de 1986.

El consultorio del doctor, con los tubos y los frascos de vidrio llenos de vacunas y medicinas, está desierto en el Centro Médico número 26.

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Jerzy Wierzbicki

En el jardín de infancia “El pequeño osito” de Pripyat el abandono es evidente: los pupitres y las sillas están amontonados uno encima del otro y los juguetes están llenos de polvo.

Antes de la apresurada evacuación de la ciudad, a los residentes no se les informó sobre el accidente nuclear que había ocurrido a poca distancia.

En total, 116.000 personas fueron sacadas del área que se declaró como una zona de exclusión.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

Tirada en el piso de un apartamento en Pripyat se ve una pequeña imagen en blanco y negro de Vladimir Lenin.

Otro signo de un mundo que desapareció hace décadas.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

Pripyat era una típica ciudad soviética, llena de bloques de concreto de apartamentos uniformes, con poca vegetación y vías mal construidas y llenas de baches.

Esta es la vista desde el piso 15 del edificio de apartamentos más alto de la ciudad.

Sin la presencia de pobladores, el bosque cercano ha invadido las calles y los espacios entre los apartamentos de forma lenta y constante.

Los únicos residentes ahora son animales salvajes, cuya población ha aumentado vertiginosamente.

Expertos hablan del retorno de especies que se creían extinguidas de la zona.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

No muy lejos de Chernobyl hay una pequeña ciudad de vacaciones, desierta, con decenas de casas de veraneo.

Dos personajes icónicos de los dibujos animados para niños de la era soviética Nu Pogodi! todavía están pintados en la pared de madera de una de las viviendas.

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Jerzy Wierzbicki

Una instalación militar fue construida a varios kilómetros de la planta en gran parte para proteger chernobyl.

Sobre el campo militar se eleva una antena radar Duga-3.

Fue apagada tres años después del desastre nuclear.

Image copyright
Jerzy Wierzbicki

Recoger cualquier objeto dejado en la zona de exclusión está estrictamente prohibido, especialmente las máscaras usadas después del desastre por los trabajadores a quienes se les llamó “liquidadores”.

Se estima que unas 600.000 personas participaron como “liquidadores” para ayudar a apagar el incendio y limpiar el área.

Un reporte de la Organización Mundial de la Salud de 2005 calculó que 4.000 personas morirían por la exposición a la radiación.

Los guías en la zona de exclusión prefieren no hablar sobre los efectos en la salud de los locales, pero el gobierno de Ucrania estima que sólo 5% de los “liquidadores” que todavía viven está en buenas condiciones de salud.

Hoy en día, a los trabajadores de la planta nuclear no se les permite poner nada en el piso.

Todas las personas son chequeadas regularmente para medir la radiación en estaciones especiales de dosímetros.

El sarcófago de concreto y acero que todavía está sobre el reactor número cuatro está ahora en un estado precario y un equipo internacional busca reemplazarlo en 2017.

Una vez el arco gigante de más de US$2.000 millones sea sustraído, empezará el trabajo de desmantelar y eliminar el desperdicio en su interior.

Todas las imágenes fueron tomadas por Jerzy Wierzbicki.

Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2016/04/160424_chernobyl_30_accidente_nuclear_radiacion_ucrania_desastre_mr

São Paulo – Ten Arab importers are engaging in matchmaking with Brazilian pharmaceutical and pharma-chemical companies on August 5th and 6th, at the CPhI South America fair in São Paulo. The meetings are being organized by the Brazilian Pharma-Chemical and Pharmaceutical Inputs Industry Association (Abiquifi) and the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.

Abiquifi International Projects manager Natalia Porto explains that Arab companies do not come to Brazil looking to purchase specific types of products, but to engage in broader negotiation.

“Brazilian industries offer rather vast portfolios. The goal [of the matchmaking] is to bring Arabs and Brazilians together so they may weigh the business opportunities. We are focusing on potential exports, joint venture formation, licensing for overseas manufacturing, and the internationalization of Brazilian enterprises,” she said.

In order to participate in the matchmaking, Brazilian companies must be affiliated with the Brazilian Pharma Solutions project, sponsored by Abiquifi and the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil). Affiliation is cost-free and so is the matchmaking.

Abiquifi is expecting 10 to 15 Brazilian companies at the meetings with the Arabs. Registration is still open and will remain so until July 31st.

The Arab companies attending the matchmaking are Tabuk (Saudi Arabia), Bajafar Medical (Sudan), Reopharm (Jordan), Ibn Hayyan&Mohdar (Yemen), Pharmacare (Palestine), Al Taqaddom Pharmaceutical Industries (Jordan), Al Multaqa Drugs & Pharmaceutical (United Arab Emirates), Unipharma (Iraq), Biopharm and SigmaTec Pharma (Egypt).

Every year, Abiquifi holds matchmaking events during the CPhI South America, featuring importers from one single country or region. In 2014, the matchmaking will involve buyers from the Middle East and North Africa exclusively. In 2013, the guest country was Russia.

“The Arab market is a large one, and some of the countries are on our target list, such as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates,” the executive says on explaining the choice of the region. She also says she received requests from Brazilian companies, which are very much interested in the Arab countries, but find it difficult to break into the region’s markets. “Our main goal is to enter the markets,” says Porto, adding that the participating Arab companies are medium and large-sized.
She notes that some Arab countries are exportation hubs, therefore other markets can be reached through them.

As a preparation for the matchmaking, on July 30th, a workshop will be held on Cultural Aspects and Negotiation with Arab Countries. The event, at the Arab Chamber headquarters, will focus on business techniques with Arab businessmen, and an overview of the region’s pharmaceutical industry. The seminar is open to all interested companies.

According to figures compiled by the Arab Chamber, in 2013, Arab countries imported US$ 17 billion worth of pharmaceutical products. Imports from Brazil, however, amounted to only US$ 11.57 million. The leading pharmaceutical product suppliers to Arab countries are Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and England.

Service

Matchmaking at CPhI South America
Expo Center Norte
José Bernardo Pinto Street, 333 Vila Guilherme – São Paulo
August 5th and 6th
To register, send an email to atendimento_psi@abiquifi.org.br

Workshop on Cultural Aspects and Negotiation with Arab Countries
July 30th at 9:30 pm
Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce headquarters
Paulista Avenue, 326, 11th floor – São Paulo
For additional information call (+55 11) 3147-4092 or send an email to tmachado@ccab.org.br

*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum

Source Article from http://www2.anba.com.br/noticia/21864391/business-opportunities/arabs-to-engage-in-pharma-industry-matchmaking/

Virginia and national Republicans have joined the bipartisan chorus demanding the resignation of Virginia’s Democratic governor. But many of the same people now decrying his racist behavior have done little to nothing to impede racists in their own party or to fight against legal discrimination.

Since the news broke Friday that an image of two people, one in blackface and one dressed as a Ku Klux Klansman appeared on Gov. Ralph Northam’s (D-VA) medical school yearbook page, condemnations from Virginia and national politicians and activists have been swift.

Northam first apologized for appearing in the racist photo, then denied having been in the photo at all, and then acknowledged that he had appeared in blackface around the same time elsewhere — but this has done little to quell the nearly universal calls from Democrats and Republicans alike for him to resign from office.

But as the push for Northam’s resignation quickly spread, several progressives online began pointing out the double standard. Many noted that few of the same folks have called for the resignation of white supremacist Rep. Steve King (R-IA) or spoken out against racist President Donald Trump as he defended white nationalists, pushed for a Muslim ban, demonized Mexican immigrants, and made voter suppression a priority for his administration. Reminders that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Republican Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R) also appeared with racist organizations went viral. And others noted the irony that the Virginia Republican Party nominated racist George Allen for Senate in 2006 and 2012 and pro-Confederate Corey Stewart for U.S. Senate just last year.

In addition to the heads of the Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Virginia demanding Northam step down and Trump himself calling Northam’s actions “unforgivable,” numerous other prominent Republicans have selectively criticized Northam but done little else about racism in their party and public policy. They include:

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA)

The senior Republican in Virginia’s Congressional delegation, condemned Northam and said the state needs a leader who can move “who is moving us forward, not backward.” But he has not demanded the resignation of King, endorsed Corey Stewart in 2018, and declined to co-sponsor the Voting Rights Advancement Act in the last Congress.

Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA)

The first term Republican congressman was a long-time member of the Virginia House of Delegates prior to January. In that time, he voted for Virginia’s strict voter ID law and campaigned alongside Corey Stewart. He condemned the “racist behavior depicted in the photos” and urged Northam to “make the best decision for the future of our Commonwealth and step down immediately.”

Virginia House and Senate GOP leaders

Virginia State Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment, Speaker of the House of Delegates Kirk Cox, House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert, House Majority Whip Nick Rush, and House Republican Caucus Chair Tim Hugo all demanded the governor resign.  The House leaders said that Northam’s “ability to lead and govern is permanently impaired and the interests of the Commonwealth necessitate his resignation.”

Each one also voted for strict photo ID laws. Norment even sued former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to stop his voter re-enfranchisement plan and offered a constitutional amendment to permanently ban people committed of violent felonies from ever regaining the right to vote.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Cruz tweeted that “anybody who voluntarily chooses to celebrate the evil & bigoted KKK is unfit for public office.” But since running against Trump for president in 2016, Cruz has been one of his most enthusiastic supporters and has not criticized his racist behavior. After Steve King’s latest round of white nationalist comments emerged last month, Cruz called them “stupid” but refused to even say that he would not back his longtime political ally in the future. Cruz has not supported the Voting Rights Advancement Act, backs strict voter ID laws, and supported a repeal of the Voting Rights Act’s pre-clearance provisions.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)

The new senator from Florida demanded Northam resign after seeing his “horrible” yearbook picture. But over his two terms as governor, Scott was noted by the Palm Beach Post for rejecting almost all civil rights restoration requests by people with felony convictions in Florida — unless the applicants were white. He also spent much of his tenure fighting to illegally purge voters from the rolls based on a list so error-riddled that even Republican elections supervisors refused to carry out his scheme. Scott defended then-gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis (R) last summer following his racist comments about the Democratic nominee who is black, saying, “I know he didn’t mean any ill will.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) 

McCarthy tweeted that after his “past racist behavior,” Northam’s “[s]taying in office only poisons efforts to grow together as one nation.” McCarthy has strongly backed Trump and has not backed the Voting Rights Advancement Act — nor did he take any action during his four-plus years as House Majority Leader to bring a voting rights legislation up for consideration. While he stripped King of committee assignments, McCarthy pointedly refused to call for his resignation, saying that should be left up to him.

Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN)

Bucshon opined that Northam “should resign” because there is “no place in our society for racism in any form.” But he has not made similar demands of King or Trump and has not co-sponsored the Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

Gaetz has repeatedly tweeted mocking Northam about his racist yearbook and his subsequent denials with comments like, “No way America buys that it was two random people on #RalphNortham’s yearbook page right?”

Gaetz is a fierce Trump defender who actually thanked him for his comments after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. At the time, Trump blamed the violence on “both sides.” Gatez has also not called for King to resign and has not backed the Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) 

Stefanik tweeted, “Virginians deserve a new Governor. Ralph Northam should resign.” But she has not called for King to resign, has not backed the Voting Rights Advancement Act, and drew criticism for her initial response to Charlottesville which initially simply condemned “hatred and bigotry.”

Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC)

Walker tweeted:If you don a mask or a hood of racism and hatred you have no business in our public discourse. Governor Northam needs to step aside.” But he has not made the same demand of King, saying only, “Republicans as a whole have tried to respect the voters’ wishes, specifically in Iowa in this case. Even though we’ve had some things we’ve gone on record and publicly disagreed with Mr. King on, I think it’s reached a place that any time — it’s kind of like a football team. . . . If it begins to impact the team in a negative way, then you have a team meeting and say we’ve got to work on this.” Though he has made much of his occasional efforts to boost GOP outreach to black voters, he has not co-sponsored the Voting Rights Advancement Act. 

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY)

Zeldin tweeted that Northam was “guilty of lying with a straight face” about his yearbook and urged him to go to church on Sunday and resign on Monday.  But he has not backed the Voting Rights Advancement Act, has not called on King to resign, and actually defended Trump’s “both sides” reaction to Charlottesville, saying, “I would add though that it is not right to suggest that President Trump is wrong for acknowledging the fact that criminals on both sides showed up for the purpose of being violent. That particular observation is completely true.” Zeldin also hosted a 2018 fundraising event featuring Sebastian Gorka (the former Trump aide with ties to a Hungarian Nazi party) and Steve Bannon (Trump’s former chief strategist and former head of a white-nationalist-tied Breitbart website).

Ryan Koronowski contributed research to this story.


Source Article from https://thinkprogress.org/republicans-calling-out-governor-ralph-northam-hypocrites-racism-6251bd338af9/

A judge ordered the release Wednesday of the Indiana man charged by the feds with acting as the so-called straw purchaser of the gun that killed Chicago Police Officer Ella French — and drew the ire of the city’s top cop.

Prosecutors had said they wanted Jamel Danzy held in custody, and a detention hearing had been set for Wednesday. But when the hearing began, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert said lawyers had come to an agreement on conditions for Danzy’s release.

Gilbert then agreed to release Danzy, 29, on terms that included a $4,500 unsecured bond, supervision by court personnel and a warning to have no contact with Eric Morgan, who has been charged along with his brother in state court in connection with French’s death.

Chicago Police Supt. David Brown blasted the decision, which he views as another example of the lax judicial system releasing too many people charged with serious offenses.

“To say that I am extremely disappointed in U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffery Gilbert’s decision to release Jamel Danzy on an unsecured bond today is an understatement,” Brown said in a written statement. “It is an outrage.”

Brown said “the court has done a disservice to Officer French’s memory, to the entire Chicago Police Department, and to the thousands of men and women across the country who work around the clock, day in and day out to stem the violence that is plaguing our communities.”

Emonte Morgan, 21, and his brother Eric Morgan, 22, have been charged in the shooting and face several felony charges. Both were ordered held without bail Tuesday in separate court hearings.

The Saturday shooting at 63rd Street and Bell Avenue left French dead and her partner in critical condition.

Danzy, who was arrested Sunday, is charged with conspiracy to violate federal firearm laws. His release underscores the uphill battle authorities say they face when prosecuting so-called straw purchasers, who use their clean criminal records to put guns in the hands of people who aren’t supposed to have them.

“[Gilbert’s] decision sets a dangerous precedent that straw purchasers like Danzy are not a danger to society, despite the fact that his alleged actions directly led to the murder of a Chicago Police Officer and left another in critical condition,” Brown said. “The outrageous abundance of illegal firearms in our city and our nation is a major factor driving the violence that is continually cutting short the lives of our loved ones and fellow human beings.”

Straw purchasing has been characterized as a so-called paperwork crime that involves lying on a form. And straw purchasers have clean criminal records by nature, though prosecutors would point out that they use their clean records to commit their crime.

Attorney General Merrick Garland came to Chicago last month for the launch of a new initiative meant to curb gun violence, in part by targeting straw purchasers.

To have Danzy held, the feds would have had to show he is a danger to the community or a flight risk. They signaled during an earlier hearing that part of their argument could have involved at least one other straw purchase he allegedly made. Danzy admitted he also purchased a gun for his cousin, who he knew was a convicted felon, records show.

The criminal complaint filed against Danzy alleges the Honda CR-V stopped by the officers Saturday was registered to Danzy. He was not present at the shooting, it said. Authorities then traced the gun used in the shooting to Danzy.

He allegedly purchased the Glock semi-automatic pistol from a licensed dealer in Hammond on March 18.

Federal agents approached Danzy on Sunday at a Munster restaurant where he works, according to the complaint. He agreed to speak to the agents, and he initially told them his purchase of the gun was legitimate, the document said. Eventually, the feds say he admitted he was lying. He said he bought the gun for Eric Morgan knowing Eric Morgan could not legally purchase it because of a criminal conviction, court records show.

Eric Morgan was previously convicted of felony theft in 2019 in Dane County, Wisconsin, records show. He was sentenced to three years of probation.

Source Article from https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/8/11/22620489/man-charged-straw-purchase-gun-kill-officer-ella-french-ordered-released

CNN anchor Jake Tapper has repeatedly acknowledged the latest sexual misconduct allegation against Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, yet apparently has no time to talk about the claims on his own show. 

On Tuesday afternoon, the Albany Times Union published claims by a sixth Cuomo accuser, an unnamed former staffer who alleged that Cuomo had touched her inappropriately at the governor’s mansion late last year. 

Tapper, known as a regular Twitter user, retweeted the report after it was shared by Times Union editor Casey Seiler. 

CNN ANCHORS ADDRESS LATEST ANDREW CUOMO DRAMA … WHILE STEERING CLEAR OF OF SIXTH ACCUSER’S GROPING CLAIM

However, Tapper made no mention of the sixth accuser on his show, “The Lead.” The rest of his CNN colleagues similarly avoided the story.

On Wednesday evening, the Times Union followed up its initial report with a bombshell containing disturbing details about the woman’s claims. 

“The staff member, whose identity is being withheld by the Times Union, had been called to the mansion under the apparent pretext of having her assist the governor with a minor technical issue involving his mobile phone,” the paper reported, citing a source with direct knowledge of the allegation. “They were alone in Cuomo’s private residence on the second floor when he closed the door and allegedly reached under her blouse and began to fondle her, according to the source.”

CNN CONTINUES CUOMO BLACKOUT AFTER SIXTH ACCUSER REPORTEDLY CLAIMS SHE WAS GROPED BY GOVERNOR

The report continued, “The person, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said the woman — who is much younger than Cuomo — told the governor to stop. Her broader allegations include that he frequently engaged in flirtatious behavior with her, and that it was not the only time that he had touched her.”

Cuomo denied the allegations but called the reported details “gut-wrenching.”

A report about the alleged groping has since been made to Albany Police by the New York State Executive Chamber.

Tapper not only posted the Times Union report to his account but retweeted Cuomo’s response to the groping allegation, which had been posted by others. 

However, there was still no mention of Cuomo’s sixth accuser on the air.

Instead, Tapper ran an expansive report on Thursday about the latest Cuomo drama, which featured New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joining the calls for his resignation and his program’s own fact-checking of Cuomo’s misleading nursing home rhetoric in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC ALL AVOID ON-AIR COVERAGE OF SIXTH CUOMO ACCUSER AFTER STORY BROKE

When addressing the sexual misconduct allegations, CNN correspondent Brynn Gingras told Tapper, “Five women, four who formerly worked with or for the governor, have publicly accused Cuomo of either sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior,” putting emphasis on the accusers who “publicly” came forward. 

The inexplicable omission continued Friday, even after New York magazine published an essay written by Cuomo’s seventh accuser, former Albany reporter Jessica Bakeman.  

Bakeman alleged that the governor touched her inappropriately and made her feel uncomfortable in an attempt to impose his power on the young journalist.

CNN’S BRIAN STELTER GUSHED OVER CUOMO’S COVID ‘LEADERSHIP’: ‘HE’S PROVIDING HOPE, BUT NOT FALSE HOPE’

“I never thought the governor wanted to have sex with me. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power,” Bakeman wrote. “He uses touching and sexual innuendo to stoke fear in us. That is the textbook definition of sexual harassment.”

Like the previous reports, Tapper retweeted the essay twice after it was shared by two CNN analysts, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim. 

On Friday’s installment of “The Lead,” neither Bakeman’s nor the sixth accuser’s allegations were mentioned in Tapper’s report about Cuomo.

After panning Cuomo’s comments during a phone call with reporters in which the governor attacked “cancel culture” and asserted that he’s “not part of a political club,” Tapper referred to “at least five” accusers who have come forward, despite there being seven accusers by the time his show aired.  

CNN’S BRIAN STELTER FORCED TO ADDRESS CUOMO SEX SCANDAL AFTER NETWORK DELAYED COVERAGE OF FIRST ACCUSER

Conservative commentator Stephen Miller, a vocal critic of Tapper on Twitter, told Fox News that CNN’s star anchor has a “reputation” of retweeting “damning stories of Democrats” and “that’s his way of covering it, and then topics on his show are different.”

“He plays the role [CNN President] Jeff Zucker wants him to play, like pretty much everyone else at CNN. Pretty simple,” Miller said. 

Tapper did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. 

Tapper’s colleague, Wolf Blitzer did address Bakeman’s claims on “The Situation Room.” However, after a guest alluded to the sixth accuser’s groping allegation, Blitzer told viewers that CNN “has not confirmed” the unnamed woman’s claims. 

The pro-Cuomo network previously went two full days without mentioning the explosive reporting from the Times Union that outlined the groping allegation. Even on Thursday, as multiple CNN anchors reported on the “latest” developments, they steered clear of the sixth accuser’s claim. 

Nearly 40 minutes into the 3 p.m. ET program Thursday, CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin addressed the 59 New York Democrats who have signed a letter calling for Cuomo’s resignation and invited Democratic State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who expressed his support for the governor’s impeachment. 

FROM PROP COMEDY TO PRESIDENTIAL HYPE, THESE ARE CHRIS CUOMO’S BIGGEST BLUNDERS WITH ‘LUV GUV’ BROTHER

During the interview, Mamdani mentioned the Times Union report, but Baldwin refrained from acknowledging the sixth accuser and moved on to another question about the impeachment push. 

Later that day, both Tapper and Blitzer skipped over the groping allegation while covering the Cuomo scandals.

On Friday’s “New Day,” its daily morning show, CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota gently pushed back after her guest, New York Times journalist Jesse McKinley mentioned that “six” accusers had come forward at the time against Cuomo, telling viewers, “CNN hasn’t been able to confirm that number.”

CNN previously went roughly an entire day before mentioning the allegations made by Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan, a former aide who wrote an essay accusing her former boss of unwanted touching, inappropriate comments, and forcibly kissing her on the lips. 

CHRIS CUOMO BLASTED AFTER TELLING CNN VIEWERS HE CAN’T COVER BROTHER ANDREW’S HARASSMENT SCANDALS

Meanwhile, the liberal network had no problem running an anonymous woman’s sexual misconduct allegation against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after it was reported that a letter was sent to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., during the Trump appointee’s 2018 confirmation hearings. That woman was later identified as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. 

CNN previously did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment. 

The mainstream media previously hailed Cuomo’s “leadership” in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic; CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter at one point sycophantically said Cuomo provided “hope” and he would pass Cuomo’s advice along to his own children.

The governor is the older brother of the network’s star anchor, Chris Cuomo, putting CNN in an awkward position.

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Rather than cover the Democratic governor objectively, CNN allowed the “Cuomo Prime Time” host to welcome the governor for a series of chummy interviews that lacked in substance but were heavy in fanfare.

While Gov. Cuomo’s controversial nursing home policy went virtually unmentioned, the CNN anchor made plenty of time for brotherly banter, hyping the governor’s presidential prospects, and even prop comedy. 

Now, as his brother faces multiple scandals and investigations, as well as calls for his resignation and impeachment, Chris Cuomo has said he “obviously” cannot cover the embattled governor despite previously starring in what critics dubbed CNN’s “Cuomo-Cuomo variety hour.” 

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-jake-tapper-cuomo-allegations-twitter

The president made no public appearances Friday, a day after the United States recorded 2,879 Americans deaths caused by COVID-19, 217,664 confirmed cases of the virus and over 100,000 hospitalizations — all records.

Trump has spent his waning days in office not focused on leading the United States through a historic, deadly crisis but rather fundraising for his future political endeavors and sowing doubt in the country’s democratic foundations.

Regurgitating debunked conspiracy theories about electoral fraud that courts across the country have rejected, the president and the Republican Party have collected hundreds of millions of dollars as Trump mulls another run for the presidency four years down the line.

More than 276,000 Americans have been killed so far, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday predicted 53,000 more lives could be lost by Dec. 26. On average, one person died every 30 seconds Thursday.

“The reality is, December and January and February are going to be rough times,” the CDC’s director, Robert Redfield, said Wednesday. “I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress that it’s going to put on our health care system.”

Trump’s Twitter feed, meanwhile, has focused almost entirely on making wild, false accusations of electoral fraud.

Trump has held few public events since the election ended on Nov. 3, with just one devoted to the virus — a Nov. 13 Rose Garden gathering at which he touted what he characterized as the United States’ unprecedented pace at producing vaccines.

Asked Thursday what, if anything, the president was doing that day to address the pandemic, the White House did not offer any specifics. Asked about what he was doing Friday related to the pandemic, the White House did not respond.

As millions of Americans experience economic hardship, Trump on Thursday expressed general support for coronavirus-related relief from Congress. But he has shown little interest in engaging with Capitol Hill during negotiations over what form that support would take.

In pre-taped, scripted remarks that aired during the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony Thursday, Trump did briefly mention the “once-in-a-century pandemic,” noting “the goodness of our fellow citizens” and workers producing “life-saving supplies and critical aid.”

“Brave doctors, nurses and first responders have courageously risked their lives to save others,” he said.

In recent days, Trump has lamented that President-elect Joe Biden could receive credit for the vaccines. Inoculations may begin as soon as late next week — pending authorization by the Food and Drug Administration — although most doses would be distributed after Biden takes office in January.

Trump on Wednesday posted a 46-minute diatribe filled with a dizzying array of falsehoods about the election he lost — which he delivered standing at a podium with the presidential seal, in the White House.

Declaring “this may be the most important speech I’ve ever made,” he only briefly mentioned the coronavirus — blaming Democrats for “using the pandemic as a pretext” to expand access to voting by mail.

“It is important for Americans to understand,” he said, “that these destructive changes to our election laws were not a necessary response to the pandemic.”

Trump offered no evidence to back his claim. He also made no reference to the virus’s victims.

As the president’s words and tweets became further detached from reality over the past month, more Americans died.

Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parsacle, said in an interview this week that he thought Trump’s lack of public empathy tipped the election in Biden’s favor.

“I think it was the decision on COVID to go for opening the economy vs. public empathy,” Parscale said in an interview with Fox News that aired Tuesday. “And I think a young family with a young child who, one, were scared to take them back to school, wanted to see an empathetic president and an empathetic Republican Party.”

“I think he could have leaned into it, instead of run away from it,” Parscale added.

Instead, Trump’s White House has become a poster child for behavior public health experts say will make the situation worse.

It has begun hosting large, indoor holiday parties — directly contradicting guidance from the CDC — one of which Trump attended on Monday. Few of the attendees wore masks or practiced social distancing.

Dozens of White House officials, Trump allies, campaign officials and others have tested positive for COVID-19 in a series of outbreaks, including the president, first lady and their 14-year-old son, sometimes after large or indoor events.

West Wing staffers eschew mask-wearing, and the president has publicly mocked those who follow common-sense precautions.

The president plans to hold another packed, outdoor campaign rally in Georgia Saturday for two GOP candidates facing Senate runoffs. It appears to be styled after the dozens he held in the final days of his reelection campaign, when thousands of his supporters crammed together and most did not wear masks.

ABC News’ Anne Flaherty and Josh Margolin contributed reporting.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-fixated-political-fate-virus-kills-record-number/story?id=74536821

São Paulo – In 2013, Brazilian companies became more international than in 2012. According to a survey conducted by Dom Cabral Foundation, last year Brazilian companies attained 22.9% of internationalization. In 2012, the rate was 21.3%. The study covered 52 multinational companies and 14 companies which operate abroad via franchises.

The internationalization or transnationality index is the result of three calculations performed by the Dom Cabral Foundation: ratio of assets abroad to total assets; ratio of foreign revenue to total revenue; and ratio of foreign workforce to total workforce.

As per these ratios, construction company Norberto Odebrecht was the most international business in 2013, with a 0.549 score. Next on the list are Gerdau (steel), InterCement (cement), Stefanini (software consulting), Metalfrio (refrigerators), Magnesita (steel), Marfrig (meat), JBS (meat), Artecola (chemicals) and Ibope (statistics institute). This was the first time in the last four editions of the ranking that JBS did not top the list.

The ranking of companies active in the highest number of countries is topped by Stefanini, operating in 32 countries, followed by the electric engine manufacturer WEG, active in 31 countries, the mining company Vale, in 27 countries, bus manufacturer Marcopolo (25) and the bank Banco do Brasil (24).

In revenues, JBS leads the ranking, followed by Norberto Odebrecht, Magnesita, Marfrig and Gerdau. The ranking by assets is topped by Magnesita, followed by the meat plant Minerva Foods, Stefanini, Metalfrio and Gerdau. In the workforce index, the most international company is InterCement, followed by Marfrig, JBS, Metalfrio and Gerdau.

The ranking has shown that the Brazilian multinationals surveyed operate in 89 countries. The United States has the strongest Brazilian presence: 39 companies in total, followed by Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, China, Venezuela, Paraguay, Portugal, Bolivia and the United Kingdom.

Countries and franchises

Among the Arab countries, Brazilian companies are present in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Oman. In Kuwait, Brazilian companies operate via franchises only. The survey shows that in 2013 five Brazilian companies fled Argentina due to its struggling economy. Brazilian companies did not flee Arab countries; in fact Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Lebanon received one new Brazilian company each.

The most internationalized franchise-based company was car rental group Localiza, followed by the natural food store chain Mundo Verde, grooming parlor chain DepylAction, eyewear retailer Chilli Beans, shoe retailer Datelli, clothes manufacturer Hering, fast food chain Giraffas, yoghurt store chain Yogoberry, shoe store chain Arezzo and beauty spa Magrass.

As regards franchises, the index is calculated based on ratio of stores abroad to total number of stores; royalties from foreign operations to total royalties; and revenue from foreign franchisees’ sales in comparison to total franchisees’ sales.

According to the survey, 65.1% of the companies surveyed plan on expanding their operations in countries they already operate in this year, and 55.6% plan on entering new countries. The survey’s coordinator, Sherban Cretoiu, said the companies were more optimistic about sales abroad than domestic sales, which may be related to the slowdown in Brazil’s economy.

*Translated by Rodrigo Mendonça

Source Article from http://www2.anba.com.br/noticia/21864728/industry/odebrecht-outranks-jbs-as-brazils-most-international-company/

The FDA, CDC and American Medical Association have all warned against the use of ivermectin (shown here in India) in treating COVID-19 patients.

Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Getty Images


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Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The FDA, CDC and American Medical Association have all warned against the use of ivermectin (shown here in India) in treating COVID-19 patients.

Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Getty Images

A judge in Ohio has reversed an earlier emergency order that required a hospital to administer ivermectin to a COVID-19 patient against the hospital’s wishes. The anti-parasitic drug is most commonly used in the U.S. as a dewormer in animals.

Federal agencies and medical associations alike have cautioned against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, as there is little evidence it is effective. But prescriptions — and related calls to poison control centers — have skyrocketed in 2021 as right-wing media have hyped it as a treatment for COVID-19.

A previous ruling by a different judge had ordered the hospital, West Chester Hospital near Cincinnati, to administer the drug to a patient after his wife brought suit over the hospital’s refusal to administer a prescription written by an outside doctor.

“After considering all of the evidence presented in this case, there can be no doubt that the medical and scientific communities do not support the use of ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19,” Judge Michael A. Oster wrote in the new ruling, issued Monday.

Ivermectin is used in humans to treat parasites such as lice and the worms that cause river blindness. It is also approved by the Food and Drug Administration for similar use in animals, including as a livestock dewormer and a heartworm preventative for dogs and cats.

But the FDA, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and American Medical Association have all warned against using ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment until additional clinical trials can be completed. The National Institutes of Health, which has not issued a formal recommendation, says most existing studies about the drug’s ability to fight COVID-19 “had incomplete information and significant methodological limitations.”

At the center of the lawsuit affected by Monday’s order is Jeffrey Smith, who tested positive for the coronavirus in July, court records say.

After Smith was admitted to West Chester Hospital, his condition deteriorated steadily. In mid-July, he was transferred to the intensive care unit. On Aug. 1, he was placed on a ventilator. By Aug. 20, doctors put him in a medically induced coma.

His wife, Julie Smith, contacted Dr. Fred Wagshul, affiliated with the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which has lobbied for the use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients. He is not board certified within any specialty and has not worked at a hospital in 10 years, according to his own testimony.

Wagshul provided a prescription for ivermectin, doing so without having seen Smith and despite lacking medical privileges at West Chester Hospital, court records say.

The hospital refused to administer the drug, saying it would interfere with other medications.

When Julie Smith filed suit, a different judge granted an emergency injunction on Aug. 23 that ordered West Chester Hospital to begin administering 30 milligrams daily for 21 days. The Smiths’ attorney say that Jeffrey Smith’s condition has since improved.

But in another hearing last week, doctors from West Chester Hospital told the court that ivermectin had not helped their patient. Wagshul, testifying on behalf of the Smiths, did not convince the judge otherwise.

“Plaintiff’s own witness … testified that ‘I honestly don’t know’ if continued use of ivermectin will benefit Jeff Smith,” Oster wrote in the ruling.

“While this court is sympathetic to the Plaintiff and understands the idea of wanting to do anything to help her loved one, public policy should not and does not support allowing a physician to try ‘any’ type of treatment on human beings,” the judge wrote.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/09/07/1034947315/ivermectin-ohio-hospital-order-judge

Derechos de autor de la imagen
Oficina del Alguacil del condado de Hillsborough

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Mowry enfrenta cargos de abuso sexual.

Cuando tenía 22 años, en enero de 2014, Marissa Ashley Mowry tuvo relaciones sexuales con un menor de 11 años en una casa cerca de la ciudad de Tampa, Florida, en el sureste de Estados Unidos, según las autoridades.

Mowry quedó embarazada y en octubre de 2014 dio a luz a su hijo.

La mujer y el joven padre siguieron teniendo relaciones sexuales “múltiples veces” hasta que este cumplió 14 años, según la Oficina del Alguacil del Condado de Hillsborough, Florida.

Debido a estos hechos, Mowry, ahora de 25 años, fue arrestada el martes, informó la Oficina del Alguacil.

Fue detenida a la salida del parque temático Busch & Gardens, en Tampa, donde trabajaba en un puesto de comida, según los medios estadounidenses.

3 años después

La joven enfrenta cargos de abuso sexual contra una víctima menor de 12 años, de acuerdo con la Oficina del Alguacil.

El menor, que ahora tiene 15 años, “cooperó” con la investigación, le dijo la Oficina del Alguacil a BBC Mundo.

La mujer ha sido acusada recién ahora, tres años después de que supuestamente cometiera el delito, “porque el caso no fue reportado en 2014”, añadió la entidad.

El Registro Estatal de Abuso de Florida recibió un reporte anónimo en abril de 2017 y lo transmitió a las autoridades de Hillsborough, según le contó a BBC Mundo Larry Mckinnon, vocero de la Oficina del Alguacil.

Según le comentó la policía a la prensa, Mowry no tiene abogado por el momento. De ser hallada culpable, podría ir a prisión de por vida, indicó McKinnon.

Por su parte el hijo, que ahora tiene 3 años, vivirá “con un adulto responsable”.

La División de Protección Infantil del condado está colaborando en la investigación del caso, según las autoridades de Hillsborough.

Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-40451878











La Presidenta Cristina Fernandez se refirió anoche, a la cantidad de “noticias negativas” que se difunden en radio y televisión, según un análisis realizado por la Jefatura de Gabinete, que maneja Jorge Capitanich.


“Si alguno me proyecta la del circulito rojo, de las radios”, pidió ayer la mandataria en medio del acto que encabezó en la Casa Rosada para presentar el plan de 12 cuotas sin interés “Ahora 12”, y así comenzó su exposición sobre “la cadena del desánimo”, como suele llamar a los medios que informan supuestas “malas noticias”.


Según aseguró, el 79 por ciento de las noticias que se emiten en las primeras horas de los programas radiales son “negativas”, el 17 por ciento son “positivas” y el 4 por ciento son “neutras”. Cristina Kirchner no explicó a qué correspondía específicamente cada etiqueta.


No pueden pasar tantas cosas negativas, porque si no las gentes estarían suicidándose, realmente si todo esto pasara realmente en el país…


“No pueden pasar tantas cosas negativas, porque si no las gentes estarían suicidándose, realmente si todo esto pasara realmente en el país… (sic.)”, dijo la mandataria, antes de exponer un gráfico de torta en el que la porción más grande estaba pintada de roja y correspondía a las “malas noticias”.


“Analizamos las noticias, y los programas periodísticos, de primera y segunda mañana, tienen 79 por ciento de noticias políticas y económicas negativas; un 17 por ciento positivas y un 4 por ciento neutras”, expuso la Presidenta, que luego marcó una excepción a su propia regla: “¿No me creen? Vamos a los medios para que vean. Radio Nacional es la única positiva, bueno fuera también que Radio Nacional fuera también mala onda y neutra una sola: Del Plata, el resto… ¡Dios mío! Apágalo porque si no te das un tiro, está hecho todo por grupos, por medios, por segundo, por participación”.


Finalmente, Cristina Kirchner aseguró que no escucha radio









Source Article from http://www.continental.com.ar/noticias/actualidad/la-presidenta-dice-que-las-radios-dan-malas-noticias/20140912/nota/2411506.aspx

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AP

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Corea del Sur detectó el lanzamiento de los misiles de Corea del Norte, pero estos no iban dirigidos a ningún objetivo específico. (Imagen de archivo)

Corea del Norte lanzó seis misiles de corto alcance hacia el mar de su costa este en la madrugada de este jueves (hora local).

La acción, que fue detectada por el ejército de Corea del Sur, se llevó a cabo horas después de que el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU autorizó nuevas sanciones en contra de Pyongyang.

Según medios de Corea del Sur, los proyectiles ascendieron unos 150 km antes de caer al mar y no parecían tener un objetivo específico.

Los observadores aseguran que es probable que se incrementen las tensiones en la península coreana después de las sanciones, que fueron impuestas en respuesta a la prueba nuclear que Corea del Norte realizó en enero y al lanzamiento de un cohete en febrero.

Samantha Power, la embajadora de Estados Unidos ante la ONU, afirmó que los castigos definidos por esta nueva resolución son los más severos que se han impuesto en 20 años.

Un funcionario surcoreano le dijo a la agencia de noticias oficial Yonhap que los proyectiles fueron disparados a alrededor de las 10.00 hora local desde Wonsan, en la costa este del país.

Indicó que se trataba de cohetes o misiles guiados.

Más tensiones

El corresponsal de la BBC en Seúl, Steve Evans, afirma que el lanzamiento de misiles es visto en Corea del Sur como una señal de indignación y desafío de Corea del Norte.

“Y se espera lleven a cabo más lanzamientos”, agrega.

“Es un ritual que se ha llevado a cabo muchas veces en el pasado que resulta en un incremento de tensiones. En este caso, después de la prueba nuclear y lanzamiento del cohete a principios de año siguió la clausura de un complejo industrial conjunto y las sanciones de la ONU”, afirma el corresponsal.

La próxima semana se llevarán a cabo los ejercicios conjuntos regulares entre Corea del Sur y EE.UU.

“Cada año, cuando esto ocurre, Corea del Norte manifiesta mucha indignación” -señala Steve Evans- “y afirma que están practicando para llevar a cabo una invasión”.

“Este año habrá mucho más tensión. La retórica de Pyongyang ha sido temible. Los medios estatales han vinculado a la presidenta surcoreana con un ‘murciélago que vive en una cueva sórdida’. Dicen que ella ‘se levantaría la falda’ por los estadounidenses”.

“Ante todo esto, la gran pregunta ahora es si Corea del Norte realizará una quinta prueba nuclear”, afirma el corresponsal de la BBC.

Según los observadores es difícil predecir si esto ocurrirá.

La cuarta prueba nuclear surgió de la nada. Corea del Norte logró esconder todos los preparativos y podría estar llevando a cabo nuevamente el trabajo de forma encubierta bajo los entrometidos ojos de los satélites.

Nuevas sanciones

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Naciones Unidas

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La ONU también ha prohibido la venta de armas ligeras a Corea del Norte.

Las nuevas sanciones prevén, entre otras medidas, que todos los cargamentos que reciba la nación liderada por Kim Jong-un sean inspeccionados para verificar que no haya materiales que pudieran utilizarse para su programa balístico y nuevas limitaciones a sus exportaciones e importaciones.

Además, se agregan 13 personas a la lista de individuos que tienen prohibido viajar y cuyos activos quedan congelados.

Se espera que la tensión en la península coreana aumente a causa de estas sanciones.

Los medios norcoreanos ya han atacado verbalmente a la presidenta de Corea del Sur, Park Geun-hye, a la que han descrito como un “murciélago que vive en una sucia cueva”.

Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2016/03/160303_internacional_corea_norte_misiles_sanciones_ppb