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(CNN)On Monday, cathedral bells tolled at midday in Cape Town as South Africa began a week of mourning for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died on Sunday.

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    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/27/africa/desmond-tutu-lgbtq-climate-palestine-reaction-intl/index.html

    LAWRENCE, Massachusetts – Vowing to “fight my heart out,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday formally declared her candidacy for president.

    The populist Democratic senator, who was re-elected in November to a second term representing Massachusetts, pushed her progressive platform as she told her life story of growing up “on the ragged edge of the middle class” and spotlighted her efforts on behalf of working class Americans.

    BACKDROP FOR WARREN CAMPAIGN IS SANCTUARY CITY, SITE OF MASSIVE FENTANYL BUSY

    But Warren made no mention of the swirling controversy over her longstanding claims of Native American heritage, which resurfaced over the last week and served as a major distraction as the senator geared up for her much anticipated official campaign launch.

    “This is the fight our lives. The fight to build an America were dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way. And that is why I stand here today to declare that I am a candidate for president of the United States,” Warren said in this working class city that sits along the Merrimack River in northern Massachusetts.

    Warren promised to fight so “that every kid in America can have the same opportunity I had – a fighting chance to build something real.”

    Warren spotlighted her upbringing in Oklahoma, saying “when my daddy had a heart attack, my family nearly tumbled over the financial cliff.”

    But as expected, she didn’t say a word about her claims of Native American ancestry, which first surfaced during her 2012 victory over then-Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

    Her October release of a DNA test, meant to bolster her longstanding claims in hopes of settling the controversy before she launched a presidential bid, was widely panned. The move was intended to rebut Trump’s controversial taunts of Warren as “Pocahontas.” Instead, her use of a genetic test to prove ethnicity spurred controversy that seemed to blunt any argument she sought to make.

    WHO’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2020? GROWING FIELD OF CANDIDATES JOIN RACE FOR DEMOCRATIC NOD

    The taking of the DNA test also angered some tribal leaders of the Cherokee Nation, which resulted in an apology by Warren to the tribe last week. And she apologized again in the last couple of days after the surfacing of a 1986 registration card for the Texas state bar showed that she had written “American Indian” as her race. The inability to put the controversy to rest has proved to be a distraction to Warren, taking her off message in the days leading up to her presidential announcement.

    Warren supporter Joy Wieder of Acton, who traveled 30 miles to see the senator announce her candidacy, said the Native American controversy “bothers me but I think there have been worse sins by politicians and I think that her strengths outweigh what her questionable actions in the past have been.”

    Another Warren supporter, Alissa Onigman of Reading, said she doesn’t care about the stories. But she added that “I think it’s a distraction technique” used by the senator’s opponents.

    The historic Everett Mills, where Warren declared her candidacy, was the site of the two-month long Bread and Roses strike in 1912, when textile workers protested a cut in pay implemented after a shortening of the workweek for women.

    Speaking in front of the massive textile mill buildings on a windy and chilly winter day, Warren told the crowd –estimated at 3,500 by the campaign – that “the textile workers here in Lawrence more than 100 years ago won their fight because they refused to be divided. Today, we gather on those same streets, ready to stand united again.”

    Touting that she’s “been in this fight for a long time,” Warren argued that “the rules in our country have been rigged” against women, African Americans and Latinos, Native Americans, immigrants, people with disabilities black Americans

    And she highlighted that “the rules of our economy have gotten rigged so far in favor of the rich and powerful that everyone else is at risk of being left behind.”

    “Rich guys have been waging class warfare against hard working people for decades. I say it’s time to fight back,” she emphasized.

    Warren spotlighted her push for government investments in child care, college, infrastructure, clean energy and the Green New Deal. She advocated for the proposed big government Medicare for All program, and for criminal justice reform.  The senator also vowed to fight for voting rights and repeated her pledge to refuse to accept contributions from federal lobbyists and political action committees (PACs).

    She didn’t mention by name Republican President Donald Trump. But she criticized the president, saying “the man in the White House is not the cause of what’s broken, he’s just the latest and most extreme symptom of what’s gone wrong in America.”

    President Trump’s 2020 campaign called her a “fraud” minutes before she made her announcement.

    “Elizabeth Warren has already been exposed as a fraud by the Native Americans she impersonated and disrespected to advance her professional career, and the people of Massachusetts she deceived to get elected,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and crush America’s middle-class. Only under President Trump’s leadership will America continue to grow safer, secure and more prosperous.”

    The senator was introduced and endorsed by Rep. Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, a rising star in the Democratic Party. And she was also backed by the Bay State’s other senator, veteran Democrat Ed Markey, who also spoke at the rally.

    Warren formally enters a Democratic field that’s shaping up as the most crowded in decades, a field that includes some of her Senate colleagues. Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey have already declared their candidacies, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York launched an exploratory committee. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota’s expected to jump into the race on Sunday.

    Another Senate colleague and fellow populist – independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont – appears to be moving towards making a second straight run for the Democratic nomination.

    Also in the race are former San Antonio, Texas mayor and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

    Former Vice President Joe Biden and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas are seriously mulling White House runs, as are Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, billionaire media mogul and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Rep. Eric Swalwell of California.

    CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

    After her announcement in Lawrence, Warren beelined for neighboring New Hampshire, where she’ll hold an organizing event in Dover, a working class city and Democratic stronghold located along the border with Maine. The first in the nation primary-state is considered a ‘must win’ for the senator. Warren campaigns Sunday in Iowa – which votes first in the White House race – holding events in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Davenport.

    Warren’s kick-off tour also takes her to South Carolina, which holds the first southern primary, and Nevada, which holds the first western contest, as well as Georgia and California.

    Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-formally-launches-2020-presidential-bid

    El secretario de Inteligencia, Oscar Parrilli, y su subsecretario, Martín Mena, solicitaron hoy a la Justicia una medida cautelar para que le prohíban a la revista Noticias que siga divulgando información sobre la ex SIDE, después de que esa publicación diera a conocer, en su última edición, un listado de 138 supuestos flamantes integrantes de la agencia.

    Según informó la agencia oficial Télam, Parrilli y Mena pidieron a la Justicia que impida “que la revista Noticias siga violando la Ley 25.520 de Inteligencia Nacional con ‘la divulgación de información sensible para el normal funcionamiento de ese organismo y que compromete la seguridad nacional’”.

    El pedido puntual es que los denunciados -el dueño de editorial Perfil, Jorge Fontevecchia; el editor de Noticias, Edi Zunino, y el periodista Rodis Recalt- se abstengan de “realizar publicaciones que impliquen la continuidad del delito atribuido” y sean obligados “a abstenerse de revelar información a la que de cualquier forma pudieran haber accedido y cuya divulgación infrinja” el secreto sobre la agencia de seguridad.

    El escrito cita jurisprudencia de la Corte, sostiene que la denuncia no afecta a la libertad de expresión y afirma que “la línea editorial del medio gráfico involucrado, anterior y posterior a la publicación de la noticia que motiva esta denuncia (el listado de los 138 supuestos agentes), evidencia un deliberado desprecio hacia la norma infringida”.

    Tanto a través de las redes sociales como en su sitio de Internet, Noticias publicó la información asegurando que “la SIDE de Parrilli busca frenar la salida” de su próxima edición.

    La agencia Télam resalta que la publicación de las fotos de los supuestos agentes de seguridad “está prohibida por la ley 25.520” y menciona que en uno de los párrafos del pedido de la cautelar Parrilli enfatiza que “quienes cometen delitos son delincuentes, sean de la profesión que fueran, periodistas, médicos, etc. y no existe franquicia profesional para cometerlos”.

    Source Article from http://www.cronista.com/economiapolitica/La-ex-SIDE-pidio-que-la-Justicia-le-prohiba-a-Noticias-divulgar-informacion-sobre-el-organismo-20150319-0122.html

    Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, has criticised Donald Trump’s reelection campaign for using his words out of context to make it appear as if he was praising the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

    “In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci said in a statement to CNN on Sunday. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the [Republican] campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”

    In the video released on Saturday, Fauci can be heard saying “I can’t imagine that … anyone could be doing more” as the advert boasts of Trump’s response to Covid-19, which has claimed the lives of more than 214,000 Americans and infected more than 7.7m people.

    The clip came from an interview Fauci gave to Fox News, in which he was describing the work that he and other members of the White House coronavirus task force undertook to respond to the virus, not Trump.

    Aaron Rupar
    (@atrupar)

    Fauci has responded to this: “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago.” (via @jaketapper) https://t.co/G57Q9rqCXj


    October 11, 2020

    A majority of Americans do not approve of the president’s handling of the crisis, according to several recent polls. The Trump campaign said it would not stop running the adverts.

    “These are Dr Fauci’s own words,” said Trump’s communication director Tim Murtaugh. “The video is from a nationally broadcast television interview in which Dr Fauci was praising the work of the Trump administration.

    “The words are accurate and directly from Dr Fauci’s mouth.”

    For months during the course of the pandemic, Trump has often been at odds with Fauci, delivering contradictory public health messages and publicly expressing frustration with the doctor’s more sober take on the crisis.

    In the spring, as the virus ravaged the north-east of the country, Fauci was a regular at the White House’s coronavirus press briefings. But in June, Fauci said he was no longer invited to the briefings, with Trump claiming to Fox News that Fauci was “a nice man, but he made a lot of mistakes”. Polls conducted in early summer found a majority of Americans trusted Fauci’s assessments of the pandemic, whereas less than a third trusted Trump’s.

    As cases began to rise across many parts of the country, Trump encouraged states to quickly reopen their economies for the summer. Fauci at the time cautioned against reopening without appropriate social distancing measures in place, contradicting Trump’s messaging that states should not delay.

    Fauci has largely remained a neutral, authoritative public health figure over the course of the pandemic, refusing to harshly criticise the administration’s approach, and opting to do dozens of virtual interviews to offer his recommendations to Americans. Trump has since replaced Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx, another respected public health expert who was once a regular at the White House press briefing, with Dr Scott Atlas, who is neither an epidemiologist nor an infectious disease expert.

    Atlas, a regular on the Fox news network, has come under scrutiny by public health experts for questioning the effectiveness of masks and parroting the Trump administration’s optimistic timeline for a Covid-19 vaccine.

    Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/11/anthony-fauci-criticises-donald-trump-for-using-his-words-out-of-context

    Rosa Ramírez cries as she looks at photos of her son Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, and granddaughter Valeria, nearly 2, while speaking to journalists at her home in San Martín, El Salvador, on Tuesday. The drowned bodies of her son and granddaughter were found Monday morning on the banks of the Rio Grande.

    Antonio Valladares/AP


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    Antonio Valladares/AP

    Rosa Ramírez cries as she looks at photos of her son Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, and granddaughter Valeria, nearly 2, while speaking to journalists at her home in San Martín, El Salvador, on Tuesday. The drowned bodies of her son and granddaughter were found Monday morning on the banks of the Rio Grande.

    Antonio Valladares/AP

    Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET

    Editor’s note: This story contains images that some readers may find disturbing.

    The desperate and tragic plight of a father and daughter who drowned while trying to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. has become a new flashpoint in the border crisis, after a photographer captured a haunting image that shows the pair lying facedown, washed onto the banks of the Rio Grande.

    Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, died as he tried to bring his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, to safety and a new life in the U.S. Ramírez’s wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, says she watched from the shore as her husband and daughter were pulled away by a strong river current near the border crossing between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas.

    The small family was fleeing poverty in El Salvador and had secured a humanitarian visa in Mexico — but after spending two months in a migrant camp waiting to apply for asylum in the U.S., Martínez decided that they should try to cross the border on Sunday. Those details all come from the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, whose journalist, Julia Le Duc, was at the riverbank as Ávalos spoke to police and emergency workers.

    Le Duc also photographed the bodies of Ramírez and his daughter, which were found after Ávalos alerted authorities in Mexico. Le Duc’s images show the pair lying along the riverbank, with their feet in the water and their heads on the reeds of dry land. The toddler is tucked into her dad’s T-shirt — an apparent attempt to keep her close as the current took them away. Her arm is flung around his neck.

    The bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his nearly 2-year-old daughter, Valeria, lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, where they were found Monday morning. They drowned while trying to cross the river to Brownsville, Texas. This photograph was first published in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada.

    Julia Le Duc/AP


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    Julia Le Duc/AP

    The shocking and unsettling image has drawn comparisons to other powerful photos, of the death of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in 2015 as his family tried to reach sanctuary in Greece, and of Omran Daqneesh, who was 5 when he was wounded in an airstrike in Aleppo.

    In the same way those images focused the world’s attention on the humanitarian crisis in Syria and Turkey, the intense image from the Rio Grande comes as a stark reminder of the human toll of the immigration crisis. As in those earlier cases, it also shows the devastating effect strife and desperation often inflict on children and families.

    On the same day Óscar Alberto and Valeria died, U.S. Border Patrol agents found four bodies along the Rio Grande in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, about 55 miles west of Brownsville. In that case, three children — one toddler and two infants — died along with a 20-year-old woman.

    In reports about the drowning in Matamoros, some of the details have varied. According to La Jornada, Ávalos said her husband had taken their daughter across the river and was returning to get his wife when he realized the little girl had not stayed on the bank — she was in the water. Valeria had apparently panicked when she saw her father go back across the river without her.

    Ávalos said her husband was able to reach the little girl but wasn’t able to make it back to the shore. Their bodies were found Monday morning, about 550 yards from where they tried to cross, La Jornada reported.

    The New York Times, meanwhile, says the family had entered the river together and that Ávalos swam back to the Mexican side, where she watched the water sweep away her husband and daughter. The newspaper cited Ávalos’ comments to government officials.

    The family had attempted to cross at a relatively narrow section of the river. But as The Associated Press reports, local officials had recently warned that the river poses a perilous threat, especially because it has been coursing with water that was released from dams to supply irrigation projects.

    “We are united to pain by this irreparable loss,” the Salvadoran president’s office said of the tragedy, after Ramirez’s cousin asked for the government’s help in bringing the bodies back home.

    Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele granted the request, telling Foreign Affairs Minister Alexandra Hill to make arrangements and give the family financial support. Both the president and Hill also urged Salvadorans not to try to cross the U.S. border without going through legal channels.

    “Someday we will finish building a country where these things do not happen,” Bukele said. “Someday we will finish building a country where migration is an option and not an obligation. In the meantime, we will do as much as we can. God help us.”

    In the most recent fiscal year, there were 283 deaths across the U.S. southern border — with nearly 100 of those deaths reported in the Rio Grande Valley, according to the Border Patrol.

    Migrants who want to enter the U.S. at legal border crossings often face long waits due to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection policy of “metering,” which is meant to manage the flow of migrants by blocking entry if no space is available in CBP’s processing facilities.

    The U.S. agency says the practice of metering targets health and safety hazards. But in a report on the policy that came out last fall, Homeland Security’s inspector general said, “While the stated intentions behind metering may be reasonable, the practice may have unintended consequences.”

    Citing interviews with Border Patrol officers and supervisors, the inspector general’s office said it found “evidence that limiting the volume of asylum-seekers entering at ports of entry leads some aliens who would otherwise seek legal entry into the United States to cross the border illegally.”

    The Hispanic Caucus of the House of Representatives blamed the Trump administration for the deaths.

    “They were driven to cross the river out of desperation — only after they tried to legally seek asylum,” the caucus said in a tweet. “They should be safe in the U.S. Instead, they are dead because of Trump’s cruel policies.”

    On Wednesday, Trump blamed current U.S. immigration laws for the deaths. When he was asked how he felt about the photo of the dead father and daughter, the president replied, “I hate it.”

    “I know it could stop immediately if the Democrats change the law. They have to change the laws,” Trump said, adding, “and then that father, who probably was this wonderful guy, with his daughter — things like that wouldn’t happen.”

    Trump predicted that if asylum rules were changed and a wall were built, migrants wouldn’t try to cross the river. Speaking to reporters before he boarded Marine One at the White House, he added that conditions at the border prove he was right to say America has an immigration crisis.

    “We have a crisis at the border,” Trump said.

    Under President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigration, the Department of Homeland Security has been criticized for its treatment of families and children, including the now-revised policy of separating minors from their parents.

    Over the weekend, the bleak and unsanitary conditions under which more than 350 children were housed in a Border Patrol station in southwest Texas sparked an outcry, prompting the government to move most of those children to other facilities.

    Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/736177694/a-father-and-daughter-drowned-at-the-border-put-attention-on-immigration

    “I guess I’m fortunate enough to go to real prison, so I’ll have more material,” she said.

    After her release, she is likely to be deported to Germany, but she said she then hoped to move to London.

    She said she had already made some “smaller investments” in technology and cryptocurrency with personal money routed through an L.L.C.

    Ms. Sorokin said she was also interested in criminal justice reform, artificial intelligence and the banking industry, adding: “Ideally, if all goes well, I’ll have my own investment fund.”

    Mr. Spodek, her lawyer, said: “I don’t know how realistic some of these business endeavors are. But I’m confident that this won’t be the last time we hear from Anna, and I know that she will go on to great things.”

    Others are also writing Ms. Sorokin’s story: Ms. Williams has deals with HBO and Simon & Schuster. And Netflix purchased the rights to the New York magazine story for an undisclosed amount. Shonda Rhimes, the creator of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal,” has been tapped to dramatize it.

    As guards signaled the end of the visit before her sentencing, Ms. Sorokin was asked if, given the chance, she would do the same things again.

    Ms. Sorokin shrugged. “Yes, probably so,” she said, laughing.

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/nyregion/anna-delvey-sorokin.html

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    China se está urbanizando a un ritmo acelerado.

    El espectáculo es desolador y, en China, inusual.

    Ciudades de avenidas anchas sin coches ni gente, con centros comerciales y edificios vacíos.

    Los medios occidentales han calificado de “ciudades fantasmas” a estos desarrollos urbanísticos.

    Y algunas ciudades, construidas en imitación de localidades occidentales, parecerían corroborar esta perspectiva.

    Lea también: ¿Por qué China copia ciudades enteras?

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    La acelerada urbanización de China ayudo a impulsar el crecimiento de su economía.

    Pero para Wade Sheppard, autor de Ghost cities of China (“Ciudades fantasmas de China”) y del blog vagabondjourney, se trata de una percepción simplista e interesada.

    “Las mal llamadas ciudades fantasmas de la China fueron noticia en Occidente porque contribuían a generar la idea de un sistema demente que construía monstruos urbanos que nadie habitaba”, le dijo a BBC Mundo.

    Pero cuando, como está sucediendo, estas ciudades son habitadas, dejan de ser noticia porque muestran que, detrás de estas iniciativas, hay un proyecto de urbanización diferente”, indicó.

    La foto y la película

    La consigna oficial “construyamos primero que se habitarán después” refleja con claridad este modelo chino de desarrollo urbano.

    Una de las cifras más citadas sobre el programa urbano chino es que, desde 1978, se construyeron unas 500 ciudades.

    Según Sheppard hay que comprender estas cifras en el contexto chino.

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    Por primera vez en la historia china los habitantes urbanos superan en número a los rurales.

    La palabra ciudad es un término administrativo. Cuando decimos que hay 600 nuevas ciudades, es que 600 zonas rurales fueron reorganizadas como ciudades”, le dijo a BBC Mundo.

    En muchos casos son nuevos distritos, barrios o municipalidades para millones de personas. En otros son nuevas ciudades, cercanas a algún centro importante”, explicó Sheppard.

    “Pero todos tienen una característica común: son construidas desde cero antes de que siquiera un residente habite la ciudad o exprese un interés en hacerlo“, detalló.

    El caso de Dantu, distrito en Jiansu, provincia al este de China, es emblemático.

    Según publicó en diciembre de 2010 la publicación de negocios “Business Insider”, “la ciudad fantasma Dantu ha estado vacía durante más de una década“.

    Y, por la misma fecha, el matutino británico “Daily Mail” comentaba que “en la mayoría de los barrios de Dantu no hay coches, no hay señales de vida“.

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    La otra cara de la moneda: las aglomeraciones propias de ciudades como Pekín.

    En ambos casos se basaban en fotos satelitales tomadas al comienzo del emprendimiento.

    Pero la diferencia entre foto y película de un lugar es grande.

    En el mejor de los casos, la foto capta un momento. La película, en cambio, puede ver el desarrollo: hoy Dantu tiene unos 380 mil habitantes.

    “La visité en 2012 y encontré una ciudad activa, con las señales vitales en perfecto orden. Comparada con otras ciudades chinas está menos poblada, pero había gente en las calles, negocios abiertos, gente comiendo, ropa tendida en las ventanas de las casa. De ciudad fantasma, nada”, señala Sheppard.

    Los habitantes de la nueva ciudad

    Dantu no es una excepción.

    Un reciente informe del banco Standard Chartered muestra que, entre 2012 y 2014, Zhengdong, un nuevo distrito del tamaño de San Francisco en Henan, centro del país, duplicó su población.

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    Changzhou es otra de las zonas de rápida urbanización.

    Un emprendimiento similar, la prefectura de Changzhou, en el este de China, aumentó de un tercio de la población.

    Lo que se llama ‘ciudad fantasma’ es un fenómeno transitorio que se debe a la continua urbanización china”, señala el informe del banco.

    Un nuevo distrito de China tiene tres fases de desarrollo: una inicial en la que se colocan los cimientos y la infraestructura básica, una segunda fase de crecimiento y una final de madurez. El proceso tarda normalmente entre 10 y 15 años”, se lee ahí.

    El proceso urbanizador que comenzó con Mao Tse Tung, y se aceleró con las reformas de Deng Xiao Peng en los 80, alcanzó su ritmo actual con la urbanización nacional de principios de este siglo.

    Y ya ha resultado en un cambio demográfico sin precedentes: por primera vez en su historia milenaria hay más chinos en centros urbanos que en el campo.

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    Muchos departamentos son comprados como inversión para el futuro de los hijos.

    Las razones que llevan a emigrar a estas localidades reflejan tanto el tipo de urbanización como la misma sociedad china.

    “Hay urbanizaciones que se convertirán en el nuevo centro de una ciudad ya existente. Otras son suburbios dónde escapar del bullicio o encontrar más espacio y mejores precios”, indicó a BBC Mundo Sheppard.

    El estado contribuye con una serie de beneficios como pasajes gratis de autobús, alquileres muy bajos, subsidios para las cuentas de gas”.

    “Pero también hay tendencias sociales. Un notable porcentaje de departamentos son adquiridos para el futuro de los hijos y, sobre todo, para mejorar sus chances de casamiento. Otros son simplemente una inversión o un lugar para jubilarse“, explicó.

    ¿Despilfarro o planificación?

    El término “ciudad fantasma” confunde porque no se trata de lugares abandonados por alguna razón económica, social, política o ambiental sino de una fase del proceso urbanizador.

    Los malentendidos en torno al financiamiento de estos emprendimientos son igualmente notorios.

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    AFP

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    El distrito de Pudong en Shangai es uno de los casos más exitosos de desarrollo urbanístico en China.

    El mensaje mediático es que estas ciudades son más el capricho corrupto de algún funcionario que la estrategia planificadora racional de un gobierno.

    Pero la urbanización es hoy un motor de la economía china.

    El último plan de urbanización nacional, que abarca 2014 a 2020, fue anunciado en marzo del año pasado con un costo de US$7 billones.

    Lea también: El ambicioso plan de megaurbanización de China

    Este plan forma parte de la transición china de una economía basada en las exportaciones a otra en consumo y constituye una fuente de demanda para la economía global por las necesidades de materias primas y productos elaborados implícitas en cualquier programa urbanizador.

    Errores y aciertos

    En un país de las dimensiones geográficas (tercera a nivel mundial) y poblacionales (primera) de China todo plan está condenado a un porcentaje de error.

    El actual modelo urbanístico produjo grandes éxitos como Shenzhen, una ciudad de pescadores, que se convirtió en un centro financiero, exportador e importador; o Pudong, un distrito de Shanghái, construido en los 90, que permaneció semivacío durante más de una década y hoy tiene cinco millones de personas.

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    Hace pocos años Huaxi era una zona rural.

    Junto a estos éxitos, se encuentran caprichos arquitectónicos imitativos como la”Manhattan china” en la norteña Tianjin y la réplica de ciudad británica, Thames Town, en Shanghai.

    “Ha habido denuncias de corrupción, planes que no se cumplen, avances a los saltos, abuso de poder. Las urbanizaciones son importantes para las carreras de los políticos que las usan para escalar posiciones en el Partido Comunista. El desplazamiento de campesinos por estos procesos ha sido extraordinario”, señala Sheppard.

    Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/09/150902_economia_ciudades_fantasmas_china_mj

    SAITAMA, Japan — Kevin Durant has had some wonderful days in his career, but there’s never been one like this green and gold Saturday in Japan.

    First there was a new $198 million contract locked in with the Brooklyn Nets. Then the pride of Seat Pleasant, Maryland, extended his legendary status as one of America’s great Olympians with a masterpiece performance to lead Team USA to its fourth straight gold, 87-82 over France.

    Durant’s greatness has been building throughout the Tokyo games, and he poured out his energy in the early going to relieve stress on his teammates. With the confidence, experience and tremendous blend of skills, there was just no way Durant was going to lose. He scored 21 of his 29 points in the first half.

    It was the third time Durant has played in a gold-medal game, only deepening his resume.

    France, which had beaten Team USA in both the 2019 World Cup and two weeks ago to open the Olympics with dominating fourth quarters, tried it again with a late kick. Trailing by 10 points at the start of the final quarter, they cut it to three points twice including with just 10 seconds to play.

    With Durant tiring, there was a window where this could’ve been another bad ending. But this team, which lacked chemistry at times but never depth, had enough to finish the job.

    Jayson Tatum, who developed into Team USA’s secondary scorer in a bench role during the tournament, came up with a handful of relief baskets including two crucial 3-pointers in the fourth quarter as the most important of his 19 points. Damian Lillard, who has struggled to make an impact in Tokyo, delivered two clutch baskets to help keep the lead as well.

    Then it was Durant, appropriately, finishing the game off with free throws with eight seconds remaining.

    With a big size advantage, France tried to pound the ball inside with big man Rudy Gobert. The Americans were committed to switching pick and rolls as they have all tournament, and the French really tried to make it a fatal flaw. Gobert drew nine fouls in the game, but the U.S. played the percentages, as the shaky free throw shooter ended up just 6-of-13 from the line.

    Evan Fournier, who has been a thorn in the Americans’ side in the last two losses, scored 16 points but was just 5-of-15 from the line. Jrue Holiday had another great defensive game, coming up with three steals and a block along with 11 points. Big men Bam Adebayo and Draymond Green also played superior defense.

    Source Article from https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/31977021/team-usa-men-basketball-beats-france-win-fourth-straight-gold-tokyo-olympics

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    Attorney General William Barr (R) will decide how much of the Mueller report to share with Congress

    US congressional leaders are awaiting conclusions from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, with early findings expected Sunday.

    The long-awaited report was submitted on Friday to Attorney General William Barr, who spent Saturday at the justice department poring over the document.

    The report is the culmination of two years of investigation by Mr Mueller.

    A justice department official said it did not call for new charges.

    In the course of their investigation, Mr Mueller and his team have already charged 34 people – including six former Trump aides and a dozen Russians – as well as three companies.

    None of those charges directly related to the allegations of collusion between the campaign and Moscow – allegations that President Trump has always denied.

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    President Trump spent the weekend at his Florida resort

    Mr Mueller reportedly also examined another question: whether Mr Trump committed obstruction of justice in an effort to curtail an FBI investigation into connections between his campaign and Russians.

    It is not yet known how much of the report – if any – will be made available to the public. Mr Barr will decide initially how much information to share with Congress.

    Mr Barr, who was appointed by Mr Trump, told congressional leaders on Friday that he was “committed to as much transparency as possible.”

    ‘Watch and wait’

    Mr Barr spent nine hours at the justice department on Saturday before leaving at around 19:00 (23:00 GMT), US media reported.

    The president, meanwhile, travelled to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, where he played a round of golf and ate lunch with the rap-rock artist Kid Rock.

    He was uncharacteristically silent on social media – posting no remarks on the news that the Mueller report had been submitted.

    The president has in the past repeatedly lashed out at the special counsel investigation, branding it a “witch hunt”. Asked about the president’s mood over the weekend, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley replied simply: “He’s good”.

    Mr Gidley said that the Trump administration had not received a copy of or been briefed on Mr Mueller’s report.

    Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told the Washington Post that the president was in “watch and wait” mode.

    “We’ve all waited this long. Let’s just await the reading of what’s disclosed,” Mr Giuliani said.

    Media captionHow US networks reacted to Mueller news

    Despite all the attention is has received since it was submitted on Friday, the special counsel’s investigation is not the only probe that could threaten Mr Trump’s presidency. About a dozen other investigations are being run independently of Mr Mueller’s office.

    They include a federal investigation in New York that is looking into possible election-law violations by the Trump campaign and his businesses and possible misconduct by the Trump inaugural committee.

    What happens next with the Mueller report?

    Legally, the attorney general is under no obligation to release the report publicly, and his copy to Congress could contain redactions, but during his confirmation hearings before senators Mr Barr vowed to release as much as he could.

    A number of senior Democrats, including presidential hopefuls Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Julian Castro, have called for the full release of the report.

    The House of Representatives, newly controlled by the Democratic party following last year’s mid-term elections, will also continue to investigate the Trump administration and could ask Mr Mueller to testify or instruct Mr Barr to provide relevant materials.

    Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47683309

    Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, called Brooks’ statement “evil” in a Twitter post. Kinzinger was one of a handful of Republicans to vote for former President Donald Trump’s impeachment over the Capitol invasion.

    The bomb-threat suspect, 49-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry, surrendered and was taken into custody by police after an hourslong standoff outside the Library of Congress, where he claimed he had explosives in his truck.

    In social media videos posted to Facebook, Roseberry repeatedly referenced a “revolution” and called on Biden to send someone to talk to him.

    Brooks in his statement said that “although this terrorist’s motivation is not yet publicly known … generally speaking, I understand citizenry anger directed at dictatorial Socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom and the very fabric of American society.”

    He added that the way to stop socialism is for “patriotic Americans to fight back” in upcoming election cycles.

    “I strongly encourage patriotic Americans to do exactly that more so than ever before. Bluntly stated, America’s future is at risk,” Brooks’ statement said.

    Brooks, a House member from Alabama since 2011 who is running for Senate, had plotted in late 2020 with Trump about ways to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

    On Jan. 6, when Congress was set to convene at the Capitol to confirm Biden’s win, Brooks spoke nearby at a rally organized by Trump, who called on Republicans to reject the election results.

    Brooks at the “Stop the Steal” rally told crowds of Trump’s supporters to “start taking down names and kicking ass.” Trump in his own speech told the crowd to march to the Capitol: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said.

    Shortly after Congress convened to confirm Biden’s win, a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, derailing the proceedings and forcing lawmakers to flee their chambers and hide. More than 500 arrests have since been made in relation to the Capitol riot.

    Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/after-capitol-hill-bomb-threat-gop-lawmaker-expresses-sympathy-for-citizenry-anger.html

    • The House GOP conference devolved into Twitter chaos on Tuesday morning. 
    • Greene called Mace “trash” after Mace condemned Islamophobia from Rep. Lauren Boebert. 
    • Mace used three emojis to insult Greene as other members chimed in.

    House GOP members descended into an intraparty Twitter quarrel on Tuesday morning, which was sparked by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene denouncing her colleague Rep. Nancy Mace as “the trash in the GOP conference” and pushing Islamophobic stereotypes by accusing the South Carolina lawmaker of being “gal pals” with the “Jihad Squad.” 

    At the heart of this digital fight were Islamophobic comments GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert recently made about Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar. Boebert called Omar, who is Muslim, part of a “Jihad Squad” and said a Capitol Police officer had “fret all over his face” when he stepped into an elevator with Boebert and Omar. 

    Boebert said she told the officer, “Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine.” The comment implied Omar could be a terrorist.

    Mace rebuked Boebert for her comments in a Monday appearance on “CNN Newsroom.”

    “I have time after time condemned my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for racist tropes and remarks that I find disgusting and this is no different than any other,” Mace told CNN, adding: “We all have a responsibility … to lower the temperature, and this does not do that.”

    Greene lashed out at Mace on Tuesday, writing on Twitter: “@NancyMace is the trash in the GOP Conference. Never attacked by Democrats or RINO’s (same thing) because she is not conservative, she’s pro-abort.

    “Mace you can back up off of @laurenboebert or just go hang with your real gal pals, the Jihad Squad. Your out of your league.”

     The “Jihad Squad” is an Islamophobic insult referring to Omar and her progressive allies.

    Mace hit back at Greene by correcting her spelling of “you’re” and doubling down on her criticism of Boebert as a “religious bigot” and “racist.”

    Mace did not clarify who from the left criticized her for going on a bipartisan congressional delegation to Taiwan. The routine trip, called a “codel,” was a show of support for Taiwanese interests that spurred backlash from China.

    In a subsequent tweet, Mace also used three emojis to call Greene a common insult for describing someone as out of touch with reality and a clown.

    GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a vocal critic of his more far-right colleagues, chimed in with another insult directed at Greene. The Illinois Republican, who is retiring next year, also criticized House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for not forcefully condemning members like Greene and Boebert.

    “I love this, but worth noting that while this battle between Nancy Mace and the unserious circus barker McSpacelaser, @GOPLeader continues his silent streak that would make a monk blush,” Kinzinger tweeted.

    The “McSpacelaser” moniker is a reference to how Greene, before being elected to Congress, shared a conspiracy theory on social media saying that California’s devastating 2018 wildfires were caused by a laser sent from space by the Rothschild family. Theories that place powerful, wealthy Jewish families behind natural disasters or accuse them of shaping worldwide events from the shadows play into common, pernicious antisemitic tropes.

    Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California also got in on the Tuesday Twitter action, saying, “I would say this feels like high school. But high schoolers know how to spell ‘you’re.'”

    Greene later replied: “*You’re for the spellcheck police.”

    Greene and Mace’s fight is representative of larger fissures within the Republican conference over both policy and substance between members like Greene and more moderate members. If Republicans win back the House in 2022, McCarthy has his work cut out for him: He would first have to navigate those competing factions to get elected as speaker and then lead the caucus as it roils with tension.

    Later on Tuesday morning, Mace made another dig at Greene by repeating word for word a November 26 tweet in which Greene said she “got off a good call” with McCarthy.

    “We spent time talking about solving problems not only in the conference, but for our country. I like what he has planned ahead,” Mace wrote.

    Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-nancy-mace-descend-into-chaotic-twitter-fight-2021-11

    I’m angry. I’m furious over how much damage has been wreaked upon my beloved FBI by supposedly impartial, unbiased, and honorable public servants.

    Thursday’s release of the 448-page, partially redacted Mueller report was supposed to conclude our long national nightmare. But here we are, with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., subpoenaing the unredacted report and calling for Robert Mueller to testify on May 23.

    Many media headlines ignored the report’s central findings and instead focused on the sordid details of a corrupt White House seemingly in chaos, a press secretary forced to admit to investigators her fabrication of particular events, and a president who escaped prosecution only due to long-standing Justice Department protocols and his own ineptitude to obstruct justice.

    But I’m not here to defend or attack Trump. While our system of jurisprudence holds that where there may not be sufficient evidence to indict someone, that doesn’t mean a person wasn’t predisposed to or clumsily attempted to engage in criminal activity. Regardless, he’s not in my orbit.

    But as someone who spent 25 years working for the FBI, every man or woman who has ever served within the FBI is in my orbit. For that reason, I view their conduct, as they should view my own, through a vastly more scrutable lens.

    The events involving credible information and allegations that led up to the initiation of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane case occurred during the Obama administration. An intelligence community led by notable Trump critics John Brennan, James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey recognized the efforts from the Kremlin to sow chaos in our democratic system — dating back to the inception of the Cold War. Tradecraft has evolved significantly since the 1950s. Efforts to undermine our democracy are conducted in plain sight across the internet and social media platforms.

    But no one, least of all Trump, expected Trump to win. The leader of the FBI at the time of the 2016 election, James Comey, nicknamed the “Cardinal” for his holier-than-thou mien and nonstop virtue-signaling, had surrounded himself at FBI headquarters with callow sycophants bent on career advancement who denigrated political candidates they loathed on their bureau cellphones. Afflicted with groupthink and endowed with a penchant for confirmation bias, these Comey idolaters were oblivious to their resemblance to the gaggle of admirers who couldn’t bring themselves to advise the naked emperor about his invisible threads.

    No, the true disappointment for me and other retired FBI agents isn’t our president’s conduct. It’s the conduct of promoted-before-their time, panicked senior executives who made poor decisions in promoting a shoddily prepared, political opposition-financed, wholly unverified piece of garbage known as “the dossier” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court.

    Don’t tell me they didn’t realize what they were championing as evidence was dreck.

    For the Adam Schiffs of the world, those who purposely mischaracterized and misrepresented what they claimed to have seen with their own eyes in closed chambers, shame on you. Your clownish double down is injurious to our justice system. Please stop. Your self-righteous, sanctimonious, pious indignation is a joke.

    But cravenly misbehaving politicians aside, allow me to focus on the two men most familiar with the potent weaponization of the flawed cornerstone behind the predicate for spying on George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, please announce yourselves. Both of you shamelessly attempted to manage outsized expectations prior to the Mueller report’s release.

    McCabe, in his recent book The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, deftly leverages the bureau’s widely criticized decision to “announce a result that did not include bringing charges against anyone” in the Clinton email investigation. Comparing it to the collusion case, McCabe meekly allows that “the same might happen with the Russia case.”

    Here’s the guy who sounded the alarm, supposedly discussed 25th Amendment provisions for presidential removal with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and offered the dossier as unimpeachable evidence for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant and three renewals.

    This is the same man who in February said, “I think it’s possible” Trump is a Russian asset. McCabe signed off on the dossier multiple times as the predicate to continue re-upping the FISA warrant against the Trump campaign and had all the relevant information. Yet somehow the reality of the Mueller report, which found not a shred of evidence of Trump campaign collusion, let alone evidence of Trump being a Russian asset, was light-years away from McCabe’s judgment.

    Shameful. But when one nurses at the teat of an FBI director whose ego grows with every word he hears himself speak, we understand.

    Comey, of course, released a post-report Twitter follow-up to his “So many questions” forest photo of his gazing high into the redwoods. This one, simply captioned “So many answers,” featured the forest floor, with new growth flora emergent. The man who famously advised Katie Couric that “I hope to be forgotten” craves remaining a central figure in the continued diminution of the FBI. After disgracefully leaking FBI documents to the New York Times, he testified to the Senate to his fecklessness and lack of courage while at the helm. An overtly partisan second act beclowns him and adds fuel to the fire for those who always believed his FBI decision-making was tainted by political considerations.

    His insulting pronouncement, “I have no idea what he’s talking about,” regarding Barr’s comments that the Trump campaign was “spied” upon are rich. This is the same Comey who, along with his ardent supporters, continues to argue that any criticism of the FBI’s actions in the Trump-Russia case are “corrosive attacks on our institutions of justice.”

    Boy, please.

    The reckoning is coming, folks. There are four ongoing investigations that will seek to explain why a collection of falsehoods, including pee tapes and meetings in Prague that never occurred, were eagerly accepted as fact by Comey’s Keystone Cops.

    The Mueller report will assuredly marinate a while longer in the disappointed mainstream media echo chamber. Let’s face some uncomfortable facts when we can turn our attention to the pending inspector general report, the Senate investigation, the attorney general’s review of bureau actions, and Utah U.S. Attorney John Huber’s investigation into Crossfire Hurricane misconduct.

    I bleed FBI blue and gold. I spent half of my life serving an agency I love dearly. But it’s time to cease the political papering-over of the Comey era. I’m angry, and you should be as well.

    James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/mueller-report-is-another-embarrassment-for-james-comey-and-andrew-mccabe

    One hundred million adults in the United States are now fully vaccinated, White House coronavirus response director Jeff Zients announced Friday.

    “That’s a hundred million Americans with a sense of relief and peace of mind, knowing that after a long and hard year, they’re protected from the virus,” Zients told reporters at a White House Covid-19 briefing.

    He continued: “Knowing their decision to get vaccinated protects not just themselves but also protects their families, their friends and their communities.”

    “A hundred million Americans who can follow the new CDC guidance released this week and enjoy going to the park with their family, dining and socializing with their friends outside and many more outdoor activities without needing to wear a mask,” Zients said.

    The news comes as CNN reported that Biden’s coronavirus advisers are moving into the next phase of their response, from ramping up availability of Covid-19 vaccines to reaching those who have not yet gotten the shot. 

    White House officials have three overarching goals for the next 100 days: increasing accessibility, combating misinformation and assisting those without the resources to get vaccinated. 

    The US has administered approximately 237 million shots of the three Covid-19 vaccines as of Friday morning, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    The Biden administration doubled and surpassed its initial goal of 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in its first 100 days, reaching the 200 million benchmark on April 21. It has been racing to get shots in arms as variants spread throughout the country.

    The White House has poured resources into educating the American public about the safety and efficacy of the three Covid-19 vaccines that have received emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Association.

    The Biden administration has launched TV ads to encourage vaccinations and increase public confidence in the vaccines as it ramps up distribution.

    It also announced nearly $10 billion would be allocated toward increasing vaccine access and confidence in hard-hit communities across the country, which includes $3 billion of CDC funding to support outreach efforts in the states through community-based organizations and trusted community leaders.

    Biden has said there will be enough vaccine for every adult American by the end of May. Every American over the age of 16 is now eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine across the country.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/30/politics/white-house-100-million-fully-vaccinated/index.html

    Abbott on Monday signed a sweeping order effectively banning vaccine mandates for private businesses with 100 or more employees. Last month, the Biden administration said it will require that businesses with 100 employees or more must mandate vaccines or receive weekly Covid tests.

    American Airlines said it’s also reviewing Abbott’s order and that so far airline officials “believe the federal vaccine mandate supersedes any conflicting state laws, and this does not change anything for American.”

    White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the federal mandates’ legal mandate “unquestionable,” and said Abbott is just playing politics.

    “We’ve seen from economist after economist, and frankly, many business leaders who have already worked to implement mandates that implementing these mandates creates certainty and reduces the number of people who are out of work sick, and worse,” Psaki said. “That is good ultimately for businesses, it’s good for the economy,” she said, adding it saves lives.

    “Bottom line is we’re going to continue to implement the law, which the President of the United States has the ability, the authority — the legal authority to do, and we are going to continue to work to get more people vaccinated, to get out of this pandemic,” Psaki said. “The President will use every lever at his disposal to do that.”

    Background: Southwest recently announced that, like its sister airlines, its contracts with the federal government require “full compliance” with the federal vaccination directive. That means its employees must be fully vaccinated, or be approved for religious, medical or disability exemption, by Dec. 8 to continue employment — the same date by which federal contractors must prove they’ve been vaccinated.

    The administration has said that it would seek to modify their Civil Reserve Air Fleet contracts to require that airline employees be vaccinated, a move which top Republicans on the House Transportation Committee and its aviation subcommittee have called “insulting” given airlines’ contribution to CRAF during the Afghanistan evacuations.

    The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, its pilot union, last month first sought exemptions to the pending mandate, petitioning members in the administration to reconsider.

    The union took it a step further on Friday with a legal filing in a Dallas federal court to temporarily block the vaccine requirement as it sorts out another dispute with Southwest involving claims of unfair labor practices during Covid.

    Where this is going: The Abbott decree is similar to one issued by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that directed the state to sue federal authorities over requirements that cruise ship passengers prove their vaccination status prior to boarding a ship. A judge last month ruled that cruise lines can’t ban vaccine passports; Florida is attempting to appeal the ruling.

    The Abbott-Biden vaccine mandate staring contest is likely to head to the courts as well.

    When asked for a response to Abbott, on Tuesday the White House pointed to vaccine mandate guidance for government contractors issued through the Office of Management and Budget on Sept. 24. That states that federal contractors and subcontractors “are promulgated pursuant to Federal law and supersede any contrary State or local law or ordinance,” and “nothing in this guidance shall excuse noncompliance with any applicable State law or municipal ordinance.”

    DOT could step in front of Abbott’s decree by using its broad consumer protection authority to mandate that pilots and flight crew be vaccinated. However, it’s unlikely to do that absent a directive from the White House. So far, the Biden administration has preferred to utilize the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to implement and parse out its mandates, creating a more comprehensive enforcement as opposed to singling out individual agencies to do the job.

    OSHA is in the midst of reviewing the matter, and is expected to issue the regulations in coming weeks.

    Julian E.J. Sorapuru contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/12/southwest-airlines-enforce-vaccine-mandate-employees-515801

    Since becoming president, Mr. Trump has spent 99 days at Mar-a-Lago compared with 20 days at Trump Tower, according to NBC News. Although Mr. Trump ran his presidential transition from Trump Tower and some aides had expected him to spend many weekends there in his Louis XIV-style triplex on the 58th floor, his presence created traffic headaches for New Yorkers and logistical and security challenges for the Secret Service.

    White House officials declined to say why Mr. Trump changed his primary residence, but a person close to the president said the reasons were primarily for tax purposes.

    In his Twitter posts on Thursday night, the president claimed that he paid “millions of dollars in city, state and local taxes each year.” There is no way to fact-check his assertion; he has never released his tax returns.

    Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in New York, was infuriated by a subpoena filed by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, seeking the tax returns, the person close to the president said. Changing his residence to Florida is not expected to have any effect on Mr. Vance’s case, which Mr. Trump has sought to thwart with a federal lawsuit.

    It was unclear how much time he would spend in New York in the future or if he would keep his triplex at the top of Trump Tower. Under New York law, if he spends more than 184 days a year there, he will have to pay state income taxes.

    Florida, which does not have a state income tax or inheritance tax, has long been a place for the wealthy to escape the higher taxes of the Northeast.

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/trump-new-york-florida-primary-residence.html

    Poland’s Solidarity labor union has joined forces with climate skeptics from America to call for “a restoration of the Scientific Method and the dismissal of ideological dogma” in the study of climate change as part of a joint declaration the union has submitted to the United Nations in partnership with a U.S.-based free-market think tank.

    This is the same labor union founded under the leadership of Lech Walesa, the Nobel Prize winner who organized anti-Soviet movements in the 1980s.

    The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly made the case that catastrophic climate change is imminent and that human emissions are largely to blame. The latest in a series of reports from the IPCC was released in October to measure “the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.”

    The IPCC has maintained a significant presence throughout the U.N.’s 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is widely known as COP24. U.N. officials view the recently released IPCC report as a “wake up call” for conference participants to finalize negotiations for implementing the Paris climate agreement, which calls on participating countries to curb their greenhouse gas emissions. Although 195 countries adopted the language of the climate agreement during a December 2015 COP meeting in Paris, the agreement cannot be fully implemented until after 55 of the countries responsible for producing a combined total of 55 percent of the world’s emissions accept the treaty’s terms, according to the U.N.

    Media coverage of the intergovernmental panel’s climate change report has made the case for “urgent and unprecedented changes” built around emissions restrictions to curtail global warming that could lead to catastrophic conditions.

    But the joint declaration — which was signed by Jaroslaw Grzesik, chairman of Solidarity’s energy and mining secretariat; Dominik Kolorz, president of Solidarity in Poland’s Silesian region; and James Taylor, a senior follow for environment and energy policy with the Heartland Institute — makes the point that “there is no scientific consensus on the main causes and consequences of climate change.”

    The Heartland Institute, which is headquartered in Illinois, has gained international recognition for challenging the premise of theories that link human activity with catastrophic levels of global warming. The free-market think tank released the latest version of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change at a media event last week in Katowice just as the COP24 meeting was getting underway. More than 100 scientists, economists, engineers, and other experts from across globe who have insight into the dynamics of earth’s climate have come together to take part in the nongovernmental panel, which began releasing the studies in 2009.

    They conclude that “[t]he global war on energy freedom, which commenced in earnest in the 1980s and reached a fever pitch in the second decade of the twenty-first century, was never founded on sound science or economics. The world’s policymakers ought to acknowledge this truth and end that war.”

    Unlike its U.N. counterpart, the nongovernmental panel performs a cost-benefit analysis into the use of fossil fuels that highlights the benefits to humanity.

    “Despite calling for the end of reliance on fossil fuels by 2100, the IPCC never produced an accounting of the opportunity cost of restricting or banning their use,” the report says. “That cost, a literature review shows, would be enormous. Estimates of the cost of reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the amounts said by the IPCC to be necessary to avoid causing ~2°C warming in the year 2050 range from the IPCC’s own estimate of 3.4% to as high as 81% of projected global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2050, the latter estimate nullifying all the gains in human well-being made in the past century.”

    Solidarity’s willingness to defy climate alarmism while making a principled stand on behalf of sound science will reverberate across Europe long after COP24 comes to an end, James Lakely, the director of communications for the Heartland Institute, said in an email.

    “Propaganda fades, truth endures,” he said. “Solidarity proved with its joint statement with Heartland that it will not be pushed around by the jet-set bureaucrats of the United Nations. I think that is the case with Poland as a whole. The people of Poland get 80 percent of their power from coal. Going ‘carbon free’ in the next decade or so will destroy their economy and society. The Polish people know this, so they will not be pushed around by the UN — nor should it, as Solidarity made clear in their meeting with Heartland.”

    He added:

    Still, the money and organization standing behind climate change policies is considerable. That much was made clear in remarks made by Michal Kurtyka, a Polish energy official who is serving as the COP24 president.

    Kevin Mooney (@KevinMooneyDC) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., who writes for several national publications.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/polands-solidarity-union-joins-forces-with-us-climate-change-skeptics

    CLOSE

    President Donald Trump doubles down on his criticism of Rep. Elijah Cummings and the Baltimore community he serves.
    USA TODAY

    On Sunday, former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh addressed his role in stirring racist rhetoric in politics in the past while announcing his intentions of challenging President Donald Trump in the Republican primary.

    Walsh apologized for his past comments during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in which he said he had a role in Trump’s ascension. 

    “I helped create Trump, there’s no doubt about that,” he said.

    Walsh went on to offer his opinion of Trump: “He’s nuts, he’s erratic, he’s cruel, he stokes bigotry.”

    He also wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed that Trump “inspires imitators” but brought up his own “share of controversy.”

    “At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead,” he wrote. “There’s no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.”

    Walsh’s past comments 

    In 2014, Walsh was pulled off the air during his radio show for using racist slurs. He also promoted the “birther” conspiracy during former President Barack Obama’s time in office and said Obama was only elected because he is black.

    More: Former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh announces he will challenge Trump in Republican primary

    When asked by Stephanopoulos on Sunday to address instances of his own racism, including his promotion of the false conspiracy that Obama is Muslim and remarks against Sen. Kamala Harris, Walsh said he has reflected on his previous statements.

    “I said some ugly things about President Obama that I regret,” Walsh said. 

    In 2017, Walsh tweeted “We LOWERED the bar for Obama. He was held to a lower standard cuz he was black.”

    “I had strong policy disagreements with Barack Obama, and too often I let those policy disagreements get personal,” he said Sunday.

    He’s been all over the place on Trump’s comments 

    Walsh has a history of inconsistency in his opinions of Trump’s rhetoric. At times, he has denounced the president as a racist. This summer when Trump told four Democratic congresswomen, who are people of color and citizens of the U.S., to “go back and help fix” the countries he said they “originally came” from before trying to make legislative changes in the USA, Walsh spoke out.

    “To say ‘go back to where you came from’ is gross. It’s offensive, ignorant, anti-American, and racist,” Walsh tweeted

    But it was not that long ago that Walsh thought Trump’s language made him a bully, but not a racist, and that Walsh was still making racist claims about Obama:

    Why he’s apologizing 

    Walsh said the one good thing about Trump’s language since he has been in office is that Trump has made him realize his attacks were inappropriate. The difference between them?

    “We have a guy in the White House who’s never apologized for anything he’s done or said. I think it’s a weakness not to apologize,” Walsh told Stephanopoulos. “I helped create Trump, there’s no doubt about that. The personal, ugly politics, I regret that and I’m sorry for that. And now we’ve got a guy in the White House, George, that’s all he does.”

    Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/08/25/joe-walsh-apologizes-racist-comments-run-against-trump/2115011001/