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Hong Kong has fallen into recession, hit by more than five months of anti-government protests that show no signs of relenting, and is unlikely to achieve annual economic growth this year, the city's Financial Secretary said. "The blow to our economy is comprehensive," Paul Chan said in a blog post on Sunday, adding that a preliminary estimate for third-quarter GDP on Thursday would show two successive quarters of contraction — the technical definition of a recession. He also said it would be "extremely difficult" to achieve the government's pre-protest forecast of 0% to 1% annual economic growth. Protests in the former British colony have reached their 21st week. On Sunday, black-clad and masked demonstrators set fire to shops and hurled petrol bombs at police who responded with tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. Protesters have routinely torched store fronts and businesses including banks, particularly those owned by mainland Chinese companies and vandalized the city's metro system MTR Corp as they view it as acting at the government's behest to curtail protests. The MTR has shut services early for the past few weeks and said it will close around two hours earlier than normal on Monday by 11 p.m. to repair damaged facilities. Tourists numbers have plummeted, a decline Chan called an "emergency" with the drop in visitor numbers worsening in October, down nearly 50%. Retail operators, from prime shopping malls to mom and pop businesses, have been forced to shutter for multiple days over the past few months. While authorities have announced measures to support local small and medium seized enterprises, Chan said the measures could only "slightly reduce the pressure". "Let citizens return to normal life, let industry and commerce to operate normally, and create more space for rational dialogue," he wrote. Protesters are angry about what they view as increasing interference by Beijing in Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" formula intended to guarantee freedoms not seen on the mainland. China denies meddling. It has accused foreign governments, including the United States and Britain, of stirring up trouble.

Politics

Hong Kong

Swedish police said on Sunday that the suspect in the Stockholm truck attack was known to have expressed sympathies with extremist organisations, including Islamic state. Police also said that the suspect had sought and been denied permanent residency in the Nordic country and was wanted for deportation. "We know that he showed sympathies for extremist organisations, among them IS," police official Jonas Hysing told a news conference. Meanwhile, Swedish police have arrested a second person in relation to the deadly truck attack in the capital and a court has appointed the person a legal representative, a court official said on Sunday. "Police have arrested a person and we have appointed a public defender," Helga Hullmann, judge at the Stockholm District Court said. She said lawyer Johan Akerman was the legal council appointed. Police arrested a 39-year-old Uzbek man on Saturday on suspicion he was the driver of the truck that killed 4 people and injured a further 15. Follow CNBC International on and Facebook.

Legal

Crime

FRANKFURT, March 23 (Reuters) - Burkhard Balz has been nominated to join the board of Germany’s central bank, replacing Andreas Dombret, the Bundesbank said on Friday. Balz, a 48-year-old lawyer who worked for several years at Commerzbank, is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. He has been a member of the European parliament since 2009, serving as his group’s coordinator for economic and monetary affairs for the past four years. His appointment has been approved by the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, and is now due to be ratified by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Bundesbank said. Dombret is due to step down on 30 April. (Reporting By Francesco Canepa, editing by Larry King)

Politics

Government

Styles Q. and A. This Saturday night, thousands of gay men will don leather outfits or the skimpiest of black accessories to dance at a club on the Far West Side of Manhattan for a 20-hour marathon event known for its erotically daring stage shows, theatrical acrobatic acts and otherworldly lighting. The Black Party, the granddaddy of all gay “circuit” parties, is an annual rite-of-spring bacchanal that turns 38 this year, a remarkable run by any standard. (Tickets cost $160 at the door.) While the hedonistic, dance-driven formula has remained unchanged, it has a new creative director, Rob Roth, a 48-year-old multimedia artist who lives on the Lower East Side. The role is something of a homecoming for Mr. Roth, who made a name for himself at the Jackie 60 and Click & Drag parties of the 1990s, creating shows and art installations. When those parties faded, Mr. Roth switched to commercial work for brands like Coach, along with his own performance art. The journey back to night life was a result of a death. For years his friend Michael Peyton, a producer of the Black Party, tried to get him to work on the party. After Mr. Peyton died from cancer in 2015, he felt an obligation to help carry the tradition forward. So when Stephen Pevner, the producer of the Black Party, asked him to join last year, it was hard to say no. What does the creative director for the Black Party do? My role is helping them create the theme. Then I direct and create the teaser film that comes out a couple weeks before. The film actually dictates the tone and the look and the feel of everything else. I plant the seed, and it sort of grows from there. What was your concept for this year’s film? I really wanted to put a pole dancer in space. I was trying to find guys who would go out to a basement in Bed-Stuy to get tied up for the two-day shoot. It was very old-school New York, like what I used to do at Mother. How is the Black Party different from other gay circuit parties? The Black Party is known for being much darker, much more dangerous, more naughty. What is the most scandalous thing you’ve seen at the Black Party? I can’t say that! Let’s just say I have seen a lot. How can I phrase this? The acts are quite hard-core. I’ve seen a lot of beautiful bondage performances and things I can’t really describe. What’s your favorite Black Party moment? The time that I went with Debbie Harry in 2000 and we went backstage. Backstage had more shenanigans than onstage. To me it was a rather shocking experience but sort of funny, too. Tell me more. There was a sort of beautiful chaos to it. There were go-go boys and performers, and all these people in fetish gear, and drag queens and people running around. Some were preparing for shows, some had just finished shows, some were between shows. And everyone was just yapping away and yelling and screaming and having a good time. What can partygoers expect this year? I’m working on something with Darrell Thorne, a performance artist who’s also a friend. And there’s going to be a lot of dark corners. But it’s what people always expect from the Black Party: a bit of a debauched experience that you can escape into. I think the Black Party is all about escapism, which we definitely need for the moment. What does the Black Party mean to gay men today? It’s definitively a night to let go of your inhibitions. I think some of the older generation look at it as a constant, something that was important in the past and it’s important to keep these traditions going. I think with the younger ones, they seem to be curious about New York in the past. And I think there’s some history there. And some ghosts. What are you looking to forward this year? I always really love dancing. I also really do love some of the outfits. Chi Chi Valenti used to call Halloween amateur night, but this is pro night. You’ve got to get pro for the Black Party. Do you know what you’re going to wear? I don’t. But last year I wore some Zana Bayne sock garters, high heel boots and a jock strap, with a military shirt. But this year I have no clue what I’m going to wear. I always wait to the last minute. It depends on how cold it is too.

Dance

Ballet

(The following statement was released by the rating agency) Link to Fitch Ratings' Report: 2017 Outlook: Global Trading and Universal Banks (Diverging Fortunes in Difficult Operating Environment) here LONDON, December 13 (Fitch) Fitch Ratings says that the sector outlook for the Global Trading and Universal Banks (GTUBs) is stable. We expect earnings will remain under pressure, but prospects for asset quality, capitalisation, funding and liquidity to remain good. We expect the banks with the strongest client franchises and with geographic and product diversification to perform best. The banks that are still adapting business models will be more challenged to implement strategies in a difficult environment. We expect revenue generation to remain difficult in 2017. Low interest rates have made traditional retail banking less profitable and are squeezing margins on wealth and asset management. Expected increases in interest rates in the US should provide some relief, but the short-term impact on earnings is likely to be only moderate. Periods of market volatility, which are probable given the global political climate, could result in higher trading volumes, but we expect cautious investor sentiment will continue to dampen sales and trading activity. Fitch believes that non-performing assets in most of the regions where the GTUBs operate have reached a cyclical low and expects some deterioration in asset quality in 2017. Given our economic growth forecast, increases in non-performing assets should remain modest and rising impairment charges should remain manageable. Following a peer review on 13 December, Fitch has affirmed the Long-Term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) and Viability Ratings (VRs) of the following 11 GTUBs: Bank of America Corporation (A/Stable/a), Barclays plc (A/Stable/a), BNP Paribas (A+/Stable/a+), Citigroup Inc. (A/Stable/a), Credit Suisse Group AG (A-/Stable/a-), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (A/Stable/a), HSBC Holdings plc (AA-/Stable/aa-), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (A+/Stable/a+), Morgan Stanley (A/Stable/a), Societe Generale (A/Stable/a) and UBS Group AG (A/Positive/a). Deutsche Bank AG's A- Long-Term IDR and a- VR were maintained on Rating Watch Negative following the review. During the peer review, Fitch assigned Derivative Counterparty Ratings (DCRs) to the GTUBs' entities that are significant derivative counterparties as part of its roll out of DCRs to significant derivative counterparties in western Europe and the US. DCRs were introduced in our July 2016 Global Bank Rating Criteria. Assigned on the 'AAA' scale, DCRs are a product of developments in bank resolution frameworks that mean different types of banks' senior creditors may be treated more or less favourably relative to one another. DCRs are issuer ratings and express Fitch's view on banks' relative vulnerability to default. This relates to the highest-risk type of derivative contracts with third-party, non-government counterparties, which we assume (either jointly or in isolation) will be an uncollateralised derivative exposure. Fitch's '2017 Outlook: Global Trading and Universal Banks' is available at www.fitchratings.com or by clicking on the link above. Fitch has also published Rating Action Commentaries for each bank in the peer group, which are available on www.fitchratings.com. These include each issuer's key rating drivers and rating sensitivities and lists of all rating actions taken. Contact: Christian Scarafia Senior Director +44 20 3530 1012 Fitch Ratings Limited 30 North Colonnade London E14 5GN Meghan Neenan Senior Director +1 212 908 9121 Bridget Gandy Managing Director +44 20 3530 1095 Joo-Yung Lee Managing Director +1 212 908 0560 Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. 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Due to the relative efficiency of electronic publishing and distribution, Fitch research may be available to electronic subscribers up to three days earlier than to print subscribers. For Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea only: Fitch Australia Pty Ltd holds an Australian financial services license (AFS license no. 337123) which authorizes it to provide credit ratings to wholesale clients only. Credit ratings information published by Fitch is not intended to be used by persons who are retail clients within the meaning of the Corporations Act 2001

Investment

Bonds

The ebb and flow of oil prices and the direction of the dollar could be important factors for stocks Tuesday, as traders also focus on a few earnings. "We really go from catalyst-heavy to catalyst-light," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. "Last week, we had 160 S&P 500 companies reporting. This week we've got none of that. ... It's a back-end loaded week in terms of data. … You tend to fall back to some of the macro things. More people are talking about the strong dollar and weak energy prices." There are also a few data points Tuesday — the NFIB small business survey at 6 a.m. EDT, and wholesale trade and Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary at 10 a.m. Earnings are expected from Credit Suisse, Lumber Liquidators, Dean Foods, Nokia, SodaStream, EchoStar and Norwegian Cruise Line before the bell. Disney, Electronic Arts, Nuance Communications, Ambac Financial and Planet Fitness report after the close.

Finance

Investing

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani Islamist with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, led prayers at a mosque in Islamabad on Friday and called on his country’s military to shoot down any American drones entering Pakistani territory. The anti-U.S. rhetoric came as the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan visited Islamabad for the first time since last month’s killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike in western Pakistan. U.S. and Pakistan relations have been strained by the strike, which Islamabad has protested against as a violation of its sovereignty. Friday’s public appearance by Saeed, whom the U.S. and India accuse of masterminding a 2008 attack on India’s financial capital Mumbai that killed 166 people, was another reminder of the many sore points in the Pakistani-U.S. relationship. The United States has offered $10 million for information leading to Saeed’s arrest and conviction, but he remains free. He maintains a low profile for much of the time, meaning his occasional public appearances and pronouncements are closely watched. “The U.S. stands with India in their enmity towards Pakistan,” Saeed told a crowd of hundreds of people after leading Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque. “We want to request the army chief and make the air chief realize that it is their duty to shoot down any drone that comes into Pakistan and respond to it in kind.” In response to the May 21 drone strike that killed Mansour, an Islamist charity Saeed heads, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has announced a series of anti-U.S. protests in major cities, with Saeed expected to be a featured speaker. Pakistan’s top foreign policy official and its powerful military chief met Richard Olson, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, during a visit. A statement from the military said Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif had expressed “serious concern” over the U.S. drone strike. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad said it had no statement on Olson’s visit. Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Kay Johnson and Robert Birsel

Politics

Afghanistan

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Jeremy Lane was arrested for DUI over the weekend in Washington ... TMZ Sports has learned. The 27-year-old former Super Bowl champ was arrested and later booked Sunday morning at 5:30 AM in the Seattle area. Bail was set at $1,000. He was released a short time later on his own recognizance, according to official records. Lane had a decent career with the Seahawks until he lost his starting job earlier this season. The team reportedly tried to ship him to Houston, but he failed his physical -- killing the deal. Lane's most famous moment is probably when he picked off Tom Brady in Super Bowl XLIX -- a game the Seahawks ultimately lost.

Science

Psychology

(Adds details, background, paragraphs 3-5) By Humeyra Pamuk and Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has decided to suspend non-essential travel by staff because of the spread of the coronavirus and will only permit mission-critical trips, three sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. One source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said decisions about travel by employees stationed abroad would be made by U.S. embassies and consulates while Washington-based staff must obtain approval from their bureau. Two other sources confirmed that U.S.-based staff needed approval from their bureaus, some of which focus on geographic areas and others on issues such as arms control. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The decision reflects the seriousness with which the U.S. government is taking the spread of the virus despite efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to play down the threat. The coronavirus has infected more than 119,100 people across the world and has killed 4,298, the vast majority in China, according to a Reuters tally. (Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Travel

Cruises

TOKYO, Nov 8 (Reuters) - Japan’s benchmark stock index rallied to a 13-month high on Friday before paring much of those gains, as markets were buffeted by conflicting reports on how much progress has been made in U.S.-China trade negotiations. Earnings at Japan Inc. also swayed sentiment, with the Nikkei average up 0.1% at 23,352.10, after climbing to as high as 23,591.09 - the highest point since Oct. 10 of last year. For the week, the index was on track to log a 2.2% gain for what would be its fifth consecutive weekly rise. The broader Topix advanced 0.15% to 1,700.68, its highest in more than a year. The Chinese commerce ministry said on Thursday that the two countries had agreed to cancel the tariffs in phases, which was confirmed by a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Yet, in an interview with Fox Business Network that underlined the fluid nature of the talks, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro dismissed suggestions of a roll-back in tariffs. “There is no agreement at this time to remove any of the existing tariffs as a condition of the phase one deal,” he said. In Tokyo, there was still plenty for investors to focus on as Japanese earnings moved into full swing. Shares of companies with solid earnings spiked. Terumo rose 13.4% to record highs after the medical equipment maker posted strong earnings in the three months to September. Isetan Mitsukoshi jumped 11.0% after the department store operator posted upbeat quarterly earnings and announced share buyback. Kirin Holdings gained 9.2% after the beer and beverage maker announce share buy-back totalling up to 6.8% of its shares. Toyota rose 1.8% to hit four-year highs, helped by its release of a share buyback plan and estimates-beating quarterly results. On the other hand, Shiseido shed 7.5% after the cosmetics maker cut its outlook on poor sales in South Korea and Hong Kong. Rakuten dropped 4.2% as its quarterly operating profit was almost wiped out in the three months ended September as investment in its e-commerce and mobile units weighed on profits, with the value of its bet on ride-hailing firm Lyft also sliding further. Mercari lost 17.3% after the internet shopping service operator’s earnings underwhelmed investors. (Reporting by Hideyuki Sano & Tomo Uetake; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

Finance

Investment

It looks like Snap is enlisting outside help to advance its expansion into new hardware projects. The U.S. company is in talks with China-based drone maker Zero Zero Robotics over an acquisition, according to a source with knowledge of discussions. The deal, which was first reported by The Information, is in the range of $150 million-$200 million, the source told TechCrunch. That price would represent quite an outlay, but Snap previously paid upwards of $250 million for social map company Zenly which is its most expensive acquisition to date. (Although Snap hasn’t confirmed its price for Zenly.) Neither Snap nor Zero Zero Robotics had returned our requests for comment at the time of writing. Zero Zero Robotics is best known for its Hover Camera drone, which is designed for taking aerial selfies and was on display at our TechCrunch China event in Shanghai last year. The device launched to the public in October, it is sold exclusively by Apple for $500 via both its online and physical retail stores. When we first began to hear rumors that Zero Zero Robotics had been acquired by a “major U.S. company” earlier this summer, it was easy to assume that it had followed the fate of other drone companies in struggling to build a sustainable business and was seeking a soft landing. Most prominently, Lily, a Kickstarter success story, was forced to shutter earlier this year due to financial issues. Snap does have a track record in shopping for bargains among defunct drone companies. The fact that Lily had held unsuccessful acquisition talks with Snap as an alternative to closing and that Snap reportedly did acquire drone firm Ctrl Me Robotics, which was about to shut down, played into that theory. While increased competition from drone pioneer DJI, which announced its own take on Hover Camera, the $499 Spark drone, may well have put some heat on the Hover Camera. However, these negotiations are not driven by failure. Not only is Snap in talks to pay a lot more than the $25 million which Zero Zero Robotics has raised from investors to date, but, according to The Information, the Chinese company actually approached Snap over a potential investment — and that turned to a prospective acquisition. For Snap, the deal makes sense as it looks to push its hardware business on from its Spectacles product. While another, more advanced iteration of the wearable camera glasses that could include augmented reality technology is currently under development, as TechCrunch recently reported, Snap has shown a desire to get into drones as part of its broadening focus on being a camera company. Snap once looked into developing its own drones in house, according to a New York Times report, but in the end it looks to have opted to lean on specialists outside of the company. Snap is under pressure from Wall Street to show growth, which could explain why it is prepared to pay a large sum to get a product that is already in the market. Its stock just came out of the dreaded lock-up period, when insiders are able to sell their shares, relatively unscathed, but its current value of $13.10 is well down on the $17 that it priced its IPO at in March.

Technology

Cameras

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Kors looked to the country to find inspiration for his fall 2020 collection, showing a host of luxuriously oversized looks on Wednesday that the designer said were meant to evoke coziness as well as glamour and confidence. “I think the world is a confusing, difficult place, and I think that the best fashion makes you feel confident so I really wanted this whole thing to have a coziness to it,” Kors told Reuters before his presentation. Accordingly, the veteran designer presented a largely neutral palette using plaids and paisleys, with voluminous, unstructured looks of mostly mid-calf length. Poncho and cape-style coats featured enveloping, oversized scarves, collars and lapels. Earthy, autumnal tones were offset only by the occasional pop of red or hit of black and white, while turtlenecks were pulled high and widely flared coat sleeves ran long. High boots with low heels added to the laid-back yet elegant look. “We all want to escape to the country,” Kors said, speaking of fashionable urban dwellers. “But of course we can’t, so I wanted to take that cozy kind of laid-back attitude that you would find in the country and merge that with an urban polish.” Owing to the Internet and smartphone revolution, designer collections can be duplicated worldwide within hours of runway shows, but Kors, approaching 40 years of presenting collections, said that hasn’t rendered the runway tradition irrelevant. “If designers didn’t have a show, I have a feeling most designers would never finish their collections,” he observed. “They would just keep designing.” But he added that “ultimately, it really is the best way, in the shortest amount of time, for me to tell my story for six months to that many people. And as far as copying it, you can’t copy quality, you can’t copy tailoring. “I think my customers want the real thing.” He also contended that “these are the kinds of accessories and clothes that I think people will want to keep in their closets for 20, 25, 30 years.” Kors’ show featured Canadian country musician Orville Peck and his band playing foot-tapping country rock as models strode down the runway, which was augmented by a barn-style wooden stage and set. Reporting by Tara Cleary and Chris Michaud, writing by Chris Michaud, editing by

Fashion

Clothing

Danny Trejo is the hero L.A. needs ... or at least one grandmother in L.A. desperately needed when her car flipped over trapping her infant grandchild in the backseat. Danny was in the right place at the right time Wednesday afternoon when the woman allegedly ran a red light, and got smashed so hard by another vehicle ... hers ended up on its roof. Trejo was in the area running errands when he came across the accident, and ran to assist. While grandma was stuck in the driver's seat, she kept screaming for Danny and 2 other samaritans to help the baby boy, who was strapped in the carseat in the back. Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media. Trejo says he climbed into the wreckage and -- with the help of the other heroic bystanders -- was able to pull the infant to safety. The baby and his grandmother were reportedly transferred to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Trejo described helping the little boy to stay calm by saying "OK we have to use our superpowers. So he screamed 'superpowers' and we started yelling 'superpowers." I said do this, with the muscles. He said 'muscles.'" Yeah ... there's that warm, fuzzy feeling.

Entertainment

Television

DEBENHAMS SAYS PLANS TO CLOSE UP TO 22 STORES IN 2020; ABOUT 1200 PEOPLE TO BE AFFECTED FROM CLOSURES

Other

Other

Jimmy Tagliaferri spent Monday afternoon at New York Men's Day, where a selection of hot up-and-coming designers kicked off New York Fashion Week: Men's with a coterie of fresh and eclectic presentations. At NYMD, Tagliaferri caught collections by brands like Descendant of Thieves, Heliot Emil, Life in Perfect Disorder, Body Wild, R.Swiader, and Maiden Noir. While each presentation had its own distinct appeal, Tagliaferri's eye was drawn to a lot of the same features time and time again: his camera caught the models and men at the shows beneath their necklines, focusing on their taut physiques and their swaggering postures. When we asked Tagliaferri about his approach to shooting fashion, the photographer told us, "I love documenting awkward moments in fashion because it crushes the stereotype of everything being glamorous and perfect." Here's what he saw. -Clara Mokri You can see more of Jimmy's images on Instagram.

Fashion

Clothing

The family of a 3-year-old boy who fell into a Cincinnati zoo's gorilla enclosure, prompting workers to fatally shoot a male gorilla to protect the child, said it will not accept donations from supporters and asks all contributions to be sent to the zoo. "We are ... very appreciative for the expressions of concern and support that have been sent to us," the family said in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "Some have offered money to the family, which we do not want and will not accept. If anyone wishes to make a gift, we recommend a donation to the Cincinnati Zoo in Harambe's name." The death of Harambe the gorilla on Saturday has attracted international attention, with many criticizing the zoo for its decision to kill the animal. The boy's parents have also been heavily criticized after the child was able to crawl under a railing and through wires before falling into the exhibit's moat. Police in Cincinnati said Tuesday they launched a review "regarding the actions of the parents/family that led up to the incident." Officers said their investigation does not concern the operation or safety of the zoo itself. Police have asked witnesses and those with video recordings of the incident to contact authorities. The boy and his family have not been officially identified by authorities or the zoo. But said in a statement released on Sunday the family said they understand it "was a very difficult decision for [zoo officials to shoot the animal], and that they are grieving the loss of their gorilla." The zoo on Monday defended the decision by staff to shoot the animal, saying the child's life was in danger. "We're the ones who took this loss and we made a very difficult call in handling it," zoo director Thane Maynard told reporters. The boy's age has been changed from 4-years-old to 3-years-old based on new information from the Cincinnati Police Department.

Nature

Animals

Evan McMullin estimates he had 131 Twitter followers when he entered the presidential race in August. Today he has 168,000. Despite a campaign that never had a shot of landing him in the White House and only made the ballot in 11 states, McMullin has rapidly built up his image as a principal irritant of President-elect Donald Trump. On his "thank you" tour, Trump has taken to calling McMullin "McMuffin" and proclaiming "I never heard of this guy before." "I think the reason for that is I'm his only opponent during the election who has stayed vocal," said McMullin, in an interview Monday at CNBC's San Francisco bureau. "I wasn't just running against him in the election because I was only committed to liberty and equality for a few months. I was running against him because I knew, I saw the danger that he posed to the country." McMullin, a former CIA operative, investment banker and chief policy director of the House Republican Conference, is in San Francisco to meet with investors and potential partners as he tries to figure out where to go from here. He lived in the Bay Area from 2010 to 2013 when he worked for Goldman Sachs. Having run as an independent conservative candidate and with a growing audience on both sides of the political aisle, the 40-year-old McMullin is in a unique position to build a resistance to what he views as the dangers and potential overreaches of a future President Trump. The Utah native and former Mormon missionary, who won 21 percent of the vote in his home state, isn't ready to divulge his plans, in large part because he's not sure exactly how it will all unfold. But he did tell CNBC that he's very interested in combining the power of digital media with real political action. "Those of us who are standing for freedom and for our democracy, we've got to learn to use those tools much better than we have," he said. "We've got to stand for truth and use digital media in order to do that most effectively." Of gravest concern to McMullin is the influence that Russia is having in the U.S. in ways that go well beyond hacking the Democratic National Committee's computer system and leaking emails with the intent, according to the CIA and FBI, of swaying the election to Trump. RT, a Russian news network that airs in the U.S., has been intentionally running stories to undermine Americans' faith in democracy, he said. At the same time, Russia has close ties to white supremacists and has "an army of online trolls" sent to pose as Americans and attack Trump critics. McMullin sees the same playbook being used in Germany and across Western democracies. Trump made clear throughout the campaign that he wants to improve relations with Russia, in stark contrast to President Barack Obama, who authorized sanctions against Russia for violating Ukraine's sovereignty. Trump also announced Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his choice for secretary of State. Tillerson has criticized U.S. sanctions on Russia and was awarded Russia's Order of Friendship by President Vladimir Putin in 2013. "The fact that these attacks are happening but we have a president-elect who wants to partner with our attackers is absolutely unconscionable," McMullin said. A Trump spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment. McMullin launched his presidential bid in August as an unknown in national politics. By then he had missed filing deadlines for more than half the states and was not only facing Trump and Hillary Clinton but two other third-party candidates. Including write-ins, voters in 34 states could ultimately cast their ballot for McMullin. At the time of his announcement, he called Clinton a "corrupt career politician" with questionable judgment and ethics and said Trump "appeals to the worst fears of Americans at a time when we need unity, not division." He didn't delve much into his own positions except to say that he's for limited government, embracing human life, limiting national debt and defending the Constitution. In the aftermath of the election and with his loud and constant criticism of Trump, McMullin has raised his profile in a way that's unfamiliar. "I had spent my entire professional career trying to avoid the limelight," McMullin said, highlighting his 11 years as a CIA officer. "So I wasn't looking for any kind of media attention or for a big footprint on social media." While McMullin is enthused about the reception he's getting from citizens, he's less optimistic about what he sees in Congress. He said that very few Republican or Democratic senators and representatives are speaking out against Trump because they're afraid of retribution or that he'll harm their re-election bids. McMullin is still considering a future in politics and said, "there are seats that are interesting" in Utah. That's down the line. Right now, McMullin is moving quickly because he said there's no time to wait. His concern about Trump and his Cabinet and the ongoing threat of Russia require rapid mobilization from both parties as well as independents, he said. "One thing I want to prevent from happening is this issue of Russia attacking our democracy becoming a partisan issue," he said. "We can't let that happen. That's why voices on the right are so critical right now, and there are so few of them standing up."

Politics

Government

March 6 (Reuters) - York Water Co: * THE YORK WATER COMPANY REPORTS 2017 ANNUAL AND FOURTH QUARTER RESULTS * YORK WATER CO - QTRLY OPERATING REVENUE $12.4 MILLION VERSUS $11.9 MILLION Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

Technology

Telecommunications

Supermodel Karlie Kloss finally responded to the viral "dinner with the Kushners" moment on "Project Runway." On an episode that aired earlier this month, judges questioned now-eliminated contestant Tyler Neasloney over a dress they said they couldn&apost picture Kloss wearing. He responded: "Not even to dinner with the Kushners?"Kloss is married to Jared Kushner&aposs brother, Joshua."The real tragedy of this whole thing is that no one is talking about how terrible that dress was," she responded.She also said she supports Democratic candidates, telling Cohen: "I&aposm sure I&aposm not the only person in this country that does not necessarily agree with their family on politics."Visit Insider&aposs homepage for more stories.Supermodel Karlie Kloss finally addressed her viral "dinner with the Kushners" moment on "Project Runway" in an interview with Andy Cohen on Bravo&aposs "Watch What Happens Live.""I was honored to be one of the first memes of the decade," Kloss told Cohen. "But honestly the real tragedy of this whole thing is that no one is talking about how terrible that dress was. That&aposs why he went home. And no, I wouldn&apost wear that dress to any dinner… any kind of dinner"The contestant Kloss was referring to, Tyler Neasloney, was eliminated from the current season of "Project Runway" on an episode that aired on January 2.Judges tasked contestants with making an outfit Kloss could wear to a fashion event in Paris. They told Neasloney they couldn&apost picture the model wearing the black-and-white dress he designed.Neasloney replied: "Not even to dinner with the Kushners?" —Ξvan Ross Katz (@evanrosskatz) January 3, 2020Kloss is married to Joshua Kushner, whose brother is Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump and son-in-law of President Donald Trump, for whom he works as a senior adviser.Neasloney later apologized to Kloss for the comment, saying his remark "had no hidden agenda, no meaning, nothing like that."On "Watch What Happens Live," Cohen asked Kloss how she felt about her in-laws&apos politics."Andy, I&aposm sure I&aposm not the only person in this country that does not necessarily agree with their family on politics," she said. "I voted as a Democrat in 2016, and I plan to do the same in 2020."Watch the full clip here: —WWHL (@BravoWWHL) January 17, 2020Read more:Karlie Kloss was speechless when a &aposProject Runway&apos contestant seemingly mocked her for being in-laws with Jared Kushner and Ivanka TrumpKarlie Kloss said &aposit&aposs been hard&apos marrying into the Kushner family as a DemocratFormer Angel Karlie Kloss reveals why she left Victoria&aposs Secret: &aposI didn&apost feel it was an image that was truly reflective of who I am&aposPhotos show Princess Beatrice, Ellie Goulding, and Ashton Kutcher celebrating Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner&aposs 2nd wedding at a ranch in Wyoming Read the original article on INSIDER. Copyright 2020. Follow INSIDER on Facebook. Follow INSIDER on Twitter. window._taboola = window._taboola || []; window._taboola = window._taboola || [];

Television

Reality TV

Washington (CNN)Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, told reporters on Wednesday both he and President Donald Trump are still fully behind the nomination of Stephen Moore for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. "He still supports Steve's (nomination)," Kudlow said at a breakfast roundtable with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "People are being awfully hard on him. We are fully behind him." Kudlow described Washington as "toxic." "He will be a bit of fresh air." Kudlow also said Trump administration would take any necessary steps it sees fit to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. "We have sanctions. Sanctions are working. It may take additional sanctions. We will do it as necessary," Kudlow told reporters. He called the situation in the Latin American country "a humanitarian crisis," "a foreign interference crisis" by countries like Russia and China. "We want him out," Kudlow said, referring to Maduro. Kudlow also said the Trump administration has a rebuilding plan for the nation, which they are calling "Day 2." "We have a lot of plans to revitalize the Venezuelan economy and move very rapidly," he said. "There's a financial plan. There's food planning. Getting cash to the people on the streets. Working with banks in the region to help us." He also said there was some discussions about external plans to gain assistance via the International Monetary Fund, but declined to provide any specific details. "We are moving as fast as we can," he said.

Politics

Government

Cuban leader Fidel Castro has died at age 90, his brother Raul announced on state television in the early morning hours Saturday. Raul Castro made a brief TV statement around 12:30 a.m. Eastern.  "It is with great pain I come to inform our country, friends of our America, and the world that today, Nov. 25, 2016 at 10:29 p.m., the commander in chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died," he said.  Castro’s funeral will be Dec. 4 in Santiago, Cuba, after a nine-day mourning period and a tour of his ashes through the island country, according to multiple reports. The former communist leader's health had been failing for several years, and his brother took control of the government in 2008.  Castro led the Cuban Revolution, taking power in 1959. His uninterrupted 50-year reign saw the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis and a relationship with the U.S. that deteriorated to near-complete isolation under heavy trade and travel restrictions president after president. President Obama moved last year to normalize relations between the two countries, becoming the first president to visit Cuba in about 80 years. While there, he met with Raul Castro, but not Fidel.  The first commercial flights from the U.S. to Cuba took place earlier this year.  Fidel Castro later blasted the visit, writing, "We don't need the empire to give us anything."  Shortly after Obama's visit, Castro delivered a rare speech to the Communist Party, urging his followers to carry his ideas forth after his death.  "This may be one of the last times I speak in this room," he said. "We must tell our brothers in Latin America and the world that the Cuban people will be victorious." In his minute-and-a-half remarks, Raul Castro said details about a funeral would be forthcoming, and said his brother wished to be cremated.  "To victory, always!" he concluded.  View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Cuba

(CNN)Congressional Republicans spend most of their time these days holding their breath and praying that President Donald Trump doesn't say something that will blow up their carefully laid plans for the 2018 election. Of course, this is Donald Trump we are talking about. And blowing up carefully laid plans is, well, sort of his thing. Which brings me to Trump's speech at the annual Susan B. Anthony dinner in Washington Tuesday night. Here's part of what Trump said when talking about the coming midterm election: "But if Democrats gain power, they will try to reverse these incredible gains. These are historic gains. They will try and reverse many of them. So your vote in 2018 is every bit as important as your vote in 2016 -- although I'm not sure I really believe that, but you know. (Laughter.) I don't know who the hell wrote that line. I'm not sure. (Laughter and applause.) But it's still important." HA HA HA HA HA ... wait. This is vintage Trump. He is reading a prepared speech about how 2018 is so critical because it will determine whether the gains made for conservatives with his 2016 election will be continued in the second half of his first term or not. It's standard issue political speak for a president trying to rally his somewhat too-satisfied base to the necessity of turning out to vote in midterm contests. Since there have been midterm elections, presidents have given speeches in the run-up to the campaign trying make sure their bases understand just how high the stakes actually are for this non-presidential year vote. But this is Trump. And Trump never does things the way past presidents (or even past politicians) have. So he reads the line -- "your vote in 2018 is every bit as important as your vote in 2016" -- but them stops himself because, well, he doesn't totally believe it. Trump believes that the most important election -- past, present or future -- was his election in 2016. It was the biggest upset in American political history. It was a seminal moment in the ongoing battle between the people and the powerful. It signaled a remaking of not just the Republican party but of how we conceive of -- and analyze -- American politics. (Nota bene: I think he's right about all of that.) In truth, that doesn't make Trump terribly unique. Every president thinks his election -- especially the first one -- is the most important election. And that the second most important election is their reelection race. The difference? They don't say it out loud. Trump's honesty is sure to send a chill down the spines of Republican strategists tasked with trying to hold onto the GOP's 23-seat majority come this fall. For Republicans to have any chance at remaining the majority party in 2019, they badly need the Trump base that turned out in droves to vote for the GOP nominee in 2016 to again head to the polls in five months' time. The available data since that 2016 election suggests that isn't easy -- even with an engaged Trump. In Alabama, Trump was an active participant in the final days of the special election between Roy Moore and Doug Jones. But he was unable to sway the result to Moore. Ditto a special House election in southwestern Pennsylvania in which Trump campaigned with the Republican nominee, only to watch him come up short with voters. What Republicans simply cannot have is a Trump who seems less than jazzed about the 2018 midterms -- and who conveys that "meh" feeling to his core base of supporters. Which is why Trump's comments on Tuesday night have to be so concerning for Republicans. Let's be clear: There was a joke-y element to Trump's aside. People laughed -- twice! -- during his 2018-is-no-2016 lines. But, in all "jokes" there is an element of truth. Especially when the joker is Donald Trump. He often hides behind humor to tell truths he quite clearly believes. Or uses the idea that he was joking to escape criticism or controversy. The question Republican candidates and elected officials have to ask themselves this morning is, do they trust that Trump was joking? And, even more importantly: Does Trump's base know that he was joking? And will he make that clear a whole bunch of times between now and the November election? Can anyone make him? Even the slightest loss of enthusiasm among Trump base voters could be problematic for the broader Republican Party. Special election results over the past 17 months have confirmed time and again what polls of the electorate also show: That the Democratic base is currently more passionate and motivated to turn out than the Republican one. Trump's role over the next five months is to use his personal popularity among Republican base voters to close that gap. But comments like the one he made Tuesday night could well have the opposite effect.

Politics

US

(CNN)At least one Republican senator thinks the calls for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned are going one step too far. As speakers and delegates at the Republican National Convention lifted their voices with chants of "lock her up" on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Flake tweeted that Republicans are "jumping the shark." ".@HillaryClinton now belongs in prison? C'mon. We can make the case that she shouldn't be elected without jumping the shark," tweeted the Arizona senator, who is opposed to Trump's candidacy. Trump, who officially became the Republican presidential nominee Tuesday night, has himself called for Clinton to be imprisoned, frequently calling her a criminal on the stump for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. Trump supporters are frequently seen sporting campaign swag emblazoned with the "Hillary for Prison" slogan. The FBI earlier this month recommended no charges be brought against Clinton and the US attorney general followed that recommendation. But should Trump be elected, he has vowed to direct his attorney general to investigate Clinton's email use once again, and has suggested he would urge Clinton's indictment. Flake's tweet came after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former US attorney, made the case in a speech that Clinton should have been prosecuted. Christie is considered a top prospect to serve as Trump's attorney general, should Trump become president.

Politics

US

Instagram is creating a standardized format that should make it clearer to everyone when a post has been paid for by an advertiser. These aren’t for ads that businesses buy directly from Instagram, but rather for influencer marketing, where brands pay celebrities and other users with a significant online following to promote their products. It’s an area that every big tech and media company seems interested in, but it’s also creating questions around disclosure and transparency. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission recently sent letters to more than 90 influencers reminding them that they need to “clearly and conspicuously” disclose when their posts are sponsored. That means they shouldn’t hide the disclosure under the “more” button, or use ambiguous language like “Thanks, [Sponsor Name Here]!” Instagram’s Creative Programs Director Charles Porch told me that most influencers and advertisers are looking for a clear, straightforward way to make these disclosures. “People are building amazing businesses on Instagram all over the world, at all sorts of scale,” Porch said. And those users are “looking for ways to be super transparent with their followers when they have a partnership.” So with this new feature, influencers tag a brand as the sponsor for their post, which accomplishes two things. First, it means the post will include a “Paid partnership with” notification at the very top. (These disclosures can also show up on Instagram Stories.) It’s not exactly a giant banner warning users that the post is an ad, but the language is straightforward and the placement will make it hard to miss. At the same time, the tag also means the advertiser will automatically get access to the same data as the influencer around a post’s reach and engagement — and that data will show up in the same Facebook dashboard as the rest of their advertising data. Instagram is currently testing this new tool out with select users, including BuzzFeed and Aimee Song. But will the company eventually require everyone to use with these tags when they run sponsored content? “Right now, we’re still in phase one,” Porch said. “The goal is to one, educate people and two, get a ton of feedback … There will be enforcement, but first we want to get feedback on how everyone reacts.”

Other

Other

President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE’s onetime business associate Felix Sater was interviewed privately by House Intelligence Committee staff Tuesday about his years-long business relationship with President Trump and failed efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. Sater spent nearly eight hours behind closed doors with committee staff, telling reporters later that he spoke truthfully about his knowledge of the discussions to pursue the Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 presidential campaign and answered all of the questions posed by congressional investigators. But the committee issued a rare statement Tuesday evening vehemently pushing back on Sater’s suggestion he was fully cooperative, saying he still has not provided documents including unredacted telephone records and files related to a joint defense agreement that the committee required he produce under subpoena. “Mr. Sater has not fully cooperated with the Committee, and he will remain under subpoena until he does so,” House Intelligence Committee spokesman Patrick Boland said in a statement. Boland also said Sater asserted “a baseless claim of attorney-client privilege” in response to a question about former Trump attorney Michael CohenMichael Dean CohenCapitol Police advised Gaetz against holding open events I'm not a Nazi, I'm just a dude: What it's like to be the other Steve King Wyden blasts FEC Republicans for blocking probe into NRA over possible Russia donations MORE’s false statement to Congress about the property discussions in summer 2017. “Our investigation thus far has revealed that Sater was not a part of any joint defense agreement, and has no basis to assert this privilege over these documents,” Boland said. Sater downplayed the importance of the real estate deal when questioned by reporters following the marathon session, saying it was “no different” than the dozen other Trump Tower projects he pursued domestically and internationally in the course of his years working with Trump. “In hindsight, I should have probably tried to revive Trump Paris. A lot less questions,” Sater quipped. The House Intelligence Committee sought Sater’s testimony as part of the panel’s sweeping investigation into Trump’s financial dealings and ties to Russia, a probe unveiled by Chairman Adam SchiffAdam Bennett SchiffAre Democrats turning Trump-like? Schiff offers bill to make domestic terrorism a federal crime New intel chief inherits host of challenges MORE (D-Calif.) in the weeks before former special counsel Robert MuellerRobert (Bob) Swan MuellerMueller report fades from political conversation Trump calls for probe of Obama book deal Democrats express private disappointment with Mueller testimony MORE concluded his investigation into Russia's election interference. Sater, who cooperated extensively in Mueller’s investigation, is a key person of interest for House Democrats because of his efforts with Cohen to bring a Trump property to Moscow. Schiff has raised national security concerns about the defunct business proposal, noting that the Trump Organization was pursuing the project at a time when then-candidate Trump was speaking positively about Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinThe Hill's Morning Report - Trump on defense over economic jitters Can we do business with Kim Jong Un? Leadership analysis might give clues Russian defense minister: 'We won't do anything' in Europe unless US places missiles there MORE on the campaign trail. Trump signed a letter of intent to pursue the project but never went through with the plans. “This was a deal that he was seeking the Kremlin's help to make happen — a deal that Michael Cohen believed, and others as well, that without Putin's support they could not make happen,” Schiff said during an appearance at the National Press Club in June. “That may not be a crime. Maybe it should be, but it may not be a crime. It is however, a counterintelligence problem of the first order of magnitude,” Schiff said. The project attracted scrutiny from Mueller’s prosecutors and Sater’s involvement in the talks is detailed in the special counsel’s 448-page report. The special counsel did not unveil charges in connection with the real-estate discussions, beyond Cohen’s guilty plea to making false statements to Congress about the duration of the talks within the Trump Organization. Mueller also did not find sufficient evidence to charge members of the campaign with conspiring with Russia to interfere in the election. Schiff’s panel is also examining whether attorneys working for Trump’s family obstructed the congressional investigation into Russian interference by shaping or editing Cohen’s false statement. Sater, the former managing director for the New York-based real estate firm Bayrock Group, said Tuesday that he provided the committee with documents in the form of phone records, business records and emails. “I pretty much brought just across the board everything having to do with Trump Tower Moscow and some other areas. Whatever they have asked me for, I have provided. Whatever I have not yet been able to get, I will get them,” Sater said, flanked by his attorney, Robert Wolf. Echoing the president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr.Donald (Don) John TrumpPETA billboard in Baltimore calls Kushner a 'rich pest' Dick Cheney to attend fundraiser supporting Trump reelection: report House chairman warns foreign governments to 'cease and desist' spending money at Trump properties MORE in minimizing the importance of the Trump Moscow project, Sater stated he believes the project was no different from other real estate projects that were also in the works. “I have worked on probably five or six Trump Tower projects in the United States and at least that many internationally, so to put all the onus on Trump Moscow as that important — yes, it’s one of the twelve deals that we worked on,” Sater said. Sater, who said he never talked with the president about the business deal, would not say if he believes Trump misled the American public during the 2016 presidential campaign about his business ties to Russia. “I don’t speak for the president and I don’t opine on what the president says,” Sater told reporters.  Trump had repeatedly said he had no business deals in Russia, and did not disclose the existence of the real estate discussions during the heated presidential race. Cohen told Congress in February that he offered Trump updates on the project “at least a half-dozen times” between the Iowa caucuses and the following June. The president has attacked Cohen, who is currently serving a three-year prison term for various crimes, as a liar. Sater said he also wished that his interview could’ve been public, but the “committee chose to do otherwise.” The committee initially announced it planned to question Sater publicly in March, following Cohen’s closed-door testimony, but the interview was twice delayed. And then last month, Sater did not appear for a scheduled private interview before the committee, prompting the panel to issue a subpoena. At the time, his attorney blamed “unexpected health reasons” for preventing his client from appearing. The Intelligence panel’s probe is one of numerous Democratic-led investigations the White House is fighting in the lower chamber. Trump’s private attorneys are currently locked in a dispute with the Intelligence and Financial Services Committees over financial documents they have subpoenaed from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Law

23 Photos View Slide Show › This year at New York Bridal Fashion Week, designers like Monique Lhuillier, Reem Acra and Inbal Dror showcased their fall 2017 bridal collections. New looks that emerged on the runways included dramatic capes, intricate floral details, flamboyant ruffles and metallic gowns. Here’s a peek at some of the fashions that will be available for next year’s brides.

Fashion

Clothing

NBC host Seth Meyers attacked congressional Republicans on Tuesday over a provision in the tax bill that, citing reports, he said would personally enrich Sen. Bob CorkerRobert (Bob) Phillips CorkerTrump announces, endorses ambassador to Japan's Tennessee Senate bid Meet the key Senate player in GOP fight over Saudi Arabia Trump says he's 'very happy' some GOP senators have 'gone on to greener pastures' MORE (R-Tenn.). On "Late Night with Seth Meyers," the host tore into the GOP for "ramming through" tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy before some senators have even read the bill. "Now, the Republicans appear to have the votes to pass this bill after securing a key vote, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, who voted against the bill the first time because it would add nearly $1.5 trillion to the deficit. Corker announced last week that he would support the bill, despite the fact the deficit impact is virtually the same. So what changed?" Meyers asked. He then played news clips that explain a provision tucked into the final bill would reduce taxes on real estate LLCs, which could benefit people such as Corker with real estate investments. Meyers accused Republicans of using the provision to win over Corker, who has said he didn't know about the provision and had nothing to do with its inclusion in the tax bill. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin HatchOrrin Grant HatchTrump to award racing legend Roger Penske with Presidential Medal of Freedom Trump awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to economist, former Reagan adviser Arthur Laffer Second ex-Senate staffer charged in aiding doxxing of GOP senators MORE (R-Utah) has backed up Corker's story. "Now, Corker and the GOP claim he didn't even know about the provision, and that this whole thing is one big misunderstanding," Meyers said.  "And who knows? Maybe that's the case," he continued. "But if it is, Republicans are doing a bad job of defending themselves." He then showed video of Texas Sen. John CornynJohn CornynThe Hill's Morning Report - Trump on defense over economic jitters Democrats keen to take on Cornyn despite formidable challenges The Hill's Campaign Report: Battle for Senate begins to take shape MORE (R) defending Corker by saying the provision was just one part of the bill. "I'm sorry, but that's not a convincing argument," Meyers joked. "That's like if you poison your husband and tell the cops 'my meatloaf has a lot of ingredients, antifreeze is just one of them.'" Meyers then noted that Corker said he had not read the full legislation. "Wow, so Corker's argument is basically, 'this doesn't benefit me, I haven't read the bill, I don't understand the bill, this is ridiculous, and if you'll excuse me, I have to go vote for the bill,'" Meyers said, to laughs. Meyers also criticized Republicans for including a provision that would benefit Trump at the last minute. "And even if it is true that Corker had no idea, the fact remains that Republicans added it, at the last minute. A provision that would personally enrich Corker, Trump, and Trump's family. And the senators who are supposed to vote on that provision didn't even know it was there. Which means Republicans are racing to pass a massively unpopular tax plan, and they're only defense is that they didn't read it," Meyers continued. "No wonder this bill is doing so badly in the polls. In another words," Meyers finished, playing a clip of Trump, who added: "People are very, very angry." View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Government

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices edged higher on Thursday, with Brent settling above $50 a barrel the first time in seven months, after the latest drawdown in U.S. crude stockpiles offset OPEC’s failure to set a ceiling for its output. U.S. crude stockpiles fell 1.4 million barrels last week, drawing for a second straight week, data from the Energy Information Administration showed. Although lower than a 2.5 million-barrel draw forecast by analysts, the decline helped crude futures reverse early losses. [EIA/S] U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled up 16 cents, or 0.3 percent, at $49.17 a barrel. It had tumbled more than $1 earlier. Brent futures rose 32 cents, or 0.6 percent, to settle at $50.04, after peaking at $50.30. It was its first settlement above $50 since Nov. 3. “It was more a definitive day for the EIA than OPEC,” said Carl Larry, director of business development for oil & gas at Frost & Sullivan in New York. “Leaving aside the crude draw, the demand numbers for U.S. gasoline and diesel were a bit too large to ignore.” U.S. gasoline stockpiles fell by 1.5 million barrels, compared with expectations for a 157,000-barrel drop, the EIA data showed. Inventories of distillates, which includes diesel and heating oil, fell by 1.3 million barrels, versus a forecast 891,000 barrels. Brent and WTI had largely traded in a $3-$5 range below $50 for weeks due to uncertainty over oil demand and strong technical resistance for crude at above $50. Crude futures have gained more than 80 percent from this year’s lows as supply outages in Canada, Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria eased a two-year long glut. Still, analysts said, the key to real recovery was balancing supply-demand from the biggest producers, which include OPEC. Thus, Thursday’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna was closely watched for signs it may revive OPEC’s group output ceiling, as proposed by Saudi Arabia, or introduce individual member production quotas, as suggested by Iran. OPEC did neither. Saudi’s new Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih instead promised the kingdom would not flood the market with extra oil. His remarks suggested a softening of Riyadh’s previous stance, when it rigorously pumped to defend its share of a crude market oversupplied by around 1.5-2.0 million barrels per day. Iran maintained its right to steeply raise crude exports to pre-sanction levels, although Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said he didn’t think others in OPEC would ramp up supply. Additional reporting by Amanda Cooper in LONDON and Reem Shamseddine, Rania El Gamal and Alex Lawler in VIENNA; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Chizu Nomiyama

Energy

Oil

March 24 (Reuters) - England’s Premiership Rugby is considering midweek matches and staging multiple games behind closed doors at a single venue to complete the 2019-20 season, league chief executive Darren Childs has said. The Rugby Football Union cancelled the remainder of English rugby domestic season last week, excluding the English Premiership, due to the coronavirus pandemic. England’s top-flight competition is suspended until at least April 24, with nine rounds and the playoffs still to be played. “Our number one priority is to find a way to play, and that is what we are all working on behind the scenes,” Childs told British media. “We want to get this season finished, and if that means playing over the summer, then we will do that, as long as it is safe to do so. We won’t take any risks about anyone’s health and welfare. “We are all working to try and hopefully be the first sport back on television, whether that is in a closed stadium or an open stadium. There is no reason why we couldn’t play four games over a weekend in a single stadium.” Several of the Premiership’s 12 clubs have told their players and staff to take a 25% pay cut due to the postponement of rugby during the coronavirus outbreak, with Harlequins becoming the latest to announce such a measure on Monday. (Reporting by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Rutherford )

eSports

Competitive Gaming

March 6 (Reuters) - GATEGROUP HOLDING AG: * PRIMARY OFFERING IS EXPECTED TO RESULT IN PROCEEDS FOR COMPANY OF APPROXIMATELY CHF 350 MILLION * FREE FLOAT OF APPROXIMATELY 65% Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)

Investment

Stock Market

(Adds details of Supreme Court ruling, legislation on federal control board) NEW YORK, June 13 (Reuters) - The price on Puerto Rico’s benchmark 2035 general obligation debt rose 2 points in price on Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the island’s bid to revive a local bankruptcy law because it conflicted with U.S. federal statutes. The 2035 GO bond carrying an 8 percent coupon was last traded at a price of 66.75, with the yield dropping to 12.65 percent from 13.05 percent on Friday, according to data provided by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. The court ruled 5-2 that Puerto Rico’s 2014 law known as the Recovery Act conflicts with U.S. federal bankruptcy law, leaving in place a 2015 appeals court ruling that had invalidated the statute. The U.S. House of Representatives last Thursday passed legislation creating a federal control board to help Puerto Rico cope with its crippling debt, and sent the bill to the Senate for consideration. The White House has urged the Senate to act promptly so President Barack Obama can sign the bill into law ahead of a looming July 1 deadline for Puerto Rico to make a $1.9 billion debt payment. Passage of the legislation could be the only remaining option to avoid a disorderly default by the U.S. territory of about 3.5 million U.S. citizens that is burdened by a $70 billion debt load it has said it cannot pay. (Reporting By Daniel Bases; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Politics

Government

Hannah Brown is moving on from her relationship with Luke Parker with positivity in her heart. On Monday night’s episode of The Bachelorette, the former pageant queen finally sent Parker packing after having a heated argument about sex during their one-on-one date in Greece — a decision many fans have been waiting for while watching their contentious relationship play out week after week. “Even though it was difficult in the moment and it has been difficult watching it back, there’s definitely a silver lining to the relationship I had with Luke P.,” Brown, 24, tells PEOPLE. “I grew a lot from that relationship. I think every time you go through a difficult relationship, you realize more and more about what you will and you won’t have in your next relationship — what you deserve and what you don’t deserve.” Along with learning about herself, Brown says that having her “toxic relationship” with Parker, 24, play out in front of millions of viewers could be beneficial for people who have found themselves in similar circumstances. “It was a very candid version of that for people to witness and to maybe see some similarities that they might have in their relationship and [ask], ‘Is this something that I’m dealing with and do I need to end this relationship?’ Or, ‘Have I been in a relationship that has hurt me before and has it caused insecurities in me now and what do I need to do to move forward?&apos” she says. “I am really thankful that I didn’t have to wait until after this season to use my platform. I’m getting to use my platform as the Bachelorette — on my season — to really make change through my experience. So definitely a silver lining. I’m glad if I can help anybody.” During their last one-on-one date, Parker revealed that although he’s not a virgin, he has been abstinent for nearly four years and plans to wait until marriage to have sex again — and expected Brown to follow suit. “I just want to make sure that you’re not going to be sexually intimate with the other relationships here,” he said on the show. “I totally have all the trust in the world in you, but at the same time, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. Like, if you told me you’re going to have sex or you had sex with one or multiple of these guys, I would be wanting to go home, 100 percent.” His comments infuriated Brown, and after a heated back-and-forth, she laid down the law. “I have had sex,” she declared. “And Jesus still loves me. And from obviously how you feel, me f—ing in a windmill, you probably want to leave. And my husband would never say what you said to me.” Parker’s time on the show seems to not be over yet, though. As seen in a sneak peek of next Monday’s episode, Parker makes a shocking return to interrupt Brown and her three remaining suitors — Tyler Cameron, Jed Wyatt and Peter Weber — at the rose ceremony. “Hannah thought there was no way I would want to be with her anymore after the last thing she told me,” he says in the clip. “She’s sadly mistaken.” Parker’s drama with his fellow contestants has also been an ongoing storyline this season, with Brown canceling three cocktail parties after having tough conversations with the Georgia native. Despite noticing “red flags,” Brown explained during an episode that aired in June why it was so hard for her to let Parker — who was the recipient of her first impression rose — go. “Luke P. is still here because my heart wants him to be here,” she said. “My head doesn’t always want him to be here. It makes it really difficult to know what’s the best decision to make. We know we have crazy chemistry, but there are red flags, and I honestly haven’t had the time to explore our relationship the way that I feel like it needs to be explored.” The Bachelorette airs Mondays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.

Television

Reality TV

Authorities are investigating anti-Semitic social media posts possibly made by the suspect in Saturday morning’s attack at a Jewish synagogue that killed 11 people, a law enforcement source tells PEOPLE. Authorities confirmed at a Saturday news conference that the suspect is Robert Bowers, a Pittsburgh-area resident whose age authorities have not released and who was not previously known to police. The suspect was taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds after surrendering to police, authorities said, adding that there is no continued threat to the public. On Sunday morning, federal prosecutors said that Bowers had been charged the night before with 29 federal crimes, most of which carry a maximum penalty of death. According to U.S. Attorney Scott Brady, Bowers faces 11 counts of murdering victims exercising their religious beliefs and 11 counts of using a firearm to commit murder as well as seven additional charges in connection with his alleged attack on the responding police officers at the scene, four of whom were wounded. Brady said that during the rampage, which began about 9:50 a.m., Bowers allegedly talked about genocide and wanting to kill Jewish people. He was armed with three handguns and an AR-15 assault rifle, according to Brady. Bowers will make his initial court appearance Monday afternoon, Brady said. Police sources previously told local TV station that KDKA the the gunman yelled “all Jews must die” after entering the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill section of the city during the Saturday morning Shabbat service. President Donald Trump condemned the attack as anti-Semitic violence and authorities announced it is being investigated as a hate crime.  According to the law enforcement source, investigators are looking at an account on the social media site Gab in which a user who is possibly the shooter writes, “Jews are the children of Satan.” In another post, the user reacts to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a Jewish organization that works with refugees. “He accused [the organization] of bringing in hostile invaders to live in the U.S.,” the source tells PEOPLE. “Something touched him off this morning,” the source says, citing a post on the Gab account that read, “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.” Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich told reporters on Saturday that authorities received a call about an active shooter at 9:54 a.m. Robert Jones, the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Pittsburgh, said the suspect spent about 20 minutes inside the synagogue and was leaving when an officer engaged him. That officer was subsequently wounded, after which the suspect went back inside the synagogue to hide from SWAT officers, Jones said. On Sunday, Jones said that Bowers is still in the hospital under guard, following surgery, and that while the investigation is in its early stages there is no indication that he acted with accomplices. Jones on Saturday described the site of the shooting as “the most horrific crime scene I have seen in 22 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” “Members of the Tree of Life Synagogue — a place of worship — were brutally murdered by a gunman simply because of their faith,” he said. Six people were also injured in the shooting, including four SWAT officers who responded to the scene. Police Chief Scott Schubert said Sunday that one of the four wounded officers was released from the hospital on Saturday and that another could leave Sunday. No children were killed in the shooting, according to authorities. “We are going to get through this,” Schubert said Sunday. “We are going to continue on and show what Pittsburgh is made of.” In response to the shooting, HIAS issued a statement saying, “There are no words to express how devastated we are by the events in Pittsburgh this morning. This loss is our loss, and our thoughts are with Tree of Life Congregation, our local partner Jewish Family and Community Services (JFCS) of Pittsburgh, the city of Pittsburgh and all those affected by this senseless act of violence. “As we try to process this horrifying tragedy, we pray that the American Jewish community and the country can find healing.”

Crime

Police

International soccer is trying something new with the penalty shootout this week. At the European men’s under-17 championship in Croatia and the women’s under-17 event in the Czech Republic, knockout games ending in a tie will go to a shootout as usual. And, as usual, a coin toss will determine who goes first — but only for the first kick. Instead of one team kicking first in each round, the teams will alternate going first, round by round. Looking at it another way, instead of the kicks going AB, AB, AB, AB, AB until a winner is determined, they will go AB, BA, AB, BA, AB and so on. Yes, sort of like a fantasy league’s snake draft. The change is an experiment: Soccer’s rulemakers are tinkering with the rules of the shootout to try to address what they feel is a clear issue of fairness. The penalty shootout is far from beloved by players and fans. As a way to determine the winner of a crucial match, it almost always feels unsatisfying and random, more of a lottery than a true test of the teams’ skill, endurance and tactics over 90 — or 120 — minutes of open play. But it is a lottery that is not entirely random. Studies have shown that the team lucky enough to kick first wins about 60 percent of the time. Since the teams shoot at the same net, why this advantage? It appears to be entirely psychological. “Both teams should have the same probability of winning regardless of the kicking order; yet, we find a systematic first-kicker advantage,” wrote two professors, Jose Apesteguia and Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, in a paper, “Psychological Pressure in Competitive Environments: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment,” published in 2010 by The American Economic Review. Their research zeroed in on the brain, not the foot, as the crucial element in the disparity. “As most kicks are scored, kicking first typically means having the opportunity to lead in the partial score, whereas kicking second typically means lagging in the score and having the opportunity to, at most, get even,” the professors wrote. “Having a worse prospect than the opponent hinders subjects’ performance.” The researchers surveyed professional players and found that almost all preferred to kick first “to lead in the score in order to put pressure on the opponent.” They also found that the discrepancy was entirely because of the kicker, not the goalkeeper. Save rates stay pretty much the same, but kickers’ misses go up when their team is kicking second. This discrepancy was found be to true for every kick in the shootout, from first to last. The International Football Association Board, the stewards of the game’s laws, suggested the new shootout format explicitly to counter the advantage of going first. “The stats at the moment say that 60 percent of penalty shootouts are won by the team that takes the first penalty,” Stewart Regan, a board member, told The Telegraph. “We believe that the AB, BA approach could remove that statistical bias.” “The hypothesis is that the player taking the second kick in the pair is under greater mental pressure, because if the opposition’s first penalty in the pair has been successful, a miss by the second penalty-taker in the pair could mean the immediate loss of a match for his team, especially from the fourth pair of penalties onward — i.e. the 7th and 8th spot kicks,” UEFA, which is running the under-17 tournaments, said in an article on its webpage. Soccer tries out offbeat rules from time to time, and many of the experiments are never heard from again; sudden death, for example, in the form of the so-called Golden Goal, was eliminated after a brief and contentious trial period. Others, like goal-line technology, are adopted and win praise. But the first step is often to try them away from the spotlight, with youth teams as the test subjects. The first chance to try the new system could come this week: on Friday in Croatia, Hungary’s under-17s play Turkey and Spain faces France in the first two UEFA men’s quarterfinals, while in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands plays Spain and Germany squares off against Norway in the women’s semifinals on Thursday.

Sports

Soccer

Things are heating up between John Cena and Shay Shariatzadeh. In new photos obtained by TMZ, Cena and Shariatzadeh were spotted packing on the PDA outside of the San Diego airport on Wednesday. Cena was seen giving Shariatzadeh a kiss as he dropped her off for a flight. The two were first linked in March after they were seen holding hands in Vancouver. Shariatzadeh is a project manager for Avigilon, a Motorola Solutions tech company, and has been employed at the Vancouver-based company since 2015, according to E! News. She’s the first woman the pro wrestler has been linked to since his public split from Nikki Bella last summer. While Cena, 42, has yet to comment on his relationship status, Bella, 35, recently opened up about watching her ex move on. During the April 10 episode of her podcast with twin sister Brie, The Bellas Podcast, Bella confessed that even though she wants the best for her ex, when she first saw a headline about the photos, her “stomach went into knots.” She also admitted she felt bad about how their breakup was portrayed on her reality show Total Bellas. “When [I] film the reality shows, you guys only get to see so much. So one thing that I thought was kind of unfair for John was you saw a very small amount on our reality show about our breakup and of course it was pro-me, because it was coming through my eyes,” she explained. “It made me sad for John. I felt bad for John. I felt bad because I felt like I embarrassed him, I felt like I disappointed him, and I have to live with a lot of that stuff.” “Because of how sad I made him and how much I felt like I hurt him, when I saw the big smile on his face with the paparazzi photos [with Shariatzadeh], I think that’s why I didn’t want to s— my pants,” she continued. “I felt happy for him. I am very happy for him.” Ultimately, Bella said that she wants both of them to be content. “As long as John is happy, I’m happy,” she said. “But let me tell you, she breaks his heart? I will rack-attack her in a heartbeat. Still protective of that man.” Bella has also moved on. PEOPLE confirmed in January that she and her former Dancing with the Stars partner Artem Chigvintsev, 36, were casually dating. Since then, the two have been spotted packing on the PDA, but Bella has maintained that they’re not official. Speaking to PEOPLE at a WrestleMania 35 kickoff event earlier this month, Bella said she’s “not fully taken,” but that she and Chigvintsev are in a good place. On this week’s episode of her podcast, she called Chigvintsev an “amazing lover” but insisted he’s not her boyfriend, saying she’s “not ready” for that label.

Entertainment

Television

Jennifer Lawrence is in party planning mode for her upcoming wedding to New York City gallery director Cooke Maroney. A source tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue that the Oscar winner, 28, and her fiancé, 34, will tie the knot this fall with an extravagant celebration. “She wants it to be a blowout party and for everyone to just have a ton of fun,” the insider says. “She’s really excited about the wedding and can’t wait to be married.” For more on Jennifer Lawrence, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on stands Friday But Lawrence has hardly been a bridezilla. Speaking with Catt Salder on an episode of her Naked podcast that dropped last week, the actress revealed how easy it was for her to choose a dress and a venue. “I’m like too lazy to be neurotic,” Lawrence told Sadler, 44. “I saw a dress I liked I was like, ‘That’s the dress.’ I saw a venue I was like, ‘Cool, we got the venue.’” And the source thinks Lawrence and Maroney are a perfect match. “They’re a super fun couple,” the insider continues. “Cooke doesn’t care that she’s famous, and she loves that he brings normalcy to her life.” Maroney and Lawrence got engaged in February when the Dark Phoenix star was spotted wearing an engagement ring during a night out in New York City. The couple has been linked since last June and has been spotted out on numerous dates in the last year.

Relationships

Weddings

I'm a huge fan of Iron Man, so when the real-life opportunity to suit up like Tony Stark presented itself, I didn't hesitate to book a flight from JFK airport to Heathrow to test-drive a flying jet suit. The invitation to fly like a superhero came via Richard Browning, CEO of Gravity Industries and the inventor of the Gravity Jet Suit. If you haven't seen the viral videos of Browning flying through the sky in his insane invention (I had), then let me give you a little bit of background. Browning is a former British Royal Marine and oil trader who set out on a mission in early 2016 to make human flight a reality. By October that year, he had a suit that could fly. He's constantly enhancing his invention, and today the suit is propelled by two mini jet engines strapped to each forearm and a slightly larger jet attached on your back. Total propulsion: 1,050 horsepower. "That's more than a Bugatti Veyron. Nearly one and a half Indy cars. It's phenomenal," says Browning. When you see Browning effortlessly zoom across the sky like a comic book hero, you'll understand why I was so excited to "work" on this assignment. The suit sells for $440,000, so unless I hit the lottery, this is my one and only chance to fly like Iron Man. Browning asked me to meet him two-and-a-half hours northeast of London at a former U.S. Air Force airfield deep in the English countryside. When I pull up to the security gates, the Gravity team directs me by phone down an old runway toward a 1970s R.A.F. T4 jet, parked in front of a giant aircraft hangar. The corrugated steel doors emblazoned with the letters "gravity" suddenly begin to slide open revealing Browning's fog-filled test-flight facility (the fog is generated by a smoke machine for dramatic effect). When the haze dissipates, a steel platform comes into focus. Behind it is a red crane with a 30-foot arm that extends to the rafters. On one side of the platform sits two massive decommissioned jet engines, on the other, three of Browning's suits, which have a total retail value about $1.32 million. When I meet Browning, his excitement for his invention is palpable, "The vision, was really to go and tackle a challenge that was largely considered to be impossible: the idea that human beings could fly. Having gone and achieved it, it's opened the door into a whole new realm of human capability, really, human possibility," Browning tells me. His achievement: the first wearable jet-suit technology. He also has dozens of jet suit stories to share, like the time he impressed Tom Cruise by landing a few feet away from the movie star on the set of a European TV show. The CEO is on a mission to get the word out about his invention, which is why he's suiting up a few lucky journalists this week and as a senior executive producer at CNBC, I'm first on the list. Browning sits me down on an old military crate where his team suits me up. Two men carry over the Gravity Jet Suit. It's made up of a black 3D-printed aluminum shoulder harness with lots of straps, tubes and electronics all rigged to five jet engines. The first part of the suit is hoisted over my shoulders placing the largest of the five jets squarely at the center of my back. It feels like a bulky knapsack with a scuba diving oxygen tank attached. When they explain the plastic tubes running from the engine go to the fuel reservoir now pressed firmly against my back, my excitement turns to anxiety. Browning assures me that the 5-gallon reservoir filled with jet fuel, is way less combustible than gasoline. "It's probably safer than, riding a motorbike around on public roads," Browning says as he tries to convince me that what I'm about to do is less dangerous than riding a motorcycle with the tank full of gas between your legs. Now protective sleeves are being pulled over each of my forearms so that a pair of jets, each a little bigger than a Nutribullet blender, can be strapped on. The team tightens the straps around my chest, shoulders and groin, locking it all in place with half a dozen buckles. The suit is so tight around my chest and crotch that I'm starting to feel claustrophobic. While I've never had an anxiety attack before, this sure feels like the beginning of one. I silently consider backing out of the test drive but talk myself into staying the course. Just as I think the suit couldn't get any tighter they tug, pull and tighten it some more. The final buckles are fastened and I'm essentially fused to the suit. I'm warned the engines are very loud, so I'll need to push plugs firmly into my ear canals and strap on a helmet to protect my skull (the helmet's rigged with a GoPro for my story). I stand and make my way onto the test-flight platform. In just a few awkward paces it's clear the almost 100-pound suit (including fuel) is built for flying not for long strolls in the park. For my safety, I'm tethered to a rope connected to the crane above the platform and Browning begins to explain that when the jets are ignited they'll create three distinct vectors of powerful thrust, two shooting out of the engines mounted on my left and right hand, and the third coming from the jet strapped to my back. There's enough fuel for about three minutes at full throttle. The goal, Browning says, is to balance the three forces against each other so I don't get pushed left or right or worse spin out of control on the tether. I'm face-to-face with the inventor as he holds the jets connected to my forearms up in front of me. He's cool as a cucumber as he carefully points the engines attached to my wrists away from his body and gives his team the signal to power me up. Instantly the engines scream. Even with earplugs the roar coming from my suit is the most intense sound I've ever felt with my entire body. There's a heavy smell of jet exhaust in the air and the blast of energy gushing through my hands feels like a new superpower. Over the roar of the engines, Browning gestures for me to increase the thrust on my suit with the trigger in my right hand. This is when he lets go of my arms and steps off the platform. From a safe distance he mimes as if he's wearing the suit himself. He's moving his body into the position he wants me to mimic. He bends at the waist and holds his arms wide open in front of him as he gestures slowly to simultaneously move both my arms downward. Essentially, Browning wants me to flex like the Incredible Hulk. When I move my arms apart like his, I can feel the force of the jets pushing my shoulders into my torso and every muscle in my core engages. I'm in awe of the power and relieved Browning had the good sense to set my suit's max output well below its 1050 horsepower potential. If I can strike the right balance, my suit's setting is just strong enough to make my 160-pound body feel weightless on the platform. In other words, this experience will feel more like walking on the moon than flying like a rocket. As I try to strike the perfect Hulk pose, my arms are slightly out of sync and the jets instantly thrust me to the left side of the stage. Even on the novice setting this takes concentration, muscle and a good sense of balance to nail it. I know I'm in the zone when my heels begin to lift off the platform. Suddenly, I'm weightless. The gravity-defying sensation lasts for just seconds, but it's wildly addictive. I instantly want more power so I can fly for real, but when I press the trigger for more juice the jets don't respond. Browning signals to release the throttle. My suit is running low on fuel and sadly my test ride is over. The engines wind down, and I'm stripped of my superpower. As I walk off the platform, I wonder how many of my friends I can convince to split the cost of a jet suit with me. Browning tells me I did really well for a first try (I'm not sure if he's just being kind). The truth is, it can take two or more full days of training before a newbie pilot is safe to fly with no tether. So far, Browning says he's sold two of his $440,000 jet suits, one to a Japanese billionaire and the other to a millionaire who lives in New York. The CEO also offers a less expensive option called "The Experience." It's a full day of one-on-one jet suit pilot training for $40,000, jet fuel and lunch included. The founder says he's currently doing research and development on an electric version of the Gravity Jet Suit and his next model may even come with wings. But what has Browning most excited is his plan to turn his jet suit technology into a competitive sport where famous athletes strap on jet-powered suits and race each other across the sky in front of thousands of adoring fans.

Other

Other

LONDON — Banco Santander of Spain said on Wednesday that its profit declined 5 percent in the first quarter as fluctuations in the British pound and other currencies, as well as a deterioration in lending and fee income, weighed on its results. For the three months ended March 31, Santander reported a profit of 1.63 billion euros, or about $1.84 billion, which was above analysts’ expectations. That was down from €1.72 billion in the first quarter of 2015. On a currency-neutral basis, profit rose 8 percent in the quarter, Santander said. Net interest income, or what a bank earns on its lending after deducting what it pays out on deposits and other liabilities, fell 6 percent to €7.62 billion in the first quarter, from €8.04 billion in the same period a year earlier. “Our Q1 results are ahead of plan, and we continue to deliver on all of our commitments,” Ana Patricia Botín, the Santander chairwoman, said in a news release. The profit in the bank’s British unit fell 4 percent to €453 million in the quarter, from €471 million in the first quarter of 2015. On a currency-neutral basis, it was down less than 1 percent, Santander said. Britain is an important market for Santander, one of Europe’s largest banks. During the first quarter, the pound weakened against the euro amid uncertainty in Britain, which will hold a referendum on June 23 on whether to leave the European Union. The pound has strengthened in recent days, reaching a 10-week high against the dollar on Tuesday, but its value is expected to continue to fluctuate before the vote. Weaker currencies in Latin America also weighed on Santander’s results, sending profit in its businesses there down 16 percent in the quarter. On a currency-neutral basis, profit rose 8 percent in Latin America. Profit fell 25 percent in Brazil to €359 million in the first quarter, from €477 million in the same period a year earlier. Over all, provisions for delinquent and defaulted loans were down 6 percent, to €2.41 billion, in the quarter, from €2.56 billion in the first quarter of 2015. Operating expenses declined 4 percent to €5.16 billion in the first quarter, from €5.38 billion in the same period a year earlier. Santander’s earnings in Spain, its home market, fell 10 percent to €307 million in the quarter, from €340 million in the first quarter of 2015.

Finance

Banking

G-Eazy's giving getting saucy a whole new meaning ... after treating 100 fans to a chow down at his favorite chicken joint. The "Me, Myself & I" rapper corralled 100 of his most fervent fans Friday night in Chicago for a spicy spread at Nando's PERi-PERi Chicken (think Chipotle but with an explosive taste featuring chicken). G-Eazy kicked off the weekend by asking his more than 8.3 million Instagram followers who wanted to grab dinner. The first 100 to RSVP to the number he posted got directions to Nando's in Chi-Town for a free meal. The rapper more than delivered ... treating fans to an insane spread of 25 chicken platters (that's about 100 quarter chickens if you're counting), 300 wings, plus tons of sides that included mashed potatoes, fries, spicy rice, macho peas and garlic bread. The night ended with "Naughty Natas" ... traditional Portuguese tarts served warm with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar. G-Eazy picked up the tab ... to the tune of well over $1,000!!! But, that's not all ... fans also got to mingle with G-Eazy, and also each fan left with a limited edition G-Eazy Nando's sauce bottle. Dude's clearly obsessed with Nando's, an original South African joint that spread like fire in the UK before making its way to the U.S. with 42 locations in D.C., Illinois, Maryland and Virginia. No, seriously. G-Eazy loves it so much it's practically all he eats when he's in the UK. The obsession's legit ... G-Eazy dropped the joint's name when he made his debut on Charlie Sloth's "Fire in the Booth" segment for BBC Radio. G-Eazy rapped, "Yeah, PERi-PERi on the Nando's, couple deals on the table, watch me land those." One of Nando's slogans ... "I bring a lot to the table." G-Eazy and Nando's ... a match made in chicken heaven.

Food

Cuisine

(Corrects lead paragraph to show dollar on track for best weekly gain in two months, not two weeks) * Graphic: World FX rates in 2019 tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh By Saikat Chatterjee LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar rose on Friday and is on track for its biggest weekly gain in two months as dissipating geopolitical tension prompted investors to buy riskier currencies, while the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc gave up all their recent gains. With the United States and Iran backing away from further confrontation, traders will focus on monthly U.S. jobs data, which will follow a batch of strong economic figures. “The galvanising force for the dollar rally this week was the fizzling of tensions in the Middle East with the recent U.S. data also giving investors some further room for optimism,” said Ricardo Evangelista, a senior analyst at ActivTrades. Against a basket of its rivals, the dollar gained 0.1% on Friday to 97.53, taking its cumulative gains this week to 0.7%, its biggest weekly rise since early November. Recent data have showed a pick-up in the U.S. services, falling joblessness claims and solid private hiring. Traders are focused now on December jobs data due at 1330 GMT. The consensus forecast is the United States added 164,000 jobs in December, after 266,000 were added in November. The dollar’s gains were particularly pronounced against the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc, against which it has rallied 1.7% and 1% respectively from this week’s lows. “Hopes of an interim trade deal between China and the U.S. as early as next week is also boosting the dollar,” said Manuel Oliveri, a currency strategist at Credit Agricole in London. U.S. President Donald Trump, who announced last month that the Phase 1 trade deal with China would be signed on Jan. 15, said on Thursday the agreement could be signed “shortly thereafter”. Hopes of a trade deal has also boosted the Chinese currency this week. The yuan climbed to a five-month high as the Jan. 15 date for signing the Sino-U.S. trade deal approached. It last traded up 0.1% at 6.9315 per dollar. The Aussie rose a third of a percent to $0.68755, although its gains were curbed on bets interest rates will be cut as early as February. Weeks of bushfires have cast a shadow over the broader economy. The Kiwi dollar also edged up 0.2% to $0.6622. The pound weakened after a Bank of England policymaker said the British economy’s response to Brexit developments in coming months will determine whether rates were cut further. It was down 0.1% against the dollar at $1.3054. Reporting by Saikat Chatterjee; editing by Larry King

Finance

Currency

Republican presidential candidate Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat O'Rourke: Trump driving global, U.S. economy into recession Manchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms MORE is calling rival Ted CruzRafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump moves forward with F-16 sale to Taiwan opposed by China The Hill's Campaign Report: Battle for Senate begins to take shape O'Rourke says he will not 'in any scenario' run for Senate MORE "dirty" for starting a rumor about Ben CarsonBenjamin (Ben) Solomon CarsonCarson's affordable housing idea drawing undue flak Overnight Energy: Trump EPA looks to change air pollution permit process | GOP senators propose easing Obama water rule | Green group sues EPA over lead dust rules Green group sues EPA over lead dust rules it says are too lax MORE's campaign ending after the Iowa caucuses. "[Ted Cruz] insulted Ben Carson," the billionaire said at a news conference before a campaign rally in Milford, N.H. "What he did to Ben Carson was a disgrace."  Trump also accused Cruz of insulting the people of Iowa when he sent out a voter violation mailer before the caucuses.  When asked if he thought Cruz was running a dirty campaign, Trump responded that his rival "certainly was dirty."  "What he did to Ben Carson was terrible," Trump said. "When they said Ben Carson is out of the race and come vote for him, I thought it was terrible."  Cruz apologized to Carson earlier Tuesday for the "mistake."    View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

US

Thank goodness we didn't have to wait any longer for this team up.  It's been a whole year since producer Mike Will Made-It teased a collaboration with Rihanna on Twitter, but now the official release of "Nothing Is Promised" is upon us—and it's the perfect banger to bump loud as we ride straight into summertime.  #NothingIsPromised - Single by Mike Will Made-It & Rihanna#RANSOM2 #EARDRUMMERSUMMER https://t.co/cxxeGGBslf — Mike Will Made-It (@MikeWiLLMadeIt) June 3, 2016 The duo's trap-tinged single is now available on iTunes. It's the first single off of Ransom 2, Mike Will Made-It's new album which is set to be released this summer. The track is dripping with bravado and Rihanna raps about vacations in France and drowning in cash. Casual. "Ain't none of us perfect," Rihanna raps, but it's safe to say this is track makes it easy to believe that the magic between Mike Will Made-It and Rih is pretty damn close.  You can hear a preview of the song here.  Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Music

Hip-Hop

For lack of better judgement, I decided to watch Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals a couple months ago. The movie just looked so tense and downright gorgeous that I was willing to ignore the fact that I turned off Ford’s first movie halfway through. I should have done the same with this one. I don’t like to be dismissive of movies in this weird little intro space here since I never write more than a few short paragraphs, but Nocturnal Animals is a whole other beast. The film’s hero is a guy who spends over a decade writing a book just so he can get revenge on his ex-wife for... breaking up with him? The conclusion is that the book makes her feel bad. It also equates abortion to a gruesome double rape/murder. Obviously, movies are allowed to be about bad people. The problem with this one is that the film takes the bad guy’s side, as though his ex deserves to be punished for wanting to escape their unhealthy, loveless relationship. The film’s point of view is just so morally corrupt that I don’t know how everyone agreed to make it. There’s an argument to be made that creating this kind of repulsed feeling in the viewer is a type of art, but I don’t believe that was the intention here. Also, the movie contains numerous extended reaction shots of someone reading a book. Last week was slow so there was no new trailers column, so check out seven trailers from this week and last week below. The internet’s most famous meme villain / horror legend is getting an appropriately creepy movie adaptation, and this trailer is a first look that just never seems to end. On one hand, it may have only been a matter of time before a studio brought a legend with a built-in audience and minimal copyright to life; on the other, it feels extra weird since there are actual incidents in which 12- and 13-year-olds attacked people in the name of Slender Man, which makes me wonder if there’s a degree of sensitivity this movie needs to approach its evil lore with. The film comes out on May 18th. Speaking of creepy internet stories, Channel Zero is a Syfy anthology series that’s based on a new myth each season. I’d missed this show until now — it’s two seasons in — but a trailer just came out for its third run, and it looks exceptionally creepy. It starts February 7th. Netflix’s big, colorful, and super-stylized adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events is close to returning for a second season. The streaming service released a brief teaser this week, though you likely won’t have to wait too long to see more. The second season comes out on March 30th. Netflix put out a very brief teaser for its new David Letterman-hosted talk show this week. But the real highlight isn’t Letterman, or the set, or anything unusual that’s going on: it’s the guests. For its first six-episode run, the show has landed President Obama, Jay Z, Malala Yousafzai, Tina Fey, George Clooney, and Howard Stern. In an usual move for Netflix, the season won’t premiere all at once: the first episode will go up January 12th, and new ones will roll out once every month after that. This is Israel’s entry for the foreign language Oscar this year. The trailer is not great from a ‘convey the tone of the film or what it’s about’ kind of standpoint, but it has so many great shots and so many perfectly strange moments throughout that it still caught my interest. The movie follows the parents of a solider after his death and also follows that solider’s depressing, but also apparently quite odd, experiences leading up to his death. It opens in the US with a limited release on March 2nd. This show actually came out yesterday, but Netflix did’t put out a trailer for it until early this week and it’s too weird not to include here. Be warned, the show looks exceptionally twee, but the dark twist could make it a lot of fun. Once or twice a year, Nicolas Cage turns up in a completely bewildering role. This is one of those roles, and yet it is also the perfect role, one that finds him screaming the lyrics to “Hokey Pokey” while destroying his home with a sledgehammer. It opens January 19th.

Literature

Fiction

The Brazilian men’s soccer team is now in a prime position to score their first-ever Olympic gold medal and it’s partially thanks to one record-breaking 15-second play. That’s how long into the Wednesday semifinal game it took for Barcelona striker Neymar to score, setting the stage for Brazil’s definitive 6-0 victory over Honduras. The win guarantees the Olympic host country a spot in Saturday’s final. Right after the opening kick-off, 24-year-old Neymar intercepted a lazy pass and got just one touch to guide it toward the wide-open goal before crashing into goalkeeper Luis Lépez. The ball bounced softly into the net as both men took a hard hit – making it as the fastest goal in Olympic history. .@neymarjr's goal was the fastest in Olympic #Football history (and only 5.42 seconds slower than @usainbolt 😜) pic.twitter.com/SMDhmULUSC — Rio 2016 (@Rio2016_en) August 17, 2016 For more of PEOPLE’s Olympic coverage, pick up our collector’s edition, The Best of the Games, on sale now. “Scoring a goal that early was spectacular for us,” Brazil coach Rogerio Micale told the Associated Press. “It helped us break the game open and it made everything easier.” “Neymar is a monster,” Micale added to Yahoo Sports. “He plays a great match today and wants to be Olympic champion. We make everything for his dream.” Brazil has never won the Olympic title, although the team came close and lost in the final at the 2012 games in London. An Olympic gold is the only major trophy eluding the five-time World Cup champions. Saturday’s matchup against Germany will be made even more bitter by the memory of Germany’s 7-1 semifinal defeat of then-World Cup host Brazil in 2014. At the end of Wednesday’s match, the crowd at the legendary Maracanã Stadium began a chant: “Germany, your time has come.”

Sports

Soccer

A Minnesota state judge has rejected manufacturing company Graco Inc’s challenge to a law that will raise Minneapolis’ minimum wage to $15 an hour, in the latest decision to find that a city’s law is not preempted by a state law mandating a lower minimum wage. District Court Judge Susan Burke in Hennepin County on Tuesday said the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act sets a floor, and not a ceiling, for what workers must be paid, and allows cities to tweak their laws to meet the needs of their residents. To read the full story on Westlaw Practitioner Insights, click here: bit.ly/2HTcaWt

Labor

Unions

March 13 (Reuters) - iApotek Int AB: * AFTER TRANSACTION RINAPHARM OWNS 13.4% OF SHARES IN IAPOTEK Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdansk Newsroom)

Technology

Internet

BEIJING — A prominent democracy activist said on Monday that he had been blocked from traveling to India to meet the Dalai Lama after the Chinese government urged Indian officials to rescind his visa. The activist, Dolkun Isa, had been scheduled to attend a conference this week in Dharamsala, the Himalayan city that is home to the Tibetan government in exile. Indian officials had initially approved his visa, Mr. Isa said, but on Saturday, after China publicly denounced the decision, the government said his visa had been canceled. “I recognize and understand the difficult position that the Indian government found itself, and regret that my trip has generated such unwarranted controversy,” Mr. Isa said in a statement. Mr. Isa, 48, is a leader of the World Uyghur Congress, a Munich-based group that advocates self-determination for Xinjiang, an expansive region in western China that is home to a large population of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. He now lives in Germany. China has labeled Mr. Isa, who fled the country in 1994, a terrorist, accusing him of aiding violent separatists in Xinjiang. Mr. Isa has denied the accusations. After news of Mr. Isa’s planned trip to Dharamsala emerged last week, Chinese diplomats were livid. Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said, “Bringing him to justice is the due obligation of relevant countries.” But commentators in India defended the decision to grant him a visa, hailing it as a sign that New Delhi was standing up to Beijing. Some news organizations described the issuing of the visa as retaliation for China’s opposition to an India-led effort to add Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani militant leader, to a United Nations list of terrorists. By Saturday, it appeared India had backed down. In a terse email to Mr. Isa, officials said that they were denying the visa because of “new factors that have come to our notice,” according to a copy of the message provided by Mr. Isa. Many people in India criticized the government’s decision to cancel Mr. Isa’s visa. “What was all that chest thumping earlier,” Omar Abdullah, a prominent Indian politician, wrote on Twitter. Officials at the Indian Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi did not respond to a request for comment. The Indian Embassy in Beijing said it did not have any information. The episode appeared to be another indication of Beijing’s growing clout abroad. Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch, said government leaders were increasingly acquiescing to China’s efforts to influence whom they met and whom they allowed into their countries. “One can’t help but wonder: What other decisions do those governments cede to Beijing, and are they not fearful of the longer-term consequences?” she wrote in an email.

Politics

International Relations

Get the VICE App on iOS and Android Stanford University is banning hard alcohol from most on-campus events for undergrads after a national firestorm erupted over the lenient sentencing of convicted rapist and former school athlete Brock Turner, as Newsweek reports. Containers of liquor that are more than 750 mL and over 40 proof will also be prohibited in undergraduate housing generally, the school announced Monday. "We must create a campus community that allows for alcohol to be a part of the social lives of some of our students, but not to define the social and communal lives of all of our students," Greg Boardman, vice provost for student affairs, wrote to students. Turner was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster after a Stanford frat party earlier this year. He was subsequently sentenced to just six months in jail after blaming his attack on "party culture." Not long after it went public, the new alcohol policy—which the school denies was a response to the Turner saga—was promptly criticized for missing the big picture. That is, women are routinely preyed on by men who often evade appropriate punishment in a dysfunctional criminal-justice system. Not only that, but some advocates say the new rule effectively reaffirms the rapist's defense by putting the onus on victims of sexual assault. Stanford law professor Michele Landis Dauber, a leader of the recall campaign against the judge who handled Turner's case, went so far as to argue it "makes students less safe by incentivizing pre-gaming and heavy drinking in private rooms" rather than drinking socially at an event on campus. "Sadly Stanford appears to agree with Brock Turner that 'alcohol' and 'party culture' are to blame for his conduct," Dauber tweeted Monday, apparently referring to the phrase "campus culture around alcohol" appearing in the new rule's announcement. The rule also doesn't seem likely to account for the role of Greek Life in some campus crimes, including rapes like the one committed by Turner. "It's hard to look at this policy with respect to fraternities and be very optimistic," Douglas Fierberg, a Washington, DC–based attorney with experience in college hazing cases, told USA Today. Read: Brock Turner Claims 'Party Culture' Led Him to Commit Sexual Assault

Law

Crime

Donald J. Trump may call himself a genius for his tax avoidance strategies, but in comparison, corporate America is being run by absolute virtuosos, Andrew Ross Sorkin writes. In fact, if working families could carry over deductions or spread out their taxable incomes over years like businesses, and Mr. Trump, virtually every taxpayer would be better off, according to Lily Batchelder, a law and public policy professor at New York University. Instead, Mr. Trump and the trillions of dollars that Fortune 500 companies have managed to shelter overseas serve only to highlight the need to fix the tax system. Whichever leader manages that would be considered a true genius, Mr. Sorkin argues. As for Mr. Trump, his campaign says he has a “fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required.” That defense remains questionable, Gretchen Morgenson writes. “There is no such thing as a fiduciary duty as a businessman to oneself,” says Richard W. Painter, a professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota and former chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House. “That’s called greed. And greed is not a component of the law of fiduciary duty anywhere.” Cabela’s, whose credit card became a status symbol for hunting and fishing enthusiasts across the United States, will sell its retail business to Bass Pro Shops for $5.5 billion. It has also agreed to sell $5.2 billion worth of credit card receivables and $5 billion in associated liabilities to the Capital One Financial Corporation. Bass Pro Shops is expected to receive royalties for bringing in more credit card customers as well as use of the brand. The two companies may both be outdoor retailers but there will still be “significant integration risk,” said Mike Zuccaro, a Moody’s retail analyst. “The company’s final capital structure is unclear given that expected proceeds from Capital One’s purchase of certain financial services assets and assumed liabilities have not been disclosed,” he said. What’s the attraction for Bass Pro Shops? According to Bill Smead, the chief executive and chief investment officer of Smead Capital Management, Cabela’s “created a cult of addicted customers and attached the most successful credit card operation to that cult.” “A so-called hard Brexit, in which the U.K. places heavy restrictions on inflows of E.U. economic migrants, risks doing the most damage to the U.K. economy in the long run.” — Holger Schmieding and Kallum Pickering, economists at Berenberg Bank in London. Continued angst over the way in which Britain would leave the European Union dragged the pound down again on Tuesday, to a 31-year low. A postcrisis push for loan growth has prompted regulatory warnings about lax lending standards and made smaller banks shy away from the market. Brokers say there are fewer lenders for commercial property deals, particularly ones that involve construction or redevelopment because they are considered riskier. This means that bankers are sticking to business closer to home and finding their growth by buying up other banks instead. There were 6,122 banks in the United States in the second quarter, and at the current pace of consolidation, that figure should dip below 6,000 this quarter. But this raises questions about how banks will fare in the long term. Commercial real estate has been a “lifeline for community banks for decades upon decades,” said Collyn Gilbert, an analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods. “If we are seeing a shift in that, then where are these banks going to go for growth?” • Google will hold an event in San Francisco to unveil a series of hardware products before the holiday shopping season. One of the most highly anticipated items is Google’s answer to the Amazon Echo.

Politics

Government

The White House said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump paid $38 million in federal income taxes in 2005 — on $150 million in earnings — offering a small glimpse at the president’s personal finances, which Trump has so far kept almost entirely private. The administration offered those details in a statement after journalist David Cay Johnston published two pages of tax information about the president, apparently from Trump's 2005 return. The revelations were simultaneously broadcast on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow" show, which included an interview with Johnston. Based on the information on the two pages, Trump paid an effective tax rate of about 25 percent. The returns, which POLITICO could not independently confirm, but which the White House appeared to acknowledge were legitimate, also showed Trump wrote off more than $100 million in business losses in 2005. “Before being elected President, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required," The White House said in a statement. "That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that." While initially promising to release his returns ahead of the 2016 election, Trump hedged and then resisted repeated calls to do so during the campaign. Trump has argued that his taxes are under audit by the IRS — and said that he would be happy to release them after the audit was complete. There are no IRS rules that prohibit someone from releasing their tax returns publicly while they are under audit. By refusing to release his returns, Trump eschewed decade of precedent — every candidate since 1976 had released their returns, when former President Gerald Ford released only summary data. The new documents, which were posted online and broadcast on MSNBC, show Trump and his wife Melania paid $5.3 million in standard federal income tax and more than $31 million in the alternative minimum tax. The Alternative Minimum Tax is intended to prevent taxpayers from excessively reducing their tax liabilities by taking many or sizable deductions. Trump has proposed eliminating the AMT as part of an overhaul of the tax code. Johnston is a former reporter for The New York Times who won a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the tax system. He runs a web site, dcreport.org, which crashed soon after he posted the tax documents. The purported tax documents, which were aired live on MSNBC, bore a stamp that read “Client copy.” Johnston said the documents were sent to him, but said he did not know where they came from. At one point, as he spoke to Maddow, Johnston seemed to imply that Trump himself may have sent him the returns. "It's entirely possible Donald (Trump) sent this to me," he added. "Donald has a long history of leaking material himself." In the run up to their publishing, Maddow created an Internet frenzy — hyping them on Twitter and setting off more than an hour of speculation. But the documents, which were incomplete, were short of salacious revelations. According to the document, Trump earned about $150 million, including some $32 million in capital gains. But he reported a $100 million loss he was able to subtract from that. MSNBC only released the first two pages of the return, and it’s impossible to tell from them what produced that loss. Trump’s adjusted gross income was $48.5 million that year. He took $17 million in itemized deductions against that, though, again, the documents do not detail speifics. Among the likely candidates: a deduction for state and local taxes important to high-tax states like New York. That left Trump with about $31.5 million in taxable income, and his regular income tax on that was about $5.3 million. But the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to prevent the wealthy from ducking the tax man, forced Trump to pay an additional $31.2 million in taxes. “If it weren’t for the AMT, he’d pay a very, very low tax rate,” said Roberton Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center. Many lawmakers, like Trump, have called for eliminating the AMT, which critics say is overly complicated. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., seemed to revel in the — in relative terms — mundane nature of the revelations, tweeting: “Thank you Rachel Maddow for proving to your #Trump hating followers how successful @realDonaldTrump is & that he paid $40mm in taxes!” Still, fresh information on Trump’s taxes has been relatively rare. In October, at the height the 2016 presidential campaign, The New York Times obtained and published three pages of Trump’s 1995 state tax returns, which showed he took a deduction of $916 million on losses, which could have allowed him to avoid paying taxes for 18 years. While it’s not unusual that Trump would use that tax break, the losses he claimed were so large they amounted to almost 2 percent of all such deductions claimed that year by taxpayers. In June 2016, POLITICO reported that Trump likely paid no taxes for at least two years in the 1990s. The Washington Post has also previously reported that Trump paid no taxes in 1978 and 1979. Tuesday's Trump tax news also shared some details with the earlier Times report: Both of the scoops arrived in the mail. In the same way New York Times reporter Susanne Craig got her hands on Trumps 1995 tax records In September, Johnston said someone just mailed him Trump's 2005 1040 tax form. "It came in the mail over the transom," Johnston said on MSNBC. Johnson did not immediately respond to a Twitter message seeking comment to why he chose to break the story on MSBNC. Toby Eckert, Hadas Gold, Brian Faler and Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.

Politics

Government

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Eric Rosengren sees a rate hike as the U.S. central bank’s possible next move, according to an interview with Bloomberg published on Tuesday. Rosengren described himself as “more optimistic” over the economic outlook than his colleagues on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee. Rosengren has a vote on that committee this year. If he turns out to be right about his economic forecast, he told Bloomberg, “it is possible the next move would be up” but if conditions deteriorate it is also possible that the next move could be a rate cut. The interview was conducted on Friday. Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

Finance

Economics

Update: Sorry, Victoria's Secret swim devotees: It's really happening. The lingerie giant confirmed its swimwear (which previously held televised-special status for the company) is no more. "In order to better focus our resources on core merchandise categories, we have decided to eliminate non-core businesses, including swim in our Victoria's Secret lingerie business, and shoes, accessories and apparel that were offered in our digital channel but not in stores," Victoria's Secret said in a statement obtained by Refinery29. Don't be too sad, though. The news may be coming right before Memorial Day, but the remaining inventory is on massive sale right now, per WhoWhatWear. Go forth and shop.This story was originally published on April 21, 2016. A swimwear go-to for many might be about to disappear. Victoria's Secret may soon be cutting its beach and pool-apropos offerings entirely, according to CNBC, which is reporting that certain categories are about to get nixed. The news was reportedly announced during VS parent company L Brands' March sales figures release. Victoria's Secret reps were not able to confirm or share further details with Refinery29 about the fate of its swim selection. But they said the retailer is expected to shed some light on the category's future in the next month. In addition to discontinuing bikinis, monokinis, and the like altogether, Victoria's Secret may stop sending out its catalog. The end of the old-school shopping vehicle is kind of a big deal, despite its popularity as parent-irking tween boy reading material and the fact that you probably never actually ordered anything from its pages. (And its ability to instill body insecurities, thanks to the models who are always incomprehensibly both super-lithe and busty.) Stay tuned for further updates on the skivvies-centric mall staple's plans for its swim selection (and more). And in the meantime, if you're a VS swim devotee, maybe consider stocking up for this summer and beyond, just in case Angel-vetted monokinis become a thing of the past in the not-too-far-off future.

Fashion

Clothing

The fear of "leaks" is spreading. IBM reportedly won't let its employees use any removable storage devices, like USB drives, SD cards, and flash drives. According to The Register, the company informed employees of the change in written advisory, stating that the new policy was to avoid leaks and security breaches. "The possible financial and reputational damage from misplaced, lost, or misused removable portable storage devices must be minimized,” chief information security officer Shamla Naidoo reportedly wrote. The policy affects all "removable portable storage devices (eg: USB, SD card, flash drive)." Which is pretty rich coming from a computer chip company. What's IBM up to that it's imposing this rather clunky security measure? Quantum computing. Recently, it unveiled a computer smaller than a grain of salt. And in September 2017 it announced the grant of $240 million for a research center at MIT called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, that will work on developing hardware to power AI. The policy is a disruption for IT professionals who need to install patches for their clients at IBM. But, with security as IBM's priority, apparently the IT guys and gals will just have to deal. Mashable has reached out to IBM to confirm reports of this policy, and get more information on what's behind the change. We will update this story when and if we hear back. UPDATE May 10, 2018, 12:30 p.m. ET: An IBM Company spokesperson provided the following comment regarding this story: We regularly review and enhance our security standards and practices to protect both IBM and our clients in an increasingly complex threat environment

Other

Other

Microsoft said on Thursday it aims to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits by 2030 and that by 2050, it hopes to have taken out enough to account for all the direct emissions the company has ever made. The focus on removing existing carbon from the atmosphere sets Microsoft's climate goals apart from other corporate pledges which have focused on cutting ongoing emissions or preventing future ones. Speaking from a stage at Microsofts headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Chief Executive Satya Nadella said that corporations need to create profitable solutions for the problems of both people and planet. If the last decade has taught us anything, its that technology built without these principles can do more harm than good, he said. We must begin to offset the damaging effects of climate change, he said, adding if global temperatures continue to rise unabated the results will be devastating. The announcement by the world's largest software company is the latest in a flurry of climate goals set out by firms after President Donald Trump announced in 2017 his decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, the global pact to fight climate change. Microsoft plans to cut its carbon emissions by more than half by 2030 across its supply chain. The plan includes the creation of a "Climate Innovation Fund," which will invest $1 billion over the next four years to speed up the development of carbon removal technology. The effort "will require technology by 2030 that doesn't fully exist today," Microsoft President Brad Smith said. He added that Microsoft will also expand an internal fee that it has charged to its business groups to account for their carbon emissions. Since 2012, Microsoft assessed the fee on direct emissions, electricity use and air travel, among other activities, but will expand it to cover all Microsoft-related emissions. That money is used, then, for us to invest in our work to reduce our carbon emissions, he said. Co-founder Bill Gates was an early backer of British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering, one of a handful of companies developing direct air capture technology. Microsoft's goal to have removed enough carbon by 2050 to account for all its emissions since its founding in 1975 encompasses direct emissions from sources such as company vehicles and indirect emissions from electricity use, it said. But even as technology companies have stepped in with their own climate goal plans, they have faced criticism from their employees for doing too little. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, last year pledged to be "net zero carbon" by 2040 and to buy 100,000 electric delivery vans from a startup, after employee activists pushed the retailer to take a tougher stance on climate change. Microsoft plans to become net zero carbon a decade earlier than Amazon, although this is in part because its emissions are roughly a third less. Microsoft expects to release 16 million metric tons of CO2 in 2020, including indirect emissions from activities like corporate travel. Amazon runs a bigger cloud business than Microsoft and a massive retail and logistics organization, with packaging, delivery and customer trips to its chain of Whole Foods stores all piling on to its carbon footprint. Including indirect sources, it emitted more than 44 million metric tons of carbon in 2018. It was not immediately clear if the figures reported by the companies were exactly comparable. Both Microsoft and Amazon have come under fire from activist tech workers who have demanded they stop supplying technology to oil and gas companies. Microsoft in 2017 announced a multi-year deal to sell cloud services to U.S. energy giant Chevron. In a blog post, Microsoft on Thursday reiterated its commitment to working with oil and gas companies. "Its imperative that we enable energy companies to transition, including to renewable energy and to the development and use of negative emission technologies like carbon capture and storage and direct air capture," Microsoft said.

Climate

Politics

Panoply.io, a startup that wants to make setting up a data warehousing and analytics infrastructure as easy as spinning up an AWS server, today announced that it has raised a $7 million Series A round led by Intel Capital, with participation from previous investor Blumberg Capital. This follows Panoply’s $1.3 million seed round from late last year. “It’s remarkable that what once required teams of engineers can now be accomplished with a click,” said Yaniv Leven, Panoply’s co-founder and CEO in today’s announcement. “With Panoply.io, complex tasks like schema building and altering, data mining, complex modelling, scaling, performance tuning, security, backup and more are all handled by an array of machine learning algorithms.” The Tel Aviv- and San Francisco-based company says setting up a full-stack analytics infrastructure using technologies like Kafa, Spark and Amazon Redshift should take fewer than 15 minutes. Indeed, one of Panoply’s differentiators, in what is becoming an increasingly crowded field, is that the team is putting a strong emphasis on ease of use. There’s nothing easy about setting up a full data warehousing and analytics service, after all, so Panoply handles the modeling and scaling for its operators. In addition, the service can also handle data transformations and other common tasks. The service is currently in closed beta, though, but the team expects to open it up for a wider beta by the end of the summer. “Apart from our SF presence, the funding will allow us to significantly invest in our BI and data integration partnerships, as well as offer Panoply.io across other major cloud providers like Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and more,” said Leven. “It’s all about solving the labor-and-time-intensive issues for engineers who really need to focus on more important things.”

Technology

Artificial Intelligence

April 27 (Reuters) - Radian Group Inc: * Radian announces first quarter 2017 financial results * Q1 adjusted operating earnings per share $0.37 * Q1 earnings per share $0.34 * Q1 revenue $40.1 million versus $34.5 million * Radian group inc - book value per share at march 31, 2017, was $13.58, compared to $13.39 at December 31, 2016 * Q1 earnings per share view $0.43, revenue view $236.4 million — Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

Finance

Banking

DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar on Saturday recorded its first death from the coronavirus, a Bangladeshi resident, and 28 more cases to take its total to 590 infections, the health ministry said. The 57-year-old Bangladeshi national was suffering from a previous chronic disease, state news agency QNA reported. The majority of cases in Qatar have been diagnosed among migrant laborers, and authorities have locked down a large section of an industrial zone where many live and work. Reporting by Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne

Science

Biology

CHINA CBANK LOWERS INTEREST RATE ON 14-DAY REVERSE REPOS, KEEPS RATE ON 7-DAY UNCHANGED - STATEMENT

Other

Other

One of two coffins found in the tomb, amid bits of pottery.Image: Lassithi Ephorate of AntiquitiesUnbeknownst to a Greek farmer, a 3,400-year-old tomb containing two coffins and dozens of artifacts dating back to the Late Minoan era had been lying beneath his olive grove in southeast Crete.As reported in Cretapost, the unnamed farmer was trying to park his vehicle under the shade of an olive tree when the ground beneath him began to sink. After pulling away, the farmer noticed that a hole, measuring about four feet wide (1.2 meters), had suddenly appeared. As he gazed into the void from above, he quickly realized he had stumbled upon something important.The hole. Image: Lassithi Ephorate of AntiquitiesThe farmer contacted the Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities—the local heritage ministry—which sent archaeologists to investigate. The farmer, as it turns out, had stumbled upon a Late Minoan era tomb containing a pair of coffins, each containing a single skeleton. Two dozen pots with colored ornaments were also found inside the tomb, according to the ministry. The hole in the olive grove had opened up on account of a broken irrigation tube, which made the soil soft.“According to the ceramic typology, and according to the first estimates, the tomb can be dated to the Late Minoan IIIA-B period, approximately from 1400 to 1200 BC,” explained the ministry in a statement. The tomb is located near the village of Kentri in southeast Crete. The tomb consists of three subsections that were dug into the limestone. Image: Lassithi Ephorate of AntiquitiesImportantly, the tomb, at a depth of eight feet (2.5 meters), has never been disturbed by looters. Archaeologists are now in the process of collecting as much information about the chamber and its contents as possible. Some 3,400 years ago, the tomb was dug into the region’s soft limestone, with access made possible by a vertical trench. The tomb is comprised of three carved niches, and the entrance was eventually sealed by stone masonry, according to the ministry.One of two skeletons found in the tomb. Image: Lassithi Ephorate of AntiquitiesThe two clay burial coffins, called larnakes, were in excellent condition, and embossed with ornamentations. The coffins each held a single male skeleton, the identities of which aren’t known, but the quality of the pottery suggest they were high-status individuals. Larnakes are small, closed coffins that were often used in Minoan culture. Bodies had to be placed in tight crouching positions to make them fit inside. Larnakes debuted in Minoan times during the Aegean Bronze Age. They were initially made from ceramic materials and made to look like wooden chests. These coffins were often decorated with abstract patterns, or scenes depicting hunting and religious rituals.The archaeologists now plan to study the skeletons in more detail, so hopefully we’ll learn more about these ancient Minoan individuals.[Keep Talking Greece, Cretapost, The National Herald]

Science

Paleontology

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump said Thursday his first foreign trip later this month will include visits to the Vatican, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, stops that his top aides hope will both combat views of the President abroad and build toward Middle East peace. The stops will come before Trump attends a NATO meeting in Brussels on May 25 and a G7 meeting in Italy on May 26. "Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, and it is there that we will begin to construct a new foundation of cooperation and support with our Muslim allies to combat extremism, terrorism and violence, and to embrace a more just and hopeful future for young Muslims in their countries," Trump said Thursday in announcing his trip during a Rose Garden ceremony where the he signed a religious liberty executive order. "Our task is not to dictate to others how to live, but to build a coalition of friends and partners who share the goal of fighting terrorism and bringing safety, opportunity and stability to the Middle East," Trump said. First lady Melania Trump will "will accompany her husband for the entire trip," an East Wing spokeswoman told CNN. Trump, a senior administration official said, feels like accomplishing Middle East peace is "one of the things that he has to try to do" during his presidency and has been "very involved" with "a lot of ideas" during the trip's planning. The trip has been coordinated by the White House, in cooperation with the National Security Council and the State Department, another official said. To date, Trump has left the foreign travel to his top aides and Cabinet members, including Vice President Mike Pence, who has been on two international trips so far, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Trump's visits to the Vatican, Israel and Saudi Arabia were first reported by Politico. Other senior administration officials told CNN this is part of the strategy to reach out across religions and countries to combat extremism -- both to fight ISIS and to further isolate Iran. He will visit Jerusalem, Israel, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior administration official. There is also a clear interest among top aides in the White House to counter the view Trump has cultivated abroad. "Saudi Arabia is going to convene a lot of the leaders from the Muslim world, and you will see that there is a lot of objectives they share with America," one senior administration official said. Trump ran on a ban of Muslims entering the United States, proposing the in a December 2015 announcement a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" until American officials could get a handle on terror. While his campaign slowly backed away from that pledge, one of Trump's first actions in the White House was to push a travel ban for seven - and eventually six - Muslim majority countries. The trip is meant to show that Trump's "America First" motto is "fully compatible with American leadership in the world," another official said. Trump's election has provided the United States with opportunities to "re-engage the world," the officials said, given Trump's perceived unpredictability and that he is "not dogmatic to one school of thought, (rather) open-minded, flexible and opportunistic." The senior administration officials said it's a time when the Trump administration can pursue policies that "strengthen our hand and weaken our enemies." "Certain things will be formalized and announced in the time leading up to the visit," one senior administration official said. A second senior administration official said that a recent visit to Saudi Arabia revealed an open-mindedness to stepping up and leading in a way the official had not seen in the country since right after 9/11. "Saudi Arabia realizes the challenges it has; and there is a similar feeling throughout the region," the official said. Part of the problem, the officials said, stems from the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran, which they view as providing a path to a nuclear weapon for the country, as well as Iran's continued funding of terrorism throughout the region. The officials add the administration has been working hard to produce a "meaningful set of deliverables" to be announced around the trip. Trump's first foreign trip is coming later in his presidency than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson, who waited over 10 months after President John F. Kennedy was killed to travel abroad. He is also the first president since Carter to not make his first trip to Mexico or Canada. Trump's top advisers insist the President is focused on making deals with foreign leaders in a bid to create a more secure planet, despite the lack of foreign travel. They point to frequent visits from foreign leaders -- including the most recent visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- as proof that Trump has influence on foreign affairs from the White House. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday the President's first trip came after King Salman bin Abd Al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority extended invites to Trump. Trump will also meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican during his trip, Spicer said. CNN's Kevin Liptak, Athena Jones and Kate Bennett contributed to this report.

Politics

Current Events

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) called for President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump pushes back on recent polling data, says internal numbers are 'strongest we've had so far' Illinois state lawmaker apologizes for photos depicting mock assassination of Trump Scaramucci assembling team of former Cabinet members to speak out against Trump MORE to stop attacking special counsel Robert MuellerRobert (Bob) Swan MuellerTrump calls for probe of Obama book deal Democrats express private disappointment with Mueller testimony Kellyanne Conway: 'I'd like to know' if Mueller read his own report MORE and to instead "focus on being president." Gingrich on Monday was asked during an interview on Fox News if he thinks Trump is doing the right thing in targeting Mueller with a series of tweets. "No, I don't think he's doing the right thing. ... The president ought to just drop this whole line of worrying about Mueller,” Gingrich said during the interview. “Focus on being president. Mueller is going to be taken care of. Mueller, in the end, is, I think, not going to have anything substantive about the president.” Gingrich called for Trump to "quit doing this stuff." "Focus on tweeting about things that move his presidency forward," he said. "And just every time he starts to think about Mueller, quit thinking about him and go back to the presidency." His comments come after Trump last weekend lashed out at Mueller over his probe into Russian election interference and potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Trump is also adding prominent white-collar attorney Joseph diGenova to his personal legal team, the latest sign of an increasingly aggressive stance toward Mueller's investigation. The former U.S. attorney has attacked the FBI and Department of Justice in conservative media outlets. The White House is insisting there are no plans to fire Mueller. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

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An on-demand delivery startup with a lot of funding raised a down round. Peter Thiel landed more than a billion dollars for his latest venture capital fund. Here are the headlines from the funding front in Silicon Valley this past week: This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Technology

Startups

#SpeakingIndance Megan Fairchild of New York City Ballet performs a solo from “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.” #SpeakingInDance is a weekly visual exploration of dance on Instagram. Watch the video from our most recent post below, and follow us at @nytimes.

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Rod Rosenstein is the US deputy attorney general. Amber Rudd is the UK home secretary. The opinions expressed in this commentary are their own (CNN)We are living in a truly remarkable era, in which each day seemingly brings a new technological innovation -- from health to education, communications to manufacturing -- that improves the lives of people around the world. But some of these advancements have left children unsafe -- sometimes even in their own homes. Vile predators who seek to prey upon children's innocence have used numerous new media by which to participate in online child sexual exploitation -- through peer-to-peer file sharing, through chat rooms and through online forums. To effectively pursue criminals and protect our children, we need a coordinated global response from governments, industry and society. On Wednesday, the UK Home Office and the US Department of Justice joined representatives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter to discuss our collective efforts to fight child exploitation and possible new ways to work together to thwart these crimes. This week, representatives of our respective governments met to discuss ways to address Internet child exploitation offenses. We are already seeing significant progress. In the WePROTECT Global Alliance -- a coalition of 70 countries, international law enforcement agencies, civil society organizations and key players from the technology industry -- we have an unprecedented collaboration with the influence, expertise and resources to transform the global response to child exploitation crimes. Online sexual abuse of children is a modern scourge in both the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as many other nations. The UK Home Office and the US Department of Justice will continue to attack Internet child exploitation whenever we encounter it. Unfortunately, we are encountering it with great frequency. Our respective nations, therefore, have devoted significant law enforcement resources to combating the issue. For example, the Department of Justice assigns prosecutors in each of its 93 US attorneys' offices to specialize in prosecuting child exploitation offenses. They are assisted by the 61 Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces that the Department funds throughout the United States. In addition, the Department has a specialized unit in Washington — the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section — that helps train prosecutors and investigators on the best ways to address these crimes. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the US Postal Inspection Service are just a few of the US law enforcement agencies working to stop child exploitation. The UK's response is underpinned by the world-leading Child Abuse Image Database (CAID), a capability launched in 2014, which enables all police forces in the UK and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) to search seized devices for indecent images of children, and assess images for their severity. CAID's use has enabled the NCA to review a seizure of material that would have taken a minimum of six months to review, in six weeks. The UK has brought together the technical expertise of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) with the National Crime Agency in a joint operational team, to target the most sophisticated offenders, and invested £20 million (US$26.38 million) in the last four years into specialist undercover online activity, targeting offenders who attempt to groom children in chat rooms, and on platforms and fora In the UK, results include identifying 524 victims in indecent imagery of children in 2016, and UK law enforcement is safeguarding around 500 children a month from sexual abuse and harm. Still, there are obstacles that makes stopping predators difficult. A key problem is the movement of child exploitation images across international boundaries via the Internet. Images that were produced in one country are often sent to other countries. Fighting international crimes requires international cooperation. To effectively pursue criminals and protect our children, we need a coordinated global response from governments, industry and society. This includes working together to formulate innovative new solutions to disrupt criminal networks and autonomous criminals who operate internationally. Governments have territorial limitations and finite resources. They cannot be everywhere, and certainly not in the ether of the Internet. It is essential, therefore, that the technology industry work with governments to safeguard the platforms, products and applications that can be used to harm children. Thankfully our two nations have a lengthy history of uniting to protect society from international threats, including criminal threats. Our countries repeatedly have cooperated to address emerging threats to international security and safety, and our way of life. Technology is a key weapon in our arsenal against these horrendous crimes. We are encouraged by the development of Project Arachnid, a groundbreaking technological approach developed by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. It uses hash lists, the "digital fingerprints" of known child exploitation images, to proactively detect child sexual abuse material online, and issue notices to content hosts so that they remove these items. Unfortunately the pain and suffering caused by the sexual abuse of children continues when images of the abuse are shared on the Internet. Survivors report feelings of re-victimization when an image is viewed. This is another reason why we must work with Internet technology companies to erase such images from the Internet. Consider the real case of a child who was sexually abused for 10 years, starting when she was 6 years old. The person who abused the child has been convicted and imprisoned, but now the victim must live with the knowledge that others are viewing images of her abuse with glee. The victim has received some solace from the knowledge that Arachnid found images of her. These images then were removed from the Internet, and Arachnid will continue to search for the images. Tragically there are thousands of other victims whose images are circulating on the Internet. Our governments are striving to stop this, and technologies like Arachnid appear to be helping. The Canadian Centre is now working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to develop Arachnid into a global tool that will help technology firms of all sizes ensure that their platforms are not being misused by criminals, and that victims are identified, protected and spared further suffering. As US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has stated: "All of our citizens deserve to live free from the threat of harm — especially our young people. So our efforts to improve public safety will make the fight against child exploitation and human trafficking a top priority." Our agencies will continue to fight the proliferation of sexually explicit imagery of children and the harm that it causes. But our efforts alone will be insufficient to eradicate these images internationally. And as long as such images exist along with the Internet, they can be sent anywhere in the world. That is why international cooperation is essential.

Technology

Cybersecurity

BEIJING — A Chinese human rights attorney, who rose to prominence defending other activists, confessed to trying to overthrow the Communist Party on Tuesday, in a trial reported across the country and choreographed as an attack on liberal political ideas. The lawyer, Jiang Tianyong, was well known for his vociferous support of dissidents amid a nationwide crackdown on dissent. But at his trial in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in southern China, which was streamed live on the internet and shown on television news, a soft-spoken Mr. Jiang appeared defeated. He pleaded guilty to inciting subversion of the state, voiced contrition in a calm, practiced voice and asked for mercy. His wife and supporters said his confession was forced and possibly the result of torture after nearly a year in secret detention. At trial, Mr. Jiang said he had been led astray by indoctrination in Western notions of the rule of law. In proceedings broadcast on Weibo, China’s hugely popular social media network, a prosecutor asked Mr. Jiang the content of the training. “It was mainly about the bourgeois Western constitutional system,” Mr. Jiang said. “It certainly had a subliminal influence on me. It gave me ideas about overturning our country’s present political system and introducing their political system into our country.” The trial was a vivid illustration of President Xi Jinping’s efforts to discredit domestic critics, especially human rights activists, by depicting them as members of a conspiracy whose goal is toppling the Communist Party. The televised drama of this and similar trials serve as a “shock and a warning” to other Chinese human rights advocates, said Eva Pils, a law scholar at King’s College London who studies China’s human rights lawyers. “To a wider TV audience, it is meant to discredit human rights defenders as people who fabricate stories that smear the image of the motherland for their own personal gain or self-promotion,” Ms. Pils said by email. “Over all, it has the effect of giving one a sense that the authorities are in control of the truth.” The party has long cast dissidents as puppets of shadowy, hostile forces backed by the West. But Mr. Xi has redoubled that effort. A few months after coming to power, he demanded a systematic offensive against Western liberal ideas like constitutionalism, and show trials have been increasingly used to impress such warnings on the Chinese public. “I hope that other so-called rights defenders and defense lawyers will draw lessons from my example and let this serve as a warning,” Mr. Jiang said in a statement to the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court. “Give me a chance to become a new person.” The court said a verdict would be announced at a later hearing but did not set a date. As a result of his public confession, Mr. Jiang may earn a lesser prison sentence or even a suspended one. Born in rural central China, Mr. Jiang, 46, had taken on contentious rights cases for more than a decade. His clients included Chen Guangcheng, the human rights activist who escaped house arrest and fled to the American Embassy in Beijing before receiving asylum in the United States. Mr. Jiang has also represented members of Falun Gong, a banned spiritual sect. The government rescinded Mr. Jiang’s license to practice law in 2009, but he continued advising dissidents and activists. He was meeting clients even after July 2015, when the Chinese police began a widespread clampdown on rights lawyers and their associates. About 250 people were detained in that crackdown. Most of those lawyers were released with warnings after a few days or weeks in detention, but a core group was picked out for prosecution. A week ago, Wu Gan, an activist associated with the Fengrui Law Firm in Beijing and known by his internet handle, “Super Vulgar Butcher,” also stood trial on subversion charges. That hearing was not broadcast. At his trial, Mr. Jiang said he had taken up the cause of the detained lawyers to make trouble for the Chinese government. He said he wanted to “achieve the goal of overturning the state and transforming the current political system by causing a fuss over these sensitive, hot spot incidents and vilifying and attacking our country’s government and legal organs.” The Chinese government choreographed similar trials just over a year ago, when four lawyers and rights campaigners were shown on television confessing to subversion, and sentenced to prison terms of up to seven and a half years. “No matter whether you forgive me or not, I am very sorry from the bottom of my heart,” Mr. Jiang told the court. Mr. Jiang’s wife and supporters suggested that during his detention he might have been tortured to obtain his confession. International human rights groups denounced Mr. Jiang’s trial as a charade, because he had not been allowed his own lawyers, and was instead appointed lawyers by the court. Three United Nations officials have denounced Mr. Jiang’s detention. One of them, Philip Alston, a former special rapporteur, visited him just months before his arrest. Mr. Jiang disappeared into custody last November when he was traveling to Changsha from Beijing to help Xie Yang, another Chinese rights lawyer held in detention. In January, Mr. Xie’s lawyers released detailed allegations that he had been tortured in custody, but at his trial in May he retracted those allegations and pleaded guilty to subversion and disrupting court proceedings. At Tuesday’s hearing, Mr. Jiang said he had helped fabricate Mr. Xie’s claims of torture. Before the trial, Mr. Jiang’s wife, Jin Bianling, who lives in California, wrote in an open letter that she believed he had been coerced. “We’re convinced that Jiang Tianyong is innocent,” she said in the letter. “Even if Jiang Tianyong pleads guilty in court, that will certainly be under torture unimaginable to ordinary people.”

Politics

International Relations

March 27 (Reuters) - Dominion Energy Inc: * DOMINION ENERGY ANNOUNCES PRICING OF COMMON STOCK OFFERING VIA FORWARD SALE * ‍ANNOUNCED PRICING OF A PUBLIC OFFERING OF 20 MILLION SHARES OF ITS COMMON STOCK AT A PRICE PER SHARE OF $67.85​ Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: ([email protected])

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Warning: Spoilers are ahead for Game of Thrones. In the "inside the episode" portion of Sunday's Game of Thrones, co-showrunner D.B. Weiss described the Battle of Winterfell as "19 or 20 characters all involved in a very chaotic situation," and that's just him talking about the main characters. The war against the dead brought together Lannisters, Starks, Targaryens, Mormonts, and more, so not everyone got a ton of screentime. What happened to Gendry during the Game of Thrones battle wasn't immediately clear, because he stopped showing up early on in the battle sequence. But if that's got you worrying about Arya's flame, there are a few reasons you can sleep soundly now that the battle has been won. Is Gendry Dead? Even though they were faced with a pretty much unwinnable battle with the dead, not that many major characters lost their lives. Those who did received proper send-offs and enough of a scene that fans were very clear on their fate. Theon Greyjoy, Lyanna Mormont, Jorah Mormont, Beric Dondarrion, and Melisandre were amongst those who died in the battle, and they each had ample screen time denoting their deaths. Gendry was seen fighting the wights, but wasn't the focus of many scenes later on. If he had died, we would have seen it. Where Was Gendry During The Battle Of Winterfell? The battle may have taken place only at Winterfell, but there were still a lot of locations within Winterfell to show and a lot of character stories that needed screen time. The showrunners said in the "inside the episode" portion that they wanted to flip back and forth between the straight-on action scenes and also other more quiet scenes so as not to bore viewers with an endless battle sequence. Time was given to Jon and Dany's fight on the dragons in the sky, Arya's attempt to go unseen in the castle, Bran's warging in the Godswood, and the goings on in the crypt as well as the battle on the field. As the episode wore on, it was building towards the moment where Bran and the Night King would meet. That's when Theon got his death scene, and Arya got her moment in the sun when she ended the literal whole war. That had nothing at all to do with Gendry. He was an infantryman in the episode, knocking wights off walls, but not as necessary to the building plot about injured dragons, the Night King's arrival, the crypts opening up, Jon and Dany's attempt at survival, and Bran's potential death. But Gendry was somewhere, out in the roiling battle. That's for sure. Why Was Gendry Missing During Episode 3? Weiss said that they even moved away from Arya's storyline (and Gendry is now part of that) for a while in the episode so that fans wouldn't be thinking about her in that moment with Bran and the Night King. They wanted her to come out of nowhere for audiences. It's clear that the showrunners planned everything meticulously, including who got screen time and where and why and how. Is Gendry In Episode 4 Of Game of Thrones Season 8? Yeah, Gendry appears to be in the episode 4 promo. In one scene, he's standing behind Arya and the other Winterfell people as they survey the rebuilding of Winterfell. He's also shown kissing Arya, so that storyline is far from over. Plus, that means Gendry and Arya are still candidates for that endgame theory that says they will join their houses like Robert Baratheon promised Ned Stark in Season 1. Basically, no matter how little time he got in this episode, Gendry's not going anywhere just yet. It's going to be just fine. For now, anyway.

Television

Game of Thrones

Last night, the 60th Annual Grammy Awards proved once again that unlike a large number of music fans, they are not committed to the Carter family. Jay-Z was nominated for eight Grammys last night — including Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and the coveted Album of the Year — but unfortunately he didn’t take home a single award. He lost to Bruno Mars and Kendrick Lamar in just about every category, creating another wave of outrage from fans of both the rapper and the genre. I, too, found it disappointing the Recording Academy didn’t find any of Jay’s efforts on his album 4:44 to be worth a gramophone. But as for Album of the Year, the highest honor of the night, I am very pleased that Jay had to stay seated when the winner was announced. As you may recall, Beyoncé was nominated for nine Grammys last year following her critically acclaimed album and film, Lemonade. She took home two awards, Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video for “Formation,” but also failed to snag Album of the Year. However, everyone knows she deserved it, including Adele, the person who actually won the award. Bey’s shocking loss in 2017 was about more than an out-of-touch group of voters within the Recording Academy. It was about the fact that Beyoncé is a Black woman and viewed as inherently less talented and capable as her white peers; not to mention the fact that Lemonade is also a musical protest against white supremacy and misogynoir. Many are suggesting that her loss was not a snub, but punishment for daring to create music that does not center the interests and tastes of white people. Whatever the reason, I’m still not over it. It’s also important to remember that in addition to the themes of Black liberation and female empowerment, Lemonade was a journey into the private life of Beyoncé and her family. Track by track, Bey narrated a saga of betrayal, anger, reconciliation, and redemption between her and Jay-Z after he cheated on her. Jay-Z’s album 4:44 had its own broad themes of Black excellence, but it was also a response to Lemonade in which he admitted to his own infidelity and emotional ineptitude throughout most of their relationship. It, too, was a great album that was “for the culture”... but it was no Lemonade. Unlike some members of the Beyhive, I haven’t committed myself to Jay-Z’s success just because he’s Beyoncé’s husband. While I’m able to recognize the masterpiece that 4:44 is, it was still painful to hear him cosign all of the ways Beyoncé had to hurt, bend, and perform emotional labor because it took Jay reaching middle age to deal with his own baggage. That the Grammys snubbed Beyoncé last year is bad enough. Giving out an award that she was more deserving of, for an album that describes an even more impactful Beyoncé snub would have been unforgivable. I simply wouldn’t have been able to handle that. In the nearly two years since Beyoncé vulnerably opened up about the rocky parts of her marriage to Jay, there has been an interesting amount of weight put on his version of events, even before we knew a rebuttal album was in the works. I had so many conversations with friends (mainly men, go figure) on social media and in real life who thought that Bey was simply spinning sensational narratives to drum up publicity for the album. They made fun of women who could relate to the pain Bey expressed and doubted that Jay would ever actually cheat on Beyoncé. They didn’t believe her until Jay himself admitted his wrongdoings himself, nearly a year later. Lemonade may have been the first time Beyoncé got so personal on an album, but it wasn’t the first time people refused to believe a woman over the word of a man. This could be a reach, but I feel like 4:44 taking home Album of the Year would have been another validation of his courage for admitting guilt over Bey’s admission of pain. For what it’s worth, none of my logic lets the Grammys off the hook for their own history of devaluing Black artists, especially those in hip-hop. Only two hip-hop/rap albums have ever won Album of the Year in the Grammys 60-year history, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Hip-hop is the dominant genre of music in the United States, and it would be great to see this reflected in who takes home Album of the Year. But this year, I’m okay that Jay-Z wasn’t the one chosen for it. Read these stories next:The Hottest Movie Sex Scenes, Ever (NSFW)The Best Part Of Snapchat? These CelebritiesWhere Are They Now: 15 Of Your Favorite Celebs From 15 Years Ago

Music

Pop

Bravo didn’t actually evict five stars from its Summer House.  The Daily Mail reports that Lauren and Ashley Wirkus, Stephen McGee, Danielle Olivera and Amit Neuman were fired from the reality show’s third season days before filming began. However, a source tells PEOPLE that even if they may not be returning as series regulars this season, that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good. “As with all Bravo shows, production sometimes refreshes the cast, but it doesn’t mean they don’t come back or make an appearance in the season,” the source explains. Lauren Wirkus had been a main cast member for two seasons, but her twin sister Ashley moved to a recurring role in season 2. McGee was also a regular from the beginning, and Olivera and Neuman joined the cast in season 2. In an Instagram post on Monday, Lauren confirmed that she and her sister would not be returning. “Since many of you have asked, my sister and I will not be returning as cast members on Summer House this season,” she wrote. “We are so grateful to Bravo for the past two summers and we are excited for what’s in store next. We love all of you for being a part of this journey with us! More to come very soon, happy summer everyone and see you in the Hamptons! #wirkuscircus #wirkustwins #summer2018 #staytuned #SummerHouse #bravotv.” Summer House follows a group of New York City-based friends who spend their weekends in Montauk. Season 1 premiered in January 2017 as a Vanderpump Rules crossover.

Television

Entertainment

close Video DHS: 13 percent of DACA recipients had arrest record Exclusive: Agency releases never-before-seen data on DACA applicants; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Francis Cissna explains on 'Fox & Friends.' EXCLUSIVE – Nearly 60,000 immigrants with arrest records -- including 10 accused of murder -- have been allowed to stay in the United States under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed Monday. According to DHS, 59,786 DACA recipients have been arrested while in the U.S. -- approximately 7.8 percent of all who have been approved to remain in this country under the program since it was created in 2012. Of those, 53,792 were arrested before their most recent request for a so-called "grant of deferred action" was approved. Another 7,814 were arrested after their request was approved. The DHS statistics do not indicate how many of the arrested immigrants were convicted of crimes, nor do they indicate whether charges were reduced or dropped. They also do not indicate how many arrested DACA recipients were deported as the result of a conviction. Francis Cissna, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director, told “ Fox & Friends " the agency wants to release as much data about DACA as possible for the public and lawmakers to be informed. “I would like people to keep in mind . . . whatever they do, I would hope that we, at USCIS, would be able to turn down these people . . . if we think they’re a public safety threat . . . if someone is a gang member . . . even if they don’t have a conviction,” Cissna said. WHAT IS DACA AND WHAT DOES THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WANT TO DO WITH IT? Of the 53,792 DACA recipients with a "prior" arrest, more than 4,500 had been arrested on allegations of assault or battery; 830 arrests were related to sex crimes -- including rape, sexual abuse or indecent exposure; and 95 arrests were made on warrants for kidnapping, human trafficking or false imprisonment. Ten such arrests -- or 0.02 percent of all arrests -- were made in murder cases. Approximately 38.9 percent of the DACA recipients with a "prior" arrest were accused of so-called "driving-related" offenses, excluding driving under the influence. Another 22.1 percent were accused of "immigration-related" crimes, while 12.3 percent were accused of theft and larceny. More than 4,600 DACA recipients have been accused of "drug-related" crimes, again excluding driving under the influence. A DHS spokesman said the department was releasing the arrest data in response to inquiries "from Congress and others" for more detailed information on DACA recipients, including DACA criminal activities. Under the terms of the program, immigrants are able to live and work in the U.S. for two years at a time before they must apply for a renewed "grant of deferred action." DHS says convictions for felonies, "significant misdemeanors," or at least three "non-significant misdemeanors" would "generally" result in removal from the program. The arrest data has been made public as Congress prepares to consider a pair of immigration bills put forward by Republicans that contain provisions aimed at helping immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children. “You could be arrested a whole lot of times and still get DACA," Cissna told "Fox & Friends" on Monday. "The data we’re putting out is only arrests, so presumably those people who had murder arrests, rape arrests -- that type of seriousness -- either got acquitted, charges were dropped or they plead something down, I would hope . . . there are a lot of crimes on the list we published that are misdemeanors – and they could&aposve been convicted and still could’ve gotten DACA if they only had two of those misdemeanors.” The current version of one of the bills, penned by conservative Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would extend DACA protections for renewable six-year periods. Recipients could later apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship. An expanded number of children who arrived legally with parents who have obtained work visas also would be covered. President Trump announced this past September that he was ending the DACA program, though a series of federal court rulings has kept it functioning for the time being. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Politics

Immigration

March 23 (Reuters) - Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd: * KIRKLAND LAKE GOLD ANNOUNCES INITIATIVES IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19 VIRUS * KIRKLAND LAKE GOLD LTD - INCLUDED AMONG INITIATIVES ARE INTRODUCTION OF COMPANY-WIDE HEALTH AND SAFETY PROTOCOLS * KIRKLAND LAKE GOLD LTD - INCLUDED AMONG INITIATIVES ARE TEMPORARY REDUCTION IN OPERATIONS AT DETOUR LAKE MINE * KIRKLAND LAKE GOLD LTD - SUSPENSION OF NON-ESSENTIAL WORK AT ALL OPERATIONS, AS WELL AS SUSPENSION OF ALL EXPLORATION ACTIVITIES ACROSS COMPANY * KIRKLAND LAKE GOLD LTD - IT WILL TERMINATE AUTOMATIC SHARE PURCHASE PLAN (“ASPP”) EFFECTIVE MARCH 23, 2020 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

Technology

Internet

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people, most of them police, outside a polio eradication center in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, the latest militant attack on the anti-polio campaign in the country. Two militant groups - the Pakistani Taliban and Jundullah, which has links with the Taliban and has pledged allegiance to Islamic State - separately claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomb blew up a police van that had just arrived at the center to provide an escort for workers in a drive to immunize all children under five years old in the poor southwestern province of Baluchistan. “It was a suicide blast, we have gathered evidence from the scene,” Ahsan Mehboob, the provincial police chief told Reuters. “The police team had arrived to escort teams for the polio campaign.” Ahmed Marwat, who identified himself as a commander and spokesman for Jundullah, said his group was responsible. “We claim the bomb blast on the polio office. In the coming days, we will make more attacks on polio vaccination offices and polio workers,” he said by telephone. The Pakistani Taliban also claimed responsibility in a statement released by their spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani. Teams in Pakistan working to immunize children against the virus are often targeted by Taliban and other militant groups, who say the campaign is a cover for Western spies, or accuse workers of distributing drugs designed to sterilize children. The latest attack killed at least 12 policemen, one paramilitary officer and two civilians, officials said. Twenty-five people were wounded. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic, the World Health Organization says. The campaign to eradicate the virus in Pakistan has had some recent success, with new cases down last year, but violence against vaccination workers has slowed the effort. Reporting by Gul Yousafzai and Syed Raza Hassan; Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Jibran Ahmed in Peshawar; Writing by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel

Terrorism

Violence

(Reuters) - Japan’s Naomi Osaka made short work of a subdued world number one Simona Halep on Friday, the unseeded 20-year-old racing to a 6-3 6-0 semi-final victory to set up a surprise BNP Paribas Open final against Daria Kasatkina. The Russian, also 20, continued her sparkling run of form earlier in the evening when she outlasted American veteran Venus Williams in a three-set slugfest lasting almost three hours. Osaka’s defeat of the top-seeded Halep stood out as the bigger of the two upsets, which played out under the lights on a chilly night in the California desert city of Indian Wells. The Romanian had won all three of her previous meetings with the emerging Japanese player and looked poised to make a run to reclaim the title she won in 2015, but instead put in a puzzling performance full of uncharacteristic errors and little fight. The match started as a cagey affair until it reached 3-3 in the opening set before Halep’s game unraveled as she coughed up a litany of errors, paving the way for Osaka to reel off the next nine games without much resistance. “It wasn’t easy,” Osaka said in a courtside interview. “I was really stressed out the entire time but I am really happy I could end it fast.” Halep offered few excuses for her baffling display but felt that the long wait to get on court had not helped her cause. “I just didn’t feel the ball at all. I was out of the game today. I played okay until 4-3 but then I just went out. I don’t know why. I just lost my concentration,” she said. “She was better. She was more prepared and she was ready to play and ready to win the match. I was not.” While Osaka barely broke a sweat in her 64 minute victory, it was a different story for Kasatkina, who emerged the victor after a marathon 4-6 6-4 7-5 battle against Williams. Kasatkina took advantage of a sub-par serving night from the more powerful Williams as the match progressed, forcing long rallies that ultimately wore her 37-year-old opponent down over the course of the contest. The Russian, who fought back after being two points away from losing in the contest in the third set, dropped her racquet and put her hands on her head in shock after Williams sent a backhand into the net on match point. “I’m a bit tired,” Kasatkina said after the two hour and 50 minute encounter. “One more to go.” The win extends the Cinderella run for the tournament’s 20th seed, who defeated grand slam champions Sloane Stephens, Caroline Wozniacki and Angelique Kerber without dropping a set before going the distance to take down Williams. Williams played an excellent all-around game, mixing bruising groundstrokes with frequent approaches to the net and moving well around the court. However, she was unable to rely on her big serve at key moments and ended up getting broken seven times. Kasatkina will have Saturday to recover before facing Osaka for the first time in their fledgling careers on Sunday. Neither Kasatkina nor Osaka have much experience in big matches with the Japanese player’s only career final coming in Tokyo in 2016 and her opponent’s lone singles title coming in Charleston last year. Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Ian Ransom/John O'Brien

Sports

Tennis

Jamie-Lynn Sigler‘s son on the way is already so loved. The pregnant actress was showered with affection at a party thrown by some of her “best friends” Thursday night, including fellow star and close pal JoAnna Garcia Swisher. “These gorgeous best friends of mine threw me a Sprinkle last night full of my favorite food and Ralph’s supermarket cake,” Sigler, 36, captioned a photo of herself with Garcia Swisher and two other women. “I’m the luckiest. Also I’m still pregnant,” the mom-to-be added on the post, sharing photos of the delicious spread (including the cake that read “Baby Dykstra!”) on Instagram Stories. Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter. For more coverage, follow our babies magazine on Flipboard. Sigler’s baby boy will be her second child with Cutter Dykstra. The star and her former-MLB-player husband also share son Beau Kyle, 4. The Sopranos alum is likely pretty close to giving birth. In early November, she shared a photo that showed off her growing baby bump under a long fitted gray dress. “We’re getting there … ” she captioned the bathroom mirror selfie. FROM PEOPLETV: Katherine Heigl Introduces Baby Joshua Sigler announced on Instagram in July that she and Dykstra, 28, would be parents for a second time, sharing the sex of their baby in a baseball-themed reveal later that month. “We are excited to announce, it’s a … ” teased Sigler in the caption of the clip, which was cheekily soundtracked with Eiffel 65’s ’90s classic “Blue (Da Ba Dee).”

Parenting

Pregnancy

Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpPossible GOP challenger says Trump doesn't doesn't deserve reelection, but would vote for him over Democrat O'Rourke: Trump driving global, U.S. economy into recession Manchin: Trump has 'golden opportunity' on gun reforms MORE said in an early morning Twitter rant on Friday that terrorists in the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) scoff at Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonLewandowski on potential NH Senate run: If I run, 'I'm going to win' Fighter pilot vs. astronaut match-up in Arizona could determine control of Senate Progressive Democrats' turnout plans simply don't add up MORE’s threats. Look where the world is today, a total mess, and ISIS is still running around wild. I can fix it fast, Hillary has no chance! Crooked Hillary Clinton looks presidential? I don't think so! Four more years of Obama and our country will never come back. ISIS LAUGHS! The presumptive GOP presidential nominee said America’s rivals are hungry for a Clinton administration, arguing they would exploit her weaknesses for personal gain. Crooked Hillary has zero imagination and even less stamina. ISIS, China, Russia and all would love for her to be president. 4 more years! Trump added that the former secretary of State's struggles with Democratic presidential primary rival Bernie SandersBernie SandersJoe Biden faces an uncertain path Bernie Sanders vows to go to 'war with white nationalism and racism' as president Biden: 'There's an awful lot of really good Republicans out there' MORE shows she is a weak White House contender. Crooked Hillary can't even close the deal with Bernie - and the Dems have it rigged in favor of Hillary. Four more years of this? No way! Clinton on Thursday said that Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. fuels the fire of radical Islamic terrorism groups. “When you run for president of the United States, the entire world is listening and watching,” she told CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.  “So when you say you’re going to bar all Muslims, you’re sending evidence to the Muslim world, and you’re also sending a message to terrorists. … Donald Trump is essentially being used a recruiter for more people to join the cause of terrorism." Trump counterpunched later that evening, arguing that Clinton’s remarks show she is not qualified for the Oval Office. “The fact that Hillary thinks the temporary Muslim ban, which she calls the ‘Muslim ban,’ promotes terrorism, proves Bernie Sanders was correct when he said she is not qualified to be president,” he said in a statement, referencing a critique Sanders made of Clinton in early April. Trump drew a line from Clinton’s comments to the disappearance of EgyptAir Flight MS804 on late Wednesday. “And by the way, ask Hillary who blew up the plane last night – another terrible, but preventable tragedy,” the businessman said. "She has bad judgment and is unfit to serve as president at this delicate and difficult time in our nation’s history.” Clinton and Trump have each said that terrorism is a realistic possibility for Flight MS804’s vanishing earlier this week. The White House on Thursday said that it is “too early” to say what definitively caused the jet’s disappearance over the Mediterranean Sea. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

US

WASHINGTON — GOP front-runner Donald Trump is protesting the Fox News Republican primary debate Thursday, and is instead hosting his own event nearby to raise money for veterans. The events are both taking place at the same time in Iowa. Trump hopes his event, which he says is raising money for veterans, will pull viewers away from Fox News and embarrass the network. Trump is skipping the debate for what he called "unfair" treatment from one of the debate's moderators, host Megyn Kelly. Trump's event below began at 8 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. CT. You can watch the Fox News debate below, starting at 9 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. CT.

Television

News

Jonas Jerebko recorded a 14-point, 13-rebound double-double in place of suspended Draymond Green, helping the Golden State Warriors pull away from the Atlanta Hawks for a 110-103 victory Tuesday night in Oakland, Calif. Green was suspended for the game for conduct detrimental to the team in the wake of a run-in he had with Kevin Durant after Monday’s overtime loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. The Warriors also played without Stephen Curry, who sat out his third straight game with a strained groin. The Hawks led by as many as six points in the first half and 58-53 early in the third period before Jerebko, Klay Thompson and Quinn Cook drilled 3-pointers in a 17-2 flurry that turned the game for good in the Warriors’ favor. In his second start as a Warrior, Jerebko hit five of his 10 shots and four of his seven 3-pointers to account for his season-high point total. Durant led the Warriors with 29 points. Thompson had 24 and Cook, starting in place of Curry, chipped in with 18 as Golden State improved to 3-0 this season in the game immediately following a loss. The Warriors also won for the seventh straight time in the game immediately following an overtime affair. One night after being outscored 30-16 at the foul line, the Warriors got the better of the Hawks 20-11 in a game in which Atlanta had more field goals (40-39) and the teams had the same number of 3-pointers (12-12). Taurean Prince had a team-high 22 points for the Hawks, who lost their fifth straight overall and eighth straight against Golden State. Kent Bazemore (18 points), Alex Len (14), DeAndre’ Bembry (13 points), Vince Carter (11) and Jeremy Lin (10) also scored in double figures for Atlanta, which fell to 0-2 on a four-game Western swing. Rookie star Trae Young suffered through a 2-for-12, four-point night on which he missed all five of his 3-point attempts. He had a game-high nine assists, as well as five rebounds and three steals. —Field Level Media

Sports

Basketball

Your body wakes into its quiet rattle. Ropes & ropes . . . How quickly the animal empties. We’re alone again with spent mouths. Two trout gasping on a June shore. Side by side, I see what I came for, behind your iris: a tiny mirror.        I stare into its silver syllable where a fish with my face twitches once then gones. The fisherman        suddenly a boy with too much to carry.

Other

Other

The massive Kobe Bryant fan-generated memorial across the street from Staples Center in Los Angeles was being dismantled Monday, eight days after the NBA legend died in a helicopter crash with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others. The collection of items left at the L.A. Live entertainment center included flowers, candles, balloons, artwork, photographs, jerseys, basketballs and stuffed animals, among other items. All items left behind are being cataloged and given to the Bryant family, per their request. All perishable items like flowers and plants will be composted and brought back to the area to be used as nourishment for landscape. People began gathering at L.A. Live soon after Bryant’s death was reported on Jan. 26. The Lakers were scheduled to play at home against the Los Angeles Clippers last Tuesday, but that game was postponed. The Lakers made their emotional return to their home court on Friday in a 127-119 defeat to the Portland Trail Blazers on an evening that included a pregame speech from LeBron James. Instead of more gifts, fans are being encouraged to donate to the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation or the Mamba Sports Foundation. —Field Level Media

Sports

Basketball

* Dollar near 4-month high against basket of major currencies * Trade worries could hamper dollar By Hideyuki Sano TOKYO, May 7 (Reuters) - The dollar stayed near its 2018 peak early on Monday after U.S. jobs and wages data did little to water down perceptions of strength in the U.S. economy, though renewed concerns about trade frictions could cloud its outlook. The dollar index stood at 92.609, near Friday’s high of 92.908, which was its firmest level since late December. The dollar gained broadly, maintaining its strength after Friday’s mixed U.S. data. The U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected and the average hourly earnings, closely watched for signs of inflationary pressures, rose less-than-expected 0.1 percent in April, leaving the annual increase at 2.6 percent. The unemployment rate dropped to near a 17-1/2-year low of 3.9 percent, although this was driven in part by Americans leaving the labour force. None of this changed the perception that the Federal Reserve will likely hike interest rates at least twice, and possibly three times, by the end of year. In contrast, recent data suggested Europe’s stellar growth last year is losing momentum, leading speculators to trim bets on the currency on expectations the European Central Bank will wind down its stimulus. The euro changed hands at $1.1962, not far from Friday’s four-month low of $1.1910. Data from U.S. financial watchdog published late on Friday showed speculators’ net long position in the euro in Chicago’s futures exchange declined only slightly in the latest week. They held 120,568 contracts of net short positions , down from a record 151,476 set last month but still at a high level. A wider measure of dollar positioning that includes contracts on some emerging market currencies showed net dollar shorts shrank to $18.32 billion, from a seven-year high of $28.18 billion two weeks earlier. “Speculators’ positioning has gone to extreme levels as they had been selling the dollar continuously,” Yukio Ishizuki, senior strategist at Daiwa Securities. Concerns about Trump’s protectionism was one big reason many investors had shied away from the dollar earlier. Some market participants expect worries over a trade war could return after the trade talk between the United States and China produced little apparent progress. In a sign that the trade tension is spilling over to other issues, Beijing and Washington came to loggerheads over how to refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Elsewhere, the British pound traded at $1.3538, near its four-month low of $1.3487 touched on Tuesday. The dollar stood little changed at 109.10 yen, off its three-month high of 110.05 yen. The yen’s rebound was in part driven by short-covering by Japanese margin traders, especially against the Turkish lira , which fell to record lows during Japan’s Golden Week holidays. The lira fell more than 4 percent last week versus the dollar. (Editing by Sam Holmes)

Finance

Currency

In 2008, Paul Karason, a 57-year-old man from the Pacific Northwest, agreed to appear on the Today show. And appear is the best word for it, since he was there because of the way he looked. From head to toe, Paul Karason was the color blue. Not a subtle light-wash tint, either. This was closer to navy—like Beast from the X-Men or some elder Smurf. His graying auburn hair heightened the effect; the whites of his eyes had a leaden tint. “I’ve gotten kind of used to it,” he told Matt Lauer. He wasn't always this way. For most of his life, Karason was a fair-skinned redhead. But then he saw an ad in a magazine showing a desiccated old daisy brought back to life by the power of the solution it had been placed in: silver ions in water. The flower looked freshly cut. Karason bought a device to make his own colloidal silver at home—a colloid is one substance dispersed through a second—and soon he was drinking a 10-ounce tumbler of the stuff daily, hoping to improve his general health, and dabbing it on his face for his dermatitis. After a few years of this regimen, he had developed a case of what doctors call argyria, a blue-gray discoloration of the skin and mucus membranes. The disorder is caused by excess silver ions in the body, which react when exposed to light (the same phenomenon that makes silver nitrate useful for developing photos) and form dark deposits in the skin. It’s a rare but irreversible condition, and in most cases the culprit is overenthusiastic use of colloidal silver. Karason wasn't the only victim. Stan Jones, a libertarian politician from Montana, started taking colloidal silver in advance of Y2K, assuming the new millennium would cause a shortage in antibiotics. A Montessori teacher from Brooklyn, Rosemary Jacobs, became known as the “silver woman” for the argyria she developed from colloidal silver nasal drops a doctor prescribed her as a child. None of this has stopped people from ingesting colloidal silver, though. In fact, its popularity only seems to have increased in recent years. Celebrities ranging from Alex Jones, the host of the far-right radio show Infowars, to Gwyneth Paltrow, she of the jade egg and wellness brand Goop, have enthusiastically promoted the potion; you can find it on the shelves of your local Whole Foods. Yet there's very little mainstream evidence of its usefulness. According to the Mayo Clinic, colloidal silver “isn’t considered safe or effective”; the NIH warns that “evidence supporting health-related claims is lacking” and that “it can be dangerous to your health.” And, of course, overuse risks turning you blue forever. Silver has been a favored defense against infection since ancient times. Pliny the Elder reported in AD 78 that silver slag, the gunk left over from smelting silver, “has healing properties as an ingredient in plasters,” and Cyrus the Great, king of Persia from 550 to 529 BC, stayed healthy by drinking only boiled water stored in silver flagons. (According to Herodotus, mule-drawn carts laden with silver urns followed King Cyrus “whithersoever” he went.) During the Middle Ages, monks popularized the use of silver nitrate, a salt formed by reacting silver with nitric acid, to treat ulcers and burns. Relative to other premodern health tips, these were actually pretty good ideas, because—as scientists discovered once they finally figured out germ theory—silver does have germ-fighting abilities. The exact mechanism by which it attacks bacterial cells still isn’t clear, but scientists have some guesses. Silver is most toxic to microbes in its ionized form—AG+, same as in those silver nitrate salts—which seems to deactivate important microbial enzymes and potentially screw with DNA replication. Through the 1960s, most American newborns received silver nitrate eyedrops at birth to prevent eye infections. It’s occasionally still used for that purpose, but silver nitrate had a bad side effect: It burns skin and can cause severe eye damage. That's why, starting in the early 20th century, scientists started suspending silver in water. Protein molecules in the solution surrounded the silver ions, so that only some—but not all—of the ions were released. The idea was to make a formula that was much less irritating than silver nitrate but equally effective at killing bugs. “In fact,” wrote Henry Crooks, one of the early pioneers, in 1910, “no microbe is known that is not killed by colloidal silver in laboratory experiments in six minutes.” But the colloidal silver solutions were problematic too. It’s very difficult to control or analyze how much of the silver is ionized, so a patient has no way of knowing how much active silver they’re ingesting or applying—rendering it either useless or, on the other extreme, so potent it results in argyria. So colloidal silver was mostly abandoned by the medical establishment, which moved on to safer and more effective applications of silver, such as in wound dressings or as an infection-fighting additive to joint replacements. Recent tests of modern colloidal silver products found they had no significant antimicrobial properties and left most bacteria unscathed (even after six minutes). Even so, colloidal silver never left the drugstore shelves. In 1999 the FDA declared that over-the-counter products containing colloidal silver ingredients were “misbranded” and “not generally recognized as safe,” banning its sale as an OTC drug. But in practice that just means it sits on a different shelf in the pharmacy, as a supplement now instead of a medication. Alex Javier and Deb Blossom are not acquainted—nor, in the current political climate, would they likely want to be. Javier is a Ron Paul–loving libertarian who voted for Trump without much hesitation; Blossom was a Bernie fan who happily voted for Hillary. But they have more in common than they might think. Blossom is a yoga teacher, life coach, and energy worker in Santa Monica, California. When she was a child, she watched her mother battle cancer and go through painful chemotherapy that was ultimately unsuccessful. She died when Blossom was 11. Then, in her twenties, Blossom watched her mentor and teacher endure the same experience. “Chemotherapy is being sold to a lot of people who don’t need it,” she says. Though Blossom stops short of writing off Western medicine altogether—she thinks it has its strengths, mostly as a diagnostic tool—she’s certainly a skeptic. Javier’s skepticism was shaped by a similar experience. It started during high school. He had always been a rowdy kid, playing sports to keep his energy in check, but in his sophomore year, Javier's doctors and mom decided his hyperactivity needed to be addressed medically. He ended up on a combination of four psychoactive drugs. The side effects were disastrous: He lost 30 pounds, became depressed, and suffered narcoleptic paralysis—waking up without being able to move his body. “It scared the crap out of me,” he says. Javier is now 36 years old and living in Hartford, Connecticut, where he keeps up a hodgepodge of odd jobs, usually as a substitute teacher or musician. To fill the gaps between work, and for company during his long nights (he’s a serious night owl), he listens to the radio. Local shows sometimes, but also a lot of Infowars, his source for political and medical advice. It was during one of his late-night radio sessions that Javier first started hearing ads for colloidal silver. When a bad flu was going around a few years ago, most of Javier’s friends who got sick ended up taking antibiotics. Javier generally refuses to take antibiotics, so he tried colloidal silver instead. He took it every day, doling out an entire bottle until he was healthy, and he believed he got better faster than his friends. Now he takes it when he has a stomachache or if he thinks he was exposed to something while teaching. “You see what works for you,” he says. “In my experience this works.” Blossom—who has a very different media diet—also keeps colloidal silver handy. She mostly uses it for cuts and scrapes on herself and her dog. “It works incredibly effectively and quickly,” she says. “I've been using it for years.” Like Javier, she thinks the most important thing she can do for her health isn’t to heed the FDA’s warnings but to trust her instincts and her own research. “I don’t subscribe to what the FDA says, nor do I subscribe to what the medical community says, generally,” Blossom says. “I don’t think they are pure in their intentions.” “The pharmaceutical industries have to raise profit,” Javier says. “So they’ll do anything they can to increase profit, and if that means suppressing information … I'm not going to say lie, but there have been a lot of false things.” Blossom makes the same argument: “The pharma companies' interests are in money, not at all in healing people. It’s a business.” To many, Blossom and Javier will sound like conspiracy-minded cranks. But Sanford Newmark, medical director of the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, says paranoia about pharmaceutical companies is “not entirely misplaced.” Pharmaceutical companies “do have undue influence over both doctors and the FDA,” he says, pointing to reports of corrupt professors at major institutions receiving kickbacks from Big Pharma and drug companies that publish the results of only the most favorable drug trials. “You can't assume that that's not going to affect how people will see things,” Newmark says. The Osher Center offers alternative treatments, like acupuncture and meditation, to patients at UCSF. Some are people like Blossom and Javier, cynical about the motives behind their doctor’s prescriptions, but others come because there is no drug that will fix them, or because they don’t like the side effects of what they’re offered. Acupuncture and meditation are treatments that made their way into Western medicine largely via the New Age fringe and have now proven themselves effective enough to be offered at one of the nation’s leading medical institutions. Some so-called alternative therapies are supported by sound scientific evidence. Others just haven’t been studied yet. From a consumer perspective, it’s not easy to discern good evidence from bad, or a lack of research from a consensus perspective that something—like colloidal silver—has been evaluated and discarded. The conclusions each person comes to vary widely depending on the sources they believe, and how they interpret their personal experiences. And even doctors can seemingly change their minds. In 2008, Paul Karason told Oprah and Dr. Oz that he was having a problem with acid reflux. But after incorporating colloidal silver into his daily regimen, "in less than three days that was gone." Dr. Oz appeared incredulous. "I just can't see using something that fell out of conventional use when we developed antibiotics," he said. Fast forward to 2013, when Gwyneth Paltrow came on Dr. Oz's show to talk about how she keeps herself and her family happy and healthy. Colloidal silver was one of her four wellness tips—she said she regularly sprays it under her tongue and on airplane seats to keep viruses away. "This has a ton of data behind it," Oz agreed, having apparently forgotten the blue man he doubted. Oz told Paltrow he uses colloidal silver as a daily throat spray, and so do his kids. "This was the first antibiotic," he said. That same year, at 62 years old, Paul Karason died of a stroke. It was unrelated to his argyria. He had struggled during the final years of his life. He became more reclusive to avoid the stares and had a hard time finding work. Even so, he never stopped taking colloidal silver.

Other

Other

Check out the companies making headlines after the bell: Shares of RetailMeNot skyrocketed 49 percent in extended trading Monday after the Austin-based coupon site said it will be acquired by Harland Clarke Holdings. The market and retail company is set to pay $11.60 per share in cash for the outstanding shares of RetailMeNot Series 1 common stock at an equity value of $630 million, according to a RetailMeNot press release. United shares dropped nearly 1 percent after the airline forcibly removed a passenger from a flight. A 30-second clip circulated on social media shows a man being dragged by security after refusing to leave an overbooked flight. He was randomly selected, among 3 other passengers, after no one volunteered to get rebooked on another flight. United's CEO Oscar Munoz said "this is an upsetting event to all of us here at United," and he apologized for the need to re-book customers. He said, "our team is moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct our own detailed review of what happened." Shares of J.B. Hunt Transport Services sank over 2 percent after competitors Swift Transportation and Knight Transportation announced a merger. The combination of the two truck companies will be worth over $5 billion.

Technology

Computers

Paul Krugman Over the past couple of months Republicans have passed or proposed three big budget initiatives. First, they enacted a springtime-for-plutocrats tax cut that will shower huge benefits on the wealthy while offering a few crumbs for ordinary families — crumbs that will be snatched away after a few years, so that it ends up becoming a middle-class tax hike. Then they signed on to a what-me-worry budget deal that will blow up the budget deficit to levels never before seen except during wars or severe recessions. Finally, the Trump administration released a surpassingly vicious budget proposal that would punish not just the vulnerable but also most working families. Looking at all of this should make you very angry; it certainly infuriates me. But my anger isn’t mostly directed at Republicans; it’s directed at their enablers, the professional centrists, both-sides pundits, and news organizations that spent years refusing to acknowledge that the modern G.O.P. is what it so clearly is. Which is not to say that Republicans should be let off the hook. To be sure, American history is full of politicians and parties that pursued what we would now call nefarious ends. After all, the pre-Civil War Democratic Party — which shares nothing but a name with today’s Democrats — was largely devoted to the cause of preserving slavery. But I can’t think of a previous example of a party that so consistently acted in bad faith — pretending to care about things it didn’t, pretending to serve goals that were the opposite of its actual intentions. You may recall, for example, the grim warnings from leading Republicans about the dangers of budget deficits, with Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, declaring that our “crushing burden of debt” would create an economic crisis. Then came the opportunity to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut targeted on the rich, and suddenly all worries about the deficit temporarily disappeared. Now that the tax cut is law, of course, deficit-hawk rhetoric is back — not as a reason to reconsider those tax breaks, but as a reason to cut food stamps and Medicaid. You knew this was going to happen, although even I expected the fake deficit hawks to wait a little longer before resuming their act. You may also recall how Republicans posed as defenders of Medicare, accusing the Obama administration of planning to cut $500 billion from the program to pay for the Affordable Care Act. The legislation did in fact seek substantial savings in Medicare, for example by ending overpayments to insurance companies. But so did Republican proposals. And Donald Trump, who promised during the campaign not to cut Medicare or Medicaid, is now proposing hundreds of billions more in Medicare cuts and truly draconian cuts in Medicaid. Why have Republicans become so overwhelmingly the party of bad faith? (And not just about budgets, of course; remember when Republicans cared deeply about a president’s sexual morality?) The main answer is probably that the party’s true agenda, dictated by the interests of a handful of super-wealthy donors, would be very unpopular if the public understood it. So the party must consistently lie about its priorities and intentions. Whatever the reasons for G.O.P. bad faith, however, its reality has been apparent for a long time. Yet the gatekeepers of our public discourse spent years being willfully blind to this reality. Take, for example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that, to be fair, can be a useful resource for budget analysis. Still, I can’t forget that back in 2010 the committee gave Paul Ryan — whose fraudulence was obvious from the beginning to anyone who actually read his proposals — an award for fiscal responsibility. And even now the committee is busy pontificating about the need to reform the “budget process.” Let’s get real, O.K.? The problem isn’t the process, it’s the Republicans. Meanwhile, many news organizations — which, by the way, gave Ryan years of adoring coverage — treat recent G.O.P. actions as if they are some kind of aberration, a departure from previous principles. They aren’t. Republicans are what they always were: They never cared about deficits; they always wanted to dismantle Medicare, not defend it. They just happen not to be who they pretended to be. Now, there’s no mystery about why many people won’t face up to the reality of Republican bad faith. Washington is full of professional centrists, whose public personas are built around a carefully cultivated image of standing above the partisan fray, which means that they can’t admit that while there are dishonest politicians everywhere, one party basically lies about everything. News organizations are intimidated by accusations of liberal bias, which means that they try desperately to show “balance” by blaming both parties equally for all problems. But our job, whether we’re policy analysts or journalists, isn’t to be “balanced”; it’s to tell the truth. And while Democrats are hardly angels, at this point in American history, the truth has a well-known liberal bias.

Politics

Government

Nov 18 (Reuters) - Orbital Corporation Ltd * Appointment of senior executive Todd Alder as chief financial officer * Ian Veitch has resigned from his position as chief financial officer Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

Technology

Computer Science

This story is available exclusively on Business Insider Prime. Join BI Prime and start reading now. There have been few winners in the stock market recently, but Matthew Taylor of UBS says there are a few medical technology companies that could benefit from the response to the coronavirus outbreak. Just as importantly, there are some companies in the industry that are more vulnerable than their peers to supply chain trouble and delays.A key point is some medical device companies are relying on China as a major driver of revenue growth.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Healthcare stocks are in something of a unique position during the ongoing coronavirus-linked selloff because of the wide variety of good, bad, and mixed effects on their businesses.UBS analyst Matthew Taylor is drilling down into medical technology companies to assess what the viral outbreak means for their businesses. That involves evaluating their business lines, supply chains, procedural volumes, and the geographies of their businesses.That can help investors get a handle on what to do and what not to do with their money as the COVID-19 epidemic spreads. As of Friday, more than 100,000 people have been infected around the world, and 3,400 have died.In his estimation, the most at-risk companies are the ones that are relying heavily on China as a source of growth, as well as those that get a lot of their revenue from less-vital medical procedures that can be postponed because of the epidemic.In a note to clients, Taylor says the overhang on these companies won't last, but he cautions that the recovery in delayed procedures is going to be a gradual one.  "In our view, the impacts will likely be limited to a 1x negative in the coming periods; over time we expect most of the missed procedures to come back," he wrote. "Impacted regions could see a modestly elevated level of utilization for several quarters as patients re-enter the system and seek treatment."He continued: "Given patient fears about visiting healthcare facilities, we think this benefit likely lags containment of the virus in affected regions by weeks or months."What follows is a list of two companies that could ultimately see more demand for products and services as a result of the outbreak, and seven that could remain under pressure during that slow recovery. They're ranked based on how the percentage of their annual revenue growth that comes from China. #1 STOCK TO BUY: Baxter International Ticker: BAXMarket cap: $46.8 billionAnnual revenue: $11.4 billionChina revenue: 6%China growth contribution: 10%Summary: "China revenue exposure is ~6%, with the vast majority being the renal business. These patients need continued support so the main thing BAX is focused on is ensuring supply," said Taylor. "The Acute business (acute kidney injuries) could benefit from more people going into hospitals; BAX is seeing strong performance." #2 STOCK TO BUY: Masimo International Ticker: MASIMarket cap: $9.7 billionAnnual revenue: $937.8 millionChina revenue: 1%China growth contribution: 1%Summary: "If the coronavirus were to spread deeper into Europe or the US, that could benefit MASI through higher sensor volumes via an increase in hospitalization," said Taylor. "Even if elective procedures were negatively impacted by the virus, higher hospitalization rates would offset that. MASI is also benefit ting from one of the strongest flu season in years." #1 STOCK TO AVOID: Zimmer Biomet Ticker: ZBHMarket cap: $32.7 billionAnnual revenue: $7.98 billionChina revenue: 5%China growth contribution: 27%Summary: "ZBH has seen a pretty significant reduction in elective procedures (~85-90%) thru February," wrote Taylor. "The company has not seen any material recovery and thinks this will continue at a minimum through March." #2 STOCK TO AVOID: Medtronic Ticker: MDTMarket cap: $154.1 billionAnnual revenue: $30.6 billionChina revenue: 7%China growth contribution: 15%Summary: "The ventilator business has been performing well as MDT is sending a lot of equipment into impacted markets," Taylor wrote. "China was also shut down in 1H February for the new year, and MDT noted there could be some delays in procedures coming back." #3 STOCK TO AVOID: Becton Dickinson Ticker: BDXMarket cap: $72.5 billionAnnual revenue: $17.29 billionChina revenue: 7%China growth contribution: 13%Summary: "BD does not have any manufacturing or distribution operations in Wuhan or the province," Taylor said. "It noted about 95% of products manufactured in China are sold within China. It currently has sufficient inventory of the few products that it exports from China to meet current demand." #4 STOCK TO AVOID: Abbott Laboratories Ticker: ABTMarket cap: $159 billionAnnual revenue: $30.6 billionChina revenue: 8%China growth contribution: 11%Summary: "Some of its products like nutrition, drugs, and diagnostics may not see as much impact as deferrable procedures," said Taylor. "Our understanding is that ABT's manufacturing footprint is pretty limited in China and does not likely represent a major risk." #5 STOCK TO AVOID: Varian Medical Systems Ticker: VARMarket cap: $13.3 billionAnnual revenue: $3.23 billionChina revenue: 9%China growth contribution: 10%Summary: "VAR has a material business in China making up about 9% of sales which has been growing strong [double digits], faster than average (17% CAGR over 5 years)," Taylor wrote. "About half the Interventional business is in China, which is a material opportunity." #6 STOCK TO AVOID: Boston Scientific Ticker: BSXMarket cap: $59.2 billionAnnual revenue: $10.7 billionChina revenue: 5%China growth contribution: 8%Summary: "While most of the portfolio is acute, the majority of it is not emergent – procedures like endoscopies, urology interventions, and scheduled replacements could potentially be deferred," Taylor said. "Focus on virus detection, containment, treatment, and other measures are causing other procedure to be deferred." #7 STOCK TO AVOID: Intuitive Surgical Ticker: ISRGMarket cap: $71.4 billionAnnual revenue: $4.48 billionChina revenue: 3%China growth contribution: 3%Summary: "We would have expected strong growth in the country this year ex-corona," said Taylor. "ISRG noted that coronavirus has been affecting procedure volumes in China and likely had some impact on other countries around the region as well."

Industry

Manufacturing

Google has been pushing RCS (rich communication services) texting through the Android Messenger app since last year, and that effort is expanding in a big way today to include Europe and Asia. That’s through a partnership with the carrier Telenor, which announced today that it’s supporting the new messaging standard. Telenor customers who live in markets where RCS support is launching will simply have to install an update to the Android Messenger application to take advantage of the service. RCS is a carrier-based standard that’s viewed by many as the next evolution of SMS, adding features like group chats, high-resolution photo sharing, and text messages longer than 160 characters — all things that the current SMS standard struggles with. Per the Google’s blog post, RCS messaging will be available in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, and India; Google says that it hopes to expand to other countries soon. Similar to other implementations of RCS by Google, the Telenor integration is based on Google’s standard for RCS, called Jibe. It will theoretically work with some other RCS standards, though right now it’s incompatible with similar systems from T-Mobile and AT&T, so there’s still a ways to go.

Technology

Mobile Apps

soccer roundup Catalan separatists clashed with the police in streets in Barcelona ahead of a draw against Real Madrid. One of the world’s most-watched soccer matches was played amid heavy security Wednesday night as the Spanish authorities sought to keep Catalonia’s separatist movement from disrupting the game between host Barcelona and Real Madrid. While the game in Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium began without incident, some riot police clashed with protesters in the streets outside, and plastic trash cans were set on fire. The match, which drew nearly 100,000 spectators and ended in a 0-0 tie, was halted briefly when a few dozen balls were thrown onto the field, some of them bearing a message urging the Spanish government to open a dialogue with the separatists. Thousands of police and private security guards were deployed in and around stadium. During the street clashes, riot police used batons to force back the crowd. Some protesters also fought between themselves, while others threw objects at police officers lined up behind shields. At least four trash cans were set on fire, and a smell of smoke wafted into the Camp Nou ahead of the game. The game between Spanish league leader Barcelona and its fierce rival Real Madrid was broadcast to more than 650 million people worldwide, according to the home team. The separatists sought to take advantage of the global media coverage to promote their bid for independence from Spain. The game, known as El Clásico, was postponed from Oct. 26 amid earlier violent protests by the separatists. As crowds entered Europe’s largest soccer stadium Wednesday night, security guards confiscated masks of Barcelona’s Argentine star Lionel Messi from supporters, apparently to ensure they could be identified on closed-circuit cameras if they broke the law. As the game began, some fans held up blue signs saying ‘Spain, Sit and Talk” and “FREEDOM.” Others chanted, in Catalan, “Freedom for the Political Prisoners.” Those messages referred to the Spanish government’s refusal to discuss the wealthy northeastern region’s independence, as well as the recent imprisonment of nine of the movement’s leaders convicted for their roles in a failed 2017 secession bid. LIVERPOOL REACHES FINAL Roberto Firmino’s 90th-minute goal sent Liverpool into the Club World Cup final with a 2-1 victory over Mexico’s Monterrey in Doha, Qatar. Firmino, a Brazilian forward, flicked in Trent Alexander-Arnold’s cross at the near post to break a tie and set up a meeting with the South American champion Flamengo of Brazil on Saturday at the Khalifa Stadium. Naby Keita had put Liverpool ahead in the 11th minute but his opening goal was canceled out within three minutes by Monterrey’s Rogelio Funes Mori. The stadium was largely full for the event, with an announced attendance of 45,416 for the second semifinal, which will be a relief for FIFA and Qatari organizers three years before the World Cup arrives in Qatar. Two months ago, during the world track and field championships in the same Khalifa stadium, large sections of seats were covered with fabric to disguise poor attendances. Even for the showpiece track sprints that week, crowds sometimes numbered in the hundreds. The lineup for the final will roll the clock back almost three decades. Liverpool and Flamengo met in a 1981 version of this tournament in Japan, with the Brazilians winning by 3-0.

Sports

Soccer

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal remains the best option for leaving the European Union despite it having been voted down three times by lawmakers, Treasury minister Liz Truss said on Monday. The most recent defeat for May’s deal in parliament on Friday “was less than we lost by last time and we are seeing people coming on board with that,” Truss told BBC radio. “I think we need to carry on looking at how we get the support for that deal,” she said. Truss said “The answer lies in modifications to the prime minister’s deal to be able to get that to have support.” She said it was not clear that alternative Brexit plans, such as a customs union, would command the support of a majority in parliament. Lawmakers are due to vote on Monday on alternatives, several of which call for Britain to have closer ties to the EU than foreseen under the prime minister’s plan. Reporting by James Davey; Editing by William Schomberg

Politics

UK

Boy George is remembering George Michael, a day before the one-month anniversary of the singer’s death. On Tuesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live, the New Celebrity Apprentice star shared that he was in touch with Michael “on and off” and was “not really” aware of his personal issues. “I read stuff in the papers,” George, 55, said about Michael’s health. “But I never really knew really what — he really kept people out, he was quite private.” Michael died on Christmas Day at age 53. His U.S. publicist told PEOPLE that the musician had died of heart failure. On their relationship, George, whose music career paralleled Michael’s in the ’80s, told WWHL host Andy Cohen that the pair were rivals before pals. “In the early days, we were competition to each other. Both called George, both made soul music. So in the early days, we were really in competition,” he explained. “Then sort of later on, I started to really appreciate him as a musician — you know, right around ‘Faith.’ I started to really appreciate his talent.” The two stars were rumored to have feuded over the years, and George set the record straight regarding a specific quarrel they had about Michael not wanting to come out. “We did, it wasn’t really a feud,” George recalled. “In the ’80s, everyone — Peter Burns, me, we all used to be really bitchy about each other. It’s like the thing that you did in the ’80s with those pop magazines. Now it’s the Housewives who do it!” Concluding, “But in the ’80s, you just said vile things about everyone.” Remember George Michael in PEOPLE’s commemorative edition, George Michael: A Pop Star Life, on sale now. Following the news of the former Wham! band member’s death, tributes poured in for Michael and George was one of many from the music world to share condolences. “I am thinking of @GeorgeMichael’s family, friends and fans right now,” he wrote in an extended tweet. “He was so loved and I hope he knew it because the sadness today is beyond words. Devastating. What a beautiful voice he had and his music will live on as a testament to his talent. I can’t believe he is gone.”

Music

Rock

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Macau court has ruled that a former business partner of Las Vegas Sands Corp, the world’s biggest casino company, can proceed with a lawsuit seeking billions in damages for breaking the terms of their former partnership agreement. In a filing made on March 16, a court in the Chinese southern territory denied Las Vegas Sands a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleges that the company, headed by U.S. billionaire Sheldon Adelson, misused trade secrets obtained during their venture. The former partner, a company called Asian American, which is headed by Taiwanese businessman Marshall Hao, is asking for just over 70 percent of Las Vegas Sands’ profits from 2004 to 2022. Even before taking into account future profits, that would exceed $8 billion on reported profits to 2015, according to Reuters calculations. Las Vegas Sands, which has taken legal action in Nevada and Macau to try and stop the suit, said: “The company has consistently maintained that this case has no merit. We have confidence that ultimately the Macao judicial process will reach the same conclusion.” Hao’s lawyer Jorge Menezes said the court had not yet set a date, but a hearing should take place in the coming months. He said he could not comment further due to the legal proceedings. The partnership of Las Vegas Sands and Asian American submitted a bid for a gaming concession in 2001 in Macau, which has since become the world’s largest gambling hub. During the process, Las Vegas Sands switched partners, and instead teamed up with Hong Kong group Galaxy Entertainment, a venture that went on to win a licence in the former Portuguese colony over a decade ago. Asian American claims that Las Vegas Sands terminated its joint venture and then made a near identical bid submission with Galaxy, using details that were exclusive to their previous partnership. “We are delighted and looking forward to see this dispute adjudicated on the merits for the first time. We have walked a long and difficult path to reach this goal,” Hao told Reuters. For Las Vegas Sands, which faces a number of lawsuits in Macau, including breach of contract for work done helping obtain its casino licence and unlawful dismissal claims, the case could bring unwanted attention as the territory’s government decides whether to extend the six operators’ licences as they start to expire in 2020. The case also comes at a difficult time for gambling revenues in the former Portuguese colony, which have slumped to five-year lows, as China’s anti-corruption campaign has deterred conspicuous consumption by high rollers and as economic growth in the world’s second-largest economy slows. Analysts have nevertheless remained relatively bullish on Sands’ operations relative to the other Macau operators - Galaxy, Wynn Macau, MGM China, SJM Holdings and Melco Crown - due to its focus on mass-market visitors and its large footprint. The company is due to open the Parisian casino in Macau this year, featuring a half-size replica of the Eiffel tower. (additional reporting by Tripti Kalro in Bangalore)

Technology

E-commerce

(CNN)Fifteen-year-old Savitri Yami Baker loves to belt a tune. "They can hear her from three houses away," Savitri's 26-year-old sister, Victoria Ajene, jokes. This comes as a surprise, as Savitri often has challenges breathing when she speaks. The Clovis, California, girl has the neurological disorder cerebral palsy. "She'll speak, and before she finishes her sentence, her breath will run out, and she'll just struggle to get the breath out. However, when she sings, there is no problem. She hits every tone, every note, loud, clear," said Beverly Baker-Ajene, Savitri's mother. Beverly, Victoria and Robert Ajene, Savitri's 23-year-old brother, are among those who know Savitri best, from her contagious smile to her teenage mood swings. "I think about Savitri and who she is and how people perceive people with disabilities," Baker-Ajene said. "Savitri's African-American. Savitri's Muslim. Savitri's a woman. She's in the disabled community. She has special educational needs," Baker-Ajene said. "I want people to understand that there's a person here, there's not just a group or a statistic. We're people ... people with hearts and lives and hopes and dreams and fears and wishes." 'All about the family' Savitri's family -- along with other families of children with chronic or complex special needs -- was featured in a photography project titled "The Super Parents," debuting on CNN on Wednesday. The project was produced by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, whose programs advocate for a better system of care for children with chronic health problems and their families. "We want to highlight not that these children exist but these families exist," said Dr. Edward Schor, senior vice president of programs and partnerships at the foundation. "I tend to not look on the lives of children with special needs as a child issue so much as it is a family issue," he said. "If a doctor says, 'Please give this medicine,' well, it's the parents who are giving the medicine. If the doctor says, 'Make an appointment to see a specialist,' it's the parents who have to make the appointment and then take off work and make that additional appointment. If the child is ostracized in some way, it's the family who has to protect them from that or explain it. So, it's really all about the family." After Savitri was born as a surviving twin, Baker-Ajene said, she left her career in grant funding for research to care for her daughter full-time -- which is common for some families of children with chronic illnesses. "If the child has, in any way, a severe or complex condition, there are likely to be financial adjustments that families are going to have to make," Schor said. "National data show that a very large proportion of these parents either have to cut back or stop working in order to care for their child." Now, Baker-Ajene's day begins at 6 a.m., when she uses a pulley-like harness to transfer Savitri out of bed to dress her and to help get her ready for the day. "It was incredible to see," said Deanne Fitzmaurice, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who took the photos in the project for the foundation. "There are so many pieces that are involved. Not just the daily tasks like getting her ready ... but also the medical aspects," said Victoria, Savitri's sister. "I don't have to worry about my sister's well-being as long as my mom is around taking care of her, because I know she stays on top of it," Victoria said. "She's done it on a daily basis for 15 years, disregarding any personal thing she might be going through or any medical thing, and she has to do all that by herself, for the most part. That's really super." As many parents of children with chronic health conditions devote their lives to caring for their children's medical needs, their own physical and mental health sometimes suffer, Schor said. "There have been previous studies that have found that ... approaching half of the parents of kids with chronic problems will screen positive for depression," Schor said. "In general, it is recommended that children with chronic conditions are regularly reassessed in terms of their health status and functioning status and so on," he said. "We believe that assessing the parent's physical and mental health should be part of that child health assessment." What the future holds In the United States, nearly 20% of children have a special health care need, such as a developmental disability, a chronic illness or a birth defect. What's next for these children and their families isn't clear. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has mandated that insurers in the health insurance marketplace cover treatment for anyone with such pre-existing medical conditions, which put an end to health plans limiting or denying benefits to children due to a pre-existing condition. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to repeal and replace the health care law throughout his campaign, and now many Americans are waiting to see his administration's plan of action. Although Trump has said he'd like to keep coverage of pre-existing conditions and some other parts of the ACA, repealing and replacing still scares Baker-Ajene, she said. "So much of Savitri's care and well-being is due to the fact that we had access to medical needs that we may not have otherwise had. ... It scares me that they're talking about taking away these rights or privatizing them," she said. "There's a point where I have to just stop and say 'OK, let me see what's going to happen,' " she said. "I have no idea what the climate is going to be."

Other

Other

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A ruling party official and two others were killed in a bar in southern Burundi, an official said on Tuesday, as the toll from 18 months of political violence grows. Unidentified gunmen attacked the bar in Saga village, Rumonge province, at around 8:30 p.m. on Monday evening, regional official Joachim Manirakiza told Reuters. Manirakiza said a school principal was among the victims. The African country has been gripped by political strife and conflict since President Pierre Nkurunziza’s sought and won a third term in 2015, which opponents said violated the constitution and terms of a peace deal that ended civil war in 2005. At least three rebel groups have taken up arms against Nkurunziza and hundreds have been killed, including opposition figures and government officials, in tit-for-tat violence. The U.N. Human Rights Council agreed last week to set up a commission of inquiry to identify perpetrators of killings and torture in Burundi and to ensure they are brought to justice. Burundi rejected the move. At least 564 killings have been documented by the United Nations in Burundi since the unrest broke out. Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Alison Williams

Politics

Government

The following Spanish stocks may be affected by newspaper reports and other factors on Thursday. Reuters has not verified the newspaper reports, and cannot vouch for their accuracy: Spanish discount supermarket Dias said on Thursday it will propose the payment of a gross dividend of 0.2 euros ($0.2) per share against 2015 earnings July 14 at its Annual Shareholders Meeting in April. Spain will auction between 2 billion and 3 billion euros at a bond sale of paper due 2019, 2026 and 2032 on Thursday. Struggling energy and engineering firm Abengoa will probably have to ask a court for more time to get lenders to back its debt restructuring, as its race to avoid becoming Spain’s first ever bankruptcy goes down to the wire. Banco Santander Brasil SA is eyeing a potential bid for Citigroup Inc’s local subsidiary, as the largest foreign lender in the country seeks to expand into banking for wealthy clients, a senior executive said on Wednesday. Realia says Inversora Carso, a vehicle of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, has decided not to exercise its right to capitalize a loan of 61.6 million euros but will opt for admitting debt haircut for up to 20.4 million euros For today’s European market outlook double click on. For real-time moves on the Spanish blue-chip index IBEX please double click on For IBEX constituent stocks highlight .IBEX in the command box and press the F3 button on your keyboard For latest news on Spanish stock moves double click For Spanish language market report double click on For latest Eurostocks report please double click on

Business

Investment

Sept 30 (Reuters) - Hong Kong stocks fell the most in over two weeks on Friday, as global markets were knocked by worries about Deutsche Bank’s financial health. Still, strong money inflows from mainland China saw the benchmark Hang Seng Index jump 12 percent in the July-September period, the best quarterly performance in seven years. Investors are now bracing for a week of trading without liquidity support from Chinese investors, who will be on Chinese National Day holiday next week. The Hang Seng index fell 1.9 percent, to 23,297.15, while the China Enterprises Index lost 2.2 percent, to 9,581.93 points. For the week, Hang Seng was up 1.6 percent, and rose 1.4 percent for the month. All main sectors fell, with telecom and financial shares leading the decline. (Reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

Finance

Investment

The Trump Administration has no plans to pay for its proposed tax cuts, according to revealing comments made Thursday by top White House officials Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin at an Institute of International Finance conference. There will be no border adjustment tax — the trillion-dollar hike on imports raised in Paul Ryan's plan — nor any other big new revenue generators. Both Cohn and Mnuchin said economic growth would be the primary way to pay for corporate and individual tax cuts, while fewer deductions and tax simplification would also play roles. It is not an opinion that is widely shared by on Capitol Hill, including among Republicans. Trump economic advisor Cohn was slightly more cautious, saying that "running a big deficit in the tax code would potentially make it not permanent." But, like Mnuchin, he emphasized the importance of dynamic scoring (i.e., aggressive growth assumptions based on Trump's economic policies). Not all Republicans are warming to what some describe dismissively as a "magical" supply-sider approach. After Mnuchin's speech, a Republican intimately involved in tax reform emailed Axios: "Believing in $2 trillion in dynamic scoring is the legislative equivalent of believing in the tooth fairy. Aside from blowing a hole through the deficit, it does not provide the certainty that U.S. businesses need to make long-term investment decisions. That is one of the stated goals for tax reform."

Politics

Government

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland’s private banks, used for decades by the world’s wealthy to hide money and avoid tax, are pushing for extra legal protection of client information that could halt a much-heralded exchange of data with dozens of countries. The Alpine country is preparing to dismantle bank secrecy next year when it begins sending information about its customers’ accounts to foreign tax agencies. But Switzerland’s multi-trillion-dollar financial industry is seeking new safeguards to protect bank data against misuse that could expose clients to crimes such as kidnapping or blackmail. “Data could be sold or used to put pressure on clients or their families,” said Yves Mirabaud, chairman of the Association of Swiss Private Banks and senior managing partner at Mirabaud, a Geneva-based private bank. “I’m referring to countries where we’re not very sure that the democratic process is the same as ours, or where corruption is very high.” Wealthy clients have pulled tens of billions of dollars out of Swiss bank accounts because of a worldwide crackdown on tax evasion following the global financial crisis last decade. That culminated in the Automatic Exchange of Information programme fostered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which aims to ensure that offshore accounts are known to authorities. The participation of Switzerland, the world’s largest center for overseas wealth, in the data exchange agreement was heralded at the time as a major breakthrough in ending tax avoidance. Banks in Switzerland are “fully committed” to implementing the Automatic Exchange of Information, said a spokeswoman for the Swiss Bankers Association, the main banking lobby. But they are lobbying to add an “activation” clause that means information would only be handed over to a country if two criteria are met — a level playing field with other financial centers, and an assurance the data will be used properly. They say giving information to countries in regions such as South America or Africa, where data protection standards can be weak and corruption rife, risks it falling into the wrong hands. In 2018 Switzerland is due to start swapping information with 38 foreign tax authorities, including all European Union countries, and with a further 41 from 2019. The proposed clause would apply to the 2019 batch of countries, among which are several emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico and Russia. “We want to be sure that when we provide information that it does not get misused or compromise a client’s security,” said Boris Collardi, chief executive at Julius Baer (BAER.S), Switzerland’s third-biggest private bank behind UBS (UBSG.S) and Credit Suisse (CSGN.S). The Swiss government will send to parliament a dispatch, which contains its proposals on the exchange of information with these 41 countries, by July 5. Parliament will then be asked to decide on the implementation of these plans. Mirabaud expressed confidence the government supports the clause, despite lobbyists for transparency saying it is a back-door attempt to continue bank secrecy rather than a genuine move to prevent criminality or persecution. A spokeswoman for the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters, an arm of the finance ministry, signaled the government would consider halting transfers of information. “If there are concerns about how the data will be used in a specific jurisdiction, Switzerland could look at taking any of the measures provided for in the multilateral framework governing the automatic exchange of information,” she said, referring to steps that include suspending the data exchange with a country. Campaigners against secrecy are crying foul, however, and accuse the Swiss of trying to allow the wealthy to keep cash hidden. “That information might fall into the hands of kidnappers... is the perfect excuse,” said Nicholas Shaxson of Tax Justice Network, an organization that lobbies on tax havens. “It’s a justification for an ocean of fraud.” Pressure on Switzerland built after a U.S.-led crackdown starting in 2008 publicized practices used by its bankers to keep money hidden from tax authorities, from smuggling diamonds in toothpaste tubes to hiding documents in the pages of Sports Illustrated. This U.S. clampdown and the push by the OECD to bring in global rules on exchanging tax data between countries means that Switzerland handing over information to Europe and the United States is unavoidable. Data from the Swiss National Bank shows a sharp decline in U.S. money in Swiss accounts. U.S. customers accounted for 161 billion Swiss francs ($165.3 billion) of bank deposits in 2006, but that had more than halved in 2015. In the meantime, the size of deposits from many emerging market countries has gradually increased. Mark Herkenrath of Alliance Sud, a group that campaigns for transparency, is skeptical about the true motivation. “For a lot of Swiss banks, a big part of their business is breaking away because money from the U.S. has dried up. The temptation now is to continue taking money from developing countries,” he said. “The suggestion that they are shielding their customers from abuse of their human rights is the perfect excuse to avoid transparency.” The Paris-based OECD, which will police whether the exchange of information is working, is optimistic that Switzerland will honor the deal. But it stands ready to act in case the Swiss banks drag their feet. “It’s not going to be used as an excuse,” said Pascal Saint-Amans, the OECD’s tax policy director, acknowledging the banks’ argument for preventing the misuse of information. “But if it is, the country will be sanctioned.” Editing by Catherine Evans

Law

International

The U.S. political climate today doesn’t often provide opportunities for bipartisan solutions, particularly when it comes to healthcare. However, the “Restoring Access to Medication Act (RAMA) of 2017” (H.R. 394 and S. 85) proposes a change to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that would enhance access to care by restoring a benefit to consumers that they lost when the ACA first went into effect. This quick and simple fix has bipartisan and bicameral support, and it has achieved something very rare in the health policy debate: agreement. The legislation was introduced by Sens. Pat RobertsCharles (Pat) Patrick RobertsKobach says he's more prepared for 'propaganda' in Senate campaign Pompeo: Senate run 'off the table' Grassley gambles on drug price bill despite GOP doubts MORE (R-Kan.) and Heidi HeitkampMary (Heidi) Kathryn HeitkampPence to push new NAFTA deal in visit to Iowa Al Franken says he 'absolutely' regrets resigning Trump nominees meet fiercest opposition from Warren, Sanders, Gillibrand MORE (D-N.D.), and Reps. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.) and Ron KindRonald (Ron) James KindProtect American patients and innovation from a harmful MedTech Tax increase We should repeal the medical device tax on veterans House panel approves bills on tax extenders, expanding tax credits MORE (D-Wis.). The result of the legislation would restore the ability of 50 million Americans to use their tax-preferred flexible spending arrangements (FSAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs) to purchase over-the-counter (OTC) medicines. The story of OTC medicines is an important one for American families, as well as healthcare providers, and the healthcare system overall. In fact, more and more consumers are taking their health into their own hands, and they are doing this with the help of OTC medicines. More than 240 million Americans use OTC medicines every year, and these remedies are a trusted and affordable way to get well, stay well, and feel well. OTC medicines provide Americans with accessible, affordable, and trusted solutions, empowering them to address their everyday healthcare needs. More than 90 percent of Americans prefer to treat with OTC medicines before seeing a healthcare provider and nearly 90 percent of physicians and pharmacists recommend patients self-treat with OTC medicines before seeking physician care. Furthermore, self-care with OTC medicines helps reduce unnecessary doctor visits, lost time from work, and provides a significant cost advantage for consumers. According to one economic study, OTC medicines save consumers and the healthcare system $102 billion each year, and for every dollar spent on OTC medications in the U.S., the healthcare system saves $6 to $7. In 2011, a provision of the ACA removed OTC medicine eligibility from tax-preferred accounts, and since that time the provision limited consumer access to OTC and greatly reduced the economic, social, and personal health benefits associated with these medicines. The ACA provision was essentially a tax on OTC medicines, so Jenkins is right when she says the RAMA legislation will “repeal this tax so families and individuals can better manage their own healthcare expenses.” Restoring eligibility of cost-effective OTC medicines under FSAs and HSAs will help the millions of consumers who use these accounts to take greater ownership of their own health through responsible self-care. From head to toe, OTC medicines are the trusted first line of treatment for millions of Americans, but the current provision also states that consumers must obtain a written prescription for OTCs in order to get those costs reimbursed through their FSAs and HSAs. In other words, consumers must visit their healthcare professional just to purchase medicines that treat common ailments, such as allergies, coughs, colds, heartburn, or topical pain, using their FSAs and HSAs. Since the provision took effect, CHPA has been leading a broad national coalition – the Health Choices Coalition (HCC) – advocating for restoration of this important consumer benefit. The HCC includes consumer advocates, policymakers, physicians, dentists, retailers, pharmacies, pharmacists, insurers, drug manufacturers and various employers – all who understand the valuable role of OTC medicines in our nation’s healthcare system. Given the critical role of OTCs, they should be treated as eligible expenses under tax-preferred accounts. In fact, more than 100 common OTC ingredients that started out as prescriptions are now available over-the-counter – such as certain allergy and heartburn medications as well as therapies for smoking cessation. OTCs are first-class medicines that receive second-class treatment under today’s Federal tax law. We urge Congress to pass RAMA and restore their constituents’ ability to use their FSAs and HSAs for OTC medicines that enhance health and wellness for their families and themselves. The views expressed by this author are their own and are not the views of The Hill. View the discussion thread. The Hill 1625 K Street, NW Suite 900 Washington DC 20006 | 202-628-8500 tel | 202-628-8503 fax The contents of this site are ©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Politics

Policy

Finally, some GOOD NEWS for a Dallas Cowboys player -- rookie QB Dak Prescott was just found NOT GUILTY in his DUI case ... TMZ Sports has learned. Prescott -- a star QB at Mississippi State -- was pulled over for speeding on March 12th around 12:31 AM ... and during the stop, cops believed he was boozy. Prescott admitted he had some beer earlier in the evening -- but when cops pulled out the breathalyzer, both tests came back invalid ... and no B.A.C. number makes it harder to get a conviction. Prescott took the case to trial -- which started and ended Wednesday-- after the QB was found not guilty. And the timing couldn't be better ... training camp starts tomorrow. Congrats!

Sports

Football

Lawmakers are scrambling to push something — anything — through Congress that would help secure the nation’s voting systems ahead of the 2018 elections. But it might already be too late for some critical targets. By this point during the 2016 election cycle, Russian hackers had already been in the Democratic National Committee’s networks for at least three months. Members of both parties insist they can get something done before Election Day 2018, but concede that the window is rapidly closing. Voters in Texas and Illinois will take to the polls in the country’s first primaries in just over three months — a narrow timeline for implementing software patches, let alone finding the funds to overhaul creaky IT systems, swap out aging voting machines or implement state-of-the-art digital audits. “Not a lot of time, no question,” Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who is leading an investigation of Russia’s election-year meddling, told POLITICO. It’s not for a lack of ideas. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed a raft of legislative solutions aimed at inoculating future U.S. elections from foreign meddling. But the efforts have been stalled amid partisan fighting, ideological disagreements over who should fund election security and — perhaps most prominently — a packed congressional calendar that has prioritized repealing Obamacare and pushing through a tax overhaul. “I don’t think anything can come that fast, unless you are a tax bill or something like that,” said Mississippi's Bennie Thompson, who co-chairs a House Democratic election task force formed to explore bolstering the country’s decentralized election infrastructure ahead of the 2018 midterms. Thompson’s group is planning to issue its own legislation next month and Thompson, the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, insisted it would go through “regular order,” with extensive hearings, debate and amendments — a process that could take weeks or months. “There’s no question from the standpoint of what we need to do, we’re behind,” he said. “And by being behind, we’re at risk for any future federal election.” Cybersecurity experts have long warned that America’s election system is a sitting duck for hackers looking to cause chaos. Voter rolls have regularly been been stored on inadequately protected systems, and the country has for years relied on outdated electronic voting machines. At the state and local level, governments can lack the funds to hire elite cyber professionals or properly train staff. And campaigns themselves are often harried and slapdash, with little thought given to digital security. The 2016 election vaulted these realities into the public spotlight. The U.S. government accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of deploying his hackers in an orchestrated scheme to infiltrate political parties, campaigns and state election networks. The effort was wildly successful, pilfering and selectively leaking internal files from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, spurring intra-party bickering and generating weeks of splashy headlines based on the exposed personal emails. And U.S. intelligence leaders have warned that Moscow will be back, leveraging the lessons of 2016 to try and destabilize future elections. Already, officials and researchers have accused the Kremlin of using similar tactics in subsequent elections around Europe. Yet Capitol Hill has not passed any legislation that specifically addresses the issue. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pushed a bipartisan proposal that would allow states to apply for federal grants to update election technology after proving they had adopted certain federal cybersecurity standards. But the legislation hasn’t received a floor vote. And a companion House bill is stuck in limbo. Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are another across-the-aisle duo offering their own bill that would speed through security clearances for top election officials, giving them access to classified information on hacking threats. The measure hasn’t gotten off the ground. And independent Maine Sen. Angus King pressed Senate appropriators — to no avail — for $160 million to help state and local governments purchase auditable voting machines. A slate of other mostly-Democratic proposals have similarly gone nowhere. “I’m concerned that there’s not enough urgency broadly to move legislation forward,” Heinrich told POLITICO. “But we’re going to keep pushing, because I think these problems are not going away.” Perhaps the most high-profile policy recommendations will arrive sometime early next year when Burr’s Senate Intelligence Committee releases the findings of its monthslong examination of Russia’s digital meddling efforts. Burr and panel ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) have vowed their final report will include suggestions for how to ensure the Kremlin can’t repeat its 2016 success in future elections. But it’s unclear if lawmakers will swiftly act on the committee’s advice — or if it would even help at that point. “It’s high-time we got started, and it will be too late soon if there isn’t action,” said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist and a leading expert on digitally securing elections. Halderman said it’s probably already too late for the midterms to make many hardware upgrades to voting equipment — such as replacing paperless, touch-screen machines with ones that produce a paper trail — and that there’s only a window of about six to nine months to make the switch in time for 2020, due to the winding procurement process involved. Earlier this year, Virginia was able to swiftly ditch any remaining paperless touchscreen voting machines just a few months before Election Day in the state’s closely watched gubernatorial race. But Halderman noted that, “in terms of a coordinating, national effort to really address the cybersecurity threats to elections head-on, we don’t yet have that strategy in place and we need to get it going urgently — within the next very small number of months — if it’s going to help 2018 in a significant way.” Congress is a “critical missing piece” in terms of leadership and allocating resources, said Lawrence Norden, the deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, who has worked on multiple reports detailing ideas to keep digital meddlers out of elections. Currently, Norden noted, state and local officials are left to make piecemeal ties with the Department of Homeland Security — which has worked to boost the election security tools it offers states — and the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that helps administer elections but operates on a limited budget. Even if a consensus bill emerged on Capitol Hill, however, Thompson expressed reservations that GOP leadership would let it get a floor vote. “There’s no guarantee that it would ever see the light of day,” he said. But several prominent Republicans, including Burr and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told POLITICO they might support some type of congressional or federal action, even if it isn’t as extensive as Thompson would prefer. “We’re already late,” Cornyn said. “But it might not hurt to provide some best practices or some guidelines so that those states that aren’t as well prepared can deal with it, because it’s going to be ongoing.” Such sentiment has given even the typically pessimistic cybersecurity crowd some restrained hope that something may be accomplished. “I don’t want to sound too pollyannaish or optimistic but I haven’t given up on the fact something significant could happen from this Congress in time to have an impact on 2018 and certainly 2020,” Norden said. But, he added, “the longer they wait, if something does happen … then I think that they will be blamed. No question.”

Technology

Cybersecurity

(Adds details, bank comments, share reaction) By Steven Scheer JERUSALEM, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Israel Discount Bank reported on Wednesday a 3% fall in net profit in the third quarter, missing forecasts, but said it would double its dividend payout from the fourth quarter. Israeli banks have been hit by lower profitability in the third quarter because of a drop in inflation, which hits income because their loans are linked to the consumer price index. Israel’s fourth-largest bank by assets said it earned 427 million shekels ($123 million) in the July to September quarter, compared with 439 million shekels a year earlier. This was below a forecast of 452 million shekels in a Reuters poll of analysts. “We saw continued growth of our credit balances particularly in the mortgage sector, our main focus area for lending, which grew 3.1% in the quarter,” the bank said. It said it would pay a dividend of 64 million shekels for the third quarter, under its policy of paying 15% of net profit, but said it would double this to 30% from the fourth quarter, citing “strong profitability and solid capital position”. Shares of Discount were up 2.4% at midday in Tel Aviv and are up 35% since the start of 2019. Discount, which had raised its payout from 10% in late 2018, still lags other Israeli banks that pay at least 40%. Some, such as Bank Leumi, have also started buying back shares. Net interest income before credit expenses dipped 1% to 1.4 billion shekels amid a fall in inflation, while credit loss expenses rose 24% to 152 million shekels. The bank’s Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio, which measures equity capital as a percentage of total risk-weighted assets, rose to 10.41% in the first nine months from 10.02% a year earlier. In July, Discount named Uri Levin, the head of its U.S. division, as its new chief executive after Lilach Asher-Topilsky said she would step down. Levin starts on Dec. 1. $1 = 3.4684 shekels Reporting by Steven Scheer; Additional reporting by Tova Cohen; Editing by Edmund Blair

Finance

Banking