Group items tagged

Martin O’Malley unloads on Clinton’s 9/11 comments

Martin O’Malley unleashed some of his sharpest barbs at a Democratic party event here Sunday, unloading on Hillary Clinton for invoking 9/11 in her defense of accepting political donations from Wall Street banks

Clinton is under fire from both Republicans and Democrats, as well as media analysts, for saying in the second Democratic presidential Saturday night that her ties to large financial institutions have to do with her efforts to rebuild lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trump’s Tongue

On Thursday evening, his message was equally ominous, as he suggested a link between the shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., and President Obama’s failure to say “radical Islamic terrorism.”

The dark power of words has become the defining feature of Mr. Trump’s bid for the White House to a degree rarely seen in modern politics, as he forgoes the usual campaign trappings — policy, endorsements, commercials, donations — and instead relies on potent language to connect with, and often stoke, the fears and grievances of Americans.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded. From Our Advertisers .story-link { position: relative; display: block; text-decoration: none; padding: 6px 0; min-height: 65px; min-width: 300px; } .story-link:hover { background-color: #eeeeec; } .story-kicker, .story-heading, .summary { margin: 0; padding: 0; } .thumb { position: absolute; left: 0; top: 6px; } .thumb-hover, .story-link:hover .thumb-main { display: none } .thumb-main, .story-link:hover .thumb-hover { display: block } .story-body { padding-left: 75px; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 400; color: #000; } .story-body .story-kicker { font-family: 'nyt-franklin', arial, helvetica, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px; font-weight: 400; color: #5caaf3; } .story-heading { font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; font-weight: 700; padding: 5px 0 0; } Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation Changing Charity Younger donors are finding new ways to give. <noscript class=&quot;MOAT-nytdfp348531439194?moatClientLevel1=31074278&amp;amp;moatClientLevel2=343740158&amp;amp;moatClientLevel3=58584518&amp;amp;moatClientLevel4=94015704638&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer1=28390358&amp;amp;moatClientSlicer2=30706478&amp;amp;zMoatPR=n

The ruling by the Government Accountability Office, which opened its investigation after a report on the agency’s practices in The New York Times, drew a bright line for federal agencies experimenting with social media about the perils of going too far to push a cause. Federal laws prohibit agencies from engaging in lobbying and propaganda.

An E.P.A. official on Tuesday disputed the finding. “We use social media tools just like all organizations to stay connected and inform people across the country about our activities,” Liz Purchia, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement. “At no point did the E.P.A. encourage the public to contact Congress or any state legislature.”

Dec 9 2015, 6:55 pm ET Pineapple Pesticide Linked to Parkinson's Disease

A pineapple pesticide that made its way into milk in Hawaii also made its way into men's brains, and those men were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, a new study finds. It's the latest in a very long series of studies linking various pesticides to Parkinson's, which is caused by the loss of certain brain cells.

A pineapple pesticide that made its way into milk in Hawaii also made its way into men's brains, and those men were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, a n

For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?

To find out, all it takes is a prick of the finger, a small letting of blood. If tests come back positive, the potentially severe consequences are far more difficult to discern.

That’s how lead works. It leaves its mark quietly, with a virtually invisible trail. But years later, when a child shows signs of a learning disability or behavioral issues, lead’s prior presence in the bloodstream&nbsp;suddenly becomes inescapable.

General elections in Haiti have gone ahead without major incidents, less than three months after parliamentary polls that were marred by violence.

Haitians were choosing from more than 50 candidates to succeed President Michel Martelly.

Whoever wins will face a daunting task when taking over from Mr Martelly in February.

Libya truck bomb targets police recruits in Zliten

At least 47 people have been killed by a truck bomb targeting a police training centre in the western Libyan city of Zliten, reports say.

The training centre had been a military base during the rule of ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

They sent Hillary and Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea out on behalf of her mother to bash Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of health care.

But when it's the first time (as this was for Clinton the younger), the surrogate should be sure whereof she speaks, and had better stick to talking about her candidate, not the opponent

Unfortunately, Chelsea Clinton misrepresented Senator Sanders' position, and her premiere performance on the stump backfired, producing a flood of political donations to Sanders.

Besides, Smith says, he had just about everything he needed up on Auburn Avenue, then the center of black life in Atlanta. In 1956, Fortune magazine dubbed it the "richest Negro street in the world."

and the nearby King Center, which pays homage to the neighborhood's most famous resident, the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr.

which led families and businesses to leave the neighborhood, and its struggle to rebuild. In the past five or six years, the narrative has taken a cautiously optimistic turn as new businesses and residential real estate open in the area and Georgia State University's footprint in the neighborhood expands.

spewing hate has a significant impact upon society. It is the equivalent of modern-day propaganda where the population is barraged with a stream of consistent messaging.&nbsp; As ordinary people go about their daily lives, they are exposed repeatedly, day in and day out, to the same messages in numerous forms and by numerous people. Pretty soon, these messages begin to sink in and take effect.&nbsp; The audience begins to adopt a worldview consistent with these messages, regardless of the degree of truth.&nbsp;

Propaganda is powerful stuff.&nbsp; Many people are susceptible to it and can be swayed by it, especially the less educated.

In America today, right-wing media is engaged in this very same activity through Fox News and extremist talk radio.&nbsp;

The Reimann family are now the second richest family in Germany with an estimated net worth of €33bn ($37bin). Through JAB Holding, a private company owned by the family, they also have majority shares in Peets Tea and Coffee, Panera Bread and Dr Pepper.

In July 1937, Albert Reimann Jr wrote to Heinrich Himmler, the SS leader responsible for the Holocaust, saying that his business was “a purely Aryan family business that is over 100 years old”, he wrote. “The owners are unconditional followers of the race theory.”

The report contains harrowing details about the family’s treatment of forced workers: female slaves, mostly from eastern Europe, were forced to stand naked in the factory barracks during checks. Those who refused were beaten and sexually abused. Other workers were beaten, often by the Reimanns themselves, including a Russian woman who worked in the Reimanns’ private villa.

“In just a few hours today, 650&nbsp;million euros was donated to rebuild Notre Dame,” South Africa-based journalist Simon Allison tweeted. “In six months, just 15 million euros has been pledged to restore Brazil’s National Museum. I think this is what they call white privilege.

Ever since people began to speculate about “World War III,” its very name has implied its own inevitability. We talk about it not only as something that might happen, but something that will. And it’s been on our minds for a very long time.

The phrase seems to have emerged during the early 1940s, not long after people began to think of the “Great War” of 1914 as World War I—a precursor to World War II. Time magazine mused about a third war as early as November 1941, one month before Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into WWII. More consequentially, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill started planning for a World War III while he was still fighting the second war. And he kept on worrying about it, too. “After he’s out office, during the summer of 1945 through 1946, he continually believes that the Soviet Union are going to start another war,” says Jonathan Walker, a military history writer and author of Operation Unthinkable: The Third World War.

The introduction of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and the hydrogen bomb in the 1950s gave the phrase “World War III” a new, specific meaning: nuclear annihilation. And as the U.S. and the Soviet union became locked in a Cold War, it seemed that nuclear war could break out at any moment. Writers had already been stoking people’s fears about nuclear energy long before the U.S. harnessed it into bombs, says Spencer R. Weart, a science historian and author of The Rise of Nuclear Fear. When scientists first discovered radioactivity and nuclear energy at the turn of the century, it evoked both awe and terror. One of them, Frederick Soddy, thought “it might even be possible to set off an explosion that would destroy the entire world,” Weart says.

The Benettons made occasional, bipartisan political donations but those did not explain the company’s influence. Autostrade could perform perfectly legal favors for politicians, like modernizing a stretch of local highway.

Several scholars say the skewed relationship resulted in a case of “regulatory capture,” the political scientists’ term for the situation when a watchdog bends to the interests of a company it is supposed to supervise.

When a center-left government took power in 2006, Autostrade’s contract came under scrutiny. The government blocked the company from selling itself to Abertis, a Spanish toll road operator, then signaled that Autostrade needed to be reined in

how do campaign donations that appear to be connected with Boeing manage to avoid violating this law? The answer is a loophole, cemented in the law in the 1970s, that permits government contractors to set up “separate segregated funds,” or political action committees, to make political contributions using money typically pooled from the contractors’ executives and major shareholders. Such funds are legal even if the parent company pays for their operating and fund-raising costs. This exemption — whose ostensible justification is the free-speech rights of contractors’ employees — is why political action committees like Boeing’s can exist.

The corporate PAC workaround is “clearly bad, policy-wise,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan ethics watchdog

Boeing’s PAC is a “major player” Mr. Fischer said. The sum of its contributions is three times larger than the sum of any independent individual contributions from its employees

Four dementia scientists have shared this year's 1m Euro brain prize for pivotal work that has changed our understanding of Alzheimer's disease.

These genetic errors implicated a build-up of amyloid as the event that kick-starts damage to nerve cells in Alzheimer's.

Dr David Reynolds, Chief Scientific Officer at Alzheimer's Research UK, said: "Our congratulations go to all four of these outstanding scientists whose vital contributions have transformed our understanding of the complex causes of Alzheimer's disease. "The fact that three of these researchers work in the UK reflects the country's position as a global leader in dementia research."Prof Hardy said he would be donating around 5,000 euros of his share of the 1m euros from the Lundbeck Foundation to help campaigns to keep Britain in the EU, and called Brexit a "unmitigated disaster" for scientific research.

Chile has created a new law protecting the waters along its 6,400km (4,000 mile) coastline.

The new legislation will increase the area of sea under Chilean state protection from 4.3% to 42.4 %, and protect marine life in around 1.4 million square kilometres of sea.

In September last year, Chile opened a huge marine park around Easter Island, which is home to species only found there.

The US Department of Justice on Saturday moved to ban bump stocks, firearm accessories used to mimic automatic fire.

Officials said the Las Vegas gunman had 12 rifles fitted with bump stocks in the hotel room where he carried out the attack that left 58 dead and more than 850 injured.

The NRA, which donated $30m to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has not supported an outright ban on bump stocks.

Whereas successful political movements used to have a single ideology, they can now combine several. Think about how record companies put together new pop bands: They do market research, they pick the kinds of faces that match, and then they market the band by advertising it to the most favorable demographic. New political parties can now operate like that: You can bundle together issues, repackage them and then market them, using exactly the same kind of targeted messaging — based on exactly the same kind of market research — that you know has worked in other places.

Opposition to Catalan and Basque separatism; opposition to feminism and same-sex marriage; opposition to immigration, especially by Muslims; anger at corruption; boredom with mainstream politics; a handful of issues, such as hunting and gun ownership, that some people care a lot about and others don’t know exist; plus a streak of libertarianism, a talent for mockery and a whiff of nostalgia

All of these are the ingredients that have gone into the creation of Vox.