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Contents contributed and discussions participated by runlai_jiang

runlai_jiang

Trump Agrees to Meet North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un - WSJ - 0 views

  • President Donald Trump accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the White House said Thursday, a meeting that would mark the first time a serving U.S. president has sat down with the leadership of the heavily militarized and diplomatically isolated country.
  • American officials acknowledged that it was unusual for such a face-to-face session to be arranged without an extensive series of preparatory meetings between lower-ranking officials
  • But a failure by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim to make headway could lead each side to double down on their demands and perhaps heighten the possibility of conflict.
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  • while stressing that the U.S.’s ultimate goal was complete denuclearization by North Korea, subject to stringent verification.
  • If high-level talks get under way, a key question will be what North Korea and the U.S. mean when they talk about “denuclearization.” The underlying assumption of American policy has long been that it means a North Korea without any nuclear weapons or a nuclear-weapons program.
  • The North may define denuclearization as a long-term goal that would only be achieved after the U.S. withdraws troops from South Korea and effectively ends the U.S.-South Korean military alliance.
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  • “North Korean regimes have repeatedly used talks and empty promises to extract concessions and buy time,” he said. “We’ve got to break this cycle.”
  • “If the talks between the two leaders do not go well, it is not an excuse to justify military action for a situation that has no military solution.”
  • They said Mr. Kim had confirmed that he was prepared to suspend nuclear weapons and missile tests and agreed to discuss eliminating his nation’s nuclear arsenal. They also said Mr. Kim wouldn’t object to U.S.-South Korean military maneuvers, scheduled to take place next month in the region.
  • In a September appearance at the U.N., Mr. Trump said the U.S. would “totally destroy North Korea” if attacked and vowed that Mr. Kim would not survive the devastations. “Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself,” Mr. Trump said.
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    It seems like Kim Jong Un uses nuclear power as a diplomatic approach to gain international political compensations and benefits instead of expansionism and insanity.
runlai_jiang

North Korea's Kim, Long a Pariah, Takes Tentative Step Onto World Stage - WSJ - 0 views

  • SEOUL—With a clandestine trip to Beijing this week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has taken his first, tentative steps onto the world diplomatic stage.
  • Mr. Kim and his regime have sought legitimacy and recognition as a nuclear-weapons state as the country’s dilapidated economy has faced ever-tougher sanctions.
  • conducted in secrecy after a ride on an armored train to the Chinese capital, lays the groundwork for his biggest diplomatic date yet: a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.
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  • there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!
  • by his lack of direct contact with foreign leaders, and his apparent unwillingness to stray too far from Pyongyang. Compared with his father, Kim Jong Il, the current dictator had little lead time before taking the reins.
  • “Previous Chinese negotiating behavior suggests that a meeting with Xi carries real weight
  • Mr. Kim and his wife met Mr. Xi and his wife during a lunch that “was overflowing with a harmonious and intimate atmosphere from its beginning to the end,”
  • The visit also allowed Beijing, with whom relations had soured, to play a central role in efforts to find a solution to the nuclear standoff.
  • Mr. Kim’s willingness to bring his wife to dinners with the South Korean envoys and with the Chinese president helps to make him “look like a fuller leader—a three-dimensional person, not this caricature,” she said.
  • which North Korean state media said was accepted “with pleasure”—though Chinese state media didn’t mention the invitation, one of several differences that hinted at enduring tensions between the neighbors.
  • In talks with the U.S., security analysts expect Mr. Kim to seek recognition as a nuclear-weapons state, or to demand sanctions relief and U.S. security guarantees in return for giving up its nuclear arms.
  • North Korean leaders’ preferred means of travel—armored train—would appear to reduce the likelihood of a summit in Scandinavia or Switzerland, given the distance and security concerns. Mr. Kim’s trip, like that of his father, w
  • But in venturing beyond his borders for the first time since taking power, Mr. Kim has signaled he can rub shoulders with world leaders like Mr. Xi.
  • Kim is sending a signal that he has options outside of full capitulation to Trump.”
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    the meeting is possible to denuclearize, but Kim wonders compensation instead of full capitulation. Kim also shows his ability to negotiate with world leaders. The security and location for the US-North Korea summit will be important.
runlai_jiang

How Facebook's Past Data Policy Has Come Back to Haunt It - WSJ - 0 views

  • Last week, Facebook confirmed that Cambridge Analytica , a data firm hired by President Trump’s campaign, had violated the company’s policies when it purchased the data of 50 million users from a researcher who accessed it in 2013. The stock plunged, lawmakers began demanding answers and users threatened to quit the social network altogether.
  • Although the trove of information used by Cambridge Analytica was downloaded before 2015, the year Facebook implemented stricter data policies, it has exposed an ugly truth for the social network: user information that was accessed during the company’s earlier years can still be abused today.
runlai_jiang

Most Stressful Job on the Road: Not Driving an Autonomous Car - WSJ - 0 views

  • The fatal crash last week in Tempe, Ariz., involving an Uber autonomous vehicle is bringing new scrutiny to both the quality of Uber’s technology for avoiding collision and the efficacy of its backup system of so-called safety drivers.
  • The company said the second operator wasn’t officially responsible for maintaining car safety, but some drivers said the two people in the vehicle relied on each other since an accident or traffic violation could cost them their jobs.
  • One former Uber driver said he couldn’t imagine driving alone because it was “stressful enough” monitoring the road to ensure the car doesn’t perform in dangerous or unexpected ways. Being additionally responsible for logging unusual activity, which Uber drivers may type into a device in their cars, would only increase that, he said.
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  • Still, other drivers said the job wasn’t overly difficult. “It’s about being alert, if you can’t be alert for a few straight hours then you’re not a very good driver,” a former Waymo test operator said. Video taken from inside the Uber vehicle, released by Tempe police, appears to show the vehicle heading straight into the pedestrian without slo
  • It is the second time in a year that Uber has ​temporarily halted testing following an accident involving one of its autonomous cars.
  • Uber began making the transition to using single test operators nearly three years after embarking on self-driving vehicle development. General Motors Co.’s Cruise Automation self-driving unit, which was founded in 2013, still has two test drivers in every car. Waymo—which has logged more than five million testing miles, by far the most of any company—began using one safety operator in many of its cars in 2015, about six years after its program began. Waymo now runs most vehicles without humans behind the wheel in the Phoenix area and plans to launch a commercial robot service later this year.
  • d under stress. California, where a lot of testing occurs, requires companies to disclose such “disengagements” of the autonomous technology, and unnecessary disengagements can interfere with learning and improving the technology.
runlai_jiang

Reality Check: Is Chinese an official language in Pakistan? - BBC News - 0 views

  • Reality Check verdict: False - the Pakistani parliament passed a resolution "recommending" Chinese-language courses to be taught in Pakistan, but there's no suggestion Chinese will become an official language of the country.
  • The Senate did pass a resolution - but all it called for was "official Chinese language" courses to be launched for everyone involved with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), to reduce "communication barriers".
  • The misreporting was picked up by several Indian media outlets including ANI news agency, India Today and Financial Express, and portrayed as an example of Pakistan's growing closeness to China.
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  • Urdu is the national language of Pakistan but for all practical purposes, English is treated as an official language - most government ministries use English and it is also spoken by the country's elite.
  • Several political parties and literary bodies carried out a protest on 22 February - International Mother Language Day - urging the Pakistan government to declare all major languages of the country as "national languages".
runlai_jiang

Why China banned the letter 'N' - CNN - 0 views

  • The pushback to this development was intense online. So was the government's pushback to the pushback. In addition to banning use of the letter "N" online, words such as "immortality" and "ascend the throne" were also deemed inappropriate to use on the internet.
  • Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, said the government likely feared that "N" was referring to the number of terms of office, as in a mathematical equation n > 2.
  • But the nixing of "N" was a temporary one. By Monday use of the letter online was once again permitted, according to China Digital Times.
runlai_jiang

Florida legislature backs new gun restrictions after Parkland school shooting - The Was... - 0 views

  • Florida lawmakers bucked the National Rifle Association on Wednesday to pass new firearms regulations and create a program for arming some school employees in a rare act of Republican compromise on the divisive issue of gun violence.
  • A bipartisan vote of 67 to 50 in the state House ended an emotional three-week process, during which the state’s legislative leadership toured the bloodstained hallways at the high school and thousands of students marched on the state capital in Tallahassee to demand change.
  • After weeks of debate, lawmakers approved a bill that would impose a three-day waiting period for most purchases of long guns and raise the minimum age for purchasing those weapons to 21.
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  • The legislation also includes millions of dollars to improve school security and train and arm school employees.
  • caught up in the formidable political divide that has undermined previous attempts to tighten rules for firearms.
  • President Trump, who plans to meet with leaders of the video game industry Thursday, has not put forward his own school safety proposal, after initially saying he supported arming teachers, raising the age for some gun purchases and even removing guns from people deemed dangerous before a judicial review.
  • In addition to the waiting period and an increase in the minimum age, the bill also would ban the possession or sale of bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more rapidly.
runlai_jiang

German far-right terror group members jailed for attacks - BBC News - 0 views

  • A German court has jailed eight members of the far-right group called Freital, for a number of crimes including attempted murder and terror offences.
  • Prosecutors said the group's members attempted to create a "climate of fear" with a series of attacks on political opponents and refugees in 2015.
  • The group were found guilty of two attacks on refugee homes, two on far-left political offices and one on a residential complex.
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  • A federal prosecutor said the incidents constituted attempted murder, and said it was good fortune that no one died in the attacks.
  • Germany was shocked by a wave of attacks on refugee homes, angry protests and open xenophobia
  • Largely focused in the former communist east where disenchantment spilled over into fury at the government which, so the argument goes, opened its arms to refugees but left its own behin
  • Today's verdict forces Germany to, once again, examine uncomfortable truths. The migrant crisis destroyed old taboos; what was considered unspeakable just a few years ago is now openly discussed (even in the Bundestag where the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the largest opposition party). Few, of course, condone this level of violence but a small - growing - number of Germans now support the sentiment behind it.
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      A far-right or conservative sentiment is resurgent in Europe, just like in Italy and France to drive out the refugees and restore nativism.
  • In his closing statements, Senior Prosecutor Jörn Hausschild said he was convinced the group's crimes were based on xenophobic, right-wing extremist and Nazi ideology.
  • Germany has seen a rise in anti-Islam, far-right activity in recent years coinciding with the country's acceptance of more than one million migrants and refugees since 2014.
  • The Alternative for Germany (AfD) far-right political party won its first parliamentary seats in last year's election - becoming the third largest party with 12.6% of the vote.
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    Germany has seen a rise in anti-Islam, far-right activity in recent years coinciding with the country's acceptance of more than one million migrants and refugees since 2014.
runlai_jiang

France labour: Firms to be fined over gender pay gap - BBC News - 0 views

  • French companies caught discriminating against women over pay will be given three years to close the gap or face fines under new labour proposals.
  • Larger firms - those employing at least 250 staff - would get the new software next year while firms employing between 50 and 249 staff would be affected from 2020.
  • Across the 28 EU member states, the average "unexplained" gender pay gap is a little higher than France's at 11.5%, according to Eurostat figures.
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  • Neighbouring Belgium has a gap of just 2.5% whereas for women in Lithuania, it is a staggering 24.2%.
runlai_jiang

US metal tariffs: Mexico and Canada may be exempt, White House says - BBC News - 0 views

  • The White House says there could be exemptions to US plans to impose tariffs on metal imports, in a softening of its tough stance.
  • Canada, Mexico and other countries may see "carve-outs" on national security grounds, press secretary Sarah Sanders said.US President Donald Trump has said steel products will face a 25% tariff, with 10% on aluminium goods.
  • The EU has proposed retaliatory measures against a number of US goods including bourbon and peanut butter.
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  • International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde warned "nobody wins" in a trade war, saying it would harm global economic growth.
runlai_jiang

Florida shooting: Gun control law moves step closer - BBC News - 0 views

  • New gun control measures for Florida have passed another legal hurdle, weeks after one of the worst school shootings in US history.The state's House of Representatives passed a bill raising the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 and imposing a three-day waiting period on all gun sales.
  • The bill, already passed by the Senate, now goes to the state governor.
  • The bill does not include a ban on the sale of assault-style weapons, despite it being a key demand of students and their parents.
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  • The bill, known as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, will automatically become law within 15 days unless he vetoes it.
  • The US national minimum age to buy a handgun is already 21.
  • Police say expelled former student Nikolas Cruz was 18 when he legally bought the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used in the attack.
runlai_jiang

Burkina Faso attacks leave 8 dead, 80 injured - CNN - 0 views

  • At least eight people were killed and more than 80 injured in two attacks in Burkina Faso's capital, one of them targeting the French embassy, security officials said
  • Sawadogo confirmed there were two coordinated attacks: one against the French embassy, the other against the national army headquarters, and said assailants used a "vehicle packed with explosives" against the latter.
  • The UN Security Council issued a statement condemning "in the strongest terms the barbaric and cowardly terrorist attacks" in Ouagadougou.
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  • The West, particularly France, considers Burkina Faso a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda in the region.
  • Its members "expressed their solidarity with Burkina Faso in its fight against terrorism and stressed the need to intensify regional and international efforts to combat terrorism and violent extremism, which may be conducive to terrorism."
  • The country was formerly known as the Republic of Upper Volta when it was established in 1958 as a self-governing colony under France. It gained full independence in 1960.
runlai_jiang

France is the weakest of Europe's big 3 economies - Apr. 19, 2017 - 1 views

  • Europe's third biggest economy has suffered years of anemic growth, high unemployment and budget deficits, while neighbors such as Germany and the U.K. have enjoyed a stronger recovery from the global financial crisis.
  • Two of them -- far right politician Marine Le Pen and socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon proposed radical ideas on how to improve the economy. Both oppose free trade agreements and are highly critical of the euro.
  • The French economy expanded by 1.2% in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund. The two larger economies in Europe -- Germany and the U.K. -- posted growth of 1.8% over the same period.
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  • France is also struggling to bring down its unemployment rate, which stands at roughly 10%.
  • France has relatively low income inequality and fewer of its citizens are at risk of poverty than in Germany or the U.K.
  • The percentage of GDP that the government spends on social programs and welfare is much higher in France than other major economies.
  • The generous welfare system has led to higher budget deficits, however, and the French healthcare system is in desperate need of more cash. The IMF has called for economic reforms to bring public spending under control.
runlai_jiang

Spring Home Sales Could Be the Weakest in Years - WSJ - 0 views

  • The culprits: rising mortgage rates, a tax bill that reduces the incentives for homeownership and a growing weariness among first-buyers being priced out of the market—all of which are expected to damp demand for homes this year.
  • “It’s still going to be a tight market, but we’re moving from an extremely tight market to one that has some wiggle room around the edges for buyers,” said Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at the housing-research firm Attom Data Solutions.
  • Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said he expects sales to be flat this spring from a year earlier. Roughly 2.06 million homes were sold between March and June 2017, up from about 2 million in the same period a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.
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  • Mr. Yun predicts sales will remain flat for all of 2018, due to inventory shortages and eroding affordability, as both prices and mortgage rates rise.
  • A homeowner with a median-priced home in the San Francisco area will receive $4,500 less in housing-related tax benefits in the first year of a 30-year mortgage this year, according to real-estate data company Apartment List. A homeowner in the same position in the New York metro area would receive $1,500 less annually.
  • Weakness at the high end is being driven by stock market volatility and the $10,000 cap the tax bill placed on deducting state and local property taxes
  • “People are being a little more cautious than they were before,” Mr. Glazer said. “Buyers have a number in mind, and they’re willing to stick their ground more than in the past.”
  • Kalena Masching, a Redfin agent in Silicon Valley, said she has seen a pickup in activity in recent weeks as buyers and sellers have digested the implications of the tax bill. Buyers are putting down larger down payments to bring the size of their mortgages below the new $750,000 cap. But that could be a challenge if the stock market continues to fluctuate, because buyers might want to hold on to more of their cash
  • s. Masching said she is also hearing more from older buyers who are thinking about selling their homes and using the proceeds to retire out of state, prompted in part by the changes to the tax law
  • “I’m hoping it’s going to be better. We never got any inventory last year,” said Ms. Masching. “The big concern for our sellers is: Where are they going to go?”
  • Rhian Daniel, a 50 year old who works for a medical startup, and his wife have been looking for a home for about four years, both in the Bay Area and further afield. The couple have largely given up for the moment, and are considering eventually moving to a place like Dallas, with lower home prices and property taxes.
  • Mr. Daniel’s wife is a therapist, and they both have student debt that limits the size of the mortgage they can get.
runlai_jiang

Trump Alienates Allies Needed for a Trade Fight With China - WSJ - 1 views

  • For President Donald Trump, this could be an opportunity to lead a coalition against China’s predatory trade behavior. Instead, he is threatening trade war with the countries that would make up such a coalition, over commodities that are much less vital to the U.S.’s economy and national security than the sectors threatened by China’s expropriation of intellectual property.
  • “Beijing has doubled down on its state capitalist model even as it has gotten richer,” Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, who both served in foreign-policy roles under former President Barack Obama, write in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. “Cooperative and voluntary mechanisms to pry open China’s economy have by and large failed.”
  • “Every year, competitors such as China steal U.S. intellectual property valued at hundreds of billions of dollars,” his national security strategy declared last December. “China is gaining a strategic foothold in Europe by expanding its unfair trade practices and investing in key industries, sensitive technologies, and infrastructure.”
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  • In January 2017, Mr. Obama’s administration launched a case at the WTO against China for subsidizing aluminum
  • Mr. Trump has failed to follow up. Last week, Mr. Trump invoked a little-used 1962 statute to promise tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminum, ostensibly for national security, a factor that led his chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, to announce his resignation Tuesday.
  • Chinese forced technology transfer, commercial espionage and intellectual-property theft, all aimed at creating Chinese champions in key industries by 2025
  • Yet China exports little steel to the U.S. because of existing duties and accounts for just 11% of its aluminum imports, far behind Canada. The Commerce Department argued for a global remedy because Chinese production depresses global prices and drives foreign producers out of third markets, and they then ship to the U.S.
  • It noted that since 2003 China has four times promised to address overcapacity in steel production, as its actual capacity quadrupled to roughly half the world total. “The crisis confronting the U.S. aluminum industry is China, plain and simple,” one industry group told the department.
  • When the EU threatened to retaliate, Mr. Trump said he would escalate by raising duties on European cars.
  • This means the pain of Mr. Trump’s tariffs will fall not on China but on actors that play by the rules, including Canada, Japan and the European Union.
  • The U.S. is preparing a sweeping penalty against China, but it would be more effective if done jointly; otherwise, Beijing may simply persuade others to hand over their technology in exchange for Chinese sales or capital.
  • S., EU and Japan launched a joint WTO complaint against China for restricting exports of “rare earths,” which are vital to many advanced technologies.
  • In 2014, they won and China lifted its restrictions. One former U.S. trade official says the U.S. could create a similar united front against Chinese takeovers of technology companies: “That would get their attention.” Nor would it violate WTO rules, which are less restrictive on investment than tariffs, he said.
  • “We are much more likely to get our allies to work with us if we aren’t punishing them for selling us steel that our consumers want to buy.”
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    Trump's tariffs may force allies to incline to Chinese technologies and steel products, further weakening American trade status.
runlai_jiang

At 12 She Joined the Kurdish Militia-Seven Years Later She's Had Enough - WSJ - 0 views

  • Four years ago, she joined the war against Islamic State—part of a Kurdish militia allied with the U.S. She has been wounded twice and has shrapnel lodged in her head. During the battle for Raqqa last year, she braved land mines near the front lines. Now, Ms. Ali is done fighting. “I’m tired,” she says, curled up on a sofa in her parents’ home in northeastern Syria, intently chipping away at her pink fingernail polish.
  • Ms. Ali’s mother, Ahin Ali, winces at the details. “It hurts a lot, that she witnessed all this pain,” she said. But even as she mourns the cost to her daughter, she doesn’t regret the sacrifice she made in allowing her to figh
  • Amid the chaos of the war, the Kurds have been fighting for self-rule in Syria. But their aspirations are increasingly under threat. Turkey is determined to reverse Kurdish gains and the U.S., which armed the Kurds’ YPG militia for years so it could fight Islamic State, hasn’t come to the group’s defense.
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  • As the Syrian conflict began to encroach on a corner of the country spared early in the war, the teenager traveled to a training camp in Iraq’s remote Qandil Mountains. Soon Islamic State began seizing large parts of Syria, including some Kurdish areas, and she headed to the war’s front lines.
  • At first her father, who had been arrested several times by the Syrian government because of his membership in a Kurdish political party, resisted because of her age. But her mother knew she couldn’t stop her daughter from joining a cause they had trumpeted all her life.
  • A portrait of Abdullah Ocalan —the jailed leader of the PKK Kurdish separatist  movement in neighboring Turkey and founder of its many affiliates, including what evolved into the YPG—hangs in the family’s living room.
  • In the years she was away, Ms. Ali only wrote three letters, sending them home via a modern day pony express by pick-up truck rather than horseback. Her mother keeps them carefully folded up in a leather wallet. One she wrote before participating in battle for the first time. The other is a poem of yearning:
runlai_jiang

What the Texas Primaries Tell Us About November - WSJ - 0 views

  • Democrats are surging, but not enough to turn this red state blue. Democratic turnout across Texas was up more than 80% over the last midterm primary, in 2014, but the party has a long way to go to mount a competitive challenge to Republicans in statewide races in November.
  • r. O’Rourke has drawn impressive crowds across the state on his tour of all 254 Texas counties and has raised more money than Mr. Cruz during the last three Federal Election Commission reporting quarters, but the scope of his challenge was laid bare on Tuesday.
  • After much hand-wringing over Democrats’ outpacing Republicans in early voting, a half-million more people voted GOP than for Democrats on primary Election Day.
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  • The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC controlled by House Speaker Paul Ryan, offered mock congratulations to Laura Moser, the Bernie Sanders-aligned Democrat who advanced to a runoff for a Houston-area House seat held by Republican Rep. John Culberson. Ms. Moser had been attacked by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
  • In the Seventh District, the top fundraiser—nonprofit executive Alex Triantaphyllis—came in fourth. In a Dallas House Democratic primary, the best fundraiser by far was a former Hillary Clinton aide, Ed Meier, who placed behind candidates who hadn’t raised even half the amount he had. He had more than $300,000 on hand as of Feb. 14 but failed to make the runoff.
  • They won runoff positions in all three of the most closely watched and competitive House Democratic primaries.
  • One of those women, Gina Oritz Jones, is an openly gay Filipino-American veteran of the Iraq war.
runlai_jiang

Saudi Crown Prince Woos British to Bring Business Back Home - WSJ - 0 views

  • A three-day trip to the U.K. that began Wednesday is the young royal’s first visit to a Western country since he ousted a powerful cousin to become heir to the throne in June, a bumpy political transition that led to the arrests of critical clerics, princes and journalists.
  • For British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is hosting the Saudi prince at her country house, the visit is a chance to burnish commercial ties. Expanding economic links with countries outside the EU is a critical goal as Britain prepares to exit from the bloc in March next year. Saudi Arabia is already its biggest trading partner in the Middle East, with companies from the U.K. investing more in Saudi Arabia than from any other country after the U.S.
  • To draw foreign firms to the kingdom, the Saudi government is also trying to project a softer image of the ultraconservative country.
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  • Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, is pushing to end its dependence on oil revenues. That plan will largely depend on Saudi Arabia—a country with a Byzantine bureaucracy and an opaque legal system—becoming more attractive to foreign investors.
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      The ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia is trying to end its dependence on oil revenues by international relations with different allies, having a sign of being open.
  • He is creating a new and vibrant Saudi Arabia,” said one of the billboards, sponsored by a Saudi consulting firm.
  • Billboards touting Prince Mohammed as the face of change in the kingdom could be seen in the streets of London.
  • But the two leaders, Prince Mohammed and Mrs. May, will also have to address difficult issues like the Saudi war in Yemen.
  • he added that “we are all concerned about the appalling humanitarian situation in Yemen,” but said that engaging with the Saudi leadership was the best way to get aid into the country.
  • Britain has deployed the monarchy as a tool of soft power with the Gulf’s Arab states before. Prince Charles has traveled frequently to Saudi Arabia—on one occasion even participating in the traditional Saudi sword dance.
  • But Prince Mohammed’s visit also underscores the stark differences between the two monarchies.
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