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How Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would tax the 1 percent, in one chart - Vox - 0 views

  • How Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would tax the 1 percent, in one chart
  • there’s at least one issue on which Clinton likes to stress that Trump does in fact have a set policy: tax cuts for the super wealthy.
  • There’s a certain irony to the discrepancy in the candidates’ plans: All of the evidence suggests Hillary Clinton is the candidate overwhelmingly preferred by the super wealthy.
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  • She is, for instance, the first Democratic nominee in more than 20 years to be leading among those making over $100,000, according to a Bloomberg News poll. She clobbered Trump among millionaires by 13 points in a CNBC poll. She also has a 20-to-1 fundraising edge among billionaires, and an even bigger one among top corporate earners.
  • if we’re going by proposed tax policies alone, there really is no dispute about which candidate promises to most advance the interests of America’s 1 percent.
  • As the graphic shows, Clinton’s plan would raise taxes for the top 1 percent — those making over $730,000 — by an average of $123,570 a year. That number is a little misleading —
  • Overall, Clinton’s tax increases on the top 1 percent would increase revenue by somewhere in the order of $140 billion in 2017 alone. That money would then be funneled into an ambitious and extensive array of social welfare programs and other policy initiatives,
  • Among them include raising capital gains taxes, imposing a 4 percent surcharge on incomes over $5 million, advancing a new tax for incomes that surpass $1 million
  • Trump, meanwhile, would give the top 1 percent an extra cash cushion in the range of $162,000 a year.
  • Goldwein’s analysis is based on one think tank’s estimate of incomes for 2017, though Trump’s plan is based on a different think tank’s estimate of incomes for 2016.
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Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Members of the old class turned to scientists, engineers, managers, human relations specialists, economists and other professionals for help. As these experts multiplied, they realized the extent of their collective power. They demanded fitting levels of pay and status and insisted on professional autonomy. A “new class” was born, neither owner nor worker.
  • beginning in the early 20th century, increasing complexity in science, technology, economic affairs and government meant that the “old” moneyed class no longer had the expertise to directly manage the work process or steer the ship of state.
  • A distinguishing feature of this new class, according to Dr. Gouldner, was the way it spoke and argued. Steeped in science and expert knowledge, it embraced a “culture of critical discourse.”
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  • Evidence and logic were valued; appeals to traditional sources of authority were not.
  • Members of the new class raised their children in such a culture. And it was these children, allergic to authoritarian values, who as young adults were at the center of the student revolts, finding common ground with disaffected “humanistic” intellectuals bent on changing the world.
  • the most highly educated professionals are coming to form, if not a new class, at least a reliably liberal political grouping.
  • as class inequality has increased, Americans who hold advanced degrees have grown more supportive of government efforts to reduce income differences, whether through changes to taxes or strengthening the welfare system.
  • On this issue, the views of the highly educated are now similar to those of groups with much lower levels of education, who have a real material stake in reducing inequalities.
  • This phenomenon is mostly a boon for the Democratic Party. While only 10 percent of American adults hold advanced degrees, that number is expected to rise. The group is active politically and influential.
  • The challenge for the Democrats moving forward will be to develop appeals to voters that resonate not just with this important constituency, but also with other crucial groups in the Democratic coalition.
  • The Democrats may find they need to give up a little of their wonkiness if they want resounding victories. It’s not in their long-term interest to be too much what Pat Buchanan once referred to as “the party of the Ph.D.s.”
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A New Dark Age Looms - The New York Times - 0 views

  • picture yourself in our grandchildren’s time, a century hence. Significant global warming has occurred, as scientists predicted. Nature’s longstanding, repeatable patterns — relied on for millenniums by humanity to plan everything from infrastructure to agriculture — are no longer so reliable. Cycles that have been largely unwavering during modern human history are disrupted by substantial changes in temperature and precipitation.
  • As Earth’s warming stabilizes, new patterns begin to appear. At first, they are confusing and hard to identify. Scientists note similarities to Earth’s emergence from the last ice age. These new patterns need many years — sometimes decades or more — to reveal themselves fully, even when monitored with our sophisticated observing systems
  • Disruptive societal impacts will be widespread.
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  • Our foundation of Earth knowledge, largely derived from historically observed patterns, has been central to society’s progress. Early cultures kept track of nature’s ebb and flow, passing improved knowledge about hunting and agriculture to each new generation. Science has accelerated this learning process through advanced observation methods and pattern discovery techniques. These allow us to anticipate the future with a consistency unimaginable to our ancestors.
  • But as Earth warms, our historical understanding will turn obsolete faster than we can replace it with new knowledge. Some patterns will change significantly; others will be largely unaffected
  • The list of possible disruptions is long and alarming.
  • Historians of the next century will grasp the importance of this decline in our ability to predict the future. They may mark the coming decades of this century as the period during which humanity, despite rapid technological and scientific advances, achieved “peak knowledge” about the planet it occupies
  • One exception to this pattern-based knowledge is the weather, whose underlying physics governs how the atmosphere moves and adjusts. Because we understand the physics, we can replicate the atmosphere with computer models.
  • But farmers need to think a season or more ahead. So do infrastructure planners as they design new energy and water systems
  • The intermediate time period is our big challenge. Without substantial scientific breakthroughs, we will remain reliant on pattern-based methods for time periods between a month and a decade. The problem is, as the planet warms, these patterns will become increasingly difficult to discern.
  • The oceans, which play a major role in global weather patterns, will also see substantial changes as global temperatures rise. Ocean currents and circulation patterns evolve on time scales of decades and longer, and fisheries change in response. We lack reliable, physics-based models to tell us how this occurs.
  • Our grandchildren could grow up knowing less about the planet than we do today. This is not a legacy we want to leave them. Yet we are on the verge of ensuring this happens.
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U.S. GDP Advanced 1.9% in Final Quarter of 2016 - 0 views

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    WASHINGTON-U.S. consumer spending was stronger than initially thought in the final months of 2016, though the overall economic-growth trajectory remained muted amid downward revisions for business investment and government spending. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the economy, expanded at an inflation- and seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.9% in the fourth quarter, the Commerce...
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Nine Dead as Mayhem Grips Ukrainian Capital - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Mayhem gripped the center of the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday evening as riot police officers tried to drive two armored personnel carriers through stone-reinforced barriers in Independence Square, the focal point of more than two months of protests against President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
  • In the course of wild day of parries and thrusts by the protesters and the police, the authorities in Kiev reported nine people killed, including two police officers. It was the bloodiest day of violence since President Yanukovych spurned a trade deal with Europe in November and set of protests that began peacefully but have since involved occasional spasms of deadly violence.
  • A phalanx of riot police officers, backed by a water cannon, pushed through protesters’ barricades near the Ukraina Hotel and fired tear gas as they advanced toward the center of the square. People covered in blood staggered to a medical center set up in the protest encampment.
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  • The police advance followed hours of street battles that destroyed hopes of an early political settlement, stirred in recent days by an amnesty deal. The resumption of violence underscored the volatility of a political crisis that has not only aroused fear of civil war in Ukraine but has also dragged Russia and the West into a geopolitical struggle redolent of the Cold War.
  • News agencies quoted antigovernment activists as saying three protesters had been killed, but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties. Olga Bogomolets, a doctor, told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper that three activists had died at a medical unit in the Officers’ House on Kriposniy Lane. She said that they had died from gunshot wounds to the head and heart and that tens of other people had suffered injuries.
  • Protesters reported that the police were using live ammunition, but this could not be confirmed. Cartridges scattered on the street suggested that most, if not all, of the firing from police lines involved rubber bullets.
  • “Kiev stand up! Kiev stand up!,” screamed a speaker on a stage in the square that, since late November, has been occupied by protesters.
  • “Extremists from opposition have crossed the line” and bought chaos to the center of Kiev, said the statement. “We warn hot irresponsible heads of the opposition — the government has forces to restore order.”
  • The 6 p.m. deadline passed with no sign of a push into Independence Square by Ukraine’s feared anti-riot force, known as Berkut. With the night sky darkened further by clouds of black smoke from burning rubber tires, police officers hammered their shields for several minutes as if Roman centurions preparing for battle. But they did not move forward.
  • “There should have been a resolution,” he said. “But they did not even put it up for a vote.”
  • The Russian aid signaled confidence from the Kremlin that important votes in Parliament expected this week to amend the Constitution and form a new cabinet will go in Russia’s favor. It also highlighted the absence of any clear promise of financial aid from the European Union or the United States, which have supported the opposition in Ukraine.
  • Mr. Yanukovych negotiated a $15 billion loan with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in December, and Ukraine received a first segment of this soon afterward when Russia purchased Ukrainian bonds worth $3 billion. But Russia suspended further payments last month after violent clashes broke out in Kiev and the pro-Russian prime minister resigned.Germany, which on Monday hosted a visit to Berlin by two of President Yanuvoych’s most ardent opponents, called for all sides to seek a peaceful solution to the explosive political confrontation.
  • “We call on the Foreign States and International Organizations to be objective and unbiased in assessing the internal developments in Ukraine,” the statement said. “We also expect that they will strongly condemn the unlawful activities of the radical forces.”
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The Kurtz Republicans - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • His baldness bathed in gold, his body pooled in shadow, Kurtz murmurs: “Are my methods unsound?” And Willard — filthy, hollow-eyed, stunned by what he’s seen — replies: “I don’t see any method at all, sir.”
  • This is basically how reasonable people should feel about the recent conduct of the House Republicans.
  • there is still something well-nigh-unprecedented about how Republicans have conducted themselves of late. It’s not the scale of their mistake, or the kind of damage that it’s caused, but the fact that their strategy was such self-evident folly, so transparently devoid of any method whatsoever.
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  • Every sensible person, most Republican politicians included, could recognize that the shutdown fever would blow up in the party’s face. Even the shutdown’s ardent champions never advanced a remotely compelling story for how it would deliver its objectives. And everything that’s transpired since, from the party’s polling nose dive to the frantic efforts to save face, was entirely predictable in advance.
  • just because the Republican strategy has been irrational doesn’t make it inexplicable. The trends that brought us to this point are clear enough: the discrediting of the Republican establishment during the Bush era; the rise of a populist right that often sees opposition as an end unto itself; the willingness of too many media figures, activists and politicians to stoke that wing’s worst impulses; and the current Republican leadership’s desire both to prevent an intraparty civil war and avoid a true national disaster like default.
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Biden calls Iraqi PM to calm outcry over Carter remarks on fight against Isis | World n... - 0 views

  • US vice-president Joe Biden on Monday spoke to the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to reassure him of US support, a day after controversial remarks by the defense secretary, Ash Carter, sparked an argument over the recent military successes of Islamic State.
  • A White House statement on Monday said Biden recognised “the enormous sacrifice and bravery” that Iraqi forces had displayed over the past 18 months in Ramadi and elsewhere, and welcomed an Iraqi decision to mobilise additional troops and prepare for counterattack operations.
  • Nonetheless, rival powers and allies traded barbs and accusations over the recent successes of Isis, amid warnings that it may execute hundreds of hostages captured in its latest battles. In Iran, Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, the external operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards, said the US had “no will” to fight Isis.
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  • Last week, the militant group seized the capital of the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, its greatest victory in Iraq since its conquest of Mosul last summer and its declaration of a caliphate spanning swaths of Iraq and Syria. Isis advances have not been limited to Iraq. Last week, the group took control of the historic Syrian city of Palmyra and strategic gas fields nearby after a week-long siege that routed forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The victory has triggered a humanitarian crisis, due to the flight of thousands of residents.
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Can Wikileaks Actually Make Americans Care About Iraq Again? | The New Republic - 0 views

  • Assange’s great offense is not to unearth deep dark secrets. The documents themselves have produced remarkably few genuine revelations. Rather his offense is that he is subverting the careful effort, already well-advanced, to construct a neat and satisfying narrative of the Iraq war, thereby enabling Americans to consign the entire episode definitively into the past.
  • What Americans set up and bow down before is a particular image of America itself. Central to that image is a belief in our own innocence and singularity—our chosenness. Sacrifices endured in the course of sustaining that image—sacrifices seldom touching families living in or near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, needless to say—are said to represent the cost of Freedom and to advance the cause of Freedom. And if mistakes occur along the way, well, that too forms part of Freedom’s cost.
  • With regard to Iraq, there’s a great accounting yet to be done. If Americans had a lick of sense, they would demand that accounting. Forgiveness and forgetting can wait.
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Project Classroom: Transforming Our Schools for the Future - Rebecca J. Rosen - Technol... - 0 views

  • Games are integral in human society, from ancient times to the present. Games are based on strategy and on challenge. If you do well at a game, your reward isn't "recess" or a "time out"; it's a greater challenge. When you beat a tough opponent, you seek out a tougher one. That is learning. Being able to harness the energy of games is one of our best learning tools, as any good parent knows, from patty-cake to Simon Says to musical chairs to chess or go. You can advance physical, mental, linguistic, and intellectual progress through games where the testing isn't after the fact but is intrinsic to and embedded in the very structure of play.
  • I recently was able to see a demonstration of a fantastic online algebra game, for example, that not only challenges learning, but where every problem is a test, in the sense that, if you don't solve the problem, the system generates a new problem that goes a little backward to some more basic principles, and then, when you succeed, it generates a more advanced problem and so forth. The results are amazing, because the test isn't at the end of the year, it is in everything you do, as you do it, getting not just harder and harder but more and more interesting. We know that boredom -- for the most gifted students and also for the lowest academic achievers -- is the biggest inhibitor of learning there is.
  • if the classroom experience is inferior to an online educational program, get rid of it!   If you respect and honor the fact that humans love collective experiences where we cheer, fear, laugh, or learn together -- we pay to go to sports, movies, comedy clubs, concerts, and lectures -- then you can begin to rethink school as a collective event and maximize what is added by a group experiencing together.  
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  • I spent a lot of time in the classrooms of gifted individuals who sometimes used very little actual technology but really thought about interaction in profound and inspiring ways.
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Genomics and health-care inequality: Get your genome out of my risk pool | The Economist - 0 views

  • as we develop the ability to tailor treatments to individuals, we should expect that someone who can pay for the best treatments for their particular DNA sequences to achieve far better health-care outcomes than someone who can't afford the best treatments and has to settle for general therapies rather than individualized medicine.
  • we're going to increasingly know who is or isn't likely to respond to treatment, and we may often know this in advance. For instance, genomics is already having a significant impact on breast-cancer treatment: by analysing the DNA of both the patient and the cancer cells, doctors can now identify 25% of cases which won't respond to standard chemotherapy. That's great; it saves money and needless suffering. But to the extent that a result like this is based on a patient's genetic profile, the cost effects can be predicted in advance and passed through to insurance premiums.
  • individualised medicine breaks down some of the egalitarian presumptions that lie behind health insurance. Part of the logic behind insurance is that it's a risk pool; none of us knows when we're gonna go, so we agree to split the costs. But genetic profiling may increasingly give each of us our own set of pre-existing conditions, good or bad. And that may test people's willingness to chip in for the health costs of their fellow-citizens. When "it coulda been me" turns into "nope, it couldn't", we may start seeing...hm, I was about to say "a breakdown in social solidarity", but then I remembered we're talking about America here. How about "even less willingness to do anything for people who aren't as lucky as you are."
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How To Repel Tourism « The Dish - 0 views

  • In short: Demanding a visa from a country’s travelers in advance is associated with a 70 percent lower level of tourist entries than from a similar country where there is no visa requirement. The U.S. requires an advance visa from citizens of 81 percent of the world’s countries; if it waived that requirement, the researchers estimate, inbound tourism arrivals would more than double, and tourism expenditure would climb by $123 billion.
  • what it is like to enter the US as a non-citizen. It’s a grueling, off-putting, frightening, and often brutal process. Compared with entering a European country, it’s like entering a police state. When you add the sheer difficulty of getting a visa, the brusque, rude and contemptuous treatment you routinely get from immigration officials at the border, the sense that all visitors are criminals and potential terrorists unless proven otherwise, the US remains one of the most unpleasant places for anyone in the world to try and get access to.
  • And this, of course, is a function not only of a vast and all-powerful bureaucracy. It’s a function of this country’s paranoia and increasing insularity. It’s a thoroughly democratic decision to keep foreigners out as much as possible. And it’s getting worse and worse.
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Inequality Is Not Inevitable - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The Great Divide, a series in The New York Times for which I have served as moderator, has also presented a wide range of examples that undermine the notion that there are any truly fundamental laws of capitalism. The dynamics of the imperial capitalism of the 19th century needn’t apply in the democracies of the 21st.
  • We don’t need to have this much inequality in America.
  • Our current brand of capitalism is an ersatz capitalism.
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  • For proof of this go back to our response to the Great Recession, where we socialized losses, even as we privatized gains. Perfect competition should drive profits to zero, at least theoretically, but we have monopolies and oligopolies making persistently high profits. C.E.O.s enjoy incomes that are on average 295 times that of the typical worker, a much higher ratio than in the past, without any evidence of a proportionate increase in productivity.
  • f it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics.
  • Sweden, Finland and Norway have all succeeded in having about as much or faster growth in per capita incomes than the United States and with far greater equality.
  • why has America chosen these inequality-enhancing policies? Part of the answer is that as World War II faded into memory, so too did the solidarity it had engendered.
  • As America triumphed in the Cold War, there didn’t seem to be a viable competitor to our economic model. Without this international competition, we no longer had to show that our system could
  • Some drew the wrong lesson from the collapse of the Soviet system. The pendulum swung from much too much government there to much too little here.
  • Corporate interests argued for getting rid of regulations
  • But this ideology was hypocritical. The bankers, among the strongest advocates of laissez-faire economics, were only too willing to accept hundreds of billions of dollars from the government
  • The American political system is overrun by money. Economic inequality translates into political inequality, and political inequality yields increasing economic inequality
  • Economic and geographic segregation have immunized those at the top from the problems of those down below. Like the kings of yore, they have come to perceive their privileged positions essentially as a natural right.
  • The true test of an economy is not how much wealth its princes can accumulate in tax havens, but how well off the typical citizen is — even more so in America where our self-image is rooted in our claim to be the great middle-class society. But median incomes are lower than they were a quarter-century ago.
  • With almost a quarter of American children younger than 5 living in poverty, and with America doing so little for its poor, the deprivations of one generation are being visited upon the next
  • why is America one of the advanced countries where the life prospects of the young are most sharply determined by the income and education of their parents?
  • Those with only a high school diploma have seen their incomes decline by 13 percent over the past 35 years.
  • mass incarceration has come to define America — a country, it bears repeating, with about 5 percent of the world’s population but around a fourth of the world’s prisoners.
  • access to health care is among the most universally accepted rights, at least in the advanced countries. America, despite the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, is the exception. It has become a country with great divides in access to health care, life expectancy and health status.
  • Obamacare’s objective — to ensure that all Americans have access to health care — has been stymied: 24 states have not implemented the expanded Medicaid program, which was the means by which Obamacare was supposed to deliver on its promise to some of the poorest.
  • The problem of inequality is not so much a matter of technical economics. It’s really a problem of practical politics. Ensuring that those at the top pay their fair share of taxes — ending the special privileges of speculators, corporations and the rich — is both pragmatic and fair
  • We are not embracing a politics of envy if we reverse a politics of greed.
  • Inequality is not just about the top marginal tax rate but also about our children’s access to food and the right to justice for all. If we spent more on education, health and infrastructure, we would strengthen our economy, now and in the future.
  • We have located the underlying source of the problem: political inequities and policies that have commodified and corrupted our democracy.
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North Korea says successfully conducts first H-bomb test, experts cast doubt | Reuters - 0 views

  • North Korea said it successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen nuclear bomb on Wednesday, prompting scepticism among experts and officials who doubt Pyongyang has achieved such a major advance in its strike capability.
  • The test, the fourth time the isolated state has exploded a nuclear device, was ordered by leader Kim Jong Un and successfully conducted at 10:00 a.m. local time (0130 GMT), North Korea's official KCNA news agency said.
  • "Let the world look up to the strong, self-reliant nuclear-armed state," Kim wrote in what North Korean state TV displayed as a handwritten note.
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  • South Korean intelligence officials and several analysts questioned whether Wednesday's explosion was a test of a full-fledged hydrogen device, pointing to the fact that it was roughly as powerful as North Korea's last atomic test in 2013.
  • But the development unnerved South Korea and Japan and drew international criticism, including from China and Russia, North Korea's two main allies.United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned North Korea's action, calling it "profoundly destabilizing for regional security", while U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said it "looks like a provocation".
  • No countries were given advance warning of a nuclear test, South Korea's intelligence service said, according to lawmakers briefed by intelligence officials.In previous such tests, Pyongyang had notified China, Russia and the United States beforehand, they said.
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North Korean rocket puts object into space, angers neighbors, U.S. | Reuters - 0 views

  • North Korean rocket puts object into space, angers neighbors, U.S.
  • "Even if not, it gained experience with launching and learned more about the reliability of its rocket systems."
  • South Korea and the United States said they would explore whether to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea "at the earliest possible date."
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  • North Korea said the launch of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-4, named after late leader Kim Jong Il, was a "complete success" and it was making a polar orbit of Earth every 94 minutes. The launch order was given by his son, leader Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be 33 years old.
  • "If it can communicate with the Kwangmyongsong-4, North Korea will learn about operating a satellite in space,"
  • North Korea launched a long-range rocket carrying what it called a satellite, drawing renewed international condemnation just weeks after it carried out a nuclear bomb test. Critics of the rocket program say it is being used to test technology for a long-range missile.
  • North Korea had notified United Nations agencies that it planned to launch a rocket carrying an Earth observation satellite, triggering opposition from governments that see it as a long-range missile test.
  • The U.N. Security Council condemned the launch in an emergency meeting on Sunday, and vowed to take "significant measures" in response to Pyongyang's violations of U.N. resolutions, Venezuela's U.N. ambassador said.
  • an epochal event in developing the country's science, technology, economy and defense capability by legitimately exercising the right to use space for independent and peaceful purposes".
  • NEW MISSILE DEFENSE?South Korea and the United States said that if the advanced missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) was deployed to South Korea, it would be focused only on North Korea.
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Syria conflict: Homs and Damascus bomb blasts kill 140 - BBC News - 0 views

  • Syria conflict: Homs and Damascus bomb blasts kill 140
  • Bomb blasts in the Syrian cities of Homs and Damascus have left at least 140 people dead, monitors and state media say.At least four blasts struck the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, killing at least 83 people, state media said.
  • Earlier in Homs, 57 people, mainly civilians, were killed in a double car bombing, a monitoring group reported.So-called Islamic State (IS) said it carried out the attacks in both cities.
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  • In Damascus, at least four explosions were reported in Sayyida Zeinab, the location of Syria's holiest Shia Muslim shrine, said to contain the grave of the Prophet Muhammad's granddaughter.
  • The district was hit by suicide attacks last month that left 71 people dead and which IS fighters also said they had carried out.
  • The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also said that at least 50 Islamic State fighters had been killed in an advance by government troops, backed by Russian air strikes, east of the northern city of Aleppo in the past 24 hours.'My duty'Meanwhile, Mr Kerry spoke optimistically about progress towards a possible ceasefire.
  • Asked by Spanish newspaper El Pais where he would see himself in 10 years' time, he said: "If Syria is safe and sound, and I'm the one who saved his country - that's my job now, that's my duty."Mr Assad also said his army was close to encircling rebel-held parts of Aleppo, and were advancing on Raqqa, the main stronghold of IS fighters.
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Growth worries, rate hike uncertainty pull Wall Street down | Reuters - 0 views

  • U.S. stocks dropped on Monday as concern over global growth hit banks and other economically sensitive shares, although a late rally in energy shares left the market well above its lows of the day.
  • European banks led a global selloff in financial stocks as signs of stress in the sector mounted. Uncertainty over whether the Federal Reserve would raise rates this year also dragged down U.S. bank stocks, pushing the S&P financial index .SPSY down 2.6 percent.
  • "Investors' attitudes seem to be worsening relative to the likelihood of a global recession. I think that's what financials are reflecting – that their net interest margins are going to be further compressed under collapsing bond yields," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia.
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  • Shares of Morgan Stanley (MS.N) slid 6.9 percent in their largest one-day drop since November 2012, while rival Goldman Sachs (GS.N) fell 4.6 percent. Both closed at their lowest since 2013.
  • Facebook Inc (FB.O), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) and other technology stocks that had lent strength to the market last year extended their decline from Friday. Fund managers said last year's outsized gains among some Internet stocks made them the first choice to sell now.
  • The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI closed down 177.92 points, or 1.1 percent, at 16,027.05, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 26.61 points, or 1.42 percent, to end at 1,853.44 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 79.39 points, or 1.82 percent, to 4,283.75.
  • Falling oil prices along with concern over a worsening global growth outlook have caused a sharp selloff in stocks this year. Investors have been searching for a catalyst that might change the market's course.
  • Adding to recent woes for the tech sector, Cognizant (CTSH.O) dropped 7.7 percent to $54.05 after the IT services provider issued a weak sales forecast. Amazon fell 2.8 percent while Facebook dropped 4.2 percent
  • Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,484 to 618; on the Nasdaq, 2,029 issues fell and 804 advanced. The S&P 500 posted 7 new 52-week highs and 97 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 4 new highs and 495 new lows.
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How El Chapo Was Finally Captured, Again - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Stripped to his undershirt and covered in filth, the world’s most notorious drug lord dragged himself out of the sewers and into the middle of traffic.
  • The Mexican marines had been on Mr. Guzmán’s trail for more than six months, ever since he humiliated the nation by escaping its most secure prison through a tunnel that led into the shower floor of his cell.
  • But it had come at a cost. The authorities had swept through 18 of his homes and properties in his native lands. Days on end in the inhospitable mountains, where even a billionaire like Mr. Guzmán was forced to rough it, left him yearning for a bit of comfort.
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  • Just two blocks away, a big order of tacos was picked up after midnight on Jan. 8 by a man driving a white van, like the one believed to be driven by Mr. Guzmán’s associates, witnesses said.
  • Hours later, on a highway heading out of town, the authorities finally got Mr. Guzmán, arguably the most powerful drug dealer in the history of the trade, for the third time since 1993.
  • Mr. Guzmán’s capture — described using information from interviews with witnesses and government officials, police reports, military video and Mexican news reports confirmed by officials — brings to a close, for now, one of the most exhaustive manhunts the Mexican government has conducted, an endeavor that drew in more than 2,500 people across the nation.
  • As the head of the Sinaloa cartel, Mr. Guzmán is the embodiment of an identity the country has fought to shed for decades.
  • Either way, Mr. Guzmán represents a deep crisis for Mexico’s leaders as they struggle to define the country’s image.
  • His daring escape from prison last July, in view of the video camera in his cell, cast a lurid spotlight on the incompetence and corruption that has long dogged the Mexican state, driving many to view the government on a par with criminals.
  • El Chapo’s image, by contrast, seemed only to grow after his escapes. Perhaps more than the infamy he gained as a cartel chief — responsible for shipping tons of drugs to more than 50 countries around the world, with a wider reach than even Pablo Escobar in his heyday — Mr. Guzmán has earned a reputation as the world’s pre-eminent escape artist.
  • During the 17 months Mr. Guzmán was locked up, he met often with associates, not only to plan his legal defense, but also to plot his escape, Mexican officials said. His men purchased land within sight of the prison, constructing an outer wall and an unfinished building on the site. From there, a mile away, the digging began.
  • The Mexican authorities were monitoring the phones of Mr. Guzmán and his accomplices, reading the odd and unexpectedly tender exchanges between him and the actress. Mr. Guzmán promised to protect Ms. del Castillo as he would his own eyes, an affectionate phrase Mexican parents often say of their children.
  • Six days later, a detachment of marines swept in to capture Mr. Guzmán on his ranch, acting with information from American authorities. During the raid, Mr. Guzmán, who always took his two cooks with him wherever he went, darted into a gully as he fled, injuring his face and leg.
  • In the following weeks, operations continued in and around areas under Mr. Guzmán’s control. The brutal weather of an approaching winter also concerned the cartel leader — Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa, where life could be more comfortable, was under constant surveillance. He needed to go somewhere outside his traditional zone of influence.
  • The government, aware that Mr. Guzmán was planning a trip to an urban center, followed one of his associates to a house in Los Mochis, on a busy road with a movie theater, restaurants and shopping nearby.
  • A commander ordered one of the marines to toss a grenade in front of one of the many doors blocking their advance. As the mission continued, two marines advanced down another hallway, pressing cautiously toward a staircase used by the surviving gunmen to escape to the roof, drawing fire away from the interior of the house.
  • After the marines arrived, Mr. Guzmán was taken to Mexico City in a helicopter, the capture finally over. Soon everyone was gone, leaving behind just one thing: an unpaid bill, according to an employee of the hotel.
  • To keep him locked up this time, the authorities said they would rotate his cells, never allowing him to stay anywhere long enough to burrow his way out again. Vigilance would be enhanced, with more officers and round-the-clock surveillance from extra cameras.
  • But to many, the longer the drug lord remains in prison in Mexico, the higher the risk of flight. His imprisonment could drag on for a year, perhaps longer, given the numerous — and creative — injunctions filed by his team of lawyers to fight his extradition to the United States, where he faces federal indictments on charges that include narcotics trafficking and murder.
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Life returns -- slowly -- to MLK's old neighborhood - CNN.com - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • Smith's journey from Auburn Avenue to Morehouse College to regional division manager of the Federal Aviation Administration is in many ways a realization of King's dream of upward mobility for African-Americans.
  • ned funeral homes, a fast-food seafood joint and a convenience store -- is the masonic hall that was home to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's first office and its new Atlanta headquarters. Around the corner is a restored Madam C. J. Walker salon featuring antique hair care products.
  • "He would be disappointed in all the violence that still goes on and the crime. He would've thought that we would've advanced more toward peace and liberty and respecting everybody's rights. I know we're not there yet."
  • History hides in plain sight; blink and you might miss the explanatory signs hanging on poles and historic plaques on sides of buildings. One block from Smith's childhood home -- past Atlanta's two oldest
  • Today, the gas station is gone, replaced by a shopping plaza with a barber shop and a store selling homeopathic remedies, both popular with the seniors who live across the street in Wheat Street Towers. Ebenezer is still there, adjacent to the King Center, and King's birth home is up the street. The landmarks are the main destinations for tourists disembarking at the King historic district. Due to its relative high foot traffic, the streetcar stop attracts panhandlers offering tour guide services in exchange for donations to get them a bed at the Atlanta Mission.
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  • Today, it's home to a community urban garden, which started in 2010 and has proven sustainable through community farming initiatives.
  • A professional stylist who moved to Atlanta in the 1980s, de Forest was enchanted by the abandoned storefront with the salon's original signage miraculously preserved. Even better were the antique hair care products left behind.
  • Ten years ago, Sweet Auburn Bread Company owner Sonya James moved from the Sweet Auburn Curb Market on Edgewood into the Odd Fellows building, the former headquarters of the Atlanta Chapter of the Grand Order of Odd Fellows. The building's Jacobean revival architecture recalls the grandeur of the era when it served as a hub for black businesses and the site of a black social club.
  • General manager Douglas Jester, another Atlanta native, remembers when Auburn was the epicenter of the civil rights movement. Some of the pictures hanging on the restaurant's wall are of politicians -- Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young -- who visited Jester's school in the nearby Summerhill neighborhood to talk to students about black pride and the value of an education
  • "You're a product of your environment. I'm a good example of that. I would not have advanced in my life like I did had it not been for the environment I grew up in with Ebenezer and the Kings, feeling that failure is not an option," he said. "Then, there is systematic organized racism, against males and females and Hispanics and it's not getting any better with this presidential stuff we got going now. I think Dr. King and "Daddy King" would disappointed with some of the rhetoric we're hearing and the anti-Muslim stuff."
  • It's just one block away, but unlike on Auburn Avenue, white-owned businesses have anchored Edgewood Avenue for decades, many of which are still standing, said Joe Stewardson, president of the Old Fourth Ward Business Association. Even if white-owned businesses outnumber black-owned businesses on Edgewood, he says it's still among the most diverse business corridors and neighborhoods in Atlanta.
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North Korea: How to get serious with it (Opinion) - CNN.com - 0 views

  • How to get serious with North Korea
  • (CNN)North Korea's nuclear test last week follows a well-worn pattern that spans over a quarter century: Resort to periodic provocations, wait out the flurry of condemnations
  • All the while as Pyongyang advances its nuclear and missile technolog
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  • The record of the past quarter-century of nuclear diplomacy vis-à-vis Pyongyang is distinguished by blame, denial, and fantasy masquerading as policy.
  • The only way to change this equation is to persuade Pyongyang that its regime preservation is dependent on reform and disarmament.
  • Today, China will yet again make token gestures like signing on to U.N. Security Council resolutions while repeatedly violating those resolutions and actually increasing trade with Pyongyang
  • Second, delegitimize Kim's rule in the eyes of his people and the world by engaging them through broadcasting and other information operations directed at the North Korean people
  • Such tactics proved lucrative during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, when the U.S. appeased Pyongyang with some $1.3 billion in effectively unconditional aid. Instead, we must show Pyongyang that time is not on its side.
  • Pyongyang's first long-range missile test on August 31, 1998, led to the Clinton administration's reengagement of the North
  • First, block the Kim Jong Un regime's offshore hard currency reserves and income with financial sanction
  • But all Beijing has done so far is demonstrate a disingenuous pattern of diplomatic ambidexterity.
  • China will not solve the North Korea problem for the United States until China sees the Kim regime as a financial liability
  • A regime that systematically brutalizes its own people, deliberately starves its population and remains unaccountable to its people or the norms of civilization will feel little moral restraint about making war on its neighbors or arming terrorists.
  • Recent U.N. reports confirm that North Korea continues to rely on the dollar, and its access to the dollar system, to move its streams of hard currency, much of it derived from proliferation and illicit activities, in and out of its vast offshore deposits.
  • sanctions against North Korea have failed to achieve their objectives.
  • The Treasury Department has blocked the assets of Sudanese officials for human rights violations, of Iranian entities for censorship, of the leaders of Belarus and Zimbabwe for undermining democratic processes or institutions, and of Russian officials and financiers for aggression against a neighboring country
  • It has imposed comprehensive anti-money laundering restrictions on Iran and Myanmar, but not North Korea, the only state in the world known to counterfeit U.S. currency.
  • Until Washington applies sufficient financial pressure to threaten the survival of the regime in Pyongyang, it will lack sufficient leverage for diplomacy to work. T
  • The North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act, which this Tuesday passed the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly, would codify this strategy and require the administration to keep this pressure in place until it verifies North Korea's disarmament and humanitarian reforms.
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Opinion | The Case Against Meritocracy - The New York Times - 0 views

  • I think ideals of diversity and meritocracy are two different ways of shaping an elite, which can advance together but which are just as often separable, or even in tension with each other.
  • I think it was a good and necessary thing that the American upper class diversified, and that more African-Americans and Jews and Catholics (like myself) and women now share privileges and powers once reserved for Protestant white men.
  • But I think that same upper class was unwise to abandon an aristocratic self-conception in favor of a meritocratic one
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  • On the evidence we have, the meritocratic ideal ends up being just as undemocratic as the old emphasis on inheritance and tradition, and it forges an elite that has an aristocracy’s vices (privilege, insularity, arrogance) without the sense of duty, self-restraint and noblesse oblige that WASPs at their best displayed.
  • The term properly refers to a specific kind of American elite, mostly from the Northeast, mostly high-church Protestants, concentrated in a few cities (Boston, Philadelphia, New York, plus some Midwestern and Californian outposts), generally associated with the Republican Party (with occasional defectors like F.D.R.), who dominated a particular set of fields (academia, finance, foreign policy) and shared the code of service and piety and manners that defined the elder Bush’s career.
  • Their importance rested, to borrow from a WASP acquaintance’s email this week, on being “primus inter pares” — first among equals, with a particular kind of power in a particular set of institutions, and an ability to set a tone for the American upper class that was adopted by other groups when they ascended.
  • And ascend they often did, because the older American system was both hierarchical and permeable, with room for actual merit even without a meritocratic organizing theory.
  • Those advancing groups included non-Anglo-Saxons, and eventually non-Protestants and non-whites.
  • their example suggested that an aristocratic spirit was transferable to a more diverse elite, that there could be Catholic and African-American and Jewish aristocrats — like, say, the family that has long stewarded this newspaper — who could adopt the WASP establishment’s upper-class virtues without the ethnic and religious chauvinism.
  • The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era and the “smartest guys in the room” decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley.
  • This was meritocracy, the system that we now take for granted. And for several reasons it didn’t work as planned
  • then the WASPs themselves decided to dissolve their own aristocracy, and transform their once-Protestant universities into a secular mass-opportunity system — a more democratic way of education, in which anyone with enough talent could climb the ladder, and personal achievement and technical expertise would be prized above all else.
  • instead of an Eastern establishment negotiating with overlapping groups of regional elites (or with working-class or ethnic leaders), you have a mass upper class segregated from demoralized peripheries.
  • Second, the meritocratic elite inevitably tends back toward aristocracy, because any definition of “merit” you choose will be easier for the children of these self-segregated meritocrats to achieve.
  • But even as it restratifies society, the meritocratic order also insists that everything its high-achievers have is justly earned. “He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple,”
  • This spirit discourages inherited responsibility and cultural stewardship; it brushes away the disciplines of duty; it makes the past seem irrelevant, because everyone is supposed to come from the same nowhere and rule based on technique alone
  • As a consequence, meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice.
  • First, meritocracy segregates talent rather than dispersing it. By plucking the highest achievers from all over the country and encouraging them to cluster together in the same few cities, it robs localities of their potential leaders
  • Diversity, despite what many liberals want to think, does not provide a solution to this problem
  • nothing about being a woman or a minority makes you immune to meritocracy’s ruthless solipsism. Just ask Elizabeth Holmes or the slipping-from-grace Sheryl Sandberg
  • I don’t want to bring back the WASPs; if I had the magic wand to conjure a different elite, it would be a multiracial, multilingual Catholic aristocracy ruling from Quebec to Chile. (Hey, you asked.
  • But I do want to raise the possibility that an aristocracy that knows itself to be one might be more clearsighted and effective than an aristocracy that doesn’t, and that the WASPs had at least one clear advantage over their presently-floundering successors: They knew who and what they were
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