Upcoming shows
Real News

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Maga First News with Peter Boykin

8:00 am 9:00 am



Maga First News

Upcoming Shows

Join The MAGA Network on Discord

0 0

Police: Suspect cuts tracking device, crashes into truck

Authorities say a Florida man suspected of stealing more than a half-million dollars from his dead girlfriend fatally crashed his motorcycle into a tractor-trailer.

The Miami Herald reports that 59-year-old Alejandro Aparicio died Sunday afternoon when he rode head-on into the truck in the Everglades. The truck's driver was hospitalized and later released.

Florida Highway Patrol identified Aparicio as the victim Wednesday. A warrant had been issued for him a day earlier because a judge deemed him a flight risk after he removed a GPS tracking device.

Aparicio was arrested last month on charges of stealing from Andrea Greenburg and forging her will to make himself the sole heir of her $600,000 estate. The arrest came 18 months after he told investigators he found Greenburg unresponsive. A toxicology report blamed her death on fentanyl.

Source: Fox News National

0 0

California college to vote on ending Israel study program, with support from Rep. Tlaib

A California college is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to end its study abroad program with an Israeli university -- a push that appears to have picked up the support of freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

Pitzer College, a private liberal arts college in Claremont, Calif., currently runs a range of study abroad programs with a number of countries, including some with poor human rights records such as China, Turkey and Cuba.

TLAIB SAYS 'ISLAMOPHOBIA' AMONG DEMS MAY BE WHY OMAR WAS CRITICIZED BY HER OWN PARTY

But it is the trips to Israel, specifically the University of Haifa, that have sparked the ire of students and members of the faculty, and a vote is scheduled Thursday afternoon to suspend the program. The vote will be taken by the university's College Council, which, according to its website, has the power to make recommendations to the president of the college.

The president, Melvin Oliver, has fought back against the push to end the program. According to The Student Life, he said in November that ending the program would mark a “major blow” to the college and noted the other countries to which the college runs study abroad programs.

“Why would we not suspend our program with China? Or take our longest standing program in Nepal, where the Pitzer in Nepal program has been run for over 40 years. During that time they have had a bloody civil war that killed 19,000 people,” he said. “Why Israel?”

According to The Claremont Independent, a motion approved by the College faculty in November called for the ending of the program until "the Israeli state ends its restrictions on entry to Israel based on ancestry and/or political speech and...the Israeli state adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.”

A spokesman for the college told Fox News that the college would not be releasing statements while the motion is being deliberated within Pitzer’s shared governance process.

The controversy is notable in particular to its similarities to the controversies over support for Israel currently ongoing in Washington, D.C., where freshmen members of Congress have reignited the debate over U.S. support of Israel. In particular, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., drew bipartisan condemnation for her comments about Israel, including alleging that those backing Israel were pushing for U.S. politicians to declare "allegiance" to the country.

IN ILHAN OMAR AND STEVE KING CONTROVERSIES, PARTY DISCIPLINE TOOK VERY DIFFERENT PATHS

One of those freshman members of Congress, Rep. Tlaib, was pictured offering her support for Pitzer's move to end trips to Israel. Daniel Segal, a professor at the college who backs ending the study abroad program to Israel, posted pictures this week of her wielding a folder with the hashtag "#SuspendPitzerHaifa."

Tlaib's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment from Fox News and it was not clear whether she was in California for the push.

But even though the move may have the support of at least one member of Congress, it has seen furious pushback from faculty and students. The student-run Claremont Independent’s editorial board published a furious op-ed in which it condemned the move as being against academic freedom and would take away from students an opportunity to learn in an alternative setting.

GET THE FOX NEWS APP

“In a twist of irony, this vote is also counterproductive to even the efforts of pro-Palestinian student activists; it prevents students from seeing the current conflict in-person and forces a reliance on second-hand sources. Is not actually attending the place where the conflict is occuring, seeing and experiencing it yourself the purest way to see the conflict unfiltered?” the article asked.

”This push to ban the study abroad at Haifa is nothing but the absolutely worst form of virtue signaling,” it said.

Source: Fox News Politics

0 0

Joe Biden announces 2020 presidential bid: 3 things to know about the former vice president

Former Vice President Joe Biden officially announced his 2020 presidential bid.

"The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America — America — is at stake. That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States," Biden announced in a tweet early Thursday.

Biden, 76, is the latest Democrat to enter the crowded race for the White House against President Trump. A former senator from Delaware, Biden has emerged as a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination — topping the polls alongside self-proclaimed Democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Here are three things to know about the former vice president as his campaign journey begins.

He first bid for the presidency came over three decades ago

Biden’s announcement on Thursday marks the beginning of his third campaign for the White House.

As a 45-year-old senator from Delaware, Biden launched his first campaign in 1987 at the Wilmington train station. The first campaign didn’t last long, ending after it became public that he had plagiarized a speech from a British politician, according to the Delaware News Journal.

His second bid began in 2007, but he dropped out in 2008 after failing to gain enough support. Biden ultimately went on to serve as vice president for two terms under Barack Obama.

In 2016, there was much speculation that Biden would again announce a bid for president, but he decided against running for personal reasons. His son, Beau, had died in 2015 after battling brain cancer.

His choice of transportation is the Amtrak train

Aptly nicknamed “Amtrak Joe,” Biden had long been a fixture on the rail line between his home in Delaware and his office in Washington D.C.

Biden began taking the train home every night to care for his two sons after his wife and daughter died in a car accident in 1972, according to the Washington Post.

He carried on the Amtrak tradition throughout his decades-long Senate career. Biden’s affinity for the train gained national attention when he became Obama’s running mate in 2008.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

President Barack Obama presents Vice President Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Jan. 12, 2017.

President Barack Obama presents Vice President Joe Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Jan. 12, 2017. (The Associated Press)

In January 2017, outgoing President Obama surprised Biden with the President Medal of Freedom in an emotional ceremony.

"To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without self-regard, and to live life fully," Obama said.

Biden tearfully accepted the honor.

Source: Fox News Politics

0 0

Israeli police arrest 5 Palestinians at flashpoint holy site

Israeli police say they have arrested five Palestinians for allegedly "causing a disturbance" at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.

The men took part in a prayer protest Monday outside a section of the hilltop compound that has been closed by Israeli court order for over a decade.

Muslim religious officials convened in the closed area last week, and Israeli police placed a lock on a fence in response. Videos purportedly of Monday's incident show several men damaging the fence.

The site — known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — is considered the holiest place in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam. Any change to the status quo, no matter how minor, has the potential to ignite tensions.

Source: Fox News World

0 0

Officer says he was fooled by Nassar's 'lies' in 2004

A Michigan police officer who investigated a complaint against Larry Nassar back in 2004 says he didn't send the case to a prosecutor because he was fooled by the sports doctor.

Officials in Meridian Township, Michigan, publicly apologized to the victim, Brianne Randall-Gay, a year ago, after Nassar was sentenced to decades to prison for molesting girls and young women. But they also took the extraordinary step of hiring an investigator to try to learn more about how police handled her complaint. The report was released Tuesday.

The report didn't reveal many new details. But it includes an interview with Andrew McCready, who investigated Randall-Gay's allegation that Nassar had molested her. Nassar told police that he was performing a legitimate medical procedure.

McCready says, "I believed his lies."

Source: Fox News National

0 0

In camp of diehard IS supporters, some women express regrets

The women say it was misguided religious faith, naivety, a search for something to believe in or youthful rebellion. Whatever it was, it led them to travel across the world to join the Islamic State group.

Now after the fall of the last stronghold of the group's "caliphate," they say they regret it and want to come home.

The Associated Press interviewed four foreign women who joined the caliphate and are now among tens of thousands of IS family members, mostly women and children, crammed into squalid camps in northern Syria overseen by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces who spearheaded the fight against the extremist group.

Many in the camps remain die-hard supporters of IS. Women in general were often active participants in IS's rule. Some joined women's branches of the "Hisba," the religious police who brutally enforced the group's laws. Others helped recruit more foreigners. Freed Yazidi women have spoken of cruelties inflicted by female members of the group.

Within the fences of al-Hol camp, IS supporters have tried to recreate the caliphate as much as possible. Some women have re-formed the Hisba to keep camp residents in line, according to officers from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces guarding the camp. While the AP was there, women in all-covering black robes and veils known as niqab tried to intimidate anyone speaking to journalists; children threw stones at visitors, calling them "dogs" and "infidels."

The four women interviewed by the AP said joining IS was a disastrous mistake. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces gave the AP access to speak to the women at two camps under their administration.

"How could I have been so stupid, and so blind?" said Kimberly Polman, a 46-year-old Canadian woman who surrendered herself to the SDF earlier this year.

The women insisted they had not been active IS members and had no role in its atrocities, and they all said their husbands were not fighters for IS. Those denials and much in their accounts could not be independently confirmed. The interviews took place with Kurdish security guards in the room.

To many, their expressions of regret likely ring hollow, self-serving or irrelevant. Travelling to the caliphate, the women joined a group whose horrific atrocities were well known, including sex enslavement of Yazidi women, mass killings of civilians and grotesque punishments of rule-breakers, ranging from lashings, public shootings and crucifixions, to beheadings and hurling from rooftops.

Their pleas to return home point to the thorny question of what to do with the men and women who joined the caliphate and their children. Governments around the world are reluctant to take back their nationals. The SDF complains it is being forced to shoulder the burden of dealing with them.

Al-Hol is home to 73,000 people who streamed out of the Islamic State group's last pockets, including the village of Baghouz, the final site to fall to the SDF in March. Nearly the entire population of the camp is women or children, since most men were taken for screening by the SDF to determine if they were fighters.

At the section of the camp for foreign families — kept separate from Syrians and Iraqis — women and children pressed themselves, four deep, against the chain link fencing, pleading with guards and aid workers for aid, favors and to be sent home. Many shared the same cough, and some wore surgical masks. Behind them, children played in puddles of mud, as women washed clothes in plastic tubs. Girls as young as three wore veils, while men and boys wore dishdashas, often associated with Central Asia.

Around 11,000 people are held in the foreign section of al-Hol; The Associated Press met some from South Africa, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Russia, India, Tunisia, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The women interviewed by the AP there and in Roj Camp, another site for foreign women and children, said they were deceived by IS's promises of an ideal state ruled by Islamic law promoting justice and righteous living. Instead, they said their lives became a hell, with restrictions, punishments and imprisonment.

But in a measure of the West's broad skepticism about these narratives, governments say they are focusing on repatriating children and not the parents, who took them to Syria.

Current Belgian policy is to bring back child nationals under 10 years old.

"Up to today our priority remains to return these kids because they are the victims, so to speak, of the radical choices made by their parents," said Karl Lagatie, deputy spokesman of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Aliya, a 24-year-old Indonesian, said that back home she grew up in a conservative Muslim family but was not herself practicing. Then her boyfriend broke up with her and, brokenhearted, she threw herself into religion. To "make up for" her past, she said she went far to a hard-line direction, watching videos of IS sermons.

"I believed they were the real Islamic state ... They said when you make hijra (migration to the caliphate), all your sins are cleared," she said. She spoke on condition her full name not be used for fear of drawing harassment to her family back home.

In 2015, she flew to Turkey, planning to go on to Syria. In Turkey, she married an Algerian man she met there who was also considering joining IS. But he had doubts, and suggested they move to Malaysia.

She was the one who insisted they go to the "caliphate," she said. They settled in IS's de facto capital, Raqqa, and soon after their son Yahya was born in February 2017.

She said it was not what they'd been promised. Their passports were confiscated, their communications monitored. She said her husband was imprisoned for a month by IS for refusing to become a fighter, then worked in the IS administration's welfare office.

She said she was unable to escape IS territory until late 2017, when the militants gave her and her son permission to leave. Her husband had to stay behind. She has been unable to contact him for nearly a year and believes he is now in SDF hands.

Her parents are trying to convince Indonesian officials to allow her home.

"I want to tell my government I regret, and I hope for a second chance. I was young," Aliya said. "Some people still love ISIS. Me, because I've lived there, I see how they are, so I'm done with them."

Gailon Lawson, of Trinidad and Tobago, said she began to regret her decision even before she reached the "caliphate." The night she crossed with her then 12-year-old son and her new husband into Syria in 2014, people had to dash across in the darkness to evade Turkish border guards.

"I saw people running, and that's when I realized it was a mistake," the 45-year-old Lawson said.

She had converted recently to Islam and married a man in Trinidad who apparently had been radicalized — becoming his second wife. Only days after they married, they travelled to Syria.

"I just followed my husband," she said.

They divorced not long after arriving. Lawson's biggest concern over the next years was keeping her son from being enlisted as a fighter. He was arrested three times by IS for refusing conscription, she said.

During the siege at Baghouz, she dressed her son as a woman in robes and a veil, and they slipped out. Kurdish security forces detained the son, and Lawson has not heard from him in a month.

Samira, a 31-year-old Belgian woman, said that back home when she was young, she drank alcohol and went dancing at clubs. Then "I wanted to change my life. I found Islam." She said she came to believe IS propaganda that Europe would never accept Muslims and only in the caliphate could one be a proper member of the faith.

"It was very stupid, I know," she said.

When she reached Syria, IS militants put her in a house for women and brought suitors for marriage. Samira chose a French citizen, Karam El-Harchaoui. She said IS imprisoned her husband for a year for refusing to become a fighter. After his release, he sold eggs and chickens.

In 2016, they tried to pay a Syrian smuggler to escape, but the smuggler pocketed the money and ratted them out to IS. Finally in January 2018, she and her husband fled with their 2-year-old child and surrendered to Kurdish-led forces. Her husband was imprisoned and has since been sent to Iraq to stand trial there.

"I know he will not have a fair trial," Samira said. Iraqi courts are notorious for cursory trials of suspected IS members in which almost no evidence is presented.

Meanwhile, she is trying to get home to Belgium. "What we saw with Daesh was a lesson to us and allowed us to gain perspective on the extremists. All we want is to reintegrate in our society," she said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"I hate them," she said of the group. "They sold us a dream, but it was an open prison. They kill innocent people. All that they do, these things, it's not from Islam."

Lagatie, the Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said his government would not comment on individual cases, but said Samira was "well known to Belgian authorities."

Polman, the Canadian woman, came to the caliphate to join her new husband, a man she knew only from online. One of her siblings in Canada, contacted by the AP, confirmed this part of her story. Soon after they were united in Syria, the husband became abusive and they divorced.

She married again and worked in a hospital, treating children wounded in the fighting.

"I saw an incredible number of children die," she said. She recounted mopping up blood on the hospital floor and breaking down after failing to revive a dying 4-month-old. Polman said she came to blame the militants for the horrors she saw.

"Why would the rest of the world be responding to this if you were any kind of normal human being? Why? ...You can say this is about religion but I don't buy it," she said, referring to other IS supporters who often accuse the world of ganging up against the group because it is Muslim.

In early 2019, she and her husband surrendered to the SDF.

She wants to return to Canada, saying she is not safe in the camp because she has spoken out against IS.

"I feel so badly that I think I don't deserve a future. I shouldn't have trusted."

___

Associated Press writers Michael C. Corder in Brussels, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Soyini Grey in Trinidad and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this story.

Source: Fox News World

0 0

Euro zone governments worry over Italy’s low growth: Eurogroup

FILE PHOTO: Eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Eurogroup President Mario Centeno attends a news conference at the end of a eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels, Belgium, December 4, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

April 23, 2019

By Axel Bugge and Sergio Goncalves

LISBON (Reuters) – The euro zone is worried about the heavily indebted Italian economy’s weak growth and needs Rome to implement its budget plans “with credibility”, the head of the currency bloc’s group of finance ministers said.

Speaking in an interview with Reuters, Mario Centeno, who leads the Eurogroup of 19 ministers, said it was essential that the euro zone’s third-largest economy returned to growth while meeting its budget targets.

“It is a challenge we should never be complacent about and that is why there is worry. That is where the big challenge of the Italian economy is — to grow,” he said.

Centeno was speaking late on Monday, on the eve of a Rome cabinet meeting to discuss stimulus measures. That meeting on Tuesday evening is expected to sign off on tax breaks, investment incentives and debt relief for local government.

Italy last year unveiled a big-spending budget for 2019, rattling the euro and other financial markets, but it has so far had little impact on growth. The economy slipped into technical recession at the end of 2018 and is now barely expanding.

The government, a fractious two-party coalition, downgraded its 2019 growth outlook this month to just 0.2 percent, from a December forecast of 1 percent. Its budget deficit is now set to climb to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product, above a goal of 2.04 percent previously agreed with the European Commission.

“Italy is facing some difficulties in this economic cycle,” Centeno said.

“The message is relatively simple: the government has a demanding budget to execute and it needs to be executed with credibility, and we need to gather all our efforts to reverse Italy’s growth tendency.”

Italy’s mix of high debt and low growth has shaken investors who have pushed relative yields on sovereign debt to high levels not only against German government bonds, considered the euro zone’s safest, but also above Spanish and Portuguese paper.

Centeno is also the finance minister of Portugal, which is often praised as an example in Europe for its combination of budget discipline with economic growth over the past few years.

Italy, the euro zone’s second-most indebted nation after Greece, had public debts equaling 132.2 percent of GDP in 2018, up from 131.4 percent in 2017. This year, its economy is again expected to expand less than all its euro-zone peers.

EURO ZONE REFORM

Despite the challenges of Italy and broadly slower growth across Europe, Centeno stressed that the euro zone had experienced a record 22 quarters of uninterrupted growth.

The budget positions of the euro zone’s 19 members are closer than at any time since 1995, thanks to reforms carried out during the debt crisis, he said.

That has resulted in the creation of about 10 million jobs in the euro area since 2013 and brought investment levels close to where they were before the 2009-14 euro debt crisis, he said.

“Europe reformed, today the euro zone is more robust and credible than it was five, six years ago,” he said.

To further reform the euro area and boost competitiveness, Centeno said a common budgetary instrument would go into effect in 2021 when the EU’s next multi-year budget began.

The new tool would set aside existing European funds to support reforms and convergence between economies and to help investments in countries facing temporary economic shocks.

A final decision on funding it is likely to be made in October.

Centeno has pushed hard for the creation of a common budget for the euro, calling it a longer-term project that would “make the euro area more robust and resilient”.

(Editing by Mark Bendeich and Andrei Khalip)

Source: OANN

NOW ON AIR
Now On Air

Maga First News with Peter Boykin

8:00 am 9:00 am



FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.

Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.

Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.

Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.

Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.

A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.

The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport in Washington
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States over safety issues in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – American Airlines Group Inc cut its 2019 profit forecast on Friday, saying it expected to take a $350 million hit from the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes after cancelling 1,200 flights in the first quarter.

The company said it now expects its 2019 adjusted profit to be between $4.00 per share and $6.00 per share.

Analysts on average had expected 2019 earnings of $5.63 per share, according to Refinitiv data.

The No. 1 U.S. airline by passenger traffic said net income rose to $185 million, or 41 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $159 million, or 34 cents per share, a year earlier.

Total operating revenue rose 2 percent to $10.58 billion.

(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

April 26, 2019

By James Oliphant

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (Reuters) – Four years ago, Donald Trump campaigned in small towns like Marshalltown, Iowa, vowing to restore economic prosperity to the U.S. heartland.

In his bid to replace Trump in the White House, Pete Buttigieg is taking a similar tack. The difference, he says, is that he can point to a model of success: South Bend, Indiana, the revitalized city where he has been mayor since 2012.

The Democratic presidential contender has vaulted to the congested field’s top tier in recent weeks, drawing media and donor attention for his youth, history-making status as the first openly gay major presidential candidate and a resume that includes military service in Afghanistan.

But Buttigieg’s main argument for his candidacy is that he is a turnaround artist in the mold of Trump, although the Democrat does not expressly invoke the comparison with the Republican president.

“I’m not going around saying we’ve fixed every problem we’ve got,” Buttigieg, 37, said after a house party with voters in Marshalltown. “But I’m proud of what we have done together, and I think it’s a very powerful story.”

Critics argue improving the fortunes of a Midwestern city of 100,000 people does not qualify Buttigieg, who has never held national office, for the presidency of a country of 330 million. Others say South Bend still has pockets of despair and that minorities, in particular, have failed to benefit from its growth.

Buttigieg has told crowds in Iowa and elsewhere that his experience in reviving a struggling Rust Belt community allows him to make a case to voters that other Democratic candidates cannot. That may give him the means to win back some of the disaffected Democratic voters who turned their backs on Hillary Clinton in 2016 to vote for Trump.

Watching Buttigieg at a union hall in Des Moines last week, Rick Ryan, 45, a member of the United Steelworkers, lamented how many of his fellow union workers voted for Trump. The president turned in the best performance by a Republican among union households since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Ryan said he hoped someone like Buttigieg could return them to the Democratic fold.

“He’s aware of the decline in the labor force in America, not just in Indiana or Des Moines or anywhere else,” Ryan said. “Jobs are going overseas. We need a find to way to bring that back.”

Randy Tucker, 56, of Pleasant Hill, Iowa, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Trump appealed to union members “desperate for somebody to reach out to them, to help them, to listen to their voice.”

Buttigieg could do the same, he said. “In my heart right now, he’s No. 1.”

PAST VS. FUTURE

Buttigieg stresses a key difference in his and Trump’s approaches.

Trump, he tells crowds, is mired in the past, promising to rebuild the 20th century industrial economy. Buttigieg argues the pledge is misleading and unrealistic.

Buttigieg says his focus is on the future, and he often talks about what the country might look like decades from now.

“The only way that we can cultivate what makes America great is to look to the future and not be afraid of it,” Buttigieg said in Marshalltown.

Buttigieg knows his sexual preference may be a barrier to winning some blue-collar voters. But he notes that after he came out as gay in 2015, he won a second term as mayor with 80 percent of the vote in conservative Indiana.

Earlier this month, he announced his presidential bid at the hulking plant in South Bend that stopped making Studebaker autos more than 50 years ago. After lying dormant for decades, the building is being transformed into a high-tech hub after Buttigieg and other city leaders realized it would never again attract a large-scale industrial company.

“That building sat as a powerful reminder. We hoped we would get back that major employer that would fix our economy,” said Jeff Rea, president of the regional Chamber of Commerce.

Buttigieg is praised locally for spurring more than $100 million in downtown investment. During his two terms, unemployment has fallen to 4.1 percent from 11.8 percent.

But a study released in 2017 by the nonprofit group Prosperity Now said not all of the city’s residents had shared in its rebound. The median income for African-Americans remained half that of whites, while the unemployment rate for blacks was double.

Regina Williams-Preston, a city councilor running to replace Buttigieg as mayor, credits him for the revitalized downtown. But she said he had a “blind spot” when it came to focusing on troubled neighborhoods like the one she represents and only grew more engaged after community pressure.

“He understands it now,” she said. “The next step is figuring out how to open the doors of opportunity for everyone.”

‘ONE OF US’

Trump touts the fact that the United States added almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs last year as evidence he made good on his promise to restore the industrial sector. But that growth still left the country with fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2008.

The robust U.S. economy is likely the president’s greatest asset in his re-election bid, particularly in states he carried in 2016 such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won Buttigieg’s home state by 19 points over Clinton in 2016.

Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa, said Buttigieg would be well positioned to compete with Trump in the Midwest.

“People love the fact that he’s a mayor,” said Bagniewski, who has not endorsed a candidate in the nominating contest. “If you can talk about a positive future, and if you actually have experience that can do it, that’s a compelling vision in Iowa.”

Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, which faces many of the same challenges as South Bend, agreed.

“He’s one of us,” Whaley said. “That helps.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau
A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

April 26, 2019

MONTREAL/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Rising waters were prompting further evacuations in central Canada on Thursday, with the mayor of the country’s capital, Ottawa, declaring a state of emergency and Quebec authorities warning that a hydroelectric dam was at risk of breaking.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared the emergency in response to rising water levels along the Ottawa River and weather forecasts that called for significant rainfall on Friday.

In a statement on Twitter, Watson asked for help from the Ontario provincial government and the country’s military.

He warned that “flood levels are currently forecasted to exceed the levels that caused significant damage to numerous properties in the city of Ottawa in 2017.”

Spring flooding had killed one person and forced more than 900 people from their homes in Canada’s Quebec province as of 1 p.m. on Thursday, according to a government website.

Ottawa has received 80 requests for service related to potential flooding such as sandbagging, a city spokeswoman said.

The prospect of more rain over the next 24 to 48 hours triggered concerns on Thursday that the hydroelectric dam at Bell Falls in the western part of Quebec could be at risk of failing because of rising water levels.

Quebec’s provincial police said 250 people were protectively removed from homes in the area as of late afternoon in case the dam on the Rouge River breaks.

The dam is now at its full flow capacity of 980 cubic meters per second of water, said Francis Labbé, a spokesman for the province’s state-owned utility, Hydro Quebec. He said Hydro Quebec expected the flow could rise to 1,200 cubic meters per second of water over the next two days.

“We have to take the worst-case scenario into consideration, since we`re already at the maximum capacity,” Labbé said by phone.

The dam is part of a power station that no longer produces electricity, but is regularly inspected by Hydro Quebec, he said.

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!

Listen to https://magaoneradio.net and Listen Daily! Don't Forget to Share Click a Link Below!
Current track

Title

Artist