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Infowars Exposed Wind Farm Dangers 2 Years Before Trump Took It Mainstream

The mainstream media is jumping all over President Trump for a recent comment about wind turbines where he said, “they say the noise causes cancer.”

Speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Trump also noted, “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations your house just went down 75% in value.”

Vanity Fair called Trump a “Certified Moron” over the remark, Esquire called it a “Horrifying Look Into His Broken Brain” and Business Insider says it’s “A Weird Conspiracy Theory.”

While it’s unknown whether or not wind farms cause cancer, they are known to cause sleep deprivation, stress and other health issues for those living in close proximity.

Infowars reporter Millie Weaver went to Kansas City, KS to find out more about the negative effects of wind turbines in the 2017 investigation below:

In this exclusive report, Infowars reporter Millie Weaver exposes the explicit fraud, deception and outright criminality behind wind energy and how it may be used to run rural communities off their properties as part of a major land grab effort in concert with Agenda 21.

Millie Weaver starts off asking people who live and work in Kansas City, KS what they know about green energy and industrial wind farms.

Not surprising, city people virtue signal their liberal support for industrial wind energy, dogmatizing it as a viable solution to the alleged problem of “climate change” without much thought.

However, when asked how much energy wind farms produce, what they know about impacts on birds, bats, the environment and human health, most city people appear to be clueless.

Weaver then goes to a small town where a local florist has noticed a significant increase in funerals for people who live outside of town in close proximity to the wind farm.

Weaver then journeys to El Paso County, Colorado giving us an insiders view of the fraudulent and deceptive nature of big wind energy corporations by attending and speaking at a local County Commissioner’s hearing regarding health concerns about a local wind farm.

Rural people who have been impacted by the wind farm speak out about having to abandon their homes and health effects they have experienced in a plea for help.

World-renowned acoustician Robert Rand presents prima facia evidence that the wind farm is in perpetual violation of state noise nuisance laws.

He presents data which shows the wind farm is operating at noise levels known to cause sleep deprivation, stress and other health impacts reported by those living in close proximity to it.

Millie Weaver discusses medical opinions of doctors who examined data collected as part of a scientific medical study which investigated the serious health impacts of residents living near the wind farm.

At the hearing, a wind energy advocate “Dr”, who has been giving medical opinions and medical advice in support of the wind energy project while downplaying people’s health concerns, is exposed as not being an actual “doctor”, rather, being nothing more than a person with a “PhD” in Philosophy.

County Commissioners and State legislators now wrestle with the legal conundrum of needing to enforce the law to protect the health and well-being of rural residents, to prevent lawlessness and the appearance of giving unequal protection under the law, while facing threats from wind energy tycoons of billion-dollar lawsuits if the wind farm is shut down.

Source: InfoWars

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Brazil’s political heavy hitters weigh in behind pension reform

FILE PHOTO: Brazil's Economy Minister Paulo Guedes gestures during a meeting of the committees of the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) in Brasilia
FILE PHOTO: Brazil's Economy Minister Paulo Guedes gestures during a meeting of the committees of the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) in Brasilia, Brazil April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado/Filer Photo

April 5, 2019

By Eduardo Simões and Jamie McGeever

CAMPOS DO JORDAO, Brazil (Reuters) – The challenge facing Brazilian lawmakers of reforming the country’s social security system to put public finances back on track is huge, but one they are meeting head on, finance minister Paulo Guedes said on Friday.

Presenting an image of unity with some of the key congressional figures whose support he needs to help build the political consensus required to secure approval, Guedes said commitment to pension reform across the spectrum is solid.

Separately, Guedes also said the government aims to raise 80 billion reais ($20.7 bln) from privatizations this year and receive another 120 billion reais in transfers from the state development bank BNDES.

Guedes has cut a divisive figure on the government’s signature economic reform proposal, which aims to save over 1 trillion reais over the next decade, and was embroiled in an acrimonious congressional committee hearing with opposition lawmakers this week.

But alongside Senate President Davi Alcolumbre, lower house speaker Rodrigo Maia and the government’s chief congressional whip, Joice Hasselmann, he insisted that he has the full support of President Jair Bolsonaro and other political leaders.

“My experience with the political class has been the best possible, super-constructive,” Guedes said at an event in Campos do Jordao in the state of Sao Paulo.

Alcolumbre said it is vital that the president lead the push for pension reform, but said he must listen to party leaders’ concerns. Bolsonaro met with five party leaders this week and will have more meetings next week, Joice said.

Increasingly public political back-biting over pension reform sparked a steep fall in Brazilian markets in late March, but they have settled this week on signs that political leaders are trying to come together.

Reaching out to lawmakers, negotiating and looking for consensus suggests Bolsonaro is being forced to resort to the traditional political methods he had condemned during the election campaign.

Guedes on Friday reiterated his view that pension reform will be approved by the lower house before the end of June, while Maia said delay of a few weeks will be immaterial because the economic impact will be felt next year.

A split between Bolsonaro and Guedes over private retirement accounts appeared to emerge, however, after the president told journalists that he could drop the plan if it runs into opposition in Congress, the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported.

Guedes has been a vigorous defender of the idea.

(Reporting by Eduardo Simoes; Writing by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

Source: OANN

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What the Advertising Boycott Advocates Fail to Realize

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On January 8, the restaurant chain Red Lobster became the 20th major advertiser to stop running ads on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program. It’s not because advertising on Carlson’s show won’t get you in front of millions of viewers -- Carlson has the highest ratings among cable news networks in his prime-time slot, and Fox News has been the highest rated basic cable network for over two years. Carlson has been the subject of a highly organized, and apparently effective, boycott campaign.

It’s true that he has made some controversial statements in the past year, but it’s also impossible to argue that he’s not one of the more interesting and essential pundits of the Trump era. The same week Red Lobster announced it was abandoning his show, Carlson delivered a monologue arguing that conservatives placed too much faith in their conception of the “free market” and needed to question whether the economy was rigged to benefit elites. The monologue touched off a fascinating conversation among intellectuals across the political spectrum.

Washington Post columnist Christine Emba found herself reassessing the caricature of Carlson and asking, “What happens when Tucker Carlson makes sense?” The left-wing publication Vox declared, “Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics.” The New York Times’ right-leaning columnist Ross Douthat declared the “Fox News host amplifies a debate the right needs to have.” Meanwhile, conservative pundits David French and Ben Shapiro offered sharp criticisms of Carlson’s monologue from the right.

There are numerous other instances of Carlson contributing positively to the public dialogue that should be weighed against a handful of controversial remarks. Further, there’s little reason to believe that anything Carlson has said is outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.

There is, however, pervasive evidence showing that left-wing activists are quite content using every tool at their disposal to silence influential voices on the right. The question is whether they’d thought through the disastrous consequences of normalizing politically motivated boycotts.

Even as thinkers and journalists were having an illuminating and productive debate over Carlson’s monologue on the role of the free market, others were busy stoking the boycott against him. “The Tucker Carlson advertiser boycott continues, and what's wrong with that?” asked Pulitzer-winning Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik in a column last month. “Those unhappy with Carlson’s brand of exclusionary white male power should keep the boycott threat alive -- and they should consider themselves to be operating in the American mainstream.”

Now if there’s a case to be made that Carlson’s charged comments about diversity, nationalism, and immigration are outside the American mainstream, the question also ought to be asked whether anyone on the opposite end of the spectrum that deploys racially loaded generalizations about “exclusionary white male power” at the drop of a hat is operating in the mainstream as well. Repeated suggestions that Carlson isn’t merely disagreeable, but that he’s racist, aren’t just unfair. They have dangerous consequences. Earlier this year, violent left-wing Antifa activists showed up outside his home, menacing his wife.

At the same time, there’s no real evidence that politically motivated boycotts, which are largely a tool of the left, are operating in the American mainstream. The skewed presentation of the debate by a left-leaning media; the fact that there are no organized boycotts on the right due in part to a principled commitment to free speech; and the vagaries of craven corporate branding strategies all suggest that support for boycotts might be an illusory phenomenon.

Sleeping Giants to the Fore

If you think a robust public debate involving many differing viewpoints is a precondition for healthy democratic debates—and let’s face it, increasing numbers of politically motivated people don’t—a cursory examination of the organization driving the Carlson boycott ought to be alarming. They go by the name Sleeping Giants. The organization is really just two people, Matt Rivitz and Nandini Jammi, who direct almost all of Sleeping Giants’ boycott activities around a Twitter account and Facebook page. The name “Sleeping Giants” might be a bit of a misnomer. Their Twitter account has only 218,000 followers and their Facebook page has just 56,000 followers, neither of which is much in relative terms. Tucker Carlson has 2.4 million Twitter followers, and Fox News has 18.6 million. (In the interest of disclosure, my wife, Mollie Hemingway, a Fox News contributor who has appeared on Carlson’s show, has 220,000 Twitter followers, which is also more than Sleeping Giants’ total.)

Nonetheless, Sleeping Giants first rose to prominence by forcing dozens of brands to stop running ads on Breitbart.com by simply having its followers tweet screen-shots of advertisements on the site at the Twitter accounts of the corporations behind them. Regarding Breitbart, in nearly all cases the ads are part of digital ad networks, such that the original advertisers have no idea where they appear, and they appear at a diverse array of sites. In other words, there was never any reason to believe that because an ad appeared on Breitbart’s site that the corporation behind it was in any way endorsing the message.

Breitbart is hardly the only place on the internet attracting controversy. Despite doing any number of provocative and harmful things, Gawker, for instance, never wanted for corporate advertising, right up until a jury effectively ended the publication by ruling it owed millions of dollars in damages for its egregious privacy violation—and releasing a video of Hulk Hogan having sex unaware of being filmed was just one of hundreds of very questionable editorial decisions the site made over years. Despite no shortage of bad actors, Breitbart is, however, the only website that’s been targeted for a very successful two-year boycott campaign.

Further, insensitive or incendiary sentiments regularly repeated by left-wing media outlets seem to escape the same kind of scrutiny for offense that have been applied to Breitbart. It’s not a stretch to see why headlines such as “There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck at Interviews” might cause corporate advertisers to back away from Breitbart. But you don’t see advertisers backing off of “mainstream” outlets such as the Huffington Post or The Guardian because they’ve run flattering articles on the #ShoutYourAbortion movement, which is the kind of abortion activism that can easily be shown to be offensive and off-putting.

At the same time that voices from the right are being targeted, the kinds of left-wing sentiments that can be published on major outlets has shifted dramatically, with no corresponding pushback or attempt at self-correction. “Can you admire Louis Farrakhan and still advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions,” is a real headline that ran over a January op-ed in the Los Angeles Times. Barely an eyebrow was raised over the paper publishing excuses for a virulent anti-Semite who in just the past year has called Jews “termites” and “Satanic” and said “the Jews have control over those agencies of government.” Certainly, there was no Sleeping Giants boycott campaign, even though that L.A. Times piece is arguably more overtly bigoted than anything published at Breitbart.

Sleeping Giants has complained that Twitter still allows Farrakhan a platform, but in searching its site it has done nothing to address Democratic politicians and left-wing groups such as the Women’s March that have cozied up to the Nation of Islam leader. According to its Facebook page, Sleeping Giants has even worked with “our friends” at the Women’s March on their boycott efforts, despite the fact that Women’s March leaders such as Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory have also been vocally anti-Semitic and supportive of Farrakhan.

Rivitz told The New York Times he viewed what he is doing “as an apolitical crusade against hate speech. While he is a registered Democrat, he said he had never been politically active outside of attending ‘maybe two marches pre-election.’” He further defended the Sleeping Giants boycotts as apolitical in an interview with GQ saying, “When the focus is on bigotry and sexism and violence, those are unassailable points.” Rivitz further dismissed any idea that anything they are doing might amount to censorship in an interview with Ad Week. “A lot of people say voices on certain sides are being silenced, and ultimately, that’s a way to muddy the waters and make it about politics versus what it really is, which is xenophobia and racism,” he said.

Yes, in the abstract, bigotry, sexism, and violence are unassailably bad. In reality, determining whether something qualifies sexist, bigoted, or violent can be the subject of a heated political and cultural debate. (Even “violence” is no longer a cut-and-dried thing; if you’ve been near a college campus lately, the Orwellian idea that “speech is violence” has taken firm hold.)

These questions, contrary to Sleeping Giants’ smug certainty, are not easily settled. One of Sleeping Giants’ self-proclaimed rationales for instigating boycotts is being “anti-LGBT.” But what does that mean? Tens of millions of Americans still oppose gay marriage, meaning as a practical matter they adhere to the view Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and half the Democratic Party establishment professed until mid-2012. Are all these people so irredeemably bigoted that their views should be not allowed to be aired publicly? What about people who support religious liberty laws that would provide conscience protections for Christian florists and bakers who don’t want to be compelled to participate in same-sex weddings? Are people such as Andrew Sullivan and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to be boycotted for siding with “anti-LGBT” forces on this issue?

Sleeping Giants has made no attempt to define its criteria for what is and is not acceptable as a matter of public discourse. The fact that Sleeping Giants has no established criteria for justifying a boycott is also troubling, because organizations with ill-defined goals are subject to mission creep. The organizers told GQ that the reason they are pushing a boycott of NRATV is because “the NRA pushes racially-charged programming and anti-media propaganda using these streaming services.” Aside from the fact that the NRA has been making conspicuous attempts at minority outreach for a long time now, complaining about media bias—which is an easily demonstrable problem when it comes to coverage of gun issues—is a very low bar for justifying a boycott.

Sleeping Giants has also taken activism in this area a step further, having targeted Apple, Amazon, Roku and Google for allowing NRATV on their streaming platforms. Such “de-platforming” tactics suggest that Sleeping Giants isn’t merely pressuring the NRA so it will stop using rhetoric Sleeping Giants doesn’t like, which is a very tiny percentage of the content on NRATV. Instead, it wants to silence the outlet altogether.

The truth is that Sleeping Giants does have at least one definitive criteria for whether a publication or organization is boycott worthy. It’s just too lacking in self-awareness to realize it. “After the election, we just couldn't believe that the guy who pushed Breitbart's racism and bigotry was going to be in the White House,” Rivitz told GQ. “At the time, we were painfully unaware of everything that goes on at that site.”

To some extent, Sleeping Giants’ mission is explicitly about hamstringing a duly elected president of the United States. Now, it is perfectly fine to despise Donald Trump and campaign against him, but saying as much is a degree of basic transparency that Sleeping Giants hasn’t quite managed. If you’re are horrified by the fact 63 million Americans voted for a president you abhor and your first thought is to try and shut down a prominent media voice that supported him, then telling the New York Times you see your work as “apolitical” is either delusional or dishonest -- or some combination of the two. But Sleeping Giants presenting itself as a group of concerned citizens, rather than political activists, makes its efforts more effective.

It’s remarkable that Sleeping Giants has been able to get away with such duplicity for so long, but ultimately unsurprising. The group has garnered the attention of a lot of prominent media outlets, and the resulting profiles are so softball that you’d think they were written by someone drinking a beer in the outfield bleachers. Some of the coverage even reads as if it is specifically designed to help with Sleeping Giants’ pressure campaigns. See this headline from Fast Company: “Thousands of Advertisers Shun Breitbart, But Amazon Remains.” 

There are enormously harmful consequences to free speech that will arise in a culture where politically motivated boycotts are the norm. Yet, no one who’s interviewed the organization seems all that concerned about a potential backlash. GQ did ask if Sleeping Giants was concerned about giving rise to counter boycotts, but the unquestioned response was rife with hubris: “The First Amendment applies to everyone. If they want to do something like that, they can certainly try. But at least in our minds, the message wouldn't ring true.”

One reason the two organizers of Sleeping Giants weren’t too worried about pushback against their efforts is that they were quite content to lob accusations against others anonymously. The first New York Times profile on Sleeping Giants, another puffy piece headlined “How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News,” mentioned a curious fact: Sleeping Giants’ co-founders “requested anonymity because some members of the group work in the digital-media industry.”

After more than 18 months of successful boycotts and glowing coverage, it wasn’t until last summer that we learned the identities of Rivitz and Jammi, who are both freelance copywriters in the advertising industry. While there’s no obvious reason to believe they have motives beyond expressing their obvious partisan politics, the fact they both work in advertising raises the possibility of so many conflicts of interest that it was professional negligence for the media to mostly ignore their background and honor requests for them to remain anonymous.

The only reason the world learned Rivitz and Jammi’s identities was due to reporting done by The Daily Caller News Foundation, the publication co-founded by, yes, Tucker Carlson. Rivitz was quite upset about being revealed and complained of threats being directed at him as a result. Yet, as of December, he was still encouraging people to send letters to advertisers smearing Carlson as a “white nationalist,” the kind of inflammatory characterization that has led to threats on Carlson’s own family. With the heated nature of current political debates, the desire to remain anonymous while still participating in the conversation is an impulse that should be respected. But given the nature of Sleeping Giants’ campaign against public figures, this was a stunning act of hypocrisy.  

The passively assumed reason for granting Rivitz and Jammi’s anonymity -- the idea that because they “work in the digital-media industry” their work with Sleeping Giants could negatively affect their careers -- also turns out to be a lousy excuse. Ad Week asked Rivitz point-blank if his involvement with Sleeping Giants being revealed had affected his day job. Quite the contrary, as it happened. “I’ve had love and support from people I know,” he replied, “and lots of people I don’t know hitting me up on LinkedIn.”

Advertisers’ Leftward Lean

For decades, one of the distinguishing features of the left was that it was suspicious of corporate power, and specifically the insidious influence of corporate advertising. Though less well known than “1984” or “Animal Farm,” George Orwell even wrote a novel, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying,” that railed against advertising as “the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced” and he later warned, quite correctly, that “advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.” More recently, Naomi Klein’s 1999 book, “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies,” became hugely influential for crystalizing the left-wing, anti-corporate sentiment behind the violent anti-globalization protests of the time.

But like every other institution that has proven to be an impediment to liberal political goals, the strategy adopted by the left toward advertising seems to have been “if you can’t beat them, assimilate them.” The left-wing nature of corporate advertising has become remarkably prevalent in a comparatively short amount of time.

It wasn’t that long ago that corporations didn’t want to go near anything that appeared remotely political. In Samuel Huntington’s 1996 book, “Who Are We?,” he recounts how in 1996 Ralph Nader—no one’s idea of a right-wing xenophobe—wrote to the CEOs of 100 of America’s largest corporations and urged them to have their boards of directors open their shareholder meetings by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as a way of showing corporate gratitude for receiving government subsidies. In other words, when it comes to declaring “you didn’t build that,” Nader was way ahead of the curve. Only one corporation, Federated Department Stores, responded positively. The rest rejected the suggestion, and some corporations such as Ford, Costco, and Aetna publicly disparaged Nader’s gambit.

Contrast that reaction with how last autumn, Nike swallowed a left-wing narrative whole and made a mediocre quarterback who hasn’t played in the NFL for years the face of a major national ad campaign. Far from avoiding unifying national sentiments, the only reason Nike is embracing Colin Kaepernick is his polarizing campaign to politicize the NFL by encouraging national anthem protests. Most recently was Gillette’s baffling and ham-handed attempt to cash in on the #MeToo phenomenon. The razor company aired ads questioning the virtues of masculinity, which made it seem, in the words of American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, as if “Gillette has been hijacked by the Oberlin College Gender Studies Collective.”

To be clear, it’s not that the underlying issues involved in these ad campaigns -- racism and sexism -- aren’t serious and worth addressing. But there’s a real question as to whether profit-driven corporations -- especially ones such as Nike and Gillette’s parent company, Procter and Gamble, which have routinely faced ethical questions about the way their products are produced -- can wade into social and political issues without increasing cynicism. If you go to Gillette’s webpage, it declares that “it’s time we acknowledge that brands, like ours, play a role in influencing culture. And as a company that encourages men to be their best, we have a responsibility to make sure we are promoting positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man.” This prompts a serious question: Where on earth did Gillette get the idea it has any obligation to consumers other than producing quality razors at a reasonable price? (Note that as of this writing Gillette’s ad has 1.4 million dislikes on YouTube compared to 700,000 likes, and the company is furiously deleting negative comments.)

At least one notable figure in the advertising world is sounding the alarm about how advertiser boycotts and politicized branding could be bad for business. “Nobody's going to these brands to ask, 'How should I live my life?'” says Dan Granger, the CEO of Oxford Road, an ad agency that launched Hulu, Lyft, Dollar Shave Club and lots of other notable brands. “We don't really want to be preached at by mainstream brands. And it really depends on how big a brand wants to be.”

Granger has a distinctive perspective on advertising, because his firm specializes “performance-based” metrics specifically tailored to encourage quick business growth. Unlike Sleeping Giants, Granger isn’t coy about his professional motives for speaking out. “I'm definitely incentivized to urge my clients to pursue advertising programs that are going to help them grow in measurable ways, and when they take one of the greatest sources of customer growth off the table and take that out of our toolkit it’s bad for us,” he says. “It's bad for them. So I've got some skin in the game, and it's an issue I've been dealing with on some level for probably the last 15 years, which is almost my entire professional career.”

However, if you’re familiar with late-stage corporate branding strategy, viewing advertising as a means to increase sales or to juice growth is a notion that’s almost quaint. Instead, advertising is often discussed in terms of how it defines a company’s “values” and other subjective measures that conveniently don’t involve metrics that would hold advertising agencies accountable for their work.

This values framework seems to be guiding the approach to advertiser boycotts. In 2017, an article in Ad Age addressed how corporations should handle boycott threats, and experts conceded that “there's little evidence that [consumers] actually follow through. Many weren't buying the given brand in the first place, for reasons that have nothing to do with politics or brand safety.” However, the article further cautioned: “An ad boycott is more about your long-term brand reputation. … These incidents likely have greater impact on sentiment from employees, government officials, suppliers and shareholders than consumers.” In other words, corporate decisions are disproportionately impacted by a small group of people who are overly sensitive to politics, regardless of what their larger customer base actually cares about.

Make no mistake, Sleeping Giants is just the latest iteration of overt and ongoing attempts to ideologically capture advertising. Other groups working with Sleeping Giants have driven this notion home. “You have to be inclusionary if you’re going to try to sell to a very large audience,” Nicholas Reville, a board member of the Participatory Culture Foundation, told the New York Times. The Times added that Reville “pointed out that businesses benefited from embracing diversity: And he pointed out that consumer activism might be especially effective because so many people feel they have no other way to express their opposition to Trump-ian values.”

There’s obviously truth in that last observation. But what’s motivating to some in the political realm is likely to alienate others. “They might be able to do a cheap move to get some PR for a while that ignites a base within their brand constituency,” says Granger, “but I probably wouldn't advise a client to make a move like that, because I think it's divisive. I think we've got enough divisions in this country and I think on the corporate side, we don't need to exploit that. We need to start pushing back on it and going, 'OK, how do we attract people to our value system rather than use our value system to point fingers and separate, whatever side of the equation you're on?’”

This is all rather ironic because among the many remarks by Tucker Carlson that have spurred controversy and marshalled the most boycott enthusiasm, this monologue from September, directed at progressives, stands out:

How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you’ve made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don’t know, marriage or military units in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better with your neighbors, your co-workers if you can’t understand each other or share no common values? Please be honest as you answer this question. And if diversity is our strength, why is it okay for the rest of us to surrender one of our central rights, freedom of speech, to just a handful of tech monopolies? And by the way, if your ideas are so obviously true, why does anyone who question them need to be shamed, silenced and fired?

Simply questioning what is obviously a very politicized definition of “diversity” got Carlson branded a racist by the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple. (Wemple and Carlson have a longstanding feud.) But the charitable and more accurate reading of what Carlson was saying is that “celebrating diversity” can be divisive if we don’t first and foremost share a common identity as Americans.

Something similar was at work with Carlson’s more recent attention-grabbing monologue about whether we show too much deference to our notions of the “free market.” Asking whether the system is rigged in the current era of populist discontent doesn’t just resonate with Trump voters, it has loud echoes of the sentiments expressed by Naomi Klein and Occupy Wall Street protesters. No one is going to agree with everything Carlson says or deny he can be controversial, even infuriating. But if you’re paying attention, there’s ample opportunity to look at what he says and find ideas that the left and right can agree on. This is the real reason Carlson is so interesting, and why he’s often portrayed as more polarizing than he actually is.

Meanwhile, it’s the folks at Sleeping Giants who are utterly credulous about the role corporations should be playing in our politics. “It’s scary to say it, but maybe companies will have to be the standard-bearers for morals right now,” Rivitz told The New York Times. “We’ve all seen employee handbooks where they have codes of behavior,” he said. “Maybe that’s all we have to fall back on now.”

So there it is. Rivitz unknowingly revealed the ultimate pitfall of advertiser-based boycotts. (After reading that comment, Granger said, “I just threw up a little bit.”) Yes, boycotts are bad for a culture of free speech, but the biggest problem might be that they establish a baseline where corporate policies define the terms of political debate.

What Rivitz is advocating is frightening. Actual fascism—not the lazy definition that Sleeping Giants’ Twitter followers use to tar everyone from Mitt Romney on down—is what happens when corporate and political powers are merged for common national goals. Why Sleeping Giants and other supporters of advertiser boycotts would want to blur the line between advertising and propaganda here is worth pondering. Even George Orwell managed to warn against both advertising and fascism, and if you want to imagine a future where advertising boycotts are the norm, just picture the risk-averse HR drones who run corporate diversity seminars stamping on the face of public discourse—forever.

If being forced to contemplate an America that remains permanently politically divided seems scary, it also presents a chance for brave advertisers to get beyond the left-right divide. “I'd love to do an ad where you have the Rush Limbaugh and Elton John duet or Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. How you get these guys to actually say, 'Hey, we stand behind this thing and not everything has to be a knifing of each other. We don't have to disagree on everything … maybe we can maybe even be civil about it,'” says Granger. “There was an episode of Bill Maher where he had Ben Shapiro on that was really cool, because as different as their perspectives were, they were very civil with each other. You could imagine that these guys could break bread together and have a good time. I think that a lot of us are longing for that, and I think there's an opportunity in it.”

America’s success over nearly 250 years is in some respects the result of branding campaigns and messaging that defined our values. The corporations in the 21st century that reject political division and sell us on “e pluribus unum” don’t just stand to benefit themselves—they’re going to help us all prosper. 

Mark Hemingway is a writer in Alexandria, Va. You can follow him on twitter @heminator.

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Timeline: Key events since Thailand's last general election

Thailand will hold its first general election Sunday since the military ousted the elected government in a coup nearly five years ago.

Thailand has a long history of cycling through elected governments that are then ousted by the army, which in time allows fresh elections.

Here's a look the key political events since Thailand's last general election.

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July 3, 2011: The Pheu Thai Party led by Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, wins a landslide majority in the general election. Thaksin was ousted by a 2006 military coup and fled Thailand in 2008 to avoid serving a prison term for a conflict of interest conviction.

Aug. 5, 2011: The House of Representatives elects Yingluck to become Thailand's first female prime minister.

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June 2012: Yingluck's ruling party pushes legislation to promote national reconciliation with the stated goal of ending the sometimes violent political conflict that has roiled the country since the 2006 coup. Critics charge it is meant to help Thaksin escape justice and return to Thailand as a free man.

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April 2013: The Constitutional Court rules that Yingluck's government cannot make amendments to the 2007 constitution, which was enacted by an interim government that had been installed by the 2006 coup.

Nov. 1, 2013: Mass rally held against bill proposing amnesty for political offenses committed since 2006. The protesters claim its main purpose is to vacate the conflict of interest conviction against Thaksin.

Nov. 24, 2013: As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters rally in Bangkok, demanding that Yingluck's government step down.

Nov. 29, 2014: Veteran Democrat Party politician Suthep Thaugsuban forms the People's Democratic Reform Committee to demand the dissolution of Yingluck's government and the establishment of an unelected "people's council" to reform the country.

Nov. 30, 2013-Jan. 31, 2014: The anti-government protests become increasingly violent, with pitched street battles against the police and forced occupations of government offices and installations that practically immobilized government functions. The army, which used armed force in 2010 to quash aggressive protests by supporters of Thaksin, does not intervene to defend the government.

Dec. 9, 2013: Yingluck dissolves the House of Representatives and calls early elections for Feb. 2, 2014.

Dec. 21, 2013: The opposition Democrat Party announces it will boycott the elections so that reforms of the sort demanded by the protesters can first be enacted.

_____

Feb. 2, 2014: A general election is held but disrupted by anti-government protesters who prevent polling from being held in all areas.

March 21, 2014: The Constitutional Court rules the February election invalid because voting did not take place on the same day nationwide in violation of a constitutional clause. There had been fresh balloting in March in several provinces where protesters had prevented voting on the original election date.

May 7, 2014: The Constitutional Court removes Yingluck and several ministers of her caretaker government for abuse of power in connection with the 2011 transfer of a high-ranking civil servant.

May 8, 2014: National Anti-Corruption Commission finds Yingluck guilty of criminal negligence for implementing a state rice-buying subsidy scheme.

May 22, 2014: Army Commander Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha stages a coup, ousting the government, abrogating the constitution and outlawing political gatherings. He later becomes prime minister in addition to heading the ruling junta.

_____

Aug 7, 2016: A national referendum approves a new constitution drafted under the auspices of the ruling junta, along with new rules governing how the prime minister is chosen. Campaigning against the proposed charter had been banned.

Oct. 13, 2016: King Bhumibol Adulyadej dies at the age of 88, and a year-long mourning period is declared. He is succeeded by his son, who becomes King Maha Vajiralongkorn.

_____

April. 6, 2017: The new constitution takes effect.

Oct. 26, 2017: Cremation rites are held for the late king.

_____

Jan. 23, 2019: The Election Commission announces the general election will be held on March 24, after several earlier target dates had been pushed back.

Feb. 8, 2019: The Thaksin-affiliated Thai Raksa Chart Party registers the king's elder sister, Princess Ubolratana Mahidol, as its candidate for prime minister, breaking with the idea that members of the royal family are above politics. That same day, the king issues a royal order calling her registration inappropriate and contrary to the constitution.

March 8, 2019: The Constitutional Court dissolves the Thai Raksa Chart Party for registering the princess as its candidate for prime minister.

March 24, 2019: Thailand is scheduled to hold general election.

Source: Fox News World

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Excitement, anger as Kenya awaits ruling on decriminalizing gay sex

LGBT activist Phelix Kasanda, also known as Mama G, during an interview with Reuters in Nairobi, Kenya
LGBT activist Phelix Kasanda, also known as Mama G, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Nairobi, Kenya, February 14 , 2019. Picture taken February 14 , 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

February 21, 2019

By John Ndiso

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Phelix Kasanda – affectionately called Mama G by his friends – spends most days in hiding, frightened his work as a prominent gay activist means he could be attacked again.

But if Kenya overturns a ban on gay sex this Friday, he’s going clubbing to celebrate – with the full protection of the law.

“I have a very short pair of hot pants, vest top and earrings,” he said. “I’ll be looking good.”

Twenty-eight-year-old Kasanda is one of thousands of gay Kenyans hoping judges will strike down a colonial-era law punishing consensual same-sex relationships by 14 years in jail.

Same-sex relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries, almost half of them in Africa, where homosexuality is broadly taboo and persecution is rife.

Mama G – whose makeup accentuates a friendly smile and gold tooth – said he had been expelled from school, rejected by his family and employers, chased from his home and attacked for being openly gay. “I was evicted the other day because I had a boyfriend,” Kasanda told Reuters in his cramped single room apartment sandwiched between cheap high rise flats and a dumpsite. “If the government itself cannot defend you, how are you going to argue with the landlord?”

He’s been attacked at home and the clinic where he works, he said. Friends have been carted off to witch doctors or nearly lynched, he said. Some have killed themselves in despair.

“We normally report violence cases to the police station or law enforcers. But no action is being taken,” he said.

COURT HEARINGS

Kenya arrested 534 people for same-sex relationships between 2013 and 2017, the government said. Kenya’s high court began hearings on the law last year.

Campaigners say the colonial-era law violates Kenya’s progressive 2010 constitution, which guarantees equality, dignity and privacy for all citizens. They also submitted arguments based on India’s rejection of a similar law in August.

Decriminalization won’t stop prejudice, but it should end arrests and blackmail, and help rein in assaults and rapes if gay Kenyans no longer fear police, said the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, one of the petitioners against the law.

The commission has has recorded more than 1,500 such attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Kenyans since 2014.

Many Christian and Muslim groups support the law, and the attorney general has argued decriminalizing gay sex could lead to legalizing same-sex marriage.

“A gay lifestyle is a threat to our culture and the common good,” said Charles Kanjama, a lawyer for the Kenya Christian Professionals Forum.

SLOW CHANGE

    In recent years, Kenya’s small openly gay community has grown, including a prominent writer, a journalist, and several activists, although gay public events are rare.

But after a gunman killed 49 people at the predominantly gay Pulse nightclub in America, the community held a public candle lit vigil. Last year a court temporarily lifted a ban to allow a locally-made film called “Rafiki”, which portrayed a lesbian relationship in Kenya, to compete at the Oscars.

Yet public rejection is likely to remain. President Uhuru Kenyatta has said “gay rights is really a non-issue”, while deputy president William Ruto said Kenya had “no room” for gays. Legislator Aden Duale once told parliament that homosexuality was “as serious as terrorism”.

Many Kenyans, like retired military officer Stanley Muigai Kiama, say they will reject gay people regardless of any court ruling.

“If animals cannot practise same sex how is it that a human being who is created in the image of God can actually pretend to enjoy homosexuality?” he asked.

Either way the ruling goes, Kasanda fears further attacks – either as a backlash or by those who see the ruling as vindication. But Kasanda does not want to hide anymore.

    “I want to be who I am,” he said firmly.

(Editing by Katharine Houreld, William Maclean)

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Motel 6 pays $12 million for sharing guest lists with U.S. immigration: Washington AG

FILE PHOTO: A sign marks a Motel 6 property in Espanola
FILE PHOTO: A sign marks a Motel 6 property in Espanola, New Mexico, U.S., July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

April 4, 2019

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – Motel 6 agreed to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit in which Washington state’s attorney general said the chain routinely provided guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who announced the settlement on Thursday, said the money will go to roughly 80,000 people who stayed at seven of the chain’s Washington locations from 2015 and 2017.

He said their privacy rights were violated because Motel 6 gave their personal information to ICE without their knowledge, and at least nine Washington residents were detained.

As part of the settlement, Motel 6 also agreed it will not hand over guest information nationwide absent a warrant or other legal order, and will improve employee training, Ferguson said.

Motel 6 said in a statement it was pleased to settle, and that “the safety and security of our guests, which includes protecting guest information, is our top priority.”

The settlement came five months after Motel 6 agreed to a $7.6 million settlement of similar claims in a proposed class-action lawsuit in Arizona. That accord has yet to receive court approval, court records show.

U.S. President Donald Trump has made immigration a central focus of his presidency.

Motel 6 is controlled by the private equity firm Blackstone Group LP, which bought the brand in 2012.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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0 0

Zion Williamson is NBA-bound, with a Big O endorsement

NCAA Basketball: Final Four-Practice Day
Apr 5, 2019; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Duke Blue Devils forward Zion Williamson accepts the Oscar Robertson Trophy during a press conference for the 2019 men's Final Four at US Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Shanna Lockwood-USA TODAY Sports

April 6, 2019

MINNEAPOLIS — NBA Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson was eyeball to shoulder alongside larger-than-life freshman Zion Williamson on Friday night, posing for photographers as he handed off the national player of the year award that bears his name and likeness, when he offered a warning for the basketball world.

“You may not believe it now, but you can get a whole lot better,” Robertson said of Williamson.

Williamson averaged 22.9 points and 8.8 rebounds, shooting 68.8 percent with a package of ferocious finishes at the rim and a soft touch from the perimeter.

“When I watched Zion, I watched his footwork and his intelligence when he went into the basket because everyone was after him. They were going to double-team him and triple-team him and do all these things to try to keep him from around the basket,” said Robertson. “He’s so gifted and he’s just so quick and so high, it’s difficult for any one person to guard him.

“And as I said before, he’s going to get better when he gets to the next level.”

Williamson was not a unanimous pick for either player of the year award he took home Friday night, but he is universally expected to be the first player drafted in June.

Williamson, who is 6-7, 280 pounds, said he still wants to talk to his family and teammate RJ Barrett — another Duke freshman projected as a lottery pick in 2019 — before making anything official.

But every indication from Williamson, Robertson and Williamson’s family in attendance suggested that his college career is over.

“Whatever NBA team I land on, that’s the team I want to — that’s where I want to be. Like whoever drafts me, that’s where I want to be,” said Williamson, who reacted to questions implying he wouldn’t want to play for the lottery-odds-leading Knicks by shaking his head and putting his massive hand over his face.

“If they draft me, I would love to play for them.”

–By Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media

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FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Spain's far-right party VOX wave Spanish flags as they attend an electoral rally ahead of general elections in the Andalusian capital of Seville
FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the Spain’s far-right party VOX wave Spanish flags as they attend an electoral rally ahead of general elections in the Andalusian capital of Seville, Spain April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Marcelo del Pozo/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By John Stonestreet and Belén Carreño

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Vox party, aligned to a broader far-right movement emerging across Europe, has become the focus of speculation about last minute shifts in voting intentions since official polling for Sunday’s national election ended four days ago.

No single party is anywhere near securing a majority, and chances of a deadlocked parliament and a second election are high.

Leaders of the five parties vying for a role in government get final chances to pitch for power at rallies on Friday evening, before a campaign characterized by appeals to voters’ hearts rather than wallets ends at midnight.

By tradition, the final day before a Spanish election is politics-free.

Two main prizes are still up for grabs in the home straight. One concerns which of the two rival left and right multi-party blocs gets more votes.

The other is whether Vox could challenge the mainstream conservative PP for leadership of the latter bloc, which media outlets with access to unofficial soundings taken since Monday suggest could be starting to happen.

The right’s loose three-party alliance is led by the PP, the traditional conservative party that has alternated in office with outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s.

The PP stands at around 20 percent, with center-right Ciudadanos near 14 percent and Vox around 11 percent, according to a final poll of polls in daily El Pais published on Monday.

Since then, however, interest in Vox – which will become the first far-right party to sit in parliament since 1982 – has snowballed.

It was founded in 2013, part of a broader anti-establishment, far-right movement that has also spread across – among others – Italy, France and Germany.

While it is careful to distance itself from the ideology of late dictator Francisco Franco, Vox’s signature policies include repealing laws banning Franco-era symbols and on gender-based violence, and shifting power away from Spain’s regional governments.

TRENDING

According to a Google trends graphic, Vox has generated more than three times more search inquiries than any other Spanish political party in the past week.

Reasons could include a groundswell of vocal activist support at Vox rallies in Madrid and Valencia, and its exclusion from two televised debates between the main party leaders, on the grounds of it having no deputies yet in parliament.

Conservative daily La Vanguardia called its enforced absence from Monday’s and Tuesday’s debates “a gift from heaven”, while left-wing Eldiario.es suggested the PP was haemorrhaging votes to Vox in rural areas.

Ignacio Jurado, politics lecturer at the University of York, agreed the main source of additional Vox votes would be disaffected PP supporters, and called the debate ban – whose impact he said was unclear – wrong.

“This is a party polling over 10 percent and there are people interested in what it says. So we lose more than we win in not having them (in the debates),” he said

For Jose Fernandez-Albertos, political scientist at Spanish National Research Council CSIC, Vox is enjoying the novelty effect that propelled then new, left-wing arrival Podemos to 20 percent of the vote in 2015.

“While it’s unclear how to interpret the (Google) data, what we do know is that it’s better to be popular and to be a newcomer, and that Vox will benefit in some form,” he said.

For now, the chances of Vox taking a major role in government remain slim, however.

The El Pais survey put the Socialists on around 30 percent, making them the frontrunners and likely to form a leftist bloc with Podemos, back down at around 14 percent.

The unofficial soundings suggest little change in the two parties’ combined vote, or the total vote of the rightist bloc.

That makes it unlikely that either bloc will win a majority on Sunday, triggering horse-trading with smaller parties favoring Catalan independence – the single most polarizing issues during campaigning – that could easily collapse into fresh elections.

(Election graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ENugtw)

(Reporting by John Stonestreet and Belen Carreno, Editing by William Maclean)

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FILE PHOTO: The logo of the OPEC is seen at OPEC's headquarters in Vienna
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo

April 26, 2019

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he called the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and told the cartel to lower oil prices.

“Gasoline prices are coming down. I called up OPEC, I said you’ve got to bring them down. You’ve got to bring them down,” Trump told reporters.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Sonia Bompastor, director of the Olympique Lyonnais womenÕs Youth Academy, leads a training at the OL Academy near Lyon
Sonia Bompastor, director of the Olympique Lyonnais womenÕs Youth Academy, leads a training at the OL Academy in Meyzieu near Lyon, France, April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Emmanuel Foudrot

April 26, 2019

By Julien Pretot

MEYZIEU, France (Reuters) – Olympique Lyonnais president Jean-Michel Aulas was wringing out his women’s team shirts in the locker room on a rainy London day eight years ago when he decided it was time to take gender equality more seriously.

It was halftime in their Champions League semi-final second leg against Arsenal at Meadow Park with 507 fans watching and Aulas realized that his players did not have a another kit for the second half.

“Next time, there will be a second set just like for the men, that’s how it’s going to work from now on,” he said.

Lyon have since won five Champions League titles to become the most successful women’s team in Europe and recently claimed a 13th consecutive domestic crown.

They visit Chelsea on Sunday in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final, with a fourth straight title in their sights.

At the heart of their achievements is a pervasive ethos that promotes gender equality throughout the club, starting in the youth academy.

In 2013, Aulas appointed former Lyon and France player Sonia Bompastor as head of the Women’s Academy — the female equivalent of one of France’s top youth set-ups that has produced players such as Karim Benzema, Alexandre Lacazette and Hatem Ben Arfa.

At the Youth Academy, girls and boys share the same facilities.

“Pitches, physiotherapy rooms are the same for all,” the 38-year-old Bompastor told Reuters.

As the girls train under the watch of former Lyon and France international Camille Abily, the screams of the boys practicing can be heard nearby.

The boys and girls also benefit from the same psychological support that includes hypnosis sessions and yoga.

“We have a ‘mental ability’ cell and the hypnotist acts on the girls’ subconscious, on their deeply held beliefs after observing them on and off the pitch,” Bompastor added.

SAME TREATMENT

One message the Academy staff are trying to convey is that girls are as good as boys.

“Women’s nature is such that we have low self-esteem. So self-esteem is a big topic for our girls,” said Bompastor.

This is not the case with the boys, she added.

“Some 14, 15-year-old boys still think they would beat our professional players, we tell them this would not be happening. We still need to work on those beliefs,” she said.

Female players also have to face questions that their male counterparts do not, Bompastor explained.

“In France there is a problem with the way women are considered, there are high aesthetic expectations. So we get heavy questions on femininity, intimate questions that men don’t get,” she said.

OL’s Academy has been held up as a shining example for others to follow, even in the U.S., where women’s soccer has a wider audience than in Europe.

“About one third of the (senior women’s) squad comes from the Academy, we have a good balance,” said Bompastor.

“I’m getting tons of requests from American universities and foreign clubs, who want to come and visit our facilities.”

‘ONE CLUB’

The salaries of the senior players is one area where there remains a large discrepancy between Lyon’s men’s and women’s teams.

While the three best-paid women players in the world are at Lyon with Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg earning 400,000 euros ($445,520) a year, this figure is dwarfed by the around 4 million euros earned annually by men’s player Memphis Depay.

There is, however, a level of interaction between the men’s and women’s players that is not present at many other clubs.

“When you talk about OL you talk about women and men, you talk about one club and you feel it when you are here or outside in the city,” Germany defender Carolin Simon told Reuters.

“We see it when we play in the big stadium. It’s not ‘normal’ for women’s football,” the 26-year-old, who joined the club last year, added.

Lyon’s female players also enjoy respect from their male counterparts, Simon said.

“It’s very cool, it’s a big honor to feel that it doesn’t matter if you are a professional man or woman. We talk with the men, there are handshakes, it’s a good atmosphere and it’s also why we are successful,” said Simon.

“The men respect us and it’s not just for the cameras.”

Her team mate, England’s Lucy Bronze, sees the men’s respect as key to improving women’s football.

“We might not be paid the same but they are just normal with us, they see us as footballers the same as they are,” Bronze told Reuters.

“Being at Lyon has really opened my eyes. To improve women’s football, it starts with having the respect of your male counterparts. It’s the biggest thing because they can influence so many people.”

(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Davis)

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FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian migrants, stranded in war-torn Yemen, sit on the ground of a detention site pending repatriation to their home country, in Aden, Yemen
FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian migrants, stranded in war-torn Yemen, sit on the ground of a detention site pending repatriation to their home country, in Aden, Yemen April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Fawaz Salman/File Photo

April 26, 2019

GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemeni authorities have rounded up about 3,000 irregular migrants, predominantly Ethiopians, in the south of the country, “creating an acute humanitarian situation,” the U.N. migration agency said on Friday.

“IOM is deeply concerned about the conditions in which the migrants are being held and is engaging with the authorities to ensure access to the detained migrants,” the International Organization for Migration said.

The migrants are held in open-air football stadiums and in a military camp, it said in a statement.

The detentions began on Sunday in the city of Aden and the neighboring province of Lahj, which are under the control of the internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iran-aligned Houthi rebels control Sanaa, the capital, and other major urban centers.

Both sides are under international diplomatic pressure to implement a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire deal agreed last year in Sweden and to prepare for a wider political dialogue that would end the four-year-old war.

Thousands of migrants arrive in Yemen every year, mostly from the Horn of Africa, driven by drought and unemployment at home and lured by the wages available in the Gulf.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli, Editing by William Maclean)

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U.S. dollar notes are seen in this picture illustration
U.S. dollar notes are seen in this November 7, 2016 picture illustration. Picture taken November 7. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them.

1/DOLLAR JUGGERNAUT

The dollar has zipped to near two-year highs, leaving many scratching their heads. To many, it’s down to signs the U.S. economy is chugging ahead while the rest of the world loses steam. After all, Wall Street is busily scaling new peaks day after day.

Never mind the cause, the effect is stark. The euro has tumbled to 22-month lows against the dollar and investors are preparing for more, buying options to shield against further downside. Emerging-market currencies are also in pain, with Turkish lira and Argentine peso both sharply weaker.

Now U.S. data need to keep surprising on the upside or even just meet expectations. The International Monetary Fund sees U.S. growth at 2.3 percent this year. For Germany, the forecast is 0.8 percent. The U.S. economy’s rude health has given rise to speculation the Fed might resume raising interest rates. Unlikely. But as other countries — Canada, Sweden and Australia are the latest — hint at more policy easing, there seems to be one way the dollar can go. Up.

(GRAPHIC: Dollar outperforms G10 FX – https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dz17S5)

2/FED: UP OR DOWN?

Wall Street is near record highs and recession worries are receding, so as we mentioned above, investors might wonder if the Federal Reserve will start raising rates again.

Such a pivot is unlikely after the Fed killed off rate-rise expectations at its March meeting. And the latest Reuters poll all but puts to bed any risk of rates will go up this economic cycle, given inflation remains below the Fed’s alarm threshold and unemployment is the lowest in generations.

Before the March rate-pause announcement, a preponderance of economists penciled in one or more increases this year. But that has flipped. A majority of those surveyed April 22-24 see no further tightening through December and more are leaning toward a cut by the end of next year.

Indeed, interest rate futures imply Fed Funds will be below the current 2.25-2.50 percent target range by this December.

Recent positive consumer spending and exports data have eased market concerns of a sharp economic slowdown. But inflation probably needs to run hot for a long period to panic policymakers off their wait-and-see course.     

(GRAPHIC: Federal funds and the economy – https://tmsnrt.rs/2DzjTZz)

3/HEISEI TO REIWA

Next week ends three decades of Japan’s Heisei era. Heisei, or Achieving Peace, began in 1989 near the peak of a massive stock market bubble and closes with the country trapped in low growth, no inflation, and negative interest rates.

The new era that dawns on May 1 is called Reiwa, meaning Beautiful Harmony. It begins when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the Chrysanthemum Throne. But do investors really want harmony? What they want to see is a bit of economic growth and inflation to shake up the status quo.

The Bank of Japan’s stimulus toolkit to revive a long-suffering economy is anything but harmonious and yet it’s set to stay. The central bank confirmed recently rates will stay near zero for a long time. But the coming days may not be harmonious or peaceful for currency markets. A 10-day Golden Week holiday kicks off on April 29 and investors are fretting over the risk of a “flash crash” – a violent currency spasm that can occur in times of thin trading turnover.

The year has already seen two yen spikes and many, including Japan’s housewife-trader brigade – so-called Mrs Watanabes – appear to have bought yen as the holiday approaches. Their short dollar/long yen positions recently reached record highs, stock exchange data showed.

(GRAPHIC: Japan stocks: from Hensei to Reiwa – https://tmsnrt.rs/2W6a7Fe)

4/EARNING TURNING

Quarterly earnings were supposed to be the worst in Europe in almost three years, but with a third of results in, things are looking a little rosier.

Two-thirds of companies’ results have beat expectations, and they point to earnings growth of 4.5 percent year-on-year. Financials have delivered the biggest surprises, according to analysis by Barclays.

That might just show how low expectations were. In fact, analysts are still taking a red pen to their estimates.

The latest I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv shows analysts on average expect first-quarter earnings-per-share for STOXX 600-listed companies to fall 4.2 percent. That would be their worst quarter since 2016 and down sharply from an estimated 3.4 percent just a week earlier.

Those estimates may end up being a little too bearish as earnings season goes on, quelling worries that Europe is heading toward a corporate recession.

GSK and Reckitt Benckiser will give the market a glimpse of the health of the consumer products market and spending on everything from toothpaste, washing powder and paracetamol.

(GRAPHIC: Earnings forecasts – https://tmsnrt.rs/2DuO2ZF)

5/WAITING FOR THE OLD LADY

Sterling has gone into the doldrums amid the Brexit delay and unproductive talks between the UK government and the opposition Labour party on a EU withdrawal deal. The resurgent dollar, meanwhile, has taken 2 percent off the pound in April. It is unlikely the Bank of England will be able to rouse it at its May 2 meeting.

Despite robust retail and jobs data of late, the economic picture is gloomy – 2019 growth is likely to be around 1.2 percent, the weakest since 2009, investment is down and Governor Mark Carney says business uncertainty is “through the roof”.

Indeed, expectations for an interest rate increase have been whittled down; Reuters polls forecast rates will not move until early 2020, a calendar quarter later than was forecast a month ago. The hunt for a new governor to replace Carney in October adds more uncertainty to the mix.

The recent run of UK data has fueled hopes of economic rebound. That’s put net hedge fund positions in the pound into positive territory for the first time in nearly a year. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street might temper some of that optimism.

(GRAPHIC: Sterling positions – https://tmsnrt.rs/2XJwUXX)

(Reporting by Alden Bentley in New York, Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore; Karin Strohecker, Josephine Mason and Saikat Chatterjee in London; compiled by Sujata Rao; edited by Larry King)

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