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California workers sue union for holding them 'against their will,' despite landmark ruling

Two University of California system employees claim they are effectively being held "against their will" and forced to pay monthly union dues, despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling last summer barring public-sector unions from requiring nonmembers to pay so-called agency fees without their consent.

The June 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME sent shockwaves through organized labor, holding not only that public unions violated the First Amendment by taking money out of unwilling workers' paychecks to fund collective bargaining, but also that employees must "clearly and affirmatively consent" before any fees or dues are collected.

WORKERS SAY UNIONS DEFYING JANUS RULING

The two workers outlined their claims in a federal lawsuit filed late Wednesday against the Teamsters and the University of California system. According to the complaint, exclusively obtained by Fox News, UC administrators are illegally withholding $41 per month from University of California, Santa Barbara finance manager Cara O’Callaghan, and $53 per month from University of California, Los Angeles administrative assistant Jenée Misraje.

On May 31, 2018, according to the complaint filed Wednesday, a union representative "came to O’Callaghan’s workplace and pressured workers to join the Union," without informing O’Callaghan of the impending Janus decision. O’Callaghan, the lawsuit says, "relied on this lack of information and signed an application joining the union and authorizing it to deduct union dues from her paycheck."

On July 25, 2018, "upon learning of the Janus decision of June 27, 2018," O’Callaghan resigned from the union by letter and also wrote to UCSB requesting that it stop deducting union dues from her paycheck.

In response, O'Callaghan said, the union informed UCSB that it should continue withholding money from her paycheck, and the university complied. The union said that, under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, O'Callaghan could eventually opt out of the fees -- she would just need to wait until around March 31, 2022.

O'Callaghan and Misraje are represented by the Liberty Justice Center (LJC), which also represented Mark Janus before the Supreme Court last year.

In addition to demanding those wages back, the lawsuit seeks to invalidate a California law requiring that government employers rely on unions to determine which employees' wages should be subjected to union donations, and that all questions about such matters be directed to unions instead of employers.

Mark Janus sued because he didn’t want a certain fee deducted from his paycheck to go toward a union just because he worked for the state.

Mark Janus sued because he didn’t want a certain fee deducted from his paycheck to go toward a union just because he worked for the state. (Reuters/Leah Millis)

The lawsuit also charges that other California laws violate the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights to represent themselves in negotiations -- citing the majority opinion in Janus, which stated, “Compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates that cardinal constitutional command, and in most contexts, any such effort would be universally condemned.”

O'Callaghan and Misraje join a slew of plaintiffs in several states who charge that unions are either flat-out ignoring the Supreme Court's ruling, or establishing a frustrating maze of procedural roadblocks to avoid complying with it.

EXPERTS: JANUS DECISION ENDED CASH COW FOR LIBERAL ACTIVISTS

Neither the Teamsters nor the University of California system replied to Fox News' request for comment.

"Prior to the Janus decision, employees were given an unconstitutional choice: pay the union as a member or pay the union as a nonmember," Kristen Williamson, LJC's communications director, told Fox News. "Now that their right to choose is restored, any permission to deduct dues given before June 27, 2018, should be null and void and workers should be allowed to resign immediately."

Added Williamson: "The University of California system and Teamsters Local 2010 seem intent on holding Cara and Jenée in the union against their will. They've both made multiple requests to resign since the Janus ruling yet continue to have dues deducted from their paychecks."

LJC has filed eight cases in five states -- California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Mexico and Pennsylvania -- on behalf of workers seeking to opt out of union fees in the wake of the Janus decision. All are ongoing.

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According to the latest complaint, Misraje had a similar experience as O’Callaghan, and was eventually told that she could get out of the payroll deduction only by providing written notice within a narrow "time window" that coincided with the anniversary date of her signed agreement with the union.

Experts have said Janus could end up costing unions hundreds of millions of dollars in California alone. The nation's largest union, the 3-million-member National Education Association, announced plans to cut nearly $40 million from its budget after Janus, amid fears it would lose hundreds of thousands of members.

"We're seeing huge problems across the country," Diana Rickert, the vice president of the LJC, told Fox News months after the Supreme Court's decision. "There is almost no government in America that is fully complying with the Janus ruling."

Source: Fox News Politics

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Police: Man allegedly confessed after woman's 1986 slaying

A man arrested in a southwestern Michigan cold case slaying was not charged in the years after the killing despite alleged confessions to police.

Michael Leon Curry was charged Monday in Van Buren County with murder in the 1986 strangulation of 59-year-old Wilda Wilkinson in her Bangor home.

WOOD-TV reports that a state police investigator testified earlier this month that in the late 1980s, Curry told police about his involvement in Wilkinson's death and that an anonymous letter sent to police in 1989 provided details about the slaying and had Curry's fingerprints on it.

Retired Bangor police Det, Tim Wydick tells the television station that after the slaying it was believed Curry "was trying to get attention."

Wydick says the case went to prosecutors at the time, but no warrant ever was issued.

The prosecutor's office declined to comment Friday on the case. The Associated Press was unable to reach Curry's lawyer for comment.

Curry, now 51, was living in California when he was arrested last week.

___

Information from: WOOD-TV, http://www.woodtv.com

Source: Fox News National

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What if Climate Warriors Put their Money Where their Mouths Are?

The other week, the infamous and much-derided Green New Deal was voted down in the Senate and with it the dreams of a Federal spending party for tackling climate change.

But maybe its advocates have been going about this the wrong way, engaged in political solutions and international treaties such as the Paris Agreement. To anybody with insight into political decision-making — or even a healthy skepticism about the miraculous workings of the political apparatus — trying to navigate such a minefield of special interests and entrenched divisions must have seemed like a fool’s errand. Trying to address externalities and global tragedies of the commons through a political prism might not be the best option.

What if climate activists, striking school children, television pundits, New York Time columnists and others — here affectionately referred to as Climate Warriors — joined forces and, on their own, tried to mitigate the harmful consequences of climate change?

Apparently, climate change induced natural disasters will still be with us even if we ceased emissions tomorrow. As such, we require protection — those least able to literally weather the storm most of all. As Climate Warriors’ preferred route for transforming society — i.e., politics — has faced a setback, perhaps there’s a more voluntary and individual way to offer assistance to those facing potential climate-related damages to life and property.

Financial Markets to the Rescue: Catastrophe Bonds

Catastrophe bonds (“Cat bonds”) is a fast-growing segment of the corporate bond market that emerged out of Hurricane Andrew in the 1990s, when property damages bankrupted several insurance companies. Insurance companies of the sort that you and I usually interact with pool risks across many customers so as to afford payouts for the unlucky few that are affected by damages. To protect themselves from worst possible outcomes, they typically transfer off some of their most extreme risks to re insurance companies – essentially, insurance companies’ own insurance policies. You might think about it as “capping” risk exposure at a pre-arranged level by paying reinsurance firms a fee to accept damage claims above a particular level ( Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway has large such business; other market leaders include Swiss Re, Munich Re and Hannover Re).

Cat bonds provide the same service as this traditional reinsurance business through publicly traded financial markets instead. Much like securitization in other areas, a Cat bond complements this firm-to-firm reinsurance business by allowing insurance companies to sell off risk straight to financial markets. Investors, similarly, have recently been much more willing to buy them since a Cat bond’s value and interest rate payouts vary with natural disasters rather than business cycles or financial crashes. Indeed, a standard basket of Cat bonds have delivered remarkably stable returns, even outperforming the S&P500 since 2006 (measured very opportunistically). Their two prime virtues from an investment point of view are that they are virtually uncorrelated with other kinds of investment risk (stocks, bonds, FX), and their volatility is microscopic.

Specifically, this is how a Cat bond works:

1) An insurance company offers up (“Cedes”, “Sponsors”) a well-specified risk for a section of its claimants, packaged into a bond with a face value of, say, $100m.

2) A group of investors (through an investment bank or other vehicle) puts up $100m in a Special Purpose Vehicle that holds nothing but the Cat bond funds (usually invested in short-term CDs or government bonds to ensure some minimum real return).

3) The ceding insurance company then pays regular premiums into the SPV for the insurance protection it now receives from the bond.

4) For the duration of the Cat bond — typically 3-5 years — the SPV sends its investors regular interest payments if no event takes place. Should the “Trigger event” (the event specified in the contract, such as earthquakes floods or droughts of a certain severity) occur, the losses are deducted primarily from the set-aside funds and made instantly available to the insurance company to pay for their clients’ damages.

The great benefit for the insurance company is that the money is set aside, ring-fenced, and instantly available should the terms of the contract be fulfilled (i.e. damages of a certain kind and magnitude). For investors, the construction offers a diversifiable income stream, uncorrelated with other markets, and typically yields a few percentage points above market rates of similar duration.

Even the huge storm damages in 2017 from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma did nothing to dissipate this emergent market. A recent article in Bloomberg reported that the Cat bond market have kept growing rapidly as climate change is believed to cause even more extreme weather in the future.

How Can Cat Bonds Mitigate Climate Change Damage?

The similarities between damages from extreme weather phenomena and climate change should be fairly obvious. In both cases we are talking about out-of-the-ordinary events, with damages and consequences that many communities are typically not set up to protect against. Dealing with the costs of climate change that Climate Warriors and scientists say will inevitably come, could thus be conveniently done through the Cat bond market. And the best thing? It requires no political negotiation, no global haggling of rights or responsibilities and no expansive packages navigated through Congress. It requires Climate Warriors to simply put their money where their mouths are — and start buying Cat bonds.

This is how it could work.

AOC, Paul Krugman, Naomi Klein and Elizabeth Warren create the “CW Cat Non-Profit” and invite all their staff and supporters and the parents of the striking European school children to join. There could be membership fees and grand events filled with eloquent speeches, but the key point is to amass lots of funds through donations, and start buying Cat bonds like crazy. The purposes are twofold: assist the growth of the Cat bond market and become a large enough player so that they can start setting terms from their “upstream” partners in the insurance and reinsurance business.

If these activists and pundits truly fear the outcome for which they are protesting, and if they truly believe the grand and sharp slogans of their banners, it shouldn’t be a big problem to start pooling money to fund inevitable damages from the very thing they detest.

Quick back-of-the-envelope calculations also ensure that they could quickly reach a large share of the Cat bond market. Currently, there are Cat bonds outstanding worth $37.9 billions with new issues of some $10bn per year (some of which is simply re-investment of old bonds). Adding up a 25%-salary contribution by the hundred or so politicians who have publicly backed the Green New Deal, a one-off $200 contribution by the 2m or so participants of the last month’s #FridaysForFuture (double it to include non-attending friends, relatives and families) and add a one-time 25% wealth transfer by outspoken and well-off proponents of the Green New Deal scheme such as Maher, Krugman, Warren, Gore, Harris (naturally, they wouldn’t object…?), we’re already at a billion dollars – enough to entirely buy out the March issue of Cat bonds . With some extra cash from the $12 billion that environmental charities raise every year, and the generous support of the very vocal supporters of the Green New Deal, the “CW Cat Non-Profit” is soon on track to become the largest player in this business.

The Climate Warrior’s Edge

Now, if this is just a fund-raising attempt, why couldn’t Climate Warriors just as well pour their money into renewables, putting up solar panels or invent smart electricity grids and green car engines?

They could. But here’s the beauty: they have no particular technical or comparative advantages in those fields. As Cat investors, they do. Let me show you:

1) Long time horizon

An obstacle for Cat bonds has been their limited maturity of 3-5 years, after which they fall due and the risks revert back to the insurance companies. One reason for this is that risk-averse investors have been reluctant to commit funds to longer terms than that, partly as the combined Trigger event risk rises very high; the 30-year likelihood of at least one Magnitude 6 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area is estimated at 98% . By emphasizing longer terms , CW Cat Non-Profit can induce market participant to expand bond durations.

2) Much lower required rate of return

Climate Warriors are excessively concerned with future generations , and losses — in contrast to regular investors — are to be welcomed as a needed redistribution from well-off donors to those literally affected by climate change. They therefore have much lower risk premia and, not running a for-profit, consequently require much lower rates of return for holding climate risk.

3) No Liquidity premium

As long-term investors, not primarily set on earning money for themselves, CW Cat Non-Profit does not value the option of withdrawing the assets for consumption needs, i.e., places no particular price on the liquidity of the Cat instrument. As is the case today, the Cat market is still immensely small and not as liquid as many other financial markets. For ordinary investors, this kind of investment therefore demands a liquidity premium, a higher-than-otherwise interest rate. Not for CW Cat Non-Profit, and they thereby become a better client for bond originators, as CW Cat Non-Profit is willing to take on more risk for less cost.

4) Recycled return

Since the CW Cat Non-Profit has no interest in earning investment return for itself, the revenue streams generated can be fruitfully invested in social projects or infrastructure improvements — or simply re-distributed to those without insurance policies that the organization finds worthy. Indeed, should it become a large enough player on the global Cat market they can likely offer premium reductions in exchange for payouts to refugees of climate change, contingent on, say, UN status.

For Climate Warriors, the defeat of the Green New Deal should not be gloomed over, as it offers its proponents the ability to put their money where their mouths are and start alleviating climate change damages. Provided, that is, that they can overcome their hostility to financial markets.



Matt Bracken gives his take on the social media unpersoning epidemic sweeping across the internet.

Source: InfoWars

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Amazon Japan raises Prime membership fee for first time in 11 years

FILE PHOTO: File photo of Amazon.com's logo at Amazon Japan's office building in Tokyo
FILE PHOTO: Amazon.com's logo is seen at Amazon Japan's office building in Tokyo, Japan, August 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo

April 12, 2019

TOKYO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s Japanese unit raised the membership fee for its Prime service by 26 percent on Friday, the first such hike since it was launched in the country 11 years ago.

The new annual Prime membership fee is 4,900 yen ($43.86) versus 3,900 yen previously, Amazon said in a statement. The e-commerce giant did not provide a reason, but pointed to the growing number of services available to members.

Prime membership fees in Japan are far below the $119 annual fee in the United States, helping attract Japan’s thrifty consumers. The e-commerce giant has grown rapidly in Japan, exerting pressure on home-grown players like Rakuten.

While some companies are moving to hike prices in low inflation Japan due to rising labor and shipping costs, they risk being shunned by frugal consumers.

(Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Source: OANN

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Facebook Removes Page Of Ecuador’s Former President On Same Day As Assange’s Arrest

Facebook has unpublished the page of Ecuador’s former president, Rafael Correa, the social media giant confirmed on Thursday, claiming that the popular leftist leader violated the company’s security policies.

In a statement republished by Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio, a company spokesperson said:

“Protecting the privacy and security of people is central to Facebook [and] we have clear policies that do not allow the disclosure of personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, bank account data, cards, or any record or data that could compromise the integrity physical or financial of the people in our community.”

The move comes on the same day that Ecuador’s government allowed British security personnel to enter their embassy in London to arrest journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been sought by U.S. officials for years due to his role in releasing scandalous information implicating Washington in a range of crimes, including war crimes.

Assange, 47, had been living at the Embassy of Ecuador in London since 2012, when then-President Correa granted political asylum to the Australian amid the British government’s attempts to detain him. At the time, Correa called Eduador’s actions an act of sovereign “duty.”

Ecuador’s current leader, Lenin Moreno, was openly opposed to Assange, whom he referred to on various occasions as a “miserable hacker,” an “irritant,” and a “stone in the shoe” of his government. Moreno’s distancing from the asylee came following a 2017 meeting with Trump campaign confidant and political “fixer” Paul Manafort, where the two discussed Ecuador’s handover of Assange to U.K. and U.S. authorities.

In March, WikiLeaks published a tranche of documents dubbed the INA Papers linking President Lenin Moreno to the INA Investment Corporation, an offshore shell company used by Moreno to procure furniture, property, and various luxury items.

The account number for the offshore account allegedly used by the president to launder money was shared across Ecuadorean social networks by netizens of all political stripes, including by Correa – who had about 1.5 million followers and whose Facebook page enjoyed more interactions and attention than that of President Moreno himself.

The account number was also shared alongside personal photos of President Moreno enjoying lavish breakfasts and dinners of lobster—imagery considered especially damning for the people of Ecuador given Moreno’s previous boasting of an austere poverty diet consisting of eggs and white rice.

It also came amid attempts by the neoliberal Ecuadorean government to curry favor with financiers in Europe and the United States amid the continuing debt crisis. In March, the IMF finally bailed out Moreno’s government to the tune of $4.2 billion.

Prior to the removal of the page, Correa lambasted his successor in a series of posts that still remain on Twitter at the time of this writing.

Since 2015, Correa—who lives with his family in Brussels, Belgium—had used the social platform to great effect, using strongly-worded posts, video interviews, and live-streams as a platform amid the Ecuadorean media’s de facto blackout of the former leader, who remains reviled by the center-right former opposition and sections of the country’s left.

Former President Correa minced no words in his assessment of Moreno, denouncing him in an English-language tweet as “the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history … Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget.”

In a separate tweet responding to Moreno’s announcement of the handover, Correa further tore into what he called “one of the most atrocious acts [and the] fruit of servility, villainy and revenge.”

“From now on worldwide, the scoundrel and betrayal can be summarized in two words: Lenin Moreno,” the popular former president added.

The removal of Correa’s page for violating Facebook’s “community standards” is an unprecedented move, and the former statesman is the most high-profile public political figure to ever be removed from the social platform–placing the economist and icon of Latin American “socialism of the 21st century” in the same unlikely category as right-wing conspiracy theorist and broadcaster Alex Jones.



Matt Bracken gives his take on the social media unpersoning epidemic sweeping across the internet.

Source: InfoWars

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Rep. John Garamendi: Trump can tackle immigration crisis by providing funding in Central America

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., has called on President Trump to provide more funding in key areas to help solve the illegal immigration problem at the southern border.

During an appearance on "America's Newsroom" on Wednesday, Garamendi argued that there are a number of solutions that can be undertaken to lessen the strain of illegal immigrants on America's resources, but the president has resisted implementing them.

Many Democrats, including Garamendi, believe one way to tackle the issue is to establish facilities in Central American countries where large numbers of immigrants are fleeing from, in order to process immigration and asylum claims before individuals reach the United States border, crossing illegally or facing months in detention while awaiting asylum trials.

"Legal ports of entry are understaffed - they don't have the facilities to handle the people. Everybody knows we need more judges so these cases don't linger for years and years. We know we need to have facilities to handle the people that are arrested," Garamendi said Wednesday.

REP. PETER KING: KEEPING ASYLUM-SEEKERS IN CUSTODY UNTIL HEARINGS IS WHAT 'HAS TO BE DONE'

DEPORTED ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT WHOSE SPOUSE IS A FALLEN US SOLDIER ALLOWED REENTRY INTO US

"There was a proposal that we enhance and build in those countries facilities to pre-judge or to pre-appoint people who want to leave those countries. The president, I think, has made a mistake by withholding funding in the triangle countries of Central America. Those programs can over time diminish the reason why people leave those countries," he continued.

In response to an earlier Tuesday appearance by Rep, Peter King, R-N.Y., who said Democrats have repeatedly shut down attempts to reach common ground, Garamendi argued the claim is simply untrue.

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"Last year, the Democrats proposed a major amount of money for border fencing and increasing the various ports of entry, providing new judges, all of those - ultimately the president rejected and we wound up with the shutdown," he said.

He and Rep. King have at least one opinion on immigration in common - both sides of the aisle need to work together to find compromises to solve the problem.

"What we need to do is work together - and we can," he concluded.

Source: Fox News Politics

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DNC Creates New Rule to Ban Bernie Sanders from Being Democrat Nominee

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A new rule adopted by the Democratic National Committee may block Bernie Sanders and other political outsiders from seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination in the 2020 presidential election.

Randi Weingarten, a member of the DNC and president of the American Federation of Teachers, posted a photo of the rule change on Twitter saying that the rules and bylaws committee had “changed the rules to ensure to run for President as a Democrat you need to be a Democrat.”

In order to seek the party’s nomination, a candidate must publicly announce that they are a registered Democrat, will accept the Democratic nomination, and will “run and serve” as a member of the Democratic Party.

This rule seems to be in direct response to Bernie Sanders, the independent Senator from Vermont who fiercely battled Hillary Clinton in a surprisingly close primary race in 2016. Running on a platform of universal health care and free college for all Americans, Sanders gained popularity, especially among young voters.

Sanders received 43 percent of the delegates votes at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 after a heated battle in which he initially refused to bow to some establishment Democrats’ calls to throw in the towel. 

Currently, Sanders is running for re-election to the United States Senate in Vermont. His campaign strategy will be the same as his previous two Senate races, which includes running as a Democrat, declining the party’s nomination when he wins a majority of the votes and then running as an independent instead. This strategy allows Sanders to get rid of any possible threats by blocking any other liberal candidate from getting the approval of the Democratic Party.

But the DNC’s proposed rule change would not allow Sanders to do the same in 2020.

While Sanders has not said anything concrete about running for president again in two years, his 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weavers hinted at the possibility during an interview with C-SPAN host John McArdle in May.

“He is considering another run for the presidency and when the time comes I think we’ll have an answer for that. But right now he’s still considering it,” Weavers said.

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FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier is taken to North Korea's top court in Pyongyang North Korea
FILE PHOTO – Otto Frederick Warmbier (C), a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea since early January, is taken to North Korea’s top court in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo March 16, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo/File Photo

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States did not pay any money to North Korea as it sought the release of comatose American student Otto Warmbier.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump had approved payment of a $2 million bill from North Korea to cover its care of the college student, who died shortly after he was returned to the United States after 17 months in a North Korean prison.

(Reporting by Makini Brice and Susan Heavey)

Source: OANN

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Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London
Members of The Cranberries, bassist Mike Hogan, drummer Fergal Lawler and guitarist Noel Hogan speak to Reuters during an interview in London, Britain, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Gerhard Mey

April 26, 2019

By Hanna Rantala

LONDON (Reuters) – Irish rockers The Cranberries are saying goodbye with their final album released on Friday, a poignant tribute to lead singer Dolores O’Riordan who died last year.

“In the End” is the eighth studio album from the band that rose to fame in the early 1990s with hits likes “Zombie” and “Linger”, and includes the final recordings by O’Riordan, who drowned in a London hotel bath in January 2018 due to alcohol intoxication.

Work on the album began during a 2017 tour and by that winter, O’Riordan and guitarist Neil Hogan had penned and demoed 11 tracks.

With O’Riordan’s vocals recorded, Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler completed the album in tribute to her.

“When we realized how strong the songs were, that was the deciding factor really… There was no point… trying to ruin the legacy of the band,” Noel Hogan said in an interview.

“It was obvious that Dolores wanted this album done because when you hear the album, you hear the songs and how strong they are, and she was very, very excited to get in and record this.”

The Cranberries formed in Limerick in 1989 with another singer. O’Riordan replaced him a year later and the group went on to become Ireland’s best-selling rock band after U2, selling more than 40 million records.

O’Riordan, known for her strong distinctive voice singing about relationships or political violence, was 46 when she died.

“She was actually in quite a good place mentally. She was feeling quite content and strong and looking forward to a new phase of her life,” Lawler said.

“A lot of the lyrics in this album are about things ending… people might read into it differently but it was a phase of her personal life that she was talking about.”

The group previously announced their intention to split after the release of “In The End”.

“We are absolutely gutted we can’t play (the songs) live because that’s something that’s been a massive part of this band from day one,” Noel Hogan said.

“A few people have said to us about maybe even doing a one off where you have different vocalists… as kind of guests of ours. A year ago that’s definitely something we weren’t going to entertain but I don’t know, I think it’s something we need to go away and take time off for the summer and have a think about.”

Critics have generally given positive reviews of the album; NME described it as “(seeing) the band’s career go full-circle” while the Irish Times called it “an unexpected late career high and a remarkable swan song for O’Riordan”.

Their early songs still play on the radio. This week, “Dreams” was performed at the funeral of journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead in Londonderry last week as she watched Irish nationalist youths attack police following a raid.

“We wrote them as kids, as a hobby and 30 years later they are on radio and on TV, like all the time… That’s far more than any of us ever thought we would have,” Noel Hogan said.

“That would make Dolores really happy because she was very precious about those songs. Her babies, she called them and to have that hopefully long after we’re gone… that’s all any band can wish for.”

(Reporting by Hanna Rantala; additoinal reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source: OANN

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2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston, Texas, U.S. April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

April 26, 2019

By Joshua Schneyer and M.B. Pell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce a bill Friday that offers new protections for U.S. military families facing unsafe housing, following a series of Reuters reports revealing squalid conditions in privately managed base homes.

The Reuters reports and later Congressional hearings detailed widespread hazards including lead paint exposure, vermin infestations, collapsing ceilings, mold and maintenance lapses in privatized base housing communities that serve some 700,000 U.S. military family members.

(View Warren’s military housing bill here. https://tmsnrt.rs/2Dy5aht)

(Read Reuters’ Ambushed at Home series on military housing here. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/section/usa-military)

The Massachusetts Democrat’s bill would mandate both regular and unannounced spot inspections of base homes by certified, independent inspectors, holding landlords accountable for quickly fixing hazards. The military’s privatization program for years allowed real estate firms to operate base housing with scant oversight, Reuters found, leaving some tenants in unsafe homes with little recourse against landlords.

The bill would also require the Department of Defense and its private housing operators to publish reports annually detailing housing conditions, tenant complaints, maintenance response times and the financial incentives companies receive at each base. The provisions aim to enhance transparency of housing deals whose finances and operations the military had allowed to remain largely confidential under a privatization program since the late 1990s.

The measure would also require private landlords to cover moving costs for at-risk families, and healthcare costs for people with medical conditions resulting from unsafe base housing, ensuring they receive continuing coverage even after they leave the homes or the military.

“This bill will eliminate the kind of corner-cutting and neglect the Defense Department should never have let these private housing partners get away with in the first place,” Warren said in a statement Friday.

The proposed legislation comes after February Senate hearings where Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, slammed private real estate firms for endangering service families, and sought answers about why military branches weren’t providing more oversight.

Her legislation would direct the Defense Department to allow local housing code enforcers onto federal bases, following concerns they were sometimes denied access. Warren’s office said a companion bill in the House of Representatives would be introduced by Rep. Deb Haaland, Democrat of New Mexico.

In response to the housing crisis, military branches are developing a tenant bill of rights and hiring hundreds of new housing staff. The branches recently dispatched commanders to survey base housing worldwide for safety hazards, resulting in thousands of work orders and hundreds of tenants being moved. The Defense Department has pledged to renegotiate its 50-year contracts with private real estate firms.

Congress has been quick to take its own measures. Earlier legislation proposed by senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, would compel base commanders to withhold rent payments and incentive fees from the private ventures if they allow home hazards to persist.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London
FILE PHOTO: Offices of Deloitte are seen in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar

(Reuters) – Deloitte quit as Ferrexpo’s auditor on Friday, knocking its shares by more than 20 percent, days after saying it was unable to conclude whether the iron ore miner’s CEO controlled a charity being investigated over its use of company donations.

Blooming Land, which coordinates Ferrexpo’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, came under scrutiny after auditors found holes in the charity’s statements.

Ferrexpo on Tuesday said findings of an ongoing independent investigation launched in February indicated some Blooming Land funds could have been “misappropriated”. It did not provide any details or publish its findings.

Shares in Ferrexpo, the third largest exporter of pellets to the global steel industry, were 23.4 percent lower at 206.1 pence at 1022 GMT following news of Deloitte’s resignation.

“Ferrexpo’s shares are deeply discounted vs peers … following the resignation of Deloitte, we expect downside risks to dominate Ferrexpo’s shares near term.” JP Morgan analyst Dominic O’Kane said in a note on Friday.

Swiss-headquartered Ferrexpo did not provide a reason for the resignation of Deloitte, which declined to comment, while Blooming Land did not respond to a request for comment.

Funding for Blooming Land’s CSR activities is provided by one of Ferrexpo’s units in Ukraine and Khimreaktiv LLC, an entity ultimately controlled by Ferrexpo’s CEO and majority owner Kostyantin Zhevago, Ferrexpo said on Tuesday.

Ferrexpo’s board has found that Zhevago did not have significant influence or control over the charity, but Deloitte said it was unable reach a conclusion on this.

Reuters was not immediately able to contact Zhevago.

In a qualified opinion, a statement addressing an incomplete audit, Deloitte said it had been unable to conclude whether $33.5 million of CSR donations to Blooming Land between 2017 and 2018 was used for “legitimate business payments for charitable purposes”.

Deloitte said on Tuesday that total CSR payments made to Blooming Land by Ferrexpo since 2013 total about $110 million.

Ferrexpo, whose major mines are in Ukraine, has said that the investigation was ongoing and new evidence pointed to potential discrepancies.

Zhevago, 45, who ranked 1,511 on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires for 2019 with a net worth of $1.4 billion, owns the FC Vorskla soccer club and has been a member of Ukraine’s parliament since 1998.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Tanishaa Nadkar in Bengaluru and additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev; editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Bernard Orr)

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Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba
Children walk past a damaged building in the aftermath of the Cyclone Kenneth in Pemba, Mozambique April 26, 2019 in this still image obtained from social media. SolidarMed via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

April 26, 2019

By Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer

JOHANNESBURG/LUANDA (Reuters) – Cyclone Kenneth killed at least one person and left a trail of destruction in northern Mozambique, destroying houses, ripping up trees and knocking out power, authorities said on Friday.

The cyclone brought storm surges and wind gusts of up to 280 km per hour (174 mph) when it made landfall on Thursday evening, after killing three people in the island nation of Comoros.

It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Mozambique’s northern coast and came just six weeks after Cyclone Idai battered the impoverished nation, causing devastating floods and killing more than 1,000 people across a swathe of southern Africa.

The World Food Programme warned that Kenneth could dump as much as 600 millimeters of rain on the region over the next 10 days – twice that brought by Cyclone Idai.

One woman in the port town of Pemba died after being hit by a falling tree, the Emergency Operations Committee for Cabo Delgado (COE) said in a statement, while another person was injured.

In rural areas outside Pemba, many homes are made of mud. In the main town on the island of Ibo, 90 percent of the houses were destroyed, officials said. Around 15,000 people were out in the open or in “overcrowded” shelters and there was a need for tents, food and water, they said.

There were also reports of a large number of homes and some infrastructure destroyed in Macomia district, a mainland district adjacent to Ibo.

A local group, the Friends of Pemba Association, had earlier reported that they could not reach people in Muidumbe, a district further inland.

Mark Lowcock, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned the storm could require another major humanitarian operation in Mozambique.

“Cyclone Kenneth marks the first time two cyclones have made landfall in Mozambique during the same season, further stressing the government’s limited resources,” he said in a statement.

FLOOD WARNINGS

Shaquila Alberto, owner of the beach-front Messano Flower Lodge in Macomia, said there were many fallen trees there, and in rural areas people’s homes had been damaged. Some areas of nearby Pemba had no power.

“Even my workers, they said the roof and all the things fell down,” she said by phone.

Further south, in Pemba, Elton Ernesto, a receptionist at Raphael’s Hotel, said there were fallen trees but not too much damage. The hotel had power and water, he said, while phones rang in the background. “The rain has stopped,” he added.

However Michael Charles, an official for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said heavy rains over the next few days were likely to bring a “second wave of destruction” in the form of flooding.

“The houses are not all solid, and the topography is very sandy,” Charles said.

In the days after Cyclone Idai, heavy inland rains prompted rivers to burst their banks, submerging entire villages, cutting areas off from aid and ruining crops. There were concerns the same could happen again in northern Mozambique.

Before Kenneth hit, the government and aid workers moved around 30,000 people to safer buildings such as schools, however authorities said that around 680,000 people were in the path of the storm.

(Reporting by Emma Rumney and Stephen Eisenhammer; Writing by Emma Rumney; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Alexandra Zavis)

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