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Boeing says successfully tested new 737 MAX software in CEO flight

FILE PHOTO: Dennis Muilenburg, CEO, Boeing speaks during a roundtable discussion on defense issues with U.S. President Donald Trump at Luke Air Force Base
FILE PHOTO: Dennis Muilenburg, CEO, Boeing speaks during a roundtable discussion on defense issues with U.S. President Donald Trump at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, U.S., October 19, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

April 3, 2019

(Reuters) – Boeing Co said on Wednesday its chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, had joined a test flight on a 737 MAX 7 jetliner for a demonstration of updated MCAS anti-stall software. 

The software is at the center of investigations in the crash of Ethiopian Flight 302 last month and a Lion Air accident in Indonesia five months earlier. Both involved the slightly larger 737 MAX 8 model, which features the same cockpit.

During Wednesday’s test flight, the flight crew performed different scenarios to test failure conditions, Boeing said.

“The software update worked as designed, and the pilots landed safely at Boeing Field (near Seattle),” it said in a statement.

“Boeing will conduct additional test and demo flights as we continue to work to demonstrate that we have identified and appropriately addressed all certification requirements. We will submit the update for FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) review once that work has been completed in the coming weeks.”

(Reporting by Tim Hepher; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Source: OANN

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Fed’s Mester says a rate increase may be needed later this year

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester takes part in a panel convened to speak about the health of the U.S. economy in New York
Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester takes part in a panel convened to speak about the health of the U.S. economy in New York November 18, 2015. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

February 19, 2019

NEWARK, Del. (Reuters) – The Fed may need to raise interest rates this year but could still end a process of trimming its massive bond portfolio before the end of 2019, Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester said on Tuesday.

Mester’s comments, made to reporters following her appearance at an event in Delaware, came after she appeared earlier in the day to support slowing down the process of winding down the Fed’s balance sheet, rather than stopping it altogether.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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NCAA Tournament roundup: Purdue tops Vols in OT

NCAA Basketball: NCAA Tournament-South Regional-Purdue vs Tennessee
Mar 28, 2019; Louisville, KY, United States; Purdue Boilermakers center Matt Haarms (32) defends a shot attempt by Tennessee Volunteers guard Jordan Bone (0) during overtime in the semifinals of the south regional of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at KFC Yum Center. Mandatory Credit: Thomas J. Russo-USA TODAY Sports

March 29, 2019

Ryan Cline exploded to score a career-best 27 points and made seven 3-pointers as Purdue knocked off Tennessee 99-94 in overtime of a South Region semifinal game Thursday night at Louisville, Ky.

Carsen Edwards made five 3-pointers while scoring a game-high 29 points as third-seeded Purdue (26-9) reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2000. Edwards sank 2 of 3 free throws with 1.7 seconds left to send the game to OT.

Matt Haarms and Nojel Eastern added 11 points apiece for the Boilermakers, who advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time in their past five attempts. Purdue will play top-seeded Virginia in Saturday’s regional final, with the winner advancing to the Final Four.

Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield scored 21 points apiece for the second-seeded Volunteers (31-6). Jordan Bowden scored 16 points, Lamonte Turner added 15 and Jordan Bone scored 10.

SOUTH REGION

No. 1 Virginia 53, No. 12 Oregon 49

Ty Jerome recorded 13 points, six rebounds and six assists as the Cavaliers held off the Ducks in a Sweet 16 game at Louisville, Ky.

Kihei Clark scored 12 points and sophomore guard De’Andre Hunter added 11 for Virginia (32-3), which reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the seventh time in school history.

Louis King scored 16 points for Oregon (25-13). Payton Pritchard added 11 points, and Paul White contributed 10 points and three steals for the Ducks, who had a 10-game winning streak halted.

WEST REGION

No. 1 Gonzaga 72, No. 4 Florida State 58

Rui Hachimura scored 17 points, Brandon Clarke had a double-double, and the Bulldogs finished on a big run to turn away the Seminoles in a Sweet 16 game in Anaheim, Calif. Gonzaga will play in the West Region final on Saturday against third-seeded Texas Tech.

Gonzaga (33-3) led by 14 in the first half but had trouble putting away Florida State, which was within 60-56 before Zach Norvell Jr. stemmed the momentum by hitting a key 3-point shot with 3:06 to go.

Clarke helped subdue the Seminoles (29-8) with two free throws with 2:06 left and a dunk with 1:17 to go. He scored 15 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and blocked five shots. Florida State’s Trent Forrest scored 15 of his 20 points after halftime.

No. 3 Texas Tech 63, No. 2 Michigan 44

Jarrett Culver scored 22 points while the Red Raiders smothered the Wolverines in a historic defensive effort at Anaheim, Calif.

Texas Tech (29-6) harassed Michigan into 32.7 percent shooting, including a 1-for-19 effort from 3-point range. The Wolverines set a program record for fewest points in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game (16) and total points.

Davide Moretti contributed 15 points for Texas Tech, which got 10 from Matt Mooney. Tariq Owens had seven points, 10 rebounds and two blocks. Freshman Ignas Brazdeikis led Michigan (30-7) with 17 points and 13 rebounds.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Wells Fargo’s corporate bank struggles to regain footing

A Wells Fargo logo is seen at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto
A Wells Fargo logo is seen at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren

March 27, 2019

By Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co’s corporate bank has a revenue problem.

As its consumer bank begins to see signs of recovery from a sales practices scandal that erupted more than two years ago, the San Francisco-based lender has struggled to expand its customer base in the unit catering to businesses and institutional clients. Revenue in the corporate bank dropped 4 percent last year.

Before the scandal, it was rising 6 percent a year on average. Because it offers better margins, the health of the corporate bank is critical to Wells Fargo; it represents about a third of revenue but roughly half of $22 billion in annual profit.

The bank first told investors in September that while it retained most customers throughout its scandals, it was having a harder time recruiting new clients.

This trend has been even more dramatic with the corporate bank where customers tend to stay put. “It’s been a little bit more challenging for us to bring in new customers,” corporate bank head Perry Pelos told Reuters in a recent interview.

Corporate clients are harder to win in part because commercial banking relations are more complex. Business customers seek cash management services, assistance with importing and exporting transactions, and various forms of credit such as asset-backed loans or revolving lines of credit. These services are usually locked in with multi-year contracts; some clients can only switch providers every five years.

Wells Fargo executives say they are playing the long game, having their teams reach out to prospective clients to build relationships that they hope will pay off down the road.

“I’ve lived through an entire generation of ownership before we won the business,” said Greg O’Brien, the division manager for commercial banking in New England.

REPUTATIONAL PROBLEMS

Last year, executives and analysts identified signs of life in Wells Fargo’s consumer unit for the first time since the 2016 scandal that rocked the bank. Primary checking accounts grew 1.2 percent in 2018, and auto loan originations jumped 9 percent in the most recent quarter.

The corporate bank, however, continues to languish. When business clients consider switching banks, Wells Fargo’s lingering reputational problems make it a harder sell, analysts say. Consumers don’t have to justify their decision to open a new credit card to anyone but themselves, said Autonomos analyst Brian Foran. Decision-makers at companies, such as the treasurer, have to answer to the board and other executives.

“At the margin some of them are going to say, Wells Fargo is very good but so is JPMorgan,” he said. “Right now, no one gets fired for hiring JPMorgan.”

Wells Fargo officials acknowledge the scandals remain a concern with certain customers. “I’ve certainly been in meetings where it comes up,” said O’Brien.

The scandal began with the disclosure the lender had opened unauthorized accounts for consumers. Later Wells Fargo disclosed that corporate bank employees had improperly altered customer information on certain documents. Wells Fargo has racked up billions in fines. Last year the Federal Reserve imposed a punitive asset cap on the bank, preventing it from growing its balance sheet until it improves risk management.

Pelos, the corporate bank chief, has tried to compensate for the declining revenue by slashing costs. But the 3 percent reductions last year weren’t enough to offset the revenue slide. Though 2018 profit increased, the unit became less efficient. A key metric that measures the cost of one dollar of revenue, increased to 56 percent from 55 percent a year earlier.

Wells Fargo has not provided 2019 revenue projections for its corporate bank. “There’s a lot of confidence that they are going to hit their expense targets, but there’s much less confidence that revenue is going to be able to grow as they do that,” Foran, the Automos analyst, said.

Revenue declines are bad for any company, but for Wells Fargo it raises questions about whether the kind of growth it reported before its scandals is achievable with tighter oversight, analysts said. In the past, the corporate bank focused on growing its cross-selling metric, which measured how many products employees hawked to clients, according to filings.

The bank still tracks referrals across different parts of the business today, but the company no longer reports them publicly.

O’Brien, the northeast middle bank head, said the cross-selling system, which led to the creation of the fake accounts in the consumer bank, didn’t cause similar problems in the corporate bank.

“We have never been in the business of creating false needs to sell,” he said.

Corporate bank revenue has also been hurt by the Fed asset cap. The unit no longer carries deposits for central banks, and it has sold off some smaller businesses. In January, Wells Fargo pushed back the timeline for when it expects to get the asset cap lifted by six months.

Executives told Reuters they are being “pleasantly persistent” with prospective corporate clients by pitching them ideas and connecting them with existing clients. So far their efforts have failed to bear much fruit, but executives say they have seen signs that customer acquisition trends are beginning to shift.

As evidence that business was looking up, Wells Fargo pointed to recent transactions it helped advise like Berry Global’s $4.39 billion takeover bid for RPC Group Plc, .

Earlier this month, Wells Fargo also advised its first ever USD global benchmark for the World Bank.

“My expectation is that it’s going to be better,” Pelos said. “Is it going to be back to where it was before? It’s hard to call.”

(Reporting by Imani Moise; Editing by Neal Templin and Paul Thomasch)

Source: OANN

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Small Businesses Are Key In Improving the Lives of Workers

While one often hears a lot of talk about the virtues of “mom and pop” shops (and the evils of “big box” stores) policy makers do remarkably little to encourage the growth and health of small businesses.

While the federal government has created a federal boondoggle ostensibly designed to favor small business — known as the Small Business Administration — only a tiny number of businesses ever benefit from anything the agency does.

Policies Stacked Against Small Businesses

In actual practice, policymakers fawn over large firms, creating special programs for tax breaks and subsidies, as made obvious every time a large firm looks for a new place to put a corporate headquarters. The stated political justification is often that “this business will produce a large number of jobs!” This rationale, however, ignores the fact that if a thousand of the city’s small businesses were given a similar tax break, they would likely produce a comparable number of new jobs. This is conveniently ignored, and policymakers instead choose to favor certain large firms, which in turn makes it harder for small firms to compete.

At the same time, governments at all levels relentlessly hand down ever more regulations and mandates to businesses of all sizes. Yet it is small firms who suffer the most because they have less access to financing, equity, and resources needed to cope with mounting regulatory requirements. Licensing and labor regulations create more pitfalls for small business owners to fall into, while locking many potential business owners out of industries entirely, unless they comply with arbitrary “training” or certification mandates. These mandates can be quite draconian, such as Iowa’s requirement that barbers receive 2,100 hours of training — more training than is required of a paramedic — in order to cut hair.

Other regulations indirectly disadvantage small businesses as well. As finance researcher Karen Petrou noted in the wake of the Great Recession, banking regulations in recent years have made it harder on small businesses:

[C]apital requirements imposed after the banking crisis make it a lot more expensive for banks to do a startup small-business loan than go into wealth management. Startup loans are riskier than wealth management, of course, but the capital costs have become prohibitive, and banks don’t lose money on purpose.

Small Businesses Increase Competition for Workers

It’s at this point that a seasoned reader might expect me to go into a variety of explanations about how the small business economy is important to GDP growth, and to employment growth, and to vague notions of “innovation.”

But that’s not where I want to go with this.

Yes, the small business economy is good for employment and economic development. But small businesses also serve very important social functions, while offering benefits to many workers as well.

The small business economy offers more options for workers who are competing for wage work, while also offering a potential exit from wage work altogether — and entry into sole proprietorship.

In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises  notes that one of the greatest limitations on a worker’s bargaining power with employers is the ability of a firm to exercise monopoly power over hiring. The thing is, this is impossible in a relatively free market. So long as new firms can enter the marketplace, hiring firms will come under pressure from competitors, and thus bid up workers’ wages. As Mises notes, firms must compete with each other for all types of resources, whether building materials, square footage, or financial services. It is no different with workers. Consequently, one of the worst things that can happen to a worker is for governments to create what Mises calls “an institutional restriction of access to entrepreneurship.” If governments act to limit the ease with which new businesses can enter the marketplace and compete with existing firms, this lessens the power of workers. The more firms a worker has to chose from, the better off the worker is. This is, of course, facilitated by a diverse and healthy small business economy.

More Potential Opportunities for All Types of Workers

Benefits for workers also extend to “eccentric” or “niche” workers who might find themselves otherwise relatively unemployable.

After all, large firms often become large firms because they excel at catering to the needs of the most common preferences in the marketplace. Workers who are accustomed to dealing with these mainstream preferences — whether they be along linguistic, cultural, or socio-economic lines — will be a good fit at the large firms. On the other hand, a worker who has poor English-language skills, but who is well versed in in dealing with customers of a certain ethnicity, may find employment far more easy to come by among certain small business owners who cater to a niche, ethnic-enclave, or socio-economic group.

In other words, the existence of numerous small businesses don’t just provide more employment opportunities in the abstract. They often provide more opportunities to workers who have the most trouble in finding employment otherwise.

This is part of the reason why small business ownership has so long been an important part of economic development for ethnic minority groups and for immigrants. Today in the United States, around 25% of U.S. firms are founded by immigrants, and this share rises to above 40% in states like California and NewYork.

And immigrant small business owners are often just part of a growing economy of minority-owned businesses, whether founded by native-born or immigrant owners. According to CNBC:

Business ownership among minorities has been on the rise in recent years. Between 2002 and 2007, minority-owned businesses increased 46 percent, while nonminority-owned businesses grew 10 percent during that same period…

In 2007, Asians owned 1.6 million businesses, African-Americans owned 1.9 million, [and] Hispanics owned 2.3 million.

It’s not a coincidence that many people outside the cultural mainstream are founding their own businesses. Often, these businesses are founded precisely because they provide relatively better job security and flexibility to owners and workers who could not find similarly attractive terms at larger mainstream firms.

Benefits Beyond Money Profits

Economists often debate whether or not the small-business economy is “efficient.” Some have even suggested that small businesses should be regarded as harmful because they use resources that larger firms might be able to more “efficiently” use due to advantages of economy of scale.

This is, of course, a terrible way of looking at small businesses

In addition to the benefits offered workers, small businesses often provide a wide variety of benefits to both owners and consumers in the form of services to the community, and the psychic profits afforded to owners. Unfortunately for small businesses, many of these benefits don’t show up as money profits, and thus economists ignore them.

For example, it is clear that that demonstrated preference of a small business owner is to run a small business even if, in theory, he or she might be able to command a higher wage some other way. It’s not difficult to imagine why this might be. Many small business owners — even if the enterprise does not provide for an especially high income — prefer self-employment to collecting a wage because it offers the sort of flexibility, control, and peace of mind that is not often available to wage earners. While self-employment can often mean long hours, it also often means the proprietor is unlikely to lose all of his income at once, due to being laid off. Even if the business becomes less profitable, the proprietor is not going to walk to his desk one day to find a pink slip. Moreover, if the economy is weak, a business owner can temporarily cut his own wages with more flexibility and ease than he can normally cut the wages of an employee. If times are good, a business owner can temporarily increase his own hours (and income) to take advantage of the sudden increase in demand. For a great many business owners, this sense of control over one’s schedule and career are worth it, even if the full benefits do not show up in any government statistic.

Negative Attitudes Toward Small Business Endure

In spite of all of this, we can expect both policymakers and pundits to largely ignore small businesses and to continue to ignore the high costs imposed on small firms and small entrepreneurs by government regulations.

Some even continue to attack small business owners because they are allegedly not regulated enough.

Last year, for example, the left-wing Jacobin magazine declared that “small businesses are overrated” and that “[w]e shouldn’t fetishize mom and pops. They offer lower wages, skimpier benefits, and inferior labor protections.”

This “analysis” by author Matt Bruenig attempted to make the case that since some government regulations don’t apply to businesses with fewer than 15 employees, this creates a “loophole” through which workers can be oppressed with impunity by small business owners. The ideal economy for Bruenig, it seems, is one in which even the smallest firm must do all the same paperwork and pay the same government mandated benefits as huge corporations.

In real life, of course, this would ensure that few new small firms are ever created at all.

Fortunately, even the center-left Institute for Local Self-Reliance sees the danger in attacking small businesses. As noted by the ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell, small businesses disperse economic resources more evenly throughout a community, and, as Mises noted, they provide more options to employees while creating more competition for large firms. Nor do small firms really pay less, unless we’re talking about highly-paid managerial jobs. Although Bruenig thinks small business should be trashed because they allegedly pay lower wages than large firms, Mitchell writes:

For low- and middle-income workers, there is no wage gap between small and large firms. People in the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution earn about the same working at large firms as they do at small. In other words, the fact that big companies pay more on average is solely a function of the earnings of their highest paid employees.

In fact, this myth that larger firms offer a cornucopia of higher wages for everyone has become widespread across the ideological spectrum. A belief in this trope is partly why Kevin Williamson at National Review last month insisted that government “should do more for big business,” and that big business is getting the short end of the stick thanks to a romanticizing of small business. But in the age of “too big to fail,” the idea that big firms are America’s punching bag is not terribly convincing. Meanwhile, recent efforts by conservatives and leftists to denounce small businesses as overrated is not an encouraging trend.



The conspiracy regarding college admissions has become a perfect example of the greed of the elite and could actually take down Deep State actors in the process.

Source: InfoWars

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Shock Claim: Clinton Team Hatched ‘Blame Russia’ Plan Within 24 Hours Of Loss – Resulted In 675 Day Mueller Investigation

The narrative that eventually spawned the Mueller investigation was concocted in a gloomy room littered with discarded Shake Shack containers in November 2016. 

Even though Hillary Clinton had delivered a concession speech the day before, Clinton and her team were not ready to give up yet, and so they needed a strategy to de-legitimize the election results.  They eventually decided on a plan to “blame Russia” for Hillary’s loss, and that included really pushing a narrative that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians to defeat Clinton.  As this plan was rolled out, this narrative was eagerly embraced by pro-Clinton members of federal law enforcement agencies, and it ultimately resulted in the 675 day Mueller investigation.  Robert Mueller issued nearly 2,800 subpoenas and conducted 500 witness interviews, and in the end he found that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians…

“The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Mueller wrote in the report, according to Barr’s letter, which he sent to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Barr also said that the special counsel, which consisted of 19 lawyers, found no evidence “that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate” conspired or “knowingly coordinated” with Russian efforts to use social media platforms to spread disinformation during the 2016 campaign. Nor did Trump associates conspire with Russians in the efforts to hack Democrats’ emails and disseminate them online.

Of course there wasn’t any collusion, because it was just a made up story by the Clinton campaign team that snowballed out of control.

Needless to say, President Trump is absolutely thrilled by the outcome of the investigation, and now he is calling on law enforcement to “look at the other side”

“It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest it’s a shame that your president had to go through this for – before I even got elected, it began. And it began illegally. And hopefully somebody is gonna look at the other side. This was an illegal takedown that failed, and hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani went even further.  He called for “a full and complete investigation” to figure out where the charges that sparked the Mueller investigation originally came from in the first place…

“There has to be a full and complete investigation, with at least as much enthusiasm as this one, to figure out where did this charge emanate, who started it, who paid for it.”

But we don’t need an investigation to figure this out.

In a book entitled “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign”, two Clinton insiders revealed that the “blame Russia” narrative was invented during a post-election campaign meeting that had been called by John Podesta and Robby Mook

That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.

Obviously they were looking for a way to steal the election from Trump, but that didn’t work.

But the mainstream media and federal law enforcement officials that were sympathetic to Clinton latched on to this narrative really hard, and it ultimately sparked the 675 day Mueller investigation.

This investigation has been an albatross around the neck of the Trump administration from the very beginning, and things probably could have gone very differently over the past two years if the focus had not constantly been on Robert Mueller.

And the damage that has been done to our relationship with Russia will probably never be repaired.  Sadly, it will be a gift that will keep on giving for a long time to come.

Fortunately, some members of Congress are now calling on the operatives that initiated these charges against Trump to be held accountable.  For example, check out what U.S. Representative Devin Nunes is saying

“This is the unravelling of the biggest political scandal in American history…remember, this dates back to late 2015, early 2016 & this began as nothing more/nothing less than a Clinton/Obama operation with a bunch of dirty cops at the FBI & career DOJ officials.” –@DevinNunes

And it is being reported that Nunes is actually ready to make “criminal referrals to AG Barr”

BREAKING:Rep. Devin Nunes says House Intel has evidence Clinton operatives & hi-level FBI & DOJ officials started Trump-Russia investigation in “late 2015/early 2016” & that House GOP will be making criminal referrals to AG Barr for officials who “perpetuated this hoax” for 3+ yrs

It will be extremely interesting to see where all of this goes.

Meanwhile, all over the nation those on the left that had been pinning their hopes on the Mueller investigation are now melting down in unison.  I really like how Susan Duclos made this point in her most recent article

The media meltdown stems from just one thing…. they helped create a narrative on behalf of Democrats after President Trump won the 2016 presidential election. They hammered that narrative, without proof, letting pundits, including a number of former Obama intelligence officials-turned-television talking heads, push conspiracy theories and outright libelous and slanderous allegations against the president, his family and associates, and then they began to believe their own narrative. When Mueller then ended his operation without indicting anyone close to the President for any type of collusion, they were caught flatfooted, and the meltdowns began.

And here is just a sampling of some of the quotes that we are getting from top Democrats…

Maxine Waters: “This is not the end of anything!”

Beto O’Rourke: “It is beyond a shadow of doubt that, once in office, the president of the United States sought to obstruct justice”

Kamala Harris: “I know and will know and do know how to prosecute the case against Donald Trump”

Chris Matthews: “How can they let Trump off the hook?”

In the end, I don’t expect the Democrats to give up.  There are desperate to get rid of Trump, and so they will inevitably start pushing new angles.

But at least the Mueller investigation is now mercifully over, and for that we should all be thankful.

Source: InfoWars

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Finland’s Center Party head to step down after election loss

Finland's outgoing prime minister says he will step down as head of the Center Party, which had one of its worst performances in decades in Sunday parliamentary election.

Juha Sipila tweeted Tuesday "the election result leaves me with no choices," referring to the centrist party's meager 13.8% support and loss of 18 parliamentary seats in Finland's 200-seat legislature.

Sipila is due to step down at an extraordinary party congress on Sept. 7.

He has chaired the Center Party, a major political establishment, since 2012, and been the Nordic country's prime minister since 2015. Sipila continued heading a caretaker government after his three-party coalition resigned in March,

The center-left Social Democratic Party emerged as Finland's largest party with a tight win over the populist Finns Party in the election. Only 0.2 percentage points separate them.

Source: Fox News World

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“Outdated laws” need fixing to deal with the surge in illegal immigrant families crossing the U.S. border with Mexico, a top Border Patrol official said Friday.

Migrant families face no consequences if apprehended trying to cross the border illegally under present law, Border Patrol chief of Operations Brian Hastings claimed during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“We need a change in the current outdated laws that we’re dealing with for this current demographic and this crisis that we have,” he said.

Hastings said as of Thursday there have been 440,000 apprehensions along the southwest border. There were 396,000 apprehensions all of last year.

SOUTHERN BORDER AT ‘BREAKING POINT’ AFTER MORE THAN 76,000 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TRIED CROSSING IN FEBRUARY, OFFICIALS SAY

And those numbers continue to rise, he said.

Historically 70 to 90 percent of apprehensions at the border were quickly returned to Mexico, Hastings said.

Now, 83 percent of those apprehended have come from the Central American northern triangle which includes Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and of those 63 percent are “family units” and children who cannot be returned, he said.

“There are no consequences that we can apply to this group currently,” Hastings said. “We’re overwhelmed. If you look at agents there doing a tremendous job trying to deal with the flow.”

The law dictates children have to be released after 20 days of detention.

FLORIDA SHERIFF ON BORDER CRISIS AFTER MAJOR DRUG BUST: ‘IT MAKES ME ABSOLUTELY CRAZY’

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says that has forced immigration officials to release entire families because “you don’t want to separate families.”

Recently, he said he is drafting legislation that would allow children to be detained for more than 20 days.

Hastings said agents are frustrated with the situation but are doing the best they can with the resources they have.

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“Up to 40 percent of our agents are processing at any given time,” he said. “That should say that in and of itself is pulling from those border security resources.”

Source: Fox News National

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President Trump on Friday blasted liberal billionaire activist Tom Steyer for his continued push to impeach Trump — with Trump claiming Steyer is “trying to remain relevant” and doesn’t have the “guts” to run for the White House himself.

“Weirdo Tom Steyer, who didn’t have the ‘guts’ or money to run for President, is still trying to remain relevant by putting himself on ads begging for impeachment,” the president tweeted. “He doesn’t mention the fact that mine is perhaps the most successful first 2 year presidency in history & NO C OR O! [Collusion or Obstruction]”

TRUMP IMPEACHMENT BACKERS NOT GIVING UP AFTER MUELLER REPORT

Trump and his allies have pointed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report’s conclusions that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign and its decision not to make a conclusion on obstruction of justice as a vindication for the president.

But some Democrats and left-wing activists have pointed to the instances of possible obstruction of justice that the investigation looked into as proof of the need for more investigations or even impeachment proceedings.

ELIZABETH WARREN DOUBLES DOWN ON TRUMP IMPEACHMENT PUSH, SAYS IT’S ‘BIGGER THAN POLITICS’

Steyer has been one of the leaders backing a push to impeach Trump and founded “Need to Impeach” and has kept up that push since the report’s release. He announced on Thursday that he was calling on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to support impeachment proceedings.

On Friday he responded to Trump’s tweet, calling him “angry and scared.”

“I know you want it all to go away. But for the sake of the country you must face your transgressions. Rage away, but that anger doesn’t matter,” he said in a tweet. The truth and the people will prevail.”

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Impeachment hearings have been backed by a number of House Democrats, as well as 2020 presidential hopefuls Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif. However, Pelosi has long been skeptical of impeachment proceedings against Trump.

“I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi told The Washington Post in an interview last month. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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A Florida measure that would ban sanctuary cities is set for a vote Friday in the state’s Senate after clearing its first hurdle earlier this week.

The bill would effectively make it against the law for Florida’s police departments to refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

“The Governor may initiate judicial proceedings in the name of the state against such officers to enforce compliance,” a draft version of the Senate bill reads.

A House version of the bill, which passed by a 69-47 vote Wednesday, adds that non-complying officials could be suspended or removed from office and face fines of up to $5,000 per day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign off on the measure, although it’s not clear which version.

FLORIDA MAY SEND A BIG MESSAGE TO SANCTUARY CITIES

Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando), during a press conference at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, speaks out against bills in the House and Senate that would ban sanctuary cities in the state.

Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando), during a press conference at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, speaks out against bills in the House and Senate that would ban sanctuary cities in the state. (AP)

LAWRENCE JONES: NEEDLES, DRUG USE AND HUMAN WASTE ARE THE NEW NORMAL IN SAN FRANCISCO

Florida is home to 775,000 illegal immigrants out of 10.7 million present in the United States, ranking the state third among all states.

Nine states — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas — already have enacted state laws requiring law enforcement to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Florida doesn’t have sanctuary cities like the ones in California and other states. But Republican lawmakers say a handful of their municipalities — including Orlando and West Palm Beach – are acting as “pseudo-sanctuary” cities, because they prevent law enforcement officials from asking about immigration status when they make arrests.

“There are still people here in the state of Florida, police chiefs that are just refusing to contact ICE, refusing to detain somebody that they know is here illegally,” Florida Republican Rep. Blaise Ingoglia said earlier this month. “So while the actual county municipality doesn’t have an actual adopted policy, they still have people in power within their sheriff’s department or police department that refuse to do it anyway.”

Florida’s Democratic Party has blasted the anti-Sanctuary measures, while the Miami-Dade Police Department says it should be up to federal authorities to handle immigration-related matters.

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“House Republicans today sold out their communities to Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis by passing this xenophobic and discriminatory bill,” the state’s Democratic Party said Wednesday after the House passed their version of the bill. “It’s abhorrent that Republican members who represent immigrant communities are now turning their backs on their constituents and jeopardizing their safety.

“Florida has long stood as a beacon for immigrant communities — and today Republicans did the best they could to destroy that reputation,” they added.

Fox News’ Elina Shirazi contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News National

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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)

Source: OANN

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The Amish population in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County is continuing to grow each year, despite the encroachment of urban sprawl on their communities.

The U.S. Census Bureau says the county added about 2,500 people in 2018. LNP reports that about 1,000 of them were Amish.

Elizabethtown College researchers say Lancaster County’s Amish population reached 33,143 in 2018, up 3.2% from the previous year.

The Amish accounted for about 41% of the county’s overall population growth last year.

Some experts are concerned that a planned 75-acre (30-hectare) housing and commercial project will make it more difficult for the county to accommodate the Amish.

Donald Kraybill, an authority on Amish culture, told Manheim Township commissioners this week that some in the community are worried about the development and the increased traffic it would bring.

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Information from: LNP, http://lancasteronline.com

Source: Fox News National

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