JERUSALEM – An Israeli shot and killed a Palestinian who he said tried to attack him with a knife near the West Bank city of Nablus.
A Nablus hospital says another Palestinian was moderately wounded in Wednesday's shooting.
The Israeli military says an Israeli civilian shot a Palestinian who attempted to carry out a stabbing. Israel's Beilinson hospital says the Palestinian later died of his wounds.
The Israeli man told local media the Palestinian "jumped on the car with a knife and tried to open the door."
Since 2015, Palestinians have killed over 50 Israelis in West Bank stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks. Israeli forces have killed over 260 Palestinians in that same period. Israel says most were attackers, but clashes between protesters and soldiers have also turned deadly.
FILE PHOT: Apr 6, 2019; Augusta, GA, USA; Jennifer Kupcho of Westminster, Colo. plays her tee shot on the 13th hole during the final round of the Augusta National Women's Amateur golf tournament at Augusta National GC. Mandatory Credit: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports
April 14, 2019
By Amy Tennery
AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) – More than a week since Jennifer Kupcho hoisted the trophy as the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur winner, the impact of that moment, once unthinkable to the club’s old male guard, still reverberated through the hallowed home of the Masters.
“A few guys would turn in their grave because a lot of them stood up in front of these guys and said, ‘I will never allow a woman to be a member’,” recalled the three-times Masters champion Gary Player.
“So they will be watching that, from wherever they are.”
For years, controversy swirled around the club over its long-standing tradition of not admitting women as members, drawing outrage from women’s groups as its leadership remained adamantly opposed to permitting a female presence until 2012.
The inaugural Women’s Amateur championship marked another major breakthrough at Augusta National, with its long-standing reputation as a haven for rich, white, well-connected men.
For advocates of women’s sports, it was more than just a welcome addition to Masters week.
“I think that what’s so important is it’s just moving the needle,” said Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Deborah Antoine. “The pride of going down Magnolia Lane and standing where legends have stood and for the first time making this about women.”
On the third day of the men’s competition on Saturday, Masters patrons said they welcomed the change and noticed a shift in gender balance among the crowd at Augusta National, even days after the women’s competition had ended.
Vickie Newell and Pam Bryant, of Clemens, South Carolina, who have attended roughly a dozen Masters, joked that Augusta National was the only place where the line for the men’s restroom was longer than that of the women’s.
“I think that [the women’s tournament] will make a difference,” said Bryant, who believes it will have an impact on the sport beyond Augusta.
“Who knows? Maybe even [women] being in the Masters is next,” Bryant said.
“Obviously the women need the same opportunities as the men,” said Charles Breithaupt, who, like other golf patrons at Augusta, felt a women’s Masters was in reach.
“The people at Augusta National Golf Club are looking at … diversifying opportunities.”
“I think it will happen,” added Rick Cornutt, who traveled from the Memphis area in Tennessee to attend the Masters. “The women’s game has made great strides.
“There are a lot more women here this year.”
Following Kupcho’s landmark feat as the first woman ever to win at Augusta, questions over when the Masters will see a women’s professional competition lingered.
And supporters of a women’s Masters may well have to wait as Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley tossed cold water on the idea, saying that the club was not planning to introduce a women’s professional event.
But regrets? Perhaps Augusta National’s had a few.
“I think that everyone, no matter what the issue is, you know, we can always look back and say we could do better. No question,” acknowledged Ridley.
“It’s always instructive to look at the past.”
(Reporting By Amy Tennery; Editing by Ian Chadband)
The Green New Deal proposal championed by Democrats comes with a price tag of approximately $93 TRILLION dollars, according to a think tank’s analysis.
But just how much is $93,000,000,000,000?
Here are some figures to put the socialist pipe dreams’ incomprehensible cost in perspective.
– The entire U.S. GDP in 2017 was $20 trillion.
– The entire GLOBAL GDP in 2016 was about $75 trillion.
– If the Green New Deal’s cost was distributed evenly among America’s 326 million people, it would cost approximately $285,276.00 per person in the U.S.
– If evenly distributed among the world’s population of 7.5 billion, the proposal would cost $12,400.00 for every man, woman and child on Earth.
– If you were to convert $1 into 1 second, the Green New Deal would translate to a span of 2,790,000 years.
– If you were to convert $1 into 1 millimeter, the Green New Deal would translate to 93 million miles (you could circle the Earth 2,325 times).
Here’s a visual representation to make the staggering cost even more comprehensive:
This graphic depicts $100 million as a pallet comprised of $100 bills.
Here is what $1 billion would look like:
And this is what $1 TRILLION looks like (note the pallets are DOUBLE stacked):
Now multiply that by 93 and you’ll start to understand the gargantuan scale of the Green New Deal.
“The Green New Deal is clearly very expensive,” concluded the American Action Forum. “It’s further expansion of the federal government’s role in some of the most basic decisions of daily life, however, would likely have a more lasting and damaging impact than its enormous price tag.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted a video on Instagram in which she said it’s logical for this generation to reconsider having children because of climate change affecting the globe. Alex exposes this eugenics talking point now going mainstream.
President Trump would have been indicted by Special Counsel Mueller for obstruction of justice if he wasn’t President of the United States, according to Hillary Clinton.
“I think there is enough there that any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted,” she said during the Time 100 conference on Tuesday.
“But because of the rule in the Justice Department that you can’t indict a sitting president, the whole matter of obstruction was very directly sent to the Congress.”
Clinton went on to say that the Mueller report was only “the beginning,” because the Democrats in Congress are planning more investigations.
“I’m really of the mind that the Mueller report is part of the beginning,” she said. “It’s not the end. Because there’s still so much more that we should know and that we should act upon…And we’re a long way from knowing because we need to get the full report — the unredacted version.”
“If at that point they believe high crimes and misdemeanors have been committed, then I think it is the obligation of the Congress to put forward articles of impeachment,” she added.
The former First Lady’s reaction to Mueller’s “no collusion” findings is unsurprising given Trump’s remarks about investigating the investigators.
“Only high crimes and misdemeanors can lead to impeachment. There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach,” he tweeted Monday.
“It was the Democrats that committed the crimes, not your Republican President! Tables are finally turning on the Witch Hunt!”
Only high crimes and misdemeanors can lead to impeachment. There were no crimes by me (No Collusion, No Obstruction), so you can’t impeach. It was the Democrats that committed the crimes, not your Republican President! Tables are finally turning on the Witch Hunt!
Ambulances transporting injured German tourists involved in a bus accident, arrive at a German Air Force medical airplane at Cristiano Ronaldo Airport in Funchal, on the island of Madeira, Portugal April 20, 2019. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante
April 20, 2019
CANICO, Portugal (Reuters) – An air force medical plane from Germany landed on the Portuguese island of Madeira on Saturday to take home the injured survivors of a bus crash that killed 29 German tourists earlier this week.
The bus veered off a steep road in the coastal town of Canico on Wednesday. The Portuguese driver and tour guide were among the 27 people hurt in the accident, which prosecutors are investigating.
Eleven of the injured Germans have already been discharged from hospital and 12 will be flown home on the medical plane on Saturday. Another was transferred to Germany on Friday and one will stay in hospital in Funchal, Madeira’s capital, a hospital spokesman said.
The driver and tour guide will also remain under observation in hospital, the spokesman added.
Images taken by Reuters photographers on Saturday showed some of the injured being carried inside the plane on stretchers.
The company that owned the bus said it was cooperating with authorities investigating the crash, which killed 17 women and 12 men. Many of them were pensioners, German newspaper Bild reported.
Autopsies and post-mortem examinations have been concluded, Portugal’s Justice Ministry said in a statement and authorities are waiting for data including fingerprints and dental records in order to confirm the victims’ identities.
(Reporting by Rafael Marchante and Miguel Pereira in Canico and Catarina Demony in Lisbon; Editing by Helen Popper)
LIMA, Peru – Prosecutors in Peru are asking a judge to keep former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski behind bars as he is investigated for suspected money laundering related to Latin America's biggest graft scandal.
Deputy prosecutor Hernan Mendoza made the request Monday morning, saying the former Wall Street banker should remain detained as investigators probe his alleged illegal activity as a minister over a decade ago.
Kuczynski resigned last year after opposition lawmakers revealed his private consulting firm had received $782,000 in previously undisclosed payments from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
Odebrecht has admitted to paying nearly $800 million in bribes to secure lucrative public works contracts throughout Latin America.
Kuczynski has denied any wrongdoing.
He is currently being held for 10 days as prosecutors probe alleged money laundering related to two infrastructure projects.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna speaks about the Bangladeshi suspect in Monday’s attempted suicide bombing in New York during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 12, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
March 12, 2019
By Yeganeh Torbati and Mica Rosenberg
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. immigration agency plans to significantly reduce its presence abroad, according to an internal e-mail seen by Reuters and current and former U.S. officials, in an effort to shift resources to domestic offices that took some career officials by surprise.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, currently operates 23 offices overseas, scattered across Latin America, Europe and Asia, according to the agency’s website.
The move comes as the Trump administration has worked in the past two years to limit both legal and illegal immigration with cuts to the U.S. refugee program and USCIS stepping up vetting of visa applications.
The USCIS offices carry out a number of services, including helping Americans who want to bring relatives to the United States, processing refugee applications, enabling overseas citizenship applications and assisting U.S. citizens who want to adopt foreign children, the website says. USCIS officers abroad also look for fraud in visa applications and provide technical immigration advice to other U.S. government officials.
On Monday, senior USCIS officials told employees within the agency’s Refugee Asylum and International Operations division that the agency had decided to close its overseas posts, one current and one former official said. The closures will happen over the next year and some of the offices’ tasks likely will be shifted to the State Department, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
USCIS Director Francis Cissna sent a message on Tuesday to all agency employees saying the agency is preparing for discussions that would lead to shifting much of its international workload to its U.S. offices for domestic processing, as well as to U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.
“Change can be difficult and can cause consternation,” Cissna wrote, but he said that the agency was committed to implementing “as smooth a transition as possible.”
In places where USCIS does not have overseas posts, the State Department already carries out some of its duties, such as replacing green cards for American permanent residents who have lost theirs.
“As we have internally shared, USCIS is in preliminary discussions to consider shifting its international USCIS office workloads to USCIS domestic offices in the United States and, where practicable, to U.S. embassies and consulates abroad,” agency spokeswoman Jessica Collins said in an e-mail to Reuters.
“The goal of any such shift would be to maximize USCIS resources that could then be reallocated, in part, to backlog reduction efforts,” she said.
The agency would work closely with the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security “to ensure no interruption in the provision of immigration services to affected applicants and petitioners,” Collins said.
One of the responsibilities of the overseas offices is to help process refugee applications. But the Trump administration’s reduction of refugee admissions has reduced that part of the offices’ workload.
The administration also has put in place new barriers for asylum seekers, barring citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States, and pushing new rules that would make it harder for low-income people to become permanent American residents.
USCIS has in the past decided to close individual offices based on demand for its services. The agency previously announced that its Moscow field office will permanently close at the end of March, citing a “significant decrease in workload.”
But the closure of all overseas USCIS offices represent a shift in the agency’s operations and came as a surprise to some employees.
Leon Rodriguez, the former USCIS director during the Obama administration, said the shift may have been aimed at cutting costs.
“Symbolically it is retreating from an international presence,” Rodriguez said. “That’s the message we have been sending.”
However, he said, “There is nothing that will go undone. There are certain things that will now be able to do in the U.S. and other things that will now be delegated out the consulates.”
(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Trott)
FILE PHOTO: The Credit Suisse logo is pictured on a bank in Geneva, Switzerland, October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
April 26, 2019
ZURICH (Reuters) – Shareholders approved Credit Suisse’s 2018 compensation report with an 82 percent majority on Friday, overriding frustrations expressed at its annual general meeting over jumps in executive pay during a year its share price plummeted.
Three shareholder advisers had recommended investors vote against Switzerland’s second-biggest bank’s remuneration report, while a fourth backed the report but expressed reservations about whether management pay matched performance.
The approval marked a slight increase over the 80.8 percent support garnered for the bank’s 2017 compensation report.
(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Michael Shields)
FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the trading floor of Barclays Bank at Canary Wharf in London, Britain December 7, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Simon Jessop and Sinead Cruise
LONDON (Reuters) – Activist investor Edward Bramson is likely to fail in his attempt to get a board seat at Barclays’ annual meeting next week, even though shareholders are dissatisfied with performance of the group’s investment bank.
New York-based Bramson’s Sherborne Investors and the board of the British bank have been sparring for months over Barclays’ strategy.
Bramson wants to scale back Barclays’ investment bank to reduce risk and boost shareholder returns. Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley remains staunchly committed to growing the business out of trouble.
After failing to persuade Staley to change course since he began building a 5.5 percent stake in the bank in March last year, Bramson hopes a board seat will rachet up the pressure.
Both sides have written to shareholders pitching their case and Bramson has courted investors in one-on-one meetings, although none have publicly backed him yet.
Interviews by Reuters with five institutional investors in Barclays suggest Bramson has failed to persuade them.
Sherborne declined to comment.
Mirza Baig, head of investment stewardship at top-40 shareholder Aviva Investors, said Bramson was welcome on the bank’s register but the boardroom was a step too far.
“He has created a lot of value at other businesses, but, generally, when he has come in as executive chair and taken full control. This would be a different case where he would just be one lone voice on the board,” he said.
A second Barclays shareholder said he backed Bramson’s goal of improving returns but via an “evolutionary” approach.
“If you look at banks that have tried to restructure their operations in investment banking – you look at Natwest Markets, Deutsche Bank – I struggle to think of an example where a roughshod restructuring has been accretive to shareholder value.”
A third, top-30 investor said he had been impressed by incoming Chairman Nigel Higgins’ grasp of the challenge in hand, and felt investors would give him time.
“Management know they have to execute and deliver improved returns… [Higgins] will continue to re-shape the board but obviously he didn’t feel that having someone with a diametrically opposed view on it would be helpful.”
A fourth, top-30 investor agreed: “We voted for the chairman to come in and it would be crazy to allow an activist to join the board (at this time).”
Jupiter Fund Management, the 24th largest investor, said it also planned to vote against Bramson.
Barclays has nearly 500 institutional shareholders, Refinitiv data showed.
Since Staley joined Barclays in 2015, the investment bank returns relative to capital invested have increased but are still underperforming the overall business.
Barclays’ first-quarter figures showed the investment bank posted a 6 percent drop in income from its markets business and a 17 percent fall in banking advisory fees.
Returns in the investment bank fell to 9.5 percent from 13.2 percent a year ago.
Famed for successful campaigns against smaller British companies in sectors from chemicals to advertising, Bramson’s board seat pitch has been rebuffed by shareholder advisory firms.
Institutional Shareholder Services, the world’s biggest, said Bramson’s proposal “falls short of what can reasonably be expected from a shareholder trying to address issues at a 28 billion pounds, systemically important bank”.
Glass Lewis also flagged concern about Bramson’s lack of banking experience and “questionable” shareholding structure, referring to Sherborne’s use of derivative contracts to hedge losses should its strategy fail.
Critics said the arrangement meant his interests are not truly aligned with those of other long-term shareholders.
British advisory firm Pirc, however, said it recommended that investors abstain in the vote on Bramson’s proposal as a challenge to the board to do better in the year ahead – or face a similar contest in 2020.
After an over 15-month pregnancy, “Akuti,” a 7-year-old Greater One Horned Indian Rhinoceros, gave birth as a result of induced ovulation and artificial insemination at Zoo Miami, April 23, 2019.
FILE PHOTO: A Chevron gas station sign is seen in Del Mar, California, in this April 25, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – U.S. oil and natural gas producer Chevron Corp reported a 27 percent fall in quarterly earnings on Friday, hit by lower crude prices and weaker margins in its refining and chemicals businesses.
Net income attributable to the company fell to $2.65 billion, or $1.39 per share, for the first quarter ended March 31, from $3.64 billion, or $1.90 per share, a year earlier.
Earlier in the day, larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp reported earnings well below analysts’ estimates, as margins in its refining business were hurt by higher Canadian prices and heavy scheduled maintenance.
(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
FILE PHOTO: The Ford logo is seen at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., January 15, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Ford Motor Co said on Friday the U.S. Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into the automaker’s emissions certification process in the United States.
The potential concern does not involve the use of defeat devices, the company said in a regulatory filing. (https://bit.ly/2VqjHpl)
Ford had voluntarily disclosed the matter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board in February.
(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel)
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