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In pointed terms during an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Obama-era attorney general Eric Holder posed the question to MAGA-chanting Trump supporters: "Exactly when did you think America was great?"
The comments echoed those of Cuomo, who took heavy criticism for remarking last year that America “was never that great.” Together, both off-the-cuff comments amount to stunning statements from public figures who until recently were considered potential presidential candidates. In both cases, the Democrats took shots at America's past as part of an effort to criticize President Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan.
After speaking during Wednesday's MSNBC interview with Holder on topics like criminal justice reform and partisan redistricting – which the ex-AG says is now his focus instead of running for the White House in 2020 – host Ari Melber had asked him: “There is a lot of talk about America being a leader as a democracy, quote unquote, in the 1800s when women and African-Americans couldn’t vote. What kind of democracy is that?”
Holder, unprovoked, then used his answer to tear into Trump's campaign rally cry.
I hear these things about 'let’s make America great again' and I think to myself, exactly ‘when did you think America was great’?
— Former Attorney General Eric Holder on MSNBC's "The Beat with Ari Melber"
"That's exactly right. And that's what I hear these things about 'let’s make America great again' and I think to myself, ‘exactly when did you think America was great’?” he said on the show.
“It certainly wasn’t when people were enslaved. It certainly wasn’t when women didn’t have the right to vote. It certainly wasn’t when the LGBT community was denied the rights to which it was entitled."
Melber then asked Holder if he believes Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan had discriminatory undertones.
“Does that phrase echo as discrimination in your ears?” the MSNBC host asked.
“It takes us back to what I think, an American past that never in fact really existed. This notion of greatness,” Holder replied.
“You know, America has done superb things. It has done great things. And it has been a leader in you know, a whole range of things. But we are always a work in process and … looking back, ‘Make America Great Again’ is inconsistent with who we are as Americans at our best where we look at the uncertain future, embrace it and make it our own.”
Holder’s comments Wednesday echo remarks made by Cuomo last year in which he drew gasps and chuckles from an audience by declaring that America “was never that great.”
“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said during a bill signing event in New York last August. “We have not reached greatness, we will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged, we will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of our population, is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution,” he continued.
Cuomo’s office later was in damage control mode and said the governor “believes America is great and that her full greatness will be fully realized when every man, woman and child has full equality.”
“America has not yet reached its maximum potential,” it added.
FILE PHOTO - 90th Academy Awards - Oscars Backstage - Hollywood, California, U.S., 04/03/2018 - Frances McDormand poses backstage with her Best Actress Oscar for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri." REUTERS/Mike Blake
February 18, 2019
By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A year after best actress winner Frances McDormand used the Oscars stage to advocate for more women in front of and behind the camera, Hollywood is celebrating some progress – but remains far from reaching parity with men.
McDormand urged powerful celebrities to insist on inclusion riders: contractual provisions that require producers to interview female candidates for jobs ranging from gaffer to director.
In the aftermath of McDormand’s speech, one major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., adopted policies based on the idea, and A-list stars such as Matt Damon and Michael B. Jordan, who also work as producers, committed to pushing for inclusion riders.
“It’s been remarkable,” said Kalpana Kotagal, a civil rights attorney who co-developed the inclusion rider concept, which also is being used to encourage hiring of people of color, as well as gay, disabled and older people. “We are actually seeing it being implemented.”
Kotagal pointed to coming-of-age movie “Hala,” which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and will be distributed by Apple Inc. Producers adopted inclusion riders and filled many off-screen jobs, including the majority of department head positions, with women.
The publicity around the riders kick-started a nascent effort to pressure filmmakers into boosting female representation.
A study released this month showed some gains. Forty of the top 100 films in 2018 featured a female as a lead character, the highest number since tracking began 12 years earlier, according to University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Those movies included best picture nominees “A Star is Born,” “The Favourite” and “Roma.”
And 28 percent of this year’s Oscar nominees are women, the highest percentage in history.
The industry is taking other steps to promote gender diversity.
The 4 Percent Challenge asks for a commitment to announcing at least one feature film with a female director in the next 18 months. Four percent refers to the pool of women-directed films among the top 1,200 movies of the past 10 years.
“For decades, directors have been viewed as a male job,” said Oscar-nominated “Vice” director Adam McKay.
But he said that attitude is changing, and his production company has made five feature films with female directors.
“I think you are seeing the whole town rally around the idea that there are voices that need to heard,” he said.
More than 120 actors, producers and writers, and seven studios, have signed on to the 4 Percent Challenge. Many studios also have established mentoring programs for women.
Still, “the work is far from done,” Kotagal said.
The industry remains far below the 50/50 parity that advocates are pushing for among on-screen talent, behind-the-scenes workers and studio executives. The number of female cinematographers is particularly low, comprising just 3 percent of last year’s 100 top-grossing films, according to data from San Diego State University.
And none of the major studios aside from AT&T Inc-owned Warner Bros. has committed to using inclusion riders across the board on productions.
Actress Natalie Portman said she had encountered resistance to the idea. “I think a lot of people are making the argument that you’re hiring people for their talent, not their gender,” she told Hollywood website Deadline in December.
A common refrain across the movie business is that decades of inequality make it hard to find qualified women to fill positions.
Betsy West, co-director of Oscar-nominated documentary “RBG” about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, rejected that argument. Key jobs on “RBG,” including editor, producer and cinematographer, were performed by women.
“People say ‘How did you find the people?'” West said. “It wasn’t that hard. They are out there, and you just have to look.”
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Omar Younis; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
People walk past a Caixa Economica Federal bank in downtown Rio de Janeiro August 20, 2014. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares
February 26, 2019
By Tatiana Bautzer and Carolina Mandl
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian state-owned bank Caixa Economica Federal is close to selling a 9-billion-real ($2.4 billion) stake it owns in oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.
The share offering of the 2.3 percent stake owned by Caixa in Petrobras, as the oil company is known, depends on the publication of a new presidential decree authorizing the sale, the sources said, asking for anonymity to discuss private plans.
President Jair Bolsonaro has already signed a first decree authorizing Caixa to sell its Petrobras stake, but the decree had technical mistakes and needed to be republished, they said.
Once the new decree is signed, Caixa will hire investment banks to help manage the secondary share offering.
Press representatives at Caixa Federal declined to comment.
The sale of the Petrobras stake will be the second divestiture led by Caixa since Chief Executive Pedro Guimaraes took the helm at the state bank last month, after the sale of a 2.4 billion reais stake in reinsurer IRB Brasil Resseguros SA. The IRB share offering will be priced later on Tuesday.
These shares in IRB are owned by a government fund responsible for financing education and managed by Caixa.
Caixa owns 3.2 percent of Petrobras common stock directly and 1 percent of non-voting capital.
Both transactions will be led by Caixa’s recently created investment banking unit, with around 30 bankers recruited internally.
Guimaraes recently appointed new senior management officials at Caixa. Andre Laloni, former head of UBS AG in Brazil and the Southern Cone, is the new chief financial officer, while former Banco Santander Brasil SA executive, Luciane Ribeiro, will lead Caixa’s asset management unit.
(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
President Trump on Thursday said he was giving Mexico a "one-year warning" to stop the flows of migration and drugs into the U.S., or he would slap tariffs on cars made there and close the southern border.
“We’re going to give them a one-year warning and if the drugs don’t stop or largely stop, we’re going to put tariffs on Mexico and products, in particular cars,” he told reporters at the White House. “And if that doesn’t stop the drugs, we close the border.”
He said that Mexico had "unbelievable" and "powerful" immigration laws and that such a threat would be a "powerful incentive" for it to act.
The warning is a step back from the threat he issued last week, when he threatened to close the border this week unless Mexico stopped “all illegal immigration” into the U.S.
On Tuesday, his stance appeared to soften, when he told reporters that Mexico had started taking further measures to stop migrants travelling into the U.S., and White House officials said that closing the border was one of a number of options on the table.
“So Mexico has, as of yesterday, made a big difference. You’ll see that -- because few people, if any, are coming up,” he said Tuesday. “And they say they’re going to stop them. Let’s see.”
Trump also faced opposition from members of his own party, including Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who had warned that closing the border would have "unintended consequences."
On Thursday, Trump said he fully intended to carry out his threat, but added the one-year delay, as well as the additional threat to put tariffs on cars.
“You know I’ll do it, I don’t play games,” he said.
Trump’s remarks came as the administration struggles to get a grip on the escalating crisis on the southern border, with Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) saying last week they were on track to apprehend more than 100,000 border crossers in March.
Trump declared a national emergency on the border in February after Congress granted only a fraction of the $5.6 billion he had sought for funding for a wall on the border. That move, which was opposed by both Democrats and some Republicans, allows the administration to access more than $3 billion extra in funding for the wall.
"If we don't make a deal with Congress...or if Mexico doesn't do what they should be doing...then we're going to close the border, that's going to be it, or we're going to close large sections of the border, maybe not all of it," he said on Tuesday.
Trump will travel to Calexico, California on Friday where he will visit a recently completed part of the barrier on the border, as well as participate in a roundtable with local law enforcement officials.
Jussie Smollett faces up to three years in prison if allegations that he staged a hate crime against himself are true, according to former prosecutor Andrew Weisberg.
Smollett launched a media firestorm at the end of last month when he claimed he was assaulted by two individuals who shouted “this is MAGA country” and had a noose placed around his neck.
However, police are now seriously investigating evidence which suggests Smollett paid Nigerian brothers Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo to stage the incident.
Should Smollett be found guilty of filing a false police report having staged the attack himself, the Empire actor could face several years in prison.
“If it is determined that a person lied to police about a crime that was committed, they could be charged with a Class 4 Felony ‘Disorderly conduct,’” Weisberg told HollywoodLife.
“This is charged where a person reports to police that an offense took place when they knew at the time of the report that no crimes was actually committed,” he added, noting that the charge “carries a possibility of one to three years in prison,” in addition to a “fine up to $25,000.”
Federal prosecutors could also pursue a mail fraud charge against Smollett if it turns out that he had a role in creating a letter sent to the Empire studios that contained homophobic slurs and white powder that turned out to be aspirin.
Aside from jail time, the broad consensus is that Smollett’s career will be completely ruined should the allegations against him be proven accurate.
“The best thing that Jussie can do is pray and pray a lot,” said Ronn Torossian, founder of 5W Public Relations. “If he made it up, he has big problems in both the court of law and the court of public opinion.”
FILE PHOTO: Lawyers carry a national flag as they march during a protest to demand the immediate resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in Algiers, Algeria March 23, 2019. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina
March 26, 2019
By Hamid Ould Ahmed
ALGIERS (Reuters) – About 2,000 people rallied in central Algiers on Tuesday calling for the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, keeping up the pressure after weeks of protests that threaten to topple him and the ruling elite which has helped keep him in power for 20 years.
Bouteflika, one of the veterans of the 1954-1962 war of independence against France who dominate the country, bowed to protesters this month by reversing a decision to seek another term and postponing elections that had been scheduled for April.
But Bouteflika stopped short of quitting as head of state and said he would stay on until a new constitution is adopted, effectively extending his current term.
The move failed to placate hundreds of thousands of Algerians who have taken to the streets for nearly five weeks to demand that Bouteflika quit along with his allies.
Some key partners such as members of his ruling party and business tycoons have abandoned Bouteflika, increasing the isolation of a leader who has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013
“The system must go. There is no point for it in resisting,” said Belkacem Abidi, 25, one of the thousands of protesters, most of them students, who gathered in downtown Algiers on Tuesday.
MILITARY’S INFLUENCE
Even if Bouteflika is pushed out, Algerians could face uncertainty for some time before a new president emerges to head the vast North African country, a major oil and gas producer.
One of the most important factors is the position of the powerful military, which could act as kingmaker, as it has done in past decades.
So far the chief of staff has distanced the army from Bouteflika and praised protesters.
Any direct action to help Algerians oust him could be perceived as a military coup by an institution which prefers to manipulate politics from behind the scenes.
(Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo
April 26, 2019
By Ben Blanchard
BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.
News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.
The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.
“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.
“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.
British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.
Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.
“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”
Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.
There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.
(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
April 26, 2019
SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.
Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.
Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.
Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.
Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.
Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.
A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.
The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States over safety issues in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – American Airlines Group Inc cut its 2019 profit forecast on Friday, saying it expected to take a $350 million hit from the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes after cancelling 1,200 flights in the first quarter.
The company said it now expects its 2019 adjusted profit to be between $4.00 per share and $6.00 per share.
Analysts on average had expected 2019 earnings of $5.63 per share, according to Refinitiv data.
The No. 1 U.S. airline by passenger traffic said net income rose to $185 million, or 41 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $159 million, or 34 cents per share, a year earlier.
Total operating revenue rose 2 percent to $10.58 billion.
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage
April 26, 2019
By James Oliphant
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (Reuters) – Four years ago, Donald Trump campaigned in small towns like Marshalltown, Iowa, vowing to restore economic prosperity to the U.S. heartland.
In his bid to replace Trump in the White House, Pete Buttigieg is taking a similar tack. The difference, he says, is that he can point to a model of success: South Bend, Indiana, the revitalized city where he has been mayor since 2012.
The Democratic presidential contender has vaulted to the congested field’s top tier in recent weeks, drawing media and donor attention for his youth, history-making status as the first openly gay major presidential candidate and a resume that includes military service in Afghanistan.
But Buttigieg’s main argument for his candidacy is that he is a turnaround artist in the mold of Trump, although the Democrat does not expressly invoke the comparison with the Republican president.
“I’m not going around saying we’ve fixed every problem we’ve got,” Buttigieg, 37, said after a house party with voters in Marshalltown. “But I’m proud of what we have done together, and I think it’s a very powerful story.”
Critics argue improving the fortunes of a Midwestern city of 100,000 people does not qualify Buttigieg, who has never held national office, for the presidency of a country of 330 million. Others say South Bend still has pockets of despair and that minorities, in particular, have failed to benefit from its growth.
Buttigieg has told crowds in Iowa and elsewhere that his experience in reviving a struggling Rust Belt community allows him to make a case to voters that other Democratic candidates cannot. That may give him the means to win back some of the disaffected Democratic voters who turned their backs on Hillary Clinton in 2016 to vote for Trump.
Watching Buttigieg at a union hall in Des Moines last week, Rick Ryan, 45, a member of the United Steelworkers, lamented how many of his fellow union workers voted for Trump. The president turned in the best performance by a Republican among union households since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Ryan said he hoped someone like Buttigieg could return them to the Democratic fold.
“He’s aware of the decline in the labor force in America, not just in Indiana or Des Moines or anywhere else,” Ryan said. “Jobs are going overseas. We need a find to way to bring that back.”
Randy Tucker, 56, of Pleasant Hill, Iowa, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Trump appealed to union members “desperate for somebody to reach out to them, to help them, to listen to their voice.”
Buttigieg could do the same, he said. “In my heart right now, he’s No. 1.”
PAST VS. FUTURE
Buttigieg stresses a key difference in his and Trump’s approaches.
Trump, he tells crowds, is mired in the past, promising to rebuild the 20th century industrial economy. Buttigieg argues the pledge is misleading and unrealistic.
Buttigieg says his focus is on the future, and he often talks about what the country might look like decades from now.
“The only way that we can cultivate what makes America great is to look to the future and not be afraid of it,” Buttigieg said in Marshalltown.
Buttigieg knows his sexual preference may be a barrier to winning some blue-collar voters. But he notes that after he came out as gay in 2015, he won a second term as mayor with 80 percent of the vote in conservative Indiana.
Earlier this month, he announced his presidential bid at the hulking plant in South Bend that stopped making Studebaker autos more than 50 years ago. After lying dormant for decades, the building is being transformed into a high-tech hub after Buttigieg and other city leaders realized it would never again attract a large-scale industrial company.
“That building sat as a powerful reminder. We hoped we would get back that major employer that would fix our economy,” said Jeff Rea, president of the regional Chamber of Commerce.
Buttigieg is praised locally for spurring more than $100 million in downtown investment. During his two terms, unemployment has fallen to 4.1 percent from 11.8 percent.
But a study released in 2017 by the nonprofit group Prosperity Now said not all of the city’s residents had shared in its rebound. The median income for African-Americans remained half that of whites, while the unemployment rate for blacks was double.
Regina Williams-Preston, a city councilor running to replace Buttigieg as mayor, credits him for the revitalized downtown. But she said he had a “blind spot” when it came to focusing on troubled neighborhoods like the one she represents and only grew more engaged after community pressure.
“He understands it now,” she said. “The next step is figuring out how to open the doors of opportunity for everyone.”
‘ONE OF US’
Trump touts the fact that the United States added almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs last year as evidence he made good on his promise to restore the industrial sector. But that growth still left the country with fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2008.
The robust U.S. economy is likely the president’s greatest asset in his re-election bid, particularly in states he carried in 2016 such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won Buttigieg’s home state by 19 points over Clinton in 2016.
Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa, said Buttigieg would be well positioned to compete with Trump in the Midwest.
“People love the fact that he’s a mayor,” said Bagniewski, who has not endorsed a candidate in the nominating contest. “If you can talk about a positive future, and if you actually have experience that can do it, that’s a compelling vision in Iowa.”
Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, which faces many of the same challenges as South Bend, agreed.
“He’s one of us,” Whaley said. “That helps.”
(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie
April 26, 2019
MONTREAL/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Rising waters were prompting further evacuations in central Canada on Thursday, with the mayor of the country’s capital, Ottawa, declaring a state of emergency and Quebec authorities warning that a hydroelectric dam was at risk of breaking.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared the emergency in response to rising water levels along the Ottawa River and weather forecasts that called for significant rainfall on Friday.
In a statement on Twitter, Watson asked for help from the Ontario provincial government and the country’s military.
He warned that “flood levels are currently forecasted to exceed the levels that caused significant damage to numerous properties in the city of Ottawa in 2017.”
Spring flooding had killed one person and forced more than 900 people from their homes in Canada’s Quebec province as of 1 p.m. on Thursday, according to a government website.
Ottawa has received 80 requests for service related to potential flooding such as sandbagging, a city spokeswoman said.
The prospect of more rain over the next 24 to 48 hours triggered concerns on Thursday that the hydroelectric dam at Bell Falls in the western part of Quebec could be at risk of failing because of rising water levels.
Quebec’s provincial police said 250 people were protectively removed from homes in the area as of late afternoon in case the dam on the Rouge River breaks.
The dam is now at its full flow capacity of 980 cubic meters per second of water, said Francis Labbé, a spokesman for the province’s state-owned utility, Hydro Quebec. He said Hydro Quebec expected the flow could rise to 1,200 cubic meters per second of water over the next two days.
“We have to take the worst-case scenario into consideration, since we`re already at the maximum capacity,” Labbé said by phone.
The dam is part of a power station that no longer produces electricity, but is regularly inspected by Hydro Quebec, he said.
(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)
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