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Ford Expects Health-Care Costs to Top $1 Billion in 2020

Ford Motor Co. expects the cost of health insurance for its 56,000 hourly workers in the U.S. to top $1 billion for the first time next year, according to a person familiar with the situation, highlighting a growing expense for automakers even as car sales slow.

Those mounting health-care costs represent a potential sticking point in this year’s contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the three U.S. automakers that tried and failed four years ago to address an expanding outlay that threatens profits and jobs.

At Ford, General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, the tab for health insurance topped $2 billion in 2015 and has only grown since.

Bargaining negotiations get underway this summer on contracts that expire in September with each of the three automakers. Some experts say divisive issues including cost-sharing for health care benefits may lead to striking.

The UAW must balance its protection of benefits with the need to keep workers on the job at a time when GM is shuttering five North American factories and Ford is slashing shifts and cutting jobs as part of an $11 billion restructuring. Although the three automakers remain profitable, they are bracing for a slowdown that could become a recession while spending billions to prepare for a future dominated by electric and self-driving cars.

Hard-Won Benefit

Nationwide, health expenditures are projected to grow by 5.5 percent annually from 2018 to 2027, more than twice the rate of inflation, according to a new study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But unionized auto workers enjoy some of the most generous medical coverage plans in the country and have been spared premium increases.

The UAW sees that as a hard-won benefit that helps make up for concessions to automakers in other areas. But automakers view these gold-plated worker plans as a growing burden that puts them at a disadvantage against rivals with non-unionized factories.

“We’re returning to major concession negotiations in the auto industry,” said Gary Chaison, professor emeritus of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. “The major manufacturers are saying: Give us a reason for why we should expand in the U.S. as opposed to China or India or somewhere else.”

Thin Contributions

With little or no co-pays or deductibles, UAW members contribute just 3 percent to their health-care coverage, compared with 30 percent by Ford’s salaried workers, said the person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified revealing internal data. Without changes, the growth in health-care costs over the life of the next contract would be the equivalent of a $3 hourly wage increase, the person said.

In the U.S., workers with health insurance contribute an average of 18 percent of the premium for single coverage and 29 percent of the premium for family coverage, according to a study last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Health-care coverage has been sacrosanct at the UAW, which gave up wages and jobs in 2009 to help keep the automakers afloat but didn’t give back medical benefits. “The union has fought hard in the darkest of economic times to ensure its members remain protected,” said Harley Shaiken, labor relations professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s not a rhetorical commitment. It is a substantive commitment at the bargaining table.”

In 2015, when then-UAW President Dennis Williams proposed creating a health care co-op that leveraged the buying power of almost 140,000 UAW members working for Detroit automakers, workers soundly rejected it, fearing it would erode their benefits. That’s why labor analysts expect health care to be a flashpoint in negotiations for the contracts.

‘Cadillac’ Tax

As the union gathers in Detroit this week to map out its bargaining strategy for this summer’s contract talks, it has made retaining and expanding health-care benefits a top priority. The union said it will seek to eliminate disparities in coverage, which have left newer workers with less-generous coverage than veterans. It also is looking to reduce co-pays on prescription drugs and avoid any “cost shifting” from companies, according to the bargaining resolutions prepared for the convention.

Looming over the talks is a provision in the Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare -- that will tax so-called “Cadillac” health care plans like the UAW’s at 40 percent starting in 2022. That cost would be crippling for the automakers and its workers, both sides say. But finding a way around that will be tricky.

Labor experts say neither side is eager to make concessions, which could bode ill for the negotiations.

“I don’t think any of the Big Three can absorb that cost, so they’re going to want more cost sharing,” Wheaton said. “But I can see the UAW saying, we’ve given up so much money on other things and we’ve tried to claw back some of that, and now you’re saying we need to make up for a 40 percent hit on health care. I think you’re talking strike.”

Source: NewsMax America

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Mueller investigation has 'gone off the rails,' has 'zero credibility:' Rep. Devin Nunes

The Mueller investigation into President Trump's alleged ties to Russia has "gone off the rails" and has "zero credibility," Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said Thursday.

"At this point the Mueller investigation, it went off the rails a long time ago," Nunes said on "America's Newsroom." "They have zero credibility, they have been looking for two years, they have no evidence of collusion and look, this would not be complicated to find collusion."

The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee then said while there has been no proof of collusion by President Trump, collusion between Hillary Clinton and Russia was "a fact."

PAGE TRANSCRIPTS REVEAL DETAILS OF 'INSURANCE POLICY'

They have zero credibility, they have been looking for two years, they have no evidence of collusion

— Rep. Devin Nunes

"That was the whole story, we were going to find evidence of Trump colluding with Russians to get dirt on Hillary. Not only has that never been proven, we actually have the opposite," Nunes told co-host Bill Hemmer.

"It's a fact the Clinton campaign hired Christopher Steele to talk to Russians to get dirt on Trump. That's never been prosecuted so what the Hell is Mueller doing? I have no idea."

Nunes also commented on former FBI attorney Lisa Page's newly-released transcripts that appear to show her confirming DOJ officials investigating Hillary Clinton's emails made clear to the FBI the former secretary of state should not be pursued for 'gross negligence' in the handling of classified information.

TRUMP BLASTS OBAMA DOJ AS 'CORRUPT MACHINE' OVER LISA PAGE TRANSCRIPTS

"I think it's very significant. Look, this never made any sense," Nunes said. "If anyone in the military or anyone in the intelligence community, including people within the FBI, if they were to leak like that they would be fired, they would be in prison, they would be prosecuted."

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Page was in a romantic relationship with since-fired FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.

"The bottom line is that [Hillary Clinton] should have been held accountable and she wasn't," Nunes added.

Source: Fox News Politics

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With Fed pause, list of potential Asia rate cutters grows

Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue is pictured in Washington
FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue is pictured in Washington, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis

March 27, 2019

By Cynthia Kim and Marius Zaharia

SEOUL/HONG KONG (Reuters) – A slowing global economy and abrupt end to Federal Reserve policy tightening have shifted rate cut expectations in Asia to probable from possible, with the market betting on moves by a growing list of central banks.

New Zealand sent the clearest signal on Wednesday when its central bank kept interest rates at a record low of 1.75 percent, but said a weak external environment meant its next move was more likely to be a cut.

Money markets are pricing in a strong chance of a cut in Australia this year. The Philippines, India and Indonesia also have room to reverse some of last year’s multiple interest rate hikes aimed at protecting the peso, rupee and rupiah from emerging market turmoil, economists say.

In Malaysia, rate cut calls are growing louder as inflation has turned negative, while policymakers in Japan debated further stimulus amid concerns over waning global demand, according to minutes from the Bank of Japan’s March meeting.

A new and unexpected member of the club of potential rate cutters is South Korea, where the government bond yield curve has flattened rapidly, signaling economic weakness that economists believe the Bank of Korea may address.

In China, although reductions in bank reserve requirements are seen as Beijing’s main monetary policy easing tool, some analysts also expect cuts in benchmark rates.

“This shifting growth-inflation mix combined with a concluded Fed tightening cycle calls for a significant change in the course of monetary policy across Asian economies,” ANZ economists said in a quarterly note on Wednesday.

“We now expect all central banks in the region to either hold interest rates or move into accommodation mode,” they said.

This is a remarkable turnaround. Only last year the debate in trade-deficit countries was about how high rates could go, and Japan’s central bank was contemplating exiting unorthodox stimulus policies.

However, the tone in Asia is not only set by the Fed.

China’s trade war with the United States and several measures to curb financial risk-taking last year are weighing more heavily than expected on the world’s second biggest economy and Asia’s growth engine.

Inflation in most Asian economies is below, or at the lower end of central bank targets.

For an interactive graphic of Asian interest rates, click on: http://tmsnrt.rs/1U5hc2W

FLATTENING YIELD CURVES

Expectations for monetary policy easing have increased with the emergence of a bad omen for economic growth in the United States, and implicitly, the world.

Yields on benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury notes fell below three-month rates on Friday for the first time since mid-2007, an inversion that preceded every U.S. recession over the past 50 years.

This time might be different because central bankers are not worried about inflation and low yields are a global malaise.

Still, investors and policymakers took notice.

Former Fed chief Janet Yellen told a Hong Kong conference on Monday that while the yield curve inversion may not herald a recession, it might signal the need to cut rates.

Extend that rationale to flattening yield curves across Asia, and the circle of potential rate cutters is expanding.

South Korea’s 2/10-yield curve this week was briefly flatter than Japan’s curve, which has had a pancake shape for years.

(GRAPHIC: Korea emerges as a potential rate cutter – https://tmsnrt.rs/2CEKfc5)

South Korea’s housing market, one of the world’s hottest in 2018, has lost steam after the government tightened regulations.

As fears ease about housing debt, which was running at levels seen in the United States before the subprime crisis, the Bank of Korea has some room for maneuver.

“I’m currently reviewing my forecast to bring forward the timing of a cut,” said Kong Dong-rak, a fixed income analyst at Daishin Securities.

(Reporting by Cynthia Kim in SEOUL and Marius Zaharia in HONG KONG; editing by Darren Schuettler)

Source: OANN

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Australia’s Gun Laws and Homicide: Correlation Isn’t Causation

In the wake of the March 15 New Zealand shootings, advocates for new gun restrictions in New Zealand have pointed to Australia as “proof” that if national governments adopt gun restrictions like those of Australia’s National Firearms Agreement, then homicides will go into steep decline.

“Exhibit A” is usually the fact that homicides have decreased in Australia since 1996, when the new legislation was adopted in Australia.

There are at least two problems with these claims. First, homicide rates have been in decline throughout western Europe and Canada and the United States since the early 1990s. The fact that the same trend was followed in Australia is hardly evidence of a revolutionary achievement. Second, homicides were already so unusual in Australia, even before the 1996 legislation, that few lessons can be learned from slight movements either up or down in homicide rates.

A Trend in Falling Rates

As noted by legal scholar Michael Tonry,

There is now general agreement, at least for developed English-speaking countries and western Europe, that homicide patterns have moved in parallel since the 1950s. The precise timing of the declines has varied, but the common pattern is apparent. Homicide rates increased substantially from various dates in the 1960s, peaked in the early 1990s or slightly later, and have since fallen substantially.

This was certainly the case in the United States. US homicides hit a 51-year low in 2014, falling to a level not seen since 1963. This followed the general trend: peaking in the early 1990s, and then going into steep decline. And yet, we can’t point to any new national gun-control measure which we can then claim caused the decline. In fact, the data suggests gun ownership increased significantly during this period.

Source.

Australia followed the same pattern, although national homicide data collection was spotty before the early 1990s:

Source: Standardized homicide rates per 100,000 population, four English-speaking countries, various years to 2012. See “Why Crime Rates Are Falling Throughout the Western World” by Michael Tonry.

Part of the reason that the collection of homicide data in Australia is so recent a phenomenon is because it’s has tended to be so rare. Politically, it simply wasn’t a national priority. Australia is a small country, with only a few more million people than Florida, spread out over an entire continent. In the relatively high homicide days of the early 1990s, Australia’s homicides totaled around 300. This means in a bad crime year, in which homicides increase by only 20 or 30 victims, could swing overall rates noticeably.

This brings us to our other problem with using post-1996 homicide data as definitive proof of anything. The numbers are too small to allow us to extrapolate much. As data analyst Leah Libresco wrote in 2017 in The Washington Post:

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths…

This doesn’t stop many reporters in mainstream outlets from claiming that any decline in homicides can with certainty be attributed to whatever the most recent gun-control restrictions were.

But it rarely works in the opposite direction. For example, during the 1990s, many American states liberalized gun laws considerably, allowing more conceal-carry provisions and lessening controls in general. Needless to say, The New York Times doesn’t point to this and say “American homicide rates decreased in response to loosening of state gun laws.”

Of course, I’m not saying that these changes in gun laws by themselves indisputably “prove” that more conceal carry laws reduce homicides. But, if I subscribed to the same standards of rigor as most mainstream journalists, I’d likely have no scruples about doing this, in spite of what other factors ought to be considered.

Faced with a lack of evidence that 1996’s law caused Australia to follow the same trend in homicides as both the US and Canada, advocates for laws like Australia’s then fall back on the strategy of pointing out that Australia’s homicide rates are lower than the US’s. The problem with this strategy, of course, is that Australia’s homicide rates were not comparable to those in the US either before or after 1996. The causes of the difference in rates between the two countries obviously pre-dates modern gun regulation measures in both countries. (We might also point out that several US states — some of which have very lax gun laws — have very low homicide rates comparable to Australia’s.)

Attempts to explain this away have been numerous, and in many ways, justifying gun control policy has come down to endless attempts at using regression analysis to find correlations between gun policy and homicide rates. These can often be interesting, but their value often rests on finding the right theoretical framework with which to identify the most important factors.

Those who work in public policy, and who lack a good foundation in broader issues around criminality tend to just go directly to legal prohibitions as the key factor in homicide rates. But this isn’t exactly the approach taken by those who engage in more serious study of long-term trends in homicides.

Famed crime researcher Eric Monkonnen, for example, in his essay “Homicide: Explaining America’s Exceptionalism,” identified four factors which he though most likely explained the higher rates in the United States: the mobility of the population, decentralized law enforcement, racial division caused by slavery, and a generally higher tolerance for homicide. Monkonnen concludes: “To assume that an absence of guns in the United States would bring about parity with Europe is wrong. For the past two centuries, even without guns, American rates would likely have still been higher.”

Monkonnen’s conclusions on this matter don’t necessarily make him laissez-faire on gun control. But they do illustrate his recognition of the fact that factors driving difference in homicide rates between two very different societies go far beyond pointing to one or two pieces of legislation. And if gun control laws are to be posited as the cause of declines in homicide, there need to be a clear “before and after difference” in the jurisdiction in which they are adopted. Comparisons with other countries miss the point.

Suicide Rates Higher Now In Australia

Perhaps recognizing that homicide rates haven’t actually changed all that much in the wake of 1996, some defenders of Australia’s gun legislation have tried to gild the lily by claiming that an additional benefit of legislation has been a decline in suicide rates. This is a common strategy among gun control advocates who often like to claim gun control is often a suicide prevention measure.

[RELATED: “Guns Don’t Cause Suicide“]

For example, it’s not difficult to find media headlines proclaiming “suicide figures plummeted” in Australia after the adoption of the 1996 law. But Australia runs into a similar problem here as with gun control: suicide rates fell substantially during the same period in Canada, the US, and much of Europe.

Moreover, in recent years, suicide rates in Australia and the US have climbed upward again. There’s little doubt that suicide rates fell from 1995 to 2006, dropping from 12 per 100,000 to under 9 per 100,000. But after that, suicide rates climbed to a ten-year high in 2015, rising again to 12 per 100,000, or a rate comparable to what existed before the 1996 gun measure. In other words, suicides are back to where they were. But as recently as 2017, we’re still hearing about how gun control also makes suicides decline.

Overall, this is just the level of discourse we should expect from the media and policymakers on this matter. Even the flimsiest correlation to the passage of a gun control law is assumed to have been the primary factor behind a decline in homicides. Meanwhile, any easing of gun laws that coincides with declining homicides (as happened in the US) is to be ignored. In both cases, the situation is more complicated than reporters suggest.

But don’t expect this to be a restraining factor on the drive for new gun laws in New Zealand. In Australia, the 1996 gun-control measure was passed only 12 days after the massacre used to justify the new legislation. New Zealand politicians look like they’re trying to take an even more cavalier attitude toward deliberation and debate. Meanwhile, in Norway, where Anders Brevik murdered 77 people in 2011 — 67 of them with semi-automatic firearms — the national legislature didn’t pass significant changes to gun control regulations until 2018.


Comedian Tommy Sotomayor joins Owen Shroyer on The War Room to expose SJWs’ inability to reason logically, unless it fits their political narrative.

Source: InfoWars

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Senate pays tribute to Fritz Hollings, the ‘senator from central casting’

Nobody talked like the late Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C.

Nobody sounded like Fritz Hollings.

Nobody was Fritz Hollings.

"When it comes to Senator Hollings, they broke the mold," observed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in a statement. "Fritz was a giant of a man who was often called the 'senator from central casting.'"

"He was an original," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Fritz Hollings died over the weekend at age 97. Hollings was tall, standing about 6'3". He was topped by a shock of sleek, white hair, always demarcated by a crisp part on the left. Always dressed impeccably, in tailored, pinstripe suits.

Hollings just looked like a senator.

And then there was the voice.

The pipes were what really distinguished Hollings. His voice was deep like a hollowed-out, Lowcountry well. The result was a resonant, rich, southern drawl. When Hollings spoke, he just sounded the way you thought a senator from South Carolina would sound. Think Foghorn Leghorn crossed with James Earl Jones.

And when Hollings took the floor, everything in the Senate stopped. You couldn't ignore him. Hollings would prowl around his desk near the rear of the Senate chamber. Hollings didn't need props. He didn't need a stack of papers. Hollings just had his own, 100-watt sound system. The senator would thunder from the back of the Senate and his voice would rattle the copper spittoons which remain on the floor in front.

"If this budget is balanced, I'll jump off the Capitol Dome!" Hollings once cried during a speech about fiscal discipline in the mid-1990s. He stretched out the word "dome" into a polysyllabic melody.

Hollings then proceeded to upbraid his colleagues who would "ride around the countryside in limousines," describing the entire affair "a grand farce."

Only, Hollings didn’t quite say "farce." He stretched out the word "farce" like a grade-school kid playing with slime. There was no discernable "r" in Hollings’s enunciation.

Hollings served in the Senate from 1966 through 2005. But despite his lengthy tenure in Washington, Hollings was South Carolina's junior senator for all but the final two years of his career. That made Hollings the longest-serving junior senator in U.S. history. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., arrived in the Senate in 1954, and after a seven-month gap in 1956, never left until he retired at age 100 in January 2003. Thurmond's longevity always blocked Hollings when it came to seniority.

Skyrocketing federal spending was Hollings' key issue. He teamed with then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, and the late Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., to create a balanced budget plan called "Gramm-Rudman-Hollings" in 1985. You may have heard of "sequestration," the package of mandatory spending cuts imposed by the debt ceiling deal of 2011. Sequestration lingers to this day over what Congress terms as "discretionary" spending. However, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was the original version of sequestration. It canceled spending, preventing Congress from exceeding certain fiscal ceilings.

The House and Senate approved Gramm-Rudman-Hollings in 1985. But the Supreme Court case Bowsher v. Synar found the automatic cuts to be unconstitutional. The argument was that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings ceded spending authority to the executive branch. Senators retooled the plan in 1987, but it never resulted in smaller deficits. Hollings later lopped off his surname from the legislation, saying the revised effort lacked teeth.

As much as you remembered Hollings' voice, people often recalled what he said – for good or ill.

Congressional Republicans frequently pushed for tax cuts. Hollings often suggested that the government really needed a tax increase to balance the books.

Hollings sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. "Shoot all the economists," he said. "Shoot all the pollsters." It wouldn't have helped. Hollings dropped out of the race after a poor showing in New Hampshire.

Hollings once referred to then-Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, as "the senator from B'nai B'rith." Metzenbaum, who was Jewish, took issue with the South Carolinian's characterization of him and the Jewish service organization. Hollings later apologized and the language was stripped from the Congressional Record.

When discussing an international trade meeting in Switzerland, Hollings said that "these potentates down from Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good, square meal in Geneva."

Hollings chaired a Commerce Committee hearing about violence on TV in the early 1990s.

"What is it? Buffcoat and Beaver or Beaver and something else?" Hollings said at the hearing, referring to MTV's animated ne'er-do-wells Beavis and Butt-Head. "I don't watch it. But whatever it was, it was on at 7. Buffcoat. And they put it on now at 10:30."

Current South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ran against Hollings for Senate in 1986.

“I’ll take a drug test if you’ll take an IQ test,” snapped Hollings during one contentious exchange.

Hollings prevailed with 63 percent of the vote. But McMaster and former Vice President Joe Biden will both speak at Hollings's funeral next week. Hollings will also lie in state in the South Carolina statehouse.

When Hollings was on his way out from the Senate in 2005, he noted that a letter to the editor of a local paper declared "'We hope Hollings enjoys his retirement, because we sure as hell will.'"

Bipartisan members of South Carolina's House delegation assembled in the well of the House chamber Monday evening to pay tribute to Hollings. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn spoke about Hollings's push for desegregation while serving as South Carolina governor.

Clyburn says he first met Hollings in 1960, when Clyburn was organizing sit-ins. Hollings invited Clyburn to his office.

"He gave me a great lesson that day in politics," said Clyburn, saying that even to this day, he's not spoken publicly about some of the kernels of wisdom Hollings passed along.

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Clyburn said that in 1962, just before Hollings was to finish his term as governor, the courts ruled that Clemson University had to integrate.

"Fritz spoke to the legislature and said to them on that day, 'We have run out of courts. And we are going to be a nation of laws,'" said Clyburn.

Fritz Hollings may have fallen silent. But to Clyburn and others, the voice still echoes.

Source: Fox News Politics

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The Latest: Tornado confirmed in Alabama

The Latest on severe weather in the Southeast (all times local):

12:55 p.m.

The National Weather Service says a small tornado is responsible for destroying farm buildings and causing other damage in northeast Alabama.

The weather service says a team found damage from an EF-1 tornado with winds estimated at 90 mph (145 kph) after storms moved through Blount County early Monday.

A barn and other rural buildings were damaged or destroyed, and one person was reported hurt.

The weather service team is checking other damage that occurred elsewhere, and storms are still moving across the region.

___

11 a.m.

A strong storm moving across northeast Alabama knocked down power lines and caused scattered damage in a retail district and forecasters said more bad weather was on the way.

Photos shared on social media showed plants and other items thrown around the parking lot of a Walmart store in Guntersville, Alabama, during Monday's storm. Nearby stores had to close because of power outages.

High winds left trees tilted sideways and utility lines drooped toward the ground. Farm buildings were damaged in rural Blount County, Alabama, where one person was reported injured.

The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings after radar indicated a possible twister. The weather service office in Huntsville said it was sending a team to determine whether a tornado caused damage.

The Storm Prediction Center says 26 million people were at a slight risk of severe storms in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas.

Source: Fox News National

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Sen. Blumenthal: Barr Must 'Stand Up, Speak Out' for DOJ

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Thursday said Attorney General William Barr has to "stand up" for the Justice Department when special counsel Robert Mueller finishes his report.

Blumenthal told CNN's "New Day" that Barr is in for a "wild ride" once Mueller completes his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

"That means [Barr] has to make a decision: Is he going to be the people's lawyer or is he going to be the president's lawyer?" the senator said. "Clearly, this president regards the attorney general as one of his minions.


"He has no respect for the law, in fact, utter contempt for judges and the judicial process and he has denounced relentlessly the FBI and other law enforcement," Blumenthal continued. "Absolutely unprecedented, shattering all the norms."



"William Barr is a professional, at least he should be," he said. "And he's going to have to stand up and speak out for the Department of Justice and the rule of law. And that will make his ride pretty wild."

Source: NewsMax America

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said trade talks with China are going very well, as the world’s two largest economies seek to end talks with a trade agreement to defuse tensions.

Trump said on Thursday he would soon host China’s President Xi Jinping at the White House.

Earlier this week, the White House said that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer would travel to Beijing for more talks on a trade dispute marked by tit-for-tat tariffs between the two countries.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Donald Trump hosts Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day at the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to his audience as he hosts Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 25, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments on North Korea this week following the Russian leader’s summit with Pyongyang’s Kim Jong Un.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump also said China was helping with efforts aimed at the denuclearization of North Korea.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Makini Brice; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Representatives of Russian Transneft, Ukranian Ukrtransnafta, Polish Pern and Belarusian Belneftekhim gather to hold talks on fixing tainted oil supplies to Europe, in Minsk
Representatives of Russian Transneft, Ukranian Ukrtransnafta, Polish Pern and Belarusian Belneftekhim gather to hold talks on fixing tainted oil supplies to Europe, in Minsk, Belarus April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

April 26, 2019

By Katya Golubkova and Andrei Makhovsky

MOSCOW/MINSK (Reuters) – Russia is confident it can soon resolve a problem of polluted Russian oil contaminating a major pipeline serving Europe and affecting supplies as far west as Germany, a senior official said on Friday at talks with importers about the issue.

Russian Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin did not give a precise timeframe but Moscow has previously said it would pump clean oil to the border with Belarus from April 29, seeking to end a crisis hitting the world’s second-largest crude exporter.

Sorokin was speaking at talks with officials from Belarus, Poland and Ukraine in Minsk on the issue. Belarus said the issue had cost it $100 million, while analysts say alternative supply routes for refiners cannot fully fill the gap.

Poland, Germany, Ukraine and Slovakia have suspended imports of Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline. Halting those supplies has knock-on effects further along the network.

The problem arose last week when an unidentified Russian producer contaminated oil with high levels of organic chloride used to boost oil output but which must be separated before shipment as it can destroy refining equipment.

Russia’s Energy Ministry said pipeline monopoly Transneft and other Russian companies had a plan to mitigate the effects of the contaminated oil. It did not give details.

Russian officials have said contaminated oil has already been pumped into storage in Russia and Friday’s talks would focus on how to partially withdraw the tainted crude from the Druzhba pipeline running via other countries.

The suspension cuts off a major supply route for Polish refineries owned by Poland’s PKN Orlen and Grupa Lotos, as well as plants in Germany owned by Total, Shell, Eni and Rosneft.

Some refiners have outlined plans for alternative supplies, but analysts say other routes cannot meet the shortfall.

OIL PRICES

Ukraine’s Ukrtransnafta suspended the transit of oil through the pipeline on Thursday, closing supplies via Druzhba’s southern route to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The pipeline issue, which has supported global oil prices, lifted Russian Urals crude differentials to an all-time high on Thursday.

With pipeline supplies to Europe shut, Russia faces a challenge of how to divert about 1 million barrels per day (bpd) that was meant to be shipped through the network to other destinations at the time when export capacity is at its limits.

State-run Russian Railways held talks with energy firms on using up to 5,000 rail tankers to transport crude, RIA news agency reported on Friday.

Concerns about the quality of Urals crude also caused delays in loadings at the Baltic port of Ust-Luga, when buyers refused to lift cargoes, resulting in a brief shutdown of the port on Wednesday and Thursday. An Ust-Luga official and traders said on Friday loadings had resumed.

Russian loading plans indicate it aims to boost Urals exports in May before the expiry of a deal on output cuts agreed with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, Reuters calculations and Energy Ministry data show.

The provisional loading plan for Russia’s Baltic Sea ports and Novorossiisk in May show exports rising to 10.7 million tonnes, the highest level in half a decade.

Minsk estimated its loss from lower oil product exports due to contaminated Russian oil at around $100 million, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported on Thursday, citing Belarusian state oil company Belneftekhim.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, in charge of government energy policy, said this week that those found responsible for contaminating the oil could be fined. He did not provide names.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko in WARSAW, Sandor Peto in BUDAPEST, Jason Hovet in PRAGUE, Matthias Williams and Natalia Zinets in KIEV, Katya Golubkova, Olesya Astakhova, Gleb Gorodyankin, Olga Yagova and Maxim Rodionov in MOSCOW, Andrei Makhovsky in MINSK; writing by Katya Golubkova; editing by Michael Perry and Edmund Blair)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO - A worker sits on a ship carrying containers at Mundra Port in the western Indian state of Gujarat
FILE PHOTO: A worker sits on a ship carrying containers at Mundra Port in the western Indian state of Gujarat April 1, 2014. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – India has once again delayed the implementation of higher tariffs on some goods imported from the United States to May 15, a government official said on Friday.

The new tariff structure was to come into force from May 2, the spokeswoman said without citing reasons for the delay.

Angered by Washington’s refusal to exempt it from new steel and aluminum tariffs, New Delhi decided in June last year to raise the import tax from Aug. 4 on some U.S. products including almonds, walnuts and apples.

But since then, New Delhi has repeatedly delayed the implementation of the new tariff.

Trade friction between India and the U.S. has escalated after U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans earlier this year to end preferential trade treatment for India that allows duty-free entry for up to $5.6 billion worth of its exports to the United States.

In a further blow, U.S. on Monday demanded buyers of Iranian oil stop purchases by May or face sanctions, ending six months of waivers which allowed Iran’s eight biggest buyers including India to continue importing limited volumes.

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar in New Delhi and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Source: OANN

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One of Joe Biden’s newly-hired senior advisers has seemingly had a very recent change of heart.

Symone Sanders, a prominent Democratic strategist and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., staffer in 2016, was announced as one of the big-name members of Team Biden on Thursday.

But Sanders, who has also served as a CNN contributor, is seen in resurfaced footage from November 2016 expressing her opposition to a white person leading her party after Donald Trump’s election.

“In my opinion, we don’t need white people leading the Democratic party right now,” Sanders told host Brianna Keilar during a discussion on Howard Dean potentially becoming DNC chairman.

BIDEN HIRES FORMER BERNIE SANDERS’ SPOKESPERSON AS SENIOR ADVISER

“The Democratic party is diverse, and it should be reflected as so in leadership and throughout the staff, at the highest levels. From the vice chairs to the secretaries all the way down to the people working in the offices at the DNC,” she said.

Sanders wrapped up her remarks by saying: “I want to hear more from everybody. I want to hear from the millennials and the brown folks.”

Footage of the interview was resurfaced by RealClearPolitics.

After news of her hiring broke on Thursday, Sanders backed her new boss on Twitter.

TRUMP ASSESSES 2020 DEMS; TAKES SWIPES AT BIDEN, SANDERS; DISMISSES HARRIS, O’ROURKE; SAYS HE’S ROOTING FOR BUTTIGIEG

“@JoeBiden & @DrBiden are a class act. Over the course of this campaign, Vice President Biden is going to make his case to the American ppl. He won’t always be perfect, but I believe he will get it right,” she wrote.

The hiring of Sanders has been viewed as another indication of the expected tough fight that Biden and Sanders are in for as the two frontrunners battle a deep Democratic field.

While Sanders himself didn’t torch Biden as he jumped into the race, it’s clear that many of his progressive supporters view the former vice president as a threat.

Biden’s entry into the race – at least in the early going – sets up a battle between himself and Sanders, who thanks to his fierce fight with eventual nominee Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination, enjoys name ID on the level of the former vice president.

BIDEN VOWS THAT ‘AMERICA IS COMING BACK,’ SPARKING ‘MAGA’ COMPARISONS

Justice Democrats — who also called Biden “out-of-touch” – is an increasingly influential group among the left of the party. They’ve championed progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as well as Sanders. The group was founded by members of Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.

Biden has pushed back against the perception that he’s a moderate in a party that’s increasingly moving to the left. Earlier this month he described himself as an “Obama-Biden Democrat.”

And Biden said he’d stack his record against “anybody who has run or who is running now or who will run.”

Former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile – a Fox News contributor – highlighted that “Joe Biden can occupy his own lane in large part because he’s earned it. He’s earned the right to call himself whatever.”

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But she emphasized that “elections are not about the past, they’re about the future…I do believe he has the right ingredients. The question is can he find enough people to help him stir the pot.”

Fox News Andrew O’Reilly contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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