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Trump calls on House intelligence chairman to resign after Mueller probe

FILE PHOTO: Chairman Schiff departs after House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington
FILE PHOTO: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) speaks to reporters as he departs after hearing testimony from Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney of U.S. President Donald Trump, at a closed House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Young?

March 28, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called for House intelligence panel chairman Adam Schiff to resign after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not establish collusion between the 2016 election campaign and Russia.

“Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!” Trump tweeted.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: OANN

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Expense report of the future reduces fraud and headaches

FILE PHOTO: A view inside the lobby of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square in New York
FILE PHOTO: A view inside the lobby of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square in New York City, U.S., November 8, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

March 25, 2019

By Beth Pinsker

NEW YORK(Reuters) – It sounds like it should have been impossible to miss, but it took more than a year for an industrial equipment company to discover $12,000 worth of doggie day spa charges on an employee’s expense reports.

Level upon level of corporate management also failed to detect that the same employee was running a scheme to sell more than $200,000 in company equipment on eBay.

Only a fraction of expense reports are closely examined, so it is no wonder that companies experience more than $7 billion in annual losses from fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

By using robots, instead of relying on random spot checks, companies are catching fraud more than twice as fast and fraud losses are halved, said Andi McNeal, director of research for the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

That is what happened when the industrial equipment company put in place an artificial-intelligence program from Oversight Systems, which was able to quickly ferret out the culprit.

“It started out as a small infraction that led to an investigation that led to other things,” said Terrence McCrossan, chief executive of Atlanta-based Oversight Systems, which audits about $2 trillion worth of employee spending each year and works with employers like the U.S. Department of Defense, McDonald’s and General Electric.

The expense reporting universe is being overhauled to use artificial intelligence to get a 100 percent overview of employee submissions. In addition to monitoring fraud, companies are streamlining the way employees file expenses.

Soon, employees around the world will stop fussing with paper receipts and crying over hotel bills, then waiting weeks to get reimbursed while their paperwork travels through the corporate labyrinth. Managers will no longer be stuck in the middle of the process, policing spending, and companies will stop losing so much money to waste and fraud.

TEST CASES

Some changes have already occurred, ranging from corporate card charges that automatically attach to electronic expense reports to seamless experiences for business travelers who stay at approved hotels.

One of SAP Concur’s newest offerings is Concur Detect by AppZen, which does a 100 percent audit of incoming expense reports.

AppZen analyzes expenses by looking for risk. Only about 10 percent of expenses that flow through a company have a problem that needs to be addressed, said Anant Kale, CEO of AppZen, based in San Jose, California.

The algorithm can clear expense reports with no issues almost instantly, so that these employee outlays can be reimbursed as quickly as two days.

If a charge has a red flag, it goes to a human auditor. One Concur Detect customer, Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc, said it had reduced the number of expense reports that required review by one-third.

Kale has been surprised by the kind of problems that are popping up since AppZen’s 2016 launch.

“Employees are claiming the same expense multiple times. That happens more often than you can imagine,” Kale said. “It’s not fraud, but an honest mistake.”

AppZen also finds many expenses that are disallowed by corporate policy. Some of these are for strip clubs, in-room movies during business travel or charging gifts at a hotel shop.

Oversight Systems has identified questionable expenses like eyelash extensions, lost sunglasses and an employee who billed for a new shirt after he spilled coffee on himself on the way to a meeting.

There is also true fraud. Oversight Systems, for instance, found an employee who expensed for parking over and over using the same receipt each time. By the time the fraud was discovered, the parking lot no longer even existed.

What makes the difference between catching wrongdoers and companies’ losing money? Better compliance and making audits more efficient, said the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ McNeal.

As much as machines can learn and improve their performance, people are more complicated. AppZen, for instance, has yet to run a clean screen on a company where it catches no problems, no matter how much effort a company puts into employee education and catching disallowed expenses before they are filed.

“You’re never going to get all of them to comply – that’s just human nature,” McNeal said. “You’re just trying to let the fewest grains get through the sieve.”

(Editing by Lauren Young and by Leslie Adler)

Source: OANN

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Factbox: T. Rowe Price sheds most of its Tesla stake

FILE PHOTO: A Tesla logo is painted on a wall inside of a Tesla dealership in New York
FILE PHOTO: A Tesla logo is painted on a wall inside of a Tesla dealership in New York, U.S., April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

April 18, 2019

(Reuters) – T. Rowe Price, once the second-largest investor in Tesla Inc after Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, has shed most of its stake in the electric carmaker in a series of transactions over the last two quarters.

Funds managed by T. Rowe Price Group Inc owned a 10.12 percent stake in Tesla as of September. It sold roughly half of that stake in the quarter ended December and 92 percent of its remaining stake in the following quarter.

Tesla has been plagued with problems for the last several quarters, ranging from production hurdles for its Model 3 sedans to Musk’s brush off with securities regulators.

T. Rowe, which managed more than $1 trillion in assets, started investing in Tesla in 2015 and the electric carmaker said in 2016 it was among its top five investors.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)

Source: OANN

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Trump on Smollett Case: FBI, DOJ to Review 'Embarrassment to Our Nation!'

The FBI and the Department of Justice will review the "outrageous" Jussie Smollett case in Chicago, President Donald Trump announced Thursday on Twitter.

Trump called this week's decision by Illinois prosecutors to drop all charges against the "Empire" star for allegedly fabricating a hate crime "an embarrassment to our Nation!"

FBI & DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our Nation!

On Tuesday, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office suddenly dropping the charges for allegedly filing a false police report after claiming in late January to have been beaten up and subjected to homophobic and racist slurs by two masked men in Chicago. Smollett forfeited his $10,000 bail as part of the deal.

The decision to drop charges has sparked a backlash from officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the public, prompting the actor's lawyer  to issue a blistering statement Wednesday accusing Chicago officials and police of trying to "smear" Smollett even after the case is closed.

"We are disappointed the local authorities have continued their campaign against Jussie Smollett after the charges against him have been dropped," said attorney Patricia Brown Holmes, "We should all allow Mr. Smollett to move on with his life as a free citizen."

Material from The Associated Press was use in compiling this report.

Source: NewsMax America

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Brexit crisis tipped for British asparagus as EU seasonal workers stay away

Asparagus ready for picking is seen in a growing tunnel at Cobrey Farm in Ross-on-Wye
Asparagus ready for picking is seen in a growing tunnel at Cobrey Farm in Ross-on-Wye, Britain, March 11, 2019. Picture taken March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

March 18, 2019

By James Davey and Kate Holton

ROSS-ON-WYE, England (Reuters) – For almost 100 years, Chris Chinn’s family has farmed asparagus in the rolling hills of the Wye Valley in western England.

This year, he fears uncertainty around Britain’s departure from the European Union will keep his eastern European workers away and the asparagus will stay in the ground.

Asparagus grown in Britain is feted by chefs as among the world’s best but the seasonal worker shortage threatens the country’s asparagus industry and the viability of Chinn’s Cobrey Farms business.

It is a predicament shared by many British fruit and vegetable farmers, almost totally reliant on seasonal migrant workers from EU member states Romania and Bulgaria taking short-term jobs that British workers do not want.

At Chinn’s farm, which turns over more than 10 million pounds ($13 million) a year, the workers pick the premium asparagus spears that can grow up to 20 cm a day by hand. Sometimes they pick them twice a day before dispatching them to customers such as Marks and Spencer. and Britain’s biggest supermarket, Tesco.

“It is incredibly clear cut – there is no UK asparagus on your supermarket shelves without seasonal migrant workers,” Chinn, whose great grandfather started as a tenant farmer in 1925, told Reuters.

“We’re really at the point where we either import the workers or we import the asparagus.”

Britain’s asparagus season is short and early – traditionally running from April 23, known as Saint George’s Day, to Midsummer’s Day in mid-June. It will be the first big test of the 2019 seasonal labor crisis.

NO SHOWS

This year Chinn’s team has had to work much harder to recruit Romanians and Bulgarians who are perplexed by the long Brexit process as Prime Minister Theresa May seeks parliament’s approval for a divorce deal with the EU. They are also wary of the welcome they will receive from Britons, who voted in 2016 to leave the EU.

Though Cobrey Farms has signed up 1,200 workers who are due to start arriving at the end of this month, Chinn fears many will not turn up. He does not think he will be able to harvest the entire crop, meaning valuable asparagus will be left in the fields.

“If we’re 20 percent short of people then we will harvest 20 percent less asparagus,” said Chinn. “UK agriculture’s not a high-margin game, so 20 percent less means we’re in loss-making territory. Fifty percent could sink us.”

Chinn’s concern grew after 20 of the 100 or so workers due to help cultivate the crops in January failed to turn up.

Of 247 workers due to arrive between March 31 and April 6, 125 are yet to book flights, he said. They include 38 who have worked at Cobrey Farms before and stayed in the dozens of static caravans that stand at the foot of the hills on the farm.

Chinn, who voted Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, said uncertainty over eastern Europeans’ employment rights and how long they can stay, combined with a fall in the value of the pound, meant Germany and the Netherlands were now considered more attractive destinations.

“They go somewhere which is most straightforward and any, even minor, hurdles you put in their way is just nudging them ever closer to going somewhere else,” he said.

With just 11 days to go until Britain is due to leave the EU, the government is yet to agree a withdrawal arrangement or an extension, meaning the risk of a disorderly “no-deal” Brexit cannot be ruled out.

If Britain agrees on a divorce deal, a transition period will kick in, maintaining freedom of movement until the end of 2020. In the event of no deal, EU citizens arriving after March 29 would need to register to work for more than three months.

Elina Kostadinova, a 28 year-old harvest manager at Cobrey Farms who is from Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea, said many workers were worried about coming to Britain because of Brexit.

“They don’t know if they will be welcomed in the country, how long they may be able to stay, how they may be able to travel and what the future may hold,” she said. “It would be wonderful if the UK government could make a decision, so we can relay this message.”

British farms typically pay workers the national minimum wage of 7.83 pounds an hour plus performance-related bonuses.

Chinn said the idea of British workers plugging the gap was fanciful. He does not expect much help from the supermarkets, where sales volumes have already been negotiated for the season and prices have been fixed, barring exceptional circumstances.

PERMIT TRIAL

Britain’s fruit and vegetable sector relies on up to 80,000 seasonal workers from the EU each year. Having previously been inundated with applications, labor agencies say interest dropped off in 2017 and 2018 as workers from Romania and Bulgaria opted to go elsewhere in the EU.

For the last two seasons, Britain has been short by around 10,000 workers, threatening the food supply and forcing farms to pay higher wages and bonuses. At the end of the summer as workers want to leave, farms will offer free accommodation and to pay the cost of flights to try to persuade them to stay on.

Concordia, a labor agency charity that finds EU pickers for British farms, said it now has to work much harder to recruit.

“U.K. agriculture is definitely entering into a crisis. No labor means no harvesting, which means no fruit and no vegetables on shelves in British supermarkets,” Chief Executive Stephanie Maurel told Reuters.

She was speaking in Moscow after the British government sanctioned a pilot trial for 2,500 workers to enter the country from Russia, Ukraine and Moldova for up to six months over the next two years.

Chinn, who has 3,500 acres of land, wants the government to increase the numbers to 10,000 this summer and over 50,000 in the next couple of years.

“We can’t change this natural cycle of the crop … the crop will come out the ground when it warms up,” he said. “So the key is about not waiting for a total disaster that wipes out large swathes of UK horticulture.”

(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Timothy Heritage)

Source: OANN

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Why the Sprint/T-Mobile Merger Makes Sense for America

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It is very rare to find much bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., these days. The rules of engagement right now appear to be if one side is for something, the knee-jerk reaction by the other side is to immediately come out against it, no matter the merits of the idea or policy being proposed. 

So when congressional Democrats, Republicans -- and the Trump White House -- agree on something, it’s worth taking note. That is precisely what is taking place right now regarding the potential Sprint/T-Mobile merger. For those who haven’t been following the issue, it would appear to be dry subject matter. But once you understand the implications of the United States and China moving pieces around on the chessboard over who will control global 5G networks, the stakes are enormous. 

According to Fox Business, the administration has signaled support for the merger. Why? Because it would create another formidable competitor to countries, especially China, in the battle over the 5G networks. Citing national security concerns and the healthy impact of marketplace competition, policymakers as divergent as Silicon Valley Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo and Newt Gingrich have come out in support.

There are many reasons why the merger should happen: Sprint and T-Mobile are seeking to form a third major competitor to Verizon and AT&T. Verizon and AT&T don’t want a third competitor in the 5G battle as they have for all intents and purposes been acting as a duopoly. Adding a third competitor to the mix upsets the balance of power and will likely lead to great competitive pricing. Progressives have come out strongly against it, reflexively asserting that the merger will somehow, in defiance of the laws of competition, raise prices. The Communications Workers Association union, a significant donor to the Democratic Party, is claiming that somehow this will result in major job losses. As the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, CWA has not always been opposed to massive telecommunication mergers. “It threw its full support behind the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner,” the Free Beacon  noted. Not so coincidentally, this happened around the time CWA and AT&T signed a regional labor contract requiring CWA to support the company’s legislative agenda. What a coincidence that the CWA would oppose a merger that would lead to great competition for AT&T.

A Sprint/T-Mobile merger would make it the first nationwide 5G carrier, absolutely leading to greater competition, igniting an arms race of innovation and deployment that will benefit consumers, not only with lower costs, but with greater reach on a shorter timeline. It will also help the United States in the fight with China over the 5G networks: The issue of control cannot be understated when one considers the implications of the 5G networks on the Internet of Things, which could see over 20 billion smart devices in the next few years, and sets the standards and decides who controls the data and how it’s being used. 

On top of all of those reasons, one of the biggest conversations taking place in regard to deploying 5G networks is how deep the deployment can go into rural America. There are massive benefits to rural America having 5G networks, from farming to new openings for remote jobs. For personal reasons, I’m rooting for greater competition to accelerate deep rural deployment because I live in the countryside of Loudoun County, Virginia. Cellphone coverage isn’t the greatest there. Somehow, the farm was hardwired with high-speed internet by a previous owner, which allows me to make calls with wi-fi, but I often wonder how I live in one of the wealthiest counties in America and can’t get decent cellphone coverage. 

One of T-Mobile’s major pledges regarding this merger is to take 5G networks into rural areas: The  company has publicly pledged, if the merger were to take place, to provide coverage for 96 percent of rural America by 2024. Rural interconnectivity is not only a big issue for the Trump administration, it is key to expanding economic opportunity to overlooked areas. While 5G won’t be replacing broadband or fiber anytime soon, 5G deployment can come sooner and reach more rural areas faster than fiber. The beauty of it is that 5G can offer the same speeds as most internet providers: 5G networks will, in a perfect scenario, allow for 500 megabytes-per-second download speed. For comparison, the average internet download speed in the U.S. just a few years ago was only 6.5 megabytes-per-second. 

When you realize that, by the FCC’s own estimates, about 40 percent of rural America lacks broadband and that 5G could be an integral part of the solution for rural interconnectivity, this isn’t a hard decision. Having a third major player in this sector would accelerate the timeline on everything. This week the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the merger. Sometime soon, the Department of Justice and the FCC will make a decision. For the sake of competition, for the sake of the consumer, for greater innovation, and for the sake of helping America beat out China to become the world leader in 5G, this merger should be approved. 

Ned Ryun is a former presidential writer for George W. Bush and the founder and CEO of American Majority. You can find him on Twitter @nedryun.

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GM extends production at Detroit factory until early 2020

GM Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant is seen in Hamtramck, Michigan
General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant is seen in Hamtramck, Michigan, U.S. November 26, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

February 22, 2019

(Reuters) – General Motors Co said on Friday it had extended the production at its Detroit Hamtramck plant until January 2020, against an earlier plan to discontinue production in June this year.

The No.1 U.S. automaker is revamping its operations, which include plant closures and thousands of job cuts, as it looks to boost profitability in the wake of declining U.S. auto sales.

The Hamtramck plant will continue to produce the Chevrolet Impala and Cadillac CT6 sedans until early next year, the company said.

“We are balancing production timing while continuing the availability of Cadillac advanced technology features currently included in the CT6-V – the Blackwing Twin-Turbo V-8 (engine) and Super Cruise (driver assistance system),” GM said.

The plant has already discontinued production of the Buick LaCrosse sedan and Chevrolet Volt electric hybrid car.

Detroit-based union United Auto Workers’ President Gary Jones said GM’s decision to continue production at the plant was a relief for the workers as well as their families.

“We commend GM for today’s decision and we reiterate the importance of a collective bargaining process in times like these,” Jones said.

(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
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)

Source: OANN

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Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
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)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport in Washington
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.

(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa
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)

Source: OANN

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A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau
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)

Source: OANN

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