FILE PHOTO: A security guard walks past in front of the Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo, Japan January 23, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato
March 26, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – Bank of Japan policymakers debated the feasibility of ramping up monetary stimulus at their rate review this month as heightening overseas risks weighed on the country’s fragile economy, a summary of opinions of the meeting showed on Tuesday.
“In the current situation where downside risks are materializing, the BOJ should be prepared to make policy responses,” one of the central bank’s nine board members was quoted as saying.
“If there are concerns that the inflation momentum will be lost, the BOJ should ease policy decisively,” the member said.
At the March meeting, the BOJ kept monetary policy steady but downgraded its view on exports and output in a nod to the impact of slowing global growth.
(Reporting by Leika Kihara; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim)
Tech giant Google celebrated the globalist-created “Earth Day” on its homepage on Monday, but chose to ignore Easter Sunday – Christianity’s holiest day.
Rather than show a cross, colored eggs, or even the Easter Bunny, Google showed nothing on its homepage acknowledging the Easter holiday.
But it sure made the effort to celebrate “Earth Day,” which promotes the idea that humans are the scourge of the planet.
Google’s decision to ignore Easter is blatant and obvious when you consider the litany of obscure and little-known “holidays” Google chooses to celebrate, such as “Duygu Asena’s 73rd Birthday,” “Teacher’s Day,” and the “100th Anniversary of Bauhaus.”
Google, which acknowledges 'Earth Day' and a myriad of other obscure days, chose to acknowledge Easter with….precisely NOTHING. pic.twitter.com/xk39itiFmJ
Additionally, just look at how the media covered the Sri Lanka terror attacks versus the Christchurch attack, where they downplayed Islam’s role in the bombings but then blamed all white people for the mosque shooting in New Zealand.
LONDON – Britain's only female giant panda has been artificially inseminated in a bid to produce a cub.
Officials at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland said Monday it's "far too early" to know if the procedure was a success. The zoo said Tian Tian had her annual health check on Sunday and was artificially inseminated "under expert veterinary care."
Tian Tian, 15, has had cubs in China but not in Britain, where she and male companion Yang Guang have lived since 2011. Her name means "sunshine."
There have been attempts to breed a cub every year since then, thus far without success. The zoo says the gestation period for a giant panda is typically about five months.
Rescue members stand at the site of a footbridge collapse outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai, India, March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui
March 14, 2019
By Rajendra Jadhav
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Five people were killed and 36 injured when part of a pedestrian bridge collapsed during evening rush hour on Thursday in India’s financial capital Mumbai, police said.
At least three of the dead were women, Mumbai police spokesman Manjunath Singe said. The injured have been taken to hospital.
An excavator was brought in to clear the debris that had blocked the movement of traffic on a busy road in south Mumbai. Fire engines and an ambulance were also at the site.
The bridge connects to one of Mumbai’s biggest local stations, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, which was the site of a militant attack in 2008, and is used by tens of thousands of commuters each day.
Maharashtra state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Twitter he was pained to hear about the accident and had asked municipal and police officials to ensure speedy relief efforts.
The incident brought back memories of a rush hour stampede that killed at least 22 people and injured 36 in 2017 at a busy railway station in Mumbai.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), flanked by Representative Joaquin Castro (D-TX) (L) and House Democrats hold a news conference about their proposed resolution to terminate U.S. President Trump's Emergency Declaration on the southern border with Mexico, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
February 26, 2019
By Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives votes on Tuesday on a resolution to terminate President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall on the border with Mexico.
House Democrats introduced the resolution last week, challenging Trump’s assertion that he could take money Congress had appropriated for other activities and use it to build the wall.
The resolution is expected to sail easily through the Democratic-controlled House. Action then moves to the Republican-majority Senate, where the measure’s future is uncertain even though it only requires a simple majority to pass.
While Tuesday’s vote will be another chapter in a long-running fight between Trump and Democrats over border security and immigration policy, it also will be a test of constitutional separation of powers, as it is the House and Senate that primarily dictate spending priorities, not the president.
The No. 2 House Democrat, Representative Steny Hoyer, said at a press conference on Monday that he had traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border twice in the past few weeks.
“What I concluded is there is no crisis at the border. The issue … will be whether there is a crisis of our constitutional adherence,” Hoyer said.
At least two Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, have told the media they are likely to vote for the measure. But at least another two Republican votes would be needed if the resolution is to pass that chamber, assuming all Democrats and two independents back it.
Trump, who declared the national emergency this month after Congress declined his request for $5.7 billion to help build a border wall, vowed last week to veto the measure if it passes both chambers.
Congress would then have to muster the two-thirds majority necessary – a high hurdle – to override the president’s veto in order for the measure to take effect.
A bipartisan group of 58 former national security officials issued a statement Monday saying there was no “factual basis” for Trump’s emergency declaration.
Lawmakers must not allow “any president (to) on a whim declare emergencies, simply because he or she can’t get their way in the Congress,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer declared Monday.
Schumer warned Trump’s emergency declaration “could cannibalize funding from worthy projects all over the country,” noting that the administration had not even decided yet what projects to take the funds from.
About 226 House lawmakers are co-sponsoring the bill, including all but a handful of Democrats as well as one Republican, Justin Amash.
The issue is also in the courts. A coalition of 16 U.S. states led by California have sued Trump and top members of his administration to block his emergency declaration.
Congress this month appropriated $1.37 billion for building border barriers following a battle with Trump, which included a 35-day partial government shutdown – the longest in U.S. history – when agency funding lapsed on Dec. 22.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Richard Cowan; Editing by Tom Brown)
Vatican Cardinal Robert Sarah warns that the “west will disappear” as a result of mass migration, adding that “Islam will invade the world” and “completely change culture, anthropology, and moral vision.”
Sarah’s new book, Evening Draws Near and the Day is Nearly Over, is causing controversy in Europe because it explicitly identifies Muslim migration as a harbinger of the continent’s collapse.
“If the West continues in this fatal way, there is a great risk that, due to a lack of birth, it will disappear, invaded by foreigners, just as Rome has been invaded by barbarians,” said Sarah, adding, “My country is predominantly Muslim. I think I know what reality I’m talking about.”
The Cardinal also blamed the European Union for its “desire to globalize the world, ridding it of nations with their distinctive characteristics,” labeling the move “sheer madness”.
“The Brussels Commission thinks only about building a free market in the service of the great financial powers,” he continued. “The European Union no longer protects the peoples within it. It protects the banks.”
In a previous video interview, Sarah warned that Europe had lost its roots and was dying because of fewer European natives having children.
In recent interviews he has gone even further, noting that priests, bishops and cardinals within the Catholic Church have betrayed the teachings of Christ by pursuing political activism.
Sarah’s comments put him at odds with the Pope, who has relentlessly promoted migration from African and Middle Eastern countries into Europe.
According to the Cardinal, it is wrong to “use the word of God to promote migration,” and it is better “to help people flourish in their culture than to encourage them to come to Europe.”
Sarah slammed mass migration as a “new form of slavery” because migrants end up “without work or dignity”.
“Is that what the Church wants?” he asked.
Sarah remained hopeful of the situation being reversed, asserting, “This is not the end of the world, the Church will rise.”
Former Navy SEAL-turned-politician Dan Crenshaw is taking aim at political correctness.
Rep. Crenshaw, R-Texas, said Friday that identity politics is a problem in America that will have dire consequences for the military and the country.
“It’s certainly a problem in America at-large. What is identity politics? It’s this temptation to divide us up into different groups. Whether that be based on race, gender, or some other category and then pit those groups against each other and compete for power accordingly,” Crenshaw said on “Fox & Friends.”
“The way America should be is the only colors that matter are red, white, and blue. And that we compete according to our competency, that we compete according to a meritocracy which is really a fundamental element to the military. If you take that away from the military... the military will eventually fail and our country at-large will fail.”
Crenshaw was reacting to comments from retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland who Monday called identity politics a “cancer” and said it was getting harder to get everybody “playing for the same team.”
The way America should be is the only colors that matter are red, white, and blue.
"Is it getting harder in the U.S. military to assimilate everybody and get everybody on the same — playing for the same team? Yeah, it is. Identity politics is a cancer,” MacFarland said at an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.
Crenshaw agreed with MacFarland and was critical of America’s colleges for their role in promoting identity politics.
“It’s sort of this postmodern mentality... on college campuses especially, there’s this real temptation to tear down everything this country was built on to tear down these enlightenment ideals of equality,” he told "Fox & Friends."
“They have different ideas of what equality means, right. They think quality means egalitarianism. They think it means everybody should have the exact same thing and… that there’s injustices all around them.
"But the reality is that we’re supposed to compete in a free society as free individuals and part of that competition is a meritocracy and that’s what our country was founded on. And I think people are forgetting that.”
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)
FILE PHOTO: Pallbearers carry the coffin of journalist Lyra McKee at her funeral at St. Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo
April 26, 2019
BELFAST (Reuters) – Detectives investigating the murder of journalist Lyra McKee in Northern Ireland last week suspect the gunman who shot her dead is in his late teens as they made a further appeal to the local community who they believe know his identity.
McKee’s killing by an Irish nationalist militant during a riot in Londonderry has sparked outrage in the province where a 1998 peace deal mostly ended three decades of sectarian violence that cost the lives of some 3,600 people.
The New IRA, one of a small number of groups that oppose the peace accord, has said one of its members shot the 29-year-old reporter dead in the Creggan area of the city on Thursday when opening fire on police during a riot McKee was watching.
The killing, which followed a large car bomb in Londonderry in January that police also blamed on the New IRA, has raised fears that small marginalized militant groups are exploiting a political vacuum in the province and tensions caused by Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.
Police released footage on Friday of immediately before and after the shooting showing three men who were involved in the rioting and identified one as the gunman who they believe is in his late teens.
“I believe that the information that can help us to bring those responsible for her murder to justice lies within the community. I need the public to tell me who he is,” Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy told reporters.
Murphy said those involved in the disorder on the night were teenagers or in their early 20s, and that about 100 people were on the ground watching the trouble as it unfolded.
He added that police believed the gun used in the attack was of a similar caliber to those used before in paramilitary type attacks in Creggan.
“I recognize that people living in Creagan may find it’s difficult to come forward to speak to police. Today, I want to provide a personal reassurance that we are able to deal with those issues sensitively,” Murphy said, echoing similar appeals in recent days.
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, editing by Padraic Halpin and Toby Chopra)
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