Category: News

Home / Category: News

Halloween costumes can sometimes be a little dangerous.

No one knows this better than Wendy Williams, who suffered a scary on-air mishap while taping her eponymous show on Tuesday. In the clip below, we see Williams dressed immaculately in a glittery green Statue of Liberty costume, headpiece and all.

She kicks off her annual Halloween costume contest but in seconds stops talking, stumbles about the stage, and drops to the floor—all on live television.

Her fall was frightening, but we’re glad to know the TV host recovered quickly. In the clip, we see Williams prop back in front of the cameras later. “That was not a stunt,” she says after the incident. “I overheated in my costume and I did pass out, but you know what? I’m a champ, and I’m back.”

VIDEO: The Most Unforgettable Kardashian Halloween Costumes

Talk about badass.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With fall seasons winding down and games dwindling, there was limited movement in this week’s NFCA Fall High School Top 25 Coaches Poll.

Top-ranked, two-time defending state champion East Coweta (32-0) remains No. 1 for a ninth straight week, and returns to action in the Georgia state Class 7A final four starting today at the South Commons Complex in Columbus, Ga.

No. 2 Papillion-LaVista (36-0) kept pace again this week by winning the Nebraska Class A championship for the second time in the last three years. The Monarchs completed their unbeaten season with a pair of victories over 11th–ranked Elkhorn — 8-0 in last Thursday’s semis, and 15-2 in Friday’s final — has now been in the state final five consecutive years.

Elkhorn (30-5) had moved up to Class A following its B state championship last season.

The only change in the rankings this week came toward the bottom, as fellow Nebraska schools Beatrice (32-6) and Skutt Catholic (29-4) swapped places at No. 23 and 24. Beatrice, who lost to Elkhorn in last year’s Class B state final, beat Wayne, 1-0, in this year’s semis, but lost both the rematch and the winner-take-all championship game with the Blue Devils, 6-1 and 5-3, respectively, to close out its season. Skutt Catholic, meanwhile, was eliminated from the state Class B tournament with a 4-2 loss to Seward.

In the only other action involving ranked teams, Missouri’s Raymore-Peculiar (23-5) won all three of its games to maintain its spot at No. 25.

After a snowstorm on Wednesday in Colorado, teams are hoping state tournament games scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Aurora Sports Park are not affected. Officials have already said games will be pushed back as needed until they can be played, and said delays of several hours could occur before utilizing the next available day.

State rankings submitted by NFCA member coaches are used to compile the NFCA Fall High School Top 25 Coaches Poll. Teams are chosen based on performance, roster quality and strength of schedule. Five states — Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri — play a fall fastpitch schedule, while Iowa recently completed its summer season.

NFCA Fall High School Top 25 Coaches Poll – Oct. 24, 2019

Rank

Team

2019 Record

Previous

1

East Coweta (Ga.)

32-0

1

2

Papillion-LaVista (Neb.)

36-0

2

3

Wesleyan (Ga.)

28-0

3

4

Collins-Maxwell (Iowa)

27-1

4

5

Westfield (Ga.)

Click Here: kanken kids cheap

18-1

5

6

Rock Canyon (Colo.)

22-1

6

7

Holy Family (Colo.)

21-1

7

8

Assumption (Iowa)

41-2

8

9

Broken Arrow (Okla.)

37-2

9

10

Sequoyah (Tahlequah, Okla.)

42-3

10

11

Elkhorn (Neb.)

30-5

11

12

Columbine (Colo.)

21-2

12

13

Loveland (Colo.)

21-2

13

14

Silo (Okla.)

38-3

14

15

Golden (Colo.)

21-2

15

16

Grand Junction Central (Colo.)

21-2

16

17

Binger-Oney (Okla.)

30-3

17

18

North Gwinnett (Ga.)

27-3

18

19

Kiowa (Okla.)

40-4

19

20

Prairie View (Colo.)

19-4

20

21

Chatfield (Colo.)

19-4

21

22

Banks County (Ga.)

28-3

22

23

Beatrice (Neb.)

32-6

24

24

Skutt Catholic (Neb.)

29-4

23

25

Raymore-Peculiar (Mo.)

23-5

25

Dropped out: None.

(NEW YORK) — A few fun facts about Kanye West: He’s running for president in 2024, he recited color psychology to wife Kim Kardashian West as she sat in a morning bath Thursday, and he was fired at 16 for shoplifting at the Gap where he worked.

West, with Kim in tow, let loose with those pearls and more during a surprise 35-minute appearance before a crowd of about 500 at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival.

Accompanied on stage by Steven Smith, lead designer of West’s shoe brand Yeezy, West dug into the nuts and bolts of the fashion industry. He said he plans to make his manufacturing entirely eco-friendly, moving it all to South and North America in the next two years, including at his 4,000-acre ranch in Cody, Wyoming.

The rapper also joined his wife, Rihanna and other celebrities in calling on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to free death row inmate Rodney Reed , based on new evidence that includes the affidavit of a fellow inmate implicating another man. Reed is scheduled for execution Nov. 20 in the abduction, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacey Stites in 1996.

Related Stories

Newsfeed

Glenn Close Is Sending Her Fans on a Wild Goose Chase to Win an Iconic Movie Prop

Entertainment

A$AP Rocky to Perform in Sweden After Conviction

When it comes to big ideas, West called Yeezy the “Apple of apparel,” and he revisited his call for African Americans to not flock to the Democratic Party as a voting bloc and to reject the notion that they’re an en masse consumer demographic.

West also broke down exactly what happened with those dome homes he was building on his sprawling property in Los Angeles, complaining that authorities went to the media to “let everyone know that you were tearing down Kanye’s domes” because one was 10 feet higher than codes allowed.

In conversation with Fast Company senior writer Mark Wilson, West referenced everybody from filmmaker Wes Anderson to Leonardo Da Vinci to Jesus Christ, but the focus was mostly on fashion.

He said he plans to move the industry forward on sustainability, starting with hydroponic, cotton, wheat and hemp farming in Cody, along with searching for ways to make the dyeing process less harmful to the environment.

“Our color is a big signature of the brand, but also dyeing is one of the main things that’s impacting the planet and the fashion industry, so just being responsible from A to Z,” West said.

Smith said West is not “blowing smoke” about making shoes from beginning to end in the United States. Smith displayed prototypes made Wednesday in Atlanta using, in part, algae harvested from ponds.

“We’re going to bring jobs back here. We’re going to make Yeezys in America. This is revolution,” Smith said. “Eco-concerns are intersecting with what we do. This is just the beginning of the future that Kanye envisioned for us to start working on.”

West added: “We took the word ‘try’ out of it and we just ‘do,’ like Yoda says.”

Click Here: kenzo online españa

(BEIJING) — Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com reported a total of more than $50 billion in sales on Monday in the first half of Singles Day, an annual marketing event that is the world’s busiest online shopping day.

Singles Day began as a joke holiday created by university students in the 1990s as an alternative to Valentine’s Day for people without romantic partners. It falls on Nov. 11 because the date is written with four singles — “11 11.”

Alibaba, the world’s biggest e-commerce brand by total sales volume, adopted the day as a sales tool a decade ago. Rivals including JD.com and Suning joined in, offering discounts on goods from smartphones to travel packages.

E-commerce has grown rapidly in China due to a lack of traditional retailing networks and government efforts to promote internet use. Alibaba, JD.com, Baidu and other internet giants have expanded into consumer finance, entertainment and offline retailing.

Related Stories

World

China’s Conviction of Fentanyl Traffickers Is Unlikely to Stop Exports to the U.S.

World

Hong Kong Lawmakers Detained After Death of Protester

On Monday, online retailers offered discounts on goods from craft beer to TV sets to health care packages.

Alibaba said sales by merchants on its platforms totaled 188.8 billion yuan ($27 billion) between midnight and noon. JD.com, the biggest Chinese online direct retailer, said sales reached 165.8 billion yuan ($23.8 billion) by 9 a.m.

Electronics retailer Suning said sales passed 1 billion yuan ($160 million) in the first minute after midnight. Dangdang, an online book retailer, said it sold 6.8 million copies in the first hour.

Alibaba kicked off the event with a concert Sunday night by Taylor Swift at a Shanghai stadium.

Chinese online spending is growing faster than retail overall but is weakening as economic growth slows and consumers, jittery about Beijing’s tariff war with Washington and possible losses, put off big purchases.

Online sales of goods rose 16.8% over a year earlier in the first nine months of 2019 to 5.8 trillion yuan ($825 billion), according to government data. That accounted for 19.5% of total consumer spending. Growth was down from an annual average of about 30% in recent years.

Click Here: kenzo online españa

Read More

Like everywhere else in Puerto Rico, the small mountain city of Adjuntas was plunged into total darkness by Hurricane Maria. When residents left their homes to take stock of the damage, they found themselves not only without power and water, but also totally cut off from the rest of the island. Every single road was blocked, either by mounds of mud washed down from the surrounding peaks, or by fallen trees and branches. Yet amid this devastation, there was one bright spot.

A Solar Oasis

Just off the main square, a large, pink colonial-style house had light shining through every window. It glowed like a beacon in the terrifying darkness.

The pink house was Casa Pueblo, a community and ecology center with deep roots in this part of the island. Twenty years ago, its founders, a family of scientists and engineers, installed solar panels on the center’s roof, a move that seemed rather hippy-dippy at the time. Somehow, those panels (upgraded over the years) managed to survive Maria’s hurricane-force winds and falling debris. Which meant that in a sea of post-storm darkness, Casa Pueblo had the only sustained power for miles around.

Click Here: mochila fjallraven

And like moths to a flame, people from all over the hills of Adjuntas made their way to the warm and welcoming light.

Already a community hub before the storm, the pink house rapidly transformed into a nerve center for self-organized relief efforts. It would be weeks before the Federal Emergency Management Agency or any other agency would arrive with significant aid, so people flocked to Casa Pueblo to collect food, water, tarps, and chainsaws — and draw on its priceless power supply to charge up their electronics. Most critically, Casa Pueblo became a kind of makeshift field hospital, its airy rooms crowded with elderly people who needed to plug in oxygen machines.

Thanks also to those solar panels, Casa Pueblo’s radio station was able to continue broadcasting, making it the community’s sole source of information when downed power lines and cell towers had knocked out everything else. Twenty years after those panels were first installed, rooftop solar power didn’t look frivolous at all — in fact, it looked like the best hope for survival in a future sure to bring more Maria-sized weather shocks.

Visiting Casa Pueblo on a recent trip to the island was something of a vertiginous experience — a bit like stepping through a portal into another world, a parallel Puerto Rico where everything worked and the mood brimmed with optimism.

It was particularly jarring because I had spent much of the day on the heavily industrialized southern coast, talking with people suffering some of the cruellest impacts of Hurricane Maria. Not only had their low-lying neighborhoods been inundated, but they also feared the storm had stirred up toxic materials from nearby fossil fuel-burning power plants and agricultural testing sites they could not hope to assess. Compounding these risks — and despite living adjacent to two of the island’s largest electricity plants — many still were living in the dark.

The situation had felt unremittingly bleak, made worse by the stifling heat. But after driving up into the mountains and arriving at Casa Pueblo, the mood shifted instantly. Wide open doors welcomed us, as well as freshly brewed organic coffee from the center’s own community-managed plantation. Overhead, an air-clearing downpour drummed down on those precious solar panels.

read the rest at The Intercept…

 

Naomi Klein is Senior Correspondent at The Intercept and the inaugural Gloria Steinem Chair of Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. Her books include: No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need; This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate;  The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism; and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies.  To read all her writing visit www.naomiklein.org. Follow her on Twitter: @NaomiAKlein.

Lauren Feeney is a video journalist whose reporting has focused on poverty and human rights in the U.S. and abroad. Her work has appeared on-air and online on PBS, the New York Times, Al Jazeera English, and The Atlantic, among other outlets, and has been featured in film festivals around the world. Before joining The Intercept, Lauren spent many years as a senior digital producer for various PBS programs including Wide Angle, Women, War & Peace, and billmoyers.com. Lauren is a graduate of Bard College and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and is currently based in Brooklyn.

Read More

Dear Members of the US Senate and House of Representatives, 

On July 1, Mexicans will go to the polls to elect a new president, both houses of Congress, and thousands of local and state officials. As scholars and representatives of civil society organizations that focus on Mexico, we are concerned about the serious challenges surrounding these elections. We are also concerned about the potentially negative role that the US government may play in light of recent comments from this administration and a mixed track record when it comes to supporting democracy in Mexico and other countries in the hemisphere.

It is important that Mexico, one of the US’s closest allies and trading partners, has a vibrant democracy, one in which citizens can freely and fairly exercise their right to vote, without restrictions or outside interference. We therefore respectfully call on you and your congressional colleagues to do everything in your power to ensure that US government policy with regard to Mexico’s elections remains neutral and supportive of basic democratic norms.

Mexico has a troubling, checkered record when it comes to elections, with frequent reports of major irregularities, vote buying, and the manipulation of results. The 1988 and 2006 presidential elections were strongly denounced as fraudulent by both the political opposition and independent civil society groups. The legitimacy of the most recent presidential elections, in 2012, has also been called into question due to revelations of illegal funding, vast vote-buying schemes, and the lack of independence of official electoral institutions and much of the broadcast media.

The recent 2017 regional elections in Mexico State and Coahuila demonstrated that unfair and fraudulent electoral practices remain a major problem today. In both these elections, there were credible allegations regarding the illegal use of public and private funds in the campaigns of the winning candidates (both belonging to the party of the sitting national government), numerous serious reports of vote buying, reports of attacks and intimidation targeting opposition campaigns, and widespread doubts about the fairness of the vote counting itself.

We are also concerned by recent developments that undermine basic civil liberties, such as freedom of association, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful protest, all of which are a prerequisite to a healthy electoral climate. Among other things, reports have emerged indicating that the Mexican government has been involved in spying on opposition activists through the use of “Pegasus” software, and has engaged in covering up the role of security forces in the 2014 mass disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. The government also has recently approved a new Internal Security Law that gives the armed forces a greater role in policing, causing many to fear that these forces could be used to suppress legitimate political opposition and social protest.

At the same time, there is growing discontent in Mexico with increasing levels of corruption and violence. Last year, four former state governors were arrested on charges of corruption. Mexico scored at the bottom of Transparency International’s index of perceived public sector corruption, with 61 percent of those polled affirming that the level of corruption had increased. Violent crimes have also risen, with 2017 being the worst year on record in terms of the number of homicides that Mexico has experienced. As in the case of the 43 disappeared of Ayotzinapa, frequent and credible allegations of state security agents’ involvement in disappearances and homicides are rarely investigated.

These and other serious problems currently plaguing Mexico can only be resolved by Mexicans. But for Mexicans to be able to effectively and collectively tackle these issues, they need to have institutions and public officials that they can rely on and believe in. Clean and fair elections are essential to achieving this.

In this context, it is imperative for the US government to support a fair and democratic electoral process in Mexico, and avoid premature statements or actions that could lend legitimacy to elections that are strongly contested on the basis of credible reports of fraud.

Unfortunately, US administrations have at times adopted unhelpful positions with regard to elections in Mexico and other countries in the region.

In last year’s elections in Honduras, the US government was quick to recognize and support elections that raised serious doubts, both within Honduras and internationally. The same occurred after the Mexican presidential elections of 1988 and 2006. Such positions embolden entrenched political actors to carry out further fraudulent and unfair electoral practices. Such a scenario should not repeat itself in the upcoming elections in Mexico.

We urge you and your colleagues to make every effort to ensure that the US supports Mexican democracy by insisting on the strict adherence to fair electoral practices and compliance with laws by supporting the peaceful transition of power, and by publicly condemning any electoral irregularities or human rights violations. The US government should maintain the utmost respect for Mexican national sovereignty and the popular vote and express its commitment to building a strong relationship with any new Mexican administration.

We also encourage you to closely monitor the selection of the next United States ambassador to Mexico, subsequent to the departure of current ambassador Roberta Jacobson on May 1st, so as to ensure that he or she is equipped with the necessary experience and diplomatic skills to effectively navigate the complex and critical bilateral relationship.

Many Mexican and international electoral monitors, including many signers of this letter, will be on the ground in Mexico providing independent reports and evaluation of the elections. We will keep you posted on these monitoring efforts, and look forward to sharing key observations with you before, during, and following the July 1 electoral process.

Sincerely,

*Affiliation for identity purposes only

 

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Associate Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University

Laura Carlsen, Director, Americas Program, Center for International Policy

Christy Thornton, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Tony Payan, Fellow and Director, Baker Institute Mexico Center, Rice University

Gilbert Joseph, Farnam Professor of History and International Studies, Yale University

Mary Kay Vaughan, Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, College Park

Horacio Larreguy Arbesu, Associate Professor of Government, Harvard University

Jonathan Fox, Professor, American University

Robert A. Blecker, Professor of Economics, American University

Maureen Meyer, Director for Mexico and Migrant Rights, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)

Vanessa Freije, Assistant Professor, University of Washington

Ted Lewis, Human Rights Director, Global Exchange

Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Associate Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies 

Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland

Alexander Aviña, Associate Professor of History, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University

David Shirk, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of San Diego

Lisa VeneKlasen, Executive Director, JASS (Just Associates)

Salih Booker, Executive Director, Center for International Policy (CIP)

Margaret Chowning, Professor of History, University of California Berkeley

José Antonio Lucero, Associate Professor of International Studies, University of Washington

Christopher Boyer, Professor, University of Illinois – Chicago

Renata Keller, Assistant Professor, University of Nevada, Reno

John Lindsay-Poland, Coordinator, Project to Stop US Arms to Mexico

Vicki Gass, Senior Policy Advisor for Central America & Mexico, Oxfam

Stephen Morris, Professor, Dept of Political Science and International Relations, Middle Tennessee State University

Paul Gillingham, Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Associate Professor of History, Northwestern University

Kevin P. Gallagher, Director, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, USA

Louise Walker, Associate Professor of History, Northeastern University

John M. Ackerman, Law Professor, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

James Cohen, Professor, North American Studies, University of Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle

Alexander Main, Senior Associate for International Policy, Center for Economic and Policy

Research

Jocelyn Olcott, Associate Professor of History, Duke University

Tanalís Padilla, Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Daniella Burgi-Palomino, Senior Associate, Latin America Working Group

William I. Robinson, Professor of Sociology and Global and International Studies, University of California-Santa Barbara

Greg Grandin, Professor of History, New York University

Yolanda Zorayda Avila Toledo, Leadership and Capacity Building Manager, Alianza Americas

Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Geoff Thale, Vice President for Programs, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)

David Montejano, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Ethnic Studies, University of California at Berkeley

Carla Garcia Zendejas, Director People, Land and Resources Program, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

Dan La Botz, Murphy Institute, City University of New York

Casey Marina Lurtz, Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University

Ericka Beckman, Associate Professor of Romance Languages, University of Pennsylvania

James E. Sanders, Professor of History, Utah State University

Barbara Weinstein, Professor of History, New York University

Raymond Craib, Professor of History and Director, Latin American Studies Program, Cornell University

Amy Offner, Assistant Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

Luis Herran Avila, Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Carleton College

Laura G. Gutiérrez, Associate Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, The

University of Texas at Austin

Ginapaolo Baiocchi, Associate Professor and Director, Urban Democracy Lab, New York University

Pamela Voekel, Associate Professor of History, Dartmouth College

Sinclair Thomson, Associate Professor of History, New York University

Matthew Vitz, Assistant Professor of History, University of California, San Diego

Susan Gauss, Associate Professor, Latin American and Iberian Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Alejandro Velasco, Associate Professor, Gallatin School, New York University

Robert A. Karl, Assistant Professor of History, Princeton University

María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University

Gerardo Renique, Associate Professor, City College of New York

Adam Goodman, Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois at Chicago

Aurelia Gómez Unamuno, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Haverford College

George Ciccariello-Maher, Visiting Scholar, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

Judith Aissen, Professor Emerita of Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz

Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor, Pomona College

Benjamin H. Johnson, Associate Professor, Loyola University Chicago

Susan Rose-Ackerman, Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

Gareth Williams, Professor, University of Michigan

Victor Silverman, Professor, Pomona College

Guadalupe Bacio, Assistant Professor, Pomona College

Gilda Ochoa, Professor of Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, Pomona College

Guillermo Delgado-P., Anthropologist, Univ of California Santa Cruz

James M. Cypher, Professor of Economics, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas and California State University (Emeritus)

Ivonne del Valle, Associate Professor, U.C. Berkeley

Bradley Levinson, Professor of Education, Indiana University

Domenico Romero, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Queens College, City University of New York

Kirsten Weld, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University

Rodrigo Aguilar Benignos, CEO, Wiljan Consulting LLC

Susanne Jonas, Retired, University of California, Santa Cruz

Noam Chomsky, Professor (emeritus) MIT, Laureate Professor U. of Arizona, U. of Arizona

Veronica Montes, Assistant Professor, Bryn Mawr College

Lorrin Thomas, Professor, Rutgers University

Alexander Dawson, Associate Professor of History, SUNY Albany

Patricia Escamilla Hamm, Associate Professor, Independent Scholar/formerly at William J Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University

Valentina Melgar Bermúdez, Project Coordinator, University and Citizen Network for Democracy (“RUCD”), Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Francisco de Vitoria OP. A.C.

Carolyn Gallaher, Associate Professor, American University

Yann P. Kerevel, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Louisiana State University

Xóchitl Bada, Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago

Neil Harvey, Professor, New Mexico State University

Dana Frank, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz

Norma Klahn, Professor of Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies, U of CA, Santa Cruz

Armando Navarro, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Riverside

Nora Haenn, Associate Professor, North Carolina State University

Maria Anna Gonzales, Retired Public Policy Researcher, University of California, Riverside

Enrique C. Ochoa, Professor of Latin American Studies and History, California State University, Los Angeles

Estelle Tarica, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Suyapa Portillo, Assistant Professor, Pitzer College

Fernando Herrera Calderón, Associate Professor of History, University of Northern Iowa

Janice Gallagher, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University-Newark

Karen Hansen-Kuhn, Director of Trade and Global Governance, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Francisco Lara-Valencia, Associate Professor, Arizona State University

Corinna Zeltsman. Assistant Professor of History, Georgia Southern University

Heather Vrana, Assistant Professor of History, University of Florida

Ana Claudia Zubieta, Program Director, The Ohio State University

Chris Tilly, Professor of Urban Planning and Sociology, UCLA

Gladys McCormick, Associate Professor, History, Syracuse University

María L. Olin Muñoz, Associate Professor of History, Susquehanna University

Maria Rosa Garcia, Professor, CSUN

Rachel Nolan, Doctoral Candidate, New York University

Claudia Lucero, Executive Director, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America – CRLN

James Chaney, Professor, Middle Tennessee State University

Diana Schwartz Francisco, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American Studies, Wesleyan University

María José Zubieta, Professor, New York University

Stephen Allen, Assistant Professor, California State University, Bakersfield

Rebecca Watts, Program Associate, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Entering office as Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel said Thursday that he would focus his leadership on ensuring that “the revolution continues its course”—promising the modernization of the island nation’s economy but making clear that he would fiercely defend its socialist system from outsiders who have pressured Cuba to change.

“In Cuba there is no space for those who aspire for a restoration of capitalism,” Diaz-Canel told the National Assembly in his inauguration speech. “The mandate given by the people to this house is to give continuity to the Cuban revolution in a crucial historic moment.”

Diaz-Canel, who was born a year after the revolution led by Fidel Castro which overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, has risen in the Communist Party’s ranks over the last three decades. He served as vice president for five years under Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, after Fidel handed over power to him due to poor health.

The inauguration, following Castro’s reported selection of Diaz-Canel as his successor and an almost-unanimous vote by the National Assembly, marks the first time since 1959 that the country will be led by a president who is not in the Castro family.

Raul Castro resigned Thursday but will remain the head of Cuba’s Communist Party. His presidency was marked by market reforms made in the hopes that they would strengthen the island’s economy, and the opening of diplomatic relations with the U.S. in 2014.

Since President Donald Trump’s administration began last year, the relationship has chilled again as Trump has reinstated some restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba. Despite the widely-celebrated thawing of relations between the two countries since, Trump denounced the agreement forged by President Barack Obama in 2014 decision as a “terrible and misguided deal.”

Diaz-Canel said in his inauguration speech that he would not move to change the island’s foreign policy, saying “he would hold dialogue with anybody who treated Cuba as an equal,” according to Reuters.

Click Here: liverpool mens jersey

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday placed blame for a terrorist attack at a parade in southwestern Iran on a U.S.-backed Persian Gulf state, and said he planned to “confront” the U.S. over tensions between the two countries at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly this week in New York.

The attack took place Saturday at an annual event in Ahvaz, killing at least 29 people, including several civilians, and injuring nearly 70 others. ISIS and a separatist group with Saudi connections, the Ahvaz National Resistance, both claimed responsibility for the attack, in which attackers disguised as soldiers opened fire at a military parade. But Rouhani suggested one of the United States’ allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates (UAE), had been involved.

“It is Americans who instigate them and provide them with necessary means to commit these crimes,” Rouhani said of the countries he was accusing.

Following the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif also held regional U.S. allies responsible in a statement on Twitter.

The attack came four months after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, against the advice of the international community and the wishes of 63 percent of the American public. He also announced that he would reimpose sanctions on the country, which have resulted in higher prices for medications and other goods, 

“America is acting like a bully toward the rest of the world…and thinks it can act based on brute force,” Rouhani told reporters just before leaving Iran for the U.N. meeting in New York. “But our people will resist and the government is ready to confront America. We will overcome this situation and America will regret choosing the wrong path.”

Trita Parsi, president emeritus of the National Iranian American Council, posited that Iran’s accusations are “difficult to dismiss.”

“John Bolton, the national security adviser, penned a memo last August in which he specifically said the U.S. should be providing assistance to the Khuzestan Arabs, the group that this entity claims to represent, the entity that perpetrated this terrorist attack,” Parsi told CNN. “You have the Saudi Crown Prince saying that he’s going to take the fight inside of Iran, you have the advisor to the UAE Crown Prince today on Twitter saying that this was not a terrorist attack, that this was declared policy…mindful of that picture, it is not completely inconceivable that Iranians are going to be looking to Saudi Arabia and potentially the U.S. as being behind these attacks.”

Click Here: liverpool mens jersey

Parsi also criticized many in the corporate media for calling the incident a “military parade attack” instead of a terror attack that killed numerous civilians.

Read More

Click:high temperature gate valves

The rise of xenophobic, right-wing extremists intent on stoking bigotry and prejudice against foreigners in Europe and elsewhere has startled observers around the world—but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered critics Thursday when she revealed her belief that the onus lies with European leaders to curb migration in order to appease those same extremists, rather than to protect the rights of asylum seekers.

In an interview with the Guardian, the 2016 presidential candidate perfectly illustrated the rift between so-called centrist Democrats and progressives as she suggested Europe should end its attempts to resettle the world’s 25.4 million refugees whose home countries have become unlivable due to war, unrest, and poverty—frequently thanks to actions  by the U.S. and its European allies. 

“I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame” of right-wing power in Europe, Clinton told the Guardian. “I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message—’we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’—because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.”

Clinton’s comments drew immediate criticism from European leaders and progressive Americans, who in addition to calling for Democrats to stand with refugees as they exercise their internationally-recognized right to seek asylum, denounced her remarks as a capitulation to extremists like President Donald Trump and his European counterparts.

Clinton’s remarks echoed Trump’s frequent lies about the burden Central American immigrants have placed on the United States. The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan pointed out that while Europe—a continent of about 740 million people and some of the world’s wealthiest countries—allowed about a million refugees to cross its borders in 2015, before numbers started to steadily decline, the vast majority of refugees are hosted by far less well-off countries. 

Turkey hosted the greatest number of refugees as of 2016, according to the United Nations, followed by Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iran. 

Click Here: liverpool mens jersey

“We face not so much a crisis of numbers but of cooperation and solidarity—especially given that most refugees stay in the countries neighboring their war-torn homelands,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that year.

Clinton went on to criticize Trump’s impropriety when he’s demanded the U.S. accept fewer migrants and refugees, calling for a wall on the southern U.S. border and issuing his Muslim ban—despite the fact that she had just expressed a similar desire.

Read More

To underscore the planetary emergency and denounce the U.K. government’s inaction on the climate crisis, a new group calling itself Extinction Rebellion rallied over 1,000 people to block Parliament Square in London on Wednesday. The direct action marks the launch of a mass civil disobedience campaign, with the group issuing a “Declaration of Rebellion” against the government because the activists “refuse to bequeath a dying planet to future generations by failing to act now.”

Police arrested 15 people taking part in the action, but organizers say the wrong people were taken into custody. “If we lived in a democracy,” Extinction Rebellion declared in a tweet, “the police would be here to arrest the criminal politicians who are wrecking the planet.”

Noted speakers at the action included Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, journalist George Monbiot, and 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl “on strike” from school over her own government’s climate inaction.  “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything,” she stated.

Green Party MEP Molly Scott Cato took part as well. In an op-ed at the Guardian, she explained that she felt there was no alternative to being a lawmaker turned law-breaker. “We are prepared to halt lorries entering fracking sites; to stand in the way of bulldozers building roads and block traffic along heavily congested and polluted streets. Direct actions like these have a long and proud history; it’s time to carry them through in a systematic way to protect the climate, and to be willing to be arrested for doing so.”

Pointing to the latest IPCC report and the World Wildlife Fund’s latest assessment of the Earth’s declining biodiversity, she added, “It is no exaggeration to say that our survival as a species is at risk. Enough. Enough of words; of hypocrisy and broken promises. It’s time to act.”

The declaration declares, in part: “The ecological crises that are impacting upon this nation, and indeed this planet and its wildlife can no longer be ignored, denied, nor go unanswered by any beings of sound rational thought, ethical conscience, moral concern, or spiritual belief. “

As such, we “declare ourselves in rebellion against our government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our future,” it continues.

They charge they government of having “wilful complicity” that “has shattered meaningful democracy and cast aside the common interest in favor of short-term gain and private profits.”

“This is our darkest hour… The science is clear—we are in the sixth mass extinciton event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly.”
—Declaration of Rebellion“This is our darkest hour… The science is clearwe are in the sixth mass extinciton event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly.”Declaration of RebellionThe declaration, said noted U.S. climate activist and author Bill McKibben, “should ring true not just for Brits, but for Americans (who have a declaration in their past) and for people anywhere.”

Wednesday’s action was far from the end of the road for Extinction Rebellion; they’ve got a week of action lined up for mid-November in London if their three demands— that the government openly communicate the severity of the crisis and urgency for change; enact legally binding policies to slash emissions; and allow for a Citizens’ Assembly to monitor and hold government to account for enacting to “the bold, swift, and long-term changes necessary”—aren’t met.

“This is just a warm up. Rebellion Day is on November the 17th. Same time, same place,” the environmental group, which is backed by nearly 100 leading academics, tweeted.

The escalating actions, they say, are because we “are raging against this madness and our hearts are breaking.”

“We have a right and duty to rebel in the face of this tyranny of idiocy—in the face of this planned collective suicide.”

“We are going to act,” the group says, “and in acting together we will overcome.”

Click Here: liverpool mens jersey

Read More