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☆ Opinion: Investing in oil and gas doesn’t make sense anymore
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-04 | by ( Opinion Tom Steyer | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Some might think that, questions of morality aside, fossil fuel investments are just too good to pass up. Even in the United States, where President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is making historic investments in clean energy, oil exports are at an all-time high. On closer examination, the simplest argument against funding new oil, gas and coal projects is not that they’re immoral. What should be even more concerning to investors is that fossil fuel companies’ challenges go beyond supply and demand. Finally, there is perhaps the greatest risk fossil fuel investors face: the industry’s massive profits are largely dependent on special treatment by governments.

Persons: Tom Steyer, Pimco, Vladimir Putin’s, Joe Biden’s, I’ve, —, there’s, Morgan Stanley, persuasively, Herbert Stein Organizations: Solutions, CNN, JPMorgan Chase, State Street, Global Energy Monitor, Farallon Capital, ” Locations: BlackRock, Ukraine, United States, Texas, Farallon

☆ J. Lo and Behold: Is She for Real?
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-22 | by ( Wesley Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Nobody who winds up at a “what’s the strangest moment in this new J. Lo thingy” contest should worry. None of these people appears to have been on the set at the same time. The only performers persuasively sharing the screen are Jenifer Lewis and Jenifer Lewis, and that’s only because she’s doing Gemini. A number about a quickie wedding is called “Midnight Trip to Vegas,” but the groom has already hand-delivered Lopez’s invitation.

Persons: Lo thingy, Joe, Melfi, Jennifer Lopez’s Tony Soprano bewilder, Jane Fonda, Trevor Noah, Keke Palmer, Post Malone, Kim Petras, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jenifer Lewis, It’s Locations: Vegas

Hot economic data pushed mortgage rates back up at the end of last week, and they've inched even higher this week. Mortgage rates aren't directly impacted by Fed rate changes, but investor expectations of how Fed policy decisions will impact the overall economy can push mortgage rates up or down. See more mortgage rates on Zillow Real Estate on ZillowMortgage CalculatorUse our free mortgage calculator to see how today's mortgage rates will affect your monthly and long-term payments. 15-Year Fixed Mortgage RatesAverage 15-year mortgage rates were 5.94% last week, according to Freddie Mac data, which is a two-basis-point decrease from the previous week. Now that the Fed has paused hiking rates, mortgage rates have come down a bit.

Persons: they've, Jerome Powell, Powell, Freddie Mac Organizations: of Labor Statistics, Fed, Zillow, Federal Reserve Locations: Chevron

☆ Sen. Warren asks Justice Department to consider nixing Corizon's bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-01 | by ( Dakin Campbell | Nicole Einbinder | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Read previewSenator Elizabeth Warren is bringing fresh scrutiny to the controversial bankruptcy of private prison healthcare company Corizon Health. Warren applauded the US Trustee Program, which oversees the federal bankruptcy system, for making a rare decision last year to file an objection in court to Corizon's bankruptcy plan. Corizon's current bankruptcy plan, she wrote, "will deny Corizon's creditors, including incarcerated individuals, adequate restitution for the company's serious harms." This is the second time Warren has weighed in on the Corizon bankruptcy. "Corizon's bankruptcy is premised on the fact that it does not have sufficient resources to pay victims and other creditors," she wrote.

Persons: —, Elizabeth Warren, Warren, Corizon, Jason Brookner, YesCare didn't, Emma Dulaney, Dick Durbin, YesCare, Raphael Prober, Corizon's, plan's Organizations: Service, Corizon Health, Department of Justice's U.S, Business, Tehum Care Services, Department of Justice, US, Corizon, YesCare Holdings Locations: Texas, Tehum, YesCare

☆ Opinion: The strategy that can support Ukraine even if Trump is elected
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Christopher Good | Fareed Zakaria | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —Between the tragic, ongoing war in Gaza and the Biden-Xi summit, one crucial global crisis is in danger of being forgotten — the war in Ukraine. And this is a terrible time for it to be slipping from public consciousness because Ukraine faces trouble on two fronts. Despite the drones and Starlink connectivity, this is looking like the trench warfare during World War I, which ground on for four years. The second front that is equally worrying is in the West, where support for Ukraine is weakening. An international legal organization and process of adjudicating claims should be established and the funds handled through it.

Persons: Fareed Zakaria, “ Fareed Zakaria, General Valery Zaluzhny, Biden’s, Giorgia Meloni, “, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Trump, Laurence Tribe, Larry Summers, Robert Zoellick, Philip Zelikow, Summers, Zoellick Organizations: CNN, Biden, World Bank, Bank Locations: Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, Kherson, Italian, Moscow, Putin, Switzerland, Belgium, Kyiv, United States

☆ The Media, Like the Terrorists, Aim at Israel and Miss
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-23 | by ( Elliot Kaufman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Journal Editorial Report: Rifts emerge among the Republican presidential candidates. Image: Mohammed Saber/ShutterstockIt was a lie. Hamas said Tuesday that an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City hospital killed at least 500 Palestinians. Turns out it wasn’t Israeli, it wasn’t an airstrike, it didn’t hit the hospital, nowhere close to 500 people were killed, and Hamas knew it. The evidence indicates that a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad is the likely culprit.

Persons: Mohammed Saber, Biden Organizations: Republican, Pentagon, National Security, Palestinian Locations: Gaza

☆ Opinion | Analyze This: Donald Trump’s Thoughts and Speech
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

To the Editor:Re “Donald Trump’s Way of Speaking Defies All Logic,” by Michael Wolff (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 6):Mr. Wolff argues persuasively that much of what Donald Trump says can be chalked up to illogical and thus legally inconsequential blather and bluster. Except that is true only when one evaluates the former president’s pronouncements individually. Thus, the route to defeating Mr. Trump’s “my words are meaningless” defense is to assemble them into their coherent and sinisterly subversive whole meaning. To the Editor:Michael Wolff’s depiction of Donald Trump’s language and thinking as disordered rings true after years of hearing and reading the former president’s communications. His speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6 contains a number of examples of indirect language.

Persons: Donald Trump’s, Michael Wolff, Wolff, persuasively, Donald Trump, Trump, Trump’s, Richard Sclove Amherst, Michael Wolff’s Locations: Mass

☆ Opinion | Does Free Speech Protect Trump’s Election Lies?
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-02 | by ( Thomas B. Edsall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +5 min

But, Hasen argued:“Trump did not just state the false claims; he allegedly used the false claims to engage in a conspiracy to steal the election. There is no First Amendment right to use speech to subvert an election, any more than there is a First Amendment right to use speech to bribe, threaten, or intimidate.”Francesca Procaccini, a law professor at Vanderbilt, shares the view that in the contemporary political environment, there needs to be more regulation of speech. In an email, she wrote:The left is split on how to respond to misinformation precisely because the left is historically committed to free speech and also to uplifting marginalized voices. Now, many on the left have increasingly come to understand that speech itself (whether false speech or hate speech) is also detrimental to marginalized communities. It concluded that “states and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees (partial union dues) from nonconsenting employees.”

Persons: Hasen, Trump Will, ” Hasen, Jack Smith, Donald Trump, Trump, “ Trump, ” Francesca Procaccini, ” Procaccini, “, ”, ” Catherine MacKinnon, ” MacKinnon, misogynists, MacKinnon, Elena Kagan Organizations: “, Trump, Vanderbilt, Citizens, University of Michigan, . State, Municipal Employees Locations: “ U.S, Janus, ., County

☆ At Harvard, Affirmative Action Shouldn’t Be Just Black and White - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The other officer cut to the important question — the student’s skin color: “Brown?”“Heck no. doesn’t know what race a person of Middle Eastern descent is, should it really be making decisions based on race? Asian Americans scored better than other groups on academic and extracurricular measures, but Harvard’s admissions officers consistently gave Asians lower “personal” ratings than members of other groups. Harvard’s use of such subjective criteria to curb the number of Asian students admitted smacked of its efforts a century ago to keep out Jewish applicants it deemed unworthy of its “character and fitness” standards. In dissent, the three liberal justices argued persuasively that the court’s ruling might significantly reduce enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite colleges.

Persons: Brown, ”, Heck, “, ’, David Bernstein, persuasively, Richard Arum, Mitchell Stevens Organizations: Harvard, Federal, Court, The Times Locations: Asian, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, America

☆ Insight: Young Russian lawyers step up to defend anti-war protesters
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( Lucy Papachristou | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

"I have always had a keen sense of justice," Gominova told a Reuters reporter based in Poland. "Defending protesters in court is my version of protest," said Gominova, who began representing anti-war activists in court almost immediately after the invasion. With numerous civil society groups disbanded by the state, many other lawyers also defend anti-war activists independently, but it is hard to determine how many. Several Russian lawyers have attracted the attention – and condemnation – of authorities, not only for defending critics of the invasion but also for expressing their own opposition. Before the Ukraine conflict, Gominova, in St Petersburg, worked mainly on civil cases ranging from family disputes to consumer rights.

Persons: Young, acquittals, Sofia Gominova, Gominova, Violetta Fitsner, Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Kara, Murza, Russia's, Evgenia Kara, Vladimir, Vadim Prokhorov –, Putin –, Prokhorov, Dmitry Talantov, Ivan Safronov, Maria Bontsler, Anastasia Rudenko, George Orwell's, Yuri Mikhailov, Mikhailov, Filipp Lebedev, Gabrielle Tetrault, Farber, Mike Collett, White, Mark Trevelyan, Andrew Cawthorne Organizations: Russia, Ukraine Lawyers, Petersburg Bar Association, Moscow Bar, Russia's, Ministry, Russian Federation, Reuters, U.S, of America, Facebook, Thomson Locations: Ukraine, acquittals Moscow, Russia, Soviet Union, Poland, St . Petersburg, St, Petersburg, Moscow, Ivanovo, Russian, St Petersburg, Tbilisi, Geneva

☆ The Martian Chronicles
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Alec Nevala-Lee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Instead of astronauts, exploration has been left to robots, which attract passionate fans of their own. As Shindell observes, a trip to Mars “always seems to be two or three decades in the future,” allowing policies in the present to be justified or forgiven indefinitely. To his credit, Shindell persuasively argues that Mars is most instructive when it sheds light on how we see ourselves. Proposals for Martian colonies are often tangled up with the language of capitalism and privilege, treating the planet as an escape hatch that minimizes the need to solve problems on Earth. It fills the same imaginative role today that America once did for Europe, which underlines the danger of exporting old assumptions to an undiscovered country.

☆ A federal judge has blocked Biden's clean water rule in 24 states
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Emma Newburger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked a Biden administration rule that would expand federal protections for hundreds of thousands of rivers, lakes, streams, wetlands and other waterways in 24 states. The Biden administration's clean water rule, issued in 2022, repealed a Trump-era rule that federal courts rejected and that environmental groups argued left waterways open to pollution. White House officials and environmental groups have argued that loosening federal water protections would harm sources of safe drinking water across the country. The rule applies federal protections to wetlands, tributaries and other waters that have a connection to navigable waters, and it doesn't impose a specific distance for when adjacent wetlands are protected. West Virginia and 23 other Republican-led states sued the EPA and other federal agencies in February, alleging the rule violates the U.S. Constitution.

☆ When Did Linoleum Get So Luxe?
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Sarah Karnasiewicz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

FOR DECADES linoleum has been shorthand for downmarket and drab, the stuff of dingy, unrenovated kitchens and hospital corridors. But lately that bad rap is fading, thanks to creative, environmentally conscious designers who are approaching the material with fresh eyes. In the linoleum renaissance, the colors are rich and sophisticated, the patterns unexpected. In cabinetry and furnishings as well as underfoot, these new, elevated versions argue persuasively that the utilitarian workhorse can deliver practicality with panache. “Around 2000, you started to see a fetishization of luxury and ‘natural’ materials like stone and wood,” said Ms. Lange.

WASHINGTON — A Georgia prosecutor on Thursday urged the Supreme Court not to block a requirement that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., testify in an investigation into whether former President Donald Trump and his allies tried to interfere in the 2020 election. She noted that under the lower court ruling, Graham would be immune from questioning about legislative activities and future disputes could be adjudicated by the lower court. On Monday, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles emergency applications that arise from Georgia, temporarily blocked the grand jury subpoena from being enforced while the court determines its next steps. Willis is investigating a pair of post-election phone calls Graham made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his staff. As an influential member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham helped ensure that Trump was able to make three appointments to the Supreme Court.

Here are five races where long-shot contenders could shock the nation on Nov. 8; we've also included how the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which analyzes elections and campaigns, rates the odds. Or skip that race on the ballot?”Cook Political Report rating: “Lean Democratic”North CarolinaRepublicans are favored to win North Carolina, but only slightly. Cook Political Report rating: “Lean Republican”IowaAt 89 years old, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is running for another six-year term. Cook Political Report rating: “Likely Republican”WashingtonSen. Patty Murray, the third-ranked Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, is the GOP’s white whale this cycle. Cook Political Report rating: “Likely Democratic”

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