At CES 2017, self-driving cars were a hot topic. Faraday Future revealed its Tesla challenger, the FF91, while Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, and Nissan all had anonymous vehicle announcements. But the big question is, when will truly self-driving cars be in use or available to purchase? That’s what I asked Ford executives before CES kicked off. Ford is actively developing its own self-driving car, and has what […]
By Joe Brock | JOHANNESBURG JOHANNESBURG The chances of South African President Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, becoming the next leader of the African National Congress were given a boost on Saturday with the endorsement of the ruling party’s women’s division. The ANC will pick a new leader at a conference in December and, given its national dominance since coming to power at the end of apartheid […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin personally approved cyber attacks aimed at interfering with last year’s presidential election motivated by “a clear preference” for Donald Trump, according to a newly declassified report by the US intelligence community. “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,” the report concluded. “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate […]
This story is a collaboration between Kaiser Health News and the Center for Public Integrity. Six years ago, federal health officials were confident they could save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually by auditing private Medicare Advantage insurance plans that allegedly overcharged the government for medical services. An initial round of audits found that Medicare had potentially overpaid five of the health plans $128 million in […]
The Center for Public Integrity teamed up with The Associated Press for this series examining the politics behind the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic. It’s an epidemic that has cost 165,000 Americans their lives and surrounds the prescription opiod manufacturers with controversy. Drug companies have developed a 50-state strategy to combat laws that would stem the tide of prescription painkillers, complete with lobbying and campaign contributions adding up […]
The events of the past few days have renewed a longstanding debate over whether American Jews must always stand with the Israeli government, and under what circumstances should they criticize a friend. Continue reading the main story “There’s a very clear values clash going on,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights organization. “On the one hand, we have a small […]
By Lesley Wroughton and Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Wednesday that Israel’s building of settlements in occupied territory was endangering Middle East peace, expressing unusually frank frustration with the longtime American ally. In a swiftly issued statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Kerry of showing bias. He said Israel did not need to be lectured to by foreign […]
The Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity investigated how pharmaceutical companies are using their political clout to push a new form of opioids as their answer to the epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse. The pills are marketed as abuse-deterrents because they usually are difficult to crush and dissolve, but they also are lucrative for the industry. Some key findings: Lawmakers in 35 states introduced more […]
Getting $45 million in new work In the complaint, the whistleblowers said that when they originally lodged accusations of mismanagement — several years earlier — Bechtel project leaders launched a coordinated lobbying campaign to defend their work and also to collect new revenues for additional work on the waste treatment plant project. It then billed the department for the costs of this lobbying, the complaint said. In January 2010, […]
UNITED NATIONS — Defying extraordinary pressure from President-elect Donald J. Trump and furious lobbying by Israel, the Obama administration on Friday allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemned Israeli settlement construction. The administration’s decision not to veto the measure broke a longstanding American policy of serving as Israel’s sturdiest diplomatic shield at the United Nations. While the measure will have no practical […]
Mr. Trump, who last week nominated as ambassador to Israel a bankruptcy lawyer who heads a fund-raising effort for a West Bank settlement, made clear on Thursday that he would not wait for his inauguration to weigh in. In a statement, he said bluntly that the resolution should be vetoed. Continue reading the main story “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and […]
When mandatory telecommunications data retention legislation was first introduced — the so-called “metadata” retention laws — Australia’s favourite Attorney-General Senator George Brandis QC stressed that it wouldn’t be used to chase copyright infringers. “They can’t be and they won’t be,” Brandis said of the laws on ABC TV’s Q&A in November 2014. “The mandatory metadata retention regime applies only to the most serious crime, to terrorism, to […]
Proponents of the drugs say switching to the new formulations could save taxpayers money if addictions decline, though there is little evidence now that they reduce rates of either addiction or overdoses. The prescription painkiller epidemic costs the U.S. economy $78.5 billion annually, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report this year. “We have an enormous prescription-drug abuse problem in Illinois that’s costing a […]
It was a clear and chilly afternoon in Moscow – March 18, 2014 – when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the documents to formally annex the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine. Frustrated Western governments soon began rolling out the only response they could agree on to Mr. Putin’s brazen redrawing of Europe’s borders: economic sanctions. Over the next two days, the United States would designate 27 individuals […]
Wherever she travels, Christine Lagarde receives head of state treatment. But back home in Paris this week, in the chamber where Marie-Antoinette was sentenced to death by guillotine during the French Revolution, the chief of the International Monetary Fund faced unimpressed judges and uncompromising former colleagues. For five days in the small, wood-panelled room, she gave evidence and listened to damning testimonies that pointed to her alleged […]
‘You can’t put a price tag on anybody’s life’ Two years after the overdose that killed her 21-year-old son, Terri Bartlett traveled to Illinois’ state capital to champion an unlikely cause: revamped painkillers. Bartlett’s son Michael became hooked on Vicodin and later graduated to heroin. In emotional testimony last year, she urged lawmakers to support a bill that would prioritize the new harder-to-crush pills, saying she believed […]
Submitted by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com, Stimulus, in a general sense, is something that causes an action or response. A ringing alarm clock may prompt someone to exit their slumber. Or a fist to the gut may force someone to gasp for breath. Stimulus can come in many forms and varieties. It can come in the form of a stick; do this and you won’t get whacked […]
Steve Garey, who retired from the Anacortes refinery in 2015 after almost 25 years and served as president of the United Steelworkers local, said that while some positive changes were made after the 2010 accident, upper management at Tesoro remains “contemptuous” of its work force and is “hiding behind incredibly permissive process safety regulations.” Those regulations grew out of a string of catastrophic events in the 1980s, […]
By Julia Love and Ginger Gibson | SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON Alphabet’s Google is racing to hire more conservatives for its lobbying and policy arm, trying to get a foothold in President-elect Donald Trump’s Washington after enjoying a uniquely close relationship with the administration of President Barack Obama. In the weeks since the Nov. 8 election, Google has ramped up efforts to hire Republican lobbying firms and […]
Google, Facebook and other online advertising businesses face strict new privacy rules from Brussels on the ways they can track people online. The new rules would compel websites and browsers, such as Google Chrome, to switch from a default of allowing users to opt out of online advertising to asking them to opt in to view adverts based on their browsing history, according to a leaked draft […]
December 13, 2016 by: Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington Donald Trump is poised to name Rex Tillerson, chief executive of ExxonMobil, as his secretary of state, ignoring criticism that the oil and gas man is too close to Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Mr Trump tweeted on Monday that he would formally unveil his choice for the high-profile cabinet position on Tuesday morning. US media reported […]
Dec 12, 2016 10:08 am IST As more airlines roll out in-flight internet and regulators loosen rules governing wireless devices on planes, one country is a holdout in continuing to prohibit passengers from using Wi-Fi on board: India. Home to the fastest-growing major air-travel market and a galloping economy, India hasn’t consented to the use of onboard Wi-Fi in its airspace due to security concerns. Carriers including […]
As the first mainstream fiction film tackling the thorny issue of gun control in the United States, Miss Sloane – which opened the 13th Dubai International Film Festival on December 7 and goes on general release in the UAE on December 15 – was always likely to attract angry headlines from both sides of the debate. So while it might be surprising that no one has tackled […]
Boeing officials, already dismayed by Mr. Trump’s attack last week over the costs of a new Air Force One, acknowledged that the Iran jet deal still faced contingencies — a polite way of saying they were deeply worried about whether Mr. Trump and the Republican-led Congress would support it. Continue reading the main story Beyond that deal, Boeing and other companies that export jet engines, high-tech products […]
Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter on Monday announced they had joined forces in an attempt to curb explicit terrorist imagery online. The move follows criticism from Brussels that big US social media groups have made insufficient effort to clamp down on hate speech. In a statement, the technology groups said they were building new technology that would identify extremist content, including terrorist recruitment videos and images of […]
Russian President Vladmir Putin played a crucial role in helping OPEC rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia set aside differences to forge the cartel’s first deal with non-OPEC Russia in 15 years. Interventions ahead of Wednesday’s OPEC meeting came at key moments from Putin, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, OPEC and non-OPEC sources said. Putin’s […]
By Emily Stephenson and Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump, who pledged on the campaign trail to “drain the swamp” in Washington, is staffing his on-the-ground transition teams mostly with government veterans, including ex-lobbyists, a Reuters review of publicly available information shows. Drawing heavily from former military, congressional and agency staff, he has named about 140 operatives to “landing teams” at various government departments to […]
Over the years, I have often written about Silicon Valley’s desire for Washington to stay out of its hair. Except for lucrative defense contracts, the tech industry would prefer to work unrestrained by politics and government regulations. That trend lasted well into the early 1990s, but when Bill Clinton was running for president, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins and then-CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, figured that if […]
Continuing her crusade against some seemingly imaginary election tampering claims, Jill Stein has just announced that she has officially filed a recount petition in the state of Pennsylvania. According to The Hill, Stein released the following statement: “We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system. We need to verify the vote in this and every election so that Americans of all […]
The ads’ sponsor The Humane Society Legislative Fund formed in 2004 as the lobbying arm of the Humane Society of the United States, a public charity to which donations are tax-deductible. Donations to the Humane Society Legislative Fund, however, are not tax-deductible, as it’s organized as a “social welfare” nonprofit under section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code. Electoral politics cannot be the primary focus of charities […]
