Another solid month for the U.S. economy as American companies added 200,000 new workers to their payrolls last month. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.1 percent, but wages are rising. Although the number of unemployed Americans continues to fall, recruiting agencies say they’ve never been busier. Mil Arcega explains.
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Category Archives: News
Worldwide news. News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called “hard news” to differentiate it from soft media
Trump and Republicans Hail Release of Classified Memo on Russia Probe
Congressional Republicans released a classified memo related to the Russia investigation Friday after President Donald Trump decided that the document should be available to the general public. The memo from Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee alleges U.S. law enforcement officials including the FBI abused their authority in seeking to put a Trump campaign associate under surveillance for possible ties to Russia. The release of the memo has set off yet another political firestorm over the Russia probe in Washington, as we hear from VOA National correspondent Jim Malone.
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What Is in the Nunes Memo?
A controversial document prepared by Republican members of Congress accuses U.S. law enforcement officials of abusing their surveillance authorities during the Russia investigation.
The 3½-page secret memo, written by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, was released Friday after President Donald Trump authorized its declassification.
What the memo alleges
The memo’s key allegation is that the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI improperly obtained a series of electronic surveillance warrants on former Trump associate Carter Page as part of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Page served as a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign and came under U.S. intelligence suspicion after traveling to Moscow and meeting with Russian officials.
FBI surveillance of foreign spies and other foreign targets in the United States is overseen by a secret court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). To obtain a warrant from the court, the FBI must furnish evidence that the target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign government.
In Carter’s case, the memo alleges, the FBI substantially relied on information from a research dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer for the election campaign of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton. The bureau used the information in its initial warrant application in October 2016 after Page had left the campaign as well as three subsequent renewal applications.
The author of the dossier, Christopher Steele, was a longtime FBI source who was paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, via the law firm Perkins Cole and the research firm Fusion GPS, to “obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia,” according to the memo.
Steele is also accused of harboring an anti-Trump bias during the campaign, telling a senior Justice Department official two months before the 2016 election that he “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Trump has called the dossier’s allegations about his personal and financial ties to Russia a “Crooked Hillary Pile of Garbage.”
But while the dossier formed an “essential part” of the Page surveillance applications, the memo says, FBI and DOJ officials failed to disclose that the underlying information had been funded by the Democrats “even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.”
The government “had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts,” the Republicans wrote in the memo. “However, our findings indicate that … material and relevant information was omitted.”
To support their claim that the dossier was central to obtaining the warrants, the Republicans cited December 2017 testimony by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that “without the dossier information,” no surveillance warrant would have been sought.
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee who unsuccessfully tried to block the memo’s release blasted the document for “serious mischaracterizations.”
In a statement, Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the FBI “would have been derelict in its responsibility to protect the country had it not sought a FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] warrant.”
What the memo doesn’t say
While the memo says the application relied on unsubstantiated information from the Steele dossier, it doesn’t say what other pieces of evidence the FBI invoked to obtain the warrants. A FISA warrant application typically contains multiple sources of classified information to establish probable cause that the target of a proposed surveillance works for a foreign government.
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said a key question that is left unanswered in the memo is whether other information used in the application was enough to warrant its approval.
“There is a lot of questions raised by the information that I’d like to get answers to,” Gonzales told VOA.
Ahead of the memo’s public release, Trump tweeted that the “top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!”
But the memo does not directly accuse the top brass at the FBI and Justice Department of any wrongdoing, though it does say that senior officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, all signed off on the Page warrant applications.
Gonzales said that top officials who sign FISA warrant applications don’t always get to read every fact included in them.
“You’re not necessarily going to know what’s not included in the application and nonetheless you go ahead and sign the FISA application,” he said.
Gonzales said criticism of the department’s top brass can trickle down to its rank and file.
“Whatever one might say about being for the rank and file at the department, the line prosecutors and line investigators, anytime you attack the leadership or the work of the department, it does hurt the morale of the rank and file,” he said.
“I’m worried that the public’s confidence in the integrity of investigations and prosecutions by the Department of Justice has been eroded,” Gonzales said. “I think that’s a terrible place to be, quite frankly.”
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FBI Director Tells Employees He Stands With Them After Memo Release
FBI Director Christopher Wray told agency employees Friday that he stood with them after the release of a memo outlining allegations by Republican lawmakers that FBI investigators abused their powers in their probe of Russian interference in the presidential election.
“I stand by our shared determination to do our work independently and by the book,” Wray said in a statement to 35,000 FBI staff.
“You’ve all been through a lot in the past nine months and I know it’s often been unsettling, to say the least. And the past few days haven’t done much to calm those waters,” he said. “Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.”
Wray’s letter made no direct reference to the memo released Friday. He also gave no indication that he planned to leave the agency.
President Donald Trump lashed out at the FBI and Justice Department on Friday after the memo was made public.
He tweeted: “The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people.”
When asked by a reporter whether releasing the memo made it more likely Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would be fired, Trump replied, “You figure that one out.”
Rosenstein supervises the Russia probe and named special counsel Robert Mueller to lead the investigation.
White House officials said later that the administration expected Rosenstein to remain in his job.
“No changes are going to be made at the Department of Justice. We fully expect Rod Rosenstein to continue on as the deputy attorney general,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told CNN.
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Suspected Spam King Extradited to US
Spain has extradited to the United States a Russian citizen who is suspected of being one of the world’s most notorious spammers.
Pyotr Levashov, a 37-year-old from St. Petersburg, was arrested in April while vacationing with his family in Barcelona.
U.S. authorities had asked for him to be detained on charges of fraud and unauthorized interception of electronic communications. He was scheduled to be arraigned late Friday in a federal courthouse in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where a grand jury indicted him last year.
A statement from Spain’s National Police said officers handed Levashov over to U.S. marshals Friday. The extradition was approved in October by Spain’s National Court, which rejected a counter-extradition request from Russia.
The Russian Embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Army of botnets
Authorities in the U.S. say they have linked Levashov to a series of powerful botnets, or networks of hijacked computers, that were capable of pumping out billions of spam emails. An indictment unsealed last year said he commanded the sprawling Kelihos botnet, which at times allegedly involved more than 100,000 compromised computers that sent phony emails advertising counterfeit drugs, harvested users’ logins and installed malware that intercepted bank account passwords.
On a typical day, the network would generate and distribute more than 2,500 spam emails, according to the indictment.
Levashov’s lawyers have alleged the case is politically motivated and that the U.S. wants him for reasons beyond his alleged cybercrimes. They had argued that he should be tried in Spain instead, and pointed to evidence showing that he gained access to Russian state secrets while studying in St. Petersburg.
Levashov’s U.S.-based lawyer, Igor Litvak, didn’t return emails or calls seeking comment Friday.
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U.S. House Sets Tuesday Vote on Bill to Avoid Government Shutdown
The U.S. House of Representatives plans to vote on Tuesday on legislation to keep federal agencies operating beyond Feb. 8, when existing funds expire, a senior House Republican aide said on Friday.
The aide did not provide details, however, on the duration of this latest-in-a-series of temporary funding measures.
Congressional negotiators are fighting over defense and non-defense spending levels for the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, as well as other unrelated matters.
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US Stocks Swoon, Sending Dow Down More Than 650 Points
U.S. stocks slumped Friday, pulling down the Dow Jones industrial average by more than 650 points and handing the market its worst week in two years.
Technology, banks and energy stocks accounted for much of the broad slide. Several major companies, including Exxon Mobil and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, sank after reporting weak earnings.
Fears of rising inflation sent bond yields higher and contributed to the stock market swoon after the government reported that wages grew last month at the fastest pace in eight years.
The sharp drop follows a long period of unprecedented calm in the market. Stocks haven’t had a pullback of 10 percent or more in two years, and hit their latest record highs just one week ago.
“We’ve enjoyed low interest rates for so long, we’re having to deal with a little bit higher rates now, so the market is trying to figure out what that could mean for inflation,” said Darrell Cronk, head of the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
The increase in bond yields hurts stocks in two ways: it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow money, and it also makes bonds more appealing to investors than riskier assets such as stocks.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 59.85 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,762.13. That’s the biggest loss for the benchmark index since September 2016. The S&P 500 has lost 3.9 percent since hitting a record high a week ago.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 665.75 points, or 2.4 percent, to 25,520.96. The Nasdaq slid 144.92 points, or 2 percent, to 7,240.95. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks gave up 32.59 points, or 2.1 percent, to 1,547.27.
Rise in interest rates
While interest rates are still low by historical standards, meaning borrowing is still relatively cheap for businesses and people, they’ve been rising more swiftly, and that’s what has markets on edge.
“The pace of rate increases is more important than the level,” said Nate Thooft, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
The increase in rates has been driven by the prospect of stronger economic growth, and higher inflation, in the U.S. and abroad.
Bond prices declined again Friday, pushing yields higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for interest rates on many kinds of loans, including mortgages, climbed to 2.83 percent, the highest level in roughly four years. The rate was at 2.41 percent four weeks ago and 2.66 percent on Monday.
“Once we started going north of 2.5 percent, and you put that together with an overbought market, it had the ingredients of a sell-off, especially since January was so strong,” said Jeff Zipper, regional investment strategist at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management.
The S&P 500, which many index funds track, soared 5.6 percent in January, its biggest monthly gain since March 2016.
The expectation among investors has long been for a gradual rise in interest rates, as the Federal Reserve slowly pulls back from the stimulus that it implemented for the economy amid the Great Recession. But if rates rise more quickly than expected, it could upset markets.
The key concern is that the Fed will respond to higher inflation by raising its key interest rate more quickly than expected. The government’s latest job and wage data stoked those concerns Friday.
U.S. jobs
U.S. employers added a robust 200,000 jobs in January, slightly above market expectations for an 185,000 increase. Meanwhile wages rose sharply, suggesting employers are competing more fiercely for workers. The figures point to an economy on strong footing even in its ninth year of expansion, fueled by global economic growth and healthy consumer spending at home.
That’s good news for Main Street USA, but not for Wall Street. Investors fear the pickup in hourly wages, along with a recent uptick in inflation, may make it more likely that the Fed will raise short-term interest rates more quickly in the coming months. Some economists were predicting Friday that the central bank will raise its benchmark rate four times this year, rather than the three times most previously expected.
“With financial conditions continuing to ease and core price inflation also starting to pick up, we expect this will persuade the Fed to hike rates four times this year,” Andrew Hunter, an economist with Capital Economics, wrote in a published note Friday.
The market slide may have been overdue, particularly after the strong start for stocks this year where the S&P 500 had its best January in two decades.
The global economy is still strong, corporate profits and sales have been better than expected this reporting season and buyers for stocks still remain, all reasons to be optimistic about stocks, said Nate Thooft, senior portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management.
“It’s appealing, these 2 to 3 percent pullbacks,” said Thooft, who had been trimming some of his stock holdings after the market’s big January gains. “We look at this and say, ‘Maybe it’s your first day to buy a little bit.'”
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Trump Nominee for Ambassador to Singapore Withdraws
President Donald Trump says K.T. McFarland has withdrawn from consideration to be ambassador to Singapore.
Trump issued a statement Friday. He said McFarland served his administration “with distinction” and said Democrats “chose to play politics rather than move forward with a qualified nominee for a critically important post.”
McFarland is a former deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration and former Fox News analyst. She was nominated in May.
After the Republican-majority Senate did not act on the nomination by the end of last year, McFarland was re-nominated in January.
McFarland’s nomination was in doubt amid questions about her communications with ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
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North Korean Escapees Tell Trump About Their Ordeals
After phone calls with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke Friday in the Oval Office with a group of North Koreans who had escaped their repressive country.
“Their story is amazing,” Trump said before asking the eight Koreans to speak about their ordeals. The president listened intently as they spoke for 20 minutes.
“We actually have two other people outside and they are literally afraid of execution — they didn’t want to be with cameras,” the president told reporters.
Those defectors who decided to appear on camera thanked Trump for highlighting North Korean human rights abuses. Trump addressed the subject during his speech last November in the South Korean National Assembly and in his State of the Union address last week.
Several appealed to Trump to do more.
Those who escape North Korea to China “would rather die and kill themselves than be repatriated to North Korea,” said Lee Hyeon-soo, adding many carry poison with them in case they are caught.
“Please help us to stop the repatriations from China to North Korea,” she implored Trump.
Lee added that “escaping North Korea is not like leaving another country, it’s more like leaving another universe. I’ll never truly be free of its gravity no matter how far my journey.”
She told Trump that she fled an arranged marriage and a brothel in China.
Lee, now a student in South Korea, has written a memoir about her experience, The Girl with Seven Names.
Kim Kwang-jin, who was a banking agent in Singapore for the North Korean government and defected in 2003, told Trump his attention to the human rights issue “will be an inspiration” to many in his native country.
Ji Seong-ho, a double amputee who attended Trump’s State of the Union address, where he stood to wave his old crutches when he received an ovation, told Trump: “I’ve been crying a lot these past few days since the speech, as I was so moved by the whole experience.”
Ji also thanked the president “for paying attention and trying to help us.”
Peter Jung, who escaped to China in 2000, told Trump he is now a broadcaster for the U.S.-government-supported Radio Free Asia, which — as does VOA — broadcasts to North Korea in the Korean language.
“I was very honored to become a United States citizen” last year, he told Trump.
U.S. efforts
The president, during the Oval Office meeting, refrained from making provocative comments about North Korea or its leader.
In the past, he has threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on the country — which is building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles — and has belittled North Korea’s leader as “Little Rocket Man.”
During the meeting, Trump said, “We’re doing a lot” regarding North Korea. “We have many administrations that should have acted on this a long time ago.”
The president indicated his patience remains limited regarding North Korea’s activities.
“We have no road left,” Trump said.
“It’s a very tricky situation,” the president added. “We’re going to find out how it goes, but we think the Olympics will go very nicely and, after that, who knows?”
South Korea, Japan efforts
Vice President Mike Pence will lead the official U.S. government delegation to the opening of the Winter Games next week in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Athletes from the North and South are to march together under a common flag and will put a unified women’s hockey team on the ice.
A state of war has technically persisted on the Korean Peninsula since 1953, when the armies of China and North Korea signed an armistice with the United States and U.N. Command, which had defended the South during a three-year war.
North Korea has been under a totalitarian government since then. According to U.N. inquiries, the country’s violations of human rights are widespread, grave and systematic, rising to the level of crimes against humanity.
In his phone call Friday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the U.S. president thanked him “for Japan’s efforts to maintain international pressure on North Korea. This includes recent efforts to clamp down on North Korea’s attempts to circumvent sanctions in the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula,” according to the White House. “Both leaders agreed on the need to intensify the international maximum pressure campaign to denuclearize North Korea.”
They also discussed expanding Japan’s missile defense capabilities, it said.
Trump, in a call with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, “discussed the importance of improving the human rights situation in North Korea and underscored their commitment to work together on this issue,” according to a readout of the discussion issued by the White House.
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Dow Falls More Than 600 Points as Stocks’ Slide Continues
Stocks closed sharply lower in New York on Friday, extending a weeklong slide, as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 600 points.
The drop capped stocks’ worst week in two years. The Dow’s drop was its biggest in percentage terms since June 2016.
Several giant U.S. companies’ shares dropped after reporting weak earnings, including Exxon Mobil and Alphabet. Apple and Chevron also fell.
Bond yields rose sharply after the government reported the fastest wage growth in eight years, stoking fears of inflation.
The Dow fell 665 points, or 2.5 percent, to 25,520.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 59 points, or 2.1 percent, to 2,762. The S&P is down almost 4 percent since hitting a record high a week ago.
The Nasdaq was off 144 points, or 2 percent, to 7,240.
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Britain Embraces China’s ‘One Belt’ Initiative; Washington Offers Warning
Britain has made clear its desire to be part of China’s so-called “One Belt One Road” initiative — a cornerstone of President Xi Jinping’s vision to boost Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa. But there are concerns about the financial and humanitarian costs of the vast infrastructure projects being undertaken.
British Prime Minister Theresa May recently visited Beijing, leading a delegation of ministers and business leaders in an effort to boost trade after Britain’s European Union exit. The two countries signed deals worth $12.7 billion, and May hailed a “golden era” of Sino-British relations.
Her ambassador to Beijing, Barbara Woodward, earlier outlined Britain’s hopes of cooperating in China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative.
“The first is, we’d like to collaborate on practical projects,” she said. “The second area where we’d like to collaborate with China is bringing some of our city of London financing experience. Because these projects are big projects, particularly infrastructure, they require complex funding mechanisms.”
Too complex, according to some.
Approximately 9,500 kilometers away in Uganda, one of China’s latest “One Belt One Road” projects is nearly complete. Soaring above the muddy swamp between the capital, Kampala, and its airport, the new 51-kilometer (31-mile) four-lane expressway was built by the China Communications Construction Company. Its $580 million cost was met with a loan from Beijing.
Kampala’s mayor, Erias Lukwago, says the price is too high.
“Even these Chinese who are coming here from — even these commercial banks we are borrowing from, Exim Banks and what not, the burden will finally come on our shoulders as Ugandans, our children and grandchildren will have to shoulder this burden which is very, very unfortunate,” Lukwago said.
Through the “One Belt” initiative, China has invested across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and even into eastern Europe.
However, Britain’s decision to get involved should not be taken lightly, warns Barnaby Willitts-King of the Overseas Development Institute.
“Particularly in fragile parts of the world where China’s Belt and Road initiative is going to be running through, there are a lot of potential risks around humanitarian concerns, environmental concerns, that I think focusing on just on a trade deal might overlook,” Willitts-King said. “But it’s also got an advantage. The U.K. has worked and invested in a lot of these countries over the years. And it could actually provide some very practical advice to China.”
Washington has gone further in its criticism of China’s trade and foreign policy.
“China, as it does in emerging markets throughout the world, offers the appearance of an attractive path to development. But in reality, this often involves trading short-term gains for long-term dependency,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Thursday, ahead of his trip to Latin America.
Many emerging economies welcome China’s investments, and the involvement of countries such as Britain. However, there are concerns that mounting debts will cause big problems further down the road.
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Glasses Capture 360 Video From Wearer’s Perspective
As virtual reality becomes more popular, different types of 360-degree cameras are popping up for consumers. One that stands out from the crowd for its unique look and design are eye glasses with built-in cameras. Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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Ultrasound Prosthetics Allow Fine Motor Control
Just like every other health technology, prosthetics are now able to do things that were unimaginable a few years ago. The advances are happening with the help of machine learning, but also through human ingenuity. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Media Shut Out of President’s Speech to Republicans
U.S. President Donald Trump addressed the Republican Party’s winter dinner in Washington Thursday, aiming barbs at Democrats and touting some of the legislative successes for the party.
It was the second time in the day that Trump addressed the Republicans. Earlier he spoke to the Republicans at their retreat in West Virginia, urging those present to back his immigration proposal and help elect more Republicans.
At the dinner, Trump criticized the Democrats for “stonewalling” the critical immigration reform bill. He said while he is pushing to reach a deal, “The Democrats are AWOL. They’re missing in action,” he said.
Trump said all Democrats do is resist, taking a jab at the “resist” movement opposing him.
The president also spoke of how well his State of the Union speech had gone earlier in the week. He said, “Even the haters back there [members of the press corps] gave us good reviews on that one [State of the Union address]. It’s hard for them to do it. They came up with some fake polls, you know that fake polls. But the fake polls were even good.”
But the president’s full remarks were unavailable as the reporters present were told to shut down their cameras and were escorted out. The live feed carried by CSPAN was also cut.
The president routinely criticizes the media as being biased against him and his administration.
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Google’s AI Push Comes with Plenty of People Problems
Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently declared that artificial intelligence fueled by powerful computers was more important to humanity than fire or electricity. And yet the search giant increasingly faces a variety of messy people problems as well.
The company has vowed to employ thousands of human checkers just to catch rogue YouTube posters, Russian bots and other purveyors of unsavory content. It’s also on a buying spree to find office space for its burgeoning workforce in pricey Silicon Valley.
For a company that built its success on using faceless algorithms to automate many human tasks, this focus on people presents something of a conundrum. Yet it’s also a necessary one as lawmakers ramp up the pressure on Google to deter foreign powers from abusing its platforms and its YouTube unit draws fire for offensive videos , particularly ones aimed at younger audiences.
In the latest quarter alone, Google parent Alphabet Inc. added 2,009 workers, for a total of 80,110. Over the last three years, it hired a net 2,245 people per quarter on average. That’s nearly 173 per week, or 25 people per day.
Some of the extra workers this year will come from its vow to have 10,000 workers across Google snooping out content policy violations that computers can’t catch on their own, representing “significant growth” in personnel.
Alphabet on Thursday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $3.02 billion, after reporting a profit in the same period a year earlier.
The Mountain View, California-based company said it had a loss of $4.35 per share, caused by provisions for U.S. tax changes enacted last year. Earnings, adjusted for pretax expenses, came to $9.70 per share.
The results missed Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $10.12 per share.
The internet search leader posted revenue of $32.32 billion in the period. After subtracting Alphabet’s advertising commissions, revenue was $25.87 billion, exceeding Street forecasts. Twelve analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $25.65 billion.
Alphabet shares were down 4 percent at $1,119.22 in after-hours trading.
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Notorious Nunes Memo Is Criticized as Political Tool
The Nunes memo is a four-page document creating a big controversy in Washington, despite few people outside Congress having read it. It has even become the subject of a rift between U.S. President Donald Trump and his FBI director, Christopher Wray.
But what is in this memo that is upsetting so many people?
Critics of the document say the memo seeks to discredit the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department, which are involved in the effort to uncover whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential race.
The document was created by staff members of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, alleging the FBI abused its authority to conduct surveillance by seeking a court order to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.
Reports say the memo was produced solely by Republican members of the committee without the knowledge of committee Democrats.
The memo, along with a 10-page Democrat rebuttal, was released to the full House of Representatives on Jan. 24.
There is controversy over whether the document should be released to the public. Republicans want to, but Democrats and other critics fear it could expose sensitive Justice Department files related to the Russia investigation. Not only could that be an immediate problem, critics say, but it could set an uncomfortable precedent that could make the FBI and DOJ (Department of Justice) reluctant to share materials with the House Intelligence Committee in the future.
Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has publicly criticized the memo as “rife with factual inaccuracies” that are “meant to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI.”
Complicating the matter, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that tracks efforts by foreign nations to interfere with democratic institutions, the Alliance for Security Democracy, reported last month that the hashtag #ReleasetheMemo was being heavily used by hundreds of pro-Russia Twitter accounts that regularly spread disinformation. That connection could support the argument that the Republican memo is meant to discredit the FBI Russia investigation.
While the full House has had access to both the Republicans’ and Democrats’ competing papers on the subject, Democrats on the committee have drafted a 10-page rebuttal memo, but the House Intelligence Committee voted along party lines Monday to release publicly only the Republican version, rejecting Schiff’s motion to release the Democratic rebuttal. This has prompted accusations that the Republicans are trying to control the conversation by releasing only what information they find advantageous.
Republicans also rejected a motion giving the FBI and DOJ additional time to vet the document.
The president is tasked with deciding whether the Republican memo should be released to the public or kept secret. Trump has advocated release of the memo in the past.
Arguments over the memo have created new divisions in Washington, D.C. FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday openly opposed release of the Nunes memo, saying he has “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy.
As of Thursday afternoon, the document remains under review at the White House. A senior administration official told The Washington Post that the president “is inclined to approve release of the memo today or tomorrow.”
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Apple Dealing with iPhone Jitters, Coming Off Big Quarter
Apple is making more money than ever, but it still doesn’t seem to be enough to keep everyone happy. Not with conspiracy theories swirling around Apple’s secret slowdown of older iPhones while a cloud of uncertainty looms over its high-priced iPhone X.
It’s a reality check for a company accustomed to an unflinchingly loyal customer base. Apple expected buyers to embrace the iPhone X as a revolutionary device worth its $1,000 price, but it appears many Apple fans aren’t impressed enough to ante up, especially with other recently released models selling for $200 to $300 less.
And not even the less expensive iPhone 8 line appears to be selling quite as well as analysts had expected, based on the numbers that came out Thursday in Apple’s fiscal first-quarter earnings report.
What’s more, consumers disillusioned with the slowdown of their devices may be even less inclined to upgrade. Apple said the slowdown was its effort to prevent unexpected crashes on phones with old batteries, and it’s now offering to replace those batteries for just $29. That $50 discount is available as part of Apple’s apology for not being more forthcoming about what it did.
“Once you get past all the enthusiasts who want the iPhone X, you get down to a lot of people who think $1,000 is a lot of money for a phone,” said analyst Bob O’Donnell of the research firm Technalysis. “We may be getting near the peak of the smartphone market, and that impacts everyone, including Apple.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the iPhone X has been selling even better than management anticipated, describing it as its top-selling model in every week since its release in early November. But Apple’s revenue forecast for the current quarter fell below analysts’ already diminished expectations, fueling fears that the early appetite for the iPhone X has quickly faded.
Those concerns are the primary reason Apple’s stock has fallen about 7 percent since hitting an all-time high two weeks ago. The shares ticked up $1.02 to $168.80 in extended trading after the quarterly report came out.
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Trump Warns Republicans Against Labeling Young Immigrants as ‘Dreamers’
U.S. President Donald Trump warned Republican lawmakers Thursday against labeling hundreds of thousands of young immigrants facing deportation as “Dreamers,” as their advocates call them while trying to keep him from returning them to their native countries.
“Some people call it Dreamers. It’s not Dreamers. Don’t fall into that trap,” Trump told the Republicans at a political party retreat at a West Virginia resort. “We have dreamers in this country, too. We can’t forget our dreamers.”
The term Dreamers is derived from the DREAM Act, legislation that would have protected young immigrants brought to this country as children from deportation but was not passed by Congress. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an administrative program implemented under former President Barack Obama, provides many of the same protections and authorizes the young immigrants to work in the United States.
Trump plan
Trump last year rescinded DACA but gave Congress until March 5 to weigh in on the issue. He has proposed a 10- to 12-year track to citizenship for about 1.8 million younger immigrants who have DACA protection or are eligible for its guarantees.
The president said Thursday that he hoped Congress would reach an agreement on legislation to protect DACA beneficiaries, but he accused Democrats of politicizing contentious immigration issues while not seriously trying to resolve them.
“We want to take care of DACA and I hope we will,” Trump said. “We need the support of the Democrats in order to do it, and they might not want to do it. They talk like they do, but … we’re going to find out very soon. To get it done, we’ll all have to make some compromises along the way. We have to be willing to give a little in order for our country to gain a whole lot.”
’Sanity and common sense’
Trump, as he did in his State of the Union address earlier in the week, called for the Republicans to adopt his immigration reform plans. His proposals include protection of the young immigrants who years ago were brought illegally into the country by their parents; construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico to thwart more illegal migration; an end to a lottery for immigration applicants; and stricter family migration policies.
“What the American people are pleading for is sanity and common sense in our immigration system,” Trump said.
He said Democrats “want to use [immigration] as an election issue.” But he contended that with his proposal, which he called a compromise, “it’s an election issue that will go to our benefit, not their benefit.”
Earlier in the day, Trump said in a Twitter comment, “March 5th is rapidly approaching and the Democrats are doing nothing about DACA. They Resist, Blame, Complain and Obstruct — and do nothing. Start pushing Nancy Pelosi and the Dems to work out a DACA fix, NOW!” Pelosi is the House Democratic leader.
Trump urged the Republicans to “pass immigration reform that protects our country, defends our borders and modernizes our immigration rules to serve the needs of American workers and of American families. We want an immigration policy that’s fair, equitable, that’s going to protect our people.”
Battle at the polls
He said that if Democrats do not agree to negotiate immigration reforms, then Republicans need to elect more of their party members to increase the size of the majorities they now have in the Senate and House of Representatives.
The immigration debate is linked to discussions between Congress and the White House about funding for government agencies, with a current stopgap spending measure expiring on February 9. The immigration issue was at the center of a funding dispute that led last month to a three-day partial shutdown of government agencies.
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India Announces Raft of Measures for Rural Development
With an eye on general elections next year, India has announced several populist measures that include a health insurance program for 500 million people, and billions of dollars for rural development and affordable housing in its annual budget.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the measures aimed at improving “ease of living” for citizens, the vast majority of whom live in rural areas.
The announcements came amid widespread rural distress due to falling crop prices. Several farmers protests, sometimes violent, took place last year.
In a country where two thirds of the 1.3 billion people depend on agriculture, there are growing worries the anger in the countryside will pose a challenge for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government when it seeks reelection next year.
Saying “my government is committed to the welfare of the farmers,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley added the government would focus on building rural infrastructure such as roads and irrigation projects, as well as opening new agricultural markets to help farmers get better prices for their crops.
Jaitley promised to sharply increase the price at which government buys food grains for its stocks and said that agricultural trade, which is restricted, will be liberalized to allow farmers direct access to markets.
“We consider agriculture as an enterprise and want to help farmers to produce more from the same land parcel at lesser cost, and simultaneously realize higher prices for their produce,” he said.
Much attention was also focused on the health insurance plan unveiled by the government, which Jaitley called the “world’s largest.” It aims to give medical coverage of about $7,800 to 100 million poor families annually.
The measure is significant in a country where poor people are often forced to sell their assets, such as land and jewelry, to pay for healthcare. Government hospitals, which provide free medical facilities are inadequate and overcrowded, and private hospitals are usually unaffordable for lower income groups, who seldom have health insurance. The government also said it would build more health centers in rural areas.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the budget would spur the country’s development. “It is farmer-friendly, common-man friendly, business environment friendly and development-friendly.”
Jaitley said economic growth, which witnessed a downturn last year, was picking up and Asia’s third largest economy was “firmly on path to achieve eight percent plus growth soon.”
But even as the government is making its massive outreach to rural areas, there are worries that it also faces growing disaffection because it has been unable to meet its pledge to create millions of jobs for India’s young population. It was a key plank that catapulted Modi to power in 2014.
Trump Falsely Claims Most-Watched State of Union Speech
President Donald Trump says the ratings for his first State of the Union address this week are “the highest number in history,” but that is not true.
Nielsen reports that about 45.6 million tuned in to watch Trump Tuesday night. That’s below viewership for President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union, which was about 48 million, and Trump’s own joint address to Congress last year.
It also trails the 46.8 million viewers who tuned into President Bill Clinton’s first State of the Union speech, and the 51.7 million who watched President George W. Bush’s 2002 address.
Trump falsely argued last year that his inauguration was the most well-attended one ever.
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5 Things: What Yellen’s Fed Tenure Will be Remembered For
When Janet Yellen leaves the Federal Reserve this weekend after four years as chair, her legacy will include having shattered a social barrier: She is the first woman to have led the world’s most powerful central bank, a position that carries enormous sway over the global economy.
Yellen will be remembered, too, for her achievements in deftly guiding the Fed’s role in the U.S. economy’s slow recovery from a crushing financial crisis and recession. She picked up where her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, had left off in nurturing the nation’s recuperation from a crisis that nearly toppled the financial system.
As Jerome Powell prepares to succeed Yellen as leader of the U.S. central bank, here are five areas in which Yellen’s era at the Fed will be remembered:
Crisis management
Yellen served not just the past four years as Fed chair but for 2½ years in the 1990s as a Fed board member, then six years as president of the Fed’s San Francisco regional bank and then for four years as the Fed’s vice chair during Bernanke’s second four-year term. In all those roles, Yellen proved herself an able economic forecaster. She often detected perils before others saw reason for alarm, and she became a forceful advocate, especially during the Great Recession, for an aggressive response to economic weakness.
Transcripts of Fed policy meetings from the fall of 2008, when Lehman Brothers’ collapse ignited the most dangerous phase of the financial crisis, show that Yellen helped drive the Fed to unleash just about everything in its economic arsenal, including slashing its key short-term interest rate to a record low near zero.
Bold actions
As the recession deepened and millions more Americans lost jobs, Yellen was an assertive voice backing up Bernanke in the path-breaking move by the Fed to buy enormous quantities of Treasury and mortgage bonds to try to drive down long-term borrowing rates to support the economy. Critics warned that the bond purchases, which eventually swelled the Fed’s balance sheet five-fold to $4.5 trillion, could trigger high inflation. So far, inflation has not only remained low but for six years has remained below even the Fed’s 2 percent target rate.
The Yellen-led Fed continued to support the bond purchases in the face of skepticism. Later, it rebuffed pressure to start selling off its record-high bond holdings. Finally, in October, after the Fed felt it had achieved its goal of maximum employment, it began gradually paring its bond portfolio.
Clear communications
Yellen extended an innovation of the Bernanke Fed by holding quarterly news conferences after four of the eight policy meetings each year. At these roughly hour-long sessions, Yellen usually managed to shed some light on the Fed’s thinking about its rate policy while cautioning that any future policy changes would hinge on the latest economic data. By all accounts, she avoided any major communication stumbles by telegraphing the Fed’s moves in advance to avoid catching investors off guard.
Her success in this area contrasted with a rare but memorable stumble by Bernanke: In 2013, as Fed chairman, Bernanke triggered what came to be called the “taper tantrum.” It occurred when he first raised the possibility that the Fed could start gradually tapering its bond purchases sometime in the months to follow — unexpected remarks that sent bond prices plunging.
Jobs above all
Yellen, more than her predecessors, stressed the overarching importance of increasing job growth to the greatest level possible. Maximum employment is one of the two mandates Congress lays out for the Fed. The other is to manage interest rates to promote stable prices, which the Fed has defined as inflation averaging 2 percent annually.
Yellen’s predecessors typically worried most about triggering debilitating bouts of inflation of the kind that the United States suffered in the 1970s. That meant favoring higher rates to limit borrowing and spending.
Yellen was different. She believed the U.S. economy had entered an era in which the gravest threat was not a resurgence of inflation but a prolonged period of weak job growth. She argued that the Fed could leave its key policy rate at a record low near zero for far longer than had previously been thought prudent.
The Fed’s benchmark rate remained near zero from late 2008 until December 2015, when the central bank raised it modestly. Since then, the Fed has gradually raised rates four additional times, leaving its key rate in a still-low range of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent — well below the level usually associated with a prolonged economic expansion and a tight job market.
History’s judgment
So far, Yellen has been proved correct in her bet that rates could remain lower for longer without causing high inflation. The unemployment rate has reached a 17-year low of 4.1 percent with still-low inflation.
Yet many of Yellen’s critics remain unconvinced. They contend that her insistence on low rates has helped swell dangerous bubbles in such assets as stocks and perhaps home prices. They further warn that because the Fed took so long to begin raising rates, a Powell-led Fed could trigger market turbulence with further rate increases and end up harming the economy — possibly even triggering a recession.
Yellen’s supporters, though, argue that once again she will be proved correct and that the Fed will be able to achieve an economic soft landing: Raising rates enough to keep the economy from overheating but not so much as to derail the expansion, already the third-longest in U.S. history.
Trump’s Softer Tone Wins Positive Reviews, but Democrats Skeptical
Public opinion polls indicate President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address got a generally positive response from viewers. The president emphasized unity and bipartisanship in his speech, which pleased many Republicans, but left Democrats skeptical about his true intentions and the road ahead. VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone has more from Washington.
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Lightweight Brain-Controlled Artificial Hand Being Developed
Scientists and engineers around the world are slowly but steadily improving brain-controlled artificial limbs hoping to make them more affordable to patients. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – EPFL – say their lightweight artificial hand may someday help paraplegic patients be able to feed themselves. VOA’s George Putic explains.
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Dating App Tinder Cited for Discriminating Against Over-30s
A California court has ruled that the popular dating app Tinder violated age discrimination laws by charging users 30 and older more than younger ones.
Allan Candelore of California sued the app company over the pricing of its Tinder Plus premium service. Tinder Plus costs $9.99 per month for users younger than 30, while those 30 and older are charged $19.99 per month. The features for Tinder Plus are identical for users regardless of age.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brian Currey ruled in favor of Allan Candelore, 33, of San Diego, saying Tinder’s pricing violates California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. That law “provides protection from discrimination by all business establishments in California.”
The company countered in court documents that it is “self-evident that people under 30 face financial challenges” and this “common knowledge provides a reasonable and non-arbitrary basis for Tinder to offer a discount to people under 30.”
“Why is Tinder allowed to get away with charging me more for the exact same product as any other 18-28 year old?” asked Reddit user jshrlzwrld02. “Nothing magically changes at age 29 on Tinder. I don’t get new features. I don’t get anything extra. So why is this not discrimination based on age/sex/religion/orientation?”
Tinder has faced similar accusations before. In 2015, Michael Manapol sued Tinder for age and gender discrimination, but a judge dismissed that claim, saying Manapol failed to show how he was harmed by the allegations. Also in 2015, Wired magazine took issue with Tinder’s pricing tiers, calling them “ageist.”
“The only time pricing should be staggered is if each step up in cost coincides with a step-up in service or concern,” said Robert Carbone, a digital marketer with the LinkedIn networking service.
“Tinder is a privately owned company and should be able to charge any amount they see fit to whoever wants to use their service. No one is forcing consumers to use Tinder. This ruling is an infringement of capitalistic practices,” said Katja Case, a math major at Iowa State University, on LinkedIn.
Tinder is popular among college-age people.
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