Month: December 2017

CBS SF Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, who became the city’s first Asian-American mayor when he was named to serve out the remainder of Gavin Newsom’s term in Jan. 2011, died suddenly early Tuesday morning, city officials said.

He was 65.

In accordance with the City Charter, Board of Supervisors President London Breed became Acting Mayor of San Francisco, effectively immediately. Breed becomes San Francisco’s first female African American mayor in any capacity.   Continue reading “San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee Dead At 65”

Yahoo News

Back in late-2015, the Federal Aviation Administration introduced new rules requiring owners of  small drones to submit their devices to a database and attach a registration code to the side of the product. In May of this year, a judge in the D.C. Circuit shot the rule down, and the FAA began the process of returning the $5 registration fee.

Now the registry is back on, courtesy of a bill signed into law earlier today by President Trump. The reinstated rules were one small piece of the $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act, about which the President reportedly said, “We need our military, it’s gotta be perfecto.” Likely the bit about drone registration didn’t even register a blip on the President’s radar.   Continue reading “Trump signs bill reinstating the FAA’s drone registration requirement”

Miami Herald

Honestie Hodges says she used to dream of being a police officer, but not anymore.

On Monday, the 11-year-old walked out the back door of her mother’s house in Michigan and officers from the Grand Rapids Police Department confronted her and two other adults, who were also leaving the house, police wrote on Facebook.   Continue reading “This 11-year-old stepped outside — and found herself on the other side of a cop’s gun, mom says”

Jon Rappoport

I’m talking about major covert ops, not small ones.

ONE: Compartmentalization.

The tasks necessary to carrying out the operation are divided among players at different levels. In a successful op, these groups of players are unaware of each other. They wouldn’t be able to confess to more than their own roles.  Continue reading “Ten essential elements of a covert op”

Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Five years after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school, advocates who are disappointed with the failure of efforts to limit access to firearms are changing their strategy.

Instead of pressuring lawmakers to push new gun-control measures through the U.S. Congress, volunteers from groups including Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America are now running for office themselves.   Continue reading “Five years after Sandy Hook, U.S. gun-control advocates switch strategy”

RT

Currencies will soon coexist on a more ‘equal footing’ in international markets, and the US dollar will be forced to share prominence with the Chinese yuan and the EU’s euro, according to global currency systems expert Barry Eichengreen.

In his book How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future, he wrote that reserve currences can and do coexist. The book, co-authored by European Central Bank economists Arnaud Mehl and Livia Chițu, was published this month.  Continue reading “Dollar’s days as world’s most important currency are numbered – Berkeley economics professor”

RT

While bitcoin’s 1,700 percent rally seems impressive, there is a cryptocurrency whose value grew much faster this year – litecoin.

On Tuesday, litecoin set another record high of $341, up an astounding 85 percent in the last 24 hours. On January 1, the virtual currency was worth just above $4.

Litecoin is significantly faster than the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. The litecoin network aims to process a block every 2.5 minutes, compared to bitcoin’s 10 minutes, which allows litecoin to have faster transaction confirmation.  Continue reading “Bitcoin rival litecoin smashes record, value up astonishing 6,000% this year”

Mail.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican tax plan will deliver a swift adrenaline shot to the economy that will send hundreds of billions pouring into federal tax coffers, the Trump administration asserts in a new analysis. But nonpartisan analysts make a less rosy projection of new revenue from the tax legislation now before Congress.

House and Senate negotiators are rushing to finalize the tax legislation and deliver the promised measure to President Donald Trump before Christmas. Trump will try on Wednesday to sell the American people on a GOP tax overhaul that is unpopular with many. His pitch: the plan will lift all economic boats, bringing a brighter future for taxpayers and their families, according to spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.  Continue reading “Admin says big revenue from GOP tax plan; analysts less rosy”

MSN

Every year, Brooke Richardson, who teaches English as a second language to mostly low-income Hispanic students in Atlanta, turns to her own pocketbook to help her students. She has lost track of how many pencils, markers, notebooks and glue sticks she buys a year.

Then there are the marshmallows and cotton balls for hands-on projects. And then there are the extra books so they have something to read on the weekend and during holiday breaks, and peanut butter and jelly so kids who don’t have enough to eat have at least some food at Christmas. Every year she also has had to replace headphones or other classroom technology because something always malfunctions, and there’s rarely enough money in the budget to fix it. She prides herself as a master discount shopper, but so many little purchases add up.   Continue reading “House Republicans have a little-known plan to raise taxes on teachers by $2 billion”