FINANCIAL TIMES: Barack Obama warned “there would be costs” for Russian military intervention in Ukraine as the country’s acting president called on Vladimir Putin to cease “provocations” aimed at luring Kiev into a military conflict to “annex” the peninsula of Crimea. Serhiy Kunitsin, Mr Turchynov’s envoy to Crimea, told a Ukrainian TV channel late on […]
Month: February 2014
Russian public anger over Ukraine
“I’m worried about the events in Ukraine. But much more I worry about what is happening in this regard in our country… Such unbridled propaganda and so many lies I cannot remember from the worst periods of the Brezhnev era. Guys, what are you trying to do? Create public opinion for the introduction of troops into the territory of a sovereign state? Chop off the Crimea?”
Business and the Minimum Wage
Some retailers pay their workers even more. Costco, one of the most successful retailers in the country, has a starting wage of $11.50 per hour for most entry-level jobs, and its average wage for hourly workers is $21 an hour. Patrick Callans, a senior vice president for the company, said that Costco’s higher pay and benefits “allows us to attract and retain great employees.” A 2006 management case study argues that the higher pay has also helped the company keep “shrinkage,” or theft, fraud and errors, low by industry standards
Big spending has poll respondents crying ‘Wolf’
PITTSBURGH OBSERVER-REPORTER Editorial: …[Tom] Wolf, a wealthy businessman from York who served as revenue secretary under Gov. Ed Rendell, spent freely from his personal fortune to blanket the state with television advertisements introducing himself to Pennsylvania voters and laying out some of his priorities, including enacting an extraction tax on the gas-drilling industry to boost […]
Is the City flushing $140 million down the drain?
“The fees are expected to generate $2.6 million in revenue this year. That money will be used to plant trees, add drainage islands to parking lots, porous pavement to alleyways and park basketball courts, and vegetative “green” roofs on buildings.
‘Death Test’ Accurately Predicts Demise
NEWSMAX: …The scientists screened blood samples from over 17 000 generally healthy people for more than 100 different biomolecules. The volunteers were then followed for several years. The researchers looked for measures in the blood that could reflect who had died within the following five years after the blood sample was taken. In a study […]
President’s Brother: As Young Man Obama ‘Acted Too Black’
[Kenya-born half-brother Mark Obama ] Ndesandjo, whose book “Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery” explores the complicated relationship between the brothers, said the first time he met Barack, “it was a very powerful meeting.” We had very different views about a couple of things… there was a cultural clash because I mentioned in my book that I felt that he thought that I was too white and I felt he was too black.
Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008
NEW YORK TIMES; Closing the books on a fiscal year in which the federal budget deficit fell more sharply than in any year since the end of World War II, the Treasury Department reported on Thursday that the deficit for 2013 dropped to $680 billion, from about $1.1 trillion the previous year. In nominal terms, […]
LETTER: To tax your competitors to build competition is not free market capitalism
The business people that make up Penn Square Partners would balk if they had to pay to build their competition.
Crimea’s parliament calls for referendum on region’s future
FINANCIAL TIMES: Ukraine plunged further into crisis on Thursday after unidentified pro-Russian gunmen seized Crimea’s regional parliament, prompting legislators there to call a referendum on the autonomous peninsula’s future… The developments came as Arseny Yatseniuk, Ukraine’s new prime minister, declared that tens of billions of dollars had been looted from the state and, in a […]
Mental Illness Risk Higher for Children of Older Fathers, Study Finds
NEW YORK TIMES: Children born to middle-aged men are more likely than those born to younger fathers to develop any of a range of mental difficulties, including attention deficits, bipolar disorder, autism and schizophrenia, according to the most comprehensive study to date of paternal age and offspring mental health…. The strengths of the new report […]
Ukraine’s Revolution: Triumphant—and Wary
WALL STREET JOURNAL Column: …Across Ukraine, statues of Lenin are falling. A few pro-Russian towns are holding out, but 22 years after the Soviet Union’s collapse—an entire generation—there’s a previously missing consensus about the disastrous toll from Moscow’s domination over the past century. Millions of Ukrainians were killed in Stalin’s man-made famine in 1932-33. The […]
Pivotal Point Is Seen as More States Consider Legalizing Marijuana
NEW YORK TIMES: A little over a year after Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana, more than half the states, including some in the conservative South, are considering decriminalizing the drug or legalizing it for medical or recreational use. That has set up a watershed year in the battle over whether marijuana should be as available […]
Ukraine: Pro-Russia gunmen seize offices in Crimea
HUFFINGTON POST: SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine (AP) – Dozens of heavily armed gunmen seized control of local government buildings in Ukraine’s Crimea region early Thursday and raised the Russian flag, mirroring the three-month protest movement that drove Ukraine’s pro-Russian president into hiding last week. The moves escalated tensions in Ukraine, whose population is divided in loyalties between […]