some grindeldore imi recently read (recently means somewhere in the past month in 2023)

Phoenix Tears by PrincessElectra | 46k words, T | The summer of 1899 ends with less destruction and heartbreak, but love is not a victory march and the darkness is still a seductive temptress.

Socken by noctis_ibis | 1.405 words, G | Bathilda Bagshot realises that there is more going on between her great-nephew and the neighbours boy

the great work by Laeveteinn | 19k, M, gore warning, hannibal AU | After a bizarre string of artistic murders, the Aurors ask the local Transfiguration professor for advice.

I'd Wait For Life by Dreamer1701 | 7k, T, post SoD | For months after the events in Bhutan, no one heard anything from Gellert Grindelwald and his followers. Until the news that they left Nurmengard reach the world - and a certain Hogwarts Professor. Who of course can't resist to go there

how did you get here, my dear? by captnhowzer | 1,9k words, G | Voldemort comes for the Elder Wand. Gellert dies protecting Albus. Gellert doesn’t know Albus is already dead.

I Shall Love You Better After Death by CompassToTheEndlessSea | 941 words, G | Gellert and Albus are reunited in death, where they finally can be together. A happy ending in life was never in the cards for them, but after death and after shaking off their worldly burdens... anything is possible.

Reckless Paradise by NightWithoutStars | 23k words, T | "I am in a precarious position, as you might know. With a Dark Lord out and about and a corrupt ministry, the smallest mistake could cost me everything. As if that was not enough, I am in dire need of a divination professor." "How do you expect me to help you, Albus? I am but a prisoner in my own fortress." "What if you weren't?" Oh, how Gellert had missed that mischievous glint in those mesmerizing, blue eyes.

The Final Request by SparksAdrift | 3,9k words, G | Harry is charged with a quest to discover the truth, story and reason behind Gellert Grindelwald's final request of what becomes of his body.

Dumbledore's Meeting by AlbusGellertAlways | 2k words, G | Hermione meets with Dumbledore about dropping Divination and ends up learning more about the professor's personal life about a certain Seer than she was expecting.

A Lifetime of Insanity by kyrilu | 2,6k, T | Instead of imprisoning Gellert in Nurmengard after defeating him, Albus chooses to magically bind him and keep him at Hogwarts like a caged owl. It's really not the greatest idea.

Youtube copyright trolls Adrev claim to own a homemade MIDI rendition of 1899's Flight of the Bumblebee

Chris Knight recorded a video of the bees in his backyard and wanted to accompany it with a rendition of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 1899 composition "The Flight of the Bumblebee."

Mindful of the copyright problems that plague Youtube creators who use professionally performed renditions of classical music, Knight made his own version, by feeding the sheet music to a MIDI synthesizer, noting that he'd done so on the page description: "The musical accompaniment is a computer generated audio track created from a MIDI file transcribed from the original score. As the score itself is long out of copyright, and this is not a human performance, you would be blatantly abusing the Youtube copyright system if you attempt to file a claim against this video."

You will never absolutely guess what happened next.

A company called "Adrev" filed an automated claim against Knight's video, through which they were able to force the video to have ads whose revenues were diverted to Adrev's coffers.

There are plenty of weird things about Adrev's act of copyfraud. First, they only claimed copyright on a three-minute chunk of the music (the entire composition is repeated 60 times in the video). Knight hypothesizes that this is a tactic that lets them file a new claim against him if he disputes this one.

Knight's well-versed on the obscure subject of Youtube copyright claims, so he was willing to dispute this one, despite Youtube's dire warning that if he did so and was found to have infringed copyright, he would face a strike against his account, which could lead to its permanent deletion.

However, no such penalties have accrued to Adrev, who have been claiming copyright over public domain renditions of Flight of the Bumblebee since at least 2017, with no penalties from Youtube.

https://boingboing.net/2019/12/10/asymmetrical-warfare-2.html

The Affordable Care Act is not harming the job market – National Consumers League

Despite dire predictions to the contrary by Obamacare opponents, three recent studies have found that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) hasn’t hurt the labor market. Critics claimed massive numbers of workers would be moved from full-time to part-time jobs to avoid the cost of the employer mandate on health insurance. Critics also warned that people might choose to work less because they could either get health insurance on the exchanges or qualify under expanded Medicaid coverage.None of those scenarios is playing out. There’s no significant increase in part-time jobs, nor significant shifts in employment patterns in states with expanded Medicaid programs. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality data shows no increase in the likelihood of working part-time after the employer coverage mandate went into effect in 2015. On Medicaid expansion, while one of the studies published in Health Affairs found that people were about 0.6 percentage points more likely to leave a job in the states that expanded Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, the difference is not statistically significant. Not only that, but we now have Obamacare firmly in place and the economy is booming.

Throughout NCL’s history, our leaders have called for universal health insurance, and we, and many other supporters are vindicated by these findings. Turns out providing health insurance for all may be good for the economy and can even help create jobs. The President noted in his State of the Union on Tuesday: “It’s about filling the gaps in employer based care so that when you lose a job, or you go back to school, or you strike out and launch that new business, you’ll still have coverage. Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far, and in the process health care inflation has slowed, our businesses have created jobs every single month since it became law.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there has been “unprecedented demand” for Marketplace coverage with more than 11.3 million people signed up for coverage through January 2, 2016. Open Enrollment ends on January 31.

Sadly, the Affordable Care Act continues to come under attack by the Republican-led Congress. On January 6, yet again, the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal the ACA. The Senate had passed the same bill last month. Noting the harm the bill “would cause to the health and financial security of millions of Americans,” President Obama vetoed it. The House will vote to override the veto on January 26, but is expected to fall far short of the 2/3 vote necessary for a veto override.

While the fight over the ACA continues, this news should take the wind out of the sails of hardened Obamacare opponents. In the meantime, the National Consumers League will continue to work with its allies in the advocacy arena to preserve this landmark piece of legislation that–at last–ensures essential health coverage for millions of people. This is truly President Obama’s crowning achievement and one that NCL had been working for since our founding in 1899.

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Wake Island 1941 – “A Magnificent Fight” – Part 1

Taken from Warfare History Network

Wake, the Early Days

Wake Island is a small speck of an island, 1,500 miles east of Guam and just shy of 2,300 miles west of Hawaii. It’s an atoll barely above sealevel and consists of three islets or miniature islands clustered around a central lagoon. The United States took possession of the islands in 1899 in the wake of the Spanish-American war. The island was, at the time, uninhabited and occasionally visited by both American and Japanese ships. This changed, however, in 1921.

Map of Wake defenses in 1941, Taken from Warfare History Network 

The U.S. Navy and Pan Am

The U.S. Navy surveyed Wake Island in 1921 with the idea of turning the island into a coaling station to refuel warships in case of war with Japan. The results of this survey led to another expedition in 1923 and a detailed survey of the island. Soon, Pan Am became interested in the island and was interested in providing passenger air service to China. With aircraft technology being what it was in the mid-1920s, the aircraft would have to hop from island to island to make the trip. Wake was ideally located to be one of those waystations on the route to China. By 1935, the U.S. Navy gave Pan Am the go-ahead to begin construction. 

Construction began on the Pan Am facilities in May 1935, with the first passenger aircraft landing in August. The facilities were expanded in 1936, and by 1937, Wake was a regular stopover for China-bound Pan-Am flights. 

Modern Photo of 5" emplacement on Wake, Taken from Pintrest from user "Tom Williams" 

The War Clouds Gather

With the likelihood of war with Japan increasing, construction began in January 1941 of a military base on the atoll. Wake was only 600 miles from the nearest Japanese base. Anyone who could read a map knew that in any war with Japan, Japan would try to take Wake. Thus, in February 1941, President Roosevelt ordered the Navy to create “naval defense areas” in the Central Pacific. One of those areas was centered around Wake. That August, 178 men of the USMC’s 1st Defense Battalion arrived to establish the permanent garrison. More Marines arrived that October along with Major William S. Deveraux, the Wake Marine garrison commander. Late November saw the arrival of VMF-211 (Marine Fighter Squadron 211) and its 12 F4F Wildcat fighters to help better defend the island. 

Also at the defender’s disposal was a variety of light coastal guns and anti-aircraft pieces. However, the most important were six 5-inch naval guns that had come off the USS Texas after an overhaul. The guns were old, but as subsequent events would show, quite functional. As of December 7th, there were 450 marines, 68 U.S. Naval personnel, and 1,221 civilian construction workers left to face the Japanese onslaught.

But there were some issues with the defenders. First, the islands were flat, for the most part, which meant cover was whatever could be dug or constructed, and this was not easy with the low water table complicating matters. The other issue was the enmity between Commander Winfield Cunningham, USN, who was in overall command of the Naval Air Station, and Major William S. Deveraux, who was in overall command of the Marines. There was an additional fatal problem the defenders of Wake had. There was no radar. Early warning, such as it was, consisted of a Marine with a pair of binoculars ensconced on the water tower, which was the highest point on the island. The communications wire that was available was World War I surplus and rotted in the tropical conditions, and there weren’t even enough rifles for all the defenders. Not to mention that even as small as Wake was, there simply weren’t enough defenders to cover all the potential landing spots on the island.

Worse, the island’s primary defense against air attack was fragile, as the Wildcat fighters had no spare parts. This meant any kind of damage or even simple wear and tear that was easy to fix could render an aircraft inoperable. Worse still, the aircraft had arrived disassembled, and the manuals to reassemble them were missing, and the ground crews had no experience with the F4F. All of this was to conspire to have dire consequences.

But when war came, this small garrison would achieve things all out of proportion to their numbers and gave the American people a small measure of hope in the dark early days of World War II.

The Storm Breaks

VMF -211 after the battle. Taken from HistoryNet 

December 7th, 1941 dawned on Wake as a clear sunny day. Deveraux had just held an exercise for his men the day before and had allowed them to take a break to catch up on their mail (it was coming close to Christmas) and other sundry tasks. The mood soon soured with word that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, but very few on the island believed it. A little before noon, it was Wake’s turn, as 36 Japanese Betty bombers from Japanese bases in the Marshall Islands appeared in the skies over Wake, with the lookout in the tower barely giving the Marines 15 seconds warning.

The Japanese caught the American fighters on the ground and destroyed seven of them (in a bit of a silver lining, an eighth damaged fighter, for a time, provided some spare parts for its functional brethren). Over half of the Marine aviation personnel were killed and wounded, and the Japanese hit the fuel storage, shot up the Pan Am hotel, and bombed the barracks facilities into oblivion. The Japanese had also targeted the Pan Am Clipper, which had just pulled in the day before, but she was still flyable. The American anti-aircraft fire was ineffective, and the Japanese suffered no losses.

G4M1 Betty Bomber, Image taken from Sprue Brothers 

The Americans soon did what they could to repair their defenses and dug in the remaining aircraft. Using an American boat, they blocked the lagoon entrance to prevent a ground assault. But a ray of hope appeared when between 300-400 of the civilian construction workers volunteered to assist the Marines in defense of the island. They mostly manned some of the defensive positions the Marines didn’t have the manpower to occupy, operating the machine guns and coastal batteries to free up more Marines to act as infantry. Later that day, the Pan Am Clipper evacuated 27 employees to Hawaii, never to return.  Wake was now cut off from the rest of the U.S. military, except by radio. Ironically, two passengers were left behind on the island, one a Pan Am mechanic, and the other a bureaucrat from the Office of the Budget (the precursor to the OMB) who had been sent on a fact-finding mission to Wake!

The good news was, even with the loss of the fuel storage, additional fuel was available to the defenders in hidden caches. Food and water were also plentiful in underground storage. Better was the news that defensive emplacements and the A.A. and coastal guns had not been hit during the raid. 

On December 9th, 27 more Japanese Betty bombers launched another raid against Wake. This time, surprise was on the side of the Marines. Two of the four remaining F4Fs made a pass against a group of nine Betty Bombers, shot down one of them, and then zoomed away before any (presumed) fighters could interfere. While the anti-aircraft guns again failed to shoot down any Japanese bombers, they did spoil their aim a bit. However, the Japanese pummeled a warehouse, the naval radio station, as well as the hospital, and what was left of the Pan Am hotel. 

"Cat and Mouse over Wake" by Old Glory Prints 

The Japanese returned on the 10th, and this time bombed some of the gun positions, and, by chance, hitting a supply of construction dynamite. The Wildcats shot down two more Japanese aircraft, bringing Wake’s combined total to three. But this was a preliminary to the opening of the main event, one we’ll see in Part 2 next week.

--

At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.

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(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)

Peace Plan: The Terrorism

The cognizance of balance of power has been always an existing concept when international law and politics as well as organizations are the topic. It cannot be denied that the establishment of International organizations per se serves many diverse functions, including collecting information and monitoring trends, delivering services and aid and providing forums for bargaining, as well as settling disputes. By providing political institutions through which states can work together to achieve common objectives, international organizations can help to foster cooperative behavior. IGOs also serve useful purposes for individual states, which often use them as instruments of foreign policy to legitimate their actions and to constrain the behavior of other states. Later in the 19th century, various international organizations, such as the International Telegraph Union (1865; now the International Telecommunication Union), were established to provide specialized services and to perform specific tasks. In 1899 and 1907 European and non-European states met to develop rules to regulate armaments and the conduct of war. These conferences produced the Hague Conventions, which included agreements on the peaceful settlement of war, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the rights of neutral states. These various meetings and agreements served as precursors to the international organizations of the 20th century, such as the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN). Spurred by the political and economic interdependencies and advances in communication and transportation that developed after World War II, the UN became the centerpiece of a network of international organizations; the sheer manifestation of International Relations (IR) (Mingst, n.d.).

Yielded to the causality of forming these kinds of institutions were made to make sure that horrors of the past ought not to repeat. The violence trends as in antecedents and history becomes a liner thought of establishing an aid through actors that could manifest and solve loopholes between policies. The structure of problems is entitled to any methodology of solutions. And these institutions will bridge solutions to aid what is needed to be solving particularly, the terror of Genocide as a brutal form of ethnic violence.

There are two main views for the cause of genocide namely the structural and intentional view. First, the structural view argues that there is an elective affinity between genocide and modern civilization which hinges on the organizational capacities of the modern bureaucratic state for social engineering (Bauman, 1989). On the other hand, the intentionalist view, stresses the role of radical, fundamentalists, apocalyptic ideologies. Moreover, this view argues that the following are needed to plan the genocide: to have an intent must be organized and systemic; to have an ‘Us’ vs ‘them’ mentality; a Charismatic leadership; participative society in identifying possible targets or in killing the targets; and an influential military culture. Moving on to the different typologies of genocide, according to Fein (1990), genocide could either be ideological, retributive, developmental, and despotic. Whereas in Chalk and Jonassohn (1990), they differentiate genocide those that either Implement an ideology, eliminate a threat, acquire wealth, spread terror, or impose a sense ‘nationalism’.

In a study by Lieberman and Singh (2012), further studies on ethnic violence, its roots, and implications to the state were further discussed. Ethnic realm is encapsulated from Rogers Brubaker’s attention to the problem of “groupism” (the tendency to take for granted “discrete bounded groups as the basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis) which applies to virtually all of the recent cross-national scholarship on ethnic civil wars.

UN Peace Advocating Draft: Preventing genocide (United Nations, 2010)

 On 7 April 2004, the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan outlined a four-point action plan for preventing genocide:

 ●       ·Prevent armed conflict, which usually provides the context for genocide;

As genocide is most likely to occur during war, one of the best ways to reduce the chances of genocide is to address the root causes of violence and conflict: hatred, intolerance, racism, discrimination, tyranny, and the dehumanizing public discourse that denies whole groups of people their dignity and their rights. Addressing inequalities in access to resources constitutes a critical prevention strategy. The primary responsibility for conflict prevention rests with national governments. The UN supports national efforts, including through political, diplomatic, humanitarian, human rights, and institutional activities. Economic and social development and alleviating poverty also make a substantial contribution to preventing conflict.

 ●       ·Protect civilians in armed conflict, including through UN peacekeepers;

When efforts to prevent conflict fail, one of the highest priorities must be to protect civilians. Wherever civilians are deliberately targeted because they belong to a particular community, there is a risk of genocide. Over the last decade, the UN Security Council has frequently expanded the mandate of UN peacekeepers so that they can physically protect civilians who are threatened with violence. Today, UN peacekeeping missions regularly help national authorities to establish effective arrangements for investigating and prosecuting serious violations of the law; disarm and demobilize fighters and help to reintegrate them into the community; enforce special measures to protect women and girls from sexual violence; and report on any "hate media" inciting people to genocide, crimes against humanity or other violations of international humanitarian law.

 ·End impunity through judicial action in national and international courts;

To deter people from committing crimes of genocide, those responsible for such crimes need to be brought to justice. Fighting impunity and establishing a credible expectation that the perpetrators of genocide and related crimes will be held accountable can effectively contribute to prevention.

Today, if a State is unwilling or unable to exercise jurisdiction over alleged perpetrators of genocide, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is empowered, within the parameters of its Statute, to investigate and prosecute those most responsible. The ICC is a permanent tribunal, separate from the United Nations, with its seat in The Hague, Netherlands, to try individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It came into being on 1 July 2002, the date its founding treaty, the Rome Statute, entered into force. So far, 21 cases in 8 situations (countries) have been brought before the ICC. In March 2012, the Court delivered its first-ever verdict, issuing a judgment in the war crimes trial of Thomas LubangaDyilo, a militia leader accused of participating in the recruitment of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 ●       ·Take swift and decisive action, including military action.

When, where, and how to intervene militarily in domestic situations to prevent or respond to genocide or other mass atrocity crimes is to be decided by the Security Council, in accordance with the United Nations Charter.

In September 2005, at the United Nations World Summit, all countries formally agreed that, if peaceful methods are inadequate and if national authorities are "manifestly failing" to protect their populations from the four mass atrocity crimes, States should act collectively in a "timely and decisive manner," through the UN Security Council and in accordance with the Charter of the UN:

a) In the case of Libya, the international community moved quickly to stop the government from killing its own citizens. Security Council resolution 1973 in March 2011 enabled an international coalition to intervene to stop the killings of protestors of the Qadhafi regime.

b) In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, the UN Security Council, on 30 March 2011, unanimously adopted resolution 1975, condemning the gross human rights violations committed by supporters of both ex-President Laurent Gbagbo and President Ouattara following the presidential elections in November 2011 and authorizing a UN military operation to prevent the use of heavy weapons against civilians.

c) For South Sudan, the Security Council, in resolution 1996 of July 2011, established a UN peacekeeping mission (UNMISS), to — among other things — advise and assist the government in fulfilling its responsibility to protect civilians. In February 2014, the Security Council reiterated its steadfast support for UNMISS and its vital mission on behalf of the international community to protect civilians in South Sudan.

d) In the case of the Central African Republic, the UN Secretary-General in March 2014 outlined his proposal for the establishment of a nearly 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping operation that would be tasked, first and foremost, with protecting civilians in the strife-torn nation.

e) In the case of Syria, despite rising numbers of dead and displaced, and dire warnings from the UN’s top officials, including repeatedly from the UN Secretary-General, the UN Security Council has been unable to unify behind a common course of action.

Part 2, Saturday, April 15th, 2017

International News:

--- "Emma Morano, who at 117 was believed to be the world's oldest person and the last surviving child of the 19th century, died on Saturday, swearing to the end on her diet of two raw eggs a day. "She reached an incredible finish line," said Silvia Marchionini, mayor of the town of Verbania in northern Italy where Morano lived on the shores of Lake Maggiore. Morano, who lived 117 years and 137 days, was born on Nov. 29, 1899, four years before the Wright brothers first took to the air. Her life spanned three centuries, two World Wars and more than 90 Italian governments.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-oldest-idUSKBN17H0JH?il=0

--- "France and Uzbekistan need to strengthen security cooperation in order to combat jihadist groups and prevent violent attacks, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told Reuters on Saturday during a visit to the Central Asian nation. Suspected Islamist militants from the mainly Muslim ex-Soviet region of Central Asia have been blamed for two attacks this month: a metro bombing in Russia's second city, St. Petersburg, on April 3 and an attack in Stockholm on April 7, where a truck rammed a crowd of people on a busy street. The Uzbek government said this week it had informed one of its Western partners that Rakhmat Akilov, the Uzbek national suspected of being behind the Stockholm attack, was an Islamic State affiliate. Ayrault, who met Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov and Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov in Tashkent, said security was on the agenda, as well as economic reforms and human rights."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uzbekistan-france-security-idUSKBN17H0KF?il=0

--- "Pope Francis, leading the world's Roman Catholics into Easter, urged them on Saturday not to ignore the plight of immigrants, the poor and other vulnerable people. In his homily at an Easter Vigil Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, Francis recounted the Biblical account of Jesus Christ's mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, filled with grief, as they went to visit his tomb following the crucifixion. Their grief, he said during the solemn ceremony, could be seen in the faces of many women today. "In their faces we can see reflected all those who, walking the streets of our cities, feel the pain of dire poverty, the sorrow born of exploitation and human trafficking," he said. "We can also see the faces of those who are greeted with contempt because they are immigrants, deprived of country, house and family. We see faces whose eyes bespeak loneliness and abandonment, because their hands are creased with wrinkles." Francis has used the period leading up to Easter to stress his vision of service to the neediest. On Good Friday, he lamented that many people had become inured to daily scenes of bombed cities and drowning migrants. During Saturday's service, he baptized 11 people, most of them adult converts to Catholicism, from Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, the United States, Albania, Malta, Malaysia and China."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-religion-easter-pope-eve-idUSKBN17H0MC?il=0

--- "A North Korean missile "blew up almost immediately" on its test launch on Sunday, the U.S. Pacific Command said, hours before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was due in South Korea for talks on the North's increasingly defiant arms program. The failed launch from North Korea's east coast, ignoring admonitions from major ally China, came a day after North Korea held a military parade in its capital, marking the birth anniversary of the state founder, in which what appeared to be new long-range ballistic missiles were on display. South Korea said the combined show of force "threatened the whole world". Pence is due in Seoul at the start of a 10-day trip to Asia in what his aides said was a sign of the U.S. commitment to its ally in the face of rising tension...South Korea, which hosts 28,500 U.S. troops, warned of punitive action if the launch led to further provocations such as a nuclear test or a long-range missile launch. "North Korea showing a variety of offensive missiles at yesterday's military parade and daring to fire a ballistic missile today is a show of force that threatens the whole world," South Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement...The timing of the test, coinciding with Pence's trip and a day after the military parade, would suggest deliberate defiance. Pence had been briefed on the failed launch en route to Seoul and had been in touch with Trump, White House aides said. The North launched a ballistic missile from the same region earlier this month ahead of a summit between the United States and China to discuss the North's arms program."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-missile-idUSKBN17H0NL?il=0

Domestic News:

--- "A melee erupted on Saturday in a Berkeley, California park where supporters and opponents of President Donald Trump were holding competing rallies, resulting in at least 20 arrests as police struggled to keep the two camps apart. As fist fights broke out between the two sides and people threw bottles and cans over a barricade separating them, police resorted to using to an explosive device at one point in a bid to restore order. Several people were observed by a Reuters reporter with bloodied faces and minor injuries, but there was no official word on casualties from authorities. Media, citing police, reported that at least 11 people were injured. Police said more arrests could follow after video shot during the melee was reviewed. The trouble unfolded when hundreds of Trump opponents staged a counter-rally alongside an event billed as a "Patriots Day" free-speech rally and picnic, organized by mostly Trump supporters. Between 500 and 1,000 people were in the park as the rallies peaked, according to an estimate by a Reuters reporter. Among the Trump opponents were some counter-protesters dressed in black and wearing masks. The other side included self-described "patriots" and "nationalists", Trump supporters, free speech advocates, and other groups."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkeley-protests-idUSKBN17H0LU

--- "Tens of thousands of people marched through midtown Manhattan and dozens of U.S. cities on Saturday to demand that President Donald Trump release his tax returns and to dispute his claim that the public does not care about the issue. Organizers of "Tax March" in more than 150 cities across the country and beyond wanted to call attention to Trump's refusal to disclose his tax history, as his White House predecessors have done for more than 40 years. The marches coincide with the traditional April 15 deadline for U.S. federal tax returns, though the filing date was pushed backed two days this year. There were no reports of violence or arrests, in contrast to a clash between Trump supporters and opponents that erupted at a rally in Berkeley, California, where nine people were arrested. Two of the biggest tax marches took place in New York and Los Angeles, with each drawing about 5,000 people, according to estimates by Reuters reporters. No official estimates were immediately available...In Washington, more than 1,500 protesters gathered on the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol, where members of Congress addressed the crowd before it marched to the Lincoln Memorial. "We are taking the gloves off to say knock off the secrecy Mr. President," said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which would play a leading role in tax reform measures being considered in Congress."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-taxes-idUSKBN17H0FW?il=0

--- "President Trump’s top environment official called for an “exit” from the historic Paris agreement Thursday, the first time such a high-ranking administration official has so explicitly disavowed the agreement endorsed by nearly 200 countries to fight climate change. Speaking with “Fox & Friends,” Pruitt commented, “Paris is something that we need to really look at closely. It’s something we need to exit in my opinion.” “It’s a bad deal for America,” Pruitt continued. “It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030. We front-loaded all of our costs. Pruitt’s claim about China and India having “no obligations” until 2030 is incorrect — while these countries do indeed have 2030 targets, they are already acting now to reduce their emissions by investing in renewable energy and other initiatives... The Trump administration has previously said it is currently reviewing its position on climate change and energy policy and remains noncommittal, for now, on whether it will follow through on the president’s campaign pledge to “cancel” the 2015 Paris climate agreement...Amid this uncertainty, the statement aligns Pruitt with a more hard-line approach held by some in the Trump administration, such as chief strategist Stephen Bannon, rather than the more moderate take of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had said in his confirmation hearing that the U.S. should have a “seat at the table” in the Paris negotiations, and Ivanka Trump and her husband and Trump confidant Jared Kushner...In the energy sector, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have already declined by 14 percent from 2005 to 2016, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The reason is more burning of natural gas rather than coal and a growing profusion of renewables."

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/14/trumps-epa-chief-scott-pruitt-calls-for-an-exit-to-the-paris-climate-agreement/?tid=pm_business_pop&utm_term=.36b0f630656d

The Affordable Care Act is not harming the job market - National Consumers League

Despite dire predictions to the contrary by Obamacare opponents, three recent studies have found that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) hasn’t hurt the labor market. Critics claimed massive numbers of workers would be moved from full-time to part-time jobs to avoid the cost of the employer mandate on health insurance. Critics also warned that people might choose to work less because they could either get health insurance on the exchanges or qualify under expanded Medicaid coverage.None of those scenarios is playing out. There’s no significant increase in part-time jobs, nor significant shifts in employment patterns in states with expanded Medicaid programs. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality data shows no increase in the likelihood of working part-time after the employer coverage mandate went into effect in 2015. On Medicaid expansion, while one of the studies published in Health Affairs found that people were about 0.6 percentage points more likely to leave a job in the states that expanded Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, the difference is not statistically significant. Not only that, but we now have Obamacare firmly in place and the economy is booming.

Throughout NCL’s history, our leaders have called for universal health insurance, and we, and many other supporters are vindicated by these findings. Turns out providing health insurance for all may be good for the economy and can even help create jobs. The President noted in his State of the Union on Tuesday: “It’s about filling the gaps in employer based care so that when you lose a job, or you go back to school, or you strike out and launch that new business, you’ll still have coverage. Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far, and in the process health care inflation has slowed, our businesses have created jobs every single month since it became law.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there has been “unprecedented demand” for Marketplace coverage with more than 11.3 million people signed up for coverage through January 2, 2016. Open Enrollment ends on January 31.

Sadly, the Affordable Care Act continues to come under attack by the Republican-led Congress. On January 6, yet again, the House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal the ACA. The Senate had passed the same bill last month. Noting the harm the bill “would cause to the health and financial security of millions of Americans,” President Obama vetoed it. The House will vote to override the veto on January 26, but is expected to fall far short of the 2/3 vote necessary for a veto override.

While the fight over the ACA continues, this news should take the wind out of the sails of hardened Obamacare opponents. In the meantime, the National Consumers League will continue to work with its allies in the advocacy arena to preserve this landmark piece of legislation that–at last–ensures essential health coverage for millions of people. This is truly President Obama’s crowning achievement and one that NCL had been working for since our founding in 1899.

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